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Harnessing live online learning

October 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

2011 Research Study into Virtual Learning

My instinct is always to mistrust and challenge statistics. If you read my April 2010 blog Straight and Crooked Thinking, then you’ll recognise why I say this. But, I have just finished reading Harnessing Online Learning, a benchmark report by Towards Maturity, for Redtray. I am surprised to find myself so ready to accept its compelling findings and the conclusions that it reaches.

Devil’s Advocate

The voice of The Devil’s Advocate is seldom silent. It’s running a script in my head right now – first, the much quoted, “There are lies, dammed lies and statistics”, most commonly associated with Mark Twain. Then the much misquoted, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” which was the response of the notorious Mandy Rice Davies to Lord Astor’s denial that he had ever met her. Nevertheless, fearlessly fired by the TM report, I’ll make two bold assertions:

  1. The benefits of live online learning are proven, (“Lies, damned lies and statistics”, says The Voice).
  2. More organisations should be doing it, and doing it better, too! (I’ll declare an interest -Onlignment is a supplier of advice and skill development in this area, so, go on Voice, “He would (say that), wouldn’t he?”).

I’ve pre-empted the objections and got my retaliation in first, because it would be an opportunity lost if scepticism were to cloud (deliberate choice of word) the significance of the trends that Towards Maturity has charted. Let’s open up the report and delve a little deeper behind the headlines.

The accelerated pace of adoption

Should we be surprised that the adoption of live online technology for communication and learning has accelerated? I think not – after all the logistical and ecological arguments have always been there – travel is costly, potentially dangerous, time-consuming and inconvenient. Global organisations with a dispersed workforce find it awkward to bring people together for training and to improve operational effectiveness. We all must protect the Planet.

The absence of “hard data”

TM’s report has some numbers to validate these long-held assumptions. And yet those numbers are a measure of individuals’ perceptions. The Report expressed “shock” that only 13% of respondents were able to quantify even the simplest of comparative cost-benefits with hard data. How much had they saved on travel and subsistence; how many hours of trainers’ and learners’ productive time? I was not shocked, especially when I reminded myself that the people who had given their time and opinions to this survey came from L&D, a fraternity that is not best known for its capacity to translate its product (training) into tangible, desirable benefits with indisputable numbers attached.

Declarations of faith

Still there were the conclusions for all to find. “What have you L&D advocates and enthusiastic adopters of live online learning done for your organisations?” one might ask. And what answer should we expect? Shall we hear, “Dunno?”, or shall we hear, “We’ve DEFINITELY reduced travel time and costs (more than 40% of us); we’ve COMPREHENSIVELY opened access to more learners (42%), we’ve EMPHATICALLY reduced the costs of training (35%), and SERIOUSLY improved the quality of training (23%).”

Hopes and expectations

The Poet warned us:

“Between the idea and the reality… falls the Shadow.”

T.S. Eliot. The Hollow Men.

In the TM Benchmark Report, 57% hoped to reduce the overall costs of training; 35% claimed to have achieved it. 66% aspired to improve the quality of training; 23% believed they have done so. Separate the reality from the idea, and what you have left is a profound belief that almost 1 in 4 users of live online technology for learning have raised the quality of training in their organisations, while reducing the cost. Worth having? I’d say so! Separate the fact from the opinion and there, gnawing into my consciousness is The Voice, asking me to show what criteria define “quality” and what measures “improvement” in these people’s estimation.

Factors getting in the way of success

An examination of the obstacles that seem to prevent organisations from using live online learning is revealing. Experienced users and newcomers alike recognised and reported on a gap in the skills of trainers. New initiatives were frustrated by the negative expectations of a target population. They had been disappointed by unsuccessful earlier forays by suppliers (presumably internal) who were not ready or equipped to manage the change. This makes very good reading indeed for one who supplies, as Onlignment does, direction, training, coaching and confidence-building in the areas of online learning and communication. But don’t shoot the messenger! This is the first time an unbiased and scientific report on this scale (180 participants from a range of organisational backgrounds) has been done in the UK. We should be glad of it, and look forward to regular updates to see how robust the forecasts will have been. If it is true (and I’d like to predict it is an under-statement) that the use of virtual classrooms is set to increase dramatically in the next 18 months, then we’d all better get on with preparing our tables in the face of “reluctance to shift to virtual” (52% in the Public sector), and despite anxiety about the security of “The Cloud” (variously between 43% and 75%).

