Limbic Learning

Blog round-up

Last Updated on 17 March 2010

Every few weeks we provide you with our own personal highlights from numerous learning, e-learning, and other on-topic blogs... with our own comments thrown in for good measure. Plus don't forget to subscribe to our own Doing E-learning blog!

 

February 2010: round-up

Top LMS tips

Yet again Tony Karrer's blog gets a mention - it's great the way Tony uses questions he faces in his day to day work to elicit discussion that often makes for such rich pickings. His posting What makes an LMS easy to use? had a great series of responses, with one response in particular (from Nicole Fougere) summing up really well what to look for if you're looking into LMSs:

• A clean, user-friendly, intuitive interface
• Core functionality i.e. not having every bell & whistle that complicates rather than simplifies
• Open & friendly lines of communication with your vendor's support team is a must because there will always be questions
• Ability to import most types of media formats - it should work with your authoring tools
• An agile company who continue to upgrade their product so it is always cutting-edge - you won't get left behind and be forced to switch again
• A hosted solution if you don't want to worry about file storage or technically supporting the system
• Reporting - drill-down to get all skews on the info stored and options to export
• As much system automation as possible so you have to do less 'admin'

 

Learning styles: forget it

Will Thalheimer's blog posting on learning styles had a link to some valid research challenging the learning styles ideology. We recommend you print it and read it. This, along with Frank Coffield's 2004 review into learning styles really does provide some solid backing that it's poor business to take learning styles into account in any solution.

Even if (and that's a big 'if') there was an element of reality somewhere buried within learning styles there are a whole host of other approaches that reap well documented returns that you'd be much better investing time and money in - with our top 3 being:

• Align content with context; learning with performance
• Ensure learners get chances to repeat things: do it so it's meaningful whether it's recall based, practice, or application. This helps them remember
• Remember to repeat things later down the line, and after any formal learning event: a formal periodic follow-up, ideal to get the line manager involved, or just informal chats

 

January 2010: round-up

2010 predictions

As you'd expect for January most people were putting their crystal balls to the test and predicting trends for 2010 and technology + learning.

We view this stuff as a bit of fun, and it's fascinating seeing what's being put forward. But very much like the economy we don't have a clue what's actually going to happen. What's certain is the predictions should cause minor blips on the charts, and one day some may become bigger... even if that day's 10 years away.

The usual items, plus expected new ones showed up (alphabetically ordered here and not by relevance):

• Economic impacts - the world awaits, but especially the UK with a worryingly low first stab figure of 0.1% growth in the UK, and mass nervousness in the public sector
• Google Wave/ Sharepoint
• Just-in-time - helped along by our next item...
• Mobile - a resurgence with technology additions such as anticipation of the next wave of smart phones, the tablet PC and iPad, Kindle, and so on
• Online testing (this is all a bit unexpected - but it appeared a fair few times, so simply reflecting patterns)
• Opensource: LMSs, content, and so on - clearly Moodle and its customisation are leading the low cost and meets basics needs charge
• Video - it's still gearing up, and it's not exactly new. But of course it's the fact it's now easy to do, easy to share, and easy to watch
• Web 2.0/ social networks/ etc - naturally

If you knew last year's predictions, and the year before you could safely copy/paste to make 70% of this year's list - which is as per usual. Definitely games and virtual worlds have taken a back seat... for now. But they do hit some of the lists.

What was surprising is that economic impact didn't throw up more rapid e-learning being created: whether in-house, or vendor supplied. It didn't really appear, even though fast turnaround, affordable bespoke courseware is still the bread and butter of vendors. This is what a number of organisations simply want, and where a lot of the rapid tool manufactures and e-learning vendors are making hay... You may not agree with it, but it's a strong market.

The bottom line: the gulf between predicting and doing grows wider. Organisations actually doing much of this stuff (as a percentage) are somewhat smaller than the blogging inches it takes up. As Bill Brandon at Learning Solutions Magazine says:

"For most e-learning practitioners, 2010 will be the same as 2009, with no significant changes in practice or tools. However, the need to cut costs will drive constant incremental changes in several areas."

