Weejee Learning completes Conservation International’s first employee orientation e-learning course.

Durham, NC, April 30, 2012 — Weejee Learning, the leading provider of fun and engaging e-learning content, has completed an employee orientation e-learning course for global environmental organization Conservation International. Conservation International selected Weejee based on its innovative and fun brand of learning that could be accessed across varying levels of technology and that could be easily globalized.

“The creation and launch of this course is immensely valuable for our organization,” says Conservation International’s Catriona Moriarty. “Weejee has made it interactive and fun with a great look and feel, which will help us effectively deliver our vision and message to employees around the world.”

Conservation International’s learning challenge included reaching employees worldwide to reinforce the organization’s vision, mission and values, and educate them on the organization’s history, procedures and strategy. With offices and employees in more than 30 countries and projects in many more, Conservation International builds partnerships that help societies care for nature and contribute to the well being of humankind

Weejee Learning created a course based on a travel theme that allows users to create a passport to success; it incorporates fun and engaging media. “The one-hour course is HTML-based and works on desktops and mobile devices,” says Tracy Bissette, Weejee’s Chief Learning Architect. “Mobile learning is important here, and so we wanted to create this e-learning course in a way that would allow the organization to reach as many employees globally as possible.”

Fast growing Weejee Learning adds Corkey Devlin as Creative Project Manager to further develop Weejee’s brand of fun and engaging e-learning.

Durham, NC, April 29, 2012 — Weejee Learning announced today that Corkey Devlin has joined the company to further develop its trademark client experience and to develop processes and procedures to improve operational efficiency. Corkey Devlin comes with a wealth of experience in project management, having managed mid- to large size enterprise level training projects, including ones for Blue Cross Blue Shield and Global Compliance.

Corkey joins Weejee Learning as Creative Project Manager to continue Weejee’s recent success in providing its brand of fun and engaging learning to Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, non-profits, and small to mid-sized businesses. “I am excited to start a new challenge within Weejee Learning and look forward to working with the team to further develop Weejee’s unique brand of learning. I’m fortunate to be joining this creative and innovative company that prides itself on quality client service.”

“Corkey’s level of experience and industry knowledge has already made her a key addition to the Weejee team,” says Tracy Bissette, Chief Learning Architect for Weejee Learning. “Bringing her on is a sign of our commitment to being a leader in e-learning content development.

Corkey will play a key role in refining workflows and making sure e-learning projects are completed to the satisfaction of the client, incorporating Weejee’s brand of fun in the process. “Our learning innovations and the increasing demand from our clients led us to look for a project manager who will fit in with our ethos of innovation and exceptional service,” says Ian Huckabee, CEO of Weejee Learning. “We were fortunate to find someone of Corkey’s caliber for this position, and I feel certain she’ll play a key role in providing and implementing high quality solutions for our clients.”

Last year we took on an interesting challenge. We were approached to create five Flash-based learning modules to cover five key areas of an organization, and to deliver it to employees worldwide. The training was optional, which raised the stakes for us given our client wanted a 75% completion rate within six weeks.

What our team came up with in collaboration with our client makes a fun story. The project is featured as a case study in the eLearning Guild’s Perspectives series report, “How Mobile Learning Is Done: Nine Case Studies from Around the World,” by Imogen Casebourne. (In the report, Weejee’s project is call “Healthcare Sector: Game-based Training.”) I hope you’ll check out the full report to see all the case studies and Casebourne’s conclusions on mobile learning.

How Mobile Learning Is Done: Nine Case Studies from Around the World

WeejeeLearning, a global provider of custom e-learning solutions, has created an HTML5 framework for efficient and economical development of browser-based mobile learning solutions.

Durham, NC, February 28, 2013 – WeejeeLearning, a global provider of custom e-learning solutions, has created an HTML5 framework for the development of browser-based mobile learning solutions. The HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript framework allows Weejee to efficiently and economically develop modern standards-based Web applications that deliver learning content to learners across multiple channels and devices.

The company is detailing plans to include Tin Can API statements in the Weejee framework. Tin Can, also known as the Experience API, was developed by Rustici Software for ADL as an improvement upon the SCORM specification. With the Weejee framework, Tin Can statements can be reported to any Learning Record Store, or LRS, providing detailed learner activity data from any domain or environment.

“We’re no longer overly cautious about HTML5,” says Tracy Bissette, Weejee’s Chief Learning Architect and co-founder. “We got an early start with it, and we’ve made a lot of progress toward closing the gap between what can be done with HTML5 and what can be done with Flash. There’s still a ways to go, but day by day we’re seeing richer and richer HTML5 experiences.”

In 2011, WeejeeLearning chose HTML5 over native apps as its preferred approach to mobile learning. That year saw staggering progress on the part of browser manufacturers, and by 2012, over 75% of WeejeeLearning’s projects were completed using HTML and HTML5.

“We learned a lot the hard way,” says Ian Huckabee, principal and co-founder of Weejee Learning. “Early on, we were constantly updating our matrices with info on which HTML5 web apps and CSS3 selectors worked in what browsers and devices. It was time well spent. We’ve created an expansive library of interactions, or widgets, that can be placed within screen sets, all of which can be re-styled very quickly with CSS. So the number of custom designs is practically unlimited.” He adds that Weejee’s mobile learning division is seeing strong growth, with the Weejee framework is at the core of this growth.

HTML5 is an improved Web development specification that supports the latest multimedia and other elements, like geolocation, across computers and mobile devices. The Weejee framework builds on the stable elements of HTML5 that have been put up for recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium.

