Monthly Archives: February 2012

10 Ways to Use Facebook for Training

Leave a reply

This post first appeared in December 2009 on The Total Learner Experience. Although dated, I think it still has value. 

Bwc Brandon: You know as I work to create social learning micro-sites on the internal corporate network, it sometimes hits me that in a lot of ways I’m just re-creating what Facebook has already hit a home run with. So, Dolly, the question for you today is: How can I leverage Facebook for training?

DrjDolly: What content is best suited for Facebook? Is Facebook for content or is it for social networking and engagement?

Bwc Well it seems that technical training, soft skills training… really any type of learning content would work. The power of the platform seems to be around the integration of peer-to-peer dialogue and sharing with the context of learning. Facebook users are collaborating by default because they are exchanging comments and creating dialogue interactively. What we need to do is make this engaging activity applicable to work/training.

Drj Shall we brainstorm? What are the features of Facebook are conducive to training?

Bwc OK, so let’s make it a contest. Let’s list 10 ways we can use Facebook for training. I mean we’re professionals right? With imaginations like ours, we should be able to easily list 10 ways! Here’s one way:

1. Discussion threads. People seem to love engaging in dialogue about relevant subjects. A simple discussion board functionality is key in attracting learners to a higher level of engagement.

DrjFacebook recently took out the updates about when people commented on others’ walls. I liked that and was sad to see it go. It allowed me to see what my friends were saying — even if it was directly relevant to me AND it often introduced me to new people that I liked. You never know what tidbit of seeming off-topic information will inspire a new idea.

Bwc  2. Class notes and links to supporting information. In academic settings I’ve seen many professors, trainers and facilitators add their syllabi, notes, and links to websites. I’m using Microsoft Sharepoint now to create a wiki where I will host pre-work content and activities for a workshop I am designing. A Facebook-like platform is great for this, although versioning control would be a nice-to-have.

Drj Sharepoint?

Bwc Sharepoint is Microsoft’s collaboration platform. A lot of people are using it for collaborative learning environments. Check out more about it here.

Drj 3. Course feedback. Students can provide feedback about their favorite or least favorite aspects of the training.

Bwc This is where a “two-way” information stream can provide excellent near real-time feedback. An instructional designer could easily move to a more “agile” design process by using Facebook’s social utilities to gain “instant” feedback on instructional content. I’ve been using similar methods for several years by building database systems. Facebook has this functionality built in!

Drj

4. Student Reflection. Students are required to post some “takeaway” from any training that they just completed in their status, which can help their community at large.

5. Events. If you can get out of the whole departmental competition thing, it could be really interesting to have online “events” that everyone was invited to facilitate cross-company brainstorming for new initiatives.

Bwc 6. Build your personal network/brand. It’s important for individuals to be able to broadcast their expertise and interests. Facebook-like platforms could become similar to an “auctioning” of skills. IBM does this now with their internal Blue Pages. Employees are encouraged to list their skills, expertise, and availability. People can search using keywords to find suitable candidates for their projects.

Drj I like this idea. We haven’t talked about LinkedIn, but it seems like this might be an internal version of that.

Bwc 7. Post-classroom events (extended learning). We used this recently on a leadership training program. Although the primary component of the training course was a 3-day classroom experience, we designed pre-work activities for the cohort to participate in online, and, to ensure retention and reflection we also designed post-classroom activities. The cohort remained engaged, and continued to work on the post-class activities. One benefit were the “breadcrumbs” left behind by the cohorts… subsequent cohorts could learn from them.

Drj  8. Games. We could do a post of different types of games. But clearly all sorts of games are popular on Facebook. I don’t play, but I know that Mafia Wars, Farmville and the like have some real appeal. I could see seeking out people who had certain skill sets to form your teams. You and I play Scrabble and its knockoffs. Facebook serves as a portal to every kind of game imaginable. I could also see some scavenger hunts for content and personnel.

Bwc How many games on Facebook are designed for learning though? Quite a few I think… it’s just not real obvious.

Drj I FIRMLY believe that every activity people participate in teaches or reinforces some learning or knowledge (even if only a physical response). Even if games are not designed with education/instruction/learning in mind, they still have features that can be exploited and minded to fold in formal/planned learning opportunities. I mean, somehow they have made the most inane, tedious tasks on Farmville completely compelling. Who knew? Which leads me to think about another way to use Facebook for training:

9. Quizzes. What kind of programmer are you? What does your desk say about you? What kind of cubicle mate are you? While these are humorous, I could see some actual useful ones, like providing Myers Briggs profiles and the like. Oh, and here’s the 10th (I beat you to it)!

10. Fandom. I was interested to see that the number one corporate identity on Facebook is Coke. Their presence was first created by a zealous fan. The page has become their corporate identity, and hugely popular. A lot of times employees can be the biggest fans of a company and hold the most knowledge. Creating a safe environment to tell the positives of the company can offset some of the griping that we all need to do sometimes.

Bwc Yes, but some companies are paranoid about their “intellectual property” being made public. It’s akin to the music companies obsessing over DRM — the one thing a company needs to understand about today’s information revolution: you can’t control everything … so focus on influence rather than control. Comcast learned this quickly, and adopted Twitter to broadcast network statuses to its customers. Now it uses Twitter for customer support.

Drj  I see we keep returning to the theme that companies need to have a more flexibility in this era of accessible info.

Bwc Well there are 10 ways… but there are many more. The big question for companies: are you going to build internal social platforms, or leverage the public ones? It seems like many companies will want to keep their social networks behind their firewalls. This may work in the short-run, but newer generations of workers (Millennials and the 2020 Gen) will want to be able to blend their public and work networks and profiles. That will make for an interesting dialog… maybe we can discuss that one soon?

What’s the Difference Between a Game and an Educational Game?

Leave a reply

Back in 2009, Google Wave was the next big thing.  Dolly and Brandon used it to discuss their opinions on the difference between a game and an educational game. The distinctions are key for instructional designers to consider when deciding to design a game for a learning intervention.

Drj DOLLY: Games vs. educational games. I know, one’s fun and the other one is not! Really, though, what are the differences? I think intentionality of design is a key point, because I think that all games — indeed all experiences — are educational. Bernie deKoven talks a lot about children’s games providing an opportunity to roleplay and work out developmental issues. I know I learned a lot about what a ruthless sort my brother is when he beat me repeatedly at every board game created. So, if we accept that every game has learning opportunities, how do we make sure to include the fun?

Bwc BRANDON: Both can be fun, right? The basic difference is an educational game is designed with specific learning objectives and should be able to assess whether learning occurs.

Drj

I think assessment is key. That’s the external component that is often artificial. So many times assessment of learning within games have two basic problems:

  1. It’s completely external and separate from the game play.
  2. It’s too “safe”– Alex Trebek doesn’t give you second chances in final jeopardy. It’s FINAL!

I was thinking about that whole shift in board games with the advent of Cranium. Their whole goal was to remove the idea that there was one winner who had all the fun, but that players of multiple intelligences could play and those people could have fun. Bonding, instead of board throwing!
Bwc Hmm… Good point — Cranium could be looked at as a “learning game” although it doesn’t have traditional learning objectives, right?

Drj Well, if you look at their objectives they are met. And their learning objectives fall nicely within affective measures and an arts curriculum.

Bwc For example?

Drj Well, the goals of the game include team cooperation and communication through graphic arts and music.

Bwc “Game” is such a broad term. A game must include some element of Play, I presume. I also assume a game designed with a learning outcome in mind has structured play (as opposed to unstructured play — like when a kid plays with blocks).

Drj Garvey said that a game is institutionalized play. Look at football. It’s a game, clearly. We wouldn’t say that it’s educational, but you can learn it (and those who learn it best find it financially rewarding). Also by using it as a metaphor you can teach life lessons and/or management strategies, or you can teach math from the stats of the game.

Bwc So this leads me to think about the “game perimeter”. Most games have boundaries, right? We step into the perimeter’s “magic circle” to play the game. In the corporate workplace, the “magic circle” is the game’s play boundary the instructional designer/game designer creates. The trick for instructional designers is to craft what learning occurs while the player is in that circle… so does that mean that the assessment needs to occur inside or outside the perimeter?

Drj I think the best assessments are seamless and inside that perimeter. Examples could be performance-, point- or victory-based.

Bwc So are we saying that the differences between a game and a successful educational game can be minimal if assessment can be more embedded and genuine?

Drj Sure.

Now is the Time to Do Less of More

Leave a reply

This week we struck up a conversation about the general state of eLearning design in the corporate world. We ruminate over our belief that companies should consider doing less of more:

Bwc BRANDON: So I thought this week we would discuss the overwhelming number of requests for “training” that come from business units and stakeholders. It seems like some people think “training solves all the problems.”

I’ve been on the inside and the outside of several corporate learning organizations over the years, and one trend that I’ve seen explode recently is a “factory mentality” designed to “templatize” training. I’ve seen these factories operate almost ’round the clock packaging “rapid eLearning” courses with little regard for formative or summative analysis, or interaction that motivates a learner to participate. It’s really a “page turner” world out there in many instances. Some of this is pure economics — many learning organizations are funded by business units. If a business unit allocates a specific amount of dollars for “training” they expect those dollars to actually be spent, regardless of the necessity or quality of the training.

