Caddickisms » training

Google Wave – abridged

Jeff — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:21:49 +0000

In general, as most people know, Google builds some pretty good apps, and they’re mostly built with collaboration and ease-of-use in mind. As someone whose job involves figuring out how to distribute and manage targeted information and communication efficiently, I really appreciate their work. Sadly, most of the time I can’t use it with my target population, but what they do raises the bar for the applications I do work with and sometimes the features they introduce at Google make it to the apps I use.

One of their latest efforts is Google Wave. This thing seems to be a virtual collaboration mecca. There’s a real blurring of the line between synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous communication. It’s email, discussion boards, chat, Twitter, and Instant Messaging all mushed together in one easy package. If you’re looking to move away from email (and IMO, you should), this is the place to go. It’s very hard to follow an email conversation, for example – especially if you’re not in on the discussion from the start. It’s just impossible in IMs and chats. The playback feature in Wave takes care of that problem nicely. The ability to mix private and public conversations without cheating either of them is perfect. Everything stays in context and yet only the intended people see what you want them to see. Those are just the tip of the iceberg in what this can do.

Take a look at the abridged version of the demo Google gave. The original demo is 80 minutes long… I don’t have that kind of time at the moment, so this 10 minute version is perfect.

That goes by pretty fast, doesn’t it. I imagine the 80 minute version would be slightly easier to follow, but at 1/8th of the time commitment I’m satisfied with what I get here.

So what do you think? For a distributed group of people working on a project, this seems like the perfect answer to me. Let’s say you have a flowchart you’re creating for a new process. You could have one person create it an circulate it in email for comments and then make changes and circulate it again. Or you could use Google Docs and all make changes directly in the document in real-time. Or you could use Google Wave and edit and discuss the changes in context, publicly or privately, and have a history to refer back to, and be able to pull new people in at any time without worrying about how they’ll get up to speed.

How about for a distance training curriculum, where everyone needs to review and discuss a topic every month? Or as a support channel that becomes its own knowledge management system, or feeds into a separate one?

It’s full of possibility.

That said, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. If you need a bit more control over your environment – prescribing a learning path for someone rather than letting them find their own path, for example – this may not do what you need. It also looks like it could overwhelm some users with its rich features – this would take more training to use than email, for some people. But if you work (or play) in a collaborative environment with even moderately computer literate people, you could probably make great use of this Wave.

Tuesday TubeWatch: CommonCraft

Jeff — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:27:39 +0000

CommonCraft videos make me want to hurt myself. I can’t help but think “why didn’t I think of doing this?”

Lee and Sachi have done a great job creating a successful company that uses simple tools to explain some rather complex topics, and they make the videos fun to watch as well (skip to the bottom for the funniest).

The trick, and where they excel, is taking those complex topics and boiling them down into something simple to understand without losing the value of the training. That’s not always easy to achieve.

Early on, their efforts focused on technology. Their video on RSS is still one of the better, and most accessible, explanations for those unfamiliar with the topic.

While their production quality has increased since then, that basic style has served them well and become their brand. They have videos explaining Wikis, Blogs, Podcasting, and many more, all released for free on YouTube. One way they make their money is by selling high quality versions of these videos to companies.

They’re now doing videos on all sorts of topics – not limiting themselves to technology topics. Want to understand how to save money? How we elect a President in the US? Why to use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs? They’ve got those.

And of course, they also have the most important video you’ll ever watch. This things a life-saver:

Limits of Responsibility – ASTD’s Big Question for March

Jeff — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:52:54 +0000

The Learning Circuits Blog: Scope of Learning Responsibility

What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?

That’s the question of the month, and it’s clarified a bit in the above linked post:

Do educational institutions and corporate learning & development departments have responsibility for supporting Long Tail Learning? Do they have responsibility for learning beyond what can be delivered through instruction? If so, what is their responsibility? Where is the edge of responsibility?

Similarly, does the instructor have a responsibility to help students make sense of or deal with content he or she did not teach the students? In other words, if a student finds information on the Internet or some other place, how much time and attention should the instructor allow for the discussion of such content? Should it be discussed at all if it is non-conventional or generally thought of as not credible or contradicts the instructor? Who determines credible research? Is all non-referred research questionable?

