January Quick Clicks

Whew! It’s been awhile since an aLearning post, but we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on a great new aLearning venture. More on that soon… 🙂

 

Meanwhile, we’ll make it up to you by providing this edition of Quick Clicks, some links to what we believe are valuable resources, articles, and tools, collected here to help save you the time of tracking them all down.

As always, if you have suggestions for Quick Clicks links, send an e-mail.

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Struggling with Systems Integration?

First, take a look at “Bringing Systems Together” from associationTECH…

Then take in the first installment of their series, this one focusing on AMSes: “Bringing Systems Together: AMS Central”

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MOOCs and Connectivism

Curious about MOOCs (Mass Open Online Courses)? Wonder what the impetus was for the first one in 2008 (yes, they’ve been around more than three years now)? Want to see how Connectivism is at the center of it all?

Read all about it at Stephen Downes’ “Creating the Connectivist Course” at his Half and Hour blog.

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Making the Case (Yet Again) for the Legitimacy of eLearning

Still looking for justifying elearning? Looking for support in your argument that online teaching and learning has been validated? Craig Weiss at the E-Learning 24/7 Blog has captured a bunch of facts with bona fide, respectable sources in hispost, “Online Learning in Education.” The post focuses on elearning in higher ed, but hey, if you can get a legitimate university degree this way, shouldn’t it be fine for our association members?!??

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LMS Help

We’ve mentioned Craig several times here at aLearning (and include him in our pretty exclusive Blogroll) because provides enormous help when it comes to LMSes and other systems… Here’s a list of some of the “Must-Reads” from his blog (noted above):

Interoperability – it works every time..Wrong

LMS – Extended Enterprise Space 

LMS Q and A

What about UR infrastructure? Questions 2 Ask B4 Implementing a LMS http://bit.ly/xrRYpI

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eLearning Strategy Mistakes

Of course, we believe you should start with aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning when developing a strategy for your learning programs (especially online offerings)… but you would also benefit from Marc Rosenberg’s “Ten Common Mistakes in Building an eLearning Strategy” from his Marc My Words blog. It’s a quick but very valuable read, and you don’t need to be an eLearning Guild member to access it online.

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More on Learning Styles Bunk

Yes, we’re still fighting the “learning styles” myth. Here’s more ammo from Knowledge Factor’s blog.

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Free Image Editors

We all like stuff that’s free, especially when it saves us money and performs a job for us. You can thank Tom Kuhlman at The Rapid E-Learning Blog for a list of five free image editors. Manipulate those clip art images, photos, and other graphics to make your tutorials, newsletters and other documents look the way you want, instead of the way those images are handed to you. Read his post for the full list and links to those editors.

December Quick Clicks

As usual, here’s aLearning’s attempt to provide you some valuable, quick PD — for you! We know that you give more time to your association members and fellow staffers than you do to nurturing your own professional acumen, so we’ve gathered some links to articles, sites, blog posts, and other resources that we think would be worth your time.

This is a brief version… whenever it’s quiet on this blog, you can be sure there’s a lot of activity behind the scenes. Watch for an end-of-the-year post for a peek.

In the meantime, if you have suggestions for Quick Clicks, send them along for a future post!

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Help With Tutorials

Thinking of creating some online courses yourself, but don’t know where to start? Feeling intimidated about learning how to use an elearning authoring tool? Patti Shank’s “Beginning Instructional Authoring: Learning How to Author” at Learning Solutions e-magazine breaks it all down and provides a plethora of resources. Take a look.

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But Which Tools to Use?!?

Craig Weiss at the E-Learning 24/7 Blog has evaluated what’s out there and has posted his Top Ten “Best of the Best” list. Find out who made the list and why popular choices like Articulate Studio and Captivate didn’t make the list.

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When Brainstorming Fails

“Even though groups generally enjoy their brainstorming efforts, it turns out that people in groups actually tend to generate fewer ideas than they would if they were to brainstorm individually and then submit their ideas to be compiled later,” writes Mary Arnold in another great Learning Solutions article: “The Human Factor: The Trouble with Group Brainstorming.” Here’s the best part: she gives specifics for how to create an environment for the best brainstorming. Don’t assume you can bring people together in front of a whiteboard or flip chart and that amazing things will happen.

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Quick Clicks – August 2011

As ever, aLearning is happy to help you save some time by providing you with some direct links to valuable stuff by other people. If you haven’t seen these yet, they’re worth your time or they wouldn’t be here.

