LMS Update and How My Organization Has Adapted to Online Learning

Our LMS implementation has been painful. Our nurse educators are keen to get everything they have been doing in classes or have access to in PowerPoint up onto the system. Not the best idea. So I'm slowly taking a topic at a time (mostly what is being driven by Ministry mandatory training first) and creating courses. We rolled out the system with registrations to classroom based courses and are biggest promoter is our Health and Wellness classes (pilates, yoga, etc). That got many people use to using the system, learning how to find and register for a course. It also got me to learn new ways to manipulate the system to "advertise" or list the courses in a more attractive manner than the default settings allow.

The next large push that met much resistance happened this past summer. We rolled out our Core Curriculum modules. 6 modules that are time consuming and painfully detailed. With little time to create them, the online versions are not entirely better than the paper versions of these courses. However, some of the feedback regarding the new online courses has been very positive.

Having to do training online has been a large change for many of our staff. There have been complaints of computer to staff ratios. There is, and always seems to be the argument, do staff train on work time or on their own time. If it is mandatory it should be on work time, but budgets are tight and no one has money to do this arrangement. So time is an issue even when it is online and they can go in and out as often as they want. However, the more I spread this message the more staff like that idea.

Management was very keen on the idea that staff could no longer do one paper test and pass it to all their colleagues to copy and hand in. The fact that online training is individual, increased the accountability factor tenfold and that is an extremely positive thing.

We are only just looking into integrating some blended courses into our curriculum, but this will most likely come with leadership courses that we offer and perhaps unit orientations. We have not quite got to that stage although I have presented many ideas.

The stats that my LMS put out aren't the best at this point in time. An upgrade that as been promised from the vendor for quite some time. I'm crossing my fingers it comes soon. I do know that since we launched the annual mandatory 6 courses (WHMIS, Occupational Health and Safety, Infection Prevention and Control, Incident Reporting, Accessibility, Emergency Codes) that 1000 people have registered for at least 1 of the 6 courses and 700+ have completed them. Not super stats based on the paper version, but on the other hand I do know that all of these people that passed actually looked at the material this year and didn't just fill in the bubbles on the answer sheet.

Some problems that we had come up were that even though I had 3 or 4 sets of eyes look at the courses, some errors were still found. These were spelling, grammatical and the occasional wrong answer to a multiple choice question. When these errors were corrected and uploaded as new versions into the LMS, learners that had registered prior to the new upload seemed to have error messages occur.

Staff that needed to take a course more than once to make grade often didn't have a certificate of completion issued to them.

Some courses didn't track completion. Some frozen and after multiple attempts learners got too frustrated to continue.

Some courses wouldn't relaunch and resume where a learner left off.

After some time with the system now live and working more with the vendor most of these issues have now been resolved and any further issues seem to be more user error than anything. I was really hoping the launch would be more seamless and less painful for my users, but that was a bit of a dream looking back now. I should have known how it might roll out considering the implementation struggles I had.

I'm happy to see that people are using, most are keen too, and that their hasn't been a lot of negative feedback. I'm most excited when I have a late-career nurse call me, frustrated that they can't figure it out, and after a few minutes on the phone with them walking step-by-step through registration and course launch that they exclaim "wow, I really can do this."

Finally some nice feedback

After months and months of hard work slaving over the implementation of our LMS system. Then many long painstaking hours and overtime hours to get our mandatory core curriculum courses created. The system and courses have been launched to the entire organization.

True to form they hate change. Why can't we do this on paper? (Because you cheat off of each other) (Because no one reads it) We don't have enough computers. (One computer, everyone take turns over the course of 3 months, that's 720 times the courses can be done in one dept over the course of 3 months and the largest dept here has about 150 people).

Okay now I'm whining. I guess I was very naive in thinking that everyone would be as excited learning my this method as I am. So to have so many negative comments come my way since the launch of the mandatory courses has really gotten me down on my work environment. (The 34C weather hasn't helped either).

