Content/Quality Reviewers

I wanted to comment on the quality review meeting we had last week in class. I thought it went well and many guidelines were established that I felt would really make our training materials look professional and clean. One issue I'm having though is, as mentioned in our meeting, the size and quality of the picture files that are included in this training. The argument for saving the pictures as a GIF file were that they would not use up too much memory. I am finding that saving the pictures as GIF files is taking away much of the color consistency in the pics; however, saving them as JPG files does not affect the picture at all, and the size difference is 30.1 KB for GIF and 41 KB for JPG. There is not a big size difference here and even if we had 1 million pictures total, that would just about reach 1 GB in size. I think the GIF is going to be ineffective and hard to read in the published training materials and JPG is provides great color and does not have a significant size difference so we should really go with that.

Intranets and Internet Learning Environments

In Chapter 24 of Lee & Owens, the idea of interactivity is established in Internet based learning. Internet training provides many advantages including easy accessibility, cost effectiveness, easy development. What is important to most businesses is that they use something that is already established, and modify it to meet their business needs; no need to reinvent the wheel! There are some differences when it comes to Intranet and Internet based learning. Intranets are internal to an organization, meaning they are protected and have a high level of security requiring users to log on to gain access. The Internet is highly public, accessible by all and is not as easily controlled as a private Intranet. Three primary reasons for the adoption of Intranet and Internet delivery are universal access, ease of use, and multimedia content. As a training designer, my biggest concern when creating a training program would be acquiring the skills necessary to develop something like this and also making sure that the trainees have necessary skills to access it. Also, you must consider the type of information people are able to access (videos or flash) and how fast their connection is to the Internet. I found something really interesting in this chapter because as I have grown up and used technology and heard all the jargon, I never new that the Internet and WWW were not interchangeable terms. The Internet is the backbone, or hardware on which the WWW is accessed. Interesting?!

My First Experience With Camtasia

For those of you who don't know, Camtasia is a recording software that allows one to capture motion on a computer screen. There are many features including recording, editing, and publishing videos. This program allows you to record training videos as well as integrates PowerPoint presentations. At first glance, Camtasia may seem a bit overwhelming, but after reviewing the controls, proves to be easy and fluid. We first had to set up audio by specifying a microphone and then testing the audio so the software could normalize the voice. Simply press the record button to record and the stop button to stop recording. The feature that I liked most about the recording software is that you are able to select a portion of the screen to record. This allows you to move around outside the recording screen and can possibly make for less editing. I am looking forward to learning more about editing recorded videos and making seamless video training for OpenOffice.org Base. New for Camtasia 5 is a tool known as screencast.com, which allows bloggers to record video, post it, and blog about it instantly. My only real question is how many organizations utilize this software to support training needs?

Chapter 23 Computer Based Learning Environments

In Chapte 21 of Lee & Owens, computer based training is described as cost effective and and provides many other advantages to traditional classroom learning. Yet companies still spend billions on facilitated instruction every year. Why? I believe companies spend money on facilitated discussion because of the human interaction. Yes, CBT may be effective and help trainees learn more in shorter amounts of time, but the value of sharing human experiences with fellow learners is worth so much more. Not only is CBT an economic decision, but it also factors in global displacement among workers as well as communication between them. How then will organizations be able to prove that CBT, while cost effective, actually is an advantage to traditional learning? I'm not really sure how this can be accomplished, maybe follow up reviews of job performance or review of production rates following training. I feel facilitated instruction should be an integral part of any training, and CBT should be there to help support it.