All components of the Weejee framework have been tested for browser and OS compatibility issues, and many can be configured for older browsers as well.

WeejeeLearning, a global provider of custom e-learning solutions, has been selected by three NGOs to provide creative training solutions to worldwide staffs and constituencies.

Durham, NC, January 29, 2013 – WeejeeLearning, a global provider of custom e-learning solutions, has been selected by three NGOs to provide creative training solutions to worldwide staffs and constituencies.  In each case, the organizations selected Weejee based on innovative and fun learning that could be accessed across varying levels of technology and that could be easily globalized and translated into different languages.

“We were able to provide some clarity around today’s myriad options for e-learning,” says Ian Huckabee, CEO of WeejeeLearning. Given the rapid pace at which communications technologies are evolving, these organizations found themselves “stretched between both old and new technologies,” he continues. “We took the approach of educating and inspiring them so they could better evaluate the differences between good and not-so-good e-learning solutions. And then we helped create a road map for e-learning that would work across the organization.”

“We’ve had success with our non-profit and NGO clients because we share a passion for what they do,” says Tracy Bissette, Weejee’s Chief Learning Architect and co-founder. “It’s really gratifying to be able to work with them and carry out the learning development details so they can focus on their mission.”

New NGO Client Case Summaries

1. Global environmental organization

With offices and employees in more than 30 countries and projects in many more, this environmental organization builds partnerships that help societies care for nature and contribute to the well being of humankind. Its learning challenges include aligning employees worldwide on the organization’s vision, mission and values, and educating them on the organization’s history, procedures and strategy.

WeejeeLearning creates employee orientation training that speaks to the organization’s mission. The training incorporates fun and engaging knowledge checks, infographics, videos, maps and resources, narration, and stunning graphics. A travel theme allows users to create a passport to success. The solution is HTML-based and works on desktops and mobile devices, allowing the organization to reach more employees.

2. International humanitarian agency

This humanitarian agency provides assistance to over 130 million people in over 90 countries and territories. Assistance includes emergency relief and helping people in developing regions break the cycle of poverty. Its learning challenges include reaching specific constituencies with localized and easy-to-understand training.

WeejeeLearning works with existing face-to-face learning and converts it to interactive, engaging online learning. The training incorporates photographic imagery with custom illustrations, and includes professional narration with African voice talent. Practice activities are created to allow field agents to apply their skills. The training is developed in English and French.

3. Public health and development organization

This public health organization has a staff of 2,500, and it conducts research and implements programs in fifty-five countries. It is dedicated to improving lives by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Its learning challenges include quick and effective onboarding of new employees.

WeejeeLearning works with this organization’s team to provide instructional design, development, video editing, and narration for new employee onboarding training. The training is designed to be updated easily by the organization.

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WeejeeLearning, LLC is a custom learning design and development company providing enterprise-wide e-learning solutions to corporations, NGOs and non-profits. WeejeeLearning specializes in highly interactive e-learning, instructional design, mobile learning, and strategies for social learning and community building.

I had the opportunity during my undergraduate years to study art in Oxford, England. We spent many hours behind the scenes at the Ashmolean Museum, carefully inspecting original works of art. It struck me that masters like Rembrandt started their paintings with sketches that were drawn and redrawn many times.

Van Gogh’s Patch of Grass

X-rays have shown that Leonardo da Vinci’s 1490 portrait Lady with an Ermine was originally painted using brighter colors and softer lines than those we see today. Van Gogh frequently painted over his canvases. In Patch of Grass, a woman’s portrait was discovered behind the visible scene. In all of the x-ray and chemical testing, not once has a color-by-number been revealed as the starting point for inspiration. It made me wonder why so much e-learning starts with templates.

Effective e-learning begins with a series of questions for subject matter experts. These questions include “What is the business goal that you are trying to achieve with this learning initiative?”, “What should the learner be able to do differently when they finish the training?”, and “What would the learner need to know in order to perform those tasks?” In the 17 plus years I’ve been designing instructional materials, the answers to those questions have never been the same from one project to the next. A templated approach for me would be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Why not find out what the learner needs to do and design a foundation of practice activities for those skills, sealed with the mortar of critical bites of information?

Unique e-learning grabs a learner’s attention and can truly change behavior. I certainly understand the economics and efficiencies of templates, and it is always easier and faster to start with them. But will they deliver the best results for your learners? Can a masterpiece be designed for your workforce with only eight interactions to choose from?

Creative inspiration can be gleamed from art work, cartoons, television commercials, movies, YouTube videos and games. Laika is an animation company specializing in edgy feature films like Coraline and Paranorman. Laika CEO Travis Knight recently said “In a world awash in sequels, remakes, and reboots, where old presents are rewrapped and offered up as new gifts, the best way to establish our brand is to continue to take nerve-racking risks with audacious original ideas.”

Van Gogh was a poor man, so he used his paint and canvases wisely. Use your training dollars wisely and invest in the best. An ideal palette for the instructional designer would contain original graphics, devoted SMEs, professional voice talents, emotive music, and talented developers to help bring the vision to life. Start with as blank a canvas as you can. No paint-by-numbers. And turn audacious ideas into e-learning masterpieces.

We had Flash down cold. As an industry, we created e-learning solutions filled with rich media. They were engaging and interactive, they played nicely with SCORM-compliant LMSs, and they turned PowerPoint presentations into compelling e-learning courses.

