Communication with your provider is the key

I called a meeting with our LMS provider on Friday. It felt as if we had come to a stand still again with the entire project. Some of that was on our part some on the part of the vendor.

Year end is never great time in any organization for true productivity. Top that off with our organization going through the Accreditation process. "Participating in accreditation demonstrates an organizations commitment to quality health care to its staff, patients, clients, and community. In the pursuit of excellence, thousands of health organizations voluntarily participate in Accreditation Canada's accreditation program each year." Getting down to serious LMS work really didn't fall high on my list of priority to-dos.

Once I had finished the majority of my accreditation tasks I got back into the fine details of the LMS. For a week (at least when I could) I looked at as many components of the system as I could. Looking for items I wanted changed, items I needed change, and components that just weren't functioning. Compiling a long list of these into a table, I sent them off to the vendor, our project lead, and our purchasing contract negotiator.

Our negotiator called a meeting with the vendor and to my surprise (and I use that loosely) I began to get a few more emails. Responded to my email queries were more timely. What had happened? We called. That's it.

Wrapping this little episode up....what I want to highlight again is the truly important need of communication from you to the vendor and from the vendor back to you. Both need to know where the other is in the the implementation process. I was being side tracked by other priorities, they were as well, but in doing so they have created some upgrades that I didn't know about and would have solved many sleepless nights and countless meetings I was having with my users. More regular discussions and open communication could bring your project to a conclusion much more quickly, with less complications and head aches.

Guild Looking for Tips for Getting Started With eLearning

Oh how great will this installment be from the eLearning Guild. They are currently compliling a list of the best tips for getting started with elearning. I know we all have some, so please share your thoughts. This will be invaluable to those newly entering this "world" and I have found that the rest of us can always benefit from tips we didn't think of before approaching our next project.

"Most eLearning Guild members work in organizations that have been engaged in e-Learning for some time. In some cases for many years. But there are many organizations out there that are just getting started with e-Learning. Let’s help those organizations get started – and avoid the pit-falls and costly mistakes we made – by giving them our top tips for getting started with e-Learning. To submit your tips, click HERE. " - The eLearning Guild: eLearning Insider

Why is it they only want to teach how to write an outline?

I'm taking yet another course in online design and delivery. I think I'm a glutton for punishment, but the trouble is I have yet to find a great course that really satisfies my craving for learning or meets my needs.

I did take a certificate with Bill and Kit Horton through Training Live and Online and I will say it was really good. I walked away with a ton of great tips, tricks and resources that I could use right then and there.

However, each of the university and college courses I've participated in spend so much time on creating an outline and objectives and blah, blah, blah that there is very little practical learnings that can be taken away an applied.

If you are like me you probably have little time to be wasting learning how to write an outline for the 10th time. You want solid tools, examples, and tips you can use to really create some fantastic learning experiences. I'm curious if others have experienced this and if not who do you truly recommend for solid learning and getting exactly what you needed?

Listing the Steps of the LMS is Difficult

I'm working on my performance plan of the last year and I'm finding it surprising that the area that has occupied the most of my work life, the LMS implementation, is proving to be the most difficult to map out.

I'm having little difficulty in listing all the steps for issuing our core training packages. I very quickly mapped out the process I followed to host our annual spring gathering for all staff. I even was able to list a few other major projects, but the LMS.....wow that is much more difficult.

Now I must find out why that is proving so hard. My best guess is that is has been a real trial and error from day one. There has been gains and set backs since the beginning and set backs seem to last so long that you forget where you last left off. I'm at that point currently. I last had a meeting with one of my end users in November. Once we met again last week we had a difficult time in trying to remember what we had first discussed and agreed upon. Basically we had to start over. Relook at the issues we "thought" we had previously, were they still the same, and did we have new ideas which with to rectify.

Now that I'm being forced (almost against my will) to list out the steps I'v currently followed and those that I plan to follow I'm having some trouble working through them. For the most part I believe it is avoidance, but I would suggest at this point to others to document your steps as you meet/pass them. I have an email trail, but if I could do things differently this would be one item I would have done much more in depth from the start.

Proving My Worth & Explaining Why I Need Less Interuptions

It's been almost 3 weeks since I returned from my vacation and the 3 solid days of LMS work I had scheduled for myself still has not occurred. It's amazing how many "this is number one" priorities come up in a single day. I came back to having to create org. charts, produce yet another paper version of curriculum, general document creation, meetings, budget concerns, binder stuffing, a/v equipment malfunctions, coordinating of orientation, and it goes on and on and on.

I am finally (I think) at almost a point where I can get back to "the number one priority" (for the moment) of going through the LMS step-by-step looking for bugs, issues, and general strangeness. However, there is another priority that I believe for a change may actually be something I should concentrate on first and stop looking at as an annoyance; My Performance Development Plan. Makes me shiver just to say the words.

