DevLearn09: A Shared Summary #dl09

There have a been a lot of great reviews, summaries and reflections on the DevLearn09 conference that took place in San Jose, California in the second week of November this year.

I've been saving a bunch of the links to blog posts / articles / video and thought I'd post them all here in one place, as sort of a collaborative, shared summary of an event that is well-deserved of it's awesome reputation. If you didn't make it to DevLearn this year, then  these resources are the next best thing to get you up to speed with whats going on in the learning tech, corporate training and eLearning spaces.

• All #dl09 DevLearn Notes
  Cammy Bean @cammybean
  
  
• DevLearn 2009 Write Up
  Aaron Silver @mrch0mp3rs
  
  
• DevLearn Report
  Brian Dusablon @briandusablon
  
  
• Notes from DevLearn and the Adobe Learning Summit
  Steve Howard @stevehoward999
  
  
• Reflections on DevLearn 09
  Koreen Olbrish @koreenolbrish    
  
  
• My thoughts on DevLearn 2009
  Michael Allen, Allen Interactions @customelearning    
  
  
• Twitter, My DevLearn Conference Companion
  Terrence Wing @terrencewing    
  
  
• All DevLearn2009 posts
  B J Schone @bjschone    
  
  
• DevLearn '09 Recap
  Chad Udell @visualrinse    
  
  
• DevLearn 2009 eHandouts
  Mark Chrisman @badsquare
  
  
• All DevLearn related posts
  Litmos @Litmos    
  
  
• DevLearn 09: Show Report
  Kineo @kineolearning
  
  
• DevLearn Video of Day 1 and 2
  DevLearn @DevLearn
  

Post Updated 3 December 

• DevLearn 2009: Building the Future of Learning
  

If I've missed anyone off the list (sorry!) please do post any links you have in the comments section below.

Enjoy!

@Schnicker

Mobile Learning - Recommended Reading #dl09

I finally found a moment to read through some of my notes from DevLearn09 and found a mobile learning e-book recommendation from Judy Brown.

The book is 'New Technologies, New Pedagogies: Mobile Learning in Higher Education', edited by a group of faculty from the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia and it is an April 2009 publication.

This e-book explores the use of mobile devices in learning within higher education, and provides examples of good pedagogy. It comes highly recommended by Brown and it's free, so if you want to learn more about effective mobile learning - which as an industry is growing at an astonishing rate - this is the book to read.

The complete e-book is available for free download here.


 #DevLearn09 #dl09


@Schnicker

Edublog Awards 2009 - it's that time already!

The 2009 edublog awards (now in their 6th year) are open for nominations. There are a lot of categories and I haven't put in nominations for all of them. I found it quite difficult to figure out which categories the blogs I like fit in to because most of them cross the lines between eLearning tech, design, theory, corporate training and education.

Anyway, here are the nominations I did come up with:

Best individual blog: Learning Visions
Best individual tweeter: Jane Bozarth - always entertaining, interesting, and educational
Best group blog: eLearning Learning
Best resource sharing blog: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: #lrnchat
Best educational tech support blog: e-Clippings (Learning as Art)
Best elearning / corporate education blog: Internet Time Blog
Best educational use of video / visual: Common Craft

Nominations close on the 8th of December so make sure to get them in!

@Schnicker

DevLearn Pondering #1: Why Don't You Like Your LMS? #dl09

Last week I attended the DevLearn09 conference in San Jose (California) and I had a ball - not often you can say that about a conference! DevLearn is an annual event put on by the eLearning Guild and this year's did not disappoint with big name keynotes like Andrew McAfee, Eric Zimmerman and Leo Laporte. More than anything though it's the real wealth of knowledge shared in the conversations with the presenters and attendees that gather in the form of eLearning professionals, developers, designers, analysts and writers that impressed me.

Back to the title of this blog - it began the the first night while having dinner with a few conference attendees. The topic turned to Learning Management Systems (LMS) and immediately it became apparent that in general, people do not like their LMS. They often like their eLearning authoring tools, but not their LMS. Frustration at having to always write custom reporting queries seemed to top the list, closely followed by the need to do a training course to learn how to use the system and the general lack of flexibility.

Now maybe I live in a land of 'rainbows and unicorns' (I've heard that saying a lot lately) but this has not been my experience, and I truly was not aware of the extent of the disdain that some people feel for their LMS. This was by no means the only time this sentiment was expressed through out the conference either. On day one in the Social Learning Camp (run by Mark Oehlert with boundless energy, fueled only by salad) Aaron Silvers took a show of hands as to who felt their LMS vendor actually wanted their learners to have a good, engaging - dare I say 'fun' - learning experience. It shocked me to see not one hand went up! (More on that session here).

On another day it was clearly stated by another industry leader that sometimes when LMS vendors attend a conference like this and hear the pains of their target audience, they suffer the harsh realization that they have no business being in this industry, because they just don't get it.

Anyway, my point is - it's not cool. Why should people pay (sometimes through the nose) for a service that they aren't happy with, where they feel the learners needs are not really at the heart of the system? They shouldn't.