Then came the iPad. A toy, we thought. Or a luxury. Another gadget created by a company with disruption in its DNA. We read Steve Jobs’s manifesto, Thoughts on Flash, and heaved an industry-wide commiserative sigh as we watched the iPad become the most quickly adopted electronic product in history. While the silver lining was the new set of opportunities in mobile learning, the iPad didn’t support Flash.

And now with the release of Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10, we finally have touch on the desktop. But plug-ins like Flash aren’t designed for touch. (The desktop version of Internet Explorer 10 does support Flash, but the writing’s on the wall.)

So, is HTML5 and the race toward mobile learning driving the final stakes in the e-learning-with-Flash coffin?

Not yet.

Give Me 5

In 2012, a majority of the e-learning solutions we created at WeejeeLearning were developed using HTML5. We were able to reach learners where our clients had not reached them before, and these mobile-friendly solutions helped drive up participation and completion rates.

We encountered the expected hurdles – browser compatibility issues, different OS-browser configurations, LMS integration twists-and-turns, and more. But we learned some important things along the way. Interestingly, one thing we learned is that it’s not time to say good-bye to Flash.

Since Flash isn’t supported by Apple’s mobile operating system or Windows 8, and since Adobe has stopped supporting Flash for Android devices, the evolving HTML5 standard is more important than ever, not just for browser-based mobile learning but for all browser-based learning. HTML5 will make it possible for developers to work with a single markup language for all modern browsers – desktop and mobile – without having to maintain their code to accommodate third-party platforms, like Flash.

And for mobile, HTML5 offers better learning experiences by enabling both low-power delivery of multimedia elements and the use of responsive Web design, where Web pages are rendered to fit the screens of different devices.

But What about the Desktop?

Today, most e-learning is not mobile. This may change as HTML5 evolves, but according to Forrester Research, 63% of the devices used for work are either a desktop or a laptop. Only about a quarter are mobile devices.

And it’s important to note that HTML5 still isn’t an officially adopted standard. It won’t be until the end of 2014 at the earliest, according to W3C, the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Moreover, the less stable elements have been moved out even farther, to a 5.1 standard that will go up for recommendation sometime in 2016.

So desktop learners don’t have to give up their media-rich experiences any time soon.

When designing e-learning in HTML5, it’s critical to determine the lowest common denominator browser of your target audience. Too often, it’s IE8, a legacy browser with practically no HTML5 support. So right off the bat, you’re developing not in HTML5 but in HTML 4. And just when you think you have a successful solution, your QA team tells you they’ve discovered a user base somewhere in the client’s organization running Windows 7 downgraded to IE8, another animal altogether. Who’da thunk?

Which is why Flash isn’t dead in e-learning. Understanding your learning audience is more critical than ever. Who’s taking the learning? Where are they? What’s their technology?

If the audience for your learning is primarily mobile, develop it in HTML5. If it’s not, consider Flash. If it’s both, create solutions in both. When we put the numbers to it, it was a lot cheaper than we originally thought to develop both an HTML5 solution and a Flash solution.

Our approach has been to create the initial solution in HTML5 using the richest interactions our target browsers will allow. Then once we’ve completed the HTML5 solution, we create it in Flash using the same assets and replicating and enhancing many of the interactions. Since our solutions are XML-based, both solutions are driven by the same XML file, so course updates can be made once and applied to each solution.

The Natives Are Restless

What about native apps? Most of us heard Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg utter recently that HTML5 just isn’t quite there yet. After dedicating two years to an HTML5 mobile version of Facebook, Zuckerberg finally decided instead to focus primarily on native apps.

It’s true that native apps are the best way to offer content on a specific device. But building and maintaining separate e-learning solutions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian, webOS – along with browser-based solutions – is, in almost every case, cost prohibitive.

We’re a Mobile Society

We’re mobile, at play and at work. And our learning is increasingly mobile. As such, the relative percentage of learning consumed on the desktop will likely go down. But it remains important to give learners the best experience possible, one with the highest likelihood of improving their performance, whether they’re at a desk or at a bus stop.

WeejeeLearning is based in the Bull City — Durham, NC. We’re adjacent to the Research Triangle Park, a research park with one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the world. The park is flanked by colleges and universities — Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, Skema Business School, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — and I take great interest in studying how students here like to learn. After all, many of them will soon be working for companies like our clients in RTP. And because learning never stops, the learning technologies and techniques they like and don’t like are very enlightening to WeejeeLearning.

This infographic was sent to me by Dirk Tiu and Andrianes Pinantoan from Open Colleges, and it comments on the rise of technology in education and how and why Apple is winning the hearts and minds of today’s students.

An Infographic by Open Colleges

Expansion allows WeejeeLearning to meet the growing demand for its integrated learning solutions.

Durham, NC, October 19, 2012 – WeejeeLearning continues its growth with the addition of four new employees and the opening of its new location on the historic American Tobacco Campus in Durham, NC. This expansion will allow WeejeeLearning to meet the growing demand for its integrated learning solutions used in corporate training and training for non-profits.

“We’ve increased our focus on our distributed learning model, reaching learning audiences wherever they are within an organization,” says Ian Huckabee, CEO of WeejeeLearning.  “And now the rapid adoption of mobile devices in the workplace and new metrics technologies within the industry have presented us with many new opportunities.”

WeejeeLearning’s new employees include program manager, an instructional designer, a graphic artist and frontend developer. The historic American Tobacco Campus is home to prominent regional businesses, including the McKinney advertising agency and the nationally recognized public broadcasting station, WUNC Radio. WeejeeLearning is located in the Old Bull building on the campus at the intersection of Blackwell and Pettigrew Streets.