I've never had to do one before...ever. However, my department is responsible for creating the document and is requiring the entire management team have them completed. So, as a FINE EXAMPLE, our department has been "strongly recommended" to complete ours as well. I am not a list person by any sense of the imagination and having to list out my priorities and objectives for the year is very painful. Listing further all the implementation steps is driving me to pull my hair out and my eyes to cross.

However.....

I now realize that my supervisors seem to have little understanding in how much is needed to be done to get the LMS working and continue to have it function. I've been working on it in bits and pieces now for such a long time that it seems to be one of those things that will never get done and therefore is moving lower on their priority list. This isn't true of others in the organization that are asking me where it stands and will it be ready soon. Yes and no....depending on if I get to actually concentrate more then 10 minutes at a time on the tasks needed for it to succeed.

I'm beginning to understand myself that I need to make my Performance Plan my first priority. This is not only because I have a meeting about it next week, but also because it will allow me to show clearly everything that I have done up until this point. More importantly it will help me to demonstrate all the tasks that will be needed to get the system functioning. I'm expecting that once they see how much is truly involved they will perhaps back off the "this is number one priority now" mentality and maybe even help me to protect my time from others in the organization as well.

I'll certainly post the results of my plan and meeting after they occur next week and hope that they are greatly positive.

Posting from my cell phone text message.
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Looking Back at My Own Blog

I was trying desperately today to remember something I had posted a long time ago about grading your website. That turned out to be Website Grader, surprise, surprise. What really surprised me was some of the things I have posted about and completely forgot I had written down.

Searching somewhat randomly to what I could only remember as "grade", I came upon so many different topics that I've covered over the last two years. My task or challenge for you today is to take a look back as well at some of your earlier posts. Take a trip down your own memory lane and visit your own consciousness for a while. I'm positive you'll enjoy the journey and surprise yourself with your own writings.

How Old is Too Old to be Relevant?

This is going to be a short post, but I just wanted to comment on my astonishment at how much info is out on the web about blogging. Most of it is posted on blogs...go figure. I've search "components of blogs", "how to start a blog", "blog tools", "how many blogs exist" and that's just a starting point. It's overwhelming and difficult to grasp was parts are really relevant.

Something that struck me though is how relevant and up-to-date with current trends can some of these posts be when many are a few years old. How old is now too old when it comes being relevant? I know the lady that works in the resource library in our facility does not keep any journals on the shelf that are more than a year old.

I can barely keep up with the constants streaming of information I receive daily through Twitter and these are just the select few people I have decided to follow. What about the thousands of others out there that are posting, tweeting, sharing their information, thoughts and ideas.

Is there a point in time that you don't reference back past? Do you give yourself a limit as to what you pay attention too? Is there a standard that we all should be following and if so does that mean the past is irrelevant? (I dare not ask that question).

Is the simple to you, complex to your students?

I'm taking yet another online course in designing online courses. So far I'm not learning anything, I'm just going through the motions.

What struck me tonight though, is this about the 10th course I've taken using the Blackboard system. So you can imagine my familiarity with it. Last semester I actually got to create and teach a short course through it to my fellow students. Again, you can see it's not my first time using the platform. YOU'D THINK THOUGH..... the way I have had to ask for clarification again and again about submitting assignments that I'm completely NEW. I can't figure it out to save my life....and maybe my grade.

So that brings me to thinking about designing and clarifying those instructions you present to your students/learners/users. Make them as clear and fool proof as possible. Yes I realize I'm labelling myself the fool here because I'm just not following the teacher in my own course. Just because you have hit the the "submit" button on the screen 1 billion times, do not assume your students/learners/users can figure out where the submit button even is, let alone know how to hit it.

Do they say hit or click? Do you need to be specific and say click twice? Do you need to say it is blue? Do you need to show a small picture of it? I'm not saying I'm that lost right now, but there could very well be learners right now in one of your classes lost wondering what to do next.

My computer science teacher in grade ten always had us write our programs as dummy proof as possible. If we put a yes/no question on the screen he would inevitably type - maybe. If we asked him to type in his name he would type - why do you ask? We had to make sure that regardless of the answer typed in, the program would redirected unexpected answers into a loop of "feedback" or gentle nudging for a proper response (or acceptable yes/no).

Just a little something to keep in mind as I struggle through tonight's lesson in my own school work. On the other hand maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment and should find something else to do with my time.

Cheers.

I Can't Believe I Have to Use Paper Again

This year my Core Curriculum learning packages are going to finally be online. Fully accessible by all staff. Automatically marked by the LMS. Easy to determine completion rates. Simple to distribute to every department.


AND THEN I WOKE UP!!!

I can't believe I'm being forced against my will to set up and print out 500 learning packages. 2700 tests with student names/numbers already entered. The very worse part of the entire process is the marking and recording of completion of 2700 test.

Now can you understand why I desperately want to get my learning system up and running.