Challenge to Learn

#ICE #ASTD2013 conference recap

May 23, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

So my first ICE ASTD conference is finished. What do I think of it and what are the trends I see. Let start with the trends.

Trends and topics.
Over the past few years we had big leading topics in the world of learning; Curating, Mobile, Flash vs HTML5, TinCan. All these developments are still here, but none of them was really leading at ICE. Just over 30% of the companies are implementing mobile, the rest is too afraid for security risks. This is just a growth of a few percent in comparison to 2012. Everybody now understands that Flash is dead (no matter how unbelievable that seemed a year and a half ago). TinCan is released but if you talk about it, people get a desperate look in their eyes (It sounds great, I know I should do something with it, but where to start????). Curation is the same story. So none of these topics is really leading. One thing that I noticed was that agile and agility are increasingly hot. When you read this blog more often it will not surprise you that this pleases me. Michael Allen with SAM (and a packed Ballroom), agile processes are presented as the answer to the ever increasing speed of change.

But overall it looks like everybody is catching his breath and is waiting to see which developments they can’t ignore any longer. One development is clear Workplace learning and informal learning are getting much more attention now. The role of formal eLearning courses is diminishing. Food for thought for me as a CEO of an eLearning authoring tool. But no surprise and something that we are working on. Creation vs Curation, Formal courses vs learning nuggets, it is still content, but with a twist. I was happy to hear that content management is in the top 10 of attention points for CLO’s. Since easygenerator is a LCMS the future still looks bright.

ICE ASTD 2013
As said, my first ASTD conference. It was different than I expected. I thought it would be a lot more HR and less learning, but learning is the dominant topic. Even the sessions which seemed more HR oriented where predominantly about learning. A pleasant surprise for me, although it did mean that I haven’t experienced a great epiphany. But it was more than interesting. I will be back next year but first we have MLearn in San Jose next month. a perfect place to check the mobile developments. Easygenerator is not participating in the expo there, so I will be able to follow a lot of sessions and I will blog about it.

#ASTD2013 day 4: Changes in the Learning Organization

May 23, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 1 Comment

Today was the last day of ICE ASTD 2013, I selected some sessions that focus more on how the rapid changes in the digital world will affect the Learning organizations. I attended two great sessions. I made mind maps of both sessions (click to enlarge). I have to apologize upfront, there was so much information that I made some typos.

Annette Thompson, The learning organization of tomorrow
Very interesting presentation on how the L&D department of Thompson handles the rapid changes we are are experiencing. Main points of her answer is: Connect to the business, use cutting edge technology. Very good presentation.

Ann Herrmann: Thinking and Learning agility: 10 steps to maximizing learning outcomes.
This was probably the best presentation of the conference. She practiced what she was preaching. her main points. Take into account how the brain works when designing learning activities. She is an adept of the whole brain thinking; which means a lot for learning including learning styles. Her other big points are Engagement and Agility. Loved it. You can download the full presentation and a white paper with all the models she used, I recommend it.

Filed Under: #ASTD2013, #Changes in Learning Organizations, #elearening

#ASTD2013 ICE: Recap of day 2 and 3

May 22, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 1 Comment

These where two long days. I saw some great presentations and some that were not. I have made some session reports for you, I will skip the lesser sessions. From most session I created a mind map: click on the image to enlarge it.

Sir Ken Robertson – Innovation
The opening keynote on Monday. I have to say I was impressed. I know him of course of his great TED-talks and other presentations, this was the first time I saw him live. From the on-line talks I know that he is opposed to our educational system (and I have to agree for a large part). In this keynote he had a more positive but very simple message: Talent is buried under the surface and it needs to be discovered. Talent can only brought to its full capabilities when it is accompanied by passion. That doesn’t sound as a lot for a talk of one hour, but it was great. he is a great speaker, he was relaxed, funny and he improvised. I guess you had to be here to really appreciate it.

