Someone came onto our stand at the Learning Technologies the other week and asked, ‘OK, so you people at Saffron know social learning. What about anti-social learning?’ That intriguingly sly question got me thinking about what our role is in facilitating learning in our customers’ organisations: what exactly is it that we be should aiming to design and implement?

Consider the best versus the worst experience of “instructor-led training” in the classroom. The worst is staring at the back of someone who’s facing his or her slides and reading out the bullet points in an emotionless monotone (while you’re reading them at a different speed). The best is being in a class with a trainer who engages you and everybody else in the room in a dialogue about the subject. For example, the trainer may ask you a question but, instead of telling you whether your answer is correct or incorrect, then asks other members of the class for their opinion of your response. All answers are good answers: it’s important to know whether you’re right or wrong but it’s just as important to know why.

Today e-learning is an essential part of the training blend, in order to meet both organisations’ and learners’ expectations of availability, cost and timeliness. At Saffron we design e-learning that aspires to the best classroom experience – e-learning that makes eye contact – as you’ll know if you’ve been following the Spicy Learning Blog. Within the constraints of the medium, we aim to hold a conversation with our learners, anticipating and answering their concerns. For all that, e-learning remains a solitary, self-paced, self-study experience and one that perhaps runs the risk of becoming anti-social learning.

Social learning acknowledges a well known but often ignored truth that people learn best when they’re motivated to teach themselves and others. Adding social learning to the training blend counters any anti-social bias in e-learning design and provides a powerful underpinning for an organisational change programme, where the aim is to explain, motivate and persuade and not just to instruct.

That brings me to my title. Musing on anti-social learning got me thinking about why I don’t like “instructional design” as a name for what we do. The term instruction reminds me too much of PE at school: Arms Up! Bend Knees! Stretch! Instruction, in that sense, is completely contrary to the tone of our courses (and yours too, I hope). What we actually aim to design is a complete programme: an enjoyable, engaging and effective experience that uses, in each case, an appropriate blend of instructor-led, self-study and social learning.

So here’s my suggestion. Why don’t we call ourselves learning experience designers rather than instructional designers? It applies, incidentally, as much to our graphic designers and programmers of interactions as it does to those of us who write the storyboards. In other words, let’s set ourselves the expectation that, collectively, we design learning experiences, not instruction!

Imagine that a group of people each have a box with something in it. Let’s call it a ‘beetle.’ No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says they know what a beetle is only by looking at their beetle. It would be possible that everyone has something different in their box. Maybe the box is even empty.

This is the same problem that we, as project leads, face every time we start a new project with a client: how do I know that I’ve understood what the client wants?

With some things it’s easy. How long do you want the course to last? 20 minutes. What data do you need the course to track? Completion status, name and job title. But questions such as ‘How faithfully should I follow the content provided?’ won’t necessarily get you a definitive answer. And force feeding these answers through the Jeremy Paxman quiz maker isn’t yet an option available to the contemporary e-learning designer.

For instance, how do you know whether your client understands the technical limitations of rapid development tools when they opt to use them to build their company’s e-learning? Maybe you thought you’d explained it to them during the kick off meeting, and they made all the outward visible signs of understanding, but when you sent them the end product they asked you to add in a flashing button.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes a project lead can make is to make assumptions about what a client knows. You don’t have to err too far on the side of caution and assume that your client knows nothing. But you do need to know whether your client’s understanding of ‘highly animation based’ is simply your default Flash course or an ultra hi-tech, multimedia-intensive learning extravaganza.

So, how do we solve this ‘Beetle in the box’ problem?

Improve your communications pattern.

If you’re concerned that you may not be able to deliver what a client has asked for, then it might be worth spending a bit more time liaising with your client. What clients expect at the beginning of a project may be radically different from what they expect mid-way through or even towards the end of the project life cycle. This is particularly true if your client is new to e-learning. After a couple of storyboard and interim releases, their understanding of the possibilities grow and so too can their demands for the course. You can then find yourself having to manage the expectations of an overzealous client.

Have regular conversations with your client. We find it helps to hold weekly teleconferences with project stakeholders to plot the project’s progress against the evolving expectations of our clients. Taking meeting and call notes helps because it gives your client the opportunity to confirm your understanding and ensure that you’re on the right track.

Meet your client’s needs and manage their expectations.

