The material below the line is primarily from the era of Lance's and my book, Implementing eLearning, which was published in late 2002.

Amazon just dropped the price on Implementing E-Learning to $25 and change. Most of the message is as valid today as when we wrote it.

Making It Work (Implementing)

Change Management

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Consumer Marketing

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Why this community? Organizations implement eLearning to improve the performance of their people. The successful ones gain organizational backing through change management and ground-level support through internal marketing.

We set up this site to build upon the concepts in our book, describe new findings and insights, and give our readers the opportunity to share best practices. Welcome!

Template for Developing an eLearning Implementation Action Plan

Twenty pages of forms, checklists, and text.

Fill in the form to complete your comprehensive plan.

FREE Download

Conference Presentations

Lance & Jay's PowerPoint slides from the ASTD Conference in San Diego, May 2003

Watch the video of Jay and Lance's keynote presentation at TechLearn 2002

Implementing eLearning, the Director's Cut

Find out what didn't get into the book. Typos, far-out ideas, and topsy-turvy presentation. This is unedited. From the heart. Unexpurgated.

• Introduction
• Marketing Design
• Brand
• Positioning

• Segmentation
• Promotion
• Fundamentals

Critical Success Factors: eLearning Solutions , Cappuccino, Deloitte

Cisco's e-learning development vision - It's a process with up's and down's.

Best practices: people

Online Instructor Competencies from Learning Peaks, Patti Shank. A good online instructor wears many hats. What's an eTrainer? & New Role: eLearning Guide , Internet Time Group 2/2000 Smile, Everyone! It's Time for Your Computer Training, Fast Company, 5/2000. Empower the learners and let them have fun!

Worst practices: people

The Training Weenie Syndrome : Five Foolish Things Trainers Do To Demote Training © INSIGHT ED Patti Shank Trainer, don't shoot yourself in the foot.

The Lie of Online Learning, Training magazine, March 2000. "Let?s move learning out of the workday and into the employees? own "uncompensated" time. No one wants to tell you that the anytime of online learning is supposed to be after work and that the anyplace is at home." Learning in the Real World . Skeptics' views on why we should be cautious about putting computers into children's schools. "In the real world we can teach, explore and learn the patterns of connection which link different people, plants, animals and places. If education software even attempts to deal with these crucial concepts, the limits of the media may make the presentation inflexible, superficial, and inadequate." Much of this reasoning applies to computer-mediated training of adults as well. ERP Training Stinks , CIO (6/00). "The average ERP implementation takes 23 months, has a total cost of ownership of $15 million and rewards (so to speak) the business with an average negative net present value of $1.5 million. And the news gets worse." "But the consensus that's emerging is that the training that matters isn't techy, "this field shows this; this button does that" training. In fact, what we normally call training is increasingly being shown to be relatively worthless. What's called for, it seems, is an ability to figure out the underlying flow of information through the business itself. The traditional view of training may blind the unwary to its significance and to the tightly woven links that exist between training, change management and staff adequacy." "The first problem is that word: training . It conjures up images of dogs jumping through hoops. This is not helpful."

Motivation

Is it Time to Exchange Skinner's Teaching Machine for Dewey's Toolbox? (Yes.)

A New Role: eLearning Guide

Learntivity's Attention Links Zounds - Compelling Experiences

Motivation in Instructional Design. ERIC Digest

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence Services Emotional Intelligence Consortium

Bringing EQ to the Workplace (research paper)

What Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence is the source of ROI, human happiness, responsible behavior -- well, what more could you want? It's taken a backseat to such mundane issues as IT training because its payoff is not immediate, engineers don't get it, and it's a tough nut to crack. This is a major opportunity.

Technical

Network Architectures For E-Learning Applications tells how Cisco wires things together in support of content on demand, broadcast, and virtual classrooms. Microsoft Research on Telepresence

Change Management and eLearning by Tom Werner

Sales Knowledge Management by Carl Binder

Benchmarks for Success in Internet-Based Distance Education

A study of distance learning benchmarks at six colleges prepared by The Institute for Higher Education Policy for the NEA and Blackboard. April 2000.

While the methodology is a bit dodgy (literature review followed by ratings from administrators, faculty, and students), the study is provocative.

The benchmarks considered essential for quality Internet-based distance education are:

• Institutional Support -- a technology plan that addresses security, backup, system integrity; technical reliability; and central support for infrastructure
• Course development -- periodic updates, require students to engage in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation
• Teaching/Learning -- interaction between student and faculty (voicemail and/or email suffice), constructive and timely feedback, students learn research methods
• Course structure -- triage up front to cull out unsuitable candidates, supplemental course nfo that outlines objectives, concepts, ideas, learning outcomes, library resources (virtual is okay), common expectations for tme to complete assignments and receive feedback
• Student support -- hands-on training in system use, help line, rapid turn on answers
• Faculty support --- technical assistance in course development, instructor training, written resources to deal with issues arising from student use of electronic data
• Evaluation and assessmen t - use several standards, learning outcomes are reiewed regularly to ensure clarity, utility, and appropriateness.
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Quality on the Line

Coach Roles

goal articulation acting as a role model challenging questions achieving results personal growth gaining and keeping balance giving expert advice dealing with adversity making tough decisions social skill development improving skills inner peace and reflection lifestyle decisions finanical or economic well being

Strategies for Learning at a Distance

Morgan (1991) suggests that distant students who are not confident about their learning tend to concentrate on memorizing facts and details in order to complete assignments and write exams. As a result, they end up with a poor understanding of course material. He views memorization of facts and details as a surface approach to learning and summarizes it as follows:

• Surface approach:
  • Focus on the "signs" (e.g., the text or instruction itself).
  • Focus on discrete elements.
  • Memorize information and procedures for tests.
  • Unreflectively associate concepts and facts.
  • Fail to distinguish principles from evidence, new information from old.
  • Treat assignments as something imposed by the instructor.
  • External emphasis focusing on the demands of assignments and exams leading to a knowledge that is cut-off from everyday reality.

