LMS Pilot is Launching Friday

All I can say right now is I'm losing my mind. See previous post.

Details to follow regarding this adventure very soon......

Laughing at my own memory lost - Use it or Lose it

Once a month I run two 3 hour computer sessions. They cover the general office productivity software you would expect. Each month I have a good little chuckle at the staff that are taking the course for the second and sometimes third time. They keep taking it, not because the course isn't well received, but because they can't remember what they learned.

The reviews of the course are excellent, but the staff walks away and then doesn't use what they learn right away. By the time they do get to learn the new skills taught in the course they've forgotten what they were in the first place.

Tonight I had to laugh at myself because I've done exactly the same thing. I participated in a workshop at the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering but haven't applied any of that knowledge until the last few days. Now I'm trying madly to remember what I had learned. Was it apply A, B and then C or A, C and then B....uggg. A bit of time has now passed since then and I'm struggling to find notes, demos, and handouts. I've found everything except the handouts and the examples that were shared.

Just one more thing to consider I suppose when creating lessons and workshops for your users. Do you allow them to re-take a course? How many times? Do you have provisions for addressing learners that have misplaced their material weeks, months later? What kind of additional support do you offer once the course has ended?

LMS has brought new stress; therefore new toys

(A few general ramblings below.)

My LMS is hopefully piloting on Tuesday of next week. I've got a couple of things I want tweaked before I send it out, but am getting very hopeful. Not to mention I can feel the fire of many dragons just at the nape of my neck to get it out.

All is very stressful when you have so many tasks before you to complete and your work computer is twice as slow as your home computer. That doesn't seem quite right, however, it may push me towards working in my pjs more often. I'm not sure that's a horrible idea. (It is hard not to picture anyone who says they work at home sitting in front of their computer in flannel pajamas, bunny slippers and coffee right?...mine aren't bunny shaped though).

It's also hard to keep motivated to come into work when the weather has taken a turn for the better. It's been a long, long, cold winter....this proves I'm getting old; I never use to complain about the snow. Seeing the sun com back was invigorating. The weather also then got warmer and many of us Ontario folks have been in shorts this week. This makes it all very hard to want to stay behind the computer instead of getting up and going.

I have for some bizarre reason decided to really get moving and have taken up running (I don't advise this....every time I go out I wonder what the heck I was thinking). I've also started walking every day there has been sun. So far that's been for a few weeks. I'm guessing on of my new toys to purchase is going to be a new umbrella and rubber boots for the rainy days.

Another sign I've been stressed is I went out and got an iPod Touch instead of buying things that I really need (like bunny slippers to work in). Hense the NikeWomen widget at the side of my blog. I'll leave it there for a bit - I know it stretches the blog and I apologize for that to those that need to scroll left/right now. Seems like a neat little workout tool, tracker, etc. gadget to add to my Touch and I'm happy to find/join anyone else who wants a "buddy" using this app. It looks like you can utilize this directly through your computer as well. Give me a shout through twitter and I'd be happy to link up with you and get moving together. Oh an it says NikeWomen, but you can make your avatar look boyish too.

This has been a strange rambling post, but to summarize I'm looking forward to (in no particular order):

• more sun
• more warm weather
• camping
• biking in the woods
• swimming
• campfires
• holidays
• LMS finally working so I can move on to something else

Too Busy To Keep In Touch

I haven't posted much lately because I've been swamped with so many tasks at my office. The entire department seems very overwhelmed lately. For those curious, I am madly working away at my pilot launch. I'm convinced that it will be a go for next Monday. Whether it is at 100% ready to go or not. Those items not working should be noted by my pilot group and their extra input should hopefully reinforce the necessity of these items to work before the go live date to the organization.

I sent a list into the vendor of what needed to be "corrected" and that contained well over 30 items. I've yet to see many of them fixed yet. Again, I'm going into a slight panic mode. I'm very unsure of why they say "Sure, Yes, We'll concentrate on you and get this going in a few weeks." What actually happens is you don't hear from them for a few weeks wondering all the while what is going on and where your project stands.

It's sad that I'm already wishing for the next LMS before this one has even launched. (Dan: you'll be the first one I call as soon as I ever get a budget... :)

We'll this all being said has left me with the urge to write a nasty email to the vendor...again. I get to wishy-washy on the phone and less demanding as I need to be with them.

Wish me luck!

