Between making yourself and buying off the shelve

E-learning content is basically a make-or-buy decision. Either you find the package that satisfies your needs on the market, and you buy a license, or you don't and than you develop it yourself. I would argue that the industry is or should be shifting to a make-and-buy model, where a company can buy semi-finalized course materials, and put in the extra 20% effort to tweak them to the organization's unique needs. After all, generic e-learning can only satisfy so many needs (Office training would be one), and reinventing the wheel for customized training is a costly matter.

- Companies should be able to buy instructional templates and creative alternatives on specific types of training. I'm thinking of templates for application training, product training, process training, induction, management 'soft' skills, etc. It saves a lot on instructional design to work with a sound and proven template.

- Companies should be able to buy almost-ready content that is approx 80% ready and complete it with their own terminology, logo, picture library and relevant cases and examples. I'm thinking of general training or cross-industry training.

I stumbled upon Kineo, a UK provider that is operating in this in-between market: the offer flatpacks or templates for a fee. Have a look at their store:

http://www.rapidelearningstore.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=2&Itemid=107

What is PENS?

PENS is another standard in the elearning world, and stands for 'Package Exchange Notification Services'. It's a specification that allows for quickly and automatically uploading an e-learning package to an LMS from a supported tool like an authoring tool or an LCMS.

http://pens.lmstesting.com/pages/whatispens.htm

Busuu language learning

Busuu is a new site to learn languages (English, French, Spanish, German). Currently in beta, it offers an orientation test and a community around native speakers. The design is fresh and very visual, something important for language learners. I also like the fact this site does not necessarily assume you want to learn language A from B. In your profile you can select all the languages you know and the level you are at, and the languages you want to know. The tour video doesn't work, but otherwise looks promising. Made in Spain.

Learning snacks

What's in a name? You can a small learning unit an object (SCO from the SCORM standard), or a module, a lesson, ... Microsoft has a new name: on their Windows 2008 website they offer 'learning snacks' for free.
It are little modules on some of the features of their new server product in their usual e-learning format: a combination of a menu, static information, and simulations.
It plays in a nice Silverlight player. Silverlight is Microsoft's competitor for Flash and just like Flash requires a one time installation of the free Silverlight player. After that, it just plays in your browser, and as Microsoft will push their format in the time coming, you'll hear more of it.

One thing struck me while viewing a sample: either Text-To-Speech voices have become very good, or the man speaking the text on the simulations has a bad cold or is a cyborg. :-)

Web-based e-learning authoring tools

I'm a strong fan of complete web-based e-learning authoring tools. With the Rich Internet Client applications these days (often build with Flash Flex or Ajax), it is not needed anymore to install local programs to create courses. Furthermore, online tools ensure better collaboration during the development phase because just like learning, making learning is in essence a social and collaborative activity. These online editors often share a common online media library, have workflow features (for example for reviews), and allow for publishing in SCORM or other formats. They are often more simple to use because they heavily rely on screen templates or educational templates.

Here is a list:
- Udutu.com : beta site I wrote in this blog about before. Free authoring via Flash-based forms.
- http://www.rapidintake.com/unison/index.htm : similar product, by the makers of FlashForms
- http://www.coursebuilder.no/ by Edvantage: Course Builder is an online platform for course creation. Don't confuse it with an Adobe product of the same name.
- http://www.composica.com/product/ : online elearning tool for 150$ per author per month
- http://www.courseliner.com/ : courseliner is a French commercial tool

Knol = a unit of knowledge according to Google

It's one of the things Google is experimenting with, when they are not making maps of the moon or so. They started a by-invitation only project called Knol, which is short for knowledge. The idea is to bring authors and their expertise status back into the web. I'm not sure what it looks like, it seems like a wiki for experts only that other people can comment on but not change. I'm sure we'll hear more about it in due time, but if nothing else, we have a new cool word for 'a unit of knowledge', a knol. It sounds so much better than learning object, doesn't it?

More information and a screenshot on the official Google blog.

Masie survey on how employees learn

The Masie Consortium did a survey on how employees learn. You can read some findings here:

http://www.masieweb.com/voicesurvey


Some of the points I remember are:
- People like the fact they have multiple options on what, how and when they learn. There used to be only a class. Now there is also tutoring, e-learning, social networks, the internet, etc.
- But people also get the feeling that with more options, they actually get less time for learning.
Looks like corporate learning is shifting to 'more freedom but in your own time'.