I’m taking “Long Tail Learning” as meeting the ever expanding niche development needs of ever smaller populations in an organization. For most organizations, the training department is stretched pretty thin and has to concentrate on those development needs that either meet the needs of the largest populations or have the biggest impact on either costs or sales (that’s currently where the line of responsibility is set for most organizations). That means some departments are on their own for development needs – sometimes even their most important needs – because the training department doesn’t have the bandwidth to help. Then you’ve got the training topics that fit into that large group, but have variations for each sub-group within the larger population. Where does the training department’s responsibility fall for these groups? How do you design (and should you design) training that covers those needs?

Ideally, obviously, the answer is that in a perfect world the training department would be able to support the learning needs of everyone in the organization at all times. So I’m taking that as my starting point. Ideally, everything an employee needs to know in an organization, from literacy to how to run a business unit, would be the responsibility of the training department.

Realistically, that’s not going to happen, but that would be my ideal goal.

Now, we need to consider what “responsible” means. To some that might mean the training department directly owns and delivers all the content. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the training department is responsible for enabling the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities through any and all means necessary. That could be as simple as making sure an authoritative source for a given topic is available to someone – a book, a website, a mentor, a trainer, a vendor, etc. – to as complex as training a person or persons to be that authoritative source or creating a new course. If someone has a question about where to get training on something, the training department should be able point to a source for that training, whether they created it or not.

This is where the power of community software (or Web 2.0) comes into play. The training department obviously can’t keep track of all those training needs for themselves. Once you reach a critical mass ratio of training professionals to employees, the job just becomes too much to track for the training department by itself to meet the ideal goal. But if the training department can work with the IT department to create and structure community/networking software to enable those connections to be made with input from other departments, with oversight by the training team, then you’re suddenly much closer to the ideal. It’s important that the individual departments feel empowered to make contributions to this site, otherwise you’re back to the training team needing to come up with everything. If someone has a question, you look it up on the community-driven “solutions” site and either point to the right resource, if it exists, or begin to create the plan for getting it.

Now, how do you make sure the sources/solutions derived from the site are authoritative? To some extent you can probably rely on the community to police that itself, but that’s why the training department has oversight of the community site. They should validate the sources, or have the sources validated by a Subject Matter Expert.

To get to the second bullet of the original questions, how much time do you spend discussing information found on non-approved locations? That’s a pretty hard question, because it could be perfectly valid, and possibly even superior, information. I would say that if you’re in a course, you’re generally on a schedule and are teaching a “standard” practice of some kind that has been vetted and agreed upon. Challenges to that standard should be welcomed, but shouldn’t interfere with class time. If a short discussion isn’t enough to smooth over any discrepancies, I’d drop it into a “parking lot” or into the discussion forum or community software for evaluation and validation. If a change to the standard is warranted based on the new information, it should be implemented with thanks.

The really short version of what I’m saying here is that it’s the training department’s responsibility to enable learning, but it’s the individual departments and employees who truly have the responsibility for learning. The training team should make avenues available, but it’s up to the individuals to use the tools and opportunities provided to take responsibility for their own learning.

I think there’s one other thing implied in the original question: how do you prove that you’re meeting your “responsibility” to provide quality sources? What’s the measurement? It’s certainly not “butts in seats,” which is what many executives ask for. I honestly don’t have a quick answer for this part, though. I’m more in the camp of, “if it’s working, you’ll know” but that’s not generally enough for most executives.

I’m a casualty of war

Jeff — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:14:49 +0000

My company has recently shut down all access to YouTube. I get that. I completely believe that many people are using company time and bandwidth to watch all sorts of inappropriate — or just plain time wasting — content. From a certain perspective, I can support the decision to prevent that from happening.

There is a war between those who would waste company time and resources, and those who are tasked with keeping that from happening.

I am collateral damage.

Part of my job within the training department is to research new content creation and distribution technology, and to integrate that into our training delivery. YouTube is, for better or worse, an important part of that responsibility for two main reasons:

It is itself one of the most popular examples of that new technology.
Due to it’s popularity, it is used by many other people to showcase their own discoveries and new uses for content and distribution technology – thereby making it a valuable resource for me to do my job.

Information sharing is critical to my job. The ability to see what other people are doing/have done in converging technology and training is a significant way for me to not keep reinventing the wheel. The ability to create and deliver training products that appeal to a culture steeped in these new technologies requires me to have access to these technologies to begin with.

