There’s probably no proving my theory, but I’ve long believed that associations and non-profits lag behind corporate and academics when it comes to adopting adult learning theory and the use of technology in education, among other things. The first — adult learning — is worthy of a separate post, so I’ll leave that aside for the time being.

And lagging in technology is easily explained: associations are generally more risk-adverse. This is a good thing. Countless organizations have invested hundreds of thousands (and in the cases of some corporations, millions) of dollars in technology just to get an edge, only to see those investments fail to earn back even a portion of their cost.

We need to be good stewards of our members’ investments in our organization, and that means being cautious.

But we’re slowly catching up.

According to Ambient Insight’s report, “The US Market for  Self-Paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis,” the growth of self-paced elearning among NGO’s, non-profits, and associations will rise just over 5%. Highest growth sectors are projected to be the healthcare industry and academics (K-12 and higher education).

Why are associations and non-profits expected to grow more rapidly than corporations? Primarily because we’re just catching up to their reliance on self-paced elearning, which is established among for-profits but still relatively new for us. They haven’t given up on self-paced elearning, their growth in that type of elearning hast just stabilized while they focus on other initiatives.

And why is this important for you to know? Benchmarking across the training industry — not just across other associations — is essential if you want to continue to offer leading edge educational events. Stand-alone, self-paced, asynchronous elearning can be a big part of that, so if you’re not devising a strategy for your association’s growth in this area, you’re going to be behind the eight ball before you know it.

More and more associations are starting to feel the pressure of encroaching competition from all sides:

• For-profit corporations are better equipped than ever to offer free Webinars and other opportunities to customers (our members), often providing the same or similar content that we would have to charge a fee to offer.
• Institutions of higher education are functioning more like member associations, offering social networking and other ways of connecting and sharing experiences and knowledge.

The technology necessary for self-paced elearning and social networking is less expensive, more available, and more accessible every day. Ambient Insights reports that the largest investments (across all sectors) that will be made in elearning include hosted platform services (for example, social networking and/or learning management systems housed by the vendor on the Web, rather than on your server) and non-IT, self-paced elearning content. [For access to a free, downloadable executive summary of this report and others, click here.]

Aren’t these the very things your association is considering? Obviously, you’re not alone.

But here’s another factor in this equation that deserves some attention. Bear with me for some important economics. As the recession loomed, investors anticipated that elearning would get more attention and business, and acted accordingly. They dropped over a billion dollars in learning technology companies, particularly those specializing in academics. Tens of millions of those dollars went to companies that provide learning platforms to corporate and government clients.

Those companies now have lots of money for research and business development which they will then offer to their customers — in the corporate and government sectors.

Of course, you’ll benefit in the long run from those investments in a sort of “trickle-down” fashion — the corporations and government will continue to finance the newest innovations at the highest cost, and we’ll reap the rewards of systems and programs that will have the bugs (mostly) worked out of them, with efficiencies that will make them more affordable and stable. 

The trick will be to find that most opportune time to incorporate those innovations — early enough to avoid losing your members’ attention to corporate competitors, yet late enough to get an affordable, working solution.

Does your elearning strategy position you well for this? Are you ready?

If you’re starting with decisions about your learning management system before working through a full strategic planning process, don’t expect to end up with a system that does what you need. Do expect that you could be wasting valuable time and much — probably all — of the money you spend on a system by moving forward too soon.

If you haven’t developed a strategy for your learning programs (including your elearning offerings), no resource — even if it’s free — will help you make the right decision.

So I offer this recommendation to those of you who:

• have already planned your elearning strategy
• know how it fits into  your overall education plan
• have a clear idea of the trail ahead of you regarding certification or licensure programs (no matter how far in the future they might be)
• understand the differences between an LMS and an LCMS and know which system is your best choice
• have decided whether you will be developing any elearning programs in-house (this includes tapping the talents of your volunteers) rather than hiring a vendor company for development
• know your technological environment for hosting (or not) these sorts of systems
• have identified most if not all of the features you’re seeking in an LMS or LCMS

Not you? Maybe you’ll benefit from working through the *alearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning* book first (click the Buy Now button or here for more information), so bookmark this post for later.

One of the most common questions I hear is, “Where do we send our RFP? Now that we know what we’re looking for, how do we find the companies that can provide it?”

Brandon Hall Research (www.brandon-hall.com) is making three valuable reports available free — I’d post them here, but they have asked that the reports not be duplicated, so you’ll need to download them from BH directly.