Being in the business of e-learning, this one rings true every year.

Check out the posts we found most interesting...

Tony Karrer's thoughts

Tony Bates's thoughts

 

2010: a smart year?

The 2010 prediction we like most is the ever-present mobile learning. It must be several years now that mobile learning has been pushed - but it really still is a tiny request. A couple of projects here and there amongst the many hundreds of them aren't the sign of it taking hold. As ever, this kind of thing takes leadership in an organisation, tempered with a reality check of the real learning and development needs and tasks at hand.

From experience if we start pushing out smart phones to people then one of the last things on their mind is doing some learning: having witnessed a recent spate of people upgrading to the iPhone in January most people who 'do' learning and development for a living are not working out how to put learning into it. They're simply playing with it! For fun. For themselves. Now therein may lie the answer...

Roger 'learn by doing' Schank says "bye bye, phone" on the eLearn Magazine predictions page. (OK, this isn't a blog - but you can't ignore this, it's a top-drawer who's who of predictions!) His view that real learning doesn't happen on the mobile is focused on a course and event model - he's right. Tony Karrer for us hit it on the head about mobile devices:

"...tools, quick reference guides, quick hit videos, etc. will be the real win. What's the real change though is that we are becoming used to getting content both via our computer and on our mobile device. Thus the questions will be a bit different this time around."

Mobile vignettes could be a definite on-the-job, anytime winner - the pedagogy comes with the technology, and this starts to feel just right. A smart phone begins to fit in as a great resource under a coaching model - and, hey, I could even talk to someone on it! Taking on board all the Apps available too, and ensuring things are not just Flash enabled (v10.1) but actually usable then there's a chance the smart phones will have a say... maybe just not a big shout in 2010. Come greater improvements and greater alignment with needs, then 2011 onwards should see more of this...

This is definitely the most interesting area that doesn't rely too heavily on collaboration.

September 2009: round-up

An interesting post on Clive Shepherd's blog that linked to his short piece covering some highly enticing 'Top 10' tables for various cuts of the e-learning industry. The Top 10 bespoke content developers in 2008 interested us most:

Rank		Company	Turnover (millions)
1		Line	£7.20
2		Epic	£6.10
3		CM Group	£4.25
4		Cognitive Arts	£4.01
5		Brightwave	£3.80
6		Redtray	£3.75
7		Kineo	£3.70
8		Assima	£2.38
9		Saffron Interactive	£1.80
10		IMC	£1.01

A few points that we'd pick out from this:

• The top 10 totals a paltry £38 million, £3.6m average. And this doesn't remove secondary services such as websites, testing or marketing activity
• Where are, say, Pennant and Imparta to name a few that we thought would be in the Top 10
• The higest figure is £7 million, with the lowest only just creeping in above £1 million. Compared to digital advertising and marketing agencies this is a tiny industry

These figures don't suggest a revenue increase for e-learning companies in the past few years, and from the things we hear it's unlikely to rise in the 2009 figures. For sure there's likely to be price cutting and cheaper rapid e-learning solutions (it would be nice to have profitability figures), but in addition a lot of the e-learning may well be being done in-house.

As Clive says, let's see how 2009 measures up. With online and social media going from strength to strength across the globe as newspaper sales collapse, and non-digital marketing and advertising revenues plummet these figures are tiny considering the role e-learning will be playing in the L&D world over the coming years.

E-learning is certainly in a better position than most in learning and development. But from what we hear out there sales aren't that improved this year, with intel hitting the LIMBIC office that at least one of the Top 5 is looking to be £1m down on 2008.

 

Other posts of note...

There's been a couple of blog posts and a few comments on e-learning sites about
a recent report from the US Department of Education, which states “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction”.

Karl Kapp sums it up really well in his post Online Education: Better than the Classroom? and removes the hype of the headline:

It's good to have some supportive news: e-learning works, and well designed e-learning works a lot better! But we knew that here already...