A New Blog is Born

I've mentioned before that I presented at the eLearning Guild's 2009 Annual Gathering on how to create and start your own blog.

Well I'm happy to announce that since that presentation I have been notified of a great new blog that has (so to speak) just "hit the stands".

Please feel free to take a visit by Treehouse Views and read/comment on Michele Stouffer's brand new blog. Michele is an elearning instructional designer at Ford Motor Company and I'm sure we'll all gain much knowledge from her and her experiences in elearning as she moves forward with her blog postings.

If you've started a new blog since the Annual Gathering, drop me a line and I'll be happy to list yours here as well.

Earth Hour 2009 Before and After Pictures

The National Geographic News website has some great pictures of city scapes before and after (or during) Earth Hour. I'm happy to see the Toronto skyline is captured in the pictures.












Photograph by Dick Hemingway via WWF-Canada, retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/photogalleries/earth-hour-before-after/photo4.html, 04/01/09

My Slideshare Presentations Hit 10,000 Views (April fools on me)

(UPDATED: 04/01/09 11:40am... to good to be true.....http://blog.slideshare.net/2009/04/01/happy-april-fools-day/)

I was pleasantly surprised today to get an email from Slideshare notifying me that one of my presentations has had a dramatic increase in views in the last 24 hours. So I went to look and wow, I've had just over 10,000 views of each of the 2 presentations I have up.

One is my slides used during my presentation at the eLearning Annual Gathering this past March. It's topic was Learning From Blogging: Creating your own and Learning from Others'. The other one I have posted was for the GTA Training & Organization Development Network and it's purpose was to introduce the members to some of the new web 2.0 tools being used. Although they don't seem so new a year later.

Such an overwhelming response has piqued me to go back an see if I have others to share. There is at least one that I know I will add: eCollaboration Tools.

Something I face every day with my supervisors is there lack of understanding and slight intimidation of the tools I use daily. They are trying very hard to keep up with my thirst for technology, social networking and everything else 2.0ish. They also appreciate my enthusiasm for using and seeking out new tools, but at the same time are intimidated by anything not on paper. I'm extremely happy that people are looking at these presentations and truly hope that they help others understand some of the web 2.0 tools a little more, but more importantly make them seem less intimidating.

LMS Pilot is Looming Near

Oh this is getting scary. My LMS pilot is scheduled to occur in a few weeks and I'm getting very nervous. There is so much about the system I don't like that I'm now getting very discouraged about the entire thing. Having the fear that it's going to drastically fail is not a good feeling. It certainly is not one I can project to others.

I suppose I need to act as if I'm 100% behind the project, but what if I am not. How do you, on one hand, encourage others to use it and be excited that we now have an LMS, and on the other hand hate the whole thing and wish you could start it all over.

Oh my dilemma is drawing more and more near. I feel a bit like one of those screaming girls in a horror movie that's is running through the woods, in the dark, it's raining, I'm wearing 4 inch stilettos, a heel breaks, and the killer is behind the tree. You just kind of know how it's going to turn out don't you?

Well here's hoping it's actually Bambi behind the tree and not Jason.

(Thanks for listening to the rantings of a sick person implementing an LMS)

Honoured by a reposting of "LMS Pitfalls" to Spanish site

I was honoured earlier this week by a fellow blogger requesting if he could re-post my post on LMS Pitfalls. Anthony Montalvo of Buenos Aires, Argentina pens the blog 34.35°S, 58.24°W - Navegando el aprendizaje 2.0.

I really agree with one the comments of his re-posted version and that is that many on the list should very much be part of our common sense when implementing an LMS. The reality though is that some of these we take for granted and just assume the system will work or function as we expect. What seems natural and second hand to you may not have crossed the LMS vendor's mind.

Anthony's blog includes other topics such as collaboration, implementation, Moodle, and answers to The Big Question among many other things. Take some time to stop by his blog to read and comment on a few posts. He does offer translation of his blog, so everyone is welcome.

Reflecting on "My Big Find" of the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering '09

It dawned on me today that I've been able to come away with one truly "Big Find" from my attendance at each of the last three Annual Gatherings. There are many, many finds to be had but, I think the "Big Find" is that one new person that amazes, inspires, and teaches you something you didn't know before. Meeting this person makes you want to learn all their tips and tricks, and keeps you driven to keep learning more about the elearning field in general. They are much like that latest television show you always watch or tape so you never miss a single episode.