John Seeley Brown – Triving on change
The keynote on Tuesday was delivered by John Seeley Brown. Another interesting presentation but quite complex. He proved to us that change is happening at an ever increasing pace and that the current digital developments will change everything. It will turn learning upside down. And we have to find new ways for that. Reverse mentoring and Play are key elements in his solution. Interesting but he gave so much information that I have to process it further before making up my mind.

Michael Allen – Leaving ADDIE for SAM
I wrote post on his book and agile development and I loved his presentation. There was no seat left in the room and for me he added extra insight to the book with this presentation. Loved it.

Amy Kirkpatrick – implementing the improved Kirkpatrick modelA good presentation outlining the changes in the model to keep it up to date. They have flipped it, starting at level four, in order to ensure the connection with the business goals. Level 1 and 2 are now combined. Can’t help wondering if a renovation like this will keep it relevant. I lost a part of my notes, mainly the part where she explains the ‘old’ model. So I will present what is left of my notes.

Chad Udell What is next for mobile learning
Chad gave us a great overview of what is happening in mobile right now. I expected a bit more from him, giving more guidelines and directions to the audience of which steps to take. Nevertheless an interesting presentation.

Tomorrow the last day.

Filed Under: #ASTD2013, e-Learning

#ASTD2013 First day report: sessions by @marcjrosenberg on the quality of eLearning and @LnDDave on Curation

May 19, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 2 Comments

Today I attended two sessions at the ICE conference. One by Marc Rosenberg on how asses the quality of your eLearning and one by David Kelly on Curation. Click on the mind maps to enlarge them.

Marc Rosenberg – Building eLearning that people will (really) want to use.

Marc has created a 13 topic survey that you can fill in asses the quality of your eLearning courses. it will also indicate how you can improve it. Great overview of all elements that make up good eLearning. A very helpful tool. Here is the link to his presentation, which includes the assessment.

#ASTD2013 presentation by Marc Rosenberg on the quality of eLearning

David Kelly. Curation beyond the buzzword

Another interesting presentation by David Kelly, the master of curation. Great overview of the what, why, how and who of curation. here is a link to his presentation and more resources.

Mind map of Davids #ASTD2013 presentation on curation

Filed Under: #ASTD2013, curation, Marc Rosenberg

Agile eLearning development: business goals and road map

May 19, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 4 Comments

This is a first post in a series of post on Agile eLearning development. This series is sparked by the book ‘Leaving ADDIE for SAM’ by Michael Allen and Richard Sites. I wrote a book review on it (and it love it). I do believe that agile software development can offer us even more very practical ‘best practices’ that we can apply to eLearning. Michael told me that he is working on a new book on agile project management, that will also address this. In the meanwhile I would like to share with you our best practices. The idea is to go over the process of agile software development at easygenerator and translate that into eLearning development. I will start with the ‘long term planning’: The road map and how to connect learning to your business goals.

Before I can do that I have to introduce the roles in this process and map them to ‘e-Learning development roles’.

Software role	eLearning role
The Product Owner (PO), he is the most important person in this process. He is responsible for the ‘What’. What will we develop in the next 12 months. He translate the demands from the market into product demands.	In corporate eLearning terms this will be the manager of the Learning department. He will translate the training demands of the company into goals for the learning department. When we are talking eLearning projects this will be the Project manager
Market. Partners, customers, end users, competitors all have developments and demands. This is important input for the road map.	Your market are the users of the learning objects (both managers and end users), but also by general developments in the eLearning market with vendors and other companies and theoretical and technical developments.
Innovation. I have put this down as a separate element. Innovation comes from the development team, the organization, users, customers, the market. If you don’t pay separate attention to it, it will be something that you strive for, but never achieve.	Exactly the same here
System architect. A ‘double role’. The system architect checks planned development for technical challenges, but at the same time he will have independent input for the road map. In our case things that have to do with our technical backbone, security, performance.	I don’t think that there is a eLearning equivalent for this role. But there should be. Just think of all the technical developments around mobile, standards (like Tincan) and other technical stuff. You need more than a technician to manage this.
Road map. The document that contains the global goals and plans for the next 12 months.	This would typically be a year plan for a learning (or HR) department or a ‘customer plan’ for a client.
Development team. The team that builds the software.	The team that builds the learning components.

