Tuesday, December 1

Learning 2009

We are going to continue a tradition in the Big Question ...

The Big Question for December is:

What did you learn about learning in 2009?


If you are a blogger, I would highly recommend taking this as an opportunity to go back through your blog posts over the year and looking for any "aha moments" or highlight the posts that you think were the best/most interesting.

If you happen to be a blogger who is part of eLearning Learning, there are some tricks you can use to help you find your best stuff for the year - see Using Special Parameters to Create Year End Post for details on producing a post like 2009 Top Posts and Topics.

You might want to look back at some discussions going on during the last two yearly recaps:

January's Topic:

Predictions for learning in 2010

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):
Posted by Tony Karrer at 1:13 AM 6 comments Links to this post

Monday, November 2

Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning

I've received various forms of the same question from different people over the past few years. The basic question is:
How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?
Which provides us this month's big question:


Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning?


Let me provide some flavor for this question straight from someone who asked me about this:
My coworkers are Baby Boomers and Traditionals. When I mention blogs or any social networking they "poo-poo" me and say our workers should not use those tools because it will make them inefficient and not do their jobs. When I have presented the idea of how we can use discussion threads on our environment to discuss topics and make comments outside the classroom, many of my co-workers said it can't be done. They either haven't opened their mind to the idea or really care. In essence, if it is not classroom, they are really not interested in it.

My question is how do I get my coworkers to even consider the capabilities of these tools when it really does not interest them.

So some of the questions this raises in my mind:
  1. How do you communicate about the potential here to other learning professionals? to knowledge workers? to management?
  2. How do you communicate the value to an audience who doesn't have experience with social media?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far (also see Comments):
Posted by Tony Karrer at 6:55 AM 22 comments Links to this post

Thursday, October 1

New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills

In response to my recent post Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations, the comments were really fantastic, but got the discussion going in a different direction - and it is clear that a comment box is way too small for this discussion.

Both your face-to-face and your online audience is likely multitasking. They might be participating in chat / backchannel. They might be blogging. They might be taking notes. They might be checking and responding to email. They might be figuring out where to go to dinner.

Clive Shepherd captured the problem as Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem.

The comments suggest that there are things that presenters and learners should do to to address this. Hence, this month's big question is:




New Presenter and Learner Methods & Skills?



Related questions:
  1. What should we do as presenters in this multitasking world?
  2. Should presenters coach (or ban) people away from multitasking?
  3. As a presenter, how do you deal with the backchannel effectively? (I personally can't present and work with the backchannel at the same time.)
  4. How does the backchannel fit with effective note taking?
  5. What could a presenter do in 2 minutes at the start of a presentation to get this all to work out well?
  6. What should we do as learners?
  7. What if the presenter is not making effective use of our time?
  8. What have you seen that worked really well?
  9. What didn't work well? What would you do to change it?
  10. Any tools that make this better?
I'm hoping to learn a lot out of this discussion which is certainly far bigger than my original post.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far (also see Comments):
Posted by Tony Karrer at 8:06 AM 24 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, September 1

Working with Subject Matter Experts

I want to thank Jeff Goldman - Minute Bio for his great response last month. He suggested that we focus the Big Question on specific issues and then suggested four questions.

So, let's start with his first suggestion:
Working effectively with subject matter experts
There's a lot to this topic, and certainly it's an on-going challenge. Some specific questions that are raised in this area:
  • What should all IDs know about working with a SME?
  • What can you and can't you expect a SME to do?
  • Does it work to have SMEs create rapid eLearning?
  • How does social and informal learning impact how you engage with SMEs?
  • What's your favorite instructive story of working with a SME?
I've seen a few good posts in the recent past on this topic. Feel free to include prior posts or resources you know about in your response.


How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:
Posted by Tony Karrer at 1:23 PM 15 comments Links to this post

Sunday, August 2

Feedback on the Big Question?

We are coming up on three years since the first Big Question - Should all Learning Professionals Blog? That's still a great topic and the content you can find there is pretty interesting. I still personally believe that blogging is a great self-directed learning tool. Ah, but I digress.

I normally don't do a Big Question in August. This year, I'm just going to do something a little bit different.

The goals of the Big Question are:
  • Get different perspectives on topics that are of interest to workplace learning professionals
  • Provide input to Learning Circuits, T&D and other parts of ASTD on topical issues
  • Provide a way for bloggers and others to find relevant blogs
  • Support the network of bloggers
I'd like to get feedback on the Big Question:
  • What works?
  • What do you think should change?
  • Are there other models that you've seen that might be interesting to consider?
  • What aspects of online community management might apply here
And here is a list of past topics that might be worth looking through for thoughts and ideas:
How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:
Posted by Tony Karrer at 7:16 AM 3 comments Links to this post

Wednesday, July 1

New Skills for Learning Professionals

This month's big question comes out of a discussion that I've been having in various forms over the past few years. In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?



New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?


I know that there's already quite a bit out there on this topic, so please point us to existing information on the topic.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:
Posted by Tony Karrer at 1:00 AM 32 comments Links to this post

Monday, June 1

Time Spent

This month's big question comes from an inquiry I received from Robert Kennedy via my blog. The question was:
What is your typical day like? How do you do all you do with elearning learning, elearning technology, techempower, work literacy and all the consulting and still remain profitable while having a LIFE? Ok, so that is more than one question, but hopefully you get the drift. What are your thoughts here?
This is a great question and I'm guessing the answers will be quite interesting. After all, when I do presentations that introduce things like blogs, RSS readers, social networks, etc. I am almost always asked - "How much time do you spend on this? Where do you find the time?" And what they really mean is - I'm already too busy, how the heck can I also do all of what you are telling me about. So I really hope that we can have a great resource here that will give people a sense of what's going on in the lives of people who are adopting some of these things.

Where is your time spent?


I'm really hoping that we can get a broad cross section of answers. I consider myself to be somewhat of a "special case" ... but I'm guessing that's true for many of us.

Beyond the basic answer I'm hoping you will chime in with thoughts around:
  • How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?
  • What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?
  • Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:
Posted by Tony Karrer at 5:00 AM 23 comments Links to this post
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