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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).
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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 gary@training-games.com.
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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.”
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