No News

That is to say, I have not yet had this baby.

My official "due date" is not until May 21, but I've been hoping (as all expectant mothers do), that this is one project that would be delivered a bit early.

Can't project manage these things...

In the meantime, I've taken the last week off from work to do things like: hang out with my kids and husband, garden, cook, fold laundry, hang out with my parents, get my teeth cleaned, nap, knit, and various nesting projects.

My instructional design postings will be sporadic, at best, over the next few months. Unless I decide to post about the absolute lack of instructional design manuals that come with new babies!

Making Six Sigma Training Fun

OK. Maybe it's not possible to make Six Sigma eLearning fun. But I've tried.

And to be honest, it wasn't quite Six Sigma, but close.

This manufacturing process training course was originally delivered as a four hour plus death-by-PowerPoint classroom session (if you could see the original PPT source content, you'd begin glazing over within a few slides).

I went out on a few limbs here and tried to design something different. Within certain parameters as defined by the client (of course).

Here's some of what I tried to incorporate in order to (we hope) create an engaging experience:

Less is More. Cut, cut, cut.

Of course, SMES pushed back on this approach during story board review.

But when I hear someone telling me that this is the spot in the classroom session when the users start drooling and staring out the window, don't you think that's a good place to simplify?

Storyline. I created characters that the learner follows throughout the course. "Meet Pete and his team." Learn from this manufacturing group and how they applied these principles to their work place.

And we made it fun. Rubber Ducks! Everyone loves rubber ducks, right? Applying concepts to a fun, but real-world scenario to ensure better knowledge transfer and retention.

Got some pushback on this one, again from the SMEs. "Is it too juvenile?"

When reviewing the alpha version of the course, I made sure to have their team have actual end-users take the course and see what their responses were.

End-users thought it was fun. SMEs felt a bit threatened by this fun take on their sacred content. The juries still out.

Games! We created three or four mini-games scattered throughout the course to test concepts. Of course, we used rubber ducks whenever possible to create some fun graphics and exercises. For design inspiration, I took a few pages out of Karl Kapp's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Using Audio. I tried to make more effective use of audio. Avoided reading text heavy pages word-for-word. But I got pushback. "Unless there's audio on every page, our user's will think it's broken..."

Better Assessment Questions. I wrote scenario based questions that were about context and concepts -- not rote memorization skills.

Navigation. I tried, but couldn't convince my client to go with open navigation. We had to go with lockouts, meaning the learner must go through the topics in order and can't advance to the next topic until the previous topic has been completed. Alas.

Overall Feedback. So far, the client likes it, but there's some uncertainty. "This is unlike anything we've done before." Which can be a good thing and a bad thing, right?

Do you think I went too far with the rubber duck motif? Did I threaten a sacred cow?

Photo Credits:

• So many ducks...Ducking hell. by Gaetan Lee
• Cut my breath by batega
• Devil Duck by wonderferret

All Work And No Learning...

Lately, work has just felt way too busy. No conscious time to stop and smell the roses; to reflect on what's been going on and why; to incorporate any lessons learned. There's barely any time to even think if I've learned any lessons.

Sometimes I just want to punch in the proverbial time card and go home and do the rest of my life. Or sometimes the next project or task slams right into me and there's no time to breath.

But how lame is that?

When this kind of grueling, work cycle hits, aren't you in danger? Not just of burnout, but of being stuck in the mode of repeating the same mistakes again and again? Of continuing to do the same crappy job, because you know how to crank out that kind of crap in the necessary time frame?

How does one build learning into work -- how do you build learning into work -- when you just don't feel like you have the time?

Here's some of what I've been trying lately, in an effort not to let some important lessons slip by -- in an effort to keep the passion and NOT enter burnout land:

Take notes. Instead of just relying on my faulty memory ("Oh, there's no way I'll forget that..."), I've been taking notes: In my paper notebook, in Google Notebooks, an occasional Jott to myself. Things I could've/should've/would've done differently, if only...Ideally, I'd blog about my experiences more, but frankly, I just haven't had the time.

Verbalize. Speak the mistakes out loud to other teammates, if I can. This helps internalize it.

