This year, The eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering made an evolutionary morph, becoming Learning Solutions 2010. As Heidi Fisk noted in the opening General Session, this reflects the continuing evolution of the Guild itself, to the broader perspective that many, or even most, of the members have recognized in the year that has passed. (See the video.)
In fact, total attendance at the Learning Solutions Conference & Expo 2010 grew by 15% compared to the last Annual Gathering, to almost 1,100 participants. Many of the conference participants were enrolled in The e-Learning Foundations Intensive and in the optional pre-conference certificate programs. In addition, for over half of the attendees, this was their first eLearning Guild conference. The Expo also grew, as 53 vendors were present to demonstrate their products and services and to answer questions from visitors.
The activities
So what did all those people find to occupy their week? Over 230 learning activities delivered by over 100 presenters, to begin with. Many of these activities were of the “unconference” variety that was added last year. These included new features, such as the early morning Laptop Labs and the Rapid Multimedia Studio (RMM). (See Figures 1 and 2.) The former presented tricks and tips for using popular e-Learning tools, such as Flash, Articulate, Captivate, and social media technologies. The RMM showcased tools and best practices that make e-Learning more engaging and effective through inclusion of audio and video. “Traditional” unconference sessions, namely Breakfast Bytes, Master Classes, and The ID Zone, were also featured.
Figure 1: Brent Schlenker leads an early morning Laptop Labs session.
Figure 2: The Rapid Multimedia Studio
was a new learning activity this year.
Another new feature this year was the Speaker Clinics at the end of each day. Because participants often don’t get time to ask everything they want to know about during the sessions, the Clinics provided a time to sit down with the speakers and go into those questions.
The eLearning Foundations Intensive and the Certificate Programs
Before the actual Learning Solutions Conference began, hundreds of participants got an early start in the eLearning Foundations Intensive and in eight optional Certificate programs.
The e-Learning Foundations Intensive was a two-day event specifically for those with corporate training expertise, but limited experience in the design, implementation, or management of a successful organizational e-Learning effort. The program offered sessions in five sections: Setting your Strategy, Tools & Technologies, New Platforms, e-Learning Instructional Design, and Staffing & Project Management. (See Figure 3.) Each section included an overview of the topic, breakout sessions that drilled down into the specifics, and finally a facilitated planning activity so those who attended could document the foundations of their own e-Learning plan.
Figure 3: A session in the eLearning Foundations Intensive on the use of Virtual Reality.
Presented by the best-known names in the e-Learning industry — along with seasoned practitioners sharing their real-life experiences — every session offered vocabulary, concepts, strategies, checklists, and resources to help ensure success.
The optional Pre-conference Certificate Programs offered new skills and knowledge that those who attended could immediately put to work in their organization. (See Figure 4.) Programs addressed Moodle hands-on, designing scenario-based e-Learning, Adobe Captivate, success as a do-it-yourself developer, advanced Articulate Studio ’09, making e-Learning content compelling, design of branching simulations, and using structured interactivity. Every participant received a certificate from The eLearning Guild documenting their participation in the workshop.
Figure 4: Patti Shank leads “Boredom-Proofing Learning Content: How to Make Learning Content More Compelling,” a pre-conference Certificate program.
Concurrent sessions
Some concurrent sessions were Standing Room Only, with crowds backed out into the hallways. The most heavily attended sessions (34 of them) were those that addressed these general topics:
- Compelling, engaging design
- Project management
- Mobile learning
- Social media
- Games and simulations
- Converting ILT to self-paced
- Visual design
- Tools: Captivate, Articulate
If you attended Learning Solutions 2010, you will be receiving (if you have not already) an email with links to the handouts and slide decks provided by the speakers.
But if you weren’t at the conference, don’t despair! There were even more people using Twitter this year than last and this certainly added an extra dimension to participation. Mark Oehlert captured some early tweets and has posted them on his blog at http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/2010/03/live-coverage-of-the-elearning-guilds-learning-solutions-2010.html . (Added April 7, 2010) Kevin Thorn has posted summaries of the conference on his Learning Nuggets blog: http://www.learnnuggets.com/2010/04/nuggethead-summary-of-learning-solutions-2010/. You can check out other comments people made (and the links they tweeted) by searching on Twitter itself for the hash tag #ls2010, or you can review some of the archives that attendees set up, such as http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/LS2010 .
Bloggers were busy, too. Here are some posts from the Conference:
Cammy Bean:
- Bob Mosher: Performance Support and Learning at the Moment of Need
http://cammybean.kineo.com/2010/03/bob-mosher-performance-support-and.html - Sir Ken Robinson: The Element - How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything – Wed Keynote
http://cammybean.kineo.com/2010/03/ls2010-sir-ken-robinson-element-how.html - Keynote with Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide
http://cammybean.kineo.com/2010/03/ls2010-keynote-with-jonah-lehrer-how-we.html
Gina Minks: Adventures in Corporate Education http://gminks.edublogs.org/ (search using Category ls2010 to find her entries on the Conference)
Keynotes
Sir Ken Robinson delivered the opening keynote, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.” (See Figure 5.) Sir Ken, a consultant to education groups and governments, opened DevLearn three years ago, and on this occasion updated his thoughts on how we must change the way we understand ourselves and how we behave.