The “old dispensation”

Apocryphal tales of success will help; sufficient volumes of Good News stories will make Live Online Learning feel more like a “Movement” and less like an organisational “lifestyle choice”. More than that, the conspicuous airing and sharing of ideas, examples and innovative approaches is likely to inspire others to broaden their concept of what you can do with these tools. Eliot’s poetry comes to mind again; this time I think of ”The Journey of the Magi”, where he describes the kings returning to their homes, no longer at ease with the way things used to be done, and the people that are still doing them the old way.

“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.”

T.S. Eliot “The Journey of the Magi”

The report shows that there are still lots of presentations, demonstrations and briefings going on. I want to stimulate, see, copy and share great ways of working live online to engage, enthuse and commit people to learn from tutors, peers and materials, and to build together new and better ways of doing their jobs. Behind those assertions that the quality of training was improved, I detect a shift towards live online learning being a prompt to check that “L&D” is delivering what learners need, and not just what Training is best-placed to deliver. I want to identify and congratulate those with the vision and courage to embrace live online learning as a new rubric.

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

We need to hear more from the pioneers who are discovering ways of intensifying the learner experience online rather than making compromises to mirror the old way of doing things and shoehorn unsuitable teaching and learning transactions into an unnatural medium. Most of all, we need a steady flow of believable numbers, but not just to show comparative cost- saving. I can deliver rubbish to you fast and efficiently, or slow and laboriously; which would you prefer? I want to see the £, $ and EUR recovered through increased optimism, improved efficiency and operational effectiveness.

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We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 4 Set up your Meeting

May 7, 2010 By 1 Comment

Set up your meeting

To design an effective meeting, you must keep the participants in mind:

  • How many are they and where are they based?
  • How motivated are they likely to be to participate in this meeting?
  • What prior knowledge or information do they already have?
  • How independent are they as thinkers and decision-makers?
  • What is the level of their authority and influence?
  • What preferences do they have for particular methods or media?
  • How comfortable are they with the use of web-based tools?
  • Have they been trained in how to use the online meetings tool
  • What are the existing relationships amongst the participants?
  • What questions might they have, and can you collect them in advance?
  • How well do they work together on collaborative group work?
  • How freely are they likely to discuss issues that arise?

Web conferencing software does not constrain you in terms of how you interact any more than a physical meeting room does. The software provides you with opportunities, as well as some constraints, but it does not determine the structure or balance of your meeting – that’s down to you. But whatever strategy you have for your session, some preparation is vital. You’ll want to plan what you’re going to say; prepare any visual aids that you’ll need; design activities; prepare polls and other interactions; and allocate roles to those who will be running the meeting with you.

Pulling your design together

A typical virtual meeting might last between 30 and 90 minutes; go beyond this and you will find it hard to maintain attention and energy levels. If you need to cover a lot of ground on a single day, then provide a number of short sessions interspersed with actions to complete offline.

Without experience, it can be hard to judge just how much to cover in a single meeting. If in doubt, err on the side of too little rather than too much: if you try to cover too much ground, you’ll just cause cognitive overload; if you finish ahead of schedule, you allow everyone to get on with something else!

It’s up to you just how much of your meeting you commit to paper in advance. If you’re a less experienced facilitator, then you’ll probably benefit from a detailed outline, which clearly explains who does what and when, and for how long. You may even write out some of the things you intend to say on a work-for-word basis, perhaps just your opening comments and the agenda and how people should interact.

As for how many to invite, a good rule of thumb is to have no more than 75% of the number of people you’d seat at a face-to-face meeting if you want to achieve some meaningful outcomes and have everyone fully engaged.

Roles in online meetings

The person who takes on the role of facilitator is responsible for guiding the participants toward the desired outcomes by following the agenda. Good meeting design is the first step towards a successful meeting, but facilitators will use many techniques to keep the meeting moving, to include everyone in the conversation, and to handle difficult situations. First, facilitators need to explain the agenda and any special tools they may be planning to use, e.g., group brainstorming. Facilitators will make sure ideas and proposals are not lost. They will remind people of the time and point out when the conversation gets off track.

Often the team or project leader is the one who facilitates meetings. Although they may not think of themselves as the facilitator, they should be attentive to the process of the meeting as well as the content. Even meeting participants can act in facilitative ways by asking a question or making a suggestion to get the meeting back on track or to draw out a person’s idea.

