Jeff Howe's keynote presentation on Crowdsourcing was an interesting concept. Got a problem? Share it with the un-named, un-faced public and their collective knowledge and creativity can often return a soltuion that is revoltuionary. There is little to no cost for the problem poster, the talent pool for the problem solvers is endless and the recognition that the problem solvers receive is payment enough for their efforts.
I liked the examples he presented, threadless.com and istockphoto.com becasue I actually use both of those sites.
I snuck out a little early to attend Tom Kuhlmann's presentation at the ID Zone, "Is Rapid E-Learning a Myth?" What I enjoyed most about Tom's session is that it wasn't an Articulate advertisement, but practical application of using a rapid e-learning tool, any tool, to develop engaging learning courses. I read his blog religiously and greatly appreciate all the tips and tricks he provides. But I am a newly converted Articulate lover and I was able to get my product specific questions answered by Tom later in the afternoon. I can't wait to get my hands dirty with Quizmaker and Engage.
My first session of the day was with Patti Shank on "What Activities are Needed?" I never read her books or seen her before. My first thought was 'Damn! This woman has a mind that's all over the place!' Patti is an energetic person who self-admittadly does not think linearly. At times it was hard to follow where she was going, but overall, I enjoyed her session. I didn't blog or tweet while her session was going on because my laptop was recharging. I had to revert to notetaking 1.0 -- pen and paper.
Learning is about DOing (which will be a recurring theme today), so training should be about opportunities to practice what learners will ultimately DO on the job. She shared a cute and interesting tidbit: even songbirds need to learn how to sing. They practice just like the rest of us.
There are three steps to her process:
- Uncover the DO
- Convert the DO into activities
- Select media to support the activity
After lunch I attended Will Thalheimer's session on Situation-based Learning Design. I was looking forward to his session since I've heard him present at a webinar and I follow his blog. He uses research to back up his message: if you make your learning context similar to the work context, there is higher incidence of recall and the learner does the right thing at the right time. I took notes and posted them separately.
I was looking forward to the session by the Suddenly Smart team "A Better Way to Design and Build Immersive eLearning". The premise was intersting: there was to be audience participation & presenter challenge -- collect a topic from the audience that presents a performance need. Then, while Robert does the presentation, Blake will build the course that meets the performance need using the rapid development tool, Smartbuilder.
However the first 15 minutes were back and forth conversations to a few individual members of the audience and completely left out the rest of the audience. They spent so much time trying to get the details of the course they were going to spontaneously build that they forgot that they had an actual session to present. I left quickly after that to find something that was more interesting, which is a shame because I would have really liked to learn more about immersive eLearning.
Instead, I went back to the ID Zone and listened to "Game On! Can You Have Fun and Learn?" with Metcalf and Oehlert. Turns out you can. I arrived late so I didn't do a full blog on this, but I did tweet a lot. Casual games (solitaire, tetris, etc) are simple games that aren't graphic impressive. But how many hours have you found yourself glued to the screen?
Games are really just a simulation with scoring. (See Kongregate for casual games with a social aspect.) They are naturally 'sticky'. People are more easily engaged in a game than in traditional training. What if you were to incorporate casual games with a social aspect (such as a chat window). Then you would see how people learn from each other and created teams. And if you think about it, that's how most people's work environment are as well, formed in teams. So, games for gaming sake probably won't be the answer. But if you align the game objectives with the learning objectives, then you have something that can be really effective.
My last session of the day was also an ID Zone presentation. "Once Upon a Time: The Impact of Storytelling on your Design". This also got its own blog post. I liked this session. They helped you plan out how to organize the components of developing a good story: the objective, facts, the situation, the charaters, the plot and finally the resolution.
It was a good, long day. Can't wait for the next one.