Before you do that, here’s what’s available (to save you some time):

Learning Technology Products 2009: Learning Management Systems includes descriptions of more than 100 LMSs. They’re ordered alphabetically by company name and include products from all over the world, so be prepared to filter the options in some way to make the listing more accessible (for example, perhaps you’d prefer to work only with a company based in the US). Descriptions include basic information about the company and the product so you can determine whether it might fit your key requirements.

Learning Technology Products 2009: Learning Content Management Systems provides basic data on each company and descriptions of the features of more than 40 LCMSs. Note that these are not rapid prototyping or rapid development products, but systems that enable complex development and deployment of large elearning curricula. Unless you’re in a large association or non-profit and plan an extensive online learning library which you will develop in-house, this is not likely a resource you’ll need.

Learning Technology Products 2009: Authoring Tools is the go-to resource if you’ve wondered if you have more choices than simply deciding between Articulate and Captivate (you do, many more, and often for lower cost).

A few caveats:

• No pricing is included; you’ll need to find that information out on your own.
• Some descriptions aren’t very complete; take a look at the Web sites provided for more information on products that strike your fancy.
• And some companies weighted their descriptions with not-so-subtle sales-speak: “develop highly engaging experiences” … “quickly develop”… “anyone can easily develop…” We learned a long time ago to be cautious of such claims, so read analytically, not subjectively — one person’s easy hike is another person’s Everest!

Click  here to access and download these helpful resources from Brandon Hall Research. 

Curious about where associations are with elearning these days? Looking for a quick summary of the aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning book so you can decide how it can help your association or your client associations?

With many thanks to Jon Aleckson for bringing out the best of our conversation, I’m happy to provide this link to a podcast that covers these very topics and much more:

http://www.webcourseworks.com/blog/association-elearning-book-helpful-vendor-client-relationship

If you’re looking for ways to make sure your content and delivery modes are aligned, your membership is ready for elearning, the options you’re considering are affordable and do-able (does your staff have the skill sets?), and that you have all the information you need to make the best decisions for your association — this book will recover its cost many times over for you.

Just $25 for the download or  $35 (plus shipping) for the print version, you’ll have a manual that will take you step-by-step through each decision and action. If you follow the process outlined in the trail guide, you’ll have completed your elearning strategy, budget, and implementation plans by the time you reach the last page.

For a review, see a sumary of Bill Brandon’s review for the e-Learning Guild’s Learning Solutions e-Magazine.

Though all has looked quiet on the surface, it’s been very, very busy behind the scenes at the aLearning Blog. Here’s what’s been going on: aLearning: A Trail Guide for an Association’s eLearning Strategy.

Yes. A book. A book about three seemingly disparate things: Associations. Strategy. eLearning.

It’s the book I wish I’d had when our association headed into online learnig — and me, with experience developing elearning! So I can imagine how lost many association execs and learning professionals feel when they need to sort it all out.

No wonder so many associations lack a workable elearning strategy, as Jeff Cobb discovered in his newly-released report. His blog summarizes the issues very well. I agree with his advice:  ”…start viewing e-learning as s strategic part of your mission and your business and begin treating it like the substantial, long-term asset it could become.”

 aLearning: A Trail Guide for an Association’s eLearning Strategy will be available in 3-4 weeks. From lingo you need to know, to deciding whether an LMS is necessary for you or not, to conducting needs assessments and scans, including deciding what you need to offer and the best modalities for each topic (yes, Learning 2.o is discussed), all the way through to estimating costs, issuing an RFP and selecting a vendor — this book includes activities, charts, examples, and a case study to help you work through each step in the process as you go.

You’ll end up with  more than a workable (and flexible) strategy — you’ll have covered some essential steps necessary for creating your business plan as well.

If you’d like more info on the book, please e-mail me directly. Watch for more here soon!

If you haven’t gotten yourself a copy of Jeff Cobb’s 2008 Association Sector E-Learning Survey Summary Report, GET IT and READ IT and HIGHLIGHT IT and LIVE IT.

Far too much here to summarize, but a few things popped out that struck me as counterintuitive. Of course, I generally function in a counterintuitive way, so perhaps someone will let me know what I’m missing….

