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Best of Elearning! 2008 Finalists Named
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Elearning! Magazine announced the finalists of the Best of
Elearning! Awards at the Elearning! Summit, hosted on November
6th and 7th. Readers and professionals from hundresd of
organizations nominated and cast ballots for the best e-learning
solutions across thirteen product categories.
"The Best
of Elearning! Awards are unlike any hosted in this market," said
Jerry Roche, Editorial Director of Elearning! Magazine. "Every
product is reader nominated and the finalists are the leading
vote earners from each product category."
Readers
nominated and voted for products and solutions via Elearning!
Magazine's online ballot. Product categories included: Best LMS,
Best SaaS LMS, Best Presentation Tool, Best Authoring Tool, Best
Simulation Solution, Best Virtual Classroom Solution, Best Web
Conferencing Solution, Best IT Content, Soft Skills and
Leadership Training.
All ballots were cast between
September 1st and October 31, 2008. Each ballot was reviewed and
validated by the editorial team. All vendor ballots were voided.
At the awards session hosted during the Elearning! Summit, more
than 85% of attendees reported that they recommended a product
to a peer over the last 12 months. And, 61% reported award
recognition did influence their decision to consider or purchase
product(s) from a supplier(s).
Learn More.
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Stretch Your eLearning Budget with Interactive 3-D Virtual
Instructors
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In tough economic times, eLearning budgets are trimmed and
employee training suffers. Make your budget go further by
employing "virtual instructors" in your eLearning applications.
CodeBaby(R) software makes it quick and easy to embed animated
instructors in your new or existing courseware. These engaging
3-D full-body digital characters make training interesting for
participants while increasing knowledge retention, course
completion, and overall job performance. Read how one company
with 13,000 employees successfully used CodeBaby Virtual
Instructors.
Read Here.
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Learner vs. Instructor Centered Programs
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Let's face it, it is much easier to design training around the
instructor versus around the learner. Have you ever been in a
training program in which the instructor comes in, opens up a
book, and starts reading? Actually many of you may have had this
very experience in college. Professors are notorious for
believing they have very little to do with the learning process
and it is the student's responsibility to somehow salvage any
crumbs and bits of knowledge they choose to drop during a
remarkably poorly planned presentation. Learner centered means
designing training and teaching around the learner, their needs,
their learning preferences, their learning styles, and whatever
it takes to help your collective learners physically and
emotionally engage.
The argument for an instructor
centered approach might go like this. If I am the instructor,
the one with the knowledge, and my students are the ones needing
the knowledge, my job is to relay what I know to them. Sounds
simple, direct and honestly, does work to a degree, but only to
a relatively small degree. We know that a lecture style approach
will hold an audience's attention for approximately 15 minutes.
After this our minds tend to wander and learning retention
levels plummet. Conversely, if we design participative
programming, retentive levels can remain high for the majority
of participants throughout the entire training session. With a
higher percentage of individuals, retaining information at
higher retention levels, it only makes sense to use a learner
centered approach.
When you're designing a training
program think about your learners on a number of different
fronts. Ask yourself (1.) if you are providing training that
allows your participants to interact with you and with others
during the training. (2.) If you are structuring an environment
to allow participants to actively participate, touch, feel and
in some way become physically involved with what is being
taught, (3.) and most importantly, presenting information in a
manner that will captivate and capture the attention of your
learners. I agree that learners are also responsible for their
own learning; this is a given. But as teachers and trainers a
large part of the job is optimizing the learning environment,
and to do this we need to focus on the learner.
Contact
the author Gary Trotta at [email protected].
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Is Your Enterprise Ready for Web 2.0?
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In a recent Abderdeen Research Survey, approximately 47% of
enterprises surveyed are planning to add social networking
solutions to the enterprise learning program in 2009. Yet, many
organizations are not yet ready for such implementations.
In a survey conducted at the Elearning! Summit, 90% of
respondents indicated they participated in online social
networks. Yet, when it comes to the enterprise, 50% are still at
the early stages of collaboration. Stage I accounted for 27% of
respondents using only traditional collaboration methods.
Another 23% reported use of collaboration only in specific
applications i.e. web conferencing, Stage 2. Stage 3
organizations are proliferating solutions and uses and account
for 21% of respondents. Stage 4 users are consolidating
solutions and integrating across the enterprise, accounting for
15%. Truely virtual working is Stage 5 and 13% of respondents
report this level.
To learn how to prepare your
organization for Web 2.0 collaboration, view the on-demand
webcast of Collaboration Trends at the Elearning! Summit.
View Session
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Obama Embraces Technology, Appoints FCC Transition Teams
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President-elect Obama has appointed Kevin Werbach, assistant
professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, and
Susan Crawford, who teaches communications and Internet law at
the University of Michigan, to co-chair his FCC transition team.
In preparation for his incoming administration, the two, both
seasoned Net Neutrality advocates, will be tasked with providing
information on U.S. government Internet and telecom policies,
along with advising on budgetary and personnel matters.
This is clearly good news for Net advocates, and as it happens,
it could also be good news for online gamers. The Wharton
professor is a hardcore World of Warcraft player, a member of
two guilds:
"One of them," he wrote on his blog in 2006,
"was started by my friend and inveterate tech connector, Joi Ito
... The other guild is very different -- it's composed primarily
of academics and other thinkers who study and write about
virtual worlds."
Werbach's involvement in WoW is worth
noting as it raises the possibility that in the coming months,
he and Crawford will craft strategic policy positions relevant
to online games and worlds, including broadband usage, content
regulation, etc.
Learn More.
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Journalists Learn Via Web 2.0
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The Poynter Institute will use a $1.4 million, five-year grant from the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to help transform journalism
education by expanding NewsU, the world’s most successful and innovative
journalism e-learning site. Launched in 2005 with a prior Knight
Foundation grant, NewsU provides interactive, inexpensive courses to
journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media.
Specifically, NewsU plans to offer new courses to help journalists and
others make the transition to a digital world, shift its current content
management system to a Web 2.0 platform, deliver course content in
multiple languages, and create e-learning modules on news literacy for
the general public.
“More than 73,000 participants have enrolled
in NewsU courses since its introduction, vastly exceeding initial
expectations and making NewsU the top e-learning destination for
journalists and others interested in journalism,” says Howard Finberg,
director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute. “We are
excited about taking NewsU to the next level and reaching journalists
around the world.”
Learn More
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