Have links to posts, articles, sites and other online stuff that helped you in your association learning management? If so, drop me a line with the link so we can all benefit from it 🙂

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Jeff Hurt, over at Midcourse Corrections, discusses why learners’ brains need to “release pleasure chemicals” during your educational events (I’m not kidding — but the point he makes is serious and a good one). See his post, “Mission Possible: Engaging Event Attention.”

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Here are a couple of related posts… both work taking a look at.

First, Steve Woodruff posted the “Twelve Most Important Questions About Your Identity,”  and although it’s geared to for-profit corporations, you can easily adapt his questions for a quick assessment of your organization’s overall vision or plans for its learning component… Either way, great brainstorming starters.

Steve’s post inspired Michele Martin over at the Bamboo Project to post her PD adaptation, which is great for individual introspection about one’s professional direction… and maybe worth sharing with your members so they can consider educational offerings they might not have thought of before… See her post, “12 More Professional Development Questions” here.

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Michele Martin has so much great stuff, you should just subscribe to her feed and read her all the time. But, assuming you don’t have that kind of time, here’s another post worthy of special attention, “Future Skills 2020 and the Implications for Professional Development.”
http://www.michelemmartin.com/thebambooprojectblog/2011/07/future-skills-2020-and-the-implications-for-professional-development.html

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Clive Shepherd at Onlignment has offered up a great four-part series of posts, “A practical guide to creating learning videos.” Worth your time if you’re considering including video in your elearning curriculum:

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.

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Craig Weiss at the E-Learning 24/7 Blog has done it again — here’s a must read for those of you looking for an LMS.

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Don’t know if this works, or how well it does what it says it does… but if you design training, educational events, or generally do instructional design for your association, you might want to check out DesignJot, “the first app developed to help…build better training.” I wouldn’t include it here without reviewing it myself except that I trust the folks at Allen Communication, who have an outstanding elearning reputation. See more info on DesignJot here.

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Finally, if you’re thinking “gamification” (!) — using games within your educational sessions (especially online learning) to enhance engagement and retention, take a look at Karl Kapp’s “Match Content to be Learning with Right Game Type.”

A Followup, an Update, and More Helpful Links

…with apologies for my tardiness in posting this! Better late than never, given the value of these resources:

First the followup…

If you’re looking for ways to make your Webinars less passive for your learners, take a look at Christy Tucker’s “Synchronous Software Scavenger Hunt” post at her blog.

Christy’s been exploring how to make Webinars more active for quite a while, and the brief case study in this post will get you thinking about some possibilities.

For example, if you’re implementing a new LMS in your association, why not offer a Webinar that gets your members to hunt for various features or options? Wouldn’t that be far better than just doing a boring show-and-tell of the features?!?

What other ways could you leverage a “hunting” activity during a Webinar?

I appreciate Christy including a reference to aLearning and links to my earlier posts about Webinars and information-driven sessions. It’s great to get nudged (okay, pushed) into imagining how we can leverage the technology of live Web sessions for things other than talking heads.

Thanks, Christy, for a great post!

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And the update comes from Craig Weiss, who’s made his very useful (and FREE) LMS/Learning Portal Directory even better. It now includes whether the vendor provides a demo, pricing (if so, there’s a direct link to that info — Craig also believes that pricing shouldn’t be a deep, dark secret when so much moola is at stake), indicators for products with new features, and link updates.

Some LMSes are categorized as “Lite” — a good place for associations needing a basic system to start looking. You can access the directory here

This is a tremendous service — and Craig has made it even better by starting a LinkedIn group that covers more detail than his blog, which gets into things like personnel and other business changes at LMS companies. These are important details to keep an eye on — who wants to make a major purchase from a company that always seems to be in some sort of internal upheaval? Of course, who has time to track all that?!? So leave it to Craig — whose business it is to do that — and reap the benefits of his insight.

To join the E-Learning 24/7 LinkedIn Group, go to http://linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=3734743

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Helpful Links

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 from Jane Hart: http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2010/10/top-100-tools-for-learning-2010-list-presentation-and-more.html

The following thanks to Stephen Downes’ OL Weekly:
“Questions I’m no Longer Asking” at eLearnSpace

More on the myth of Learning Styles

Do Shared Recommendations Lead to Learning?

Four Free Web-Based Screencasting Tools

Community in Asynchronous Learning

Attention LMS Vendors… and Potential LMS Customers

If you haven’t seen Craig Weiss’s post “LMS Vendors: R u hearing us?” then you’re missing a valuable post on what you could be doing — albeit unwittingly  — to turn off potential customers.

And for the association learning leaders out there who have been struggling to narrow your LMS vendor options, you’ll find in Craig’s post some telltale signs to look for and some guidelines.

Can’t recommend this post highly enough.

Thanks, Craig!