Figure 5: Sir Ken Robinson delivered
the opening keynote.
Sir Ken’s remarks centered on passion, imagination, and creativity. Imagination, he said, powers human beings and sets us apart from every other species. It is the power to bring into your mind things that are not present to your senses. Imagination is critical to our progress, because while history is a contest for meaning, there are no facts about the future. It is there that creativity, the power to put your imagination to work, comes into play. And now, imagination and creativity have brought us to the place where we face the greatest challenges of any generation in history.
We carry the burden of making sense of the use of new technologies, and learning is the key. Our degree of connectedness today is unprecedented in human history, with so many people using the new social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Yet so many people don’t get that a huge shift is taking place. We continue to carry around old ideas that we can’t shake off. Our conceptual world is shaped by our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and culture. When we move into the future, we have to challenge the things we take for granted. Sir Ken offered several examples of this shaping: the generational differences can be as simple as whether one wears a wristwatch, for example, and cultural differences illustrated by what we see in a photo of a tiger in a jungle (Southeast Asians see the jungle; Westerners see the tiger).
There are things we need to get over, Robinson says: linearity. Stories. Resumes. All of these sound neat and planned because we impose neatness and planning on the story, so it doesn’t’ seem so chaotic and messy. He asked us to think of our life journeys that brought us to the Conference – we could not have foreseen this.
Next, Sir Ken spoke about passion and its critical importance to those life journeys. Many people don’t enjoy the work they do, so they change directions or they just get on with it (endure it rather than enjoy what they do). But there are people whose work is what they are. It defines them. They are in their element. They love what they do. To write his book, Sir Ken talked to many of these people. For example: Bart Conner, a man in Oklahoma who learned when he was a child that he could walk on his hands as easily as he could on his feet. This was how he got into gymnastics and discovered his passion, and eventually won Olympic gold. If you have a natural capacity for something, you just get it.
We all have natural aptitudes, but to be really good at things you have to love them. You never work again once you find your passion. Finding the nexus of passion and aptitude is the key to doing something great. Pay attention to what interests you. You can’t predict what will come of being encouraged. We evolve our futures, we don’t predict them. When ordinary people find their element, the results can be extraordinary.
Sir Ken concluded by reminding us that collaboration is the heart of creative work. Our old learning systems have been based on individualism. The new learning systems can be based on collaboration. Recognize that the results will be unpredictable.
Jonah Lehrer delivered the Thursday morning keynote, titled “How We Decide: The New Science of Decision Making.” (See Figure 6.) Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired and blogs at The Frontal Cortex (http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/).
Figure 6: Jonah Lehrer speaking on
how we make decisions.
Lehrer presented what research is telling us about how humans make decisions, which also affects how we learn. But he began by going back to Plato: The way to make decisions is to be rational – Plato used the example of the rational rider, controlling wild, impetuous horses. This theory elevated reason and denigrated emotion. By contrast, what we have learned more recently is that people are not nearly as rational as we might like to believe, and emotions may not be as dangerous as we think.
He continued by telling a true story about a man named Elliott, who lost the ability to experience emotions. He also lost the ability to make decisions when he lost his emotions: emotions are an essential component of all our decisions. Pure reason turns out to be a disease, not a gift from the gods.
Emotions are shaped by education and experience, and we are not always aware of all the inputs that contribute to the emotion, and much of the input has to do with our ability to recognize patterns. Researchers have found that dopamine is the chemical that is responsible for the perception of patterns (dopamine is not just responsible for feelings of pleasure, as was originally thought). We get bored quickly by new stuff – this is an adaptation to dopamine. At the same time, the brain responds to what is known as a “prediction error signal” which happens when an expected reward doesn’t happen. Neurons re-configure their response when they receive this signal. The signal is marked by negative feelings, and this helps learning. In other words, the brain learns by making mistakes. There is utility in making mistakes.
The reason that classroom teaching isn’t all that effective is because the lessons remain abstract. What works better is simulator training , which allows the learner to safely make mistakes. This understanding has made a tremendous difference, for example, in aircraft pilot training and therefore in air travel safety.
However, the secret to decision making goes beyond trusting your gut. We can’t always be rational, and at the same time we can’t always just trust our gut. We can be misled into doing profoundly stupid things by trusting our feelings. The brain is always looking for unexpected rewards – it keeps trying to find a pattern.
The key is metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It helps people avoid avoidable errors. One way that this works is through loss aversion: losses hurt twice as much as gains help. For example, people are more likely to sell stocks that go up. Selling stocks that go down locks in the loss.
