Have you heard anyone talk about cloud computing? Do you have any clue what they are talking about? Do you wish you understood the fundamentals about cloud computing?

If so, head over to this link and sign up for the new eLearning module from EMC Education entitled Cloud Computing Foundations. Its FREE until the end of March, you just need a Powerlink Account.

Here’s what you should know after taking the module:

• What is cloud computing
• What are the physical components required for cloud computing
• What sorts of applications are good to put in “the cloud”
• What are the challenges of cloud computing?
• Practical examples of cloud computing solutions

If you have a Powerlink account already, go to this page to get the module. (EMC employees please use this link).

If you need help setting up a Powerlink Lite account, go this discussion on the Proven Professional Community. We’d love to hear your comments about the module in the community as well.

I am done with this semester. YAY!!!

Here’s a look at the final projects for my classes.

In one class, we spent the semester carrying out a mini-study. My team looked at this question: Do people who say that they want to “live green” actually buy cleaning products that are environmentally friendly?

Here’s our final paper (its the doc on the top of the list: SSPP7T03). IF you want to see how students in an online course collaborate, have a look around that wiki!

And here is the link to my final project in my famous eLearning course: Executive Functioning Deficits. I had a good time making this module. I had never used Articulate before. But I used a combination of hyperlinks in the PowerPoint presentation, branching in Articulate and locking slides down in Articulate to create an interactive experience (I hope).

The one thing I wish I could have done was roped people into being actors in my scenarios. Maybe next time.

So I am free from school till June. I have a half-semester class this summer – its about Web 2.0 and Performance. It should be interesting!

This month’s Big Question from ASTD is “what will workplace learning be like in 10 years?”. If you go to their post, there are already some really interesting thoughts and comments about this topic.

Byron said “The best prophet of the future is the past”. I’m a firm believer in that notion, so I’d like to answer the Big Question with a question of my own: what happened 10 years ago to workplace learning?

I’ve been doing some sort of training since I came into the professional workplace in 2001. I just started studying education for my graduate degree in 2007. I have some very experienced, patient folks in my department who kindly talk with me when I ask them about something I am studying or something I have read on a blog that pertains to eLearning. They seem to appreciate my enthusiasm, but they always have this weary look on their face when I tell them about all these “new” ideas. They tell me they were trying to implement some of these very things 10 years ago!

Besides having these discussions with co-workers, there is literature that goes back 10 years or so that talks about CSCL, communities of practice, and all of these things that are the underpinnings of what people are talking about doing today. So I have to wonder, are some of the ideas being bandied about today really that new? Or are they rehashed from 10 years ago? If these are old ideas given new life by improved technology, what happened 10 years ago that got these ideas pushed to the back burner? What can we learn about our past so that we can execute these ideas in the present, so that in our future we’re not going through this exercise yet again?

I also want to say that I do not agree with the idea that the training department should go away completely. For one thing, work is social. Work gets done based on the relationships we have with others, and based on the social capital that we have. This means that there will always be “others” in the workplace. This otherness will be categorized just like it is in general society: by race, gender, nationality, disability, religion, etc.

Knowledge is a form of social capital. I believe very strongly if there is no guidance, “others” in the workplace will not have access to knowledge that they need to have to do their work. This will happen either because they don’t have access to the correct network, or because they are purposefully excluded from access to that information based on their position in the social ladder.

I believe this because of my status of other (a woman in a predominately male field), and my daughter’s status of other (Asperger’s Syndrome). Training departments can be the mechanism that provides each worker with access to the information required to perform his/her job duties successfully.

If we as training groups are aligning to the business and the true competitive advantage of knowledge workers is how fast they are able learn, we owe it to the business to ensure that every worker, no matter their access to social hierarchies in the workplace,  has access to all the tools they need to help them learn.

Maybe in the future learning organizations won’t be the “givers of knowledge”, maybe we become more like librarians that help people find resources (and learn to do their own searches) as they are needed.

The latest Training and Development magazine (from ASTD) has a very relevant article to some of the work I am doing this quarter for my organization. The article is titled It’s [Not] the Technology, Stupid. The article is about the pitfalls of thinking just because you have the technology to do it it that you’ll be able to create a kickass blended learning curriculum.

