!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Monday, November 23, 2009
HP Beginning Excel 2007 Course
If you want a well-structured introduction to Microsoft's Excel 2007, I can recommend the course Hewlett Packard offers at their online learning center.
The course consists of four lessons, which you can complete in just a few hours (or, if you wish, tackle at a more leisurely pace). The lessons are:
Getting started with Microsoft Excel 2007 — spreadsheet basics.
Creating your first worksheet — entering data, editing existing data, entering repeating data efficiently, selecting and manipulating ranges (groups) of cells, and moving and copying data within a worksheet.
Formula and function basics — introduction to use of simple math formulas (involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation) and Excel's built-in functions (e.g., calculating an average).
Formatting basics — simple text, cell, and page formatting.
Having worked through the course myself, I can attest to its clarity, intelligent choice of material to cover for beginning learners, good illustrations, and accuracy.
Once you have finished the introductory course, the HP Learning Center has several options for learning more about Excel, including an intermediate course. (Several of the Learning Center's Excel offerings are brief video clips showing how to complete specific tasks, such as creating a pivot table.)
As a follow-on to yesterday's post, I'd like to call attention to the excellent training for microfinance organizations that is available at the Rural Finance Learning Centre. RFLC is
RFLC, publicly available since 2004, has collected and organized, by type and topic, a wealth of learning resources — 1,804 "knowledge objects" as of today. Visitors can navigate the site in English, Spanish, French, and Russian.
I've browsed through all the sections of the site and would encourage anyone with an interest in learning about microfinance to do the same. As examples of what's available I'd cite two of the online lessons RFLC has posted. The entire set of lessons is divided into four sections:
1. Basic concepts 1.1 New paradigm rural finance - what is it? 1.2 Microfinance - the hope and the hype 1.3 The importance of savings 1.4 Financial service providers and the law 1.5 Commercial banks and microfinance
2. Understanding client enterprises 2.1 The financial reality of enterprise 2.2 Collecting and analysing financial information from enterprises 2.3 Rates of return and the cost of money
3. Managing financial services 3.1 Understanding the accounts of financial service providers 3.2 Moving towards self-sufficiency — subsidies and profitability planning 3.3 Avoiding the "downside" of microfinance 3.4 Managing arrears and defaults
4. Choosing strategies 4.1 Using and promoting groups 4.2 Taking gender into account 4.3 Adopting a client-driven approach
The lessons I reviewed were 3.2 Moving towards self-sufficiency — subsidies and profitability planning, and 3.3 Avoiding the "downside" of microfinance. Both were exemplary in their use of accessible, colloquial language; incorporation of interactivity in a way that encourages active learning (snd without resorting to extraneous bells and whistles); and solid grounding in the practical aspects of microfinance.
Strategies for Getting People Engaged with eLearning
About a year ago Allison Rossett, a professor of educational technology at San Diego State University, and Antonia Chan, an instructional designer at Qualcomm Inc., wrote a white paper (pdf) addressing the question of how to get employees to participate actively in eLearning — both as learners and as contributors.
In their paper, Rossett and Chan offer a dozen strategies "to make online experiences compelling and increase the odds that employees and students will give [eLearning] approaches a chance."
As you read through the strategies, you will see that most are more or less obvious. As with many lists of best practices, the point is not that you would never think of these items on your own. Rather, this particular set has been selected from a larger pool of possibilities to constitute a checklist of essentials.
The eLearning must be perceived as useful by participants.
If value is not obvious, a vivid case must be made. "Use testimonials. Point to data from the needs assessment. Show a problem or case that reminds participants about why they should care."
The program must provide opportunities for success, not failure or uncertainty.
Make it real. "Make certain that the programs match the audience in topic and level."
Because the new deLearning relies on involvement and generosity [in interacting with other participants and in contributing content], reveal what that participation might look like. "Create examples that demonstrate a day or a week in the life of someone who is fully onboard." Include information on who is available to help learners.
Make it active and thought-provoking. For example, well-designed simulations foster high levels of engagement.
Make it human. "Showcase people, emotions, and successes. ... Provide places where suppliers and buyers can go to share and review experiences. ... Include lessons learned — in the words of those who have learned them."
