August, 2007

Now that the buzz surrounding podcasting has subsided some, what is the place of podcasting in today’s learning arsenal? It’s a very good question. By now, most learning professionals have heard of podcasts in one way or another. They may have learned about them from buying their childrens’ iPods. Or they themselves may have been among the small minority of early experimenters who have used them in their courses and training. Or perhaps somewhere in between.

Apple really did a great job coining the terms “podcast” and “podcasting.” In some ways, these terms have become as widely used as when we say “Kleenex” instead of “tissue,” or “Xerox/Xeroxing” instead of “making reproductions on a copy machine.” A podcast is really just a type of digital media file which plays audio in a browser or on a portable device.

But podcasting has gone high-profile! Which do you think sounds better when you’re at an e-Learning. conference surrounded by other learning and training professionals?:

“Why John, we have been using podcasts for a while now in our online training programs, how about you?”

“Why John, we have been using audio for a while now in our online training programs, how about you?”

As many people know, the two most popular podcast formats are mp3 files and m4a files. If you are an Apple enthusiast, you will say Apple’s m4a file is really the only true podcast audio file, but when most people talk about podcasts or podcasting they are referring to mp3 files as well. And it just so happens that the mp3 file format is more widely used and supported.

In the last few months, a couple of academic papers and studies have questioned the learning effectiveness of podcasts. While most students, learners, companies, training managers, and instructors seem enthusiastic about using and applying this technology, other factors can inhibit their effectiveness and use. For example, the podcast medium (by nature) is one-sided, because most learners are listening to only part of a lecture-an explanation or briefing-which is not an interactive activity in and of itself.

Creating a podcast also requires decent equipment, extra software, and knowledge of how to record and edit audio files. So podcast creation is a skill many e-Learning developers may not have. It also helps to have your own voice talent or (if you are doing video podcasting) access to professional models. Let’s face it, your company’s subject-matter expert may be the most knowledgeable person in the entire industry on XYZ circuits, but they may not present very well in audio or video.

Additional factors, relating to the type of information in the podcasts, can complicate their execution and deployment. For example, the:

Type of audience (such as field personnel who use mobile devices exclusively).

Level of security needed (such as secure RSS).

Delivery methods required (such as product briefings via Blackberry).

Most training project managers understand that such factors translate into additional money that will be needed to develop their training.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Dave, you’re pretty down on podcasts!” And that is not true! I am proud to say that SyberWorks has three different podcast series:

The SyberWorks e-Leaning Podcast Series.The SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series.The e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series.

In our e-Learning development division, we produce all types of audio and video for our clients as well.

But now, you are saying, “Okay Dave, but can podcasts work with a learning management system (LMS)?” A good LMS can track and manage all types of web content: audio, video, podcasts, synchronous or asynchronous e-Learning, instructor-lead training, web conferencing, study helps, or traditional offline training. The SyberWorks LMS tracks and manages all of these types of web content, and more.

So where might podcasting fit in your own e-Learning environment? I see podcasting as one of many items in the tool box that supports your online training and overall training objectives. It can be used as a study aid, or as a performance-support tool that can be integrated into online courses and larger training programs. Finally, podcasts should be developed and integrated with the same level of diligence and care that is used to create any other study-help materials, performance-support information, or learner evaluations. Okay, so that should settle it, I really do think podcasts and podcasting have a place in e-Learning, and in your company’s training programs.

Dave Boggs is the founder and CEO of SyberWorks, Inc. He has been involved with computer-based and web-based training for more than twelve years. Before founding SyberWorks, Dave was the VP of Sales and Business Development for Relational Courseware. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Union College in Schenectady, NY, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

Dave also writes two blogs in the e-Learning space. The first blog, The Boggs e-Learning Chronicle covers news, trends, and observations about the e-Learning and web-based-training industries. His second blog, The Online Training Content Journal discusses best practices, techniques, and trends in online training development and e-Learning instructional design.

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Thomson Reuters Wins Technology Innovation Award for NetClient CS Mobile App

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November, 2009

By David Boggs, CEO and Founder of SyberWorks, Inc.

The Web is where many of our customers and users will increasingly “live” for their information needs. This means that anything we do to both deliver e-Learning and spread the word about our products and services “over the Cloud” will both serve our audiences and build our businesses.

Most of us already deliver e-Learning over the Web in a variety of ways, but the following Web channels also may be used to promote our products and services:

Search enginesWeb blogsWebinarsWikisYouTube

These are all places where your e-Learning business can live on the Web to good advantage. But people must first be able to find you there. So let’s first discuss:

Remember when your parents bought their first encyclopedia, to bring the world’s knowledgebase into your home? How times have changed. Now, the Web itself is the world’s knowledgebase, and engines like Google are its keyword-searchable Index. In a very real sense, if an e-Learning product or service isn't widely present (and readily found) on the Web, it doesn’t exist.

