Synapsys Blog - Blended Learning

Understanding the elearning landscape

One of the things that we've learned from our eLearning projects is that the term 'eLearning' means different things to different people. Once upon a time, eLearning just meant content - chunks of material that were self contained learning objects, with not much thought for the context in which learners engaged with that content. Increasingly, the term is expanding in it's reach and is now bit of a catch-all term that is used to cover a range of possible online experiences. And the number of possible online experiences is increasing dramatically.

If you don't believe me, check out the top 100 learning tools of 2009 collated by Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies

The list covers personal publishing tools, document collaboration and sharing systems, microblogs, video editing and broadcasting, web conferencing, learning management and portfolio tools and many many more. All of these tools in some way allow the creation of events that can form part of eLearning experiences. The trick is to understand what kind of experiences your learners need, and which tools are best suited to different learning experiences.

Each of the tools mentioned above are better suited to some tasks than others. They're also better suited to some environments, learning styles, content areas .. all the things that you would consider in a learner profile analysis. I've started to think about this as an eLearning landscape that is defined by these different dimensions (and I'm not the only one). If we can locate our learners in this landscape, and have a corresponding map of tools that work best in different parts of the landscape, we can more easily choose the best tools to use.

Let me give you an example. Lets say we have learners that can't meet face-to-face, and that there are three dimensions of interest when planning eLearning for this group:

• the number of learners (individual through to large group)


• temporal proximity (same timezone vs other side of the world), and


• the depth of learner engagement required (passive vs active).
  

With a large group of learners in the same timezone, we might choose a webinar tool for an expert-led seminar. When active engagement is required, we might introduce an online polling or survey tool to get real-time feedback on questions. When the audience is large, passive and in different timezones, a streamed video of the presentation and some reading material would probably be a better choice.

In contrast, a small group of people in different timezones with a need to be actively engaged in learning would have difficulty interacting in real time, so a webinar wouldn't be the best tool to choose. A better choice might be an asynchronous collaboration tool like a wiki or a forum where a small group can work together more effectively.

This isn't an exhaustive list of dimensions, or possible tools. But I hope it get's across the point that one tool does not fit all if your learners vary on important dimensions. If we want to achieve effective learning, and we want to make best choices about what tools to use, I find it a useful way to get underway. I'm planning on developing this idea a bit further in future posts and would be interested to hear your thoughts so let me know what you think.

10 tips for creating effective eLearning

Ten tips for creating elearning experiences that actually deliver results

1. Don’t start with the technology
Start by being clear about the business is trying to achieve, and what experience learners actually need. It may or may not be eLearning.

2. Learning Management Systems – Get it right before you buy, not afterwards
Don’t start with choosing an LMS, don’t buy the first one that sounds ‘OK’. Test, pilot, gather requirements with the people that matter – the users.

3. Find your champion
eLearning will involve lots of change for many people. It won’t happen unless the initiative has overt, consistent support from the management team. Find your champion(s) and enlist them.

4. Experiment with creating content
There are a myriad of options, from contracting a company, to DIY, to SaaS services. Unless you’re setting up an eLearning development function, you’ll need to partner in some way. Don’t commit until you’ve tried creating the right level of content you need, and making sure it delivers results.

5. Get learners working together
Training isn’t the goal, changed behavior and improved performance is. People working in teams in a coordinated way is an important part of achieving this.

6. Interactivity generates learning
It might be cheaper to put pages of text online, but will it achieve anything? One way or another you have to engage the user’s brain. Interactivity is a critical part of the solution.

7. Get managers involved
If people are going to learn and change behavior, the organization is going to have to change as well. ‘Doing’ eLearning is not just about providing content people can study anywhere, anytime.

8. Know what your strategy is
eLearning is just another tool. Without a clear vision for what you’re trying to achieve, your effort is likely to be misdirected.

9.Return On Investment/Cost Benefit Analysis, ignore it at your peril
Enduring changes to bottom line performance will require investment. If you don’t project the return, you’ll find it hard to get the resourcing. Elearning may be cheap in large scale delivery, but there are a wide range of costs in getting established.

10. Make sure you can demonstrate success
Don’t get lost in the big systems issues. Small, piloted initiatives that are seen to work are critical to getting momentum.

Getting social and collaborative learning right

The goal of any learning initiative should be to make a difference. This difference could be increasing learners' knowledge in a subject or improving people's ability, efficiency, or satisfaction in their job. From the organisation's perspective, the value of these initiatives is seen in the extent to which this change occurs. Increasingly, organisations are seeing the value of creating opportunities for social and collaborative learning to drive this change.

Social learning techniques give learners the opportunity to apply their learning in a practical context, and gain feedback from peers and managers about how they have approached the task. It can be used to create ways for groups of learners to work collaboratively to achieve an outcome, learning from each other as they go. It can also provide a way for personal and shared reflection on their learning.