Guide and track participants. "A guidance system structures and constrains choices. It helps people know their options, see where they are now, judge how they have fared, and figure out what to do next."
Situate eLearning within a blend. I.e., combine eLearning with additional resources, such as performance support, blogs and forums, communities of practice, online assessment, lunch chats with peers, perhaps some classroom time, and a tracking system. Provide alerts so users know about "new updates, features, and key content."
Make relationships, collaboration, and teaming a part of the effort. Tools like blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and collaborative workspaces help.
Make the program dramatic, compelling, valued, and authentic.
Measure and continuously improve.
If you are interested in trends in eLearning, you can review ASTD's most recent findings here.
Here at Streamline we look fondly on anything educational that accomplishes its purpose in a way that is as quick and simple as possible. A fine example of this principle in action is the 3:25 video below, "Social Bookmarking in Plain English." It was created by Lee LeFever, using decidedly low-tech materials and technique.
LeFever's flight from bells and whistles in no way compromises the clarity of his explanation of social bookmarking (i.e., sharing your favorite websites, duly tagged, with the wider world).
Although the version of the video I've embedded above is from YouTube, its original home is CommonCraft.com, the site where LeFever and his wife post short videos that introduce beginners to subjects that are confusing and complicated if too much information is presented in what is advertised as an overview.
In addition to their brevity, all the Common Craft videos use plain English, another practice that Streamline very much favors.
You can browse through Common Craft's other videos here.
All of these papers are beautifully organized and written. I want to home in on the last of the five because it happens to be the one that I think is of broadest value to people looking to strengthen their professional skills.
In just forty pages, Briggs presents a thorough review of the principles of effective negotiation, with due attention to the complexities associated with such issues of multi-party participation and use of facilitators in the process.
As a sample of the guidance Briggs offers, I'll call out what he has to say about establishing effective working relations, a subject that has especially broad application in the business world.
Briggs describes five traits that generally characterize effective working relationships. Quoting Briggs directly, these traits are:
Forward-looking. Change is expected, even anticipated. The parties involved make room for their relationship to grow. They look ahead to anticipate shocks and opportunities in the environment that might affect the outcomes they care about — and thus the relationship.
Committed and resilient. They withstand pressure, in part through willingness and capacity to “see things through” before resorting to “hardball.” The parties avoid making major assumptions about each others’ intentions. Effective communication is key, and this means more than sending signals clearly. It also includes active listening — listening to understand, summarizing what they say and checking with them to be sure you have understood.
Fair — i.e., perceived as fair by both sides. The relationship reflects a balanced allocation of benefits and rewards, meets the parties’ criteria — whatever defines value — over time, even if short-term costs and benefits are uneven here and there.
Trust-based and forgiving — but provocable. Charles Sabel and other students of cooperation recommend “studied trust” in which the parties make it easy for each other to monitor compliance with commitments made. Beyond having a practical value, supporting such mechanisms signals a willingness to do what you say. And Robert Axelrod says parties can apply a tit-for-tat rule to infractions, being “provocable but forgiving.” Abuses will not be tolerated, but parties will extend each other the benefit of the doubt and will be willing to forgive, at least within certain limits.1
Realistic. Agreed-upon expectations are reasonable and, where possible, adjustable. In a rush to agree, parties will not insist on or agree to things that cannot be delivered, based on best-available information and standards.
A final note: Briggs's "strategy tools" are like chapters in a book — fine for self-study. Just be sure to test yourself for comprehension and retention as you go along.2
__________ 1 Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," in Frank Pyke and Werner Sengenberger (eds), Industrial Districts and Local Economic Regeneration (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, 1992), pp. 215-250.
2 For additional self-study materials Briggs has assembled to help people involved in community development, you can visit the Working Smarter in Community Development site based in the MIT Department of Urban Studies + Planning.
At www.audienceresponselearning.com, you can get a helpful summary of the wide variety of questions that can be incorporated into training sessions in which participants are equipped with wireless audience response keypads.
The website is the handiwork of Will Thalheimer, a PhD researcher and practitioner who makes it his business to publicize research-based recommendations for training design and implementation, a subject close to my heart.
Thalheimer's audience response site also exhaustively lists the benefits of using questions in a training session.
