Tech4learning

Team-building's Gone Digital

I was excited to receive "50 Digital Team-building Games", as here is a book that combines some of my business-world passions - learning technologies, social media and leadership and management development.  

This is probably the first book that considers not only the application of learning technologies to a learning requirement, but considers first and foremost the aims and objectives of a targeted soft skill area.  Yes, this book is aimed at team leaders and members, but I was able to read it from the standpoint of a trainer and see how the various exercises could be dovetailed into a soft skills training programme.

I thought this would be a book I could dip in and out of (an easy-to-use table at the start helps to pinpoint which exercises will be of interest), but actually, having started to do that, I realised that I would get the most benefit from it by returning to the start and reading it cover-to-cover. I've reviewed other books before about how one might use technology to support a learning need, but this book is different.  You can't skip through it. The exercises need to be digested in detail, so that the subtleties of the learning outcomes can be realised.  As the trainer, you will also need to be fully conversant with how each exercise is run, as many of your learners may be using the relevant technology for the first time. Actually, getting people more familiar with Web 2.0 technologies is often a secondary objective for many of the exercises.

So what is covered?

After a good introduction on how to use the book and its contents, the first chapter looks at icebreakers, including using Twitter, chat windows, online whiteboards and - flavour of the month, Pinterest.

In the second chapter, the focus is on communication skills, including how to get an audience to interact with you as the facilitator.  So reference is made to techniques such as getting people to Tweet or text questions throughout a session; filming answers and posting to a site. For those using web-conferencing tools, mention was made of using raise hand tool (and chat window) and two new ones for me - online tangrams and PowerPoint karaoke.

The topic of building trust is covered in chapter three.  Ideas here including using Google Docs to create a trust grid (potentially quite a challenging exercise), a very useful link to an online version of the Johari Window and how to use webcams to practice the techniques of matching and mirroring.

Shared Google Docs and chat windows were featured too in the next chapter about improving performance.

Chapter five is all about problem solving.  Two digital exercises stood out here - an online version of "Move One Line/Add One Line" and a chat window version of the popular game "Survivor".

Creativity and innovation is the focus of chapter six.  Here mention was made of online mind mapping; using iPads to film breakout presentations with each group tasked to make a short film on certain topic; and using an app called Goose Chase for a cell-phone based scavenger hunt.

The important team-working skill of collaboration is addressed in chapter seven.  This includes how different teams can work better together. Online games such as "Office Move" and "Mergers and Reorganisation" are described here, along with a version of "Broken Squares".  You're also introduced to two useful tools Timely.is (a tool that only publishes Tweets when it believes they will have the most impact) and Coveritlive.com (a live-blogging platform).

The author's organisation runs team-building games that use GPS technology, so this forms the basis of the two exercises in the next chapter entitled "EPIC Team Building".

The final chapter looks at Closers.  Included in the different ways to end a team event are using Twitter to acknowledge team members actions and to gain a commitment to change.

The appendix to book offers instructions on how to get connected with some of the more popular technology tools referenced in the previous chapters.  

This is the first book of its kind where I actually felt that the use of technology would assist in achieving the training goals in a meaningful way.  Yes, you'll need to consider the culture (and technical expertise) of your audience in some cases, but overall, I found a lot of valuable content here.

Mobile First - Time to Rethink Learning Design?

One of the most thought-provoking events I've had over the last 12 months occurred when I was first piloting mobile learning.  Taking on board prototype feedback, I shaved one third off the length of the exemplar module.  Quite a challenge, but the end result proved that by stripping out superfluous elements and identifying and concentrating on the absolute core concepts, you could deliver a piece of learning that was both effective and efficient.  

My latest - and surprisingly successful - project of delivering short burst of learning to mobile devices in PDF format has again made me question whether we need to rethink everything we've done over the last decade or so.  With today's fast-paced business environment and the major change in how we consume information and knowledge today, outside of the workplace, I'm starting to think that short, sharp and to the point will the mantra for future development.  Maybe controversially, I wonder whether our future learners will have the time and appetite to always learn through traditional instructional design approaches.  Is it time to through away all those e-learning design books I've got?  In our attempts to replicate the best of the classroom in our on-line learning, are we now out of step with the modern learning scene?