However, today for the first time I got feedback from a frontline worker. Not someone I know. Not someone I owe a favour to or wants a favour from me. Just another person here doing what she needs to do wrote me this:

"My name is XXX and I work in PACU. Just working my way thought the online
Core Curriculum package and wanted to let you know that I am so impressed.
It is extremely easy to use and the visuals make for a way better learning
experience than the old booklet version, especially when you are a visual
learner like myself. Everyone here in PACU is working away on their
package. Thanks again for doing such a great job."

Wow! How cool is that? How nice is it to hear positive feedback from a complete stranger. It completely made my whole day, maybe my whole month. I'm recharged and ready to make more courses and make them even better.

Take a moment send some positive feedback to someone you work with; the difference it can make is invaluable.

A pretty little fountain found while walking Toronto

Sent from BlackBerry.

How far do you take political correctness in your clipart?

I had feedback today on a course, that I thought was quite well done, that made me take a step back and get my back up a little as well. During a recent time crunch and with limited resources I put together a course for Accessibility and Customer Service Standards. I found a set of clipart that I thought looked business like enough without being too formal. I work in a health care setting and it is difficult to find (free-cheap) clipart that isn't just doctors and nurses.

Regardless of that, I took this set of clipart and tried to include as many of the images of people facing forward as I could (they were "speaking" to the learners), as many different ethnice backgrounds as I could. I looked for different levels of mobility, and I also included what I thought were different roles. Some of the more interactive pieces included real pictures of people in other roles and situations as well.

The comment that was made was that the only image the person saw of a man in my "slide deck" (not the interaction pieces) was of a man that was a doctor. Some staff may be offended by this because of the stereotype that not all doctors are men. I tried to explain there were other images of men within the course. I also tried to explain that this course was one of six in a set and some of the others within the set did have pictures of women that were physicians.

I wonder where does one draw the line. One can't possibly show every "type" of person in every single course and in fact for this particular courses I had great difficulty in finding pictures of people that have various disabilities that were not just from Special Olympic events.

Any thoughts on how you handle situations like this or try to remain as politically correct as possible would be interesting to hear.

Reusability - Too much of a good thing?

I'm curious about something. I'm unfortunately in a time crunch and have to "whip" several courses out faster then I would like (2-3 days). For one particular course there are a series of 7-8 segments of information that are "types of tools to use" & "tips for interacting". I used a circle diagram interaction (below) to present this material.



A good point is that I'm able to create the course screens quickly. The point I wonder about is this (relatively) okay for the learner. I thought perhaps seeing the same screen each time they would know what to expect to be shown, but does that also make them more likely to skip passed it?

Thoughts are welcome and any I get from other avenues of questioning I'll add here as well.

Swapping Bullet Pts for a HotSpot Series of Questions (#Articulate)

I'm going nuts lately trying to take 6 topics of core training that we have to give to staff and turn it all into elearing in a matter of a month. Currently the material is all in Word format and has been presented, tested, and marked that way for 6 years. I'm so grateful that it's going online, but if the staff think it's nuts to complete they should trying seeing what it is like to create the content.

After looking at the (what seems like) billionth page of bullet points I'm losing my edge as to another creative way to integrate the material into the course. For one particular section, instead of having them look through points or simply click through slides, I created this Articulate Quiz that has a series of fill in the blank questions. Instead of having them drag or type the word to complete these sentence I created a series of hotspot questions.

It was a simple way to use very simple graphics and swap them out one after another for each question. For those questions that I couldn't find the "right" graphic for in that particular clipart series I went with just a simple word instead. I'm happy to share the quiz/interaction here and the clipart I used was from Microsoft Clipart - Style 1541. I'd also be very appreciative of any/all feedback or comments. Sometimes one worries that they may have simplified the task too much for the audience of learners.

Navigating an Online Course ( #Articulate Engage Interaction)

Recently while looking at some examples of various elearning courses I decided that my "help" section of my own course was incredibly too long and perhaps annoying for learners. One example I saw had a quick one screen shot that people could click around.

