From eLearn Magazine: Series of Interviews with Elearning Experts

I’ve been catching up on blog and article reading lately and wanted to share this gem. Here’s a series on eLearn Magazine by Jeanette Campos: super IDs, talking about what they do. Some of my favorite quotes:

Cammy Bean:

When your business partners know that they can trust you, when they know you are going to follow through, you have more opportunity to push them toward better, more creative, solutions.

Kevin Thorn:

You can never take for granted the extra 10 minutes you have at lunch to grab a book or find a tutorial. Because today, there is no excuse for not learning your craft.

Craig Wiggins:

Some of the research we’ve uncovered is that L&D professionals don’t challenge their peers, they don’t challenge their clients, and they don’t always advocate for the best possible learning creations. And that’s unfortunate, because that’s how we can bring value.

Abigail Wheeler:

…Being sensitive to the culture of an organization—and learning as much as you can about the organization as you begin the work—can go a long way toward making everyone more comfortable, especially if moving into eLearning production is a new experience for many involved.

…And Why It Isn’t.

This a separate post because I truly don’t want to take away from the good things I’ve said about Storyline previously. It is a superstar course authoring tool and this is not a criticism of it.

And at the same time… Less and less do I consider courses the answer. These days I’m working more on performance support, small interactions, communities, and games. I’m increasingly concerned about responsiveness and appropriateness of the content to the delivery environment and device. I’m very concerned about the ways in which the content reports interaction data for storage and analysis. And this isn’t new; what’s new is how much I’m starting to prefer these delivery methods over courses.

I’m thinking more expansively about design and looking more and more at tools outside of the “elearning authoring” world.

Shakeups are good. I encourage using this one to re-examine strategies and design processes in addition to comparing tool features. Courses may still suit your needs, but don’t choose them just because the tools enable their easy creation.

DIWIWT: 10 Ways to Occupy eLearning by Connie Malamad

I’ve had several really bad cases of Damn I Wish I Wrote That already this week.

Today’s was from Connie Malamad: 10 Ways to Occupy eLearning. In it, she puts together some of the best messages for the learning community to hear right now, including not being an order-taker, getting out of your design rut using Thiagi’s 4 Door Model, making prototypes, learning from other fields… she’s on fire! Love it, love it, love it. When you visit, be sure to add your own idea.

It also reminded me of a post of hers called Is Design Thinking Missing From ADDIE? that she pointed me to at Learning Solutions, in response to my post-UTAOU post. We had a conversation about learning processes and techniques from other design fields… something that she is already exploring well on her blog.

Rock on, Connie!

Curious George, User Interface Design, and Enterprise Software

My boys have fallen in love with Curious George in both books and cartoons, and last night I watched Curious George’s Rocket Ride with them. In this episode, George ends up going to space because a mission requires buttons in the rocket to be pressed on four separate keypads at the same time — requiring an astronaut with four hands.

Now, there are plenty of things Curious George encounters that would never happen in real life, but bad user interface design is not one of them. Take this unfortunate example. And, well, the vast majority of enterprise software, which for the most part doesn’t kill, but wastes incredible amounts of time and money in lost productivity, decreased morale, and unnecessary training development. Mostly, buyers seem to put up with it because they don’t understand those costs or don’t feel like they have better options.

That thought always gets me down, so I re-read this article written by Marcia Conner at the beginning of this year. I love her parting words:

Start now. Pressure your vendors to do better. Don’t settle. Run simple usability testing with eight new hires. If you must, have a transition plan.

Be courageous and doggedly determined to create a healthy year.