Why have training if it’s not good? I’ve counseled the organizations I work for/with to do “less of more”. I firmly believe if most training organizations just stopped producing about 40% of what they are doing today — just stopped cold turkey — no one would even notice.

Drj DOLLY: I think one reason that training can seem so irrelevant is because it is so divorced from the day to day activities that the jobs actually require. So, these people who are in sales for instance, talking and corresponding with clients everyday, come to training and spend 4 days listening to someone speak at them. These week-long explorations of Powerpoint slides don’t engage the learner. They just become data dump sessions.

Bwc Yeah, I agree. I personally think sales training should be high-touch, situational, and as contextual as possible. It seems to me that there are two avenues to drive down when producing sales training: basic “transfer of information” about products, services, etc., and scenario-based/role-play simulations that place the participant in authentic situations. At Sun, we leveraged the community for the transfer of information component by providing a user-generated content platform. Sales people ate it up. They could get small chunks of product information or sales techniques from experts in the field and download it to their mobile device. We then had “Sales University” for the mandatory accredited training courses.

Drj And the thing is, if people are just going to be sitting in darkened rooms, why bother going to the expense of shipping them across the country? If it’s just memorization of information, there’s plenty of fairly easy and cheap ways to get that across in an online setting. However, both face to face and online activities can be so much more engaging and rich.

Bwc Agreed. One thing that seems to be missing is an evaluation of actual sales skills done in a formal manner. If we’re training these folks to sell, then we need to really look at each individual and evaluate their readiness to sell. It’s one thing to lecture them, have them role-play, provide feedback, and then send them on their way. Where do we assess their readiness to do their job? Is that for their manager to determine outside of the training? If so, is training’s role just to “provide the foundation”?

Drj And  evaluation doesn’t have to be a test. It can be a demonstration, a portfolio or series of smaller activities built into the curriculum.

 

Bwc Yes, one vendor I worked with provided role-playing scenarios in an online format using computer webcams and FlipCams. Participants would video themselves doing their pitch, and then upload it for the cohort and the facilitator to critique.

Drj In my eyes, that’s a perfectly valid evaluation, as long as the learning objectives were to improve their sales pitch, not to learn the capitals of African countries. The whole point is to have evaluation that supports your objectives and curriculum. Excellent evaluation can be painless and seamless.

This post can also be found at The Total Learner Experience. 

Creative Effective Training Evaluation

Leave a reply

Drj Dolly: Brandon ranted about ineffective evaluations while I was holed up under the 2 feet of snow here. The snow is still here, but my Internet is finally back. His comments about evaluation made me wonder what I consider effective evaluation to look like. Cumulative evaluation should be as authentic as possible. If you want someone to be an effective salesperson, you’d better identify what competencies are required and then have them replicate and practice as best they can in the classroom environment.

Bwc Brandon: Good point. I concur. However, more and more organizations are hit with the high-cost of travel and the inefficiency of removing people away from their jobs for instructor-led training. We need to provide effective strategies for authentic evaluation in an online format.

Drj So I can think of two ways to recreate these situations in the digital world: virtual simulation and/or role-playing. Learners will have different profiles. Does someone who is technically minded need the same practice as someone who is naturally a people person? Both these individuals need to come out with the same skill sets at the end, but perhaps they need different practice. Formative self assessments combined with flexible course sequencing can allow individuals to focus on their areas of real need.

Bwc That just describes a sales training course I completed using Thiagi’s 4-Door Model. It allowed the learner to “self-adjust” the content based on their own self-leveling of knowledge. It does beg the question though: how do you “branch” an evaluation based on different learner profiles? Can you have an effective evaluation instrument via a dynamic system that presents a contextual series of assessment items based on the learner’s individual profiles?

Drj I think that you can have a self-assessment that gives the learner guidance in their own strengths and weaknesses.

Bwc OK, so you’re talking about self-assessment. What about an actual skills certification? One that can affect a learner’s job status, salary, or in the case of compliance or regulatory situations, a learner’s knowledge that could have life or death consequences? Can a dynamic evaluation instrument provide the appropriate assessment of knowledge?

Drj I don’t know what you mean by “dynamic evaluation instrument”.

 

Bwc “Dynamic pooling” is when the system displays content based on a learner’s input at the time of input.

Drj What you are talking about now is less about the assessment/evaluation used and more the consequences related to that assessment or evaluation. The SATs are pretty weighty and they’ve been using a dynamic response for years. A student gets progressively harder questions until incorrect responses are entered. Then a cycle commences where easier and harder questions are given to the student until the logarithm determines what the student’s level of mastery is. I’d say that stakes are high, but the College Board feels comfortable using this dynamic response.

