What Would You Do?

This is a call to everyone that has ever designed, taught, or participated in a training course. I would like your advice on a design problem I ran into as an instructional designer.

Scenario
You have a full day workshop and a half day workshop. They both have the same content and use discussion and questioning learning approaches. There is one difference between them; the longer course has small group and individual activities that help the group apply the content to the real world. The shorter class still has interaction between the instructor and group, and between participants, just no application activities.

The $64k Question
Since all the content and course goals are the same, is it correct for both workshops to have the same learning objectives?

I can really use your feedback!

You Will Remember, You Will Remember...

I recently guest blogged (glogged) for a friend of mine from the world of hypnosis, Ellie Blunt. I don't have any plans to become a hypnotist, but I am impressed with the communication and learning applications of their approaches. I met Ellie through another hypnotist, my sister, L.S. King. No trance formations required, but maybe one of these days I can get one of them over here for another cross-field type of conversation. Tom, don't worry, I'll give equal time to the theorists, too. I can guarantee this will not be a lecture that will put you to sleep!

We're in the Book!

We are now a published author (kinda). I was very excited to see that our short (but valuable) contribution to the eLearning Guild's new book on Flash techniques is now available. We suggested the simple technique of using Flash components for eLearning to control screen space when there is a lot of reference content to include. For example, if you are using PowerPoint as your platform and want to include a lot of information on a slide, but do not want to open another window or link-away from the slide, a scrollpane is a perfect solution. I've found that this is a great solution for classroom trainers that want to point out some content that is a long piece in participant workbooks, so eveyrone can see exactly what you are referencing.


eLearning guild says that "...these tips will be useful to any designer or developer looking for best practices to incorporate into their own production process." The book can be downloaded from the Guild.

Maryland Performance Awards

A lot of hard work came to fruition and provided a great experience! Fran Scher served on the 2008 Board of Examiners team for the Maryland Performance Excellence Awards.

This program requires the team to utilize the Baldrige Criteria to evaluate an organization's business excellence. After much analysis of their candidate organization, they created a scorebook and conducted a site visit. The applicant that they evaluated won the Senate Productivity Award for 2008. Fran's topic was workforce excellence. She focused on evaluating the applicant's workforce engagement (workforce enrichment; workforce and leader development), workforce environment (worforce capability and capacity and workforce climate), and workforce-focused outcomes. Here's Fran, Senator Benjamin Cardin, and her fellow Examiner teammates.
For more information about the program, visit the MPEA Examiner site.

Going Global!

What do Italy, Spain, Jacarta, El Salvador, Washington, Chicago, and Wisconsin have in common? These were some of the locations of the participants for our online program that took place Monday and Tuesday of last week. The purpose of the program, on behalf of our client APICS (The Association for Operations Management), was to validate the outline, objectives, and content for a new series of instructor-led workshops. We worked with international supply chain expert Dave Jankowski, providing the instructional design for Dave's content.

We virtually walked through one of the workshops (in a series of five) about how businesses go about doing international sourcing. Our audience was made up of other subject matter experts and trainers from around the world. They gave us great (and very positive!) feedback on the program.

This series, and the design of the international workshops we created for the Council of Residential Specialists and TRO, offers some very nice business curricula. We really enjoy international audiences. I guess all of that travel and living outside of the U.S. has come in handy. And adding the virutal classroom to the mix sure beats having to fly in for programs.

Problems: Graphics That Suck

We were contacted by Donna Safco of Mudpuddle Creations about whether we had some examples of poor uses of visuals in instructional design. She’s on the bill for The ELearning Guild’s Annual Gathering in Orlando, Fl, April 14-17. The event promises to be a lot of fun. If you make it down there check out Donna’s presentation What Not to Design – Visual Makeovers for e-Learning Content. You can find information and download the Guild’s brochure at http://www.elearningguild.com/content.cfm?selection=doc.834

Here’s some of the most common “bad” examples we’ve had to address in our clients’ projects for revising or adapting existing workshop programs for elearning. What’s yours?