For a more complete compilation of knowledge concerning effective audience response questioning strategies, you can download Thalheimer's 124-page report on the subject.
Finally, you can read an illuminating interview with Thalheimer here. (The article on misuse of interactivity that Thalheimer mentions in the interview is here.)
Back in October 2007, Chief Learning Officer published a two-page compilation of "The CLO's Top 11 Successful Practices." It was written by Tamar Elkeles, QUALCOMM's VP of learning and development, and I flipped right by it because it was so generic — perfectly reasonable, but also predictable.
Now, about a year later, I've read a brief write-up concerning a particular learning program at QUALCOMM, spearheaded by Elkeles, that is quite impressive, and I realize I should have paid more attention to what Elkeles had to say concerning do's and don'ts of structuring and performing a company's learning function. (I should add that QUALCOMM shows up as #90 on the Training magazine's Top 125 list for 2008.)
... the Employee Communications team — a group within the QUALCOMM Learning Center — developed an Online Employee Tradeshow [for remote employees] that mirrors the live technical learning event held at the corporate campus [in San Diego].
The Online Employee Tradeshow's launch page includes an interactive map that emulates the floor layout of the live event. Employees can navigate through the various technologies and company divisions represented at the tradeshow, or visit the "Information Booth" for more tips. All of the virtual booths sport the look and feel of their real-world progenitors, and include interviews with key QUALCOMM personnel and even video demonstrations filmed during the live event.
What caught my eye was the clarity and persuasiveness of the tips Elkeles offers other companies considering doing something similar:
"... my biggest piece of advice is to highlight the specific technologies, innovations, ideas, and topics that your employees care about." QUALCOMM does this "by maintaining open, clear channels of communication between management and staff. We also have an advisory group that feeds many ideas and suggestions in to us, and we feature an Amazon.com-like 'rate it' feature as part of the tradeshow experience, which gives us a very good sense of what attendees like and want to see more — or less — of in the future."
Make the tour self-guided, i.e., "we let attendees control where they go and which information they take in. Allowing them to pick what's important to them not only personalizes the experience, it also drives attendance."
Enable people to take the virtual tour in a group. "In some of our international offices, groups of employees gather in a conference room to go through the tradeshow together online, with a manager or executive facilitating the experience. If you can rally your international managers and executives to fill the role of event facilitator, it can increase event attendance and create a richer experience for attendees."
It is clear from an article about Elkeles published in Training in May 2001 that she has been pursuing her sophisticated philosophy of how to run the learning function effectively from the time she first arrived at QUALCOMM in 1992 as a doctoral student intern.
If you'd like to study — or review — principles of economics, Robert E. Schenk, a professor of economics at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer IN, has posted a full-length text online. The text includes some basic interactivity to help you retain what you read.
The text opens with four sections that introduce the subject:
There is a detailed table of contents for the text's introductory and microeconomic sections here. You can also browse micro topics via this list. There is a glossary of micro terms is here.
The macroeconomic sections are:
Economic Catastrophes
Growth and Development
Measuring the Economy
Connections
Financial Markets
Money Matters
Banks Create Money
Business Cycle Theories
The Multiplier Model
The Labor Market
Fiscal Policy Today
Monetary History
The detailed macroeconomics table of contents is here, and the list of macro topics is here.
To get a feel for how Schenk treats individual topics, you might look at the section on rent-seeking, which has particular relevance in our current environment of distressed businesses hustling to Washington to see what they can arrange in the way of taxpayer assistance.
When you visit the "Rent Seeking" page, you see four buttons at the top left:
The Overview button takes you to the introduction to "The Government and Economic Efficiency" — the section of the text of which "Rent Seeking" is a part.
The ¿Review? button takes you to a page with a few review questions. When you click on the correct answer to a particular question, an explanation of why the answer is correct appears. If you choose an incorrect answer, you generally are told why the answer is wrong, but sometimes you're simply encouraged to try again.
The Explore button takes you to a page that provides opportunities to apply the concepts covered in the text.
To see the answers to discussion questions (such as the first group of questions on the "Exploring Rent Seeking" page), you need to access the appropriate page from the list on Schenk's "Extra Features" page. For the Rent Seeking discussion question, this means clicking on the "Government and Efficiency/Problems in Resource Markets" link.
