Guest post by: Robin Neidorf

Win Teach Beyond Your Reach!

If you’re asking yourself, “Is running a distance learning program for me?” then read on. Use the following as a checklist while you’re evaluating online education tools. It’s an excerpt from the book Teach Beyond Your Reach by Robin Neidorf. The e-learning guide takes a practical, curriculum-focused approach to setting up and running successful online classes. The guide for new and experienced distance educators allows them to develop and deliver quality e-learning courses and training sessions.

Do:

Ask informed questions.

Demo a tool before you commit to using it.

Try freeware or open-source tools.

Go for low tech whenever possible.

Ask potential students for their input.

Network with other instructors; ask them what they use; compare notes, success stories, and battle scars.

Keep up with changing technology; treat yourself to an occasional seminar or conference.

Stay open, creative, and flexible about your teaching.

Assume that you will find the right solution (although it may not be the one you thought you’d find).

Don’t:

Use technology for its own sake; it must enhance the learning and instructing experience or it will be merely distracting (at best) or a barrier (at worst).

Change your requirements, objectives, or audiences without keeping your partners (especially your technology partners) informed.

Assume everything will work as promised; test and retest (preferably with members of the learner population) before the course begins.

Ignore the unwillingness of your students to use a tool; sometimes they’re not just ready and you may need to take smaller incremental steps than you’d like.

Let failure or challenges discourage you from believing in the possibilities of distance education.

“Get married” to a particular tool or solution; it might not be all things to all situations.

Use the tool as a substitute for good course design and delivery.

Migrate content from one tool to another in a cut-and-paste approach.

BY ROBIN NEIDORF

Robin Neidorf is the author of Teach Beyond Your Reach: An Instructor’s Guide to Developing and Running Successful Distance Learning Classes, Workshops, Training Sessions and More (Information Today, Inc., 2006), soon to be published in an updated second edition. She has taught communications and writing through the University of Phoenix Online and has co-taught creative writing online through the University of Gävle in Sweden.  As a consultant, she has helped organizations develop and implement successful distance learning and self-paced tutorial programs. Robin holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Teach Beyond Your Reach Free Book Contest

Contest time

[Update! Congratulations to David, who won the drawing for Teach Beyond Your Reach by Robin Neidorf. This contest may be over, but you're still welcome to keep sending ideas for picking a learning management system or exercise ideas.]

You could win a free copy of Teach Beyond Your Reach as part of Talance’s Customer Appreciation Month, courtesy of e-learning pro and author Robin Neidorf. How can you be entered to win? Just add your favorite training exercise, lesson idea or experience to the comments below, and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win.

Deadline for entries is Jan. 16, 2012. We’ll pick one winner at random from all entries on Jan. 17, 2012 and will notify the winner via e-mail. You must leave your name and a correct e-mail address to qualify.

Customer Appreciation Month = Par-TAY!

We’re letting the deals flow through the whole month of December, because it’s Customer Appreciation Month at Talance.

Why? Oh, just because we love you. From time to time we like to come up with excuses for expressing our gratitude for your support, loyalty and general fandom.

A month of fun-days

Sounds like fun, right? Here’s what we’ve got lined up:

December 2

Garbled Grammar Contest

Tap into your inner curmudgeon and share your favorite mixed metaphor, mysterious company tagline or other language gaffe. You’ll be entered to win a free clear-writing or site-review consultation from writing and online communications consultant Kyla Cromer. (Kyla’s current favorite: “Qwest is becoming CenturyLink. Two companies, stronger connected.”)

December 9

Cutest Mug Ever and Gift Card

Share where you find design inspiration, and you’ll receive a gift card via e-mail. One lucky entrant will receive a limited edition Talance travel mug. Man, these things are cute.

December 16

Teach Beyond Your Reach Drawing

Enter to win a free copy of Robin Neidorf’s acclaimed book about e-learning Teach Beyond Your Reach: An Instructor’s Guide to Developing and Running Successful Distance Learning Classes, Workshops, Training Sessions and More. All you have to do is tell us about your favorite training activity.

December 23

Drawing for a free SEO analysis

Tell us what you plan to do to make your website more findable on the web, and pick up nine quick tips for improvement. We’ll select one entrant to win a free SEO analysis and report – a $600 value!

December 30

Frankenspeak Contest with the Content Rules team

Share the words and phrases that you’d like to ban from marketing, sales, corporate communications, business schools, blogs and boardrooms, and you’ll be entered to win a copy of Content Rules, by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman. Ann is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and C.C. is the Founder of Digital Dads.