Not all projects that fail to meet client expectations do so because of a breakdown in communications. Sometimes a client may be unrealistic with their own expectations; they ask for their course to be built using a rapid development tool, fully aware of its limitations, but on seeing the end product change their minds. Ultimately, this client had something else in their box. And it’s our responsibility to make sure we manage expectations.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to focus more on what you believe an organisation needs. After all, we’re e-learning consultants as well as service providers.  Expectations are sometimes based on personal opinions rather than on what the course needs to achieve; so whilst I may not be able to visualise the look and feel that my client has printed in their head, I can recognise that if my client wants his staff to comply with the UK Bribery Act then they’re going to have to be taught how to complete an expenses form.

We’re always looking for ways to become better at identifying what our clients expect of the learning solutions we design for them. Understanding a client’s expectations will help to minimise those last minute change requests that can throw a whole project off schedule, and it will also help to ensure that you deliver high quality products that meet the needs of the company and its learners. A course that cannot meet its learner’s needs really is no better than an empty box.

Mantras such as ‘check, check and check again’ are often bandied around in the workplace, but what can we do to make sure our QA of everything we roll out is 100 per cent foolproof?

I recently bought a bottle of wine which the label described as ‘A crips dry white’. My friends and I thought this was hilarious; the point being that we all love to spot mistakes. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the reaction we want our learners to have when they are completing our courses! So we’ve selected ten basic top tips to prompt the reviewer and help you to make sure nothing gets through your QA.

1. Check the textual, visual and functional

It can be easy to prioritise one aspect of an e-learning course, but they are all equally important. It can help to complete one QA focusing on the text, then another on the visual and so on.

2. Ten or 10?

Agree a rule, and then stick to it and make sure it’s always followed. We prefer to write out numbers up to nine, and then use the characters for all numbers that are higher.

3. Is the instruction text accurate and up to date?

Make sure the text aligns with what appears on the screen. If an image or interaction has been moved then the instruction text will need updating too.

4. ‘It’s’ or ‘its’?

‘It’s’ should be used when abbreviating ‘It is’ and ‘its’ can be used in all other instances. It’s worth double checking your use of this, as spell-check and autocorrect have been known to get it wrong.

5. The capitals conundrum

The appropriate use of capital letters has been the basis of many a debate between instructional designers. Decide on rules and then stick to them. If an icon reads ‘Next’ or ‘Resources’, then retaining the capital letters when the icon is mentioned in the main text will aid usability. The rules that you agree may have to be bent at times, as some companies like the use of capitals and some don’t. Always check the relevant branding guidelines to make sure you’re writing within them.

6. Which side of the pond?

Find out whether e-learning needs to be written in UK or US English and then check against common errors when completing a QA. For instance, have you used the correct version of ‘learnt’ vs. ‘learned’, or ‘preventive’ vs. ‘preventative’?

7. Always stir your coffee

For words such as ‘practice’ and ‘practise’ it’s an ‘s’ for a verb and a ‘c’ for a noun… so stir your coffee! If you’re writing in US English the rules will differ, so bear this in mind.

8. Don’t confuse your hyphens (-) and dashes (–)

A hyphen is shorter than a dash, and is used to compound words such as ‘e-learning’. A dash is longer and is used to separate clauses.

9. A company is singular

Companies, teams and departments should all be referred to in the singular. For instance, ‘Saffron has an e-learning blog’ and ‘The instructional design team has developed the storyboarding process.’

10. Does everything work?

Even if you are satisfied that everything is working as it should be, try to complete a final functionality QA before a release. This way you’ll pick up any issues that may have found their way into a course since your last review.

• Does everything click, drag and rollover as it should?
• Do all URLs and downloads work?

What is the Multiple Intelligences theory?

For the most part, it’s common sense! Penned by Howard Gardener in 1983, the theory describes what those of us who went to school already knew: Different people learn in different ways.

Gardener initially described seven basic intelligences. They are:

• Linguistic intelligence: demonstrating abilities with spoken and written language.
• Logical-mathematical intelligence: the capacities to analyse problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically.
• Musical intelligence: skill in the performance, composition, and recognition of music, patterns or rhythms.
• Kinaesthetic intelligence: using the body or parts of the body to solve problems; learning by doing.
• Spatial (or visual) intelligence: interpreting, recognising and using visual cues such as images and charts and the ability to perceive objects in space.
• Interpersonal intelligence: the ability to understand the intentions and motivations of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others.
• Intrapersonal intelligence: the capacity to understand oneself, appreciating your own feelings, fears and motivations.

The idea of multiple intelligences is now widely accepted in education, and teachers are encouraged to utilise methods that stimulate each of these to get pupils to engage in lessons. The theory is even widely utilised in corporate training.

How can we apply this to e-learning?

There is no reason why multiple intelligences should not be catered for in e-learning. Just because the audience is accessing the course online, it doesn’t mean that all of the users now miraculously learn in the same way – they don’t. As an instructional designer, you need to design courses with a variety of interactions that will allow you to keep learners engaged by appealing to their specific intelligences. I’ve briefly described some examples of how you can do this.

