It was with great interest that I started to read this new book.
Not only because I used to work for the publisher's sister company in Europe, but because this was one of the first books I'd seen focusing on e-learning 2.0.
If you buy this book, get it for the good up-to-date chapter (3) on what constitutes e-learning today, including synchronous (live) e-learning and some comprehensive coverage on the "new" phenomenon of rapid e-learning and when you might use it versus the more "traditional" forms of e-learning. It must be mentioned that the author runs a company that sells a rapid e-learning authoring tool, but although the examples in the book do reference this product, overall, there is little "hard sell".
Buy it for its reference to the concept of social networking in the business world and among adults (chapter 4) and its discussion about podcasting (chapter 5); also for the first specific coverage I've seen in a book about the use of m-learning within the corporate learning arena (chapter 6).
Chapters 7 and 8 focus on what makes a successful e-learning course and if you're using a rapid e-learning authoring tool, then the clearly presented discussions about all manner of design issues will provide a crash course in creating an effective course.
Chapter 9 brings the book to a close with another "first" for an e-learning book - a good attempt at demystifying the world of standards and integration, in which AICC, SCORM 1.2 and 2004 are clearly and simply explained. I also welcomed the author's realistic take on the subject of reusable learning objects and her honest view - shared by me and others - that there are probably few real good situations where a "pure" learning object strategy would make sense.
Although I enjoyed reading this book, I did struggle with my first reading of chapter 2, in which the author explains the stages that an organisation will go through with an e-learning strategy. The discussions here seem to align e-learning with website development, which I've never really seen myself, but that's not to say there weren't some good observations.
There is one section though - the author's review of audio within e-learning courses - where I have to use my own 15-plus years of experience to provide an alternative viewpoint to her comment that you should "think twice about deploying audio for your courses". And I can only speak from my own experience, but from my days of deploying e-learning to over 70,000 staff at a large retail bank (where staff openly requested courses with audio, over those without);through consulting into large multinational organisations; working with two Brandon Hall award-winning e-learning development houses where audio was used throughout every title; to my more recent projects of rejuvenating Captivate-authored software training modules by re-purposing them with audio narration, I can testify that audio does make a very positive difference to an e-learning module.
This doesn't mean (and here I agree with the author) the narrator reading word for word what is presented on the screen. Instead the narration should only be reinforced with short bullet points or appropriate graphics. With in-house rapid e-learning projects, including the voice of the subject matter expert can add the authority and credibility that some learners need to "trust" the content.
In response to the comment that audio adds considerably to the production times, with my own rapid e-learning projects, it generally take two hours to record an hour of final audio and less than half that time again to perform any edits. I'm currently able to produce a finished hour of content with audio in about 6 to 8 hours, which is less than half the time mentioned in the book.
But that aside - and thanks for bearing with me and my own personal opinions above - this is a good book for anyone new to e-learning and who's looking for up-to-date messages, which are lacking in the other books on the subject, many of which are now dated in terms of their messages.
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