Logistics

Here’s how it’ll work. Every week we’ll publish a new special offer on the blog either from us or one of our trusty partners. And, because we appreciate future customers too, we’re making each offer available to anyone, whether they’ve worked with us before or not.

A new contest opens up every single week of December on the blog and runs for 30 days. Specific details about each offer will be posted with each post, so make sure you’re checking back for updates every week. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed (not sure what an RSS feed is?) or sign up for our Weekly Deal E-mail list so you don’t miss a thing.

Keep in the loop

Each week’s treat will debut on our blog, but we’ll send notifications also on our Twitter account and on our Facebook page to learn more. So, while you’re thinking about it:

Follow us on Twitter.

Like us on Facebook.

Sign up for our Weekly Deal E-mail list

Excited? We are too! From all of us at Talance: thank you!

This is an excellent question that I found while trolling through LinkedIn Answers, but it’s not unlike standard brainstorming questions I’m asked every time we launch an e-learning project.

Read the full discussion here, or check out these highlights:

The Machine is Us/ing Us. Very creative and compelling way to tell the story of Web 2.0 through imagery.

5 Tips for Success. Really funny video created by Articulate that shows the capabilities of their product and also outlines what doesn’t work with web presentations.

5 Tips for Success

Mortgage-Backed Securities. A good explanation of a complicated and possibly dry subject.

How about you? Seen any examples of e-learning videos lately that you particularly like? Add them in the comments below.

[Have a question you’d like answered? Ask on the comments form at the bottom of this page, on Twitter @talance, or on Facebook. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

A Well-Balanced, Healthy Website: HealthImperatives.org

Health Imperatives, a public health agency in Brockton, Mass., knows that the healthiest clients are the ones they can reach the best. That’s why they worked with Talance to create an innovative new website that brings together their myriad programs under one domain.

The new website brings together several features designed to help guide visitors around the site, including a handy “drawer” style menu (click Programs and Services), plus a robust multi-site format that keeps the various programs, each with its own identity, looking similar. Because the site is built on Drupal, administrators from each program are able to make their own edits.

The site incorporates many features, including an online store, registration for a large online learning program, forums, search and private user areas.

Visit the site.

[Have a question you’d like answered? Use the comments form at the bottom of this page to submit it. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

PowerPoint presentations are in many ways excellent jumping-off points for an online course. Working with slides forces you to think in discreet thoughts, which is essential for online communication. Plus, if you’ve already got a PowerPoint, then you’ve probably already gone through the hard work of planning what you want to teach and how you’ll arrange your lessons.

The key issue to remember is that a PowerPoint presentation is not an online course. It’s just that: a presentation. That’s what webinars are for.  An online course addresses different goals and is administered differently; it’s not simply a way to deliver your presentation online. An online course is more akin to a classroom experience, except that it happens remotely.

If you’re looking to create a full online course, the best thing to do with your PowerPoint is to use it as a planning tool. Most e-learning programs begin with a storyboard (this site explains what they are and provides some helpful examples), which is an outline for your online course.

From there, you can start to flesh out your course into text (you’ll have to convert all the words you say during your slideshow presentation into written copy) and activities to deliver on your online platform.

If you want more advice on planning for an online course, check out this helpful article from The E-Learning Coach blog.

Come learn about ATutor, Blackboard and other learning management systems during a panel discussion at the Boston chapter of the American Society for Training & Development. The meeting is Jan. 18, 2011, from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. in Newton, MA.

Here’s the overview from the ASTD:

The first part [of the meeting] is Tech Talk, featuring Shawn Stiles, providing an overview of Lectora. In this presentation, Shawn will discuss Lectora, a popular development tool. His presentation will be an overview of the product including costs, competitors, why he likes this product as well as some pros and cons. He’ll also cover a brief how-to demonstration and end by showing the final product, live and on-line.

The second part of the evening will be an interactive panel discussion with several LMS expert, sharing and comparing their insights on specific LMS tools. LMS experts will be covering discussions on products from Learn.com (Shannon Courtney), Blackboard (David Rosenbaum), ATutor (Monique Cuvelier) as well as others.

Location: Rebecca’s Cafe 275 Grove Street, Auburndale, MA 02459, 617-969-3382. For those who have not been to this Rebecca’s location, it is very easy to miss as you will not see a sign for Rebecca’s from the street. 275 Grove St. is the Riverside Office Park, right next to the Riverside MBTA train and bus stop. Rebecca’s is located at the back of the building, by the parking garage.

See you there!