Linguistic: Conversation-style scenarios and links to online forums or chat rooms will benefit linguistic learners. You can also use additional information pop-ups throughout the course or get the learner to use a ‘notepad’ facility to jot down ideas they have as the course progresses.

Logical-mathematical: This type of learner enjoys problem solving activities such as arranging the steps in a diagram or working out the correct answer using a series of clues. Using graphics such as Venn diagrams to illustrate your point will also engage this type of learner.

Musical: You can use word-plays, such as mnemonics, to solidify learning for individuals with musical intelligence. Using audio case studies will engage these learners (but don’t forget to include a transcript for learners that prefer to read the information). Using sounds and music that are relevant to the learning are also good practice.

Kinaesthetic: You can really engage your kinaesthetic learners by giving them the freedom to explore virtual environments and do activities that require them to get physically involved, such as drag and drop interactions.

Spatial (or visual) intelligence: Using graphics and images to back up the information you’re providing will really help to engage visual learners. Avoid using images that aren’t applicable to the learning as these can detract from the message you’re trying to give. A good way of engaging visual learners is to ask them to choose the correct image to answer a question, rather than just sentences.

Interpersonal intelligence: You can stimulate interpersonal intelligence using well constructed scenarios. Ask the learner to put themselves in someone else’s shoes to make a decision, or provide advice to a fictional colleague. Get your learners involved with other learners by providing links to online forums and chat rooms.

Intrapersonal intelligence: Intrapersonal intelligence focuses on the internal aspect to learning and using reflective exercises is a great way to engage these individuals. Ask your learners to think about how they can apply what they’ve learned to their specific circumstances. Provide links for further private study, as these will often appeal to the intrapersonal learner.

These are just a few ideas. There is so much more that you can do to ensure that the courses you design are engaging for the full range of learners. Just remember that variety is the key; add a little something for everybody and you’re sure to produce a course that all of your learners will enjoy. Next time you’re storyboarding, try it for yourself!

An interesting debate has begun in our office of late – to storyboard or not to storyboard? I can almost hear the collective intake of breath that I dared even ask this question, but here at Saffron we are all about challenging norms and finding new solutions to old problems, so I’m going to push forward regardless.
 
To even begin a debate on this topic, we have to consider why storyboards appeared in the e-learning space to begin with. Typically used in the film industry, storyboards are a tool designed to simulate flow and movement, mapping out a story scene by scene. It’s a case of being able to see individual trees in detail, but then being able to stand back and appreciate the whole forest. The concept of storyboards relies heavily on the visual aspect, and is particularly useful to demonstrate a sequence: mapping out how the cops get the bad guy, or how Bambi and his mother are happily reunited after the near-fatal shooting – ok, well that one is more wishful thinking than reality, but you get my point.

In e-learning, storyboards are primarily a tool to help articulate your vision to a client. With them, you can show your client how their ideas and content have been streamlined into a smooth-flowing, engaging and educational course. As learning professionals, we already know that not everyone learns in the same way, and this of course is also true of clients. Having a visual representation in front of you can help to focus a client’s attention, giving them a sense of how a project is developing while gently steering them away from an information dump and towards an instructionally sound course. It’s all too easy to feel you haven’t quite explained exactly how to insert pin A into slot F while simultaneously pushing buttons D & E – but when you have a nice clear diagram storyboarded in front of you with a punchy little explanation, it is all the more easier to just let go.

So, storyboards are great then, right? Well, the short answer is ‘not always’. Sometimes the process of storyboarding can just add extra hours (and therefore costs) to an otherwise simple project. Just how much time do you put into a storyboard, and how much detail do you include? I have worked on projects where developing storyboards becomes almost a project in itself – complete with graphics, animated transitions and branding already incorporated. The clients love it, but it doesn’t do your project timelines any favours when the inevitable changes are requested. It’s also terribly easy to deviate from an in-depth analysis of content, and instead get caught up in the look and feel.

Like so much else, the key to storyboarding is striking a balance. Good storyboarding is about creating flow and mapping out the journey ahead – whether it’s for yourself or your client; on a piece of paper or in your head. It is about the process more than the tools – if you can clearly articulate your vision without a storyboard (and your client trusts you enough that they don’t need to see one) then great – you’ve just bought yourself extra development time. But if you feel that you might lose track and say, inadvertently re-write a key defining moment in a certain small deer’s life – then perhaps you’d better stick with more tried and tested methods.