Why do I add “readily found”? Because peoples’ willingness to wade through masses of text (and pages of Google hits) is limited. So even if you do have a Web presence, you also need to worry about where you show up in browser search results. Even I rarely venture past the first three pages of Google hits. So in effect, three Google pages (about 36 items) is my personal Search Horizon. And if your firm’s products or services fall beyond it in my searches, then you’ve fallen off the edge of my informational world. I won’t know you exist until a different search pulls you inside my Search Horizon.

And the key to making that happen is to broaden your presence on the Web, increase your organization’s “hit rate,” and raise your position in search-result lists. This article and the next will help you do just that, by promoting yourself on as many different Web sites as are appropriate for your products and marketing plans.

Blogs are basically online chat rooms about specific topics. Google any area of interest to you, your company, or its markets, and you’ll probably find online blogs that are already discussing it. Track those that seem well targeted to your markets. Watch them. And as much as possible, throw in your own expert comments, advice, and product links. Or if you see a need, consider starting your own targeted blog.

Every time you post a blog comment (or use any of the other web sites we’ll discuss), you add a tiny piece to your presence on the Web. Google and other browsers can find these pieces, and by scattering as many of them across the Web as possible, you’ll gradually draw yourself into potential customers’ Search Horizons.

“Web-based seminars” are done in so many ways, using so many technologies, that a summary cannot do them justice. They’re like Online, Instructor-Led classes, delivered in real-time to free or paying customers or prospects. They may be lectures, workshops, or presentations delivered across the Web, and usually involve audience interaction (which differentiates them from “webcasts”).

Just Google “webinar” and you’ll find millions of links about them and specific webinar offerings. But also examine your own LMS/LCMS system. It may already include web-conferencing capabilities that you can use to deliver your own webinars to both prospects and customers, both quickly and inexpensively.

The bottom line here (as elsewhere) is that if your products or services lend themselves to promotion via webinars, consider trying them.

When you Google a topic of interest to you, your company, or its markets, you'll frequently find related Wikis at or near the top of your results. That's because so many other people have found and viewed them. So when you do, check them out. And if you see anything blatantly incomplete or incorrect in them, fix it, and make sure your firm's name and products are at least mentioned in your addition. (By definition, you can edit most Wikis once you "join" them.) Who knows, you may even decide to write and post your own Wiki.

Either way, you'll expand your firm's promotion and presence on the Web, and make it easier for existing and potential customers to find you there.

This is a great place to make promotional videos available for anyone around the world to view. More can be said about this than a short article permits. And not all e-Learning products lend themselves to promotional videos. But if your products or services could be promoted through short videos, then get to know YouTube.

The above are only a few of the more "mainstream" Web avenues for getting your organization and its e-Learning products before your audiences. In Part 2, we'll explore some less obvious channels, ones that you might not have considered!

David Boggs is the Found and CEO of SyberWorks, Inc. in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has been involved with computer and web-based training for more than twenty years. Before founding SyberWorks, Dave was the VP of Sales and Business Development for Relational Courseware. He holds a BS in Physics from Union College in Schenectady, NY, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

SyberWorks, Inc. is a leader in providing Learning Management Systems and custom e-Learning Solutions for Fortune 1000 corporations, higher education, and other organizations. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions for creating, managing, measuring, and improving e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries.

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Registration Opens for 2014 Payroll Summits

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Thomson Reuters Ideas Community Sees Record Membership Increase in 2013

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Summer 2013 newsletter

The students at the East Centre have produced another newsletter. In this issue:

the student of the monthupdates on community building, the women’s group, and health weekan article on HaitiEthiopian culture in Canadaand more!

Click to view the newsletter.

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July 2012 newsletter from PTP East

The students at the East centre have produced another issue of their newsletter, the PTP Advocate. In this release, read about the Student of the Month, Nigerian family traditions, staying safe in the sun and more.

View the newsletter.

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Rapid Adoption of Mobile CS Shows Changing Habits of Tax and Accounting Professionals

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November, 2005

By Dana Fine, Senior Instructional Designer, SyberWorks

What turns your best dress into a showstopper? Accessories. And what turns your online course content into dazzlingly useful learning content? Learning Activities. What is a Learning Activity? In e-learning content development, we use all forms of questions for test and quizzes:

Multiple correct, which presents a number of choices as answers to a particular question. There may be more than one answer to this question. The students chooses all answers that are correct.Single correct, which presents multiple choices as answers to a particular questions. One answer of the possible choices is correct.Item matching, in which there is one column of possible answers that relate to another column of questions. Item matching is commonly used for matching the correct term to the definition.Fill-in-the-blank, in which the students enters the correct word or words that complete a sentence.True/false, in which the student answers whether a statement is true or false.Short answer, in which the student enters a one to two sentence answer to a question.Essay, in which the student responds to a question with a page (or more) long response.