Overhauling the way Massachusetts’ medical practices deal with patients is no simple task. Not when you’re considering coordinating all of a patient’s health needs, including managing chronic conditions, handling visits to specialists, dealing with hospital admissions and reminding patients when they need check-ups and tests. Add to it archaic systems that involve stacks of paper medical records and rows of filing cabinets in doctors’ offices.

Many doctors deal with patients’ various medical issues by writing a referral and then maybe hearing about what happened at yearly check-up time.

The Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Health and Human Services hopes to fundamentally change the way medical practices work with the Patient-Centered Medical Home Initiative. The 3-year demonstration project is part online and part in-person. Participants, which include 46 primary care medical practices, receive live coaching from facilitators, help establishing and maintaining patient registries and extensive training through a learning collaborative, managed by e-learning technical provider Talance, Inc. (http://talance.com/elearning).

The program involves all types of doctors in every corner of the state, including large, urban community health centers and small, rural group practices. Even in a state as small as Massachusetts, where it’s possible to drive from one end to the other – the long way – in a few hours, it’s still a challenge to train a broad range of practices at the same time. That’s why it’s vital for the project to incorporate online learning as a way to help manage the project.

In many cases, e-learning is the only way to effectively push health care management shifts. It’s an industry that naturally drifts toward in-person connection, where doctors talk to people face-to-face in examination rooms. When it comes to reforming office administration on such a large scale, that model won’t work. It’s the reason that 37 percent of training hours involved electronic technology in 2009, according to Alexandria, Va.-based American Society for Training and Development.

E-learning may be key in conforming to the Obama administration’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which passed in 2009. Providers will have to adopt health information technology (HIT) starting in 2011, a requirement that includes more than $36 billion in incentive payments to reward providers whose electronic medical records (EMRS) meet the government’s test of “meaningful use”.

The end result is overall cost savings.

“At the heart of our effort to ensure access to care is a commitment to strengthening primary care and reforming how we pay for that care,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. JudyAnn Bigby. “This new initiative is one of the key building blocks in our strategic work to make all primary care practices in Massachusetts transformed into advanced patient-centered medical homes by 2015.”

The Patient-Centered Medical Home Initiative (PCMHI) was designed by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services in consultation with a multi-payer, multi-stakeholder council of consumer, physician, nurse practitioner, hospital, insurer, state agency and other interested stakeholder representatives. The Council is co-chaired by Secretary Bigby and Dr. John Fallon, Senior Vice President and Chief Physician Executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

You may have piles of experience presenting to live groups but are fuzzy on how to make the transition online. Particularly confusing is the difference between an online course and a webinar. While both formats let you present information to people from afar, they’re not the same, nor are they mutually exclusive.

If you’re considering opening up your training to include an online element, this matrix might help you find the best tool for the job.

Any veteran teacher will tell you that planning is the key to a successful course. Not all e-learning courses are taught by veteran teachers, however. Even if you don’t have years in the classroom, you can still follow some basic guidelines to develop a course that helps your learners get what they need. Here are five essential elements that benefit most online courses.

Technical Backgrounder

Some of your learners may be pros at navigating an online environment, but many won’t be. Even if they’re addicted to their iPad, they still may need help understanding your online learning environment. We build and host courses in ATutor, which is extremely intuitive, but we still provide a set of instructions that explains how everything works. Do this for any of your online courses, and make sure you cover any other kinds of technical requirements, such as a need for third-party software like Adobe Acrobat.

Syllabus or Overview

Set expectations early, and everyone will be more satisfied with the outcome. Tell your learners what you’ll be covering in the course, broken down by chapter or module. Include objectives and lend a preview into upcoming assignments or what you’re expecting from participants.

Chapters

This is the filling in your online learning sandwich. Be organized when you structure what your learners are to be learning. Some people call these modules.

Course Wrap-Up

When the course is over, summarize the key information covered. I think it’s effective to add a few bullet points that tell learners what steps they can take next to put what they learned into effect.

Final Survey

Always ask for feedback. What your learners say about the course will prove invaluable when you offer your course the next time. Also ask your instructors to provide an evaluation. This will help you make educated revisions from a different viewpoint.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, 500,000 kids in America take classes online, with many of those receiving all all their schooling from virtual public schools.

That’s right, public schools. These programs receive funding from the state, and they’re not considered home-schooling.

This calls for more people who know and understand how to use online learning. The same article says a state audit in Colorado “found that one school, run by a rural district, was using four licensed teachers to teach 1,500 students across the state.”They’re spread enormously thin, and there’s got to be a better push for education of online educators.