You get feedback to multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions (such as the second group of questions on the "Exploring Rent Seeking" page) right beneath the questions.
The Quiz button takes you to a short set of questions you can use to check how well you have learned the material in the entire section — "Government and Efficiency" — of which "Rent Seeking" is a part. After you have answered all the questions, you click on the "Check My Answers" button to see how you did.
Online Intermediate-Level Course in Website Design
The online courses Hewlett-Packard offers at its Learning Center are a mixed bag. I have by no means checked them all out, but the few I looked at several months ago did not inspire enough immediate interest to delve more deeply.
Now, however, I have worked my way through a newly posted course in "Intermediate Website Design" and found it quite useful. You can look investigate the course yourself by going to the home page of the Learning Center and registering.
To give you an idea of what the course covers, here's an outline of its four lessons:
HTML tables and web design — How to create a table, incorporate text and images, specify cell padding and cell spacing, define border color and width, and set a background color or image.
Learn how to use the following tags: <table>, <tbody>, <tr> (table row), <td> (table cell), <caption> (table caption), <tfoot> (table footer), <th> (column or row header), and <thead> (table title).
Learn how to use the following attributes: border, bordercolor, bgcolor (background color), height, width, cellpadding, cellspacing, align (horizontal alignment), valign (vertical alignment), and colspan (cell merge).
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) tutorial — How to use CSS to separate coding of your content from the content's appearance. Font styles, text effects for hyperlinks (change in link color when the mouse is hovering over the link, change in link color after the user has visited a link, presence or absence of an underscore, change in border color of a linked image when the mouse is hovering over the image), positioning of graphics (absolute or relative), inserting comments.
Learn how to use the following tags: <div> (to define divisions of content in your web page) and <span> (to define the style of a relatively small section of text).
Learn how to use the following font attributes: font-family (e.g., arial, serif), font-size, font-style (normal, italic, or oblique), font-variant (normal, small caps), font-weight (e.g., bold), and color. There is also one example of the use of the class attribute to define different types of text (e.g., introductory paragraph, body text, etc.).
Search engine optimization for your website — How search engines work (crawling, indexing, serving search results), use of paid search listings, best practices for improving your website's search engine ranking. Topics include adding keywords to your website, use of meta tags, Google Webmasters Tools, how links drive traffic to your website, basics of creating compelling content, choice of keyword phrases to embed in your content, the Google Keyword Tool, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to keep a webpage from being searched.
Website development and maintenance — How to control whether clicking on a link opens a new browser window (or, if you're using frames, whether clicking takes the user to another frame in the current window), adding tooltips, using a named anchor to link to a specific location on a web page, nesting lists, nesting tables, and using hexadecimal color values.
Each lesson is accompanied by a straightforward assignment that requires hands-on practice of the points covered in the lesson. There is also a 4- or 5-question quiz for each lesson, which provides a quick indication of whether you've retained key points.
As a follow-up to yesterday's post on facilitating informal learning, I'd like to call attention to thoughts on the subject that consultant Jay Cross, offered in the same October 2008 issue of Chief Learning Officer as contains the article I highlighted yesterday.
Cross provides a Before-and-After case study of knowledge management and informal learning at CGI, a Canadian IT outsourcing firm.
The Before situation was one of overly elaborate knowledge management infrastructure that didn't work.
The After situation was what CGI dubbed "Internet Inside," an enhanced intranet constructed internally using mostly open-source software. The purpose of Intranet Inside, which has a distinct Web 2.0 flavor, is to consolidate and make easily accessible the collective intelligence of CGI employees located in the 16 countries in which the company has offices.
As Cross explains,
CGI has dozens of communities of a hundred or so like-minded professionals. Groups have formed around topics such as Java, enterprise architecture, banking, insurance, dot-net and business intelligence. ...
Admission is by invitation only, limiting participation to like-minded individuals and keeping the groups to workable size. Participation in a community is based on need and qualifications.
... Every item that is shared as news is screened by a knowledgeable person before distribution to the group. ...
CGI has begun tagging all dialogues, not just by topic, but also by roles of the participants. A few years hence, CGI will have sufficient information to identify in-house experts based on past discussion.