All of these question types are useful for testing knowledge gained from taking a course, as well as testing the level of knowledge prior to a course. In addition, such questions are useful in the course itself as learning checks. The learning check enables the student to determine whether he understands the material. Most companies consider these questions to be adequate learning activities. However, learning activities can be much more. Learning activities that are simulations can involve the student and give him a safe environment in which to practice skills gained through the course.

Learning Activities are interactive activities that help to explain concepts and involve the student with hands-on learning. This may include all forms of drag and drop questions (one to one correlation, many to one correlation) as well as interactive ordering of graphics or text, and finally, simulations.

An IDC article and survey, Technology-Based Simulations: Cloning the Work Environment for More Effective Learning, June 2004 by Michael Brennan, states, “By 2008 the use of simulations will quadruple.... Simulations provide a parallel universe in which employees hone their skills... Innovative companies have realized this, and others will follow.”

Simulations are currently the most expensive learning activity. Simulations must be individually designed and programmed. For example, suppose you have a sales course in which you are testing the sales student's retention of the message that the company wishes to deliver to its customers. You could do a question workshop: several questions that give situations requiring an action in multiple correct or single correct formats. Another, more entertaining, method would be to have the sales person run through a scenario in which he indicates what he would do to sell his product. The learning activity indicates whether the customer would buy this product based on those actions. This feedback could be indicated by a graph indicating customer readiness to buy. It could also be complimented by video, in which the customer appears aggravated when the sales person gives his message incorrectly and pleased when the sales person gives his message correctly.

Online courses are taken privately and at the student's convenience. If the student requires several attempts with a particular scenario, praise the student for continued effort and eventual competency.

Adding humor to simulations and learning activities is essential yet can be controversial. As the simulation developer or content developer, you do not want to add any humor that could be perceived as offensive, sexist or worse, unfunny. To extend our sales example, when the sales person is unsuccessful at selling his product in the learning activity, you would not want your customer video or simple animation of the customer to offend the sales person. Yet you want him to laugh and try again. Perhaps the customer morosely shaking his head and leaving the room, with text indicating how the sales call went dreadfully south would be acceptable and could be done in a humorous fashion. You would not want this animation to be disturbing – the customer should not shake his fist and yell for a restraining order against the sales person, for example.

In the past, I participated in designing a simulation of patient anesthesia. The computer program consisted of a patient on the operating room table and two dials that the student could turn. One dial administered oxygen, the other dial administered anesthetic. The patient's parameters could change (height, weight, age). As the student administered the anesthesia, a graph showed the patient's stats. If you administered too much anesthesia the patient would die! It was a great simulation, but scary. The death knell of the patient was accompanied by funeral music. . Ouch!

On the other hand, sometimes we encounter simulations and learning activities that add nothing to the content or the course. They are superfluous, added to maintain interest. You must be very careful in these instances. If you want to add something to maintain interest, it should still be useful and explore some aspect of the topic. A Flash movie of interesting fractals may be colorful and fun - useless in a course that is not about fractals, art or Flash. For example, suppose you are teaching contractual document details. You can still relate the content of the course to a learning activity in which the student must put the correct elements from a list into three different types of contracts. As dry as you may think detailing the elements of a contract might be, if you add audio that indicates whether the addition was right or wrong, you can keep your student's interest. “Wrong!” can be contrasted with “Oh, not that element, it does not belong” said in a beautiful feminine voice. The second response can add a smile and cause the student to remember how the contractual elements are added to a contract. A booming male voice that states, “You sir, are correct!” can bring that same acknowledgement.

In conclusion, questions and quizzes while useful are not the end of interactivity. We need to provide the means for simulations inside online courses to provide the hands on learning that students need. Through clever activities that allow seeing the consequences of your actions on the simulation model, we can provide activities that enable retention of material and practice. If these activities lead the student to greater understanding, we have provided not only an entertaining activity but also great value for our online courses.

Dana Fine is a Senior Instructional Designer at SyberWorks, Inc http://www.syberworks.com. SyberWorks is a custom e-Learning solutions company that specializes in Learning Management Systems, e-Learning solutions, and custom online course development. Dana is also a frequent contributor to the Online Training Content Journal.

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