Bwc Right. So I’m saying we need a similar system in corporate learning where appropriate assessment techniques seem to be a missing factor. In eLearning, there is a cycle of ineffective self-check systems instead of situational problem-based assessments. For example, a colleague was discussing with me the usage of “misconception” problems in assessment. They can present more authentic situations such as posing the problem in a scenario and requiring the learner to identify the parts of the scenario that are wrong or inaccurate. Even using open-ended question types where the system evaluates based on a keyword or series of keywords can be quite effective. How are we truly able to measure whether knowledge or skills are transferred if we’re not willing to properly evaluate?

Drj I like that because some people are just natural or trained to be good test takers. That kind of exercise actually accurately tests knowledge that they have, rather than their ability to suss out a poorly written stem or item. I know you are all about performance. Shouldn’t people’s training be based upon actual deficits in their performance and knowledge? And if they are high performers or can demonstrate mastery of course materials, shouldn’t they be rewarded by being allowed to choose their own training regimen, anyhow?

 

This post first appeared in January 2010 at The Total Learner Experience. 

Games4Change Festival–Quick Thoughts

Leave a reply

This post originally appeared in The Total Learner Experience in May 2010.

I’m attending the Game4Change Festival in NYC for the first time this year. I might do a bit more formal commenting in later posts, but these are a few of the thoughts that keep coming up:

1) STEM– everybody kept talking about STEM content (science, technology, engineering and math) but I always wonder if STEM content in games is accurate and/or complex enough. I don’t know what the answer is to the balance of engagement and science content, but the brief glances I took at some games were encouraging.

2) What is the role of facilitators and teachers for these games? I am not sure that higher level learning outcomes happen for the majority of learners/players without some guided instruction. I know that some choose to become engrossed in this worlds, but the vast majority do not. Also, who will be pushing kids to these worlds. It seems like you will need lots of engaged ambassadors helping get the word out and getting the kids initially turned onto these games.

3) “Everyone”– People kept saying that everyone plays games. There was a good bit of homogeneity to the crowd. Mostly young, male, and white, with a few Indians and women. This was a laptop-carrying crowd, and while access was mentioned during the education days, it wasn’t so much yesterday during the main session. While I spoke with some practitioners who seemed to get it, a lot of the comments I heard tended to assume technological prowess.

By far, the getting kids involved with social games– as both creators and players– was the best takeaway I had from this conference. It reaffirmed and rekindled my belief in the power of kids doing.

IBM CityOne goes live

Leave a reply

I was a bit excited this morning to see that IBM’s CityOne had finally launched. I’m always a fan of innovative games with real life applications and I am currently searching for activities to use with my high school students. Billed as a SimCity-like experience, but with an educational side, I was expecting to have some fun building a city to my specifications and doing some high level problem-solving.

That build-up would indicate some disappointment– and indeed there was. The glossy cityscape I viewed was inviting and attractive. A small icon indicated my first problem to solve. I clicked, exposing the specific city-planning issue related to water. Three solutions were presented with various pricetags. I choose the most expensive, most comprehensive solution and was presented with some boilerplate response. Mousing and clicking over the screen to find my next challenge I determined (perhaps incorrectly) that I had no more challenges. I ended this first of ten rounds thinking that I couldn’t make much progress if I only had ten challenges to solve.

I made it to turn 7, barely. By this round I had begun to have challenges from all 4 areas (water, energy, retail and banking), but they all had the same basic format. There were few of the identified game attributes– little challenge, no suspense, I had no idea what I was competing for or against and I didn’t know how or why I could fail– and I didn’t really care.

I was attracted to the game because of this line from Gizmodo: “The idea here, presumably, is that it’s always a good thing to educate the populace about the these sorts of problems, and, hey, who knows, someone might unwittingly stumble on a solution we can actually use.” This is hard to see how that could happen  because all of the activities are call and response. There is no room or opportunity for players to create their own innovative solutions.

This seems like a marketing/training tool go awry. To launch the game I had to enter detailed personal info– not surprising– but the limited options for industry or occupation indicated to me that IBM had a  target audience in mind. One of the follow up questions asked you to indicate if you were a software purchase “decider”. Many of the game solutions included using software (presumably developed and marketed by IBM) to clean up a variety of perceived major city issues.

It’s disappointing to me that this game is so lame. I have no problem with companies reaching out through games– I just want them to be fun. There was no fun to be had.

This post originally appeared in October 2010 on The Total Learner Experience.