“We’re thrilled with our new staff members,” says Huckabee. “Each of them brings a distinct level of learning-related expertise that will help WeejeeLearning continue to innovate.”

My career as an Instructional Designer (ID) has been heavily influenced by the field of Curriculum Design and Development. What is curriculum design and how is it different from instructional design? Curriculum design is essentially the practice of designing lessons for students. The term is most commonly used when describing K-12 education. Teachers may cover up to seven different lessons in a day with students. Each of those lessons is an instructional activity to be designed.

While many design concepts are present in both instructional design and curriculum development, they are typically labeled with different vocabulary. For example, the controversial concept of learning styles debated in instructional design might be discussed among the teaching community as multiple intelligences or differentiation of instruction. While many curriculum development concepts have influenced my own ID, there are four primary practices that have inspired me the most: protocols, illustrations, professional learning communities, and artifacts.

Protocols

I was introduced to protocols in my job at the All Kinds of Minds Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving teachers strategies to reach all of the students in their classroom. There, the National School Reform Faculty Protocols served as inspiration for both staff activities and instructor led training. The constructivist-inspired protocols they publish provide instructions for how to facilitate transformative small group activities. “A protocol consists of agreed upon guidelines for a conversation,” states NSRF (www.nsrfharmony.org). NSRF has published dozens of protocols that deepen thinking, solve problems, push an issue or examine student work. The protocols are tested, and they work.

When I design instructor-led training, I often reference a book called “The Power of Protocols: An Educator’s Guide to Better Practice”. It contains two dozen protocols. Each protocol includes the purpose, details, steps, facilitation tips and variations. Particular favorite protocols of mine include the “Rich Text” Protocol, and “Marvin’s Model”. Protocols are an incredible tool for facilitating social learning conversations.

Illustrations

Dan Roam’s book, “The Back of the Napkin” tells us that 75% of the sensory part of the brain is dedicated to the sense of sight while the other 25% is shared among smell, touch, taste and hearing. Biologically, we are all visual learners. K-12 teachers ask students to draw on a regular basis to develop critical thinking skills. A group that we’re currently working with—Thinking Maps, Inc., based in Cary, NC, has been training teachers for many years on how to use eight core learning maps with students. In this model, students draw the various maps, like circle maps, tree maps and flow maps, to help them brainstorm, define, sort, describe, compare and contrast, classify and more. Research on academic achievement shows that illustrating vocabulary terms contributes greatly to comprehension and retention.

When was the last time you asked your employees or customers to draw? Think of some opportunities to incorporate this powerful instructional strategy into your upcoming learning initiatives.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

Professional learning communities are small groups of teachers and administrators who assemble on a regular basis to examine student work and push their own practice. PLCs have also been referred to as “communities of continuous inquiry and improvement”¹. PLCs are ongoing, reflective, collaborative, supportive, and focused on outcomes. Many schools post PLC norms and meeting templates on the Web. Consider implementing professional learning communities to support the transfer of skills into practice following a formal training program.

Artifacts

Corporate America is largely a testing culture. We like to know what each learner scored on an assessment at the end of a course or module. In addition, organizations might have a formal supervisor or mentor observation plan or other operational performance metrics. In the field of education, teachers are asked to produce artifacts from the classroom to show how they are implementing the Common Core Curriculum standards. These could include lesson plans and student work samples. What kind of workplace artifacts could your employees or customers share — perhaps in a safe small group environment (PLC) — to demonstrate performance?

There are many fields that can inspire and enhance learning design including gaming, entertainment, and K-12 Curriculum Development. The field of Curriculum Development has many tried and true methodologies including protocols, illustrations, PLCs and artifacts. I look forward to a continued sharing of design best practices.

When I first heard about Sebastian Thrun’s massive open online course, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, the first such course to draw wide attention to big data as it applies to learning, I thought I had come across a typo when I read that 160,000 had enrolled. Coursera followed, and then Udacity, then edX. And then, finally, my tag on Delicious: ed-revolution.

I worked in the music industry for 14 years and watched as one of the first democratizations of an information-based model transformed an industry. The same democratization occurred in the legal profession, in tax accounting, newspaper and magazines, stock trading.

Any industry that produces information faces this ultimate transformation. So it is with learning.

Last week Google introduced Google Course Builder, a tool that runs on the Google App engine and designed to let anyone at a webmaster level design and deliver learning. For free. Course Builder is the result of Google’s “Power Searching with Google” experiment that saw over 150,000 enrollments. This massive open online course (MOOC) was a very active environment where students asked and answered questions and provided additional ideas and content beyond what was offered by the instructor.

So how valuable will the learning be that is created with Google Course Builder by webmasters? Google offers this disclaimer: “We are not the experts [in] instructional design or in creating online courses. We offer this advice in the spirit of lessons we’ve learned that may be useful to you.”

Remaining relevant in an increasingly social learning context presents great opportunities for instructional designers. The challenges lie in adapting sound design principals to new modes of learning and acquiring the additional skills to bring value to social learning environments.

The role of the professional ID is changing, but learners’ needs are not. On October 11, my partner, Tracy Bissette, and I are speaking about this topic for the eLearning Guild in their eLearning Top Trends series, an Online Forum presentation. Our presentation is titled “Remaining Relevant in a Social Learning Environment,” and in it we’ll look at emerging distributed training models, how a shift towards social learning will impact professional IDs, how to facilitate and support social learning, and how to carve your niche in a decentralized learning function.

I hope you’ll join us!

Remaining Relevant in a Social Learning Environment
Presented by Tracy Bissette and Ian Huckabee
eLearning Top Trends
elearning Guild Online Forum | October 11 & 12, 2012
Register now

A corporation’s Learning and Development department often acts as a funnel. Learning content is generated from the L&D function in a model where bottlenecking occurs as different departments vie for L&D’s resources, reducing productivity and compromising desired business results. An emerging model for L&D is that of information filter where valuable information is collected and filtered from the very beginning of the project lifecycle.

Let’s imagine that a large corporation has moved up its launch date for a new product, a first-to-market super widget that the company anticipates will be a strong source of revenue. All company employees, partners, and customers need their own specific training on the widget right away. Will L&D have the bandwidth to add this new training to an already full training plan? Can the company wait six weeks to six months for formal learning solutions? How much will this new training cost and can it fit into L&D’s budget? Will the developers of the product and other employees have time to serve as SMEs while training is being developed?

Even a well-organized company’s race to market with a new product or service can catch many departments off guard. L&D now has at its fingertips the tools to accommodate these initiatives while also facilitating information flow for all stakeholders and end users from the very beginning of the project.

Traditional L&D

In the traditional role for a learning and development department, formal learning content is created and then widely distributed to end users. Producing high-quality formal training can be expensive and time-consuming, and given these constraints, L&D may not be able to integrate end-user input into the formal learning programs for the new widget. Many insights that are shared informally along the project lifecycle are often not included in the formal training, and so by the time the formal training is completed and delivered, it’s often stale on arrival or constrained to widget fundamentals. Productivity and desired business results may have been compromised and learning opportunities may have been lost.

The Filter Model

An emerging model for L&D is that of information filter, where L&D builds community around the new widget at the beginning of the project lifecycle and then collects and filters valuable information as the widget is being developed and tested. L&D then disseminates critical pieces of that information informally and in a timely manner while concurrently using it to develop formal training.

In the filter model, content generation begins before the widget is manufactured. Engineers and developers blog about the widget; testers film one-minute videos of the perceived benefits and uses of the widget; and sales people can post questions about the widget and get quick responses from the engineers or product managers. L&D initiates and monitors these discussion areas, which then inform the formal learning that is produced. By leveraging the available expertise early in the process, L&D can do more with less and get the entire organization up to speed much faster.

These results positively impact the bottom line. Once the formal learning events have been released and after the widget has been launched, L&D provides follow-up activities and communities of learning and communities of practice that will continue to capture valuable learner insights and provide informal job aids and performance support tools, helping to improve productivity, awareness and the bottom line.

Implementing the Filter Model

The filter model requires that L&D work with clearly defined learning goals and objectives to assess existing platforms and architectures in determining technology needs, obstacles and culture change considerations. A company SharePoint framework, for instance, may provide a heavily integrated set of content management tools, but over time, the integration of other technologies along with unaddressed server provisioning may have caused slower load times or other accessibility issues that hinder and even discourage the use of informal updates, video uploads, discussions or collaboration.

More and more, companies are turning to cloud-based SaaS solutions that offer SCORM-compliant, socially driven environments which foster creativity and problem solving while providing the governance and security controls required by the corporation. Next-generation LMSs – like Wisetail, Topyx and offerings by Expertus One – give L&D the ability to manage the learning path, monitor performance and drive discussion while leveraging commonly used social tools. What’s more, metrics can now be derived from social interactions.

With the rollout of the Tin Can API – the new and improved SCORM – next-generation LMSs and authoring tools are able to address the tracking and reporting of social metrics collected in these new environments. Essentially, content is no longer limited to SCOs (Sharable Content Objects), which for years have been at the heart of SCORM. Content has now become part of a larger “superset” that the developers of Tin Can call “activities.” With Tin Can, content (or activities) live outside the LMS until they’re completed by the learner. This allows for a cross-domain approach to SCORM: next-generation learning environments can co-exist on separate servers and still report back to the LMS. News flash: The C-suite can now have all of the social learning metrics they’ve been asking for!

When implementing the filter model, organizations should create informal environments at the beginning stages of product development or the project lifecycle. Whether developing proprietary environments or dusting off pre-existing ones, or implementing hosted SaaS solutions, L&D at the outset should provide the means for all stakeholders to share insights. These informal environments should be monitored so that important insights can be gleaned for concurrently developed formal learning solutions.

Leveraging Existing L&D Resources and Tools

A typical L&D team for developing formal training might look like this: Manager, Project Manager, IDs, development personnel and graphic artists. Let’s call it the formal team. The new filter model includes an informal team as well, one that operates concurrently on the same learning initiative as the formal team. The project manager coordinates the efforts of both teams.

The informal team is made up of an ID and a social learning manager, someone who can apply their knowledge of the company’s current social tools and who can assess the need for and make recommendations on any new social tools that should be deployed for informal learning purposes. The role of the informal team is to establish the appropriate social environments; seed them with informal learning nuggets (like webcam videos, documents, schematics, recorded hangouts and chat threads, and other social objects); build community; and facilitate discussions among all relevant groups at each stage of the learning initiative.

As the formal team develops the structured learning pieces – practiced-based solutions, simulations, performance support tools, in-depth resources and job aids – they are now informed not only by SME and key stakeholder input, but also by valuable learner insights gathered by the informal team.