I decided I needed something similar to this, but bearing in mind that I have learners that may have never taken an online course at all.

I created, using Articulate Engage, an interaction that is a static screen shot of a typical course here at work and the various components that the learner may come across while taking the course.

I think it's still a little over complicated (way too many things to explore). But I do believe it is a better attempt at showing the learner how to navigate through the course than my first try (1st Version - Navigating an Online Course).




Feel free to use the same interaction if you wish by getting it here: Navigating an Online Course (simple interaction)

Trends in Social Media for Hospitals & Health Care Organizations - notes from Blog Talk Radio

Today I listened in on a show on Perspectives in Health System Transformation on Blog Talk Radio hosted by Gregg Masters. Today's topic was "Trends in Social Media for Hospitals & Health Care Organizations"(Listen here). The speaker for today's topic was Ed Bennett of "Found in Cache: Social Media resources for health care professionals."

Notes taken during the show:

• What is social media? - position it to be something undramatic, many engage in it and use it as a communication tool (email, phone, fax, etc.) and social media is yet another tool for us to use appropriately as a communication vehicle.
• Positioning it as a matter of fact.....is how to make it less scary.
• Conversations like this (about social media) are going on, and if we are not involved we don't know what others are saying of us and more importantly we can't participate either.

• Where is it being leveraged within organizations? - Majority seem to be those that are already in the communications area or marketing (public relations, web team, marketing, etc). Already have an awareness of their organizations public image....a way to reach outwards to their public (sees them in the best light).

• What impact on the organization is there? - types of messages posted about hospitals tend to be positive or neutral. Once in a while they are negative, but typical (wait times, menu, etc.) However, they are not usually about more serious events (i.e. lawsuits) although we should be aware these may exist.
• If an organization tends to become more engaged they often then thank the public, direct them to other resources, assist them.

• 540 Hospitals total (across all platforms - blog, twitter, facebook, etc.) - best in class?
• Ed's List - Hospital Social Media List
• (real interesting stats here on his blog) "Over 1,000 Hospital Social Media Sites"
• State Hospital association or American Hospital Association. - Henry Ford Health, Mayo Clinic.....he has a list posted
• Look at the hospital's twitter feed and if there is more than just there news feeds that you have found an organization that is doing it right.

• Mystery Shoppers in the health care space - an idea to perhaps explore.

• Justification for using resources in this topic - Ed tries to take this off the agenda, does not keep metrics, it just something we should do. More and more people go to the internet first to find out about health care. Many then turn to social media tools to talk to friends, relatives, family members to reach out to them for advice, assistance and resources during a health crisis.
• Hospitals then need to be a part of this. What's the ROI of using a phone? A phone is "a part of breathing air", social media should be just another extension of our communication.
• 3 types - very negative, neutral, very positive - Positive - @CandidCIO very worth of following. Views all employees as brand ambassadors. Now these employees are on social media as well. It is up to as as and organization to embrace this and guide and help the employees to be greater brand ambassadors to our public.
• If you are in a neutral environment - then position this only as a another communication tool.
• If you are in a positive environment - then start embracing this and use it more.

• Do you know of a closed loop social media system? - there may be some (i.e. socialcast, ning, facebook group). There is a place for that but Mr. Bennette focus is more so towards the public. YES - Basic information, public updates, assisting. NO - touching of patient information - advising - diagnosing.

• Take on outsourcing social media consultants - There are some slick outsourced initiatives, but hospitals need to realize that the public are looking for more authentic, real people, conversations through these tools and this will be better recieved. Make this part of your normal business process.

• 2 or 3 recommended resources to stay current on trends - Lee Aase (Mayo Clinic) @leeaase facebook, twitter & best practices. Phil Bowman, RN (blog) - nature of social media as it realtes to health care, Sunday Nights - healthcare social media twitter chat (#hcsm)
• Get in, start participating. Best way to learn and know what's really going on out there.
• Birthday of the first Healthcare Social Media twitter chat this Sunday Night. (#hscmBDay)

Creating an Internal Blog with Limited Resources

Our CNO at work is interested in creating a blog here at work to write about the happenings, planning, and future of nursing at our facility. YIPPEE!!! I'm so excited that someone on our executive wants to start doing this.