Is YouTube the only way for me to keep up with these advancements and new ideas? Not at all — far from it, actually. For example, blogs are actually a great source for these ideas as well (in fact, here are two that I keep a sharp eye on: e-Learning Technology, and Corporate e-Learning Strategies and Development). The interesting thing about these blogs, though, is that they frequently use embedded movies from YouTube as examples of what they are talking about! I can’t see these things when I’m inside the Corporate firewall, so I’m missing a significant portion of the point!

I’ve also used YouTube videos to help me explain the concepts and technology that I am trying to ‘sell’ internally. For example, I used this video to help me showcase the concept of a wiki – and even embedded it in my wiki for the pilot group to see. Now it’s just an unexplained blank space on the page because the video is blocked.

That same video, and others like it, are also good examples I can use with our training team to help think about other ways to create training that may appeal more to a large portion of our employee base. Now I can’t share those examples anymore.

Collaboration, sharing, and openness – that’s where we should be going. That’s what would help us work more efficiently, smarter, and more effectively, in many cases. But the barriers to doing this at a large organization (like mine) are hard to overcome. There are times it feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle. This is just the latest setback.

Blah.

[tags]corporate IT policies, YouTube, productivity, training, development, new technologies[/tags]

Replace Adobe Captivate for free?

Jeff — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:31:07 +0000

Wink – [Homepage]

Just ran across this free application that could be a replacement for Adobe Captivate, if you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to create software demos. Did I mention it’s free?

Just from the screenshots and incredibly short example, it looks like it does a pretty good job, but isn’t as polished looking as Captivate.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to soon. It might be a decent alternative for Subject Matter Experts who need to do something as a one-off, rather than purchasing a Captivate (or similar tool) license for them.

[tags]software demonstration, desktop capture, annotation, tech support, training[/tags]

Free Music & sound effects for podcasts

Jeff — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:02:00 +0000

Free Royalty Free Music Loops, Free Royalty Free Sound Effects

A couple months ago we completed the first four podcasts our company has produced, for internal training purposes. I’ve mentioned previously some of the testing we did to get them produced, and I’ll probably go into more detail in the future on what process we ended up with and how we intend to move forward. For now, I just want to point out one aspect that took us longer to agree on than I anticipated: music.

Music tastes are really subjective, so it can be hard to get people to agree on what to use. There were only two of us that had to agree, so it could have been worse, but we were trying to find something that wasn’t too intrusive, that we could use repeatedly across different podcasts (a theme, basically), and that wouldn’t drive people nuts when looped. Each of us grabbed our favorite examples off the web and we put them up to a vote. I chose mine from Partners In Rhyme (who have a pretty good selection, IMO – I’m considering getting one of their CDs). My co-worker got hers from the audio section of Microsoft’s Clip Art site. I also just found this site, off the MS site. All have some good stuff.

All of these sites let you hear samples (they’d be dumb not to), and all contain Royalty Free music, which is important if you don’t want to break the law or pay a lot of money. The PIR site has pre-made loops – the MS site is a crap shoot in that department. The link at the top of the post here takes you to a page on the PIR site where you can get free Royalty Free loops, which is nice. The MS site is all free, but you may have to make your own loop out of it (which I ended up doing, and it took forever to get it to sound smooth). You also have to watch that you’re getting the right audio format; stay away from MIDI unless you’re willing to download a separate tool to convert that to WAV or MP3, or some other usable format.

We ended up with a sort of soft “hold music” kind of loop that had just a bit of a future newsroom feel to it (at least that’s how I thought of it) that complimented my co-worker’s voice very nicely.

Does anybody know of any other sources of free music loops? Please share! Post any you know about in the comments.

[Update: found two more sites that are promising: This one has free loops, and this one has one free score a month (though it looks like an ad banner on the site).]

[tags]podcasting, free music, corporate training[/tags]

Tips from CommonCraft

Jeff — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:35:58 +0000

I’m pretty impressed with the CommonCraft videos. They’ve found a way to make YouTube a marketing and profit center for themselves, and a lot of their work is in the training and marketing industries. They’ve found a nice niche for themselves.

One of their recent blog entries catalogs some lessons learned in their previous year of business. I’ve pulled a few of the tips out below that I think apply to a training department – especially one that focuses on e-learning.