1. Not enough graphics -- too text intensive, e.g., using descriptions when diagrams would be clearer
2. Too much artwork -- looks pretty but distracts from learning content
3. Unrelated art – not supportive of content or objectives
4. Garish colors and/or too many colors
5. Graphics that have been "over-Photoshopped" -- special effects/filters that make art hard to discern
6. Text colors that do not contrast enough with background making content hard to read
7. Colors contrary to 508 guidelines
8. eLearning and 508 -- missing alt text
9. Artwork that violates copyright
10. Sophistication misses -- cartoon clipart that doesn't suit content or audience
11. Overused clipart
12. Graphics and layout that are too regimented or cliché
13. Too many fonts
14. Too many different font sizes making material hard to read
15. Font sized to emphasize wrong elements, e.g., huge page numbers
16. Border outlines that unnecessarily separate or distract from content
17. Missing borders and separators that make columnar data easy to read
18. Layout -- table or page that spreads text too wide for easy reading
19. Text too close to edges
20. ?

Project Wrap-Up

I want to wrap up our project list that took us through the end of 2007. There were actually some other projects we were/are involved in, but they deserve more space, and are part of a bigger news item that I'll go into in the next posting. I will say that I'm working under a new banner with a partner and a new name, Scher Progression LLC. We'll keep the Instructional Systems Design Services (ISDS) domain going, but this is a new and improved animal. So on with the wrap-up! [Cool graphic effect--the steam is actually text from recorded narration. Used in communications course.]

Whew, what a year! I ended up moving between being an ISD, eLearning consultant, and online facilitator. On the design side, we wrapped up the realtor's project by upgrading, modularizing, and "internationalizing" their instructor-led course into programs about business planning, marketing, negotiation strategies, and working with clients. I can honestly say that the next time I'm buying or selling a house it will be with new eyes. Working with international consultant Ed Hatch was very intesting--he's an inspiring trainer. [We embedded Flash interactions in the WBT courses.]

Added to these four courses were two pavements courses for NHI-audiences, one for Web-conferencing delivery and the other for classroom, a blended Web-conference and Web-based (synch group and asynch self-study) communications course, and a train-the-trainer classroom course, to round out the ISD work. [Courses had very strong visual elements.]

The year also saw projects involving online facilitation of three three-month NHI "Sandbox" courses (Adobe Connect and Presenter platforms). We finished up by developing an eLearning strategy for APICS, a major operations management certification organization. They brought us on for a follow-up project creating their eLearning standards.

More to come!

Projects In the News

Usually, I keep notes and thoughts here that help me with projects, but I've had a chance to work on some interesting projects and people lately and wanted to keep track of them. So here's the latest in ISDS news:

Sell Them Thar Houses
We were excited to team up with The Rochelle Organization again. Our project this time is to upgrade and streamline four days of content for the Council of Residential Specialists. The workshops, Business Planning and Marketing, Effective Buyer Sales Strategies, Listing Strategies for the Residential Specialist are part of the six core courses required for the CRS Realtor designation. These folks rank among the top realtors in the country!

NHI eLearning Sandbox
We are facilitating a very fun online project with five groups of engineers for the National Highway Institute. They are using a hands-on approach to teaching online. A learning path is mapped out for participants to learn Adobe Connect and Adobe Presenter. The program includes demonstrations, virtual room group work and creating a one-hour pilot class for a real audience. Though they are exposed to both WCT and WBT, participants decide what type of course they will author. The program was founded under Debbie Qwaltney, of the Federal Highways Administration,and senior instructional designer Susan MacDonald Osborn. ISDS was very excited to be chosen to continue the program.

Just Try to Say That Fast!
We're providing senior ISD review for the Dallas office of FUGRO Consultants, Inc. (Nederlands) for their course Analysis of New and Rehabilitated Pavement Performance with Mechanistic-Empirical Design Guide Software. Our role is ensure that good learning principles and strong interaction is built into the course. Subject matter experts and developers Mark Gardner and Katie Hall really know their pavement!

Another Fine Blend
We just completed our high-level design plan for adapting an instructor-led workshop to a blended learning Web Conference (WCT) and Web Training (WBT) approach. The course, Effective Communications In A Public Involvement Campaign, has teamed us up with SME Steve Moler out of San Francisco. This promises to be a very interesting project!