When you set up your meeting, pay attention to who will be in the chair and who else will be supporting. Remember that most tools for meeting online require you to define in advance the privileges that belong to different roles. You would not want all participants to have the freedom to interfere with your data, your slides or your agenda for example. Nor would you want to enable 30 people all to speak at once. Setting privileges lets you restrict who can have a microphone, who can set up a new meeting space, who can annotate a slide or whiteboard or load a new document for sharing. These sorts of consideration are part of the process of setting up an online meeting, just as checking you have the right number of chairs, the projector works, there is enough coffee and biscuits, and somewhere to park your notes is part of the process when face-to-face.

What next?

Part five of this ten-part series is about managing the change to meeting online. We’ll talk about identifying stakeholders and working out how to win support and overcome resistance. We’ll post it in a couple of days time, so do please come back.

We’re hoping you will add your own ideas to these blog items too, so we can create of it something that is representative of the experience of a wide range of practitioners and helps us all to understand what works and what doesn’t.

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We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 3 The Right Tools

May 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Select the right tools, making best use of what you already have

Instant messaging is a form of real-time, online communication between two or more people based, originally, on typed text, but now extended to include the use of online audio and video. Instant messaging programs include Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, IBM Lotus Sametime and Skype.

Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings, training or presentations via the Internet. The extended functionality of web conferencing usually requires participants to download a special client application to their computers. Web conferencing incorporates a host of features, including online audio and video, application sharing, electronic whiteboards, shared media (such as PowerPoint presentations), text chat and polling. Web conferencing systems include Cisco WebEx, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Saba Centra, Adobe Acrobat Connect and Elluminate.

Video conferencing uses digital telecommunications to support remote meetings that employ both audio and video. The boundary between what can be achieved with video conferencing and with simpler instant messaging and web conferencing systems is increasingly blurred, although high end ‘telepresence’ systems, that provide a highly authentic, high-definition interface are still very much at the top end.

It is quite common for organisations to possess the ideal tool, but not everyone knows about it or knows how to use it. In some cases, they have been trained in how to work the controls but do not know which behavioural skills they need, nor what processes and procedures to work with.

Choosing and using the right tool is all about deciding what you need people to do together:

  • Brainstorming
  • Classifying
  • Voting / Prioritising
  • Reaching group decisions
  • Surveys
  • Action planning
  • Documenting meetings

Then assess the level of fidelity and functionality that’s needed. Pitch too low on either scale and your online sessions may not achieve their objectives. Pitch too high and you’ll be consuming lots of unnecessary resources. Clive Shepherd has elaborated on this in his posting Functionality ot Fidelity – Choose your Weapon.

As you start to plan the support materials you might need for your meeting, it may help to divide them into three categories (I’ve borrowed these ideas from “Designing interactive webinars” by Julia Young, facilitate.com):

1) Materials and Information that participants can read and review on their own.

2) Knowledge and information that benefits from listening and questioning a subject matter expert

3) Shared knowledge and experiential learning that benefits from interaction between participants.

Knowing the type of content you have allows you to start constructing your virtual meeting into a series of segments, including pre-work and post-work.

Think of the virtual meeting as an interactive moment in time, packaged with advanced preparation and information sharing, and followed by continued reflection and action. Then you come upon the realisation that the tool you need is not just a synchronous place to talk and share images, but also a recording system, a dynamic notebook, a library, a gateway to other resources, a think-tank, a classroom, a reference tool and a virtual water cooler.

What next?

Part four of this ten-part series is about setting up your meeting. We’ll post it in a couple of days time, so do please come back.

We’re hoping you will add your own ideas to these blog items too, so we can create of it something that is representative of the experience of a wide range of practitioners and helps us all to understand what works and what doesn’t.

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We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 2 Better Meetings

April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Take the opportunity to re-engineer meetings and so do them better

The average business professional in the USA attends more than two meetings a day. Nine out of ten participants admit to daydreaming. 73% have brought other work to meetings and 39% say they have dozed off. One firm reported that 80% of top management time was taken up discussing issues that account for less than 20% of the company’s long term value. Psychologists found that the effectiveness of meetings influences the well-being of employees and their attitude towards work. So it seems like a good idea for companies to get better at meetings. The shift to online is a useful opportunity to rethink.

Is a meeting really necessary?