The road map

We like to look ahead, but no more than 12 months. Therefore the road map documents looks 12 months ahead. We release a new version of easygenerator every 2 or 3 months (we are working on a release every month). This means that it is not a plan for 2013, but it is a plan that always looks 12 months ahead. Before we finish a release we need to renew the road map so it will still look 12 months ahead. The road map is driven by our business goals and will set the development goals on a high level.

Business goals and road map
This means that the first step is to get clarity on the business goals and how they will influence the product development. We use a method called impact mapping. There is a free tool called effectcup that supports this whole process. The Product owner takes the business goals (input CEO) and figures out what this goal means for key persona’s. What activities do they need to be able to do. And which user stories describe these activities. Our business goals are things like:

Sell more licenses
Sell easygenerator as internal authoring tool to LMS vendors
Keep existing partners and customers happy

The road map document is in fact a short document with a bit more explanation about the why of the business goals that you can present to other stakeholders.

eLearning
The trick is to figure out what people need to be able to do in order to achieve these goals. The translation to eLearning is very simple. I love the action mapping approach of Cathy Moore (see a post I wrote about this earlier). It is a one on one translation of impact mapping to eLearning. She also stresses that learning is not what people need to know, but what they need to do. That is the reason she calls it action mapping. You could use a tool like effectcup to assist you in this.

It works for a learning department or a eLearning project. For an eLearning department it is the first step in connecting learning to the business, and it is the foundation of a possible ROI calculation. When you do eLearning projects it is also very helpful. Instead of executing a project this will give you the chance to sit down with your client and talk on a much more strategic level to them.

Another important thing is that you don’t get into solutions at this point. You describe what the learner (worker) needs to be able to do. Not what kind of learning experience you are going to offer. Measuring their (hopefully improved) performance will tell you your ROI.

Filed Under: achieving your business goals, Action Mapping, ADDIE, Agile e-Learning development, agile software development, Cathy Moore, e-Learning, eLearning, Learning strategy, Leaving ADDIE for SAM, Michael Allen, Return on investment

Book review: Leaving ADDIE for SAM: will agile eLearning development become mainstream?

May 3, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 3 Comments

I have read the book from Michael Allen ( and Richard Sites) with a lot of interest and it is a book that I can recommend to read, it does explain the why and the how of the approach and it contains a lot of practical stuff like examples and check list that will help you get started.

I believe that an agile approach will bring a lot of benefits to e-Learning development. I wrote a couple of post on this subject in the past few years so I am delighted that a heavy weight in our learning domain supports this trend, hopefully making it more mainstream. I’m interested in agile development because we develop the easygenerator software in an agile way. It gives huge advantages over the classic ‘waterfall’ models. I believe if you translate this to e-Learning development, it will change not only the way we create e-Learning courses, but also the courses itself. Michael and Richard present us an agile alternative for ADDIE: SAM (Successive Approximation Model).

The book starts with why we need a new approach. It lists the short comings of a lot of e-Learning courses in a clear way. It is followed by an analysis of ADDIE, looking at its original form and some new manifestations. It makes interesting reading because it is not a theoretical story but they have written it from the perspective of the learners needs. Their conclusion is: ADDIE falls short, we need something else (and I agree).

In the third chapter they have a look at what ‘good’ eLearning should be, I quote: “Concise, effective learning events, whether delivered through e-Learning or not, are meaningful, memorable, and motivational. And they achieve measurable results, too.” And they explain CCAF (Context, challenge, activity, feedback). With this they set the stage for the process and introduce SAM.