I don’t think we have a one-size-fits-all solution to this one, but I’m really looking forward to continuing the debate. Don’t let me steer you in any one direction – what are your thoughts? What works for you?

Western fonts and typefaces fall into one of two identifiable categories; either they have small features at the end of strokes to distinguish each character, or they don’t. Serif fonts (or “Roman” fonts) are the ones with the swishes, and sans serif typefaces are the ones that don’t. Put simply, Times New Roman is a serif font; Arial is sans serif.

Sans serif fonts (also known as “gothic” script) have become the acceptable standard. At Saffron, we use a sans serif font for this blog, our website, our courses, even our internal communications. Am I complaining? No way. I would pick using a sans serif font to write an email ten out of ten times. Why? I think for me the main reason has to be that it looks cleaner – the text sits on the page nicely and doesn’t look like it might err off course into the empty spaces and escape from the page.

It’s not just me that prefers sans serif. A quick sweep of the office shows that everyone else is of the same mind. “I think it’s more accessible” and “the space between characters makes Arial easier to read” were two of the replies I had. But the remark I found most intriguing was “I would pick Arial to write an email, but when I was younger I used to love Lucida Handwriting”.

I hate Lucida Handwriting. A scrawling monstrosity, it renders even the most fluid prose completely illegible. To be honest, in that aspect it probably reminds me too much of my own handwriting, which is so lacking in definition that a friend once said it was like “the heartbeat of a dying man”.

So why would anybody pick a serif font designed to mimic handwriting when writing something? I think the answer was hinted at when the colleague admitted that she was “younger” when she liked to use it. It makes communication seem more personal and identifiable, even if in a really rudimentary way. It’s probably also why publishers prefer to use serif fonts for classic fiction. We get a sense of history with the antiquated script of the characters, but also feel like a singular, personal voice is trying to speak to us.

That’s why we avoid serif fonts in e-learning. Text needs to be open, accessible, and, frankly, anonymous. The same reason we avoid serif fonts is the same reason we avoid the use of “I” in our instructional text. “We are going to look at” and “I am going to show you” make the same point, but notice the impact.

We often try to foster a sense of community in our instructional writing for business, encouraging the employee (the learner) to identify with the business (the teacher). Companies have been making the progressive effort to change their language to homogenise and simplify their communications, which is great for everyone. Fewer words + user friendly language = happy customers = profitable business.

But if we want to be indentified by our writing, why use the same font? I’m not taking about simply making all our communications Arial-based. Everyone uses Arial. I’m advocating companies developing their own, branded sans serif font that they can use in communication. Not just focusing on logos and headings, but adopting a typeface that is identifiable, a kind of corporate handwriting. It carries all the weighting of the brand and its core values but, unlike a static logo, can adopt. Employees identify with and get used to using the “voice” of the business because they can begin to visual recognise the business voice constructions in communications, and know when they should be using appropriate language for the business because the separation from their personal communication is evident in the typography. lf business communication attains a greater degree of homogeneity, then the knock-on benefit for elearning is that instructional designers will be able to replicate the business “voice” of the client with greater success, maximising the effectiveness of their courses.

Thinking about it, I might go and trawl the internet to find a font and adapt it for my own. Why not? There isn’t just one sans serif font out there, so why restrict yourself? Discover a new handwriting.

What are your thoughts on e-learning and business typography? Think the design of one of your courses would have looked better in another font? Perhaps you’ve even used serif fonts to build courses – let us know why you prefer them in the comments box below.

We at Saffron don’t like to pigeon hole ourselves as simply training providers. Yes, we design and develop e-learning, but we do a whole lot more than that too. We’re all about performance improvement and people productivity, and there are more ways to achieve those things than training alone.

In this day and age, with advances in technology opening up all kinds of new possibilities every week, isn’t it time we all broadened our minds a little and started looking beyond training?

For instance, in the past it might have taken days or weeks to notify an entire sales team of updates to a product or service. Not only is that eating up time and money, it also means that for a certain length of time some people are selling the old version, blissfully unaware of the updates. Why not send update notifications direct to their mobile phone instead? That way, they know about the changes right away and can access the details again as and when they need to, at the touch of a button.

Likewise, if line managers are constantly flooded with emails or phone calls from new starters asking the same old question, why not find a way to let them ask and answer questions amongst themselves? Build a wiki, a forum, a portal or a fully fledged social network to facilitate this. With a bit of encouragement it will soon sustain itself, it can be used to start the settling in process before a new starter’s first day, it will complement any existing formal induction training and – crucially – it will save time and therefore money.