So, when I spotted Mobile First, I was interested to see what its author had to say, given his view that web developers should now start with the mobile version of their site, before building its bigger brother.  His views seem to reflect mine.  Start with the mobile version, cut out all that extra "stuff" that sometimes gets in the way and really hone in on what the customer needs.

This is an easy-to-read book, packed full of colour examples that illustrate the points being made.  Although part of a series aimed at web developers, it's not a technical book. Aside from one or two references to specific coding, for which the author apologises, this is a great book for the lay person (me included) to really get to grips with the key issues that matter when designing a mobile website.  [It's important to stress that this book is not about mobile app development.]

Mobile First explores the many constraints that developing for mobiles impose, such as the screen size, overall performance and the influences of time and place on the user experience.  It then goes onto look at the sometimes unique capabilities that mobiles offer developers such as rotating browser views, location services and touch screens.

The chapter on Organisation explores the important requirement to re-think what a mobile website is all about and has only served to provoke me into examining the whole business of e-learning design.  I think the breakdown of interaction types into Lookup/Find, Explore/Play, Check In/Status and Edit/Create offers a great model for mobile learning. And this gives a powerful example of how easy it is to forget the "consumer" of our information.  This chapter also covers navigation and keeping the focus clear.

The next chapter looks at how the user interacts with the site in terms of user controls, by touch screen and via other means, with the following section exploring how to make entering information into the website (i.e. inputs) as straightforward as possible.  

The final chapter concentrates on the subject of layout and how some now-standard coding can help to create the best user experience on all manner of device types.

I mentioned that this book is easy to read.  But if you want more detail, then there are 67 shortened URLs (later stated in full in an appendix) that will take you to more detailed research into - or examples of - each point being made.  Very valuable.

If you're involved with mobile learning, I'd recommend this book.  Although that wasn't its intention, it's helped me to refine my thinking as to the shape of learning to come.

*** PLEASE NOTE *** The edition of this book on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com is the French language version.  It would appear you can only order the English version direct from the publisher, but delivery from the US was relatively inexpensive and very quick.

 

 

Another Solution for iPads in the Training Room - RabbleBrowser

I can't recall publishing two postings on my blog in one day before and certainly not in such quick successsion, but literally a minute or two after I blogged about Idea Flight, the folks at Float Mobile Learning got in contact via Twitter to tell me about their soon-to-be-updated iPad app, RabbleBrowser for iPad, with an Android version in the pipeline, which will help penetrate the tablet market.

RabbleBrowser allows a trainer to lead what Float call a "group browsing experience". Essentially, they can lead a largely unlimited group through a web browsing session, where they control what everyone sees.  Learners are also able to share websites that they find back to the trainer.

The app also has features to permit multi-user private chat - I'm asuming more for groups on the same wifi network, but not necessarily in the same room; saving and editing of bookmarks; and the ability to communicate onwards via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.  You can also print via AirPrint.

The update promises integration with DropBox, "document sideloading" and photo sharing.

The current version of RabbleBrowser is available in the iTunes App Store for two dollars.

Apps with Culture

Cross cultural awareness is a big topic now within international organisations, as employees seek to better understand their overseas clients and colleagues in order to improve communications, operating efficiencies and customer service. But it's a minefield and a thorough study would take too long for most people.

In the initial stages, it's only at time of need that someone needs to know how best to interact with overseas contacts.  The deeper understanding can come later and draw on experience as well as the theory.

Many websites offer tools that enable you to compare your culture to that of another country in an attempt to give you some initial pointers.  So it's natural that some of these have migrated to the mobile world.

I've recently downloaded two iPhone apps.