This quarter a partner and I are doing an inventory of the tools we have available to create blended learning, as well as identify efforts in other groups to create this sort of learning. One thing it’s hard to get across is that you cannot simply take what we have designed for Instructer-Led learning and port it to some form of blended learning. This article makes that point too – you must redesign the learning. The learning objectives must be matched to the appropriate delivery medium.

There is an entire section in the article devoted to the helping people “overcome the idea that online learning cannot be as effective as classroom training”.

So quick! Go read this article! Read the entire Feb T&D it is very good!

I have to write an eLearning module for my eLearning class.  Gladly accepting any suggestions…

The topic is going to be:

How do you identify and interact with an adult with Executive Functioning issues?

Two learning objectives:

1. The learner will identify behavioral issues displayed by adults with executive functioning issues

2. The learner will identify strategies to diffuse situations brought on by an adult having problems with one of the executive functioning issues
   

Learner Characteristics: Anyone who may interact with an adult with Executive Functioning issues

What do you think? Am I biting off more than I can chew? Is executive functioning something I can explain in a short eLearning lesson? Should I tie what I am trying to do specifically to Asperger’s Syndrome?

My idea is to write an eLearning lesson for “neuro-typical” folks so they can understand someone with Asperger’s who may just be overloaded to the point that they are having problems with executive functioning.

In my last post I talked about the learning environments (LEs) we as developers create for students, and the Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) students create to situate themselves so that they can master the course objectives. In this post I want to explore the instructor’s role in helping students get over barriers they have to meeting course objectives, and if this role is still critical to eLearning.

Instructional designers provide course prerequisites and course objectives. They they create course LEs based on this information.

Learners come into a course with barriers to learning. Some examples of barriers to learning are:

• Not meeting the course prerequisites
• Not wanting to be in the course (attitude)
• Thinking the course was going to cover something it won’t cover
• Not devoting their full attention to the course (we get this alot — field  personnel who get customer calls during class. Guess what takes precedence..)
• A disability
• A language barrier
• Personality conflicts (don’t like the instructor, don’t like the other students in the class…)

Good instructors try to identify these barriers right away, and compensate for them during the course. They may slow the course pace if the students don’t have the prerequisite knowledge, they may try to provide the information the learner thought they would learn, they may try to make accommodations for any disabilities. I think a good instructor tries to knock down any barriers a student has as low as they can go so the student can construct their own PLE and master the learning objectives.

Most of the instructors (and course developers) at EMC have their Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+) certification. To get this certification you must prove your ability to put students first so they are able to master course objectives.

My new question is: what happens if you move a course that was formally 100% instructor-led to eLearning? This is actually an important question, since travel is being restricted. People can’t travel to training, more requests are coming in for eLearning. Here are some questions I have:

• If you make the courses completely asynchronous, who does the work of helping lower the students’ barriers to learning?
• If you do synchronous eLearning, are the LEs designed differently? Do instructors need to do things differently to help students navigate their learning barriers?
• Can you simply port courses designed for instructor-led learning to an eLearning environment? Are there best practices for converting these courses for eLearning, or do the courses need to be redesigned from scratch?

I would love to hear from other people who are facing this same situation. I’d also like to hear from anyone who has taken the CTT for the Virtual Classroom Trainer exam.

I have to start by saying this: It’s hard for me to be in an eLearning course because of my technical skills. I realize that most people in my major have not created websites, administered servers and networks, etc. So I’m glad that my major has courses to get people who will be designing eLearning up to speed technically. But reading about “the wonder of TCP/IP” is so boring for me. There is no good way for me to skip those classes, since the Instructional Design part for eLearning is built into the class.

OK, enough whining, onto my review of this week’s materials.

This class so far has had lots of reading: two textbooks and links about Instructional Design. There are also podcasts of the Instructor explaining the readings. The one thing I am missing is the ability to interact with my classmates on a discussion board, via blogs, twitter SOMETHING. (darn you CCK08!!)

This week we started reading Advanced Web-Based Training Strategies: Unlocking Instructionally Sound Online Learning by Margaret Driscoll and Saul Carliner.

