Training Alliance - June 2012 by Studio 7 Communications

Tr aining Alliance magazine Vol. 1 - Issue 3 - June 2012

Keeping it Simple is Actually Smart

A personal checklist for the marketable Instructional Designer

SPOT LIGHT

Leveraging the power of pictures to help clients embrace change A six-step guide to designing and producing an online learning product that is tailored for your audience

Saul Carliner

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Editorial:

Content:

Keeping it Simple is Actually Smart Much to everyone’s delight, including our own, summertime is here. More than at any other moment, people take summer to, as the song goes, sit back and unwind. We, however, endeavor to make this a year-long affair for ourselves and everyone around us. Contrary to what some may believe, unwinding does not necessitate abandoning work. Instead, as our cover suggests, it only requires making that work more… Zen, in other words, more enjoyable, more natural, and more inviting, to the degree that it doesn’t even feel like work at all. Not unlike in meditation, the key to attaining all these desirable qualities is maintaining simplicity. Lest we forget, as we are wont to do, let us remind ourselves of the elusive obvious: behind the myriad of accomplishments we all chase to keep up with our constantly evolving times lie building blocks of sheer simplicity. This call for simplicity is evidenced in the articles offered in this month’s issue. • Great Instructional Designers: Guidelines for Newbs offers our newly inducted instructional design peers simple advice upon which they can build their entire careers. • That’s it? Change Management Made Easy through Graphic Communications describes the art, literally, of simplifying training for clients going through potentially intimidating changes in their company. • Back to Basics: How to Create an Online Learning Product breaks down an increasingly demanded asset into a series of, you guessed it, simple steps. • To round things out, our spotlight on educational director and Concordia University professor Saul Carliner showcases his thorough exploration of the state of training and education today, all the while inviting us to join him on his journey through his book about informal learning… basics. The more you work in the field of instructional design, the more you realize that simple steps are more than just a cliché; they are the friendly, accessible foundation upon which entire careers, if not entire lives, are built. As designers, we have the honor and privilege of being invited into our client’s worlds to engineer the stepping stones they will traverse to attain their goals. When we do our job well, they will traverse quite effortlessly. Let’s ensure that we afford ourselves as much simplicity as we do our clients so that we enjoy our own tasks just as much. The Studio 7 Team

TRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

COMMUNICATING WITH CARLINER Dr. Carliner reveals what readers can expect from his new book and shares insights regarding the current state of e-learning and the future of learning technology.

GREAT INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS: Guidelines for Newbs A personal checklist for the marketable Instructional Designer by Edouard Rotondo

THAT’S IT? Change Management Made Easy through Graphic Communications Leveraging the power of pictures to help clients embrace change by George Saridakis

BACK TO BASICS: How To Create An Online Learning Product A six-step guide to designing and producing an online learning product that is tailored for your audience by Justin Romita 01

GREAT INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS: Guidelines for Newbs

Being the business manager of a corporate training and communications agency, I am often asked by our clients what makes for great instructional design. The truth is, it starts with a good Instructional Designer. IDs are a rare breed: there are only a handful of us that graduate each year, and we are quickly picked from the crop as we walk out of school. But some of us have an edge, something that, even within our small, eclectic group, allows us to stand out from the others as "the top 5%" as it's been frequently called. Here is a personal quick checklist designed to help Instructional Designer candidates along their quest to be as marketable as possible when they graduate.

• Complement your skills with other ﬁelds of expertise. For example, mixing ID with e-business will give your ID skills a whole new twist as you will come to understand how training fits in. Adding marketing, gaming and other complementary fields will take you to a whole new level.

• Get to know technology. Truth be told, IDs don't really learn much about technology in school. And yet, it is a hugely important part of our work. You don't have to be an expert,but knowing a little bit about many technologies will allow you to offer so much more. • Stay ahead of the curve. Never stop studying, even if it's just reading trade magazines and brushing up on new ideas. • Get to know business. The "real world" looks nothing like a classroom. When you intern somewhere, get to know more than just your little piece of the puzzle. You'll realize that your job is part of a long string of needs and decisions that impacts many aspects of the corporation. The more you get involved, the better chance you’ll have at tying your training projects to actual learning gaps.

TRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

• Network. It's time-consuming, but it will allow you to build a community that you can rely on when you're looking for ideas and solutions. • Pay attention to context and detail in your work. Enough said. • Be creative. A lot of learning material isn't much fun to learn. If you follow the advice above, your training projects will be both impactful and fun! • Hold on to your passion. When an ID graduates, s/he is usually quite passionate about their field of expertise. This tends to diminish over time as we work our way into less creative positions in a company. Hold on to your passion, it's what will allow you to stand out and move forward. Finally, a lot of people have never heard of an Instructional Designer and are unfamiliar with our field of work. Don't worry about that, and don't waste your time trying to defend what you do. There are plenty of corporations out there that understand us, and that need us.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s it? Change Management Made Easy through Graphic Communications

They say the only constant is change. Recently however, what’s also become constant is the demand for training on change. Companies are now constantly streamlining their practices through process revisions, technologies, or both to keep up with the competition in a frenetic race for maximum productivity and performance. While this pressure can often be redirected to a trainer, the latter can actually make his task quite a pleasant one for everyone using the right tools, namely, graphics. Below are pointers to guide you through the design of a successful change management course.

Six pictures are worth six thousand words The observant trainer starts by distilling the entirety of an old process into six major steps, give or take a few. These steps in turn are to be rendered into graphics, and simple ones at that, such as stick figures interacting or manipulating objects. This not only does cognitive and psychological wonders for learners, who see an entire process simplified to a friendly one-page or oneslide “comic strip”, but it also sets the stage for comparison between the old process and the new one. Bugging out

Robert Smith

With the bird’s eye view of the process established, the trainer can now zoom in on one graphic at a time and drill down into its details. Change is occurring because the current process has bugs, or flaws, that are no longer tolerable, and it is the trainer’s job to point them out and remind the experienced learners how irritable they can be.

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Week 11 Week 12

Here it comes to save the day

With the old process irritants freshly festering in the learners’ minds, the trainer introduces the “new and improved comic strip”. This series of graphics is perfectly analogous to the first one, but depicts the changes that have been made for each step of the old process. A comparison between the two graphic series can be made either in a side-by-side before and after fashion, or as an animation depicting a graphic transforming from its old process to its equivalent new process, such as having a document disappearing from a stick figure’s hand, with a computer screen appearing to take its place. The trainer can then drill down one graphic at a time as before, and point out how those pesky bugs from the old process are being systematically wiped out. Change management has been a notoriously challenging initiative in many companies due to people’s natural attachment to what they already know, bugs and all. Graphic change management training dissolves their resistance by demonstrating that new processes are actually a very natural and intuitive evolution of what they already know, and that they have arrived to make their lives easier. If your workforce is having trouble seeing a better tomorrow through change, contact an artful trainer to draw it out for them.

TRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

BACK TO BASICS: HOW TO CREATE Picture this: you need to design and develop an online learning product with limited time, people, and money. Here is a quickstep guide on how to produce an effective, usable online learning product, with suggested tips and resources to help you along the way.

Step 1: Design for your audience Get a general understanding of your learners, that is, who they are, what they do, what their preferred learning styles are, and what their learning objectives are. With such a user-centered design, you can create a product that enhances the way people work, and in this case, learn. Step 2: Decide on a learning approach and learning strategy There are many learning approaches you can use, but try to select one that matches your audience’s profile. Consider the notion of chunking, a method of grouping information when designing. This presents the information in a manner that is digestible to the learner, which will facilitate information storage and retrieval. Miller’s law, put forward by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller, suggests the number of objects an average person holds in working memory is 7 plus or minus 2. Keep this law in mind when transmitting chunked information to your learner.

fonts are easy to read, so they are typically used for long passages, whereas sans-serif fonts are traditionally used for short passages. Consider other typographic guidelines such as size, alignment, and spacing. Color is one of the most important features in visual design, as it can be used to convey meaning. Creating a color palette could be a difficult task; however, it can be made simple by using tools such as ColorSchemeDesigner.com. These elements should remain consistent across your product because they define both its branding and its message. The only time a designer is allowed to be inconsistent is when he or she is leveraging irregularity to convey meaning. Step 5: Develop the online product Development is made easy by using readily available resources. One avenue for developing a tutorial is recording the slides of a PowerPoint (or similar) presentation using a free online screen recording resource such as Screencast-O-Matic.com. Should you choose an educational website as a medium, and you don’t know how to program in HTML, free website builders like Wix.com or Webs.com are excellent resources that are user-friendly. Step 6: Check for quality Make sure that your content is accurate and that your product works. Validate the content with your Subject

