Worth Much More Than the Admission Price

Before you accuse me of waffling or flip-flopping (depending on whether you’re craving breakfast or the beach) on the issue of free resources, remember that I try to qualify my generalities about whether something that’s free is worth it or not. And credit goes to Jeff Cobb, who — on his Mission to Learn blog — walks his talk about free elearning by offering a Learning 2.0 resource that’s worth FAR more than the admission fee.

When a Webinar is a Bad Idea

Webinars (aka Webcasts, Web conferences, etc.) comprise the most common type of online learning associations offer. This makes sense for a lot of reasons — organizing them is similar to organizing live events (determine the topic and speaker, review the content, then “go live”). So despite their unique challenges, they seem the easiest transition into online learning, certainly the most familiar.

But I’m hear to tell you, they aren’t always the best answer.

Don’t Survey Your Members About Online Learning

…because they won’t know how to answer your questions. Imagine you have never attended a live Webinar. Pretend you have never seen a stand-alone, instructorless, asynchronous course. Picture not knowing what an archived or recorded Webcast is.

Now try to answer these questions: