So...what's on the radio?

So, you’ve found out you have to give a presentation, write an article or teach a class in the near future. You’re starting to make your outline but you’re drawing a blank as to where to start.

Why should you invest the brief amount of time it will take you to read this entry? Actually, we’ll come back to this point later.

For now, to get you started on your outline, may I suggest you listen to the radio? Specifically, I suggest you to tune into WII-FM.

Before you reach for your iPod or call up iTunes on your iPad or actually head over to your home entertainment center, I should tell you I’m not referring to any kind of electronic device. Rather, I’m referring to you tuning into What’s In It For Me. Not you specifically but your audience.

In other words, your talk or article isn’t all about you. Just the opposite.

Put yourself in their position. What’s in it for them to listen to your talk or read your article? Why should they devote the time and energy to pay attention to what you have to say? Here’s a couple of examples:

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• You’ve been tasked to give a presentation at your next staff meeting intending to change the way your coworkers fill out an expense report. The WII-FM approach would be to tailor your presentation to emphasize how doing their reports differently will result in them getting their reimbursement money back faster.
• You are writing a blog entry hoping to pass on some of your wit and wisdom about how to give effective presentations or write interesting articles. Thinking from the perspective of your audience and answering for them – all the way through it - the question of “What’s In It For Me” to read that blog entry significantly increases not only the chance they’ll actually read it all the way through and to act on your suggestions.

Personally, I’ve experienced great success using the WII-FM approach. I know you will too. Best of luck on your upcoming presentation or the article you’re writing.

Dave's “Rule of 10” for changing ILT into elearning

Experienced elearning instructional designers often get naïve directions to “take the course that Joe has been teaching in the classroom for years, digitize it and get it out on the internet.” That’s often times followed by “It shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks to do that, right?” And most of the time both of those statements have been preceeded with assumptions and proclamations about how cheaply it can be done.

Transitioning existing Instructor-led Training (ILT) into elearning could be the subject of a dozen blog entries. But, this particular entry will discuss what I call the “Rule of 10.”

Firstly, ILT and elearning have about as much in common as a cruise ship does with a submarine. They both transport people and they both do so in or on the ocean. After that…. Well, that’s about it.

Yes, an ILT course and an elearning course both have similar content and a similar audience. After that…. Well, that’s about it.

For example, the instructor is the primary deliverer of the content in an ILT course. But, in the elearning world, the computer monitor and speakers are what delivers the content. Hence, while an ILT audience watches and listens to the instructor, the elearning audience watches the monitor and listens to the audio.

Additionally, while the instructor may in fact leave the same graphic (“slide”) up on the screen for lengthy presentation about it, the audience doesn’t necessarily become bored with it because the instructor and what is being said – in other words not just the slide image - is the main focus of the learners’ attention. Learner engagement is done through voice inflections, hand gestures, visual aids beyond or outside the slide on the screen and so on.

Quite the opposite is going on in the elearning world.

During the elearning presentation, the learner has nothing else to look at than what’s on the computer monitor. Hence, learner engagement is established and maintained through audio talent voice inflections and what’s happening on that monitor.

I’d like you to try something. Do a Google search for “Abraham Lincoln” and select an image of Abe. Put it on your monitor full screen. Then have someone read something to you for 90 seconds. (The actual text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address works well for this exercise.)

How did you do? Were you able to concentrate on what was being read to you? All the way for 90 seconds? If you’re like most people, your mind would start to become bored with the visual of Lincoln pretty early on and your mind likely started to wander and your listening to and retention of what was being read suffered.

Enter, Dave’s “Rule of 10.” Staring at the same static image for even 30 seconds while the audio “speaks” can dull the senses to the point of losing engagement. Engagement lost is content comprehension and retention lost.

Back to the task of converting Joe’s ILT course into elearning. In his instructor notes he has multiple 

bullet points noted to present on only one slide (graphic) on the screen. By now you’re probably asking, why doesn’t Joe suffer that same problem of losing learner engagement in the classroom presentation of that same material then? Why does the Elearning version need a whole bunch of graphics to present that content?

Great questions. The answer is because Joe can move about, look learners in the eye, gesture, point to or hold up other objects supporting his points and a host of other things. In other words, because the instructor is the focus not the graphic on the screen.

So, what is Dave’s “Rule of 10?” Simply this; if you’re challenged to transition an existing ILT course into an elearning course – or you’re supposed to take some other kind of live presentation and turn it into something web-deployable – you need 10 times the graphics that you would need to make that same presentation in front of a live audience. Because when the audience has nothing to do but stare at a monitor, you need several different graphics changing periodically to match their visual engagement to the audio points being presented.

If you don’t you have risk of 1) learners just staring at a black screen while the audio talks (i.e., no graphic to support audio) or 2) the…same…old…graphic..staying…on…the…screen…while…they… struggle…to…concentrate…on…what…the…audio…is…saying…and…OMG…is…that…ever…boring!