Be open. Always try to learn from the mistakes; don't just brush them under the rug and pretend they didn't happen. They did. [I've been working on a knitting project for the past few months and have learned more undoing stitches and fixing mistakes, than anything else. Some mistakes I've left in the piece -- humble reminders of my own imperfection. That, and some things just aren't worth going back to fix -- but at least I can understand what I did wrong all those rows ago].

Take time off. Create a light at the end of your tunnel. I've got a maternity leave to look forward to pretty soon. A different kind of focus, a lot of opportunity to make different kinds of mistakes, but it will be a change in pace. If I didn't have that on the books, I'd certainly need some time off...

What else?

• Read blogs (yes, but I haven't had the time to focus -- instead I skim -- not nearly as satisfying...)
• Lessons learned meetings (do people still do this? We talk about it, but there's rarely the time. Suggestions?)

So how do you keep your passionate learning mind open when you're working your butt off?

This post was written rather hastily as a humble contribution to the April 2008 Working/Learning Blog Carnival. Be sure to check out all the other great contributions!

Instructional Designers Poll: Market Sector and Advanced Degrees

My original survey on Instructional Designers and Advanced Degrees had some holes in it. For awhile now I've been wondering about Market Sector differences in ID. I want to know if there's a difference in the ratio of working instructional designers with advanced degrees in the corporate and academic sectors.

Please take the latest poll!

Instructional Designers with Formal Training: Survey Update

As of today, over 119 responses to the ongoing survey Instructional Designers: Do You Have An Advanced Degree?

37% of IDs say "Yes, I do have a formal/advanced ID degree."
63% of working IDS say "Nope. I'm flying on intuition and experience and informal learning."

Only 13% of those without a degree say they have ever been denied work as a result.

38% of respondents have been in the field for just 3-5 years. Is that a spike in the amount of ID work going on? Or is this a high burnout field that people don't stick around in for too long?

I'm still curious about the breakdown in degrees between the corporate and academic sectors. What's the ratio of IDs working in corporate with advanced degrees vs. academic?

The survey remains open indefinitely. Chime in, if you haven't.

Hiring Women in 1943. You Go, Girl!

This has very little to do with eLearning - although I'm sure those of you with a creative mindset could think of something! It's certainly good for a laugh on a busy morning.

A client sent this scanned page to me this morning. A reprint from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine (as reproduced in the September/October 2007 issue of Savvy & Sage Magazine: Getting the Most of Midlife and Beyond).

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight systems.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Given the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.

Today's challenge: apply one of the eleven helpful tips mentioned in this article to eLearning/instructional design.

I'll start:

#8 Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

Another argument in favor of chunking your eLearning into 10-20 experiences. If I don't have the time to apply fresh lipstick during an eLearning course, then I just won't finish it!

Jott This Blog

I haven't had so much time lately to blog, as this project I'm working on has been quite grueling.

I find my best time for thinking up excellent blog entries is late at night when I'm lying in bed. That is, of course, if I'm even awake after the kids have finally fallen asleep.

Now I'm trying to maximize my time on the drive to work. Today, especially, my ideas are fresh from a restless night last night.

So thanks to Michelle Martin for turning me on to Jott.

I am calling this blog entry in on my cellphone as I drive. When I arrive at work, it will be in my inbox. I'll simply have to cut and paste it into my blog tool, reformat it, and do some heavy editing. And then, presto magic, I have a new blog post.

It's taken a little getting used to.

Things I'm learning:

• I have to talk much more slowly. Otherwise Jott doesn't get what I'm saying.
• Jargon can be hard for Jott to translate. But it does a pretty good job and inserts [...] when it's not sure just what you mumbled.
• You can only jott in 30 second chunks. I have way more to say than that. The answer is to immediately jott yourself again (and you don't have to redial the number, the lovely Jott Attendant asks you who you want to Jott when a previous jott is finished).

I arrived at work this morning to find 9 Jotts in my inbox -- fodder for a few blog posts at least.

(There's much more that you can do with Jott -- send Jotts to friends, send yourself reminders or txt msgs, create to do lists. I'm just scratching the surface here.)