Gaming As a Form of Training

In Chapter 19 of Lee & Owens, the idea of using games as a method of delivering training is presented. According to the chapter, games that are carefully constructed situational games that are appropriate to all media that can have positive outcomes on training. With games, people can enjoy learning and will be more likely to retain information longer. What companies are using games as a form of training right now? I found an article online, in which a Cold Stone Creamery manager plays a video game that teaches employees portion control and time management. The military is one of the largest advocates for games as a form of training. Other notable organizations include Cisco and Canon. The article states that trainers are expecting the games to attract younger employees who are media-savvy. About 15% of games are non entertainment, in other words, used strictly for learning purposes. What are some of the advantages of playing video games in training environments? For one, games are cost-effective for most organizations and allow for training material to be shared among all employees. Games also provide a sense of interaction and repetitive training that most lecture based material can not provide, which in turn helps students retain more information. As a future employee, I would like to be able to utilize this form of training because to me it would make training fun. For me, having fun while learning leads to better retention of the material. Hopefully, more organizations will be turning towards games as a method of transferring knowledge.

Five Free Web Apps We Can't Live Without

In this article, 5 web applications are listed as the best and easiest to use. They include Ta-Da List, PBwiki, Google Docs, Bloglines v3 Beta, and Zoho creator. Ta-da list is an easy to use to-do list maker, which only requires simply typing your lists and that's it. There are no tags or categories, just simple ordered lists that can be created and saved so they can be accessed from anywhere. Next, PBwiki provides users the ability to make a free wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich...catchy huh? The plus side to this wiki is that it is ad free. Google Docs has become very popular in recent months and allows users to upload docs and save them for later work. This office suite of Google Docs provides users with constant access to their documents over the Internet. Bloglines v3 Beta is just another RSS reader, or is it? Because it's in the beta version it still has some quirks to work out but offers easy access to news articles and provides basic functionality. Most importantly, it's easy to use. Zoho creator is a great tool to make your own database applications and provides only two page layouts but it can be embedded in web pages. All of these applications seem great; however, I have never heard of any of them except for Google Docs, probably because Google is such a powerful name. If I had to add any web applications to the list it would be the Google Reader which is a great tool to use if you are already using Google Apps. Also blogger.com, a Google application, is very popular and comes with many features that I like such as auto saving a blog and great template views. After reading this article, I will definitely have to use Ta-da lists and probably check out the Bloglines v3 reader.

Learning and Instructional Delivery Strategies

In Chapter 20 of Lee & Owens, two major learning strategies are introduce. These learning strategies are deductive and inductive. Deductive learning means that the students will draw general conclusions from specific information, and inductive means that students will draw specific conclusions from general information. The intsructional delivery strategies are lecture or linear presentation, followed by lecture, recitation, and interaction, which is a deductive learning style. Lecture and discussion which presents information and then questions that will elicit responses froms students, then lecture and demonstration. Demonstrations gives students the ability to see the concepts of the lecture. Next is guided learning and open exploration in which situations are created and students must explore them and raise their own questions. Next is brainstorming which brings about all possible ideas about a project assuming some of the following rules are implemented. The purpose of brainstorming is to generate ideas, all ideas are acceptable, no criticism allowed, everyone partcipates, and point out any violations. Following brainstorming is games, or more specifically carefully constructed situational games. The next delivery strategies include role playing and simulation, followed by performance support.

Effective Moderation

This week, I want to talk about what it means to be an effective moderator. In class, we went over the steps a moderator should take when engaging in a collaborative discussion. A moderator should initially set an easy question and keep the structure simple. It is also very important to make sure there is a comfortable atmosphere where people can say things without fear of being scrutinized or punished. It is important to raise key questions and suggest threads of discussion as to keep the community engaged and involved. Allow time for the community to respond to your questions, but give feedback as soon as possible by responding quickly to contributions. In my opinion, a good moderator should always have something to say or ask regardless of whether they get a response from a previous thread or not. It is up to the moderator to decide which questions to ask or which topics to bring forward. In all of this, we never really talked about any outside implications affecting the types of threads being posted. In my opinion, a good moderator would have to take into account the age group of the community, as well as race and gender. They might also consider the backgrounds of the community. Have they come from a poverty stricken country? Or have they been around war all of their lives? Maybe they've never known what it means to not have money. All of these things and so much more are going to play some part in the way people respond to a moderator, which is why moderator's must think thoroughly about their discussion.