Simple is better. Approach an explanation by removing information instead of adding it. Remember Occam’s Razor.

Production values and ideas are often at odds. Flashy graphics and cool music are sometimes a poor replacement for a good idea. Spend time focusing on the message.

It’s not always about how it works – it’s about why anyone should care. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference (Elie Weisel). The path to a solid explanation is making people care as a first priority.

We all need a little more levity. Unstuff your shirt and make people laugh. Look foolish. Defy convention and do not take yourself too seriously.

Think about how those tips might apply to your business. Are you focused on the ‘how’ at the expense of the ‘why’? Can you afford to inject a bit of humor? Are you all glitz and no substance? Are getting too deep into the details?

That last question really hits home for me. I’m a detail person. I have a hard time writing a short email when I’m trying to make a point, and frequently provide more detail than is really necessary. Many times I’d probably be better served to provide more high-level information and let the recipient ask for more if necessary. In the same way, I’m wondering if we sometimes provide too much detail in our training sessions? Should we instead move some of the detail into performance support tools? Obviously that’s not an across the board answer, but it’s something we should be thinking about when designing sessions, whether online or in the classroom.

[tags]instructional design, business tips, training[/tags]

Corporate Learning conference: Day 3

Jeff — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:26:48 +0000

I managed to get to David Snowden’s talk this morning about, essentially, the nature of learning. What does science say about how we learn? Is that different from the way we, as trainers, try to make people learn?

It seems that we are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And what we’re ending up doing is, sometimes painfully, reshaping the hole (the trainees) to become square, rather than filing our peg (the training) to become round.

Snowden (and his data) suggests that there is a point at which fragmented information, couched in the right amount of ambiguity, provides the optimal learning opportunity. This is in contrast to “ordered” systems, which provide things like Best Practice documents, Six Sigma (for which he seems to have a special disdain), and other detailed efforts that treat humans as if they were computers or machinery.

There is much that Snowden brings to the table for discussion. It’s a fundamental shift in how we currently act in many companies. I agree with much of his thoughts, though how to actually implement his ideas elude me (though to be fair to myself, I haven’t had much time to think about it, either). At a minimum, selling them to the corporation would be a challenge.

I found the presentation to be very conceptual/theoretical, and not so much implementation strategies. He mentioned he has a degree in philosophy, and it shows… but that’s not really a bad thing. We need someone to bring this stuff up and challenge the status quo – which is in many cases blindingly obviously broken.

You can access the recorded session (you may have to register first – not sure) at the conference’s wiki (once it’s posted). It’s deep in psychology and cognitive theory, and jargon filled, but worth it – especially the first 20 minutes, which lays the foundation of his theory. I’ll need to go back and listen to that part again. I wasn’t taking good enough notes during the live presentation.

[tags]David Snowden, learning theory, fragmentation, CLTI2007[/tags]

Corporate Gaming: Recruiting and training

Jeff — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:36:36 +0000

Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development: eLearnDevCast New Episode with Karl Kapp – GGG4L – Recruiting Gamer Generation

I just listened to a discussion between Brent Schlenker and Dr. Karl Kapp about part of Dr. Kapp’s book (Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning) where he covers recruiting the “Gamer” generation.

There are some great takeaways from that conversation for me. For example, they were talking about how far into the future companies have to think now to retain competitiveness in recruiting. For example, they were talking about a group focused on science and technology that have to market their fields to middle school students, because middle school grades determine which math classes you take in high school, and that determines what you’re able to take in college. If they don’t grab the kids attention in those early grades, they likely won’t have the background or interest in the field to become productive employees in relevant companies 10 years or more down the line. Developing games that educate in those fields and are engaging and entertaining is one powerful way to start attracting the attention of those potential employees.

The kinds of games I’m talking about here aren’t marketing a specific company, by the way. They’re teaching concepts, facts, and processes that the sponsoring company would find useful. Business concepts, analysis, cost projection, and such are at the basis of popular games like “Roller Coaster Tycoon”. My brother spends most of his time in Madden Football (at least I think it’s Madden) building his team, working with the budget for the stadium, making choices about concessions and tracking attendance, rather than playing the actual football games. He’s making business decisions and having loads of fun doing it.