Flash movie tool online: toufee.com

I'm not producing any flash for my sites. The reason is that although the result is visually better than HTML with combined javascript, I just don't have the skills or the money to do proper flash development. Once in a while I'm temped to use an easy (and I mean REAL easy) flash tool.

I recently stumbled upon toufee.com. Warning: I haven't tried it out, because they charge (a little) for it, but it looks like a good tool if all you want is to quickly make some animated movies or text transitions. It's made by a couple of Indians. There is an article on TechCrunch on them here.

Scorm Test Track online by Rustice Software (free)

A tool I frequently use to check an e-learning SCORM package is the free and online SCORM Test Track by Rustici Software.

Just make an account and upload your SCORM packages. You can launch the course, and track all the SCORM communication in detailed logs or just the major items like completion status and score information. Highly recommended tool for testing if your course is SCORM compatible and communicates the necessary information to the LMS.

The tool itself will not solve any compatibility problems between your course (authoring tool) and learning platform, but is a great help. The problem with especially SCORM 1.2 is that the same standard can be interpreted in multiple ways. I give you one example: there is an API to tell the LMS you are moving to another page. But the standard doesn't say if you have to specify the page ID you are moving away from, or the one you are going to.

Site with quiz and testing tools

This site lists many free or commercial tools to create quizzes or tests.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/testing.html

Does content still have value?

Answer: yes. But the willingness for the consumers of it to pay for the content is going way, way down, to the point that content itself will be offered for free, and additional services around will make the money. It is what the music industry is struggling with (the revenue is in the concert tours not the songs), and it's in fact an old prediction of the Internet bubble gurus. They weren't wrong about everything.

This blog (Will at Work) explains why learning will not escape this trend and makes some predictions. I think everyone in our industry should read this, whether or not you agree.

http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/06/all-media-force.html

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

Fiona King pointed this list of learning tools out to me. The list is categorized via learning styles or kind of learners, such as visual learners (mindmapping, video), auditory learners (pod cast tools), kinesthetic learners (note taking tools, collaboration). That gives it a nice angle. I don't know all tools in the list, but the list gives a good impression of useful tools.

Wanted: T-shaped students

I came accross an article on Fifth Academic Days Conference in Zurich some time ago, where academic leaders and business leaders met. It called for the creation of 'T-shaped' students. Before you imagine their physical appearance, let me tell you: it's just a metaphor of course. The industry is looking for people with broad general education (the horizonal line) as well as a profound and deep knowledge of a particular subject (the vertical line). I'd add to that the vertical line might actually shift to other fields during your career...

A quote:

Schools are doing this to create ‘T-shaped students’. The vertical part of
the T represents the traditional mathematics and science education of an
engineer and the crossbar is all the other qualities, so students don’t end up
deep but too narrow. Larry told the group, “at IBM we look for people who have a
depth in a particular field but that also possess much broader top end skills.
That’s what it takes for collaboration to occur.”

It's not the lack of manpower, but insufficient knowledge transfer.

Nice article on CLO Magazine on upcoming changes in workforce, I quote the first paragraph:

"According to Randstad USA’s just-released “2008 World of Work” survey,
U.S. businesses face a serious talent problem with the coming retirement of baby
boomers. Of course, this isn’t news to most chief learning officers. What they might not realize, though, is the challenge lies not with a
lack of manpower, but with insufficient knowledge transfer."

This means in my humble opinion the learning profession is called upon to make this transfer of expertise happen! The retiring generation has a lot of expertise in its head (knowledge), hands (skills) and heart (behavior), and somehow that has to be extracted, transformed into learning that works for the incoming generation and delivered to them asynchroneously.

The rest of the article is here: http://www.clomedia.com/executive-briefings/2008/June/2247/index.php

A global LMS costs 400.000 $ per year

In this month's Chief Learning Officer magazine, Josh Bersin mentions some numbers from a recent study on global Learning Management Systems (LMS):

- a global LMS costs on average 400.000 $ per year
- about half of that is for license fees
- 30% is for support
- most have LMS steering groups
- you might need up to 1 LMS FTE employee for every 1000 students

Free tool to create learning in Microsoft-style: LCDS

Microsoft develops a lot of e-learning on its own products, and you can find samples on the Microsoft E-learning site. They all follow the same template and style, and are in my humble opinions excellent pieces of learning content for the intended type of subject and audience.

And now for the good part: the internal tool they use to develop these courses is now freely available on the Microsoft site. It is called the Learning Content Development System or LCDS, installs easily and has a simple form-based editor. It shows the course structure, a list of templates you can use, and the properties like text, animations and images that go on that template screen. There is a preview button, and the output is SCORM content. Voila. What do you want more?