AN ONLINE LEARNING PRODUCT Step 3: Organize your content Richard Saul Wurmen, a guru and pioneer in information architecture, coined the LATCH principle, wherein information is organized either by Location, Alphabet, Time, Category or Hierarchy. The choice of which way it is organized is at your discretion; the guidelines is to have it make sense to your learner. Step 4: Design the online product Consider some user interface design basics. Layout is the foundation of the screen, as its visual hierarchy allows users to know what is important. Moreover, a grid system helps organize information into a coherent pattern. Typography is an important choice in any interface. Serif TRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

Matter Expert, and arrange for someone with a “naked eye” to test all the links and features of your learning product. You may ask that same person to conduct an editorial review as well to ensure that grammar and punctuation is correct. After following these steps, you will have an online learning product that is customized to your audience, follows interface design principles, and leverages available resources. Once you have become comfortable with these steps and resources, reach out and discover others that will help you along your designing journey. 07

GETTING TO KNOW

Saul Carliner SPOT LIGHT Saul Carliner, PhD, CTDP is Director of the Education Doctoral Program and Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Concordia University in Montreal. His teaching and research focus on emerging forms of learning and communication for the workplace, and the management of groups that produce these materials. Also an industry consultant, he advises clients on management and strategic planning issues. 08

You recently published a book, Informal Learning Basics. Would you describe the overview of the book, and what our readers can expect to take away from it? Thanks for asking about this. The book officially launched on May 29th, so it’s hot off the presses and I’m very, very excited about it. In terms of what readers can expect; they can expect a practical approach to harnessing informal learning in the workplace, that’s rooted in the research. Specifically, Informal Learning Basics describes how informal learning works in the context of the workplace, differentiates it from a variety of other types of individualized learning, and suggests how to effectively integrate it at key points in the life cycle of a job. Then, to help readers leverage the power of informal learning, the book describes how to support 22 specific types of informal learning, how social and educational technologies can assist in those efforts, and how to evaluate informal learning. Each chapter includes exercises and worksheets to help readers apply the concepts and assist with specific informal learning projects. As a founding partner of Carliner & Company, you have done extensive work as a consultant with respect to training and communication in the workplace. Some of your assignments were to prepare strategic plans for communications and learning technologies. How are the two related? Why is technology so important from a strategic perspective? The most basic link between communications and learning is in my background; I have dual academic and professional careers in both technical communication and educational technology. So my interest in focusing on both emerges from my working in both fields. But the two fields have a natural relationship with one another: communicators inform; educators instruct. In the workplace—the context in which I specialize—the core content is the same. That is, someone who develops a training course about a new product might use the product description prepared by the communicator. But the process of informing differs from the process of instructing—one is intended to make someone “aware” at a moment of need and act appropriately at the time. In contrast, instruction is intended to ensure someone can “do” on their own. Thanks to online communication and training, the lines between informing and instructing have blurred. I described this a few moments ago when I described e-books, but it’s also reflected in many earlier trends, like Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSSs). Most corporate and governmental communication moved online in the 1990s and early 2000s. Learning moved online more recently; although industry surveys estimate it’s only about 30 percent of all workplace learning and a bit less of the university market (depends on whom you speak to—anywhere from 10 to 20 percent), but the trend is clearly online. So, at the least, we need the means to produce and distribute communication and learning content online. And that’s what so many of us focus on, especially in academiaTRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