Distant students need to become more selective and focused in their learning in order to master new information. The focus of their learning needs to shift them from a ?surface approach? to a deep approach. Morgan (1991) summarizes this approach as follows:

• Deep Approach:
  • Focus on what is "signified" (e.g., the instructor?s arguments).
  • Relate and distinguish new ideas and previous knowledge.
  • Relate concepts to everyday experience.
  • Relate and distinguish evidence and argument.
  • Organize and structure content.
  • Internal emphasis focusing on how instructional material relates to everyday reality.
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Improving Distant Learning

The shift from surface to deep learning is not automatic. Brundage, Keane, and Mackneson (1993) suggest that adult students and their instructors must face and overcome a number of challenges before learning takes place including: becoming and staying responsible for themselves; "owning" their strengths, desires, skills, and needs; maintaining and increasing self-esteem; relating to others; clarifying what is learned; redefining what legitimate knowledge is; and dealing with content. These challenges are considered in relation to distance education:

• "Becoming and staying responsible for themselves" . High motivation is required to complete distant courses because the day-to-day contact with teachers and other students is typically lacking. Instructors can help motivate distant students by providing consistent and timely feedback, encouraging discussion among students, being well prepared for class, and by encouraging and reinforcing effective student study habits.

• "Owning one's strengths, desires, skills, needs" . Students need to recognize their strengths and limitations. They also need to understand their learning goals and objectives. The instructor can help distant students to explore their strengths/limitations and their learning goals/objectives by assuming a facilitative role in the learning process. Providing opportunities for students to share their personal learning goals and objectives for a course helps to make learning more meaningful and increases motivation.
• "Maintaining and increasing self-esteem" . Distant students may be afraid of their ability to do well in a course. They are balancing many responsibilities including employment and raising children. Often their involvement in distance education is unknown to those they work with and ignored by family members. Student performance is enhanced if learners set aside time for their instructional activities and if they receive family support in their academic endeavors. The instructor can maintain student self-esteem by providing timely feedback. It is critical for teachers to respond to students? questions, assignments, and concerns in a personalized and pleasant manner, using appropriate technology such as fax, phone, or computer. Informative comments that elaborate on the individual student?s performance and suggest areas for improvement are especially helpful.
• "Relating to others" . Students often learn most effectively when they have the opportunity to interact with other students. Interaction among students typically leads to group problem solving. When students are unable to meet together, appropriate interactive technology such as E-mail should be provided to encourage small group and individual communication. Assignments in which students work together and then report back or present to the class as a whole, encourage student-to-student interaction. Ensure clear directions and realistic goals for group assignments (Burge, 1993).
• "Clarifying what is learned" . Distant students need to reflect on what they are learning. They need to examine the existing knowledge frameworks in their heads and how these are being added to or changed by incoming information. Examinations, papers, and class presentations provide opportunities for student and teacher to evaluate learning. However, less formal methods of evaluation will also help the students and teacher to understand learning. For example, periodically during the course the instructor can ask students to write a brief reflection on what they have learned and then provide an opportunity for them to share their insights with other class members.
• "Redefining what legitimate knowledge is" . Brundage, Keane, and Mackneson (1993) suggest that adult learners may find it difficult to accept that their own experience and reflections are legitimate knowledge. If the instructor takes a facilitative rather than authoritative role, students will see?their own experience as valuable and important to their further learning. Burge (1993) suggests having learners use first-person language to help them claim ownership of personal values, experiences, and insights.
• "Dealing with content" . Student learning is enhanced when content is related to examples. Instructors tend to teach using examples that were used when they received their training. For distance learning to be effective, however, instructors must discover examples that are relevant to their distant students. Encourage students to find or develop examples that are relevant to them or their community.
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Learning for purposes of IT Certification must combine the motivational and social reinforcement academia is working on with the PI/simulation approach of traditional IT training.

Enabling Learning in a Digital Age, 1998

This is about kids but applies to adult learning equally well.

It needs more rough edges.

Enable learning, don´t teach. a good teacher doesn´t teach at all. They enable students to teach themselves. And it´s not just symantics. Enabling learning is entirely different from teaching.

While a significant part of learning certainly comes from teaching, much comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself. Until the computer, the technology for teaching was limited to audiovisual devices and distance learning by television, which did little more than amplify the activity of teachers and the passivity of children.

The computer changed this balance radically. Suddenly, learning by doing has the potential to become the rule rather than the exception. Since computer simulation of just about anything is now possible, one need not learn about a frog by dissecting it. Instead, children can be asked to design frogs, to build an animal with frog-like behavior, to modify that behavior, to simulate the muscles, to play with the frog.

The opportunity is an unrealized potential.

The Future File