For the first of my attendance that was Brent Schlenker. His presentations inspired me to begin blogging. My second year of attendance was B.J. Schone, his blog and his knowledge about mobile learning kept me reading each an every one of his posts. I'll admit I've also sent him many questions over the past two years about elearning and LMSs.

This year I think the "Big Find" was Tom Kuhlmann. I happen to come across a flyer in the lobby and after reading it walked into the expo to see if I could get my hands on a Captain Smiley from the Articulate booth. Not only did I add to my little collection for squeezey characters, but to my surprised I learned so many neat Articulate tricks from him in just 30 minutes.

I'm sorry to admit here, that it wasn't until I walked away that I realized why his name was so familiar. Tom is the author of The Rapid eLearning Blog. What I love about his postings is that they may come from the Articulate camp, but you need not have the tool to find his postings useful. Each week there are simple and practical tips, tricks, and demos that anyone can incorporate into any of their training. The past few weeks have included:
Mar. 24, 2009 3 Easy Ways to Create Silhouette Characters
Mar. 17, 2009 Here’s Why PowerPoint 2007 Helps You Build Better E-Learning
Mar. 10, 2009 50 Practical Tips & Tricks to Build Better E-Learning
Mar. 03, 2009 3 Proven Techniques to Add Creativity to Your E-Learning Courses

This gentleman was truly a great find of this year's Annual Gathering. Thanks Tom for the continued inspiration to make my learning more engaging for my audience.

Earth Hour March 28, 2009 - (8:30pm - 9:30pm)

What are you planning to do this year for Earth Hour? If you haven't yet thought about it, now is the time. Cities, Towns, and Villages around the world are choosing to help save our planet from global warming with one simple act...turning their lights off for one hour. Wherever they are in the world they are clicking the switch and saving energy for one hour, that's it! Seems simple right? It is. If you have other power appliances you can turn off for one hour too, then great the more we save the better. But just turning off our lights around the world will save tens of thousands of Kilowatts of energy and help in stopping global warming. It's not the cure all for this issue, but it is a start in the right direction and something that we all can easily to in our own homes and places of work.

So take part and do your part to help save our planet...we all know it's the only one we have.

eLearning Course or Online Demo - which is better?

My co-worker and had a discussion today about what will come into our area over the next year and one of them was my goal to create several courses to go onto our LMS (once it's up of course). As the discussion went along she mentioned that she would like to do something where she could demonstrate how to do certain searches using her literature databases to employees. I responded with how easily that could be done by screen capturing her movements on the screen and adding voice over of how/what she is doing.

She responded in turn that she prefers to have them sit at one computer and her at another then she can take control of their screen and show them where to click and move throughout the program. They could then (through microphone/headset) ask her any questions as they come up. I thought these could be addressed through an FAQ section of an e-course.

So the big question arises. Is one format better than another? Would you rather sit in on a demo with many other people or take a course online by yourself? Does one format fit better for certain training than another? Do you have a personal preference on which you'd rather teach through and even learn through?

I actually suppose this is one of those "great debate" topics that never truly gets answered, but I'm still curious to any responses you'd like to share.

My Breakfast Byte on LMS Pitfalls

I facilitated a Breakfast Byte session at the eLearing Guild Annual Gathering and wanted to capture the points I shared and those of the participants. It's a long list so be prepared and is not in any particular order. These are many of the questions I've had to answer as I've gone along trying to get my system up.