software like authoring tools. But that’s the low end of the market. The high end of the market is what causes confusion. That technology manages the design and development of the content—and manages and tracks its distribution and can even play a role in marketing it. This is where enterprise systems like Learning Management Systems, Learning Content Management Systems, Course Management Systems and Talent Management Systems come in. The sheer number of types of systems, much less the number of products available in each category, overwhelms people. That’s why choosing LMSs causes so much angst among training groups. But the way these systems are designed affect the processes within organizations. The way systems have designed the processes often differ substantially from the ways that organizations currently perform them. Reconciling the two creates even more angst for training groups. Complicating the matter further is that communication groups don’t use any of these systems—they use Content Management Systems, which are built on a different set of assumptions and standards and add additional levels of confusion. Then throw in the human component—workers who are a bit too excited about adopting the technology without thinking through the implications and adjustments to existing processes, and other workers who flatly refuse to adopt them. Clarifying what’s confusing and helping people reach clarity, and preparing them for as smooth of a transition as possible, provides great rewards to the organizations and much personal satisfaction to me. Having published the book The E-Learning Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Learning, in collaboration with Patti Shank, can you comment on the current state of e-learning, and describe some of the major challenges instructional designers are facing with regard to e-learning today? The challenges today, as I see them, are the same as ones that Margaret Driscoll and I wrote about for Michael Allen’s yearbook a few years ago. In that situation, we noted that instructional designers for e-learning face these basic challenges: • Although we’ve always known that our basic instructional design models—best represented in the generic Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) model is flawed, its flaws have become increasingly clear with the rise of e-learning and rapid authoring tools. The models are linear, whereas organizations are frequently embracing iterative models like rapid prototoyping. Although unintended, the models tend to be plodding and inflexible, at a time 09

As a board member of the Canadian Society for Training and Development, in your opinion, should an instructional designer be certified? Well, I’m Chair of the CSTD Certification Steering Committee and played an active role in the development of the current version of the CSTD Competencies for Training and Development Professionals (from which we develop the certification exam), so of course I’m going to say yes. That I earned my certification before I was even elected to the CSTD Board suggests, however, that I really mean it. But I should clarify a couple of things. First, there’s no real certification for instructional designers. People who specialize in workplace learning can either be certified as Training and Development Professionals from CSTD or Professionals in Learning and Performance from the ASTD; these primarily focus on instructional design competencies but also address the competencies of classroom instructors. when nimble models like Agile are increasingly embraced. The models assume that instructional designers drives the entire process of developing courses, an assumption that’s only true in the workplace environment and among third-party publishers. In schools and universities, the instructor of record usually drives the process.

ISPI also offers a certification, but it’s as a Performance Technologist, which is broader than instructional design.

Last, the models focus on the development of brand new courses—and are often interpreted that way. They don’t acknowledge that much work merely involves revision. Although some defenders would say otherwise, they don’t offer suggestions on how to adjust the process when making a minor revision to an existing e-course.

Third, certification only acknowledges your skills and knowledge at the time you receive certification—unless you maintain the certification. So part of an effective certification program is maintenance. One of the things I’m proud of is the new certification maintenance program for CSTD, which provides a framework for such ongoing professional development. One of the unique components of this program is that it recognizes the informal learning that people do as part of their ongoing work.

• The next issue is money: an analysis of employer spending on training that I did with one of my graduate students showed that, over the past 22 years, overall inflation—adjusted spending on training has stayed flat, while the workforce has grown by 31 percent—essentially a 31 percent reduction in spending on training. The steepest drops were in the past decade or so. Implicit in this is a shifting of costs for training from employers to workers—but the evidence we see from workers isn’t encouraging. A 2011 study of self-employed IT workers in Quebec showed that more than half spent nothing on training in the previous year, and another 10 percent only spent $500. The take-away message from these studies is that we can expect tight spending limits on training. • The last issue is competition—we face increasing competition for our work. Some of it comes from Subject Matter Experts. That companies that develop some of the most common e-learning authoring tools are trying to sell them to SMEs with messages like “you don’t need to know anything about training to develop it” really doesn’t help us in making the case that we have expertise to offer. We also face competition from technical communicators, who have strong writing skills and high levels of comfort with designing and developing online content. More than ever, instructional designers need to make the case for employing them. 10

Second, certification is a voluntary act. That is, people choose to earn their certifications to receive external recognition of their skills and to demonstrate their commitment to the field.

Your position as professor in Concordia's Educational Technology program gives you unique access to the minds that will be shaping the future of learning methods and technologies. Would you like to share some of your insights about the interesting directions the up-and-comers will be taking us in the coming years? I admire British sociologist Neil Selwyn, who advises educational technologists to think more critically about technology and thinking as much about its downsides as we do about the upsides, so we can provide more balanced—and probably realistic—expectations of technology. That resonates with me because I’ve been in this field for nearly 30 years and have noticed that educational technology has a certain Entertainment Tonight quality to it—that is, we lavish all sorts of attention to the latest trends, thinking it’s a silver bullet that will completely transform the field in a few years. We usually do so as adoring fans rather than as critical thinkers. In a few years, many the trends that looked so exciting at one point morphed into something less revolutionary than promised and we have moved on with our attentions.

