I had the pleasure of presenting "How much does E-Learning Cost?" three times today at DIR's Learning Expo (whew!).  I ran into Sue Tedford who runs the Adobe User Group and she gave me a link to her website which has a bunch of resources for Training.  Check it out at www.sueresources.com

I saw an interesting question on the ASTD Discussion Boards on preventing cheating with online testing.  We faced this problem with numerous clients.  Some of the things we did to reduce cheating included:

• Create a large test bank of questions from which we drew a random subset.  We also randomized the answers This prevented people from sharing answers. 
• Made sure that the tutorial portion of the e-learning could not be opened while the test was being taken.
• Timed the test and ran reports on the students taking the test.  We ended up checking on folks who ran through the test a bit too quickly.

If it is important to insure the integrity of the test then a proctored environment is necessary.  It is impossible to& ... Read More »

This paper describes how  Moodle was introduced as the new Learning Management System (LMS) to the University of the South Pacific with the aim of improving teaching and learning. This whitepaper examines the development process from test and selection of the platform through to project planning, gathering of political support within the institution, technical factors, the design and roll out of training, the impact and consequences, the growth and future prospects of the platform are discussed, with a focus on the university’s redesigned online law program.

The University of the South Pacific is the only university of its type in the world, and the introduction of an online learning management system there was, in turn, a unique experience. The university is jointly owned by the governments of twelve island countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa& ... Read More »

The American Society of Training and Development is offering a certification program, Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP™) for workplace learning and performance professionals.  The program covers 9 areas of expertise:

1. Designing and Learning
2. Delivering Training
3. Improving Human Performance
4. Measuring and Evaluating
5. Facilitating Organizational Change
6. Managing the Learning Function
7. Coaching
8. Managing Organizational Knowledge
9. Career Planning and ... Read More »

Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA, is best known for his publications on the importance of verbal and nonverbal messages.  In his studies Mehrabian comes to the conclusion that there are three elements to face-to-face communication:

• Words (7%)
• Tone of Voice (38%)
• Body Language (55%)

The relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attiudes. 

How does this effect E-learning?  Does it have a different effect on E-learning dealing with the communication of information vs. professional development training such as leadership training?

Read More »

Conference Alerts offers a listing of E-Learning conferences worldwide at http://www.conferencealerts.com/elearning.htm.  Be warned that the list is not comprehensive.  For example the ASTD TechKnowledge 2008 conference which MicroAssist will be attending is not on the list (http://tk07.astd.org/TK2008.htm)

Qipit.com ("Clip It") offers a free service that allos you to copy whiteboards and documents with your camera phone (or a camera) Read More »

Silke Fleischer from Adobe has a wonderful chart for Adobe Development Tool Selection.  Looks a bit like the Periodic Table for E-learning.  Click here.

At the end of our What does E-Learning Cost Lunch and Learn a number of attendees came up to us and started discussing thoughts on what they need to consider when issuing an E-Learning RFP.  Issuing an E-Learning RFP can be a complex undertaking--you have to think about business goals, technology, technology infrastructure, instructional goals, instructional modalities, etc.  At the request of one of the attendees I worked with the panel and started pulling our thoughts together on issuing an RFP.  Here is the initial draft of a document on some of the things our panel would consider.

Things to consider before issuing an E-Learning RFP

The E-Learning Guild asked its members the most important reasons for measuring results.  The top 3 reasons from all industries were:

1. Provided the learners with information/feedback (38.3%)
2. Meet organizational requirements for our learning program (37.8%)
3. Meet regulatory demands or certification standards (29.2%)

The healthcare industry by contrast did not care as much about providing learners with information/feedback--they were much more focused on legal compliance.  Is this the nature of compliance training?  Is there a better way?  Does it help to achieve true compliance if all the learner is doing is passing a quick test to meet some legal requirement without truly understanding and absorbing the material.  Doesn't i ... Read More »