Developing digital learning

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I often say I came into the learning and development field backwards. Many instructional designers were trainers or facilitators or subject matter experts first, then started creating training. I was a web developer first then started specializing in learning content/assets.

I think this background has been a huge benefit to me in terms of keeping on top of technology, and it’s something I frequently see others struggle with- they want to develop more customized digital assets, but they find themselves artificially limited by authoring tools and LMSs.

This is part of why I think eveyone who creates anything for web use (particularly learning materials!) should learn to code. It doesn’t have to be overly complex to start with, but some basic skills in front-end web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are a huge boon when you’re trying to build online learning experiences.

If you’re inspired, there’s an awesome free weekend coming up on CodeSchool. There’s a ton of great courses on HTML/CSS and JavaScript, great for getting started with building up your coding skills! Check it out.

Productivity Tip: Rescue Time

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People are always trying to squeeze more productivity out of an increasingly fragmented day.  I find for me one of the best tools for this is Rescue Time. It’s an application that tracks how you spend time on your computer, and based on information you provide it, can give you ongoing productivity scores.  I find it really helpful for keeping me on task.  You can restrict the information it has access to (so for example, I would have it record that I was using Outlook, but not the title of my Outlook windows).

It’s great for discovering just how much time is really spent on communication and scheduling.  As demands on one’s time increase, managing those becomes yet another demand on time. Timeboxing email and scheduling has really helped me to reduce some of that timesink.

I also found it really interesting in that I always thought my most productive time was the morning, but I fairly reliably am actually more productive in the afternoons.  I’ve been able to adjust when I book things and take better advantage of time when I’m at my best.

Give it a try if you’re interested in better tracking and managing your time!

Fun with Photofeeler.com!

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I got some new headshots taken recently and one of the really fun things I like to do when I have new profile photos or headshots is to run them through Photofeeler.com.

I get the opportunity to see if others’ impressions of my photos are what I’m hoping they’ll be- and I can compare results on photos to see which might be the best choice for me to use in various applications.

It’s fascinating how similar photos, with only some slight changes in background, wardrobe, and lighting, can get quite different results.

The service is really cool for getting an impression of how your photos come across.  I didn’t expect the second photo here to be such a clear leader but once I saw the results, I swapped it in to my LinkedIn profile (and added it to the front page of my site here!).  You can test out business photos (as I did- think LinkedIn), social photos (think Facebook) or dating profile photos (Tinder etc).

If you’re planning on changing up your profile photos soon, give it a whirl! You can also vote on others’ photos (and this how you get votes on your own without paying a fee for the votes).  I enjoy doing that because it helps me to see various examples and start to understand what makes a great first impression in a profile photo. It’s amazing how much difference angle, lighting, wardrobe and background can make!

Universal Paperclips, engagement and visual design

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I played a game this week, called Universal Paperclips. On the surface, it’s a simple clicker game. But through the course of playing it, I kept thinking about engagement.  What had me coming back to make more paperclips? What about this game was so irresistible?

There are an awful lot of articles and studies out there that talk about increasing engagement, and one of the strategies to do so is adding more visuals. Visual design is one of the main vehicles for communication. Some say, without visuals, experiences fall flat.

But Universal Paperclips isn’t much to look at.

It’s just text, a couple lines and buttons. As you play through the game, there’s a bit more complexity that is added, but there’s no color, and the bulk of the experience is text. So what keeps it so engaging? Here’s a few techniques that the game employs that reeled me in:

  1. It provides constant feedback. You always know how many paperclips you have, and if you click “Make Paperclip”, ta-da! Another paperclip. That instant feedback is incredibly engaging and kept me coming back to adjust, optimize, and buy in order to make that number go up faster and faster.
  2. There’s no rush. While you are timed (a little notice appears in the black bar with your time when you complete each phase of the game) there’s no countdown clock, no push to sort things out more quickly other than your own sense of urgency. If you walk away, you can come back later and make sure everything is running along smoothly, and then progress to the next inputs required from you.
  3. There’s no artificial pacing. There’s no mandatory tutorials or obastacles designed to slow you down- you can (and do) pick up the pace as you go.
  4. It keeps you guessing. Each time something new appears in the game, it presents more questions than it answers. As with a well-written short story, your creative mind will fill in the blanks, identify patterns, and develop a story that’s far better than anything more prescriptive.
  5. You have a clear goal. Throughout, you’re always making more and more clips. There’s various steps you have to take to achieve this (including spending clips!) but that number is always there at the top of the screen, incrementing ever upward.

