aLearning Featured in “Managing eLearning” Podcast!

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.

Thank you, Bill!

Bill Brandon, editor of e-Learning Guild’s Learning Solutions e-magazine, published a review of aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning that called the book “a stunning success.”

Thank you, Bill! As someone posted to my Facebook wall after reading the review, “If Bill says it, it must be so!”

If you’re not familiar with the e-Learning Guild, consider joining — their basic membership level is designed for the types of budget restrictions common to non-profits and associations — it’s free. Their next level, which provides a terrific value for the money, is just $99/year. Their focus is on elearning development, with a mission to provide specific, practical, applicable, implement-able (!) information and training.

Even if you’re not a techie, it’s important to know enough about the tech side to be able to ask a question that the techies will understand (and translate into their own geek-speak). The eLearning Guild can help you with that.

Most of their members are Web developers, instructional designers, project managers, graphic artists, and others engaged in building elearning, either in-house for large organizations (including large associations) or within vendor companies.

Over the years, they have expanded their conference tracks to include management and strategy, so those of us who oversee online learning can benefit from the practical workshops and tutorials they provide.

If you’re considering hiring a company (for Webinars or custom courseware) to develop elearning for you, or if you’re looking for a good LMS or LCMS, the e-Learning Guild’s Annual Gathering (coming up again in March of 2010) is a MUST. You’ll learn more and make more contacts for potential vendors here than at any association-specific event.

I’m not just saying this because Bill had such great things to say about my book. And he does say this:

This is one of the best-executed books I have seen in some time on the topic of learning strategy. In my opinion, every association should have a copy of this to refer to during creation or revision of the professional development curriculum.

It will be particularly useful to associations with small staffs (and no professional development staff). It will also be useful to vendors who have little or no experience or insight into the challenges faced by associations as they adopt e-Learning. Finally, consultants on the staff of associations, who are more and more often asked to help their member organizations create a comprehensive learning strategy that includes online and social media components, should definitely have a copy of this.

If Bill says it, it must be so!

Thank you, Bill! And thank you to those of you who have already purchased your copy – I’m happy to help and you know where to find me if you have questions not answered in the book!

Busy Strategizing

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!

More on the Vendor-Client Gap

With thanks to Jeff Cobb (Mission to Learn) for his comment and to the vendor representative who contacted me last week off-line, I’ve decided to spend a little more time with a statement I made in my “View from the Outside In” entry, posted as an observation of the recent eLearning Conference hosted by ASAE and The Center: 

It was clear to me that there’s a disconnect between the vendors and clients, between what’s perceived as important and what truly is, and between the often-used solution and the right solution.

First let me emphasize that the conference format was — essentially — an experiment,  a test to see if some of the benefits of a live conference would still result from an online format.  On that count, did it succeed?