Now the question arises how to help facilitate this request. We have an intranet that apparently does have blogging capabilities....if you buy the module. We haven't and currently won't be making any extra purchases right now. I placed a query out to my Twitter friends to see if any of their CEO's blog. The limited consensus that was shared with me is that a few do, but they are indeed only privately shared.

I assume I will be advising my CNO that she too (and I'm assuming this will be her intention) is to keep her postings private to the staff. That eliminates some of the free blogging tools such as Blogger (what I use) and Wordpress. Out intranet is limited into what we can add to it. I suppose I could chat with IT about what options I could import in, but who really wants to go that route if they don't need to.

So, now I must become creative with the way we organize and use our pages on our intranet to create a pseudo-blog for her to post her messages. Here's my solution:

It doesn't typically look like a blog does, but it has all the elements. There is a breakdown by month and then individual postings within that month. The only true issue I see is that they are not in reverse chronological order. That is the most recent post first. That is easily changed by shuffling pages on the back end of the system (where the content is truly created), but it does add new pages (posts) in as last one posted, last one displayed. This I'll have to chat with her about to see if she is willing to do the manipulating needed to get the format truly looking like a blog.

The backside of the system looks like this:

Where across the top you can see how many pages deep I have navigated to get to a place to enter a posting. The listings of postings (or actual web pages) looks like this:

It's certainly a little trickier then using blogger to post items to, but the idea is relatively the same. So with a little trickery and making the most of the tools you do have access too, it's interesting to see what you can create when you're in need and limited.

I'd be interested to see other work-arounds that perhaps you have come up with to solve needs like this with limited resources. Please feel free to share your creative solutions.

LMS Saga Continues With an Unsuccessful Upgrade

My LMS received and upgrade last night and of course at first I was excited. The message in my inbox this morning read "...upgrade is now complete as we have moved the files to live site. Everything seems to be working fine but would you be able to do some testing on your end in the morning?" Sounds promising right. WRONG.

I found 13 issues for them that need to be fixed. After that my head started spinning and I wasn't sure what was right and what was wrong. I'm not even sure what was upgraded. There are a few tweaks here and there, but when I hear upgrade I am for some reason always expecting new things to WOW me. A label having it's colour changed is not going to make any difference to the system's performance.

Ah yes, another typical day at work.

Articulate Interaction - How to Navigate an Articulate Based Course

I've been working for months and months to get an LMS up and running for my organization (do a search for LMS on my blog and you'll see the overall journey) now the real fun begins. I now have so many people coming to me asking for this course to be created and that one. Seems as if everyone has something that has to be taught by the end of the year to all staff because the Ministry of Health says so. Regardless of that fact the LMS is now slowly being populated with courses and not just classroom based.

One of my concerns though is not everyone in our organization is familiar with taking an online course. Many would be able to just sit down at a computer and know immediately how to navigate though a course. Some who have never taken an online course would still be technically savvy enough to work their way through on their own. But, then there are all the others who are less technically inclined and perhaps even a little afraid of trying this "new" method of learning.

These are the staff that I need to consider when creating a course and need to include a "how to navigate" lesson or tutorial. I'm using Articulate to create courses for our learners. During the pilot of the LMS one of the courses created had many slides at the beginning (that could be skipped) that explained all the components that the learner would see or could see while taking the course. Once the pilot was over I discovered that this was probably not the best method for delivering the tutorial piece. Letting them skip over it was good, but it still muddled the over all look of the course. So what I have done now instead was to create the same interaction, but have included it instead as a help tab that can be accessed at any point during the course.