These same techniques can be used in your learning experiences- keep those goals front and center and build in opportunities for frequent feedback!

 

 

Mindset and adoption of technology

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Technology adoption.  That has been one of the biggest and most important challenges I’ve faced throughout my career. For nearly all of the enterprise problems I’ve worked to solve, the solutions incorporated some kind of technology- a software platform, hardware device, web application, database, automation, cloud service, the list goes on and on.

But the biggest challenges to overcome in effectively implementing these solutions tend not to be the technical challenges, but the people ones.  No matter how elegant the technology and well-designed the solution- if people aren’t using it, it can’t fully succeed. Resistance to adoption of technology can come from anywhere, and sometimes it’s not the people you expect that present these challenges. It can often be folks who have quite a lot of technical skill, but for various reasons are operating with a fixed mindset.  If you haven’t already been fully exposed to Carol Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindset- here’s a video with some background:

Resistance can come from the user audience, from project stakeholders, contributors, but the most challenging resistance comes from people in leadership positions. When project leaders or sponsors aren’t embracing tech solutions, the obstacles grow to 10 times their height. Important to remember when you’re in a position of leadership!

So what can you do, if you are in a position of leadership and you’re faced with adopting a new technology you’re not quite ready to jump in with? Here are a few tips to help you build your own growth mindset and get ready to tackle your problems using technology.

  1. Recognize that you have a choice in your approach and actions. You can master new technology, you can try doing things you haven’t seen work. It’s your choice to build new skills or not. It may mean some temporary setbacks or failures, but ultimately you can (and should) embrace tools and technology that have the potential to help you reach your goals.
  2. Recognize when your resistance is holding you back. If you’re pushing for a “same-old-way” solution because you’re worried you won’t know how to function with a new tool- acknowledge that. You may find there are more supports than you thought for gaining the skills you need to adopt new technology. Remember, the cost of not changing is often higher, and there are so many resources to learn from!
  3. Change your inner monologue.  When you hear that inner skeptic going “sure, but I’m never going to figure out how it works”, start inner-talking-back to it.  “I can figure out how it works, I learn new things all the time, and skill comes through practice and effort”. With effort and time this will become easy!

Working through your own resistance will pave the way for your team to innovate and get better access to the competitive advantages that come from early adoption. As you begin to embrace the growth mindset and take on new challenges more readily, your team and colleagues will benefit, and follow your lead to success.

Institute for Performance and Learning Conference: Days 1 and 2

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IPL BadgeWell!  What an amazing two days I’ve had at the Institute for Performance and Learning Conference in Toronto!  This is my first time attending this conference, and so far, it hasn’t disappointed!

I want to highlight some of the big key takeaways that I’ve had so far!

Instructional Design is a lot like Marketing

So much of what I’m seeing lately is leading me back to drawing on marketing expertise. How do you engage customers (learners)?  How do you help them solve problems?  How do you demonstrate the benefits of what they’re doing?  What pulls them in?  What builds habits?  There’s a ton of parallels.

Senior Leadership

The importance of senior leadership buy-in came up again and again.  In building a learning culture, it’s important that leaders jump in and walk the talk. In adopting new technologies, new ways of interacting, of capturing knowledge- when the leaders participate, others are so much more likely to follow and plans become so much more successful.  Getting the buy in and making that business case may be more important than ever in an age when over 70% of changes fail.

Elearning is old, and new

There are a lot of industries and organizations who are still coming around to the idea of delivering more learning through online avenues.  And there’s also a lot of ancient elearning out there giving good elearning a bad name.  Many in the industry are still struggling to successfully incorporate blended learning techniques.  Because so many people have had bad experiences with elearning as well, the bar has been raised- it’s tough to really surprise and wow a learner when they expect yet another “click next” with tiny text and no interaction required.

People are hungry for stories of overcoming challenges

I’ve heard so much good feedback about a few sessions that particularly highlighted challenges that learning and development teams overcame.  I think this is one of the biggest ways that people can connect and truly learn from each other- Learn from my mistakes, and maybe you won’t have to learn things the hard way!

