e-Learning – Challenge to Learn

Agile eLearning development: business goals and road map

May 19, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

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

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

Learning Solutions Conference Day 1, my recap

March 14, 2013 By Kasper Spiro 1 Comment

Yesterday we had day 1 of LSCON2013 and here are my findings. I attended a few sessions that I will report on in this post. I had to spent quit some time at our booth, because there is a lot of interest in easygenerator so I haven’t been able to attend all the sessions I planned. if you want to have a more complete overview, you should go to the conference back channel.

Breaking Down Barriers to Successful Performance Support – Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher
The first session was a morning buzz session. These kind of sessions start at 7.15 and are very informal. This one was about Performance support. I was interested because I thing performance support, training and eLearning together will integrate learning into the workplace. You can download their presentation through Mapdeck (search for ‘performance support’). Some of the top quotes for me:

Training can’t do the job alone
Things that block: Politics, ICT
support is only 2 clicks or 10 seconds away

Interesting for me was to hear eLearning specialist talk about the need to over a part of their training effort to performance support, in order to connect to the business and the business goals more. Definitely a trend in the learning (and support) land.

Keynote: Robert Ballard, Scientist and Ocean ExplorerI saw about 3 quarter of his presentation and than I had to leave to set up our stand at the expo. Interesting story about exploring the underwater world and innovative findings to make that happen. It didn’t do it for me, nice stories, but not really something I could take away from this presentation.

Myths and Realities of Cloud-based technologies for learning – Michael Allen, Shannon JacksonLike easygenerator ZebraZapps is a cloud-based authoring tool. They encounter resistance with companies to move their content to the cloud. But they found out that it is fear of the unknown. In a survey they found that only 16% of the respondents was able to give a somewhat correct definition of the cloud. Over 50% claimed that they will never use the cloud. But without knowing over 90% of them uses the cloud. Google aps, dropbox, facebook, Flikr are all cloud based solutions. In fact the cloud is nothing else then a bunch of web servers behind a firewall, like the servers data would live on your corporate servers. It is clearly fear of the unknown that drives people here. Good presentation and good initiative.

Your eLearning lives up in the cloud what does it mean? Facilitator: Joe Ganci, Panelists: Gary Lipkowitz, Glenn Bull, Lisa Stortz, Robert Gadd, Shannon Jackson

I was on my way to the second keynote of the day, when I passed the Technology Solution stage, which is hosted by Joe Ganci this year. He was just starting up a panel with vendors of cloud based tools. Before I knew it he grabbed me and added me to the panel. I think it was a nice session, like the session by Zebrazapps we tried to explain what the cloud is and take away the fear by adding facts.

The rest of the day I spent in the booth of easygenerator (come by when you are in Orlando -booth 515-). I haven’t made my mind up yet about this years conference. I haven’t been blown away by presentations yet (like last year). Let see what the second day will bring.

Filed Under: #lscon13, e-Learning

How to Engage Learners with Scenario-based Learning

March 1, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

Over the past few weeks I wrote an article on scenario based learning, together with Hans Kövi. He is the Creative Director of Inbrain, our Dutch partner. We both see a growing demand for scenario based learning, we believe it is the affordable ‘serious gaming’ option. The article is published as featured article in this months ‘Learning solution magazine.

Filed Under: e-Learning

2012 in retrospective: top 10 posts

January 2, 2013 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

It is the time of the year to look back and to make plans for the new year. In this post I will have a look at 2012 based on the top 10 post of this blog. The top 10 is:

There are three post in this list (on 1, 4 and 10) about a new metaphor for eLearning. A generic one, one on learning maps and one on cased based learning. I do believe that this is a topic that will be big in 2013 as well. We need to find more effective ways to present our learning content to our learners and that means we have to move away from the current ‘book’ and ‘slide show’ metaphors.

50 educational thinkers. A real great series of posts by Donald Clark. I learned a lot, not only by his selection of thinkers but also by his great summaries of their central thoughts.

The launch of our free edition was big for easygenerator (number 3). A new step in easygenerators endeavor to change e-Learning. We are now live with the free edition for two months and are now approaching the 1500 users mark in over 80 countries. That is something that exceeded expectations. Will be interesting to see what will happen in 2013.

Agile e-Learning development. I’m happy that this post is in the top 10. I think the waterfall model and ADDIE have to many limitations. I believe a better way is the agile approach that comes from software development. An other interesting development here is Michael Allens SAM, an agile methodology for eLearning development. On his corporate blog is an interview with him on SAM. We need to move away from ADDIE and SAM might be the way.

My post from the mobile eLearning conference on trends also made the top 10. Well mobile (both smart phones and tablets) is a game changing trend by itself and that day at MLearncon was a very educational day for me. Also the first post where I used my mind map notes. In 2013 there will be a lot more on mobile and on mind maps.

How to keep formal learning relevant. Our world is changing and we have to change too to keep relevant. This is a trend that will be even bigger in 2013, TinCan wil come and will really be a game changer: I can’t wait. Both subjects are in the top 10.