Presumably, a further phase of informal learning at CGI will involve helping employees effectively tap into the expertise so identified.
The October 2008 issue of Chief Learning Officer has an informative summary by Agatha Gilmore of the importance of informal learning and of how organizations can best facilitate such learning.
The main theme of Gilmore's article is that informal learning, like anything else of significance to an organization, must be managed, but that the management must not be self-defeating. I.e., it makes no sense to use a management approach that bleeds most of the informality out of informal learning. As one interviewee puts it:
Facilitation is about putting in place the minimum level of systems and processes and providing, in some cases, evangelism to build energy around the subject without going too far in terms of trying to get in the middle of every discussion
Gilmore lists three requirements for effectively facilitating informal learning:
Creating a collaborative culture
Executive-level buy-in
Providing tools (which you keep as simple as possible) for:
organizing learning (e.g., communities of practice and online discussion forums)
easing the process of keeping published information up-to-date (e.g., blogs, wikis, and Web conferencing)
building communities, finding experts, and creating experts (notably, social networking)
As for managing the content that employees access, the goals should be making the time needed to find a particular bit of information as brief as possible, and ensuring that the information is accurate.
Training is also part of the story, but the objective is nothing more elaborate than making sure people know "what the tools are and how and when to use them." This equips them to make effective use of information that is relevant and accurate because it is being captured in ways that enable timely updating, something that is increasingly problematic for formal learning programs.
Step 1: Make sure you are designing training that will equip learners to do something differently — better — following the training. It's not adequate simply to impart new knowledge. It is essential to answer the "so what" question by pointing learners toward appropriate application of the skills and concepts they are learning.
Step 2: Streamline your content. To do so, adopt layouts that have ample white space, understandable bullet points, emphasis of key words and concepts (e.g., through bolding), and attractive, meaningful use of color.
Step 3: Get learners emotionally engaged. In the introduction to the training, focus on how the course will help the learner. Set expectations about what lies ahead. For example, provide advance warning of particularly challenging material, so the learner knows to slow down and not be anxious about perhaps having to backtrack in order to master the material.
Step 4: Provide context and a conceptual framework. Make sure learners understand why a particular concept is important and how it relates to the other material they are learning. This is vital for retention and for appropriate application of learning.
Step 5: Provide ample examples. The examples should include instances in which an employee makes a mistake and has to correct the problem. Quinn argues, "Good examples indicate the context, model the underlying thought processes as well as the actual steps, and connect the application of the concept to varying contexts. Making them meaningful in an emotionally satisfying way, including good story telling, is an additional enhancement."
Step 6: Provide well-calibrated opportunities to practice. The exercises learners do should be neither too easy nor too hard for the typical members of the learning audience. Application of concepts should be embedded in relevant scenarios, so learners get experience applying their learning in meaningful contexts. Quinn likes using games, with the level of difficulty gradually increasing.
Step 7: Provide closure that promotes retention. If possible, summarize specifics of the individual learner's performance, so he/she is reminded of areas of strength and areas where mastery is not yet complete. Explain how the learner will be able to continue practicing back on the job. Finally, remind the user of the larger context — how the skills learned will contribute to achieving his/her organization's goals and mission.
In March, the London-based PHM consultancy was recognized for their Content Editing and Localization (CELT) tool by receipt of CeBIT's European eLearning Award 2008 for Best Practice in eLearning.
CeBIT is the Center for Office and Information Technology (Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik in German).
Since delivering training in multiple languages is increasingly a project requirement — I'm involved in such a project right now — the availability of tools that ease the editing and translation process is of real importance.
At the moment, CELT supports all European languages, including Russian, and PHM says they are in the process of adding five Asian languages to the repertoire. PHM estimates savings of 25% relative to the more time-consuming "previous method of preparing and dissseminating similar information" in multiple languages.
You can read the press release about CELT's CeBIT award here. Included is information concerning CELT's features, and the tool's availability to other companies.
In an earlier post, I wrote about case-writing training provided to forestry managers in Bhutan. The video below, produced by the non-profit organization, TVE Asia Pacific, shows another type of training Bhutan has recently adopted, namely distance learning for the country's teachers.