This kind of learning is less structured and formal than traditional classroom approaches, and as such it can be difficult to monitor. As a result it can be also be difficult to motivate learners unless there is transparency about the expectations and outcomes.

The challenge for an organisation is to make good choices about how they direct learners to do this, and to choose good tools for their learners. The good news is that there are a number of learning technologies that can help.

However, choosing between the many options available can seem like an impossible task. Many more organisations are making use of social networking tools such as Twitter and Yammer, and at the same time other business applications are become more social - from collaborative tools like Jive SBS and PBWorks, to CRM solutions like Salesforce.com introducing social collaboration into their services. Making the right choice, when many applications seem to offer similar capabilities, can be a difficult challenge.

From our perspective, you can succeed in this area by applying some basic principles, including:

• Get your activity design right - Focus on practical activities, using case studies and scenarios, to allow learners to apply their learning. Arrange for review by peers and supervisors, and coach them to provide constructive feedback and bring the benefit of their experience to solving a problem.


• Look at your current technologies first - If you are already using Sharepoint for collaboration, or a company intranet for peer discussion, see if you can use extend these to support social learning. Giving learners more than one place to go to discuss and share their knowledge and thinking could cause confusion and reduce the likelihood of effective engagement.


• Remove technological barriers to participation - if you need to introduce another application to handle social learning, consider how easily it integrates with your other systems. Nothing will kill collaboration faster than giving users yet another username, password and web address to remember.


• Don't forget the people - Technology doesn't create effective learning, people do. Make sure you invest in people to champion this approach, to foster and encourage learner collaboration, to facilitate involvement by managers and to ensure good quality evaluative data is gathered and reported on.


• Pilot and evaluate - Identify a small group or topic that you can use to trial these techniques. Ensure you have ways for learners to easily provide feedback. Measure the outcomes and compare it to the outcomes of other modes of delviery. All of this will be necessary evidence if you are trying to justify significant investment in people and technology to support this model.

We will be writing more on this topic in the future, including commentary on possible technology choices and examples of approaches to the design of social learning activities. In the meantime, get in touch if you'd like to talk about these concepts in more depth.

Choosing the right delivery mode

IDC's Corporate Learning Buyer Survey series suggests that most corporates choose the delivery mode of training based on available content (IDC, March 2009, #217336, Vol. 1). Hardly surprising really; migrating content from one delivery mode to another is no small task. Moving the words from book to eLearning is one thing. Creating an effective learning experience in the new mode is another thing again.

In our experience, corporates are motivated to change mode because of the apparent significant savings, and the promise of 'better' results. A back-of-the-envelope calculation of the cost of flying 10 people to a workshop for two days quickly moves into the tens of thousands of dollars. Plenty there for some good eLearning content creation, surely?

The problem is that creating a new delivery mode is an upfront cost while business as usual needs to continue. Where does the 'extra' money come from? And what about the risk, maybe it won't work? And where do we get the specialist skills to develop the new mode without becoming dependent on an external provider?... Perhaps we'll just run workshops for another year....

We believe there are three critical steps to setting this process up correctly:
1. Use a sound process to choose the new mode. Base it on what will work for the learners. Audience analysis, organisational requirements, expected change, best model, and required resources.... It doesn't have to be huge, but it needs to ask the right questions.
2. Take small steps and start with the content. Don't leap in and choose an LMS, thre are plenty of cheap hosting options while you focus on creating some good content and the piloting process.
3. Take the time to do a basic Return On Investment analysis, and use it to measure the effectiveness of the pilot. It'll give you the confidence to proceed further - or not!

Selecting an LMS for your Business

What are the keys to successfully selecting a Learning Management System for your business?

I've just finished viewing an excellent webinar on this topic, courtesy of Bryan Chapman. In the webinar, Bryan talks with three senior managers at large corporates (NEC, Sharp and Valero Energy) about their process for selecting and implementing a Learning Management System.

There's a lot of really useful insights in this presentation, but the key messages that I took from it are:

• There are hundreds of potential LMSs to choose from. The challenge is to identify the one that's best for your organisation.


• Consult widely within your organisation to determine the requirements.


• Finding the right supplier is as important as finding the right system.


• Frequent communication with stakeholders, an organisational champion and leadership from senior management are all critical to the success of your implementation

Nothing terribly surprising, but it's always great when you see industry leaders agreeing with your approach. Synapsys has long been convinced of the importance of understanding your stakeholders, your audiences and their needs before making strategic decisions.

It's clear that an effective LMS implementation can have wide ranging effects on your business. The people interviewed during the webinar quoted shifts in online delivery of training from 10% pre-LMS to 90% in some cases. It was also fascinating to hear how NEC had turned their LMS into a revenue generation channel, using it to advertise and sell training packages to their dealer network. In this particular case, NEC achieved a 1300% (yes, 1300%) return on investment.