There is a simple version (SAM1), for small projects”

And a more extended version (SAM2) for larger projects”

I will not discuss all details (you should read the book) but what they do is take the iterative nature (short development sprints) of agile development and combine it with a prototyping approach. I like this; it will bring a lot of the advantages of agile software development to your e-Learning development. The book contains a huge amount of examples, checklists and even a complete project plan. It will help you to create learning goals and it gives examples of specific approaches (like the Savvy start and prototyping). The Savvy start is the second concept they introduce in this book. A concept that will help you to become more agile in your design process. It is clear that both authors have a few decades of combined experience in eLearning development. This enables them not only to develop an approach but explain it with very practical examples. And as you can expect from me I’m very happy with the chapter on instructional objectives, this is the way it should be done! The second part of this book is so rich, that even if you don’t want to switch to a more agile approach it is a must read. It is a goldmine of useful tips for every instructional designer.

Michael and Richard created a great foundation for a new agile approach. At the same time I think that they missed a lot of best practices and techniques that an agile approach can offer you. Daily stand ups, user stories, a back log, agile estimations, setting priorities, an agile team, demo’s to involve your clients. There is a lot more that can be used. I will write some future posts on this, trying to make the translation from best practices and techniques in agile software development to Agile e-Learning development. I will try to add another practical layer to the SAM foundation.

Ordering information Leaving ADDIE for SAM:

Books published by ASTD Press can be purchased by visiting ASTD’s website at store.astd.org or by calling 800.628.2783 or 703.683.8100:

Library of Congress Control Number (print edition only): 2009940017
PDF e-book edition ISBN: 978-1-60728-675-2
Print edition ISBN: 978-1-56286-711-9

And finally some links to earlier post I wrote on agile eLearning development:

A post with links to other ‘agile’ eLearning posts
A post that I wrote for the ASTD’s big question blog on agile development
And my first post on agile development after I joined easygenerator

Filed Under: ADDIE, Agile e-Learning development, agile software development, book review, e-Learning, Leaving ADDIE for SAM, Michael Allen, SAM

learning objectives: you need feed back to make them work

March 27, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 1 Comment

If you read my blog on a frequent basis you will know that I believe that Learning Objectives and learning are two sides of the same medal. I want to share a story with you that gave me an insight yesterday.

Some time ago I wanted to improve my bathroom and in a moment of insanity I decided that I would do that myself. It worked out sort of OK, but every now and then the bathroom would leak. Because it is situated on the second floor, I have a problem on the first floor as well. This was not a part of my master plan. So I needed to have a contractor that could fix that for me. I hired Albert, a local contractor, that did some fine work for us a while ago. So last week he was in my house for a few days fixing the problem. I work 3 days a week from home, so he saw me sitting in my office; mailing, conferencing, calling (over VOIP) and all the other stuff you do when you work. He was really amazed that all this was possible. He told me that he has a website (made by a local guy) and that that guy also installed a PC with internet connection and mail in his home three years ago. He never touched it since, because he hasn’t got a clue what to do with it.

Later on he decided that I would need a new shower base (if that is the proper word for it; anyway I mean the thing you stand in while taking a shower), and he told me that it would cost me between 350 and 400 Euro. I surfed the web and found the perfect one in 5 minutes for 130 euro, I ordered it and paid for it on-line. He was in awe and understood that it would be profitable for his business if he would be able do that as well. I offered him to teach this. So we set out to define the learning objectives for this, they became (with the action mapping rules in mind):

Albert is able to send and answer mail from his own PC
Albert is able to search ‘Marktplaats’ (a Dutch eBay) and buy things from it

They looked simple enough. Yesterday evening I went over to his house and we started. It turned out he did really know nothing about computers at all. I had to explain that you don’t only have to place your mouse on the desired position, but that you have to do a left mouse click as well. When he typed a few words he asked me ‘How can I get a gap between the words?’ and I had to explain the function of space bar to him.

Based on his feed back I had to adapt our learning objectives. They became:

Albert knows how to operate the main function of his PC
Albert understands the difference between mail and internet
Albert is able to sent and answer mail from his own PC

We went on from there and decided that we would need several session to reach the original objectives. For me this was a learning moment. We changed not only the learning content but the learning objectives as well. With easygenerator we are proud on our adaptive courses that will advise a learner on an individual basis; but only on a content level. I now realize we have to offer facilities on the level of learning objectives as well. Another two hours well spent.