CultureGPS is available in two versions.  Based on the work of Hofstede, the free basic version just allows you see the cultural profile of those countries analysed according to his five dimensional model, focusing on:

1. Power Distance
2. Individualism
3. Masculinity
4. Uncertainty Avoidance
5. Long-term Orientation

The extent to which each country scores against each dimension is illustrated by a bar chart, alongside which you can remind yourself as to the definitions and characteristics of each.

The Pro version (currently a pricey £17.49) allows you to assess  your own cultural profile by responding to a 25 question survey and then to compare this to the analysed countries.  You can also compare countries with each other.  Practically, you can also review hints and tips on dealing with colleagues or clients from those countries.

Given the popularity of the Hofstede model, these apps - particularly the Pro version - will be great tools for those who have a greater interest in this topic.

The other app - this one is also free - is Cultural Advisor and is a result of a collaboration between Cisco and Aperian Global.

You start off by completing an 18 question survey that produces your own personal cultural profile.  This is an abridged version of the GlobeSmart Assessment Profile.  

Unlike Hofstede's five dimensions, your profile is plotted along three continuum:

1. Egalitarianism > Status
2. Direct > Indirect
3. Task > Relationship

When you click on your own position on each scale, you see - and hear - an overview of each type.

You then have two choices - to compare yourself to another country's profile or to another individual.  In the case of another individual, you need to first register yourself on the developer's website, presumingly to be able to then enter the details of someone else who will have done the same. I didn't actually try this out.

Clicking on the second culture's position on each of the three scales brings up some hints and tips on dealing with that culture.

This model is probably better for those looking for a more practical and simple approach to cross cultural awareness.  It is certainly easier to pick up the core themes with this app.

Leadership and Management Development Support Apps

A few weeks ago, I decided to search the iTunes App Store to see what might be available to support leadership and management development training.  I found half a dozen or so serious contenders for mobile learning content in this area.  I'll admit to wasting money on a couple of solutions that proved disappointing, but did find three totally free apps that put the former to shame.

HBR Tips from Harvard Business Review is quite simply a daily digest of edited hints and tips from various publications.  Some are more relevant than others, depending on your own circumstances, but overall they provide a range of useful "thoughts for the day".  You're also able to forward individual tips via Twitter and other methods.  I regularly share the most useful tips via Twitter and further into my organisation's Yammer network.

GoodPractice Top Tips for Managers from Good Practice Limited offers a wide range of tips more targeted at a management audience.  The tips are organised into three categories:  personal performance, management skills and communication skills.  Within each category, the tips are broken down further into between four and twelve topics such as decision making, managing your team and written communication.

Each individual tip, e.g. decision-making essentials, is covered very well, with a good balance of background theory and practical steps. If you find a tip that you want to refer back to again, you can mark it as a favourite and later retrieve this from a fourth Favourites category.  I've not counted them all, but there have to be around 100 tips.  One tip is chosen by random and featured on the home page.

If you're looking for an app to support leadership skills training, then MindTools from MindTools.com would meet your needs.  This app particularly focuses on popular leadership and management theories, the sort that you'd study on an MBA course. Hence I feel this is more appropriate for a leadership development audience, although clearly a management population would benefit from the material.

There are over 100 tools, divided into twelve categories, such as problem solving, time management and communication skills.  Examples of tools within these topic areas are root cause analysis, the urgent/improvement matrix and the Johari Window, respectively.

Each theory is supported by charts and diagrams where appropriate and you can forward individual tools to others via e-mail.  You can also elect to receive the free Mind Tools newsletter every week that delivers new tools to your in-box.  There is also a useful search feature, which enables you to quickly review the tools available based on your choice of words.

This particular app would also be a great tool for trainers, as the content will enable you to get up-to-speed quickly with the background on a particular model.

Together, these three apps provide a great iPhone-based resource.  They don't yet appear to be available for other phone types and as they don't exist in iPad-friendly versions, I understand they only appear iPhone-sized on these larger devices.

 

 

Webinars on the Move...? Then Light the Fuze!

I was reading about the ten best iPhone productivity apps and noticed that one of them was the app for FuzeMeeting.  