It's clearly a decision that can have wide ranging effects on your business, and making sure you have a clear understanding of what your users need is of paramount importance. And that's where we can help.

Social networking tools

Social networking tools are a rapidly growing area of technological development. This growth is due mainly, in our view, to the growing realisation within both the corporate and educational sectors that:
-Managing knowledge requires more than documenting it
-The use that knowledge can be put to depends largely on the ability of people to contextualise it within their organisation, and that requires engagement and communication.

What began as software for dating sites and the like is growing into a range of applications from event organising, to academic networks to marketing applications. One that is starting to gain traction is Sossoon. This tool is gaining traction as a forum for academics to share information and ideas globally, and is also being used to network those involved in the purchasing industry , and professes to have a wider range of commercial applications. It will be interesting to see how this new type of offering shakes down over time. Solutions which can be demonstrated to have application to a wide of range of contexts are more likely to succeed, and in that regard Sossoon may be worth keeping an eye on.

eLearning design process, moving on from ADDIE

Most training developers are familiar with the ADDIE training development model, based on a series of steps moving from analysis through development to evaluation. This article by Kevin Kruse suggests that eLearning development processes might benefit from the incorporation of systemic design models that involve an interative process. Creative teams evolve and test concepts until there is broad user acceptance. He also suggests that a rapid prototyping step can be inserted as part of CD ROM solutions design to test out working models.

Our experience is that project practicalities such as budget and timeframe often preclude an open ended process of iterative inquiry. If (and it's a big if) the right information is gathered in the initial scoping phases, we can have confidence that the proposed solution will fit.

A relatively linear model doesn't preclude creativity. The key determinant here is that the development team needs to have clearly defined roles and processes which allow the creative/expansive work to be done in a managed way. If the team composition isn't appropriate, or if the process is unclear, it's doubtful whether a truly effective solution will emerge, no matter what time or resource is allocated to it.

At Synapsys, the vision for the elearning experience is driven by the educational designer. Graphic designers and coding developers are charged with responsibility to 'make it so', as much as techncially possible.

As more and more of our work involves blended learning solutions, the other big challenge becomes clearly defining the relationship between the different media/experiences so that the learner has a clear pathway to follow that makes sense to them.

On larger projects we'll manage this process through the use of media-specific project managers, whose output is managed by the lead educational designer. It is this person who is charged with the role of 'champion of the learner', continuously monitoring from the perspective of the learner whether the final experience will be both seamless and effective.

Beginner's Guide to Distance Learning Issues

The California Distance Learning Project (CDLP) provides a useful overview of common issues and concerns in the development of distance learning materials. eLearning related development is also addressed. Content includes an overview of the history of distance learning, as well as coverage of more contemporary issues such as SCORM compliance and open source LMSs. Administration and evaluation issues are also overviewed. If you need to clarify what these terms mean, or orient yourself around broad issues, this is a good place to start:

CDLP

Why doesn't our eLearning work?

Many organisations approach the issue of eLearning and computer based training by
1. Deciding it might add some value, or reduce training cost
2. Purchasing a Learning Management System
3. Purchasing off-the-shelf content or taking existing training resource and putting it on the intranet.

It is not uncommon for them to discover:
• Implementation costs far exceed estimates
• There are a raft of unanticipated staffing and technology issues
• There is low uptake in the training by staff
• There are real questions over whether the new training is actually delivering changed behaviours

Why? Because effectively leveraging the value of eLearning isn’t just about technology and content. It’s also about your organisations’ culture, how people cope with change, and the quality of the learning experience.

No surprise then, that a truly eLearning capable organisation has strategically addressed issues of:
• Leadership and Management
• Organisational Culture
• Technology, and
• Staffing

It's a daunting list, but the industry is mature enough now for there to be clear indicators of the sorts of characteristics that typify organisations how have developed their eLearning capability effectively.

Synapsys has classified these indicators and developed an audit service that involves mapping your organisation to a series of indicators for each area. We report to you on your organisations’ status, and provide suggestions for tactical initiatives that will target your particular areas of priority. Contact us for more information.

Multimedia development process models

The process of multimedia development is complex. Each organisation will develop its own process which reflects its own culture, as much as it does good process design principles. Here's an example of one process module developed by Stephen Lowe for use by Level 7 Multimedia Diploma students. Note that each step has rollovers, providing useful background.

Cost of developing interactive courses

One of the most common questions we're asked is "how much does it cost to develop an interactive course?" That's a bit like asking "How much does it cost to build a house?"... It's frustrating to get the answer "It all depends..." but it does. One of the key determinants of cost is the level of interactivity. Hundreds of pages of static content can be produced in the time it takes to build one sophisticated interactive learning environment.