With the filter model, the learning initiative – and the learning – doesn’t end when the formal solution is delivered. Communities of learning and communities of practice remain available and are supported, moderated and facilitated by the social learning manager.

Building Community

The greatest challenge to any informal initiative is building community, particularly for companies who are embarking on social learning initiatives for the first time. Driving community and keeping it engaged requires an artful blend of culture change, useful “only found here” content, incentives and rewards.

It also requires community, which doesn’t exist until you have, well, community. The social learning manager’s greatest task initially is to seed new social environments with useful content that, by its very informal nature, is not found anywhere else, content that is important for successful learning outcomes.

Whenever possible, a gamification layer should be added to encourage engagement. Not only will the number of users grow, but data shows the quality of user-generated content will improve as well. Even proprietary frameworks can integrate behavior platforms like Badgeville to track, motivate and reward learner behavior and to provide deep and granular behavior analytics.

Learn more

When someone needs to know something, they look for answers, and they want them quickly. With the filter model, learners who seek information find the right answers when and where they need them.

We’ll be speaking in more detail on the filter model, the social learning manager and community building this week at George Mason University’s “Innovations In E-learning Symposium,” June 5 – 7, 2012. I’ll post the slides here after the presentation. If you’d like to learn more, please get in touch!

UPDATE: Here are the slides from our presentation.

WeejeeLearning’s co-founder and President Tracy Bissette has been selected as a winner of the Top 40 Under 40 award by North Carolina’s Triangle Business Journal for her forward-thinking e-learning solutions and her thought leadership on concepts in learning.

Durham, NC, May 22, 2012 – Tracy Bissette, M.Ed., co-founder and President of WeejeeLearning, has been selected as a winner of the Top 40 Under 40 award by North Carolina’s Triangle Business Journal for her forward-thinking e-learning solutions and her thought leadership on concepts in learning. The award recognizes the Triangle’s most influential and highly accomplished young leaders.

Bissette, co-founder and President of WeejeeLearning, LLC, a woman-owned, HUB-certified custom learning firm based in Durham, NC, recognized the growing demand for integrating social tools into traditional e-learning. Partnering with a social strategy firm, she formed WeejeeLearning to provide organizations with innovative course designs for more effective learning.

“This is great honor,” says Bissette. “I’ve been inspired by many former recipients of TBJ’s 40 Under 40 award, and I’m humbled to be in such great company with this year’s class. I’m really looking forward to getting to know many of them personally!”

Since forming WeejeeLearning in July 2010, the company has experienced double-digit growth in quarterly earnings despite the slow economy. WeejeeLearning offers corporations and non-profit organizations custom e-learning, social learning and mobile learning solutions. It provides work to 10 Triangle residents, and the company’s vendor base includes over 80 contractors locally and across the country.

“The 40 Under 40 winners are the region’s up-and-coming thought leaders,” says Bryan Hamilton, publisher of Triangle Business Journal. “Fresh ideas, progressive initiatives and persistent hard work make up the creed of this group. Look for them to shape the Triangle’s vision of tomorrow.”

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About WeejeeLearning, LLC: WeejeeLearning, LLC is a custom e-learning, social learning and mobile learning solutions provider for corporations, non-profits and educational institutions. WeejeeLearning specializes in instructional design and development, highly interactive e-learning and implementing social learning strategies to drive business results.

About Triangle Business Journal: Triangle Business Journal, a multimedia platform for business news and the publisher of a weekly business newspaper, is the leading provider of local business news for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina.

We’re hearing this more and more from our clients: “We’ve always delivered e-learning in Flash, but now our training needs to work on the iPad as well!” It’s become an increasingly common concern for Learning and Development, but the solution is straight forward: HTML5. When Apple’s Steve Jobs declared that the iPad’s operating system wouldn’t support Flash, many developers gulped. But his reasoning is quite clear, and HTML5, along with CSS and JavaScript, has become the way forward for the development  of tablet training.

There are a number of things to consider as you move toward HTML5-based e-learning. We’ve come up with a list of questions to guide you.

What development tool will you be using?

There are a number of rapid e-learning tools that are supporting or moving toward supporting HTML5 functionality, including Lectora, Raptivity, Captivate with HTML5 output (not yet released), Articulate Storyline (not yet released) and Flash CS6 with HTML5 output (yep, not yet released). It’s important to research the various HTML5 interactions available with each tool and understand the customizations you may have to make to integrate it into your LMS.

You can also create your content using custom HTML5 to gain the most flexibility.

Which browsers need to be supported?

It’s important to determine which browsers your audience will be using because not all HTML5 functionality is supported in every browser. For instance, if you know that all of your learners will be taking their training using Chrome, Firefox or Safari, you’ll have almost all of the HTML5 interaction options at your fingertips. A more likely reality, however, is that your learners will be accessing the training from many browsers, in which case Flash-like interactions will require the creative use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and MP4 video.

How can I get Flash-like animation with HTML5?

HTML5 doesn’t offer quite yet the smooth animations that we’ve come to expect from Flash. Two ways that you can achieve better movement are by using JavaScript commands or by importing MP4 videos. We often build a brief mobile-friendly content video, then pause the frame, overlay buttons and ask the learner to make a choice. Once they make a selection, the video restarts, jumping to a specific section based on their choices.

How will the instructional design process change?

Instructional designers need to learn which types of interactions can be created. This depends largely on the tool you are using. It’s helpful to look at HTML5 examples. I personally like some of the interactions designed using Apple’s iBook Author as well as Raptivity’s HTML5 Turbopack. We have also created custom interactions, adding in functionality like the ability to add comments at any point within a module.