I've included a short Screenr video below that lets you see the interaction as it runs within a course. I have tried to make it "neutral" so it could be inserted into any course and that anyone could use it in their courses outside of our organization.

It's all about REUSE! So, if you'd like to use the interaction yourself please feel free to download and use it in your own courses.

Download: How to Navigate an Articulate Based Course Interaction.

Composing a TweetBook for DevLearn 2009

A while ago a Twitter project from another conference was tweeted by Mark Oehlert about a compilation of all the tweets that came out from conference attendees in to one digital book. The conference had well over 4000 tweets posted during it's run. Thinking this was a really intriguing idea and an incredible challenge I contacted Brent Schlenker at the eLearning Guild and began discussing a similar project be launched for the upcoming DevLearn conference in San Jose.

After several emails and phone calls about the best method to collect possibly that many tweets and more we devised a system that we hope will help to group the tweets once they come out into categories for posting them to the collective book. Once the conference is finished the hope is that the book will contain a complete collection of tweets broken into "overall conference" postings and "individual session" postings. It will then be made available to members of the eLearning Guild as a digital book.

If you will be attending this year's conference I hope you will be tweeting all the best bits of "What's What" and "Who's Who" for those of us that are unable to attend. Also, if you can remember the hashtag system we've created to assist in grouping the tweets into more significant chunks of infomation it will help those that wish to read postings about specific topics within the conference much more efficiently.

• For the OVERALL CONFERENCE (example: keynotes, expo, masterclasses, breakfast bytes, demofest, evening gatherings, etc.) - use #DL09
  


• For INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS (example: concurrent sessions (Session 209 "Five Easy Steps to Create e-Manuals for the iPhone and iPod"), and Certificate Programs (P1 "Designing Scenario-based e-Learning ") - use #DL09-SESSION NUMBER (ie: #DL09-209 or #DL09-P1)

Looking forward to seeing some great coverage from the tweeters at DevLearn.

Not attending and want to follow all the action. Use your Twitter search tool of choice and search for DL09 (no hashtag #) to see all tweets (including user DL09) or filter by searching for #DL09 or #DL09-session number (for a specific session).

Using #lrnchat as an example of the benefits of an online social group

Discussion Task for Online Course: select one effective moderating principle that you feel most comfortable with OR most challenged by, briefly explain why.

I feel most comfortable with the principle of "Moderating Takes Place in Both a Professional and Social Context" because of the numerous social online communities I am currently involved in. The first 2 questions posed in this section of the text (Facilitating Online Learning) asks "if one would see any real benefits from participating in a cyber community" and the other "can the feeling of community be created online?"

I see both of these being answered with a loud and clear yes. I currently participate in a weekly online chat that takes place through Twitter called #lrnchat. Each week 3 questions are posted to the group over the course of an hour and a half. The benefits each week are that I know I am guaranteed to learn something new or be directed to a new elearning resource that I previously was unaware. Brainstorms occur constantly as the conversation progresses through the course of the evening. One can see an increased progression in the discussion and even the energy level as the dialogue goes back and forth from one participant to another.

As for the feeling of community, I too think this group has an overwhelming sense of community as once the event is complete the same people continue to chat the remainder of the week. They continue sharing information, asking questions of one another, looking for guidance, support, and motivation in regards to the own increased learning, careers and even personal goals.
The person that moderates gives the questions to the group, keeps the group basically on track and on time. However, because the discussion quickly takes a life of it's own, they too are able to participate further increasing the knowledge of the group.

What is truly wonderful is each week the group grows little by little and because it is an online event there are participants from all over the world involved. Primarily because of the timing most are from North America, but that is not a steadfast rule and because of that we each gain increased perspective from various cultures. I'm truly thankful to have found the group and even more grateful to the moderator for creating and maintaining the group weekly.

How I Created Help Tutorials for My LMS

Since I had so few people come out to my drop-in sessions about the new LMS I was completely unable to train the 2700+ staff on how to use the system. I do think that we were able to configure it and create labels that make it fairly self-explanatory. Also, although it looks nothing like something staff here familiar with online learning would be use to, I believe the navigation is similar and this should help minimize the panic calls that will inevitably come to me.