1. Get your hands on a demo or sandbox version. Make sure you get to play with the LMS before purchasing.
2. Don't be in a rush to find something and just get it implemented.
3. If possible check to see what system others in your industry are using.
4. Make sure your team of stakeholders knows what they are looking for and need prior to viewing the demo. Make sure they are as informed as you.
5. Set weekly progress meetings with your vendor.
6. Ensure each side of the implementation knows exactly what tasks are being accomplished by each side (you and your vendor)
7. Make sure your HR database of employees has all the data you really need to track and report on your staff. Older HR systems may not have everything you need.
8. Make sure your HR system can communicated with the LMS system.
9. Consider whether you need an LMS that can be accessed from home or is inside the company "walls" enough. Can the LMS handle external access?
10. Training, training, training. Make sure you as the Administrator get training from a Learner level, then an Instructor level, and finally the Administrator level. Know what each person will see and be able to access.
11. Don't get pressured by the vendor to launch before you are comfortable with the system and know it is up to your personal/dept standards of excellence. Credibility will be lost by you if you launch to early and have too many bugs.
12. Ensure the reporting is extremely robust, customizable, exportable.
13. Roles - most LMS seem to offer training broken into learning roles. Is this a method you can use to group training for staff? Is this something that fits with your corp's learning models.
14. How robust is the testing/quizzing of the system? Is it even built in? Does the LMS mark a pass/fail or can it track down to the question level?
15. Can you import courses that have been created elsewhere and track the results from participation?
16. How well does the vendor understand SCORM compliance? Can they explain it to you?
17. Can you import courses or does the vendor have to do this for you? Each course could cost more money.
18. How user friendly and easily navigational is the system for learners, instructors and administrators?
19. Can students be easily updated, added, maintained?
20. Can the system be changed easily to match your organization's needs/branding? Can you do this or does the vendor have to make these changes?
21. Can you group your courses into categories that make sense to your learners?
22. Do you have a checklist of all the components that you want to see in an LMS to match your vendor against?
23. Can the system create courses (some can and still call themselves an LMS and not an LCMS)? More importantly, if so how robust are they or do you need to think about looking into a 3rd party course creation tool.
24. What types of content can be imported? video, audio, ppt, doc, xls, pdf, swf, anything else?
25. Do you and your vendor have the same idea of how the system will initially roll out? 1 course or several, only registration or online courses as well? Make sure you are both clear on what "go live" means.
26. Do you have the most current version of the system or are updates being created as you are trying to implement your system?
27. How often will you get updates?
28. Do you offer classroom courses as well as online courses? If so how well does the system manage the classroom courses for you based on your current training methods.
29. Research lots of LMSs before even going to the RFP stage. You'll be able to eliminate those that don't meet your requirements before going to stakeholders for input.
30. Name your LMS - give it a name that will mean something to your employees and keep them coming back to the system to learn.
31. Take advice from the vendor on how to role out the pilot of the system, but stick to what you also know will work best for your organization. They may have the methodology, but you may know the sample size that works best for you.
32. Find an IT buddy. Someone that can help you out and translate the computer language talk that goes along with implementing a system and getting it to talk to your internal system.
33. Find an LMS mentor, someone that has implemented a system before. Even if they implemented a different product they'll be able to advise.
34. Not everything is going to work 100% from the very start, so take it easy on yourself. Don't expect it all to fall into place right away.
35. Figure out what LMS elements are most important to you and get them up and running for the pilot, then work from there on making it more and more robust.
36. Do you have a backup plan should another dept start thinking and shopping for their own LMS?
37. How responsive is the vendor to your inquiries, troubleshooting, etc
38. Is there a yearly licence or one time fee, or per user fee
39. How often are upgrades issued? Are they part of the fee?
40. How long does the pilot take? How long do they think it will be up and running based on past customers?
41. Does the system track external learning events?
42. Do other users have comments they can share from learners of the system? Learner feedback?
43. Can you send email notification to learners?
44. Can it be integrated with your particular online calendar system?
45. Can you assign course dates to learners or do they have to assign themselves?
46. Is there space on the dashboard for news, updates, info text, on homepage?****
47. Is it searchable? By course title or right into a course? Do you have to use it’s elearning building tool to make it searchable?
48. Can you administer hands-on practical tests?
49. Are evaluations for courses available?
50. Does it have discussion boards, wikis, etc? Are these important to you? Do you even need them?
51. Does it have other social networking tools?
52. What is built in and what has to be an add-in?
53. How robust is the support documentation for the user and for the learner?
54. Can you set up courses that online some staff can access and not others? - assigned to a role?
55. Go to the top if you have to? Maybe weekly conversation with your project lead, but monthly meeting with owner of company or sales rep to keep project on track.
56. Try to list all the steps you will need to cover to get the system going.
57. What for vendors/sales reps that bully and are they showing you the "real" system? Can you see a demo from an actual user with out the vendor present?
58. How secure is the data by the vendor - if hosted?
59. Be prepared to go over budget.
60. Find out one key contact (from the provider) for your implementation project so that you can maintain constant communication.
61. Can you get ROI reporting from the system?
62. Can you produce performance appraisals, career paths, development paths? Is this something you need as an organization?
63. You can "turn off" the elements of the LMS you don't need or won't use.