There is an online help, but not much more documentation or tutorials then that. So I would recommend you first go to the Microsoft E-learning site. There are always one or two courses available for free that should give you a good feel of what the type of screens is you can make with this tool. (All the animation comes from flash you need to develop outside of the tool.)

I played around with the tool and I'm impressed with its ease. Here are my observations and tips:

- The tool is very strict in what it allows: it comes with its list of templates, and the resulting course will have the Microsoft defined look and navigation in it. If you don't like that, search for another tool that gives you other templates or full flexibility. If you are fine with the approach, you'll love the tool.

- Tip for Vista users: by default the tool installs in the c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Learning folder. It also stores all courses here (and you cannot configure that). As that part of the hard disk is not writeable for non-administrators on Vista, it will cause a lot of problems and security popups. My suggestion: after you install LCDS, move or copy the folder somewhere under 'My Documents', and start up the author.exe file from there.

- Tip for media: the images, animations, video you want to include all need to be in the media folder underneath the course folder. The form will only let you pick media that you have manually copied there first. So open up the media folder with the button on the toolbar, and drag/drop all media in there first, before using them in the course pages. This is a little something that could have been solved more nicely, but once you know it works out just fine.

Open source evaluation software: exams

There is an open source exam or evaluation software available, called EXAMS. It is made by the university of Liege if I'm not mistaken (in Belgium that is), and has the necessary components for test takers, makers and administrators.

http://www.exams.be

It is a php application that runs on an MySQL database, and the online demo looked very nice. It didn't open in Internet Explorer (kept saying something irrelevant about cookies), but worked fine in Firefox.

A list of serious games

There is a lot of talk about games that do not just intend to entertain, but also serve one or more learning objectives. There is an excellent site that lists those type of games:

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/

As with all kind of experience-based learning, it takes some time to cover one learning objective, but I do think this (at this point more expensive) kind of learning will pass the hype and remain in the ever enlarging blend of learning formats. And hey, you can't get further away from ye old pageturner learning than this :-)

George Siemens interview

Good interview with George Siemens on the link below.
http://www.elearning-africa.com/newsportal/english/news139.php

I clipped this:

1- A conceptual shift in how we view learning. Learning is increasingly seen as comprising social, contextual and situated perspectives. The social dimension of learning is certainly not new, as it has been advocated by Vygotsky, Bandura and others for almost a century. Within education today, however, these concepts are not merely receiving theoretical acknowledgement, but are now actively implemented at classroom and system-wide levels.
2- A technological shift in how we interact with information and each other. The development of technology has reduced access barriers, enabling individuals from around the world to access information and each other with far greater ease than possible even five or ten years ago.

Sample course on Udutu.com

In this post, I would like to mention a third party example of 'amazing e-learning.' Point your browser to 'Udutu.com', and on the home page, click on the 'How to build effective online courses' organge box. This will open a small sample course on how to create a course. The first page is a bit of advertising.

What makes this course special?
- I find the course look and feel and interaction just average, so that is not what makes it special. This is your typical pageturner+ kind of course.

- But I like the content: it has some nice sections on instructional design such as the often used Bloom taxonomy and definitions for constructivism and behaviorism and other popular instructional design theories. It also has a nice video based example of scenario based learning. I think everyone in the e-learning production chain benefits from a high level understanding of these principles. (Take the test: aks an instructional designer what social constructivism is, if they can't answer you can have their job :-) ).

- And above all, this is a sample course created on a new kind of platform: a completely online authoring tool with templates for the most common types of screens, customisable layout, SCORM export, etc. It is called Udubu.com and they have an interesting business model. The use of the authoring environment is free. They just charge 1$ per screen per month if you want to host the course with them. If you export if for your own LMS, it doesn't cost a thing. Obviously, this tool does not have all features that something as rich and complex as IBM Content Producer or Lectora have. But mark my words: these tools will become the 'powerpoint' of e-learning, taking down the barrier to create simple pageturner courses that enlightened SMEs can use for themselves.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating...
So I took the test myself and gave me one hour to make a little course with the udutu.com tool. I will let you judge for yourself, but here is a preview link to the course 'Hello E-learning World':

http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launcheval/4795/Course7598/Launch.html

Actually, it took me more like 1h30 hours because on two occastions, the tool frooze and I had to log in again (but without loosing any work). So in 1h30 I made 17 screens with some audio/pics etc. And no, this is not 'amazing e-learning' :-) It is just an example of what can be done by simple, dumb, thirteen in a dozen SMEs in a very near (or now?) future...