Beware: It’s not a miracle cure….

This entry is addressed more to the course champions and project managers of the world.

Imagine the football team that in the last 2 minutes of a tied game sees its big name quarterback come onto the field and…the team’s other 10 players just lay down on the grass and say, “Thank goodness you’re here. You take it from here and win this game for us.”

Believe it or not, this can happen in effect when a credentialed, seasoned instructional designer (ID) effort gets brought into a project. So, a word to the wise here, course champions and others – be it an individual or outsourcing to a whole team of IDs – is not, contrary to what you might think, the miracle cure for a project.

That’s right. Doing so won’t end hunger or bring about world peace either.

I know; it’s disappointing to hear this.

But, I think it’s necessary for everyone amongst The Powers That Be in a courseware initiative to understand this. Just because you bring in folks with courseware development credentials etc – while we can and often do some outstanding educational product development – we are only as smart or dumb as productive or not as your system keeps us.

By this I mean bringing in credentialed ID help doesn’t exonerate the other members of the process from contributing their fair share to the goals of the project. The course champion will still need to procure project funding, subject matter experts (SMEs) will still have to contribute both input and expertise and so on.

Remember; your design team, be they one or a hundred strong, is only is only as effective as the supply of content resources, SME expertise and availability etc keeps them.

If the data or expertise from which content will be built is not made available then you can’t expect a miracle from the ID portion of the team when it’s kept deaf, dumb and blind in the process. One option would be providing the ID portion the opportunity to do independent research – within limits. Just realize research hours go against the timetable and budget.

If the SMEs aren’t made available to contribute basic materials and expertise for content to be developed, then don’t be surprised if the ID portion of the team doesn’t create much basic (alpha draft) content and the schedule begins to fall behind.

Similarly, if SMEs don’t conduct effective alpha, beta and final draft reviews using their professional expertise and give timely feedback to the ID portion, how does it know whether and how to make what changes and improvements to the draft so it is satisfactory?

Adding credentialed and seasoned instructional design professionals to your project can really help it go from just an idea to a very high-quality reality. (The sooner in the project’s lifespan they’re brought in the better.) Just realize that bringing them in doesn’t mean the rest of the entire project team can just abandon any involvement in it. They’re just as critical with an ID on board as before.

Remember, a project team is called a team for a reason. If your project manager doesn't watch out for this "laying down" possibility, your project could be doomed.

Scope creep. It's not just for projects. Part One.

Have you ever been in a class or training session with a list of objectives or modules that the instructor never gets to because time runs out before they do? Or...have you ever been that same instructor that always has more teaching points to get to and accomplish than you have class time left?

If so, may I make a couple of suggestions?

First, take a look at the instructional design of the training. Ask yourself, is all of what you see necessary to accomplish the course objectives as they're stated? If the answer is no, then you know what to do - trim it.

Now, before you form the thought that "It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools" in questioning the design of the training, let me point out that oftentimes experts tend to cram a course full of way more stuff than is needed to meet the course objectives. So, if you need to cut stuff out, by all means do so.

But, if an objective comparison of the course objectives to the content reveal that the content quantity is appropriate, then can the training schedule be expanded to add more time? If so, then add what's needed.

Or maybe the course needs to be broken into more than one course.

If you can't do any of that, then read the next entry for some further discussion....

Scope creep. It's not just for project management. Part Deux

In the previous entry, we discussed running out of training time before you as the course instructor have accomplished all the teaching objectives you need to.

And it was established that the material reveals that all the existing course content is absolutely necessary to accomplish the course objectives. And there's no way to add to the allotted class time either.

So, what to do? In such case, may I suggest that you look in the mirror?

That's right; give yourself and how you conduct yourself in the class an objective analysis. Specifically, how do you deal with questions from the class audience?

For example - and a very simplistic one at that (just to quickly make the point); you have just completed presenting the portion of the class session related to the enabling objective that the learner should be able to perform simple addition of whole numbers. You demonstrated this by performing the calculation of 2 apples + 2 apples = 4 apples and that adding 2 more apples would = 6 apples.

A learner speaks up and says, "Excuse me, but this math stuff is pretty cool the way it works! Who thought this science up and how did they discover it?"

Now you have a choice; you could "go down a rabbit trail" with the class and explain the history of mathematics discovery. And... after the class is over... you'll still be wondering why you ran out of class times before you'd accomplished all the teaching objectives.

Or, you could simply respond to the question by responding with, "That's a VERY good question. But, it's beyond the scope of this class/today's lesson [or whatever]. So, why don't we talk after class is over today and I'd be happy to tell you who discovered how math works."