Graphich Symbols: The 5th Language - Kevin Thorne

5 Languages

• spoken - may be fluent in more than one
• written - symbolic form of our spoken language
• mathematics -symbols for concepts and data
• body - language of expression
• symbols

Examples: nike swish, windows flag, facebook "f", target brand, golden arches

Symbol tips to get what is in your head, out in to graphics, into your course

How do we take thousands of years of communicating graphically into e-learning? World's most well know symbol - the olive branch.

Ancient Egyptians entire language was all symbols. Mayan symbols thousands of years ago look extremely similar to iphone app icons....hmmmmmm.

Native Indians created some symbols, but added some motion into their "pictures".

Sequential art - comics, Will Eisner PS monthly - 1951 The Preventative Maintenance Monthly. Taught driving safe but in "comics". "A graphic medium in which images are utilized in order to convey a sequential narrative."

The picture does not need to be professionally drawn, it just needs to convey the message. Put the "x" in the upper right corner to exit, we all already know that.

Shem says I'll give you 2 pigs to Thor for 5 jars of olives. They agreed, left, came back and forgot the deal. So they drew pictures of what they wanted to trade. But 1 pig equalling 50 beans was too much to draw. Drew 50 beans = 1 pig. But then Bubba came and wanted to trade a goat. But Bubba couldn't draw a goat. So they then created words 4 goats = 7 Jars of olives.

NOW...instead work backwards. Think of the words you want to convey, draw them as written language, convert to symbols.

Thinking of a clown:

• big nose
• big shoes
• poofy hair
• flower
• hat
• gloves
• big clothes
• make up
• tie

Can all be drawn with simple shapes. You can do it all yourself. Entire course hand drawn, hand written and the result was the same as an expensive coures.

Dan Roam - The back of the napkin. Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be made using the same simple steps.

Think of a cash register....you'll first think of an old time 1930's cash registered. Still a recongizeable symbol.

Squares, rectangles, lines, dots (triangles too) are all you need.

Simple frame - square inside a square, triangle at top

Again - square inside a square, half moon resting on top to the left, 2 lines up from the half moon, two dots on the right side of the "frame" - becomes a tv.

This is showing and sharing of symbol libraries. Complete library of basic shapes. Reusing over and over in slightly different configurations. Break apart the symbol in to basic shapes you can then create other symbols quicker and easily.

An object is first a shape. That shape occupies a space. That space defines the object. An object is a shape that occupies a space.

We can then stretch, squeeze, squash and squish basic shapes.

Like the 4 stage engine:

Intake - Consult, brainstorm, plan, team

Compression - Development, reviews, translate, edit

Ignite - launch involve engage market

Exhaust - measure, report, review, analyze

Increasing Learner Productivity with New Technologies

Participants are looking for information on new technologies, passing road blocks that are limiting us from using new technologies, facing generations using new tools - but faculty are not.

Feels like sales forces are the drive of early adopters. They need just-in-time information often about the products they need. Also within the education industry, field support, etc.

How do you allow staff to take time out to learn? How to get mgrs to understand this need to learn?

We're at this point in time where wikis, open source products are all becoming more stable, more structured and there for more used. Mobile products are still getting there. More roadblocks about having to learn in a new way. More so a large human/cultural issue about using a new tool. What is it that people are doing that we then need to figure out the best "new" way of how to do it? (all without the testing, piloting, etc because by the time you get to it the technology is old). Now the tools of today are easy to use, turn on, and get using it. This is all quite simple compared to 10 or even 5 years ago.

Why are some industries/areas embracing new technologies and others are not? 1, 9, 90 rule one creates, one reads, 90 don't quite get it.

Using blogs - if you have a question, comment, etc call a phone number and then it gets posted to a blog. The phone then becomes a bridge using the tool of blogging. Use old technologies and connect them to the new technologies. But how do we get the large groups to do it? Get over the fascination of the technology and use the business need to drive the use of the technology.

Most change happens one bite at a time. Perhaps we need to do it gradually. Send them to the website instead of answering the question. Or watch the trends of what people want to do, now try to figure out how you can bring them in.

Fail-forward-faster. Web 2.0 stuff is really cheap. Sometimes it's too cheap because it might get cut next year. Allow for some choice and individuality, but point everything back to one place. There are personal needs, business needs. Know your people where are they, what are they doing, how are they doing. Then decide on the tools that fit that best.