Under “Business Goals & Marketing,” Jeff notes that,

“A slim majority of respondents already using e-learning (50.2%) as well [as] respondents planning to use e-learning (52.5%) indicated that their offerings must [be] self-sustaining and profitable. An additional 33.7% of current users and 38.3% of planned users indicate that their offerings must be self-sustaining though not necessarily profitable.”

He goes on to report that,

“The vast majority of respondents currently using e-learning (86.0%) or planning to use e-learning (77.4%) charge or plan to charge for some or all of their offerings.”

So… most organizations need to offer financially sustainable, if not profitable, online learning. And most are planning to charge money for them.

Recently, a separate study indicated that the average price for a Webinar is $230. Remember, a Webinar is a one-time deal. (I’m making an assumption here — that if a recording is offered, there’s a pricetag on it.) Elearning, particularly asynchronous courses, are generally provided for a much longer period of time.

With me so far? Okay. Jeff’s report goes on to share what respondents had to say about what they charge or plan to charge for their e-learning:

“The average price per course hour for organizations currently offering e-learning is US $56.79. For organizations planning to offer e-leraning in the next 12 months, the average projected price per course hour is US $52.24.”

HUH???!??!?  Why would you charge less than average? Why would you LOWER that per hour course rate when people will need e-learning more than ever in the next year at least? Doesn’t it make more sense to charge what you must in order to at least meet your expenses?

What am I missing in this picture?

Because it seems to me if you keep aiming at your shoes, you’re bound to shoot yourself in the foot.

Reports of the demise of asynchronous learning are premature. I’m talking about all I’m hearing about Web 2.0 and the miracles that can result from tapping wikis, blogs, and other social media options — no argument here — and that it means our “old way of thinking” about asynchronous learning is just that — old and outdated. This is wrong and misleading.
It’s wrong because it focuses on how learning is deployed, not on the best ways to present content. Everyone who knows me — or has been reading this blog — knows this is my primary elearning pet peeve: not matching the content type to the best way to deliver it.

In this case, asynchronous learning is being discounted without consideration for when it should be implemented, and Web 2.0 is being heralded without qualification for the best ways it can assist learning. For example, let’s say you often have for-profit company representatives present at your educational events. They serve on panels as experts, or present general sessions. But there’s a problem: they like to promote their products or services from the podium. And when they have helped to donate to your program by providing monetary assistance, they sometimes feel they have the right to do so, sort of as a bonus for being a sponsor.

Of course this violates various IRS rules.

To help educate your members about what’s allowable and what isn’t, you could write up a document and email it, post it to your association’s wiki, and you could blog about it. Of course, all that assumes that once you point people to these resources, they’ll access them, read them, learn them. Some will, some won’t. So you still have the same problem.

A better option is to produce a short tutorial using something like FlashForm by Rapid Intake. You could include the guidelines, plus examples of what’s permissable and what isn’t, and you could link the short course to a system that will track whether they actually accessed the course and completed it. This sort of stand-alone, non-facilitated tutorial could be less than five minutes long — and who doesn’t have just five minutes? 

So yes, Web 2.0 has its benefits, and there are many of those, but don’t make the mistake of believing we should ditch the baby with the bathwater. The baby still has a lot of great years left in it!

Okay, so the title of this entry dates me… that’s okay. With age comes wisdom and experience, at least that’s the goal for most of us. And in my case I was able to celebrate a professional milestone this year.

I applied and was accepted to judge the Brandon Hall Awards in online learning (now that the judging process is over, they’ve notified us that we can reveal ourselves). It was an amazing and enlightening experience, and I’m grateful and honored to have been a part of it.

Reviewing the entries was intriguing and informative. I’m bound by confidentiality not to reveal specifics but I will say that I’m impressed and encouraged by the innovative ways that Web development teams are using the tools at hand to create ever more interesting ways to provide training online.

• Basic roll-overs and what we called “click-thrus” to add more interactivity than clicking Next Page have evolved.
• High-quality graphics, 3-D imaging, and other influences from virtual worlds and gaming have made visual instruction online much more effective, realistic, and affordable.
• More experienced online learners means increased focus on the learning event itself with less need to educate the learner about how to navigate, hear the audio, etc. This makes online courses leaner, less cluttered.

The more the corporate world invests in custom content creation, the more accessible it will be to the association world — more usable in our technological environment, more affordable, and faster to create.

Competitions such as this one encourage custom content companies to push themselves to innovate, and that benefits us all.

Thank you, Brandon Hall!

