The Next Evolution of eLearning - 2008

During the panel discussion, here's some of the questions and responses.

Where do creative ideas for eLearning come from?
Dr. Michael Allen: Although you have a lot of information, it's not effective to just put the information into a course. "Knowledge is nice, but skills are power." Some people have an innate ability, but what about for the rest of us. Look at four critical components: CCAF Context, Challenge, Activity, Feedback

• What do you want them to be doing when they end the training. Start with the activity, the performance they should be able to do.
• What are the challenges to apply these skills?
• Not interesting to solve boring activities. Put the learning in an appropriate context.
• Effective feedback in intrinsic feedback. I can see the effect of what I did. I know why what I did has an impact.

Feedback, Challenge and Activity all fit within the context.
Putting learners at risk and providing them with the help they need.

Virtual Classrooms - How would you make them more effective and learning oriented.
Jennifer Hofman, InSync
What works in online classroom environments and what doesn't work.
Only 30% of learners, learn well in an auditory environment.
Participants need to be active part of the communication.

• Break out rooms - small group work online, let participants build the content by using their expertize
• Synchronized web browsing or online courses, and then bring them back to share their knowledge
• Bring back the skills you learned for classroom.
• Slides make us talk and don't lead us into activities.
• Participant guides provide a way of taking notes, building on information. Not just print out of the slides.
• Learn to fully utilize the virtual classroom software
• Help the learner become fluent in the capability of being a student.
• How do you judge the body language over the bandwidth? Experience
• Practice, observing best practices, take as many online courses as you can, to learn best practices, what works, what doesn't work.
• Use the same standards that you would for face-to-face classes
• Teach managers how to support learning via virtual classrooms.
• Spend time to learn how to utilize the virtual classroom.
• Informative vs. learning - learning requires constant activity. She says every 3-5 minutes. I'd say ever 1-2 minutes. Otherwise the learner is doing other activities.
• My suggestion: Have your learners create blog entries while they are listening. Evaluate the blog entries. I'm doing that at this time.

Where are we going in the eLearning space? Brent Schlenker - The eLearning Guild

Social networks, RSS, blogs, wikis are the technologies that are beginning to actually being used in learning. Become mainstream for learning. Empowering learners.

• Anyone can go out and talk about company and learning. Does this need to be secured, limited?
• Two types of learners. Personalities that know how to go out and find out what they want, others need to be handheld, walked through. Goal to design courses for both types of learners.
• Mobile devices - location based learning, GPS or bar coding. Make suggestions for learning based on location.
• Failures - in the process of trying new technologies, failures will occur. Trying to move a new empowered technology into an organization that doesn't support empowerment.
• Five ables for new content: searchable, linkable, taggable, feedability, bloggable,
• Not everyone will use each technology. Can't be mandated, must build from a personal desire. New associates who are experienced using these technologies may use these tools, while older partners may not. If you make it available, they will come.
• Use the coolness of the new technology to hook learners.