I don't recall encountering FuzeMeeting before and it's one of a long line - and seemingly ever-increasing - range of web-conferencing packages, but what stood out was the fact that they had an app for all of the current main-stream mobile devices:  iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android.  In fact, one writer stated that FuzeMeeting was a reason in itself to buy a tablet PC!

I'm sure I'll now be bombarded with suggestions for other providers that can do this clean-sweep, but as a user of one of the major platforms that doesn't offer this, I was heartened to see that it was possible.

FuzeMeeting does the basics such as sharing documents and your desktop (the sharer needs to download a plug-in), with a text chat window; and all with an integrated teleconference and HD video conferencing - great for those in-built cams on mobile devices.  UK iPhone users have commented on the fact that you had to a call a US telephone number, but since these reviews were posted on the App Store a year ago, FuzeMeeting has introduced a wide range of international dial-in numbers. I particularly like how the system manages your resources, both flat and multimedia.

If you want to record your webinar or run webinar-style events or training sessions, then you'll need to upgrade to the Pro version.

Pricing appears very competitive.

Click here for their demo movie and here for a more detailed training session, including the mobile options.

So if your training audience is global and mobile (that only really rhymes in US English), then this might be a good option for delivering simple straightforward online classroom training.

 

 

An App for Your Leadership Diet

My own plans in the mobile learning space will kick off with DIY rapid content development, but I'm already looking for early entrants into the generic m-learning market. There's not much out there yet - not surprising given the still fledgling nature of this delivery channel, although that's set to change as the year progresses - so I'm looking first in the app world, given the fact that app development has already succeeded into facilitating cross-platform content creation.

This afternoon, while browsing the Ken Blanchard website, I uncovered How2Lead for my iPhone.  When I came to download it, I was really surprised to see that there wasn't a single review for this app (at least not in the UK iTunes App Store). Admittedly the app was only released on 5 February 2011, but I hope that more people take advantage of it.

The well-executed idea behind the app is that it's a feed of valuable (and always up-to-date) content from the Ken Blanchard Companies.  

The app integrates a number of feeds:

• LeaderChat - a weekly blog for managers and leaders
• Twitter - from across The Ken Blanchard Companies
• Ken's Blog - Mr Blanchard's blog: How We Lead
• Coaching - blog postings from The Coaching Source Blog, authored by various coaching experts
• YouTube - the videos from Ken Blanchard's YouTube video channel
• Government - a blog for managers and leaders in the government sector
• New Leaders - up-to-date postings written by a group of young leaders to support new leaders

And this is not a quickly thrown-together mash-up, as so many content-integrators can be, but a well-designed app that is easy to navigate and soon had me drilling down into the wealth of related resources referenced in the various feed items.

Not only is the content topical and bang up-to-date, but it's full of great self-study learning resources, especially within the YouTube video assets.  And above all, it's all free!

I'll be posting its first UK review shortly!

 

Getting the Edge on Mobile Learning

This is a first for me....a review based on a version of a new book that I bought for my Kindle.  And appropriately for an e-book reader, it's a book about mobile learning.

The Mobile Learning Edge is probably the first book to specifically target the corporate learning and development space, rather than the use of mobile devices with the education sector.

The introductory chapter provides a brief history of mobile technologies and defines mobile learning and the business drivers and models for its use.  It finishes with some of the typical benefits for this method of learning and challenges some of the myths and misconceptions surrounding its use.

The second chapter tackles a number of topics under the banner of a mobile learning ecostyem, including:  devices, content, infrastructure, tools and concepts. This is book's mobile learning technoloy primer, though it finishes with hints of what's to come later in the book in terms of the different used for mobile learning, namely:  information retrieval; information gathering and analysis; communication interacting and networking; and the management of learning, knowledge and performance.

If technology talk is not for you and you're more interested in the human factors that will underpin your mobile learning strategy, then the third chapter will be of interest.  This introduces seven principles for employee training via mobile devices, including how employees learn from solving problems that matter to them and learn best in concrete situations where the context matters to them. Each is examined in turn with an emphasis on how each principle should be applied to mobile learning.