Try using Sharepoint to introduce elements of web 2.0 types of tools. Go with what your people know. Try sending more through emails as people are much more familiar with reading and scanning through emails and doing so quickly.

You need to learn how to feed information into these tools rather than waiting for people to find them. Let people go out and talk stuff up before you even turn it on and let it be used. Perhaps you always need to be ahead of the time, have the need ready, wait for them to ask for it.

Ie: NetMeeting years ago had little buy in, and now we're looking at gotomeeting, etc as tools we can't live with. FAIL - mandatory blogging...mandatory anything not good. Leaving it as - you should all be doing this, is very scary to your people. You want people to learn, but not tell them how to learn can sometimes scare them away as well.

Collaboration is incredibly powerful. The fact that millenials are so use to this is exciting.

Try putting web 2.0 questions into your interviews. Do they blog, do they use wikis, do they edit them....if so would they do it at work as well. You create buy in as you hire.

Learning from blogging: Creating your own and learning from other's

I'm actually presenting at the Annual Gathering in about 30 minutes or so and am quite excited. I really hope those in attendance enjoy the presentation and those that can't attend are free to take a look at my slides and forward any questions to myself.

AG09 Presentation (full slide presentation)

AG09 Presentation (handout - tba)

Mostly this is about the steps needed to start up your own blog and then ways to tweak the blog to make it your own. There will be some notes on how to tap into other blogs out there and in doing so learn from peers by reading theirs and connecting with them. I also will be presenting some info on changing the basic templates using some simple html tricks to make your blog uniquely your own or branding it to your corporation.

Get Dressed for Success! On-Screen Aesthetics for your courseware – Ng

Two screens shown – more positive of 2 screens is the one that is balanced, doesn’t have red, clear text.

Don’t judge a book by its cover? Is this true of your on-screen content? Here it is very true to keep your audience engaged from click one.

Placement,
Colour,
Font

Placement: 4 rectangles shown. Most popular choice is a large wider rectangle. Since the time of the Greeks they have been using the Perfect Rectangle, and to them this is the most perfect rectangle. Ie: Typical Letter size paper.

The more symmetrical left to right the more “perfect” you are.

Western culture reads left to right, however scientifically (pictures right, text left) the right side is our creative side, left side is logic side. If you tried to visualize something your eyes automatically trail to the right. Ask a math question and your eyes will trail to the left.

“video within area” Had person more in the middle and his speech bubble up to the right.

Is there a perfect course? No they are subjective, but there are guidelines we can follow and will please the majority of learners.


Colour combinations
Be sure your text does not get lost in the background you have chosen. Ie: dark text on dark background – bad, dark text on medium tone background – okay, dark text on white background – best

We’ve been taught to associate colours with items. Blue – sky, ocean, Orange – warmth, Red – danger (Chinese luck). You need to be aware of what colours mean to different people/cultures.

Ie Vegas – there are lots of bright lights, warm colours, nothing cool/pastel. Influences you to make riskier bets. Thinking of being on a plane, especially long flights the seats tend to be blue, green, calming colours. Very subtle things, but important. The learners most likely will never even notice these items.

Know compliment colours and contrasting colours. This will assist you in your own course design choices. Quick way to find out, highlight your text and it will show you automatically the contrasting colour.

Text
Fonts to choose – no standard again, more preference however. Anything as a Sans Font, will be the best. Do not use downloaded fonts because not every computer will have the same downloaded font. Alignment can be messed up, words can run off the screen.

Don’t use too many different fonts. Choose only 1 font, 2 at most where the second one is for special or warning messages within the course.. Consistency is best for the reader.

Use different font sizes to let you know the different parts of the course (title, subtitle, text). Distance from one section to another is not enough (from title to subtitle).

Summary
These elements along with good learning/teaching theory will help produce excellent courses.

Click - Thursday's Keynote - Bill Tancer

Click: What Millions Are Doing Online and Why it Matters to You as an e-Learning Professional. – Bill Tancer, General Manager, Hitwise

Keynote – Thursday, March 12, 2009

I found this keynote so interesting I took a lot of notes. I guess I love data too!

Saturday, March 13, 2009 is Pi day.

“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to onto something.” – Walker Percy

His blog – ilovedata.com

Looking through junk emails he saw an email requesting that he write an article. Was actually the editor of Time.com. Requested 3 submissions by the following week. First thing he googled was how to right a magazine column. Then from there the column became more and more popular.