Jeff Cobb’s question about why Bersin & Associates’ Learning Content Maturity Model doesn’t translate to association learning offered me a smooth transition into the aLearning Maturity Model I’ve been working on since reading the Bersin report.

If we’re to use a maturity model as a scale for where we are in a continuum, a model that tells us we’re operating at nearly all levels already doesn’t provide us with a clear indication of what to do next to move forward.

In the case of the Bersin LCMM, associations (as near as I can tell) are already operating pretty fully at all of the first four levels (Traditional, which is classroom delivery; Rapid, which is the speed of delivery; Collaborative, which is the use of teams in development; and Enterprise, which is volume of learners being reached and a variety of programs offered). The fifth level (On-Demand, which is “point of need” delivery) is where many of are headed — looking for ways to integrate social networking to facilitate the learner-to-learner/member-to-member communication that’s at the heart of informal learning.

Yet in the alearning world, most associations (as near as I can tell) are still in the early stages of learning about and trying out different types of online learning.

So I’m proposing the aLearning Maturity Model, which offers five levels in a continuum from basic online learning options through more complex and integrated systems.

Please see the sidebar for a link to this downloadable PDF, and let me know your thoughts about this.

Do the levels make sense to you? Do you see your association in the matrix? Where? Does the progression fit your strategy for furthering your association’s use of online learning as a delivery option for your educational programs?

Let the feedback begin!

Development Teams 

One of the things I’ve been curious about is whether associations outsource much of their online learning development, and whether there’s a relationship between size of the organization and whether they outsource.  Of the survey respondents, the majority (64%) said they outsource the technical aspects of their Webinars, while only 18% handle these tasks in-house (a team directly employed by the association). 

Equal numbers of respondents report outsourcing the development of their asynchronous offerings than those who report developing them in-house (27% for each).

No clear correlation could be found between the size of the association (and number of dedicated education professionals on the staff) to whether an association outsources certain aspects of the online learning program.  Organizations report working with their volunteers, the staff, and vendors in several combinations as they develop online offerings. 

It is clear that when it comes to the technical side of conducting a Webinar, most associations are more comfortable hiring a service than handling this aspect on their own.

Survey Conclusions

Although the sample size was far too small to draw any conclusions for trade associations in general (and those primarily affiliated with colleges and universities in particular), this basic survey provides a neat snapshot of online learning in some organizations.

In looking at the snapshot, a few things come into sharp focus:

• Size of the organization and its staff does not drive the investment in people nor dollars when it comes to online learning.  Most organizations devote 10% of their education program budget to online learning, regardless of the number of individual members served.
• Organizations tend to offer synchronous, live Webinars and similar events prior to venturing into asynchronous learning options.  The transition is usually from live Webinars to recorded/archived Webinars to stand-alone courses.
• Few of the associations responding to this survey are blending synchronous and asynchronous delivery options.  When they do, they tend to be on a program-specific basis, rather than part of a broader, curriculum-based strategy.
• Most associations plan to expand their online learning offerings in the next year.  About half expect to increase their budgets to accommodate this expansion, and a few have even hired an additional staff member to assist with the heavier workload more online learning will create.
• Associations responding to the survey generally indicated careful planning and a deliberate pace in developing their online learning programs.  Assessment of the success of current or previous offerings was noted in several cases as the driving force behind either moving forward or taking stock before doing so.

Do these results jibe with your association’s current online learning status?  Future plans?  Post a comment and let us know! 

One of the most frustrating things about online learning is trying to verbalize visual images.  Try describing what an asynchronous course looks like.  Or explain what a learner sees participating in a blended course.

Ikes!

So I downloaded a free trial version of FlashForm by Rapid Intake and created a quick online course showing examples of the Big Three online course types discussed in an earlier post.  FlashForm is a great little tool that allows you some flexibility while keeping things simple.  You can see from the short tutorial linked here (<- left panel, the aLearning Fundamentals Online Tutorials text link) that I was able to include some basic graphics and audio – please don’t count my boo-boos!

The link will open a page on my Web site and provide two different links to the tutorial.  Either one should work, if your browser and speed are at the recommended levels (described on that page).

Let me know if you agree with the advantages of each type and whether your organization uses all three or a combination of them.

Next time — the results of that online survey! If you haven’t taken it yet, I’ll keep it open and will continue to modify the general results as others join in.  Select the aLearning Surveys category to more quickly navigate to the posting with the link in it, or e-mail me and I’ll send the link to you.

Happy New Year!