Think about learning objects. Yes, they exist, but they’re not as widely used as promised. How about multimedia learning? It was introduced in the mid-1980s, but common use of video and audio didn’t really occur until the emergence of rapid e-learning tools in the early 2000s, nearly 20 years later.

the design of e-learning for the workplace. These programs might increasingly mix information and instruction. That means that instructional designers need to focus on the difference between instruction and information, and develop skills in writing information—that is, technical communication.

Today, it’s social media. It’s very exciting to have all of these connections but many of the initial trials of its use in learning have had mixed results. Furthermore, some inappropriate uses of social media, like inappropriate contact between teachers and students through Facebook, have resulted in restrictions that are necessary to protect the children but prevent its use for other purposes, such as the new guidelines from the New York City Public Schools. In other instances, the over-proliferation of social media has resulted in networks that no one uses. The New York Times recently reported on social networks specifically aimed at academics, like academia.edu and zotero.org. Although some have had success, many have ghost users as faculty that are so overwhelmed with e-mail, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other contacts that they don’t have mental space left for these other social networks.

I’d keep my eyes on the new wave of university partnerships to create massively online courses, like the new joint partnership from Harvard and MIT and the company Coursera, founded by faculty from Stanford. Although New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and David Brooks think these are a game-changer, I have my doubts. Similar enthusiasm and claims of game-changer greeted similar partnerships a decade ago, and nearly all fell apart some as quickly as 2 years of announcement.

So given this “realistic” orientation, which technologies might affect instructional designers in the coming years? One of the key trends likely to affect instructional designers is the continued blurring of lines between learning and communication and, perhaps, a growth of it. In the past, that was charged by the rise of blogs and social media. In the coming years, it will be fueled by the growth in e-books, especially on tablet computers, that let authors design e-textbooks that are also e-learning lessons. It’s the vision that is advocated by many proponents of e-books, including—to some extent—the new Apple program to recruit e-textbooks for its iTunes store. For instructional designers to play a significant role in e-books, we first need to take greater notice of e-books. For many, it’s only on our radar as consumers, not as designers. Much of the original work in this area is being performed by journalists, technical communicators, and information technology professionals. We also need to strengthen our writing, audio and video skills, because these media are central to effective e-books.

But I think a generation or two later (in technology generations, not human generations), these types of programs could lead to changes in university teaching. Although I am a strong proponent of informal learning, I think the pendulum will swing back to formal training as the economy improves. That’s because many employers are expressing concern that they cannot find skilled workers. Some of the leading thinkers are encouraging employers to invest more in their training programs to address those gaps. Furthermore, third-party certifications continue to gain popularity, and that fuels demand for preparation courses and certification maintenance programs. Although some certification maintenance programs recognize informal learning (CSTD’s does), others only accept formal training. That, in turn, fuels demand for formal training courses. A lot of that training will be completed online. In the short run, the major development will be that the online learning will be available as “apps” rather than through a browser. But in the longer run, other technologies could affect the way we teach. The ones that excite me the most are the ones that allow for a more immersive experiencesuch as virtual worlds (like Second Life, which we don’t hear about so much now but still generates interest) and simulations, and software that can analyze the logic in writing, which will eventually be able to provide more in-depth analysis and feedback on open assignments like case studies, essays, and similar long-form writing activitiesand expand the repertoire of online teaching strategies that are possible.

I believe that e-books are likely to have a bigger impact on education in schools and universities than in the workplace because those courses are more likely to have textbooks than workplace courses. But I think the approaches likely to characterize e-books—increasing use of video and audio and blurring of lines between e-learning and e-books—is likely to influence TRAINING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012

TR AINING

ALLIANCE magazine Issue 3, june 2012 Publisher: Studio 7 Communications, Inc. Editor: Edouard Rotondo Contributing Writers: Edouard Rotondo, George Saridakis, Justin Romita Contributing Artist: Joelle Foster Sacha Lefebvre Art Design/Direction: Joelle Foster

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