Get at the knowledge in the room!

Capturing expertise and knowledge is so important yet so many of us struggle to do that.  I learned some great new techniques for capturing best practices, for engaging every single participant to add to the discussion, and for helping others to share.  So much awesome skill and knowledge, we can’t keep it all locked up in people’s heads!

Business Relevancy- More important than ever

Many are struggling with budget cuts, unsupportive leadership, and more obstacles- but it seems that staying relevant and demonstrating that will become more and more important. Businesses need to stay on top of trends, meet objectives, and overall- make money. Demonstrating how we can positively influence those things will keep L&D at the top of the list of critical roles in tomorrow’s businesses.

Change

There’s so much change in just about every industry, which means that learning and development is broadly affected.  There’s major shifts in organizations, in the overall jobs culture, speed of change (hint: it’s getting faster). Add a thick layer of new technology on top, and there are many employees and learners out there who are frozen and not sure how to move forward.  I think my big takeaway is that knowing that change isn’t going away, and that nothing is slowing down- I want our industry to get ahead of it and LEAD the change, not just help everyone else cope.

Change

Book Review: Do Over by Jon Acuff

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So it all started with some tweets:

And the Twitter #bookclub was born. A group of us are reading Do Over, by Jon Acuff. I’m now a few chapters in and wanted to check in and share my thoughts so far!

When I first picked up Do Over I thought it might be related to iterative work- perhaps some kind of application of Agile, wherein you “do over” your work based on feedback.

As I dove into the first chapter, I saw that I wasn’t in the right area at all- “Do Over” seems to refer to the ability some have to “Do Over” things in their lives or careers. The first chapter focuses on the concept of a “Career Savings Account”- basically an idea where you build up a rainy-day fund for your career through investment of time in some key areas. These areas include:

  • Skills
  • Character
  • Relationships
  • Hustle

Nothing crazy and groundbreaking so far, but the tone is conversational and fun, and I’m sucked in. There’s a chart that illustrates how each of these areas can help with various career changes and issues- things that might cause you to call a career “Do Over”.

In the chapters following, there’s some exercises that help you work on the Relationships area. I’ve filled a few pages already with great people I know- I’m continually surprised by all the knowledge and skills and general awesomeness in my network. You guys are awesome. Pause for virtual hugs.

Anyway. we move into different types of people, friends, and foes, and advocates. There’s a big focus on the value of casual relationships, and the best things to do about foes. I got some great tips here- I don’t think I have much in the way of real foes, but what I might have probably falls more under “clueless” than “calculated”. Awesome. There’s a lot of focus on choosing a good approach and attitude- one line that stuck with me was:

“Misery loves company and also recruits it.”

Ouch. I can’t think of many people who would want to knowingly perpetuate misery! But it happens- and books like this help break the cycle.

Advocates are one place I think I’d really like to do some more work. I want to more intentionally shape my career, and an advocate is a good way to do that!

I’m about a third into the book now, and enjoying it. What do you think so far, bookclub?

Good few weeks, but eyes on the vacation prize!

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Things have been a little chaotic the past few weeks, but my vacation is coming and I’m excited! Before I talk about that though, a recap.

The Friday before last, I went to an outing of friends, wherein we all dressed up just for the fun of it and went to Imbibe. It was a good time, for sure- with one friend setting up an impromptu portrait studio so he could capture us all in our dress-up gear. It was ridiculous and awesome. Ran into a choir friend of mine there as well, so that was really fun. The image below links to the whole set of photos. Fun times!



CPLP exam is coming up soon. Worried about it, of course, but I don’t think I could have fit in more prep time. Like any standardised, proctored exam, there’s an element of the unknown going into your first take and you can’t fully prepare that away. If I need to retest, at least I’ll go into that with experience in how the test is written and run. I’ve done fine on the practice exam and other practice questions, but there are some things that stump me still.

But I’m not going to dwell too much!

I didn’t have much time to prep this weekend because I was volunteering and soaking up awesomeness at an amazing conference called Fluxible. I’ll write up some more details in another post hopefully when I’ve fully digested, but suffice it to say it was a really well-done conference, and an amazing experience.