The post on Blackboard is a representative of another trend: consolidation. We will see match more take overs in 2013, Not always for the best, but it will happen more and more, it is a sign that our industry is growing up.

I’m happy to see that this blog is growing (almost 250% up in comparison to 2011) although that is not my goal. My blog remains mainly a place for me to put done notes and thoughts, but it is nice that people appreciate this. I wish you all the best for 2013 it will be an exiting year for everybody in the e-Learning community and I will keep writing about it.

Filed Under: e-Learning Tagged With: 2012 in retrospective, e-Learning, elearning, top10

Free eLearning authoring with easygenerator, already over a 1000 users!

December 5, 2012 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

Reblogged from easygenerator.com:

We launched the free edition of our on-line eLearning authoring tool November 1st at DevLearn. This week we registered user number 1.000. This post is to celebrate that first milestone. This post also contains information on extra functionality we will make available to the users of the free edition in the coming period and some facts and figures about those users.

We had a lot of contact with the users of the free edition. We have a community in Yammer and we have at least two webinars per week to get them started. Based on the feed back we received we decided on some future changes for the free edition. The highlights are:

Branding
The free edition has a fixed look and feel, which is branded in the easygenerator style. We will change this and create a look and feel which is more neutral. In easygenerator you can set the look and feel by applying master pages. In collaboration with our partners we will offer a series of master pages. There will be a number of master pages with a fixed unbranded look and feel, we will have master pages where you can do limited branding (your own logo and background image) and we will offer the ability to use customized master pages. These options will probably be available in January or February and can be purchased for a one time fee.

Question types
The current free edition has three question types. We are currently rebuilding all question types from flash into HTML. In the first half year of 2013 these HTML based question types will become available and will be a part of the free edition.

Extra space
In the free edition you are allowed to create 10 courses and your repository is limited to a maximum of 250MB. Next year we will offer upgrade programs that allow you to create more courses and have a larger repository.

User base
I also want to share some information on the user base. At this moment we have 1077 users, spread over 6 continents and 71 countries. 51% is from the United States, followed by The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

Continent Graph

Markets
As far as we know about 45% of all users are from corporations and 20% has an educational background. About 10% of all users works for an eLearning company. The rest is from governmental organizations, Non Profits, Student or Unknown to us.

We are very exited about the interest in this edition. When we launched it we really didn’t know what to expect in terms of numbers and types of users. The response has exceeded our expectations and we are curious where this will take us next year. In case you are interested you can register and activate within minutes. Just click here to go to the form.

Filed Under: e-Learning, e-Learning authoring tool, EasyGenerator, eLearning, free edition

Returning to the didactical roots: innovation in eLearning?

November 22, 2012 By Kasper Spiro 3 Comments

Earlier this month I presented at DevLearn on connecting learning to the business and this week I did a webinar and a seminar on adaptive learning. During these sessions I noticed that our basic approach (Determine learning objectives, Figure out how to assess and then create only the content that is really needed) is far from standard. Most people create content, create an assessment and that is it. But the funny thing is that this ‘old school’ approach is the foundation of innovation at easygenerator.

Originally I’m a teacher in social studies and economics. They taught me that for every lesson you want to create you need to figure out your goal first and that you need to find a way to asses if that goal is reached in the end. Only then you could start creating your lessons. I did apply this approach through my working live: with teaching, with writing books (on bookkeeping – how boring can you get?-), when I create eLearning and even when I manage a company. I know it is not common practice, but I still believe that this is the way to go.

Old school didactics
Let’s first take a look at this old school approach.

As said you start out with your learning objectives. Creating sound and useful objectives is an art in its own right. I will not go in too much detail here but I’m a fan of the action mapping approach from Cathy Moore. The essence of this approach is that learning is not about obtaining knowledge but to (learn) to be able to perform a task. Cathy doesn’t link this to learning objectives, but if you do, they should state what the learner needs to be able to do.

The second step in the development process is the assessment: how do you prove that the learner is able to do the task? You can do this by asking questions, presenting cases, really anything that will measure the performance and comes up with a score. By the way thanks to our new emerging standard (‘Tincan API’ aka ‘the experience API’) we will be able to measure this in real live and use the outcome in an eLearning course). When you create good cases (or scenario’s) this assessment will be the learning experience by itself.

And only then you start creating the content. But in the spirit of Cathy Moore only the content that is really, really needed to (learn to) do the task. When in doubt leave it away, ‘less is better’ and much cheaper!

Innovation
We have applied this principle in the authoring platform of easygenerator and it has become the foundation underneath the innovations we have created and will create in the future. I will explain.

In easygenerator we created a dashboard to create and manage your learning objectives. You can’t create a course without a learning objective (if there no goal there is no point in creating a course after all) in easygenerator.