We're doing everything we can to listen to what you have to say and understand your needs when it comes to your LMS. We don't want a cluttered system that's hard to navigate because our mantra is all about simplicity. But we do want to offer a fresh, intuitive system that provides the tools you need to:

• Get your content online quickly
• Deliver it out seamlessly
• Facilitate communication between all levels of user
• Build community around knowledge sharing
• Effectively report on user progress
• Make learning and training as fun as possible!

That said, I'm sure that we can do more. So tell me please - why don't you like your LMS?

@Schnicker

UserVoice in Litmos: Community in Action

You'll be happy to hear we've recently added UserVoice to Litmos because as they say on the UserVoice website: Your customers have great ideas. Are you ready to listen? Well yes - we sure are!

This change means there is now a 'Feedback' button on the left side of the screen when you're logged in to a trial or paid account. UserVoice enables anyone to send us feedback, submit new feature requests, vote feature ideas up/down and see what other users think of our system.

Already we've seen a few feature requests come through that we were contemplating adding anyway, but hearing the supportive echo from our users really solidifies the idea that we're on the right track.

We encourage everyone to get involved because together through collective knowledge sharing and community action, we can continue to build a learning management system that really does its job.


@Schnicker

Mobile Learning #dl09

I learned a little more about the Merrill Lynch pilot mobile learning program (called GoLearn) that was so successful a few years back.

The pilot involved 2100 Investment Bankers and the course created was focused around compliance content. It was rolled out on the BlackBerry with the necessary design configurations, and the results that came back were amazingly positive as I mentioned in my previous post:

• Everyone who completed the course did so in less time and with better results
• A survey that was packaged up with the course found that 99% of the users felt the format was conducive to learning
• 82% completed there course (which was of approximately 45 minutes duration) outside of the 9-5pm window - which equates to a 100% time saving for the company
• Everyone wanted more courses

The only downfall was that Merrill Lynch did not plan for such high success and didn't have the budget to fulfill the demand from other departments as a result of the intital rollout.

A few other interesting things to note about design considerations was that the course would bookmark if the learner received a call in the middle of training, so they could pick up from where they left off. The course could also be completed in an offline mode (such as flight mode) and the data stored so that it would sync when re-connected.

@Schnicker

Social Learning Camp on Delicious Bookmarking #dl09

Over at the Social Learning Camp I heard some good tips from Mark Oehlert on using Delicious bookmarking within organizations as a way of creating a knowledge base and a culture of knowledge sharing.

The idea that you can turn a solitary action in to a community action is pretty cool. Meaning, instead of people just browsing websites and resources that they like (as they are anyway), you give out a Delicious button to tag their favorite sites with, which can then be used to share resources amongst their colleagues.

For the organization, this tool can effectively turn everyone in to a knowledge 'scout'. It's a great free way to find out what your teams are interested in, make use of the people resources at your disposal for researching specific topics, and it's easy because they're using the internet anyway so it's not outside of their work-flow.

@Schnicker

Social Learning and SCORM #dl09

Presented by Aaron Silvers and Mark Oehlert in the Social Learning Camp, I knew this topic was going to be interesting.

The discussion started with a question, that was never really answered. In fact, as suspected this whole topic is pretty airy fairy because in order to measure social learning, you have to first define social learning. Since no one in the group had a concise definition of social learning, the metrics can't really be identified, hence there was no real answer...yet.

What does social learning look like? How do we measure it? What are the metrics? All great questions which were set out to be answered, but it was definitely overly optimistic.


The usual objections to social learning came through in general audience responses, which are the same as those addressed in the last session I attended in the Social Learning Camp. Some people just concerned with results, not the learners experience.

Silvers wrapped up by saying that we need to 'give social learning some time to breathe - lets figure out what it is before we start to apply measures to it'. Then the discussion turned to Facebook and how was it that 'that kid' could develop such an amazing LMS (essentially) that handles millions of data transactions, while so many vendors out there with years of experience that are handling way less data transactions, are failing. It's a good point. There was a show of hands for anyone that knew of an LMS provider that actually wanted to make learning fun, and easy and exciting for the learner, like Facebook is for users. Sadly, not a hand went up (I guess they haven't seen our customer feedback ;o)).

This topic sure pulled in the DevLearn09 crowd - I think it was Silvers that made the comment that he'd never seen so many people that actually wanted to talk about SCORM.

@Schnicker

Social Learning Camp - DevLearn 2009 #dl09

Mark Oehlert is running the Social Learning Camp at DevLearn 2009 and I just attended his session on 'The Big Three of Social Media / Social Learning: Fear, Control and Trust'.