The only way to avoid loss aversion is to know about it. Lehrer’s way of expressing this is to point out that a monkey throwing darts would outperform most political pundits – and the most famous pundits are the worst at predictions. It is therefore important to reflect on your own beliefs, to spot the things you believe that aren’t true.
Another aspect of metacognition is the ability to allocate attention away from what you want. The marshmallow test – an experiment that involved asking very young children to wait until the experimenter returned to the room before consuming a treat left in front of them – turned out to be highly predictive. Kids who could wait until the experimenter returned tended to be far more successful later in life. Specifically, kids who could wait scored 210 points higher on their SAT scores. These were children who were able to orient their attention to the accomplishment of a goal. That’s good decision-making. But that doesn’t mean we should give every kid the marshmallow test and write off those who fail it. Just teach the kids who can’t wait how to wait – peer modeling via video works. Do the skills generalize?
Metacognition allow us to take advantage of our pluralist brain – it has many different strategies for dealing with reality. The mind is like a Swiss Army knife. Each strategy is suited to a particular task and situation. Just help people learn to pick the right one.
The closing keynote was given by Leonard Brody, an entrepreneur and author, whose topic was “365 Days From Now.” (See Figure 7.)
Figure 7: Leonard Brody
delivered the closing keynote.
Some key points that Brody raised were about behavioral economics and the predictability of our future. He believes that everything you need to know about social media can be summed up in just one short sentence: “Now people can talk to each other.” The “how” is not important. People will figure that out. The important question is, “Why?” Why do you do something, and why should you care?
Television still has more volume than social media (in terms of viewers vs. users), but it’s not about volume. The importance of social media is about how our lives have changed and are changing due to technology. Brody says that we are virtually aliens, compared to how we behaved ten years ago and what we can do. Technology has fundamentally altered our behaviors and perceptions in that short space of time.
The Global Giveback Competition Awards
Eric Berg introduced us on Thursday morning to LINGOs (Learning for International NGOs) http://ngolearning.org/. LINGOs is a consortium of over 45 international humanitarian relief, development, conservation and health organizations. LINGOs provides the latest learning technologies and courses from its partners so these non-profits can increase the skill levels of their employees, and therefore increase the impact of their programs.
In December, 2009, LINGOs and the eLearning Guild launched the first eLearning Global Giveback competition by asking LINGOs member organizations to identify courses they needed but for which they lacked the resources to develop. LINGOs posted the need on the internet, drawing volunteers from The eLearning Guild and the blogosphere, particularly the Rapid eLearning Blog. Many responded, and in two months, developed over 40 courses for agencies such as Acción, ChildFund, and Christian Aid.
Sponsoring companies made their products available for volunteers to use in developing courses for the competition: Articulate, CodeBaby, eLearningZoom, Instant Demo, Metamorphosis, Thinking Cap and Webucate. E-Learning experts also provided advice and assistance to the competitors: Mike Culligan (LINGOs), Lance Dublin (Dublin Consulting), Joe Fournier (Rapid eLearning), Allison Rossett (San Diego State University), Clive Shepherd (Fastrak Consulting), Chris Willis (Media1) and Brent Schlenker (The eLearning Guild). E-Learning professionals entered the competition in two categories, individual/group, and institutional or corporate. Judges evaluated the top five courses in the individual/group category and the top four in the institutional category.
After recognizing the Lingos members in the room, Berg introduced the winners of the competition. Tom Kuhlmann and David Anderson developed the winning course in the individual/group category, “Using Communication Tools at Christian Aid.” (See Figure 8.) WebOffices created the winner for the institutional category, “Preventing HIV,” also for Christian Aid based in the United Kingdom.
Figure 8: Winners and Finalists in the Individuals/Group category of the LINGOs eLearning Global Giveback competition.
The Finalists in the Individuals/Group category were:
- Amanda Warner, “Build, Manage & Improve Credit” for Accion International
- Bonnie Taylor and Lisa Barnstorm, “OMB Circular A-122” for ACDI-VOCA
- Diana Jaffee, Darla Wiggington, and Ioanna Fergadiotou, “Atlas Teaching Method” for ChildFund
- Jill Freeman and Susan Wall, “All You Need to Know to Conduct a Tract-T Survey” for Population Services International
The Finalists in the Development Companies category were:
- Monarch Media (www.monarchmedia.com), “Leadership Orientation” for Acción International
- Finitiatives Learning (www.learnwithflip.com), “Risk Management” for Acción International
- Aptara, Inc (www.aptaracorp.com), “Innovation Behaviors” for Population Services International
See you in … June and November!
When Learning Solutions 2010 closed just after noon on Friday, March 26, a thousand tired (but happy) participants headed for home. Thanks to all who came, and to all the speakers and sponsors who helped make this conference such a tremendous success!
We hope you will join us for our upcoming events in 2010:
- mLearnCon: San Diego, June 15-17, 2010
- DevLearn|10: San Francisco, November 3-5, 2010