Filed Under: Adaptive learning, e-Learning, Learning objectives

7 Things to Consider to Ensure the Proper LMS Prescription

March 19, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

Sometimes I get a request to host a guest post. This time I decided to place this post. The last 2,5 years my focus has been on eLearning authoring and I think this a very informative post on selecting a LMS. This post has been written by Jordan Barrish who is a Market Analyst for Capterra. She researches and writes about trends in a variety of software verticals, with a particular focus on learning management software. You can follow Jordan on Twitter - @jordan_barrish.

When you arrive for a check-up at the doctor’s office, the first thing your doctor does is take an inventory of what’s happening with your body. He’ll want to know what’s working and what’s not and only you can explain what’s actually wrong before proceeding to the examination.

As you are searching for your perfect Learning Management System (LMS), you need to have a sense of any problems in your organization to make sure you get the right prescription for an eLearning solution.

Here are 7 things to think about before considering an LMS:

1. Learners – Growing up, we learned not everyone acquires and retains information in the same way. If it’s possible, try to think about the information you are going to be sharing and how your users are going to be taking it in.

Tip: Typically LMS solutions are very customizable, but if there are certain learning needs in your organization make sure to address these before you jump into a demo.

2. Administrators – Especially if you are not going to be the one in charge of running your LMS, you want to make sure to choose a solution that is user friendly for your administrator. They will be handling your content and your learners, so keep them in mind; they will thank you later.

Tip: This also includes customer and technical support from your solution provider. Be sure to check out company reviews or test out their support lines to be sure your administrators will have a pleasant experience when trying to solve any potential problems.

3. Features & Functionality – Will you need customized templates or reports? What about assessment tools? Maybe you need an ecommerce feature or the ability to integrate with other applications and systems? Create a list of your must-have and nice-to-have features and have those handy as you demo different software products.
Tip: Some LMS providers focus specifically on corporate clients while others are specifically geared toward academic institutions. Many systems will work for both, but be sure to clarify that the solutions you’re considering meet your organization’s needs.
4. Content – What kind of content will you be hosting on your LMS? Does it need to be Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) compliant? Will you be creating the content or will you need to outsource for this feature? Will you need to use PowerPoint conversion, a 3rd party course authoring tool, or would you prefer an LMS that has its own? It’s vital you have a deep understanding of the undertaking that comes along with creating and supporting your learning content. Creation of content that is not effective and engaging for your learners can limit the effectiveness of your LMS implementation.

Tip: When thinking about your budget, keep in mind the possibility of 3rd party sources for content. This could cost you a pretty penny, so be wary of how much of the content creation your organization can handle on your own.

5. Web based or On-premises – Decide which type of software you need. Web-based means you can access it anywhere there’s an internet connection. On-premises means the software is installed on site.

Tip: Neither of these options is better than the other– but one may be better for your specific needs. Make sure to ask questions about security, backup files and data ownership.

6. Budget – LMS pricing is complicated, so it can be hard to determine a budget. While you don’t want to waste your time looking at solutions that are out of your price range, it’s important to consider all of your options and make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. Some LMS vendors charge a flat rate, others by number of learners and some by usage.

Tip: Typically software vendors do not list their pricing models on their website. Be sure to ask for this information upfront, either in your initial email or call with them.

7. Additional Fees - Be aware that many solutions charge fees for ad-ons that you may think are included. The best way to make sure there are no surprises is to ask. You don’t want to set a budget, sign a contract, and then realize the software can’t expand with your organization without exceeding your budget.

Tip: You may not need every feature a solution offers. Find out if you can purchase the LMS without those features to potentially cut down on extra costs.

Bonus

Finally, any other goals you have set out for your eLearning to accomplish. Be certain that whatever core functionalities those goals may require, that the LMS you plan to demo is capable of those. Do you want to be able to reach more students? Do you want to post video lectures to help cut down on classroom lectures? What about giving your students the ability to track their progress. Always keep your end goals in mind.