What should I do with all of my existing Flash content?

It’s not necessary to convert of all of your existing Flash content. Applications like iSwifter allow app users to view Flash content on an iPad. As for conversions, complex interactions can be converted manually to either a native app or to HTML5. If your existing Flash training has very simple interactions, it can be converted to HTML5 using technologies such as Adobe’s Wallaby or Google’s Swiffy. Just beware that converters like these were designed primarily to convert simple Flash-based banner display ads, so they’re fairly rudimentary.

HTML5 allows us to reach all learners, regardless of device. Once you learn which interactions are supported, it’s fun to think creatively about how to use HTML5 in designing your next course.

What HTML5 development tools are you using? We’d love to hear about them. Please comment below!

WeejeeLearning hosted a session at DevLearn 2011, “One Learning Challenge: Three Designers Put Their Skills to the Test.” We also informally refer to the session as “The Great ID Challenge.” The goal of the session was to present one authentic client challenge and see how three experienced instructional designers would approach it.

The panelists were Carol Ann Amico, Senior Manager, Instructional Systems Design – AICPA; Judy Unrein, Instructional Designer, Artisan E-Learning; and Amanda Warner, Freelance Instructional Designer and winner of the 2011 Global Giveback Competition.

Over 150 session attendees saw graphic mockups of each approach and gained valuable resources, and they heard first-hand the thought processes behind each design.

Check out each instructional designer’s approach in the full presentation:

WeejeeLearning’s co-founder and President Tracy Bissette was awarded Best of Show, Non-Vendor, for her interactive e-learning course at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn 2011 Conference.

Durham, NC, November 7, 2011 – Tracy Bissette, M.Ed., co-founder and President of WeejeeLearning, was awarded Best of Show, Non-vendor, at this year’s DemoFest, part of the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn 2011 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

DemoFest entries are voted on by e-learning professionals who attend the DevLearn conference. This year, over 1,700 conference attendees had the opportunity to see 86 unique solutions to common e-learning challenges and to speak with each entrant to learn about the tools, technologies and processes they used to build them.

Bissette’s entry, “Fire Door Inspections: Understanding the Fire-rated Opening,” designed for the Door Security & Safety Foundation, was created to educate fire marshals, code officials and insurance officers across the U.S. on the proper way to inspect fire-rated openings in commercial buildings. This authentic, practice-based course simulates real-world inspections and is designed to improve safety and save lives.

“I’m extremely honored to be recognized for our work with the Door Security & Safety Foundation on their first e-learning initiative,” says Bissette, the project’s instructional designer and project manager. “One of the challenges was designing the course to be user-friendly for an audience that may have little prior e-learning experience. WeejeeLearning’s team of developers and graphic artists really helped pull this together.” A demo of the winning entry can be seen on the WeejeeLearning website.

This award represents a significant achievement for WeejeeLearning. The company, a custom learning company founded in 2010, was formed to help corporations and organizations address economic and productivity challenges. “Our mission is to take what we understand about the science of learning and combine it with our technology expertise to develop innovative and effective learning solutions,” says Bissette.

DevLearn is organized each year by the eLearning Guild to provide learning professionals the opportunity to interact with leaders and trendsetters in the world of learning.

Ever been antiquing? The hunt for classic pieces of furniture with timeless designs is a hobby of mine. Nothing makes me as happy as finding furniture that’s a bit tarnished and worn but that, with some love, can once again look like new, if not better. Sometimes just a coat of paint or a new fabric or cushion can make the piece fresh. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been replacing pieces of relatively new furniture with refurbished antiques—out with the old and in with the older.

It got me thinking about the importance of good design in learning solutions. Often, organizations spend time and resources creating engaging e-learning or blended learning courses, but then over time, those deliverables become a bit worn around the edges. Perhaps the content has become outdated or the quality of the media assets aren’t quite up to par with today’s expectations. However, good design is good design and it’s not usually necessary to replace it altogether. It’s possible to leverage the effort that was put into the project originally.

One of our clients recently hired us to refurbish a 15-module course for them. It was one that I had originally designed in 2000. The course had always been a great seller for the institute but the CD-ROM medium was becoming less popular and the content needed updating. By bringing the course online, the institute was able to easily update the content as needed, add interactive elements and open it up to a wider audience. In essence, we kept the original design, which was still valid and popular with their members but enhanced it with today’s content and technologies.

When was the last time you did an inventory of your curricula? Begin with courses that have the largest audience, and/or the ones with the most critical content. Identify which ones need to be updated and take the plunge. Good design never goes out of style.

While the performance benefits of corporate training are well understood by most companies, economic conditions have forced many to look for quicker and less expensive training solutions. The bad news has been that in this process, the instructional quality of the training is often sacrificed. The good news is it doesn’t have to be.

Budgets may be getting tighter, but the advent and growing adoption of social tools is transforming the economics, and quality, of knowledge transfer within a company. Cloud-based training systems like Brainshark and Mindshare provide platforms for quickly implemented solutions that can be created entirely in-house by the expert for a fraction of the cost. Many companies are moving towards these types of tools to put training in the hands of subject matter experts.

Although learner expectations for high production value have lowered, companies should recognize that poorly designed and delivered training does not change behavior. And no training is worth creating if it doesn’t meet the intended outcomes. Subject matter experts are not necessarily good instructional designers.