Here's a few takeaways from his talk which surrounded corporate culture and their objections to adopting social media, why they exist, and how to work around them:

• People don't hate change, they hate how you're changing them
• It's not an I.T. problem (as in, security objections to social media are not the problem) it's a human or culture problem
• Companies worry too much that once their people have access to social media they'll say bad or inaccurate things. But social media doesn't create idiots, in fact, it can expose them.
• One way to get around the fear, control and trust issues is through policy development
• IBM has the gold standard for social media guidelines 
• It's not an I.T.issue, it's not a money issue - many social media tools are too affordable - it's just fear, control and trust
• Being an eLearning professional means being a psychologist, anthropologist and counselor, because you're constantly having to overcome and work around the human and emotional issues people have
  

Oehlert spoke about his experience with the Department of Defense and other government agencies and how Facebook and Twitter are not allowed because of operational security. There is a  fear of exposing vulnerabilities within their community. He says this is a valid concern, but then went on to ask 'does this mean that they then block access to these networks at the soldiers' homes'? No. At the end of the day, it is corporate culture that's the real problem.

@Schnicker

Lectora Master Class #dl09

Lectora's master class on "Creating Engaging e-learning Content for your eLearning Courses" was very interesting. It's a cool authoring tool, here are some of the highlights:

• Nice page transitions
• Cool roll-overs
• Pre-built flash objects to customize
• Hot spot assessment questions
• Course can finish with a form object to enter user details and produce certification
• Over 250 course templates where you just customize with your logo and content
• Branching

One thing the girl presenting kept repeating was 'it's fun' and 'if you've created it once, there's no need to create it again'.. Both of which I really like the sound of, and I imagine I'm not the only one.

Off to the Social Learning Camp now...

@Schnicker

Judy Brown on Mobile Learning #dl09

I just sat in on Judy Brown's first session on mobile learning in the Mobile Learning Jam area. This session was an overview on what defines mobile learning, current uses and the future adoption of this technology.

One thing Mobile learning is not: "It is not about shrinking a course down to a little screen". In Brown's definition it is learning done on a device which fulfils these criteria:

• Full battery for the day
• Instant on
• You're used to using it

There was some question as to whether a laptop is classfied as a mobile device, but Brown believes this not to be the case as the interactions with it are no different to those with your PC.

All mobile results so far (there were examples of a Merrill Lynch study - more on this below - and a Morgan Stanley Oct 20 presentation) point towards the future of mobile learning being bigger than we expect. Everything from mobile ESL classes which as you can imagine are very accessible for a taxi driver with spare time during the day, classes on culture shock developed by a newcomer to the UK shocked by cultural differences (port.c-shock.com), and augmented reality role play environments for work experience.

The Merrill Lynch study mentioned has been an eye-opener. They deployed three pilot compliance courses and the results showed:

• Scores were higher on mobile
• Courses were completed in 45% less time
• 100% of the participants wanted more

Finally, to round off Brown mentioned a pretty startling figure which came out of the above-mentioned Morgan Stanley presentation - an AT&T study shows that there has been a 4932% increase in mobile data traffic in the past 3 years (!), and the download of eBooks has now surpassed that of games. If this isn't an indication of where it's all heading, I don't know what is.

DevLearn Mobile Jam- log on to mlj.mlearning.com and download the app to stay tuned to mobile learning info at DevLearn

@Schnicker

DevLearn, San Jose: Day 1 #dl09

So I arrived in San Jose this evening and managed to meet up with a few DevLearners at the Fairmont Hotel and head out to dinner. Not sure exactly what happened to our Peruvian dinner group, but in the end there were just the three of us - Steve Nguyen, Darrin Hayes and myself.

Great conversations though, a sign of things to come over the next few days for sure: learning management systems, eLearning authoring products, blogging, integrated social tools, SCORM, compliance, gaming, wikis - you name it - and this was only the dinner before the real DevLearn storm!

Very exciting and just a taste of whats to come. The word frustration seems synonymous with 'LMS' which I don't like, but that's what we're working hard to change.

I did meet Tim & Chris, from Lectora, who were super friendly and are exhibiting so I'll make sure to drop by their booth tomorrow in the Expo.

@Schnicker

3 Good Things to Know About DevLearn09 #dl09

The excitement is building for one of the eLearning industry's biggest annual events DevLearn which kicks off next week in San Jose, California.

The week begins with the Adobe Learning Summit on Monday, followed by Pre-conference Certificate Programs Tuesday, then DevLearn Wed/Thurs/Fri. I'll be there from Tuesday afternoon so please let me know if you'd like to meet up at some stage for a coffee and a chat, I'm really looking forward to meeting some fellow eLearning enthusiasts.

If you can't make it along this year there are many ways you can keep on top of what's happening (even if you are coming, you can get caught up in the hype by checking out these resources too):

1. Follow the hashtag #dl09 on Twitter and look for photos tagged with it on Flickr during/after the event
   
   
2. Check out the #lrnchat group as it will be running live on the bigscreen during DemoFest this year
   
   
3. Join the DevLearn Live site for the latest news & feeds, and just to watch everything unfold

It sounds like the DevLearn team are very interested to hear how it looks from the outside for those virtual-attendees so make sure to send through any feedback to @devlearn on Twitter.

Following the conference is another event that I've already posted about and this time everyone can join in because it's online, and free! Here's more information about LearnTrends 2009.


*Please add any more DevLearn 09 resources that you know about to the comments section.

Contact me on Twitter:@Schnicker or Email: nicole [at] litmos.com

Logo courtesy of DevLearn09 website