This past Friday, I had to drive to Fort Erie, because I needed to do an interview to renew my NEXUS card. If you’re not familiar, the NEXUS card is basically an identification card for a trusted-traveler system between the US and Canada. You have to renew every five years, and the renewal requires an interview (though just by the US, it seems). It links to some other programs as well and is awesome, and means quick customs lines for cardholders. So Friday was pretty busy with driving down there for my interview and back, and then setup for the conference.

Meanwhile, I didn’t get to see Wesley much, but this week, it’s just he and I, as Trevor is traveling. So that will make things a bit less smooth, but I think it’ll be okay.

But then… on the 25th, sweet sweet vacation- and boy, do we need it! We’re traveling to Switzerland and Italy- Zurich, Lucerne, Interlaken, and Milan. It’s going to be amazing. Wesley is going to stay home, and his grandparents have kindly offered to watch him while we’re away. It’ll be so nice to recharge and to see the Alps! No doubt I will have lots of photos to share here.

Anyone else have travel coming up soon, or am I the only one who schedules all vacations for the fall? 🙂

April Updates

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I think (hope?) that spring is finally starting to arrive. Of course, I pick a day where there was snow on the ground this morning to say that, but I’m convinced enough that I swapped the snow tires off my car, so hopefully spring is properly here now.

My US taxes are kind of a pain this year for a variety of reasons, so I’ve decided to have an accountant help me out, which has been super pleasant thusfar. Hopefully we’ll be back to normal easyness next year, but this past year I definitely wanted an extra hand. It wasn’t even figuring out what to file, it was just that some of the forms I need to file are super annoying. I do think I’ll be able to wrap things up by the June deadline, which is good, I didn’t really want to file an extension again this year.

Wesley has started to properly walk now. He’s been walking while holding on for ages, but he just wasn’t comfortable letting go and taking steps unaided until recently (and I don’t blame him, as someone who still ice skates right by the boards to this day). He’s getting more confident with it though, and it’s super fun to watch. He’s a blast. He likes to dance and he likes cars a lot right now, and computer mice, which he also likes to drive around like little cars. 😀

wesley_walks

Easter has come and gone, and it wasn’t quite as busy this year since we didn’t make the trip up to visit Trevor’s parents. It’s tough squeezing in family time around holy week services! And Advent and Christmas services, for that matter.

On the volunteering front, I have nearly got all my paperwork finished for Family and Childrens’ services- I should get my police record check back shortly. Then, next month, four evenings of training, and then I’m able to actually volunteer!

I got a new laptop recently, a Samsung ultrabook. I really love it. It has Windows 8, which I like more than I expected. It also has a touchscreen, which I am finding useful off and on as well. The best part is that it’s small, and weighs less than 4 pounds, so it’s super easy to carry around, while still being powerful enough for me to do work on it if I need to, or play video for a presentation or whatever. It tucks nicely into my laptop bag along with all my other junk. I’m a fan. I’ve been using it at work, since I have a desktop at work and the team loaner laptop is this huge heavy monstrosity that I don’t love carting around, and I don’t always have enough time to set up what I need on it.

Along with the technology vein, I also got a BlackBerry z10 a while back, and I’m a fan of that, too. I’m really coming around on the topic of touchscreens. The flick-up typing on it is super nice, and I love being able to peek into my email when I’m in another app. Overall, it’s pretty awesome.

Entering the tablet world

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For a long time, I didn’t really have a use for a tablet- I have a laptop, and am not a huge fan of touchscreens (aaaaahhhh fingerprints). But just this past weekend, I got one of my own, because I found a use for them finally! I like to read in bed before I fall asleep, and I have an e-reader, which helps me avoid the otherwise inevitable stack of books on my nightstand. But sometimes I want to read blog articles or Facebook or whatever other internet, since those things work a little more nicely when my attention span is shorter. I don’t like using my laptop in bed though- so enter the tablet- it’s my ereader for the internet.

I got a BlackBerry Playbook. It was a fairly easy choice for me, since I like to support RIM, but I particularly like the size of it- it’s similar in size to my Sony ereader and since I have small hands, I find it a lot easier to handle than a 10″ tablet. I took it with me when we went to Trevor’s parents’ this past weekend as well, and it’s really nice as an alternative to lugging the laptop along or using my phone to check my email and such. It’s nice out on the deck as well, if I am not wanting to avoid technology out there. 🙂 I’m pretty pleased with it, and the price is pretty awesome too. Hooray!