As you may have noticed, Bhutan has been showing up fairly frequently in the news recently. In line with this rising profile, Bhutan will be featured in this summer's Smithsonian Folklife Festival. You can read background information on Bhutan, and access the festival program, here.
Patricia Anderson (aka Perplexity Peccable at Second Life), a librarian at the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries, has produced the machinima and voice narration for the video below, which offers an overview of some of the learning environments that various organizations have created at Second Life. (Storyboarding was done by Anderson's colleague, Sharon Grayden, who works in dental informatics at Michigan's school of dentistry and is Vitesse Vella at Second Life.)
Language Learning and Development of Intercultural Competence
An article by Meei-ling Liaw of National Taichung University in the September 2006 issue of the online journal Language Learning & Technology looks at how e-learning can help learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to do so in a way that promotes intercultural competence.
Liaw works from the premise that "intercultural communicative competence must be developed to prepare learners to be both global and local speakers of English and to feel at home in both international and national cultures."
Liaw defines four types of intercultural competences in this context:
Interest in knowing other people’s way of life and introducing one’s own culture to others
Indicators: I am interested in other people’s experience of daily life, particularly those things not usually presented to outsiders through the media.
I am also interested in the daily experience of a variety of social groups within a society and not only the dominant culture.
Ability to change perspective
Indicator: I have realized that I can understand other cultures by seeing things from a different point of view and by looking at my culture from their perspective.
Knowledge about one’s own and others’ culture for intercultural communication
Indicators: I know some important facts about living in the other cultures and about the country, state and people.
I know how to engage in conversation with people of the other culture and maintain a conversation.
Knowledge about intercultural communication processes
Indicators: I know how to resolve misunderstandings which arise from people’s lack of awareness of the viewpoint of another culture.
I know how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for myself.
Liaw found that the e-learning environment (see the article for details) seemed to contribute most to development of competencies A and C; the impact on competencies B and D was weak. She suggests this means that "this type of learning environment is conducive to the development of knowledge and attitudes of intercultural competence, but not necessarily to the development of empathy and (meta)intercultural skills."
In her summary Liaw notes
Byram and Fleming define "intercultural speakers" as people who can "establish a relationship between their own and the other cultures, to mediate and explain differences – and ultimately to accept that difference and see the common humanity beneath it" (1998, p. 8). Intercultural language teaching should recognize that language and culture are intertwined and that by adopting an inquiring and reflective approach to language learning, students can be "intercultural speakers." ... the EFL students in the present study did not learn the target culture as a checklist of knowledge. With the help of computer-mediated communication, the students took a journey of discovery and reflection where their understanding of the behaviors, beliefs, concepts, ways of interacting in their own and the other culture was exchanged, discussed, negotiated, and even refined.1
In May 2005 Michael Angeles of Bell Labs made an instructive presentation to the New Jersey chapter of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. His presentation centers on a case example spelling out how Lucent used a training blog as an integral part of a complex IT project.
The specific training need involved equipping Lucent engineers to effectively handle the second phase of Lucent's rollout of a new SAP enterprise system. The blog was designed to cover several bases:
Communication among interested parties
Sharing supplementary information, e.g., documents and announcements
Developing and refining knowledge
Archiving documents and the output of face-to-face training
The blog provided access to documents during training sessions, was used for asking questions during training, enabled administrators to push information — including answers to questions — out to the engineers, and enabled engineers to post comments, and raise issues.
Angeles emphasizes:
When it comes to fostering understanding, weblogs are viable because they’re conversational. The most successful weblogs we’ve seen have used story telling to promote understanding and allow readers to comment on whatever is written. It is this conversational tone that helps promote understanding. It’s not unlike the conversational tone in email discussion groups. ...
Weblogs encourage conversation and create connections between participants. This interaction leads to individual knowledge growth. [note to Slide 9, emphasis added]
For people interested in exploring how internal blogs can help their organizations, Angeles recommends first assessing the organization's "information ecology":
Are people blogging yet?
What are they using for software?
What type of support can you provide?
Can you provide software? If you are considering providing weblogging software, do you want to manage it centrally?
How will you support weblog authors once they get started?
Angeles points out that blogging "relies heavily on awareness of resources as much as it relies on publishing one’s own information."