The first question to ask is do we really need a meeting? Do you need people to interact with one another to share opinions and knowledge, and build a shared picture of the issue under discussion? If so then a well-run meeting is ideal. In most cases of sharing information, e-mail or voicemail will probably suffice. Busy people cannot afford to waste time in chit-chat or admiring reports that are to bolster someone’s self-esteem. A productive meeting must have a clear purpose and objective measures of success.

Laundry lists

In her book The Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings (McGraw-Hill, 2002), Barbara Streibel says:

If I’m organizing a meeting, I want to get beyond “discuss”.  Maybe “discuss and decide.” Or “discuss and build a plan,” or “discuss and identify key barriers to success.” I want an action. I don’t need a laundry list of what’s happened in the last week.

15 practical hints to make meetings more effective, whether or not online:

  1. Break the superstitious habit; meet only for defined purposes
  2. Build a time-sensitive agenda and distribute it in advance
  3. Make sure only the right people attend
  4. Do as much pre-work as you can in advance
  5. Don’t force people to remain if the meeting has moved on to matters that don’t concern them
  6. Don’t tolerate digressions, ego-trips or time-stealers
  7. Gather and share feedback and use it to become better at running or taking part in meetings
  8. Record and distribute minutes for each meeting
  9. Break into small groups for problem-solving
  10. Before meeting, send out relevant information by email
  11. Apply agreed rules to govern how people behave in groups
  12. Use the correct tools and methods for brainstorming, categorising, voting/prioritising, group decision-making, surveys, action plans, meeting documentation.
  13. Start and end meetings on time
  14. Don’t let meetings drag on for too long – break the work into a series of short, virtual meetings
  15. Set a periodic meetings-free day

What next?

Part three of this ten-part series is about selecting the right tools and making best use of what you already have.

We’ll post it in a couple of days time, so do please come back.

We’re hoping you will add your own ideas to these blog items too, so we can create of it something that is representative of the experience of a wide range of  practitioners and helps us all to understand what works and what doesn’t.

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So what does make webinars effective?

July 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Dave Ferguson responds to Clive’s posting So are webinars effective? by saying you must know what effective is before you can measure it!

I have a good deal of sympathy for Dave’s views. Survey after survey seems to show that organisations seldom measure the effectiveness of training no matter how it is mediated. As he points out, it is easy to compare direct costs and opportunity costs, but that is a long way from measuring the value added in terms of performance improvement or individual growth and the development of potential.

For certain, many webinars are boring didactic lectures. You find them in organisations where previously folk thought you could make a document interactive by digitising it and adding a few navigational icons and links. The token interactivity of which you speak is much in evidence in virtual classrroms,and the pastiches you quote must feel uncomfortably real to many.

Dave is not alone in saying you say one must first think about what effectiveness means, before you can measure it. A similar debate is under way through one of the L&D forums on LinkedIn. There the premise is that the criterion-referenced model of Robert F Mager and Peter Pipe no longer has relevance in the world of e-learning. The argument FOR seems to be that no business in the 21st century has the time or resources to waste on analysis and conceiving of a matched solution. The call to arms is, “Be swift and light on your feet because things move fast and it is important to create rapid responses which may be destined to have a very short shelf life”.

In my view that may be characteristic of businesses which are destined to have a very short shelf life! The point of Mager’s work is that learning is only one performance improvement strategy amongst many. We would do well to adopt the same stance when we are thinking of mounting a webinar, whether it be for sales, marketing, information, transfer of knowledge or skills, or anything else for that matter. We should let the old unfashionable process of front-end analysis be our spur and get back into the habit of asking (or at the very least mentally processing) those good old simple questions:

  • Why do you have webinars on your mind right now, i.e. what seems to be the need, what or who wants something new or different to happen or who has asked for training in this area?
  • How real is the need in your estimation?
  • What effect is this having on the business, team or individuals?
  • What is that effect costing the organisation?
  • Who most of all needs training / communication?
  • What are they doing at the moment, i.e. how are they performing, how is their success judged, how is their performance measured, how does that compare with how they ought to be doing?
  • Who must provide support for them to succeed?
  • Who else is involved in their success (or failure)?
  • What else might you do apart from training / communicating?
  • What might get in the way of your solving this problem?
  • How will you know your solution has been a success, i.e. what is the ultimate objective of your solution?
  • What have you tried in the past as a remedy for this (type of) issue?
  • What works for your people and culture?
  • What happens if you do nothing at all, i.e what will happen if we don’t conduct the webinars?
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