iBooks Author

Today Apple announced the release of iBooks 2 with textbooks. Like with every release of an Apple product there are scores of fanboys ready to adopt it. However, publishers are often slow to release compatible media and content you need may take some time to arrive as an iBook. No content? There's an app for that!

Apple promises textbooks on its mobile devices like the iPad to be the future of education and to make adoption easier they have also released iBooks Author. It serves as a great WYSIWYG tool to create elegant books with all of the functionality you would want in an iBook. You can add embedded content such as interactive graphics, review questions, Keynote presentations, videos, html, and 3D images. There are some limitations as integration between content generated in Pages or other sources may not be completely seamless. 

Given the power Apple has just unleashed onto the masses of educators it will be exciting to see what user generated content arises. 

Good Design: Google's "Congress, Can You Hear Us?" Graphic

I gotta say I love this graphic from Google which is part of their campaign against SOPA and PIPA. The image does a really good job of illustrating in a meaningful way the impact people's voice can have against the legislation.

Google's "Congress, Can You Hear Us?" graphic

What's the Value in Consistency?

On all of the e-Learning projects I've worked on, there has always been the push for consistency. We look for consistency in the content, in the look-and-feel, and in the functionality. The arguments for consistency are well-founded in the need to provide learners with recognizable features that help to reinforce the learning process.

Navigation functions for example, always do the same thing and should behave in a consistent manner. The next button should always take you to the next page, and the back button should always take you to the previous page. Likewise, we tend to design content with the same principle: use a pattern so learners know what to expect.

 Intro > Definition > Significance > Review 

Look familiar? Recently I've begun noticing a disadvantage in maintaining this type of consistency. After about the third or fourth page; whether the content is text on a screen or a character speaking audibly - the learner begins to know what to expect. Right... so what's the problem? 

Well, the problem is that learners tend to phase out and lose their concentration or interest in the content. It's no longer a new and exciting experience, it no longer poses a challenge for our brains and it begins to get dismissed as "more of the same." 

Even during reviews by SMEs, who are well-versed in the subject matter and keen at finding mistakes, serious content issues were overlooked that occurred beyond the first few pages. This to me means that they probably began phasing out and had difficulty focusing on the content just as learners would. 

I wonder how a little inconsistency can help keep the learner's brain focused and engaged with the content? Has anyone else encountered a similar issue?

Collaboration: What Does it Take?

Earlier this week @AngelaMaiers made an excellent point regarding the prerequisites for virtual collaboration. While her tweet was referring directly to kids, it definitely struck a chord with me and my experiences with adults. 

In the workplace, collaboration is a big deal. Millions of dollars are spent investing in consultants and tools with the goal of helping employees collaborate with each other to hopefully make more money for the company. Traditionally, the most common form of collaboration was considered to be the meeting. A table, some chairs, and a whiteboard are what some of the world's most complex problems were solved (and created) with. 

To make collaboration possible it used to take physical space, now with the virtual workplace becoming the norm - employees are looking toward online tools such as wikis, Google Docs, web-meetings, etc. 

Angela Maiers' tweet got me thinking about some of the challenges I've seen with adults effectively collaborating online. The problem doesn't seem to be the lack of collaboration tools, but the definite lack of collaboration skills. Didn't everyone have "works well in groups" on their resume?

What's the problem?

In conversations about this topic with some of my colleagues and friends, there were five common issues that came up: 

1. Lack of communication - Many of the people I talked to expressed the lack of regular communication or collaboration outside of any online environment. They just weren't used to talking to their colleagues about what they were working on.


2. "Share-ability" of work - "My stuff isn't really in any condition to share with anybody, my co-workers will think I'm an idiot." We all have our own way of doing our work and completing tasks. The problem seems to be that people don't feel that their work is fit to share with others either due to their idea of it being too unorganized/not understandable or their fear of what others might think.
   
   Some of this probably has to do with a lack of openness and confidence in our work. What's necessary is an environment where you are judged by your impact on the organization and not how messy your desk is. 


3. Interest in what others are doing - "I have so much working piling up, deadlines to meet, meetings to sit through - how or why should I care about what YOU are doing?" There has to be some recognition of the  value in sharing knowledge, resources, and skills. If they only knew how efficient collaboration could make them.


4. Organization - "How can I collaborate when I don't even work with anybody?" Many people expressed their organizational structure to be prohibitive to collaboration whether it was face-to-face or online. The lack of cross-functional teams, stove-piping, lone-wolf tasks, and most importantly a lack of leadership will all prohibit all types of collaboration. 
   