Where does the data come from?

• 25 Million internet users world wide
• 10 Million from the US
• 1 Million websites
• 172 Industry Categories
• Millions of Search terms per month
• Monthly, Weekly, & Daily

All from direct internet providers

One of the first charts that interested him was what was being searched for on one specific term. The interest is that looking at one term’s search and how it is reflective over the full year. Ie: diets are searched for huge on Jan 1 and then end Jan 5. Thanksgiving is the lowest day for the search to be term. This repeats year after year.

Prom Dress Obsession:
Gave an assistant an assignment – take 4 million search term set, using all the retail searches what is the number one thing they are searching the most. Searching to buy. After a few weeks – she said something wrong with data, number one thing was prom dresses. They thought perhaps something had corrupted the data. This was not the case, not effected by bots or anything else. First week of January there is a spike as well on prom dresses. Called their clients, retailers, buyers asking when they did marketing, for dresses and this occurred in March.

Finally at a publisher meeting a gentleman there was the GM of a major magazine and the teen division. He was specifically at the meeting for the prom dress phenomenon. Most revenue also comes through the magazine in March. They decided to try to move the consumer behaviour to begin to start marketing a pre-issue in January.

We can now look at aggregate user behaviour and make very informed choices.
Engagement Ring searches are similar. Spike was the week before Thanksgiving and largest buying time is after Thanksgiving. Consumers are tending to do research about a week before they go to the store.

Seasonality of the data trends can be quite different than we expect. Example: Dancing with the stars seems to be more of a popularity contest than anything else. Looking at who is eliminated and who is searched there is a direct correlation. Charting the season with Stacy Keibler, Drew Lachey and Jerry Rice. So, he predicted that she would win. In fact she came in second. Why the mistake in prediction?

Instead they dug into the intent of the searches regarding Stacey Keibler. The increased searches were not because of the ball room fans but those looking just for “hot pictures, pictures of, etc.” The SKCC – Stacy Keibler Correction Coefficient. This means you need to dig into the reason for the search not just the search term.

Another example looking at how people sell homes, could now predict what would happen in home sales. He started making predictions on CNN. He predicted at one point they would go up, all economists said they would go down 2%. He agreed to come back when the prediction could be validated or not. The numbers came out and they actually had gone down. SKCC he had not thought of was the intent for searches on existing home sales. People used to look at homes for sales and look to sell homes, now instead they were actually looking to see how much their home was valued at in the current market with no intent of selling.

Cognitive Dissonance & the Adult Entertainment Industry
- when you ask someone a question they usually will answer it in the best positive light. But observed behaviour is often different.

Ie: how many people in the audience regularly go to adult entertainment sites? No one answers yes. Lead us to believe that the internet is porn free. LOL.

Someone in the gov’t decided to see if the internet is then 99.95% porn free.

HoweverIf you have a theory and then go and look at the data, you can find or only look at the data that matches your theory and then believe your theory to be true.

When times get tough lipstick sales go up. Things that aren’t very expensive in times that are tough people will be the cheaper luxury items rather than the expensive items (ie a fancy dress). Looking at data about lipstick searches this to timed perfectly with the bank info drops, DOW drops, and this theory seemed to make sense. However, he went back to the data and looking deeper at the searches there were “lipstick on a pig”, “lipstick on a bull”. The peak in searches was actually related to the presidential debates of the time.

Looking at all the online learning facilities of the world he charted how well elearning is doing in this economy. Appears that more and more people are taking a look at their careers and rethinking relooking at updating and improving their education. Good news for us elearning creators.

Income brackets of people that are looking at online learning more than anyone are the upper income groups. Over $50,000 went from 0.7% to 12.9%.

Clickstream
This allows him to see where they went just previous and where they go when they leave a specific site (or search term). Driver of portals is huge to online universities. Social Networking is at about 3% right now, but it is steadily increasing as a drive to online universities.

Search.twitter.com lets you search all of Twitter for specific terms. His big ah-ha was when he searched his own name. Saw that someone twittered and asked if his book was any good? He responded that is was good. LOL

Google Trends for your own sites/terms is a great search. Currently 70+% of all searches are done through Google.