One the other hand, the value of an interactive learning experience can be hundreds of times that of simply reading through electronic content....

Recent figures out from the US suggest that the custom development of learning content can range from US$15,000 per learning hour for low level interactivity to $42,500 per learning hour for full blown simulations.

We draw two conclusions from this:
1. If you look simply at the cost of development, you'll probably shy away from high level interactive solutions. Don't. Take the time to measure what the benefit is in changed behaviour that comes about from a successful learning experience. We've watched many organisations 'tick off' an eLearning initative because they've uploaded pages of content, even though nobody has changed how they do their jobs as a consequence. THAT is a waste of money.
2. New Zealand is a great place to get custom development done. Local costs are substantially below US prices, and you have the security of knowing that the solution will be developed appropiate to Western business processes.

Useful Blended Learning case studies

This White Paper: http://www.centra.com/download/whitepapers/CaseStudy_BlendedLearning.pdf contains a couple of useful case studies illustrating the way in which different blended media can be purposed for different business needs, together with commentary on the decision making processes sitting behind them.

They do a good job of selling blended solutions, but don't go into any depth around the actual change processes that have to take place for solutions such as these to work. Case study 1 includes the use of a range of different technology tools. Unless your organisation already has them bedded down as part of its culture, the job in getting people to work with them may well overshadow the learning that you're hoping to achieve through their use.

Synergies Between Formal and Informal Learning

Lilia Efimova is doing a PhD on 'personal productivity in a knowledge intensive environment: a weblogs case'. During the course of her research, she has uncovered some of the difficult organisational problems that arise when trying to approach learning holistically, embracing both sides of the formal/informal learning coin:

"In practice the above forms of learning are more and more perceived as two sides of the same learning process, whereas organisationally they still "belong" to different departments. Formal learning programs are planned and managed under HR/T&D umbrella, while informal learning usually addressed within knowledge management domain. This seemingly dichotomy results in a variety of learning-support efforts in a company that often are not related nor aligned. This results in lack of support for informal learning, duplicated or contradictory interventions, unnecessary costs and lost opportunities to improve quality."

More here...

Blended Learning and Business Change

This is a semi-introductory article on blended learning, but includes interesting results of an IDC study of fifteen organisations that have undertaken blended learning. Included are some helpful guidelines for developing a blended learning approach, focused on ensuring business impact.

http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_fairfield.asp?articleid=349

Getting the Most Out of Blended Learning

This article has a provocative title, "Four Blended Learning Blunders and How to Avoid Them", but it's really a primer on the best way to approach blended learning projects. It echoes many of the principles we believe in, like aligning training with business strategies, using the right delivery methods, etc.

http://www.learningcircuits.org/2003/nov2003/elearn.html

Simulations for Learning

Clark Aldrich is the author of a recent book, Simulations and the Future of Learning, in which he discusses how to leverage simulations as learning tools. In this Q&A article, he clears up some misconceptions about simulations (they needn't be complicated nor expensive!) and elaborates on their potential.

We're doing some work with simulations for a couple of clients of ours at the moment, so we find this stuff quite interesting.

http://www.elearningpost.com/features/archives/002199.asp

Real-life Lessons About eLearning

This is a fascinating summary of a talk given by Damien Faughan, Charles Schwab's Director of Infrastructure & Technology, at the eLearning Producer conference. Damien frankly discussed lessons the large financial services company has learned about eLearning over the last several years, including issues related to technology, reusability, learner motivation, blended learning, etc.

These lessons learned really substantiate many of the principles we espouse at Synapsys, for instance: "At the end of the day, all learning needs to be strategic and transformational, learner-centered and focused on contributing to the business."

http://www.internettime.com/blog/archives/001021.html

Blended Learning Boosts Productivity

A new study by NetG shows that blended learning can offer a substantial improvement on productivity over methods that employ just one delivery option:

http://www.learningcircuits.org/2003/mar2003/newsbytes.html#1

Synapsys Presentation on Educational Design

This is a presentation that we delivered to the Association of Technical Communicators in Christchurch, New Zealand on October 31st, 2003.

Many of the topics sparked lively conversation, particularly those related to leveraging opportunities like learning games for populations of learners who aren't motivated by traditional methods.

Download the presentation (right-click this link to save it to your hard drive)

Managing the Synchronous Blend

This Learning Circuits article focuses on leveraging technology to create the best blend of synchronous training events (face-to-face, virtual classrooms, video conferences, etc.). Perhaps most importantly, it addresses the issue of facilitation, a powerful learning tool that is often overlooked when organisations opt to pursue eLearning approaches.

"The right blend creates a learning process rather than individual events with a common theme. Each segment of the blend is equally important and relevant. Make sure the design communicates to participants that their individual success depends on them completing each step of the process."

http://www.learningcircuits.com/2003/oct2003/hofmann.htm