If your prognosis has been made and you are ready to start demos, take another few minutes and check out Capterra’s LMS Software Directory for a comprehensive list to help you get started.
Best of luck on your journey to eLearning recovery!

Filed Under: capterra, Jordan Barrish, LMS, Select LMS

#LSCon 13 Day 3 Keynote and wrap up

March 16, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

I’m back home in the Netherlands after LSCON13. I owe you one keynote a a conference wrap up.

Yvonne Camus, Adventurer, Executive and Performance Expert, Leading a high performance life

Yvonne participated in the Eco challenge, a team expeditions race over 300 miles that ou have to complete in 12 days, through the Borneo jungle. It is a race that in principle is impossible to finish. She trained for 6 months with her team next to her job and her family live. A team consist out of four persons with at least one woman. If anyone drops out of the race the whole team is disqualified.

She was the only woman on the team and therefore the least powerful and the slowest. One day during a very bad training session het coach said: 8 out of 10 training are really good, 1 out of ten will be crap, 1 out of 10 will be awesome. And that awesome one you have to focus on. Focus on the last time you were brilliant. Ask yourself what did you do to reach that moment. And try to surpass it.

Based on her experiences in training and during the race she formulated riles for performing great:

Great will train with the intention of improving, relentless commitment
Surround yourself with incredible people. If two people on the team think exactly alike, one of them is not necessary.
You need raving fans
Plan to be excellent, energy follows thought; we move towards but never beyond what we can imagine.
Things go wrong. You trip over small things, like blisters, and that will distract you from your big goal.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, misery doesn’t discriminate.
Visualize success, great things happens twice, first in your mind and then in reality

Conference wrap up

I’m not completely sure what to think about this year’s Learning Solutions conference, for us as a vendor it was a good show, a lot of interest in easygenerator and our free edition, and a nice bunch of solid leads and I was able to do some great networking. As far as the conference goes I’m less positive. The key notes were not on the same level as they were in the past two years that I have attended. Maybe I’m getting spoiled, but the past two years the keynotes made me rethink some of my ideas and gave me new insights. I had the feeling that I had to do something with what I learned. I went through the backchannel to read other summaries in order to see if have missed out on something important. The theme is clear it is about high performance. Great stories were told, it was entertaining, but I didn’t get any ‘Aha moment’, no big new insights.

The same goes for this year’s concurrent sessions. The main themes are mobile (and TinCan), performance support, creating more attractive (less boring) eLearning. A bit the same as last year. Last year we had the rise of TinCan and HTML5 vs Flash, this is still there but it is not new. For me the most informative session was from the AICC about CMI-5. That was interesting because I finally understand how all the standards relate to each other and what the future will be (see my previous post for details). So my conclusion must be; a nice conference but it didn’t blow me away. To put this in perspective. If I have to compare this conference to some of the European conferences (Like the Online Educa in Berlin and Learning technology in London), it is still a different league. On a scale from 1 to 10 LSCon13 would score a 7, the European shows will be around the 3-5 mark. I definitely will be here next year again (and I will go the Mlearn and Devlearn). They are as far as I’m concerned the top3 conferences worldwide.

I have also wrote post on day 1 and day 2 of the conference.

Filed Under: #lscon13, eLearning

Day 2 @LSCON, Nice keynote and I finally understand TinCan, Experience API, Scorm, ADL, IACC and CMI-5……..

March 14, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 2 Comments

Day 2 of the conference. I started the day with the keynote session, before the keynote some announcements were made. Joe Ganci received a guild master award from the eLearning guild and rightfully so. Great guy, always presenting, writing, reviewing and moderating.

Eric Berg of Lingos got on stage to announce the 2013 global give back competition, I’m an ambassador for Lingos, it is a great organization that helps non-profit organizations that work internationally with eLearning facilities. They help people who do well, do even better. This year there will be an global give back competition again (http://ngolearning.org/globalgiveback/default.aspx), your chance to contribute to this great organization. Get involved, donate your time and talent, it is a course and an organization worth supporting!