My instructor doesn’t think that a constructivist learning environment can be implemented; she is a behaviorist. This is probably why I am a little frustrated with the way the course has been designed: I am definitely a constructivist. I need to interact with others to pour over ideas I have read (or heard on a podcast) to try and make sense of them. I wonder what she would think about trying a connectivist approach!

This book is very interesting, it seems to me that the pragmatic approach the authors discuss is really a way of saying business needs are the most important part of instructional design. The first chapter is dismissive of the ideas of learning theory, instructional design, and educational research.

One thing I disagree with from a corporate perspective is the idea that a person’s philosophy on education will affect the way they design education. Really, the organization’s philosophy on education will dictate how an individual designs education. It is possible for your philosophy to differ from that of your organization.

Also I don’t think adult learners, especially the highly technical learners that we teach, expect to have instruction spoon-fed to them. In a technical training environment, you may have a learner who knows more about a subject than everyone else in the class. That person may just need a tech refresh (feature/functionality info), hands on training, or positioning information. They may need to know how a new product fits into an existing information management system. I can’t even imaging trying to spoon-feed information to some of our folks in the field, or even our customers for that matter.

I’ll spend time thinking about this, but what does a constructivist learning environment look like? What would a constructivist eLearning environment look like? How about learning and eLearning environments for the other types of learning theories?

The Learning Circuits Blog Big Question for October is about E-Learning, specifically:

What advice would you give to someone new to the field (of E-Learning). Where do you start?

• Particular tools you should explore?
• Resources you should read? Videos/screencasts you should watch?
• What would your To Learn List look like?

I’m a current grad student in the Instructional Systems program at Florida State University. I can’t bash my program, because it’s great.

I also create E-Learning as a technical course developer at EMC. My list will include the things I have learned on the job as well as in my studies:

1. Learn and practice a systems-based approach to education (work and school)
   This involves needs analysis of your audience, determining the best method of delivery, knowing how to identify learning objectives, making instruction that enables the learner to “do” whatever it is you are teaching, having a feedback loop so instruction can be updated as needed.
   Where I work, the course developers are expected to be SMEs on the technology for which they write instruction. We have a pretty good system in place for creating very solid technical instruction that meets the needs of our audiences.
   I was so impressed when I started grad school at how “by the book” (literally!) our organization is about creating instruction. The course I am taking this semester is actually like a course we developed for new developers (I wish I could have tested out of this one!!). My classes also have me studying the learning theories in depth, so I am getting a very rounded view of the field.
2. Understand how to use tools (work)
   We use Saba, Centra, Articulate, image capturing software, image creating software (and have someone who can create nice images, especially  for people like me who are challenged in the making of nice images!), etc.
   For my job, we also have to understand how our software and hardware works and how to make labs available to audiences all over the world. We are starting to use VMware ALOT!!
   I am taking a class next semester that focuses on using Flash for building courses – so hopefully I am going to pick up some awesome new skills!
3. Learn collaborative online learning theories (school)
   I had a great class about Computer Supported Collaborative Learning last semester. As much as I hate to admit it, I learned a lot from that class. We used tools like Diigo, wikis, Google Docs, and concept maps to collaboratively construct a class. Although some of these tools wouldn’t work in a corporate environment, there are concepts from the class I am trying to incorporate into the courses for which I am responsible.
4. Use Collaborative “Web 2.0″ tools (school, sort of)
   This is the place I am having the hardest time getting real experience. My school is starting to teach some of these concepts. At work, we’re starting to talk about how to use Learning 2.0 technologies to promote collaborative learning.
   My undergraduate degree is Information Studies, so I have a bit of training in thinking about how information flows, and how to use technology to enable information seeking behavior between groups.  I think this sort of background helps me understand how social media can be used to build and promote collaborative learning environments.

I am going to start posting links that are relevant to my current grad school project. The first one is a presentation that Tony Karrer gave at ASTD yesterday. The title is “eLearning 2.0 for Personal and Group Learning”.

It outlines the basics of some of the tools we are being asked to use. It doesn’t go deep into group theory (like we are doing in class), but it’s almost a better starting point if you haven’t used the tools before.