Jon Matejcek, in a recent blog post, identifies the trends “pointing to the disappearance (or at least the dramatic shrinkage), of the traditional corporate training team” and suggests ways for learning professionals to secure their futures. His ideas include 1) understand your company’s business, 2) don’t become too aligned with any one single technology and 3) learn about social learning.

One of our clients recently used Brainshark to deliver leadership training. The learners enjoyed the shorter format, which was delivered by experts. But the L&D professionals realized that the bulleted text could be improved upon. So WeejeeLearning was brought in to work with subject matter experts in developing 30 micro-modules (25 to be delivered on Brainshark) on cross-cultural communications and customer service. Our flexible use of tools and our knowledge of the client’s industry allowed us to quickly jump in.

Our process is to interview SMEs about their customer service experiences and write a narration script that delivers this knowledge in an effective way. And instead of bulleted text on screen, we’ve developed PowerPoint slides with custom visuals and minimal text.

Each presentation is shorter than four minutes and consists of one-two minutes of professional voiceover talent interspersed with expert voices. We’re applying our understanding of social learning to engage the learners in the topics. We’ll be seeking relevant examples from employees prior to developing each topic and rewarding them for submissions. We’re also building in commenting tools and blogs around each topic so that learners can share their own experiences and learn from others. Subtitles in six different languages will be added for global understanding.

The role of the instructional designer is changing. But a learner’s needs are not. As companies transition into this next age of social learning, instructional designers will see opportunities to train the trainer by understanding the new tools and technologies and by keeping training on track.

What Online Pre-School Games Teach us about Adult E-Learning Design

I have two daughters: ages six and eight. When they each turned two, I introduced them to Sesame Street’s online games. Sesame Street provides free online games designed for children on topics such as potty training, learning the alphabet, counting, identifying patterns, and more.

They became instantly engaged with these learning games and over the years, have continued to learn new topics on other sites such as Discovery Kids, BBC Schools, Nick Jr., Poptropica, PBS Kids and more. Many elementary schools are recognizing the teaching power of these games and are incorporating them into the curriculum.

So what makes this e-learning so fun? And what are the instructional strategies when a child can’t yet read? Let’s take a look at a few examples.

This Cookie Monster game teaches pattern recognition. The object of the game is for the learner to click on the food on the shelf that completes the pattern. The instructions are explained verbally by Cookie Monster. When the learner clicks on the correct food, Cookie Monster identifies the pattern, modeling the thought process, and then the conveyor belt loads the food into the bag. Finally, Cookie Monster eats all of the food in the bag and more food appears on the conveyor belt.

Why is this game motivating? It grabs their attention right away, very simple graphics, a grocery store scenario that young children are familiar with and the reward of seeing Cookie Monster gobble everything up. It also builds their confidence by allowing them to try until they get it right. The ARCS Motivation theory is implemented well.

Notice that there is no upfront instruction explaining the concept of patterns to children. There is no complex introduction about how to navigate through the game or listing the objectives. And there is no text. The children are able to start playing immediately. The instruction is through modeling, clear explanation of the decision-making processes, trial and error and repetition. These games are also brief. You won’t find any two-hour learning modules on these sites. It works with children; couldn’t it work for adults?

Many adult e-learning programs contain a “Resources” area where learners can explore more about the topic. But what do you find in that section? Text-based PDFs available for download. How many learners actually download and read these documents? How are resources for children different? PBS Kids has several dinosaur-themed games for children. To explore more about the dinosaurs, children click on Field Guide. The field guide is intuitively designed with the menu at the left and sections at the right. The menu is primarily visual, although simple supporting text is added. The instruction is delivered through a combination of verbal explanation and simple graphics. For example, the size of each dinosaur is taught by saying and showing how many kids high he was.

The next time you find yourself faced with an instructional design challenge, you might want to begin by asking yourself, “What would Sesame Street do?”

A grassroots effort spurs conversation about how people learn.

Durham, NC, April 11, 2011 — Faces of Learning, a national grassroots engagement initiative for learning, has released the Learner Sketch to help users explore their own learning strengths and challenges.

The Faces Of Learning initiative engages communities to explore ways for individuals to discover and contribute their full worth and potential by identifying how individuals learn. The Learner Sketch can be found on the Faces Of Learning website at www.FacesOfLearning.net.

“The Learner Sketch does more than simply categorize the user as a certain ‘type’ of learner,” says Mary Jo Dunnington, creator of the Learner Sketch. “The feedback a user gets from the sketch actually suggests strategies users can try to help them become even more effective learners.”

The interactive Learner Sketch was designed and developed by WeejeeLearning, a custom e-learning and social learning design firm. The visually rich and interactive tool allows the user to drag and drop descriptive statements into three categories, and then presents the user with their learning strengths and challenges, categorized into scientifically based topics such as Attention, Complex Thinking, Language, and Memory.

“We didn’t want users to feel like they were taking a quiz with pre-determined right answers,” says Tracy Bissette, president of WeejeeLearning and the designer of the Learner Sketch. “We designed a sketchbook idea to appeal to different ways of learning using custom graphics and seamless interactivity. The result is a fun, easy-to-navigate introduction to the science of learning.”

The Learner Sketch helps focus the conversation on how people learn and how better learning environments can be created for everyone.

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Faces of Learning is a national grassroots engagement initiative that aims to help everyone see more clearly what powerful learning actually looks like and requires.  We are a decentralized, collaborative, story-driven, nonpartisan, solution-oriented network of individuals and organizations.