After creating the course you need to set how to measure the progress in the course. You do that by connecting the Learning objectives to questions and cases. In fact you are determining how to assess the objectives. Finally you connect these questions to related information pages.

And this simple approach will change and enable a lot:

It will change your design process and with that the kind of course you create.
The learner is able to see the objectives and his progress on the objectives during the course.
The course is able to present a personal study advice to the learner.
You will be able to report the outcome per learner per learning objective, giving you meaningful data to evaluate you course and your contribution to the companies goals.

These are only the first developments we did based on this approach, a lot more will follow. This video shows you how this works for the learner and for the author.

Based on these very basic dialectical principles we will continue the innovation of eLearning courses and the creation process. Some of the things on our road map are:

Create non-hierarchical metaphors and interfaces for eLearning courses (no book metaphor).
Create better support for designing eLearning courses in our authoring environment.
Implement TinCan
Create learning maps, where the learner can navigate through on his journey to reaching his learning objective
Create better support for case based and scenario based eLearning in the authoring environment

And there will be much more. But the bottom-line is that this idea is independent of a tool, it is how you organize your development process. You can do this on paper if you want, but I believe eLearning developers should do this much more, regardless of the tool they are using.

Filed Under: Action Mapping, Adaptive learning, e-Learning, eLearning, Learning objectives

#DevLearn retrospective: Start dreaming about the future of eLearning

November 4, 2012 By Kasper Spiro Leave a Comment

This year more than ever DevLearn addressed the future of eLearning. The message from the keynote by John Landau was that imagination precedes the technique. The stories in movies like Titanic and Avatar were impossible to realize with the techniques available at the time the stories were written. So they created the techniques in order to be able to create the movies. Our current situation is reverse. Thanks to the TinCan API (now renamed into ‘experience API’) the technique is ahead of us (learning developers and vendors). Instead of us challenging the technique, the technique is challenging us. There was another keynote by Allisone Levine at DevLearn. She draws all kind of lessons from her experiences as an adventurer. Unfortunately I was in meetings during her presentation. I stepped in for 5 minutes and heard her say: “Fear is ok. It’s normal. Complacency will kill you. You can’t afford to do nothing in an environment that is rapidly changing.” It applies to us. Our environment is rapidly changing and we need to step up to the challenge and we can’t afford to wait and see. (By the way in the back-channel I found a post by Tracy Parish who has captured a whole bunch of great lessons from that keynote.)

So what to do? It will be a mutual challenge for the people who are developing this standard, for vendors and for eLearning developers. Let’s take a closer look at our challenge.

Our challengers

I took this Photo at the TinCan panel session at DevLearn. The guy sitting on the left is Aron Silvers from ADL. He is the driving force behind the experience API. The third guy is Mike Rustici from Rustici software (the company behind Scorm cloud) the company that developed the TinCan API. They are the ones challenging us. What they did is in principle very simple. They changed the standard from a tracking and tracing system (Scorm) into a learning experience facilitator. All we need to do is to figure out what that means.

The vendors
It is time for the vendors to step up to the challenge and develop solutions that will unleash the power of TinCan for you. It is not about implementing TinCan as an extra publish option; enabling tracking and tracing via a new standard is the easy part. No, we need to facilitate new forms of eLearning where you can include real live activities into your eLearning. We need to come up with forms where learning is centered around experiences instead of information transfer. It is about connecting learning to the workplace, combining informal and formal learning and all that stuff we have been talking about for years but could never really do in a Scorm course. Another big thing is feedback. TinCan will inform your course on what people are doing and your learning needs to be able to respond to that. The tracking will change in a feed back mechanism that you can use to offer proper learning experiences, real adaptive learning based on real life outcomes. Will this happen in an LMS, in an formal course, or somewhere else? It will probably be a combination of all three. And the truth is that I don’t have the answer. We do have some ideas but we know we can’t figure this out without our partners and the users of our authoring tool.

We are aware of the fact that we as a vendor should engage our users more and start joining forces with them. And we will. A small example is the feedback button we build in, in the latest edition of easygenerator. Any user can click on it and can come up with a suggestion or an idea. All ideas will go direct to our product owner who is responsible for the product development. We will to do more like organizing a series of webinars to discuss the effect of TinCan for eLearning development and open up a community. We plan to have support for TinCan in easygenerator in February and the great thing is, we don’t have a clue how it will look and what it will enable. I’m looking forward to this process and you are all invited to join in.

From eLearning developer to Learning experience director
So what do you need to do? Just follow the advice from John Landau and start dreaming and follow the advice from Allison Levine and start acting. Dream about what it would mean if you can include real life activities (of any kind and in every place) into your learning, what you could do if you can respond to the outcome of these learning experiences from your learner and figure out a first step. Make sure that your vendor enables you, by telling them what you need. Our (vendors and eLearning developers) mutual goal is to come up with so many new ideas that we make guys like Aron and Mike sweat in order to catch up with us.

Filed Under: #devlearn, e-Learning, Experience API, TinCan API