My 2011 Predictions

Well it's that time again. Here are my e-learning predictions for the coming year.

• You know I have to include a Flash prediction. So, here you are...  I predict a Flash player will finally be included on the iPad and iPhone this year. This will be mostly due to the fact that so many more phones, and tablets, will be released with Flash, pressuring Apple to do the same.


• Say goodbye to the "e-" and the "m-" and say hello to just "learning" in 2011. I think we will be less concerned about the medium and will call it "learning" regardless of whether it is in the classroom, computer, phone or wherever else you are finding it.


• The coming flood of tablets in 2011 will move m-learning much further along. However, I think people will be distinguishing less and less between the terms e-learning, m-learning, and just learning. After all, where does m-learning stop and e-learning begin? See prior prediction.


• With the economy improving, we will see reinvestment in classroom training and classroom trainers. I believe too many organizations have hastily delved into online training, resulting in developing courses that are better off in in the classroom than online. Plus with so many rushing into e-learning without investing the time in understanding the design end has resulted in ineffective "rapid e-learning." I think we will see these people who had good intentions are going to move away from e-learning. For those that may be in that boat, don't give up on e-learning, but please read "Hey You Rapid e-Learning Peeps, Slooow Down and Take a Little Drive on the ISD Side of Town."


• QR Codes will become more prevalent in the U.S. In fact, I just started using them myself by including them in a new e-learning course. I also plan to start adding them to job aids, manuals, presentations and anywhere else when appropriate.

Want to see what I predicted last year?

Reflecting on My 2010 Blog Posts and Happy New Year

Over at the Learning Circuits' Big Question it is time once again to reflect on the past year. So, I took a look at my most popular posts during 2010. FYI: I used eLearningLearning to identify my "Best of" posts according to social indicators.

Here are the top 10 posts written in 2010:

1. My e-Learning Don’ts


2. A Few Practical Tips on Storyboarding


3. Development Tools I Would Learn If I Were You - June’s Big Question


4. Looking for THE SCORM Resource?


5. e-Learning and Games in Healthcare


6. Keeping Up - April’s Big Question


7. What is HTML 5?


8. Voice Over in e-Learning, Sometimes


9. e-Learning via the BBC


10. Flash Tutorials on Screenr

While it is nice to see I still have posts from 2009 that make it in the top 10, I only included those written in 2010. The first thing that jumps out is that quite a few relate to development. Although on reflection I probably wrote a great deal this year on development. Any skew towards development is probably due to starting a new job last February and dealing with learning a new LMS, some new software, and getting reacquainted with some old software. All of which I was able to do and the blog helped by being a tool of self-reflection and a great source of helpful comments and shared resources from my very generous readers.

I was very pleased to see the "My e-Learning Don’ts" post at number one. I wrote it as a bit of a rant against "ineffective" e-learning, but it was tweeted quite a bit and was referenced in several other blogs. That was very flattering and on reflection I think I hit on many of the things that also irk others and sinks many e-learning projects. Hopefully it provided a dose of prevention... I know for me I will revisit it, and the comments generated, as reminders of what not to do.

Thank you everyone who visited my blog in 2010 and here's to a great 2011. Happy New Year everyone!

Jeff

My New Social Bookmarking Tool

I have been a big fan of social bookmarking and my preferred tool for social bookmarking has been Delicious. With the initial rumor that Yahoo will be discontinuing it and now the news they may be selling it,  I imported my bookmarks to Diigo. It was a very easy process and retained all of my tags. This is great because I often share these tags on my blog, Twitter, e-mail and even in the classroom, so seeing them preserved was very important to me. Here are some of the tags I share the most, which are now available in Diigo:

• Free_e-Learning


• Cloud


• Development_tools


• Games


• Captivate


• SCORM

I also added a Diigo widget to this bog. So, if you are a Diigo user you can bookmark my posts using the icon in the right column. I have also inserted a working example below.

Quiz Maker Pro Give Away

ProProfs has been nice enough to give one of our lucky readers a free copy of Quiz Maker Pro. They created a sample quiz, which if you score 100% you will be included in our drawing for a free one year copy. Below is the link to the quiz, which will give you a good feel of what can be done with Quiz Maker in addition to moving you closer to winning your free copy for one year.

How Teachers Can Use Web 2.0 In The Classroom (Quiz Maker)

The deadline is December 27, 2010. I will select a name from all who scored 100% and announce the lucky winner December 29th right here on this blog.

Good luck!

No Next Button - Some Examples

As I have written in the past, I have an aversion to "next" buttons. Here are some examples of courses without next buttons, or at least in a few cases very minimal use of next buttons.

• Blood Typing - NobelPrize.org


• Deep Brain Stimulation - Edheads.org


• Trace Space Back to You - NASA


• We Choose the Moon


• Mission: Turfgrass - Kevin Thorn


• Laptop Ports - Suddenly Smart


• Zombies in Plain English - CommonCraft


• Benefit Banking - One from my own portfolio


• Business Benefit Banking - Another from my portfolio

If you have examples of "next button courses" that you would to share, please feel free to add a link to it in the comments section.

DevLearn's DemoFest Webinar

Over at the eLearning Guild they posted the recorded DemoFest 2010 Highlights Webinar. I was lucky enough to attend the webinar last week and it was great to see the winners show off their work and learn about the design and development of these great courses.

FYI: If you are an Articulate user, Kevin Thorn (a.k.a. LearnNuggets) provides some great tips and tricks during his portion of the webinar (Mission: Turfgrass).

Head over to the eLearning Guild and check out the DemoFest 2010 Highlights Webinar.

Characters

I like to use characters in courses because they can personalize a course and lend themselves to creating a more informal tone and an easy means of adding humor.

Here are some ways I like to use characters in e-learning.

• Guide or facilitator - Typically this person is the expert that walks you through the content and facilitates discussions, interaction, etc. At times I like to have two guides to break up any possible monotony. When working with two "experts" I will even include disagreement or some "ribbing" between the two. This makes it more entertaining and keeps participants' attention. FYI: Disagreements are usually humorous in nature and should not compromise the integrity of any specific learning content in the course.


• Coworkers/project team - A course I once developed for an updated teller system consisted of the participant being assigned to a project team. As a member of the team you are assigned to numerous tasks and also assist and interact with other team members. It not only keeps participants on their toes, but they learned about the system and hopefully felt more vested in it too.


• Naive, struggling learner and/or jovial coworker - This character can occur along side a "straight man" and provides not just opportunities for humor, but chances to clarify and reinforce concepts as we correct their misconceptions.


• Monsters, ghosts, robots, anthropomorphic animals, etc. - I absolutely love to surprise course participants with the unusual. I do recommend that it not be random, but that the type of monster, animal, etc. relate to the learning in some way even if a humorous tie-in. For example, I once used the ghost of Alexander Graham Bell to provide  instruction on the new phone system. Just never use a cyclops in a course, that just doesn't make sense.

Here are some good resources on using characters. Cathy Moore's Dump the Drone, which includes great information on using characters among other useful things, The Writers Gateway's Have You Thought of Character Driven Stories for Your e-Learning?, and Speak Out's Characters in eLearning.

If you have ideas or examples on how to use characters in e-learning, please feel free to share in the comments section.