Sounds simple enough, but how often do we as instructors do that? Sadly, not often enough. Be it due to an eagerness to answer every student's every question, show off how much more we know about the subject or other motivations, the cold hard truth is all too often instructors go down those rabbit trails and, consequently, run out of class time before running out of teaching points.

Moral to this story? Let the scope of the course objectives dictate how you respond to out-of-scope questions that might come up during class. If the question is within the scope of the class, by all means answer it right then. If it's outside scope, defer it to an after class discussion.

Why use Single Points of Contact (SPCs)?

Have you ever participated in a scavenger hunt? If so, then you know what it’s like to go from place to place and have to find the various items on the list- all in hopes of getting them all before the other participants do.

This is what it can be like sometimes for busy professionals who need things – information, parts, photographs or whatever the need be.

That’s where having an organizational “single point of contact” can really help manage the project’s flow of needs and help the project meet the deadline.

How so, you may be asking?

Well, think of it like the old time grocery delivery boy. In those days, someone who was either too busy to shop for themselves or perhaps infirmed and couldn’t leave home still had to eat, right? So, grocers offered a service to customers allowing them to phone in their grocery lists and a few hours later a delivery boy would be knocking on the customer’s door ready to exchange the sacks of groceries for cash. (I know; that’s a service that went the way of doctors’ house calls and the Dodo bird. But it makes a great analogy to the single point of contact.)

In today’s world there is a glut of information deeply embedded in bureaucracies that one has to wade through to get it. Employees could spend hours or even days just locating the right person to talk to about something – particularly when interactions go across business units or companies.

Hence, it saves both time and budget dollars to flow things – as much as makes sense, at least – through single points of contact. Doing so will allow your employees to “one stop shop” as much as possible and get back to what you’re paying them to do. They simply call, email or IM the appropriate single point of contact, tell them the need and get back to doing what they do best. The single point of contact takes the search process from there. When they have the item(s) requested, they simply flow them back to the appropriate requester.

Sounds logical, doesn’t it? It works. Trust me. I’d encourage you to try it – I think you’ll enjoy the many benefits of the concept. I've "done this for money" myself and I've also worked other projects involving SPCs. It's a wonderful project management  concept to employ.

Who’s really on the team II – who’s actually saying “no” by saying “yes?”

In my previous post (Who's really on the team...? (Introduction)) I pointed out that it’s sometimes hard for a project manager to know who is really supportive of a project’s goals and timelines and who isn’t. In other words, who is in reality saying “no” by saying “yes?”

While this can honestly be about as easy as “sorting fly poop out of black pepper,” it is critically important that a project manager go into the project looking for these folks. Not trying to advocate being pessimistic or paranoid, but if one or more of these kinds of people are involved in your project, it’s at risk. Plain and simple.

So…. How to figure out who these folks might be? Start with those who will be most affected by the change. Case in point; I was once a training manager for an FAA Part 135 air carrier. That’s more or less an airline - the big differences being the class of equipment (i.e., business jets and turboprop twins instead of 777s or Airbus 380s) and lack of a set schedule of routes and times. It was, as the industry terms it, “an on-demand charter operation.”

Most of our pilots were not employees of our charter company. Instead they were employed by someone who owned the business jet that used it in conjunction with their business most of the time but allowed it and their pilots to fly it for our charter company part time. The idea here was the owner got some extra revenue from his airplane through charter to help offset their cost of ownership.

Unfortunately, I saw way more instances than I really care to remember where our salesperson would take the owner and pilots out for a big expensive meal to help woo them into joining our charter ticket. As the wine flowed and the conversation centered around all the wonderful revenues said owner would receive from all these extra charter trips they could fly with their airplane (and their pilots) over and above their normal business trips.

Invariably the owner and his crews would all be saying “Yes, yes, yes. We can do this! Sign us up!” 

By now you’re probably already guessing the end of the story. The level of participation agreed to by these pilots sometimes didn’t live up to that promised.

Why? Picture this; you’re this owner’s pilots. You’ve just flown into home base from a long 4-day, 3-night trip. You’re looking forward to a little relaxation and time with the family. You haven’t been in the same state as your own home 6 hours and you get called from the charter company wanting you to head back out for another long charter trip – for which you’ll receive no extra pay. And this is the 4^th such call you’ve gotten this month. How motivated are you to accept the trip?

So, in this scenario, all these pilots got from their boss enthusiastically adding their aircraft to our charter certificate was what amounted to an extra part-time-plus job…for no money. Is it hard to believe that – despite their enthusiastic support of his signing the charter contract during the wine and steaks dinner - they’d turn down charter trips whenever possible.

Therefore, always keep your eyes open for the reasons why those “on the team” wouldn’t really want to support the team. Maybe it's job insecurity, maybe it's loss of status. Or maybe they just think the project will bring them more hassle. Whatever their objections might be, if possible, remove those objections for the health of the project.