Looked at the pattern of trends looking through elearning platforms. There is a bit of a trend following some of the school calendar, but not exactly. No decline seems to be happening as with other industries currently, but also not quite as dynamic as online universities.

Looking at the age demographics though is a doubling of millennials. This is the only group that is increasing in searching online universities.

Looking at platform searches, they next place they go are technology industry, education, then retailers and the entertainment industry.

Conclusion:
Observed behaviour is one of the key components. Look deeper at what they are truly looking at and why.
eLearning and Institutes are moving in the opposite direction of the economy.
Looking at the data is going to be key to keeping competitive.

Twitter.com/hitwise_US

Click column

Personal Productivity Tools - Thomas Stone

Going around the room of participants each person shared 1-3 of their favourite tools that they use most often during their daily duties.

• Microsoft OneNote EverNote – part of Microsoft office. Only part of the Student Suite and ultimate (?) suite. Don’t need to use post-it notes, text files, etc. Tabs, subpages, etc. Screen clipping, audio, calculator, tables, list, easy user interface, type anywhere you want on the screen. 60-day free trial. Give yourself more than a day to try it out. Put it into your daily work-flow. EverNote – web based. OneNote – desktop based. Will also search for words in audio files.
• myhours.com – time tracking, clicktime.com – project time tracking
• Twitter.com – microblogging, info intake, tons of feeds
• Delicious – one for work, one for personal
• pixlr.com image editor
• sumo.fi – image editing
• screengrab – add on to firefox, snag-it, and entire scroll down of a screen
• MS Outlook – email, tasks, time (2007 has an RSS reader)
• Lifehacker – blog, interesting read
• Remember the Milk – to do apps (can be used within google homepage as well)
• Qlock.com – world time zone tracker or world clock meeting planner
• Facebook for sending emails to students – to reach students quicker than regular emails
• Yahoo Toolbar – put up icons as shortcuts for his own websites
• LinkedIn – looked at as a more professional based “facebook"
• Gravatar.com – one picture for all places, gives you a url for your picture that then can go into every other place
• Ning sites as well for social networking
• Google Apps – share docs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
• Google Toolbar – save bookmarks as well
• TED talks
• Michael Lingenburger (sp?) – Maximizing Outlook to the best it can be
• O’Riley – the hack series – google hacks, etc.
• Adobe Connect – not blocked by most firewalls, someone on the other side can assist you in presenting, or creating virtual meetings
• Sorenson products to present and convert videos to play on the web, compression
• Audacity – free sound editing program, there are add-ons for this as well, use for recording SME’s
• Collective X , Community Zero – Social Networking
• Inspiration – mind mapping tool, webspiration.com as well

Additional tools can be found at: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/ – Jane Hart, she has extensive complied list of top 10 lists collected from users that have supplied to her. There is a further full catalogue within her directory. You can drill down into a particular contributors top ten list.

Great Day One at AG09

Well the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering for 2009 has once again not disappointed. I've learned so many great new things here today. I find it amazing every year that I seem to learn more from just networking and speaking to people over the lunch hour and at demo booths than some of the actual sessions.

I found a flyer in the lobby about Captain Smiley (which I'll insert a picture of once I return home) and went off to visit the Articulate booth. Turned out to be one of the best half hours of the day. I listened to Tom Kuhlmann and learned some amazing tricks. Simple enough tricks that will take me a few times to get right, but really neat ways to bring even more into your courses.

I found out through the dinner discussion board that the Shuttle was going to launch. Then looking at information about the best place to view it over the lunch hour, I found Nasa's Twitter link. Later in the afternoon, sure enough a tweet from Nasa that the launch had be cancelled. I'm loving Twitter more and more.

My lunch discussions also gave me a few brainstorms about how to get more buy in for social tools from the CEO and upper management. One included getting our physicians more interested in using Twitter to collaborate and consult with one another on cases. Sounds like a great idea and if you can get physician buy-in then you're definitely part way there.

I did my breakfast byte session this morning, which wasn't exactly what I envisioned it to be and I'm unsure if I gave the participants any more than they already knew. However, I really enjoyed the experience and I think it has better prepared me for tomorrow's session.

I'm looking very forward to the rest of the Gathering and all it has to offer. Oh and a big shout out to my many new Twitter Friends. Tweeple? Twiends? you get the idea. Oh and follow http://twitter.com/jzurovchak he's got great tweets going out during each of the sessions he's sitting in on.