Looking farther down the road, Angeles notes that an organization which introduces internal blogs needs to think about designing a means for aggregating, archiving and indexing blog output in a way that makes blog entries easy to find.
The University Teaching Development Centre of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has done excellent work on what they call the E-Learning Maturity Model (eMM). The goal of eMM is to change "organisational conditions so that e-learning is delivered in a sustainable and high quality fashion to as many students as possible."
eMM — now in a second version that builds on learning from version one — gauges the ability of an institution, such as a university, to
ensure that e-learning design, development and deployment is meeting the needs of the students, staff and institution. Capability includes the ability of an institution to sustain e-learning support of teaching as demand grows and staff change.
Evaluation of e-learning capability looks at five process areas:
Learning — Processes that directly impact on pedagogical aspects of e-learning (e.g., "Research and information literacy skills development by students is explicitly supported" and "Assessement of students is designed to progressively build their competence").
Development — Processes surrounding the creation and maintenance of e-learning resources (e.g., "Teaching staff are provided with design and development support when engaging in e-learning" and "Resources created are designed and managed to maximize reuse").
Support — Processes surrounding the oversight and management of e-learning (e.g., "Students have access to a range of library resources and services when engaging in e-learning" and "Teaching staff are provided with technical support in the handling of electronic materials created by students").
Evaluation — Processes surrounding the evaluation and quality control of e-learning through its entire life cycle (e.g., both students and teaching staff "are able to provide regular formal and informal feedback on the quality and effectiveness of their e-learning experience" and "Regular formal independent reviews of e-learning aspects of courses are conducted").
Organization — Processes associated with institutional planning and management (e.g., "A documented specification and plan ensures the reliability, integrity and validity of information collection, storage and retrieval" and "Pedagogical rationale for e-learning approaches and technologies communicated to students prior to starting courses").
A process assessment workbook is provided here (pdf). A fully worked hypothetical example of an assessment is here.
21st Century Journalism XXI: NewsU Healthcare Course
I've begun working my way through the preview version of a new course on healthcare reporting offered at the News University website.1
"On the Beat: Covering Hospitals" is free to any registered user of the NewsU site. The content for the course — a simulation in which a rookie reporter covers a hospital story with help from an editor and a more experienced reporter — was developed by Charles Ornstein and Karl Stark. Ornstein covers public health and health policy for the Los Angeles Times; Stark is National/Foreign Editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The course aims to improve critical thinking skills and to help the learner acquire beat-specific knowledge necessary for effective coverage of hospitals in the local community.
There are seven learning objectives, namely, to improve your ability to
Uncover sources at hospitals, local associations and goverment agencies.
Work with sources to get the information you need.
Work with your editor to get to the heart of the story.
Interpret reports, statistics and tricky government forms.
Extract information pertinent to your story from lengthy source documents.
Tap online resources to flesh out your reporting.
Detect trends across years and among documents.
The course has two story lines. The one that is currently available deals with quality of care issues by looking at how three local hospitals handle pneumonia cases. Promised, but not yet accessible, is a story involving comparative analysis of financial management at local hospitals.
As use of elearning becomes more common, it is increasingly important to determine what techniques are most effective. In the January 2005 issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology, Patricia K. Gilbert (Pearson Prentice Hall) and Nada Dabbagh (George Mason University) published a paper reporting the results of research on how best to facilitate students' asynchronous online discussions of course material.
Gilbert and Dabbagh tested the effectiveness of online discussion protocols for promoting meaningful discourse, defined as:
the ability of learners to demonstrate critical thinking skills by (1) making inferences, (2) relating course content to prior knowledge and experience, and (3) interpreting content through the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of others' understandings.
Gilbert and Dabbagh's main finding was that "guidelines that assist the facilitation and evaluation of online discussions increased the cognitive level of student postings[,] promoting a deeper understanding of course content."
As an outgrowth of their research, Gilbert and Dabbagh propose the model for structuring asynchronous online discussion illustrated in the graphic below.
[click on image to enlarge]
The model highlights the three elements of online discussion structure that proved most important in helping students discuss and think critically about a topic:
Facilitator guidelines
Evaluation rubrics
Content protocol items
A prepublication version of Gilbert and Dabbagh's paper is available here.