If you're looking for numerous examples of what mobile learning could look like in your organisation, then the next four chapters provide lots of examples in the categories mentioned earlier.  If you needed any reminding that the use of mobile devices is already a form of (informal) learning, then many of the examples will prove this point.

Chapter eight gets down to discussing how you should develop your mobile learning strategy, including how to future-proof it, given the constant progress in this technology area.  Chapter nine looks at the mobile learning design process, including not only analysing the business needs, but also the characteristics of the learners and the devices they use.

The final chapter looks at implementing and managing an enterprise mobile learning offering, before the book concludes with a very useful appendix listing a wealth of further resources and information.

This was also the first e-book where I used the Kindle's highlighting feature.  My first clipping:

[We] become anxious if our batteries run out of power, or if we can't locate our mobile phone - a condition referred to as "nomophobia".  Classic!

Learning Transfer - More Than A Cameo Role

I've written a few times about my interest in using technology to empower the learning transfer process.  Full-service learning follow-through tools such as Action Plan Mapper and Friday5s offer a powerful solution to the problem of how to ensure that learning is put into practice back in the workplace.

At a more simplistic level, many of us have used e-mail as a way to keep in touch with learners and to either remind them of key points from the training or encourage them to keep plugging away at their action plans.

Last week, I received my first demonstration in the UK of a new e-mail based tool that sends out short single-question scenario-based assessments that encourage each learner to reflect on the learning received and apply that to a specific situation, by responding to say three possible options.

The Cameo tool automatically bounces back an e-mail containing feedback based on the answer given by the learner and within that feedback you can include links to other related resources to provide reinforcement and additional learning opportunities

The easy-to-use interface allows the trainer to set up a series of questions to be automatically sequenced at regular user-defined intervals and sent out to each group based on a trigger date, most usually the date of the classroom course or e-learning module.  The system's database keeps a close eye on the responses received, can chase in a number of ways those that miss a message and reports the overall performance of the group, helping to provide evidence of the levels of participation and learning reinforcement.

A short demonstration helps to show the entire process.

And if, like me, you wondered if an e-mail based system would work given the bulging in-boxes most of us have, apparently one client - with similar concerns - reported an impressive 95% participation rate.

Launched in the US last autumn, a second version of the software is heading our way in a few weeks's time.  Future enhancements, I understand, may include the ability to integrate the tool into your own LMS.

I like the simplicity of the approach, which tackles the issues of retaining knowledge after a training event, the need for application of learning on the job and preparing learners to meet the challenges ahead through scenario-based questioning.  With Blackberries and iPhones in the pockets of some learners, then this platform also provides a form of m-learning.

A Complete "Skill-Builder" Blend

Now I'm a big-picture thinker (INTJ in the MBTI world) and in my ideal world, completeness is the key to success (and global domination, but that's for another day).

So I was very impressed to discover the Rapid Skill-Builder solution from the Worldwide Center for Organizational Development.

I discovered them from an e-learning perspective but - as part of their "completeness", their solution is also available as an m-learning solution and t-learning (yes, t-learning - or trainer-led).

Essentially, via either a face-to-face route (short 2-3 hours workshops), or one via e-learning or a mobile device, you can offer your employees a complete competency development programme that literally covers every topic you would hope to find.  You could seamlessly blend the different methods too.

Whichever route you take, the formats are the same, with video scenarios used to demonstrate the theory and either trainers' notes or audio narration to deliver the facilitation aspects.  Consistent supporting materials help both the trainer and learner through the material.

The material has also been validated by the UK's Institute of Leadership and Management, an organisation I particularly respect, having worked with them in previous roles.  In fact, the material can be studied as part of more formal accredited programmes.

The pricing is transparent and very attractive, especially as you are offered a complete out-of-the box skills and competency development approach.

This is definitely a solution worth investigating if you have a clean sheet and are looking to introduce blended learning into your learning and development strategy.