   Development methodologies like Agile, organize teams, require meetings, and ensure everyone has the right tools to work together to complete tasks. Even if you aren't developing software, some of the aspects of Agile that facilitate collaboration are worth implementing.


5. Over-confidence - Lastly, we have those who actually believe there could be no benefit in collaborating with someone on their work. "I work better alone" is a commonly heard phrase that murders the "two heads are better than one" theory.

What about collaborative learning?

The same issues mentioned above, also apply to collaborative learning. It's clear that we can't expect employees to do online what they don't already do in person. Unfortunately we've set the standard of e-learning to be ridiculously long page turners that are done independently. One of the common selling points for the online version of  class or degree program is its independent nature. "I don't have to see or talk to anybody right? I can just do my work, submit it online, and get a grade?" The common perception of e-learning is that you're all alone. Before we ask learners to use collaborative tools for learning, like @AngelaMaiers said, the skills need to be "explicitly taught, modeled, and practiced." Collaboration needs a clear and seamless transition from face-to-face to virtual. 

The bright side is that social media is changing the way we interact online. While we might be too socially awkward, shy, or dull to collaborate in person, our online social habits can be completely different. This will hopefully make collaborating online a bit easier and more of a natural way of doing things. 

What obstacles to collaboration do you see at your workplace? What would it take to make collaboration possible?

What Fasting Can Reveal About the Inner Dimensions of Learning

When you think about learning - what comes to mind? If you're in the learning business like I am, your head probably fills up with buzzwords like mlearning, rapid elearning, and web 2.0. If you are an educator you might think of standardized tests, lesson plans, and grading. The word “learning” often conjures up discussion about the tools, strategies, and policies that facilitate it, but rarely do we ever contemplate the inner dimensions of learning. What does learning mean to us as human beings?

Around the world people have begun fasting for the month of Ramadan. Fasting by abstaining from indulgences is a common practice in all major religions, but it’s not just the practice of denying yourself food. Fasting is also a period of time when you focus your attention on better understanding yourself and seek the answers to the existential questions that make us human. It makes me wonder what fasting can help us understand about learning.

 Positive Change

Fasting has an intended purpose: to make us better people. If fasting could not provide any benefit, it would be a pointless ritual of starvation that no one would voluntarily partake in. An individual knows that through his or her experience fasting, there is some spiritual or health benefit that is worth the trouble.

Learning takes effort, both physically and mentally. The effort we put forth to learn, whether its a PhD program or annual compliance training, is directly linked to our desire to constantly improve ourselves and our world around us. Subconsciously we understand that the true value in learning is the ability for it to affect a positive change - and for that we're willing to work hard.
    
Needs Analysis

As any good learning professional will tell you, a needs analysis is critical to understanding what individuals and organizations need to learn and what type of training would be appropriate. A needs analysis can reveal knowledge gaps, motivation issues, and the limits of current capabilities. An employee or business unit has a serious need for positive change if their poor performance is becoming detrimental to the company's bottom line. Likewise, fasting is a process of self-assessment where an individual is identifying his or her own needs. Driving an individual's self-assessment, like a needs analysis, is that universal desire for positive change.

Being Purposeful

Usually we think of fasting as a passive process, where you limit or deny yourself the usual indulgences. However, fasting is also very much an active process of being selective about what you eat and do. An individual is recognizing his or her needs and every action begins to have a well thought out purpose and intent behind it. This also is true for learning where we establish competencies and learning objectives to organize information to ensure that the needs of the learner are met.

Solidarity

Being hungry for a day is the best way to understand the plight of much of the world that still lives in poverty. Feeling those intense hunger pains, while not the same, helps you understand and have solidarity with people suffering from the global hunger crisis. Fasting makes you an advocate and a voice for those too hungry and weak. It makes you want to participate in relief efforts, fundraisers, and whatever else you can do to help someone less fortunate.

Likewise, understanding the importance of learning makes you an advocate for learning. You recognize it as a basic human right that should be accessible to all. Some might argue that knowledge has become a luxury since, in the 21st Century, we have so much information that we are afforded the opportunity to choose what we wish to learn. Knowledge is also a luxury in the sense that only people with means are able to get access to it. As educators and learning professionals, we see the impact that knowledge has on people's lives - and we strive to come up with better ways to deliver, teach, and instruct.