Key note: Daniel Coyle, Author and Contributing Editor to Outside Magazine
What makes high performance, what bridges the space between being bad and being great are the questions he started out with. We are told that becoming great is about your talent, hard work and passion. In order to find out if this is true he visited ‘hot beds’ that develop high performing people, looking for patterns.

What have high performers in common? They have all spent 10.000 hours learning their craft. Practice is magical and trans formative. What makes people learn? You learn when you have to struggle. When you present someone with all complete crystal clear information, they will not learn. When the information is not complete you are challenged to process this info, which enhances retainment. Making mistakes will make you learn, you need to push yourself to the limits, forcing mistakes. When you correct your mistakes they will trigger your brain into learning. Learning happens in a space where you are pushed to your boundaries and are allowed to make mistakes and fix them.

In your brain neurons will grow when used a lot, building better ‘wiring’ in your brain. This is why practice is so useful. It will deliver signals much faster when they have grown. Practice grows broadband connections in your brain! It will take 10.000 hours to make it perfect.

Daniel has three ‘habits’ that enhances great learning, we can learn from this.

Habit 1: Maximize reachfulness

Ruthlessly eliminate passive learning
Aim for the 60-80% sweet spot
Check reps Gauge
- Reaching the edge of your ability and repeating
- High level of emotional engagement
- Is there purposeful action?
- Is there swift feedback?

This takes a lot of energy, how do you motivate someone to put in the work? Does passion comes from the inside? Fast runners all are the youngest of their family. Because they were always challenged by their older siblings that were older and faster. You are motivated if you can make a connection to a role model.

Habit 2: Fill the Windshield

Promote staring
Encourage stealing
Create a mistake club

The world is a learning contest and we are the coaches. What makes a good coach? Coaches know a lot and talk a lot. Coaches are older, are able to connect to student. Great coaches don’t give long inspiring talks, but they will give short burst of inspirational information

Habit 3: Communicate like a coach

Connect
No speeches, sent short vivid information to individuals
Praise for effort, not ability

CMI-5 and XAPI (Tin Can API), Bill McDonald, Kris RockwellIt took me a while to figure the meaning of TinCan and I understood the impact it can have on our learning community, but I never understood why we have two competing standards (Scorm and AICC), and now there is a new standard emerging CMI-5 based on TinCan. So I was lost again. I attended this session and now I finally understand how it all fits together and where it is going. here is the story, I hope you can follow it, if you can it will help you.

The AICC developed in the early 1990 the AICC standard. Later on the ADL was formed and they wanted a more extended standard, based on the AICC specs. But they got into a technical argument (http vs API or something like that). So the ADL developed Scorm in a different (technical) way and we ended up with two standards. Both the ADL and AICC where working on a new generation of standards. ADL announced TinCan (version one will be out shortly) and the AICC worked on CMI-5. The TinCan announcement got a lot of attention, because it is more open and it facilitates the recording of learning experiences outside the LMS (mobile!). The problem with TinCan is that while it is very cool we don’t now exactly what to do with it. How will the fact that we can record learning experiences influence our learning design?? Tincan supports a learning model that we can envision (a bit) but that we don’t have yet. Scorm and AICC support the current model with reporting through a LMS. And this is where CMI-5 comes into play. The AICC will build CMI-5 based on TinCan but it will expand TinCan with the in-LMS tracking and tracing we are used to, replacing both Scorm and AICC standards we are currently using.

Pfff a whole story.To cut a long story short, we will end up with one standard based on Tincan and it can do reporting on learning inside a LMS and outside a LMS. That seems to be a very good thing (I think). Sometimes I feel a bit stupid not understanding all of this at once, but I guess I’m not the only one.

Filed Under: #lscon13, Aicc, CMI-5, e-Learning, IACC, SCORM, TinCan API, Xapi