Another step to creating this LMS more user friendly is that I am creating small one to two minute tutorial videos for learners to walk through should they need help. I've broken them into very small chunks and the reason for my thinking here is to allow the user to only have to view those sections of the system where they need assistance.

The steps to create my little videos isn't quite as streamlined as one might imagine, but after doing 4 or 5 of them now, I believe I've got the process worked out.

1. First I open up the LMS as a student would. I take many screen captures walking them through one step to the next (i.e. the screens one would see when looking to see what courses they are enrolled in). There are tons of tools to use to grab a screen capture, but I've been using the function included within Evernote.
2. I put all my screen shots into PowerPoint and then add some "pretty" text bubbles to each screen shot explaining in a few sentences what they see on that screen. I then copy the text in the bubble into the notes area to function as a script for the tutorial.
3. Next (I'm using Articulate) I open up the option to record narration and I read the "script" out loud. I am not producing my tutorials with sound because too few computers here have speakers, but it does create a good timing mechanism for advancing slides based on the spoken text.
4. After this step, I use the annotations to highlight or point out what is being shown on that screen shot.
5. I then go into the Audio Editor and "silence" the sound on each slide I just recorded text on. This is more a cosmetic aspect because I don't want the speech to be accidentally heard if I produce the tutorial in a different manner. I haven't been reading the text as perfectly as I would want to if I was expecting someone to actually listen.
6. Once this step is done, I publish the file and then view it in my browser window.
7. The next piece was finicky only because of the intranet system we use and the LMS feeds into it. The intranet does not accept FLV files it only takes SWF files. The reason I say this is it would have been very easy to capture the published file with Screenr.com (another articulate fabulous tool). But I couldn't figure out how to get the flv to swf without buying something somewhere. So instead I minimize my browser window to "just the right size" use Jing and start walking through the tutorial I created.
8. As the tutorial indicates to the learner to advance the page, I do manually and the video capture continues to capture the entire tutorial as if it is running on its own. The reason for video capturing the tutorial and not just loading it is again an intranet quirk that doesn't let me load up all of the files that are created when one publishes a "course" using Articulate. It wouldn't matter what I used, the intranet allows one file at a time and that is all.
9. Finally on my "login" screen to the LMS I have listed beside the login button all the tutorials I have created. They are not perfect in that they are only 500 px x 375 px (again an intranet limitation). Within the LMS however, I also video captured the tutorials in a larger size so that they are readable.
10. Lastly I plan on breaking down the original slides I created and minimizing them into a more handy printable version as well that learners can take away with them should they choose too.

Here is an example of one of my tutorials (captured with Screenr.com):

Blog Action Day 2009 is October 15th

This year's Blog Action Day topic is Climate Change. I hope you will consider participating this year by donating one post on your blog to this topic. Take a look at the site to register your blog. There are currently 700+ registered reaching over 4 million readers.

"First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue.

Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action. In 2007 on the theme of the Environment, we saw bloggers running environmental experiments, detailing innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices, and focusing their audience's attention on organizations and companies promoting green agendas. In 2008 we covered the theme of Poverty, and similarly focused the blogging community's energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions. This year we aim to do the same for Climate Change, an issue that threatens us all." - http://www.blogactionday.org/

LMS Launched with a Successful Whisper

Well I was pleasantly happy to finally get the LMS I've been working on for the last 2 years up and running for the organization. Unfortunately the organization did not seem to share my enthusiasm for the event.

My wonderful idea of having open drop in sessions all day long (30 minutes in length) for staff to stop by and see the system, brought in a huge crowd of 15 people. Not great when there is a staff of 2700+. My webinars the previous week had about 30 management staff sit in and view the demo. Also, not great when there are about 120 on the management team. Finally, my sitting in the main lobby and letting people use laptops to try out the system saw one person come by and ask why I was there. Hence my tweet yesterday about how no one cares what you are doing unless you are giving away food or a prize.