That’s obviously a long-term strategy. In the short term, what a lot of recruits are looking for now is a company that will provide some kind of engaging networking or socialization opportunity. In fact, it’s something they frequently expect, having grown up with the ability to network through MySpace or Facebook, and to share their knowledge and experiences in different online venues such as blogs, discussion boards, or wikis. At a bare minimum, just the ability to create a personal profile on the corporate intranet might give one company the edge over another, all other things being equal.

That knowledge sharing ability, by the way, would serve not just as a recruiting tool but as a way to capture the experience and knowledge of workers. That’s a hot topic in all corporate circles as people leave for other jobs or retirement – as things stand now, most of the time those years of experience walk out the door with them.

Let’s look at a concrete example of some of this stuff. I work for a very old, very successful printing company. Honestly, we don’t have much of this stuff. We have the same worries that every other company has, though: how do we retain the knowledge of retiring workers? how do we recruit people who have the skills we need when interest in those skills is waning in the general population? How do we keep people once we’ve got them? How can we maximize the knowledge of workers in one part of the company and transfer some of that knowledge to the people who need to support them, or who will eventually take over their roles? How can we manage all this and still remain profitable in an extremely competitive business landscape?

Well, a relatively low cost improvement we could make is some kind of networking software, similar to Facebook. Heck, we could even use Facebook. That would certainly be useful for many of the knowledge workers we have – the ones most likely to be at a computer for a large majority of the day – but would likely be an incentive and possibly productivity tool for at least some of the more labor intensive positions as well. Most people have access to a computer at some regular interval in their lives – even if they don’t have time during their normal work day, many people log on at night and who knows… they might just take a few minutes and check in on some information or answer a question from someone. We’ll never know if we don’t give them the opportunity.

What about skilled laborers? Let’s take a look at Press Operators. These people are responsible for an entire press. Millions of dollars worth of equipment and product, and it’s their job to make sure it all works accurately and efficiently, and produces a high quality product. They have to know how to work technology, understand color theory, process, mathematics, and mechanics. They not only have to understand these from a technical perspective, they have to have an “eye” for color. It’s a complicated job. We have excellent press simulators that let operators train on how to make adjustments and generally work the press, but those are expensive to run and from what I understand only concentrate on the functions of the press itself. What if we made a game – even one that could be sold commercially – that could teach the concepts and processes around the entire position? It could easily be made to be as engaging as something like Roller Coaster Tycoon. It could be used for general recruitment purposes, similar to what I mentioned above, or as more of an introductory training tool. As you successfully deal with one job, the customer gives you more and your reputation grows and you grow more popular and get more contracts, and now you really have to start working on efficiency and minimizing downtime and getting those magazines (or books, or whatever) out the door. Really show the impact your position has on the general welfare of the company. It could be a very powerful game.

There is so much to discuss in this area that books have been written about it. Heck, whole conferences have been convened around the topics. Hopefully I get excited enough, and find enough time, to continue writing my thoughts about it later – after all, this kind of stuff is a part of my job, albeit a part that seems to keep getting lost in the daily drudgery. For now, my kids have awakened from their naps and I have to get back to my weekend.

[tags]e-learning, technology, human resources, recruitment, games, corporate life[/tags]

Initial thoughts – Premiere week pt 2

Jeff — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:52:23 +0000

Got caught up on some stuff tonight:

Chuck: Entertaining. Pretty light. I’ll see if it pulls me in more, but it seems like one of those shows that I’ll catch if I happen to see it on.

Bionic Woman: Certainly grittier than the original. They did some cool stuff. The scene in the hospital when she first wakes up was pretty cool. It has some interesting stuff in it, and I can see how they could make it very involved. As a one shot pilot… eh. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat at the end. And I kept waiting for someone to say he was Oscar Gordon.

Smallville: Good stuff. Nice wrap up of the season finale cliffhanger. Still left some open ended questions. I did think the introduction of Kara was a little confusing, but I’m assuming they’ll iron that out shortly. Can’t wait to see what happened to Lionel. Want to hear more about Chloe’s power. Lana… big shock. NOT. Preview makes the season look promising. Looks like Clark is finally going to get some serious training! Lex? Well…. I doubt he’ll reform for more than 1 episode. He’s gotta go over the edge this year.

[tags]fall premieres, chuck, bionic woman, smallville, superman[/tags]