So what lessons have I learned so far. I believe that since I work in a health care environment, just in time is what we live for. People are not interested in what the "next" thing is until the absolutely need to know about it. We run Core Curriculum every January (WHMIS, ER Codes, etc) and everyone is tested on these topics. Everyone knows about them. Everyone will now have walk through the material and quizzes online through the system. This is when they will look to me asking what it is and how they use the system. So a secondary roll out will be needed then. I doubt it will take the form of a drop in session, but more so visits to dept meetings.

I am actually a little glad that it came in quietly as it allows me further time to perfect a few quirks that I still see in existence. I can complete my help videos, which feedback so far has indicated are really well done and actually allow for little extra explanation. All the extra months work into getting the system to be extremely user friendly seems to have paid of as well in that those that did see it agreed it was very easy to navigate through. Between the tutorials and the layout the need for training may be minimized.

I am disappointed that 2 years of me working diligently came to a close with little fan fare, but at least I am extremely proud at the overall end result. I have had many requests now to begin to put this course and that course online, so the next large challenge will be to start learning how to schedule and produce these in a timely manner.

I shall keep posting about the LMS journey over the next few months and as mentioned the next large hurdle will be to get everyone to access it in January for the large education blitz.

Cheers to everyone who has offered so many words of encouragement through this project. You kudos, warm thoughts, and offer to lend your expertise in my times of wonderment have been invaluable!!!

(photo credit: By OneTHilllove )

LMS Launch Happens in 11 More Sleeps

Wow, I really can't believe that the day has finally come. It's been delayed countless times since Fall 2007 for one reason or another and now in 7 short business days (including today) it will be here in all it's glory.





(image retrieved from: Nasa http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts121/launch/index.html, Sept 10, 2009)

I speak of our (MY) LMS. It's mine now. I've lost much of my sight peering deeply into my computer monitors over the last many months tweaking the system, finding faults, fixing and testing. I'm alone on my side of the project, but the overall launch has much to do with the great help I eventually received through the vendor to get the system just right. Once I had one true contact on the vendor's side things really begin rolling and we come to where we are now. A system that I think will suit our needs very well as we boldly step into the new Millennium. (Oh right we've been here for a while.)

I know it won't meet all our needs. Health care training is complicated. I'm finding that staffing alone is complicated and knowing who is responsible for which nurse is not as easy as you might think. However, it will do what we need it to do for an initial system. It will test our staff to see how willing they are to train using this method, it will push some of our more seasoned staff to try new things, it will force us to look at this entire need in a much different light and perspective.

My launch plan currently is to continue to test over the next few days (there are some minor glitches still occurring). I'm conducting 10 webinars for the management team members all next week so that they may get a look at the system. They have not yet seen any piece of the tool. Flyers will be distributed electronically and posted on our message boards for staff to see. I will be hosting 30 minute drop-in sessions on the launch day all day for staff to come and see what it looks like. Finally, I'll be in our main lobby the days following the launch over the lunch time shifts with several laptops so that staff may demo the system as I sit there.

Future plans will be some greater hands on training with educators and trainers that will need to create courses, track students, etc. I'm also anticipating that there will be a need to do some hands on training with staff to get them comfortable with using the system. I may deploy this as after hours webinars so that staff may look at it from their own homes. The only issue here is that we don't yet have a home access solution yet, but I talked to the right people on the right day and have the powers-that-be (IT Dept) looking at an extranet solution.

So I haven't written much in a while here, but I think you may see why now. I've been scrambling madly to get everything working, populated, piloted and ready to go. I'll continue to post on my experiences over the next few weeks as my "years' work" begins to come to a close and a new phase begins.

Don't Forget You Do Have An Electronic Tone

I recently had my annual performance review that went very well. Always a good feeling afterwards to know, "Yes I have my job for another year." There were several things that I knew would be brought up as tasks or skills that I am performing at or above expectations. That's not to "toot my own horn", but what seems simple to you and I is above or beyond what my colleagues understand. (Note to self: if they can't figure out what you do, it's hard for them to replace you.)

Please don't get me wrong though, the review was not all roses. I honestly don't think a performance review ever should be that way. One should always walk away with something they need to improve or work towards. My take away that both did and did not surprise me was the tone that I sometimes convey within my emails. (WHAT?!?! you say)

My manager is an MBTI facilitator and profiled our department. One characteristic of myself that she has seemed to nail (a little to my dismay) is that what I feel I often say out loud. So instead of thinking and perhaps writing rationally I do so emotionally.

I did think that perhaps my emails were getting shorter and shorter and more and more to just the blunt point. I've been chalking this up to my many 140 character messages through twitter and the 160 I can make on my phone. (ie: A daughter's friend does not ask how you are, she writes Sup? Her cousin replies "nutin"). However, there was one particular email she pointed out to me from quite recently where my to my surprise I did compose in a quite a harsh manner.

Mid-July the IT department decided they needed to lock down the wallpaper of workstations to publish IP information (quick info) and to minimize the radical look of some workstations. At first I was really taken back and I suppose now slightly offended that they would take away this control I had over MY workstation.

I immediately fired off an email to the manager of the department, because I have a good working relationship with her and not thinking of any consequences it may bring. I was accusatory. "...very hand y for your dept, however I find it extremely controlling." I pointed out how uncustomer friendly THEY were. "These changes seem very little more than a matter of convenience for you..."

I did have many great points in my email, but they unfortunately lost much of their power due to the overall tone of the entire email.

So what have I learned from all this? When the need arises to confront a difficult topic through word (or email in this case) first and most important ....breathe. Take a moment. Walk away from the situation, then come back and put your points down. Next, write your email, read your email, re-read your email, as a colleague to read it, edit your email....send your improved email.

A phone call yesterday to the IT manager did reveal that she didn't read so much into the tone as my own manager had thought. However, someone (anyone) else may have been hurt by it and therefore miss the key points I was trying to make. The IT department did actually receive several other complaint and although the never released the background the did take away the nasty grey theme and gave us back the default blue. Ahhh - better on the eyes.

My point that I want to convey is that although the message may seem perfectly clear to you, the next person beside you can easily read it in a much different light. In a world so inundated with technology it is imperative to ensure that your words, thoughts and feelings come across in such a way that the main message is never lost and that relationships are not hurt. Some of these take years to build in the business world and only a moment (or word) to break.

What Makes Great eLearning?

I sat in and participated last night in the weekly #lrnchat through Twitter. If you haven't yet joined in to listen (read) and talk (write) in a #lrnchat session, you really should join us. Some extremely brilliant minds in the field of elearning (and I use that loosely as it includes social media, sims/games, teaching K-12 and beyond, etc) get together each week 8:30pm (EST) and chat over three questions posed by a moderator.

Question 2 asked to the group last night had to do with "What makes great elearning?" The brainstorm that followed was extremely interesting. I tried to capture the thoughts expressed into a mindmap (list version)(map version). I hope I have done the group justice in the way I grouped their ideas together in the map below. Please feel free to send me comments to add/adjust the image.

If you'd like to see the transcript from last night's chat or for any further information on the series of chats please look to the #Lrnchat Blog.

Abbot and Costello "Who's on First?" for 2009

(I'm not sure where is originated, but I received it as an email. If you do know who's it is please let me know so that I may give them full credit. It's really funny and I do remember my dad sharing the original routine with me when I was little. Enjoy!)

You have to be old enough to remember Abbott and Costello, and too old to REALLY understand computers, to fully appreciate this. For those of us who sometimes get flustered by our computers, please read on...

If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, 'Who's on First?' might have turned out something like this:


COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.

ABBOTT : Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT:! Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Window's.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue 'W'.

COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue 'w' if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.


COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on 'START'