One thing that takes up a lot of time in every organisation is compliance training – if every employee needs to take several one hour courses every year or two, it soon adds up. But is it really necessary? How about offering staff the option to download a diagnostic assessment to a mobile device to determine whether or not they actually need to sit the full training course? If the assessment is designed properly, passing it provides confirmation of compliance in a fraction of the time it would normally take them to re-sit the same course they took the year before.

I could offer more examples, but the point is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat – if you need to improve productivity or performance and save time or money, a formal training course isn’t always the answer. These days, the possibilities are seemingly endless – with a little imagination applied to technological innovations, we can all achieve great things.

Compliance training has a bad reputation for being little more than a box-ticking exercise. But here at Saffron we believe it’s absolutely possible to create effective, engaging training that achieves both competence and compliance. Read on for our top five tips for breaking the mould and delivering gold standard compliance training every time.

1. Keep it positive
Avoid the temptation to instruct your learners in what they must and must not do. Try to minimise the number of ‘horror stories’ about the dire consequences of breaking the law. Training that’s driven by fear, or by an organisation’s need to cover its back, is unlikely to really make a difference.

2. Make it relevant
When it comes to compliance, what you do is more important than what you know. So don’t focus on legislative detail; focus instead on what the law means in practice to each individual learner in their day to day work. This is a great step towards achieving enhanced awareness and competence as well as meeting regulatory requirements.

3. Keep it real
One way to achieve that relevance and engage your learners is to use scenarios: create recognisable, everyday situations and get learners to identify the issues and make recommendations. This clearly demonstrates to them what they need to know (and do) and why. It also means they’re more likely to apply this knowledge in the workplace.

4. Make it varied
If learners are engaged in and enjoy a course they’re more likely to learn from it. Use a variety of interactions and media to cater to different learning styles and keep them interested. For example, consider photo or video scenarios, handy downloadable tips, news reports or articles, real life case studies and easy to access dictionaries.

5. Keep it conversational
We’ve had user feedback confirming what we already believed: a plain English, conversational tone of voice contributes to keeping learners engaged and therefore to the effectiveness of the training. Something as simple as this is a change from the norm of compliance training and offers learners a breath of fresh air as well as delivering results.

Download:

Top ten tips for writing an effective, engaging compliance course

Click here or here to find out more about our approach to compliance training. We’ve also recently won an IT Training Award for a compliance training project!

I was interested to see that Skype has recently announced a partnership with LG and Panasonic, which means we will soon be able to buy a TV which we can use to Skype and browse the internet (find out more here). Promoting this new technology Skype’s business development manager, Jin Kim claimed that,

“TVs have lacked two things to date… eyes and ears” because “they haven’t had cameras and they haven’t had microphones.”

This led me to wonder… does e-learning also lack eyes and ears?

In fact, I think that many e-learning courses already possess ‘eyes and ears’ thanks to new technologies. Take mobile learning for example, where the learner progresses through the course and answers questions by speaking. Or how about social learning? Forums and help desks are evidence of an e-learning strategy’s ‘ears’ while the use of social networking points not only towards ‘eyes’ but also towards an age of collaborative learning that Skype and social networking sites’ popularity makes possible. And what about the advances being made in PC-based e-learning where we can now use techniques like 3D graphics, which allow the learner to pan around images and really become immersed in the learning? Surely highly interactive learning such as these examples could be counted as the ‘eyes and ears’ Kim is referring to?

This led me on to thinking that even if we do have ‘eyes and ears’ in our learning courses, does this actually enhance the learning in any way? For me, the following benefits come to mind:

• A positive first impression
• Learner engagement and motivation
• More realistic scenarios and environments where the learner can safely practise making decisions
• The ability to tailor the learning for different preferences, learning styles and capabilities

So far we’ve been focusing on how technology can give learning its ‘eyes and ears’ but I believe that this can also be created through instructional design. For instance, a scenario can be made more realistic by using well researched case studies written in a conversational tone. Or the learner can choose how they want to progress through a course by selecting to experience a certain scenario from a different point of view, for example, an interviewer versus an interviewee.

Kim’s thoughts about the evolution of TV are interesting, but I don’t think we can expect to see e-learning strategies reliant on cameras and microphones anytime soon. Instead, we should continue to vary the approaches we take and to be creative, rather than focusing only on the technology involved. After all, the most innovative graphics, interactions and technology will fail to engage the learner if the instructional design falls short.

(See Cat’s top L&D tip here.)

We English like nothing more than a bit of bad weather. It gives us something to talk about. We discuss it in the lift, in the bus queue and on the train. Bad weather is probably the only time that it’s acceptable for the English to talk to strangers!

As you may have heard, we’ve had a bit of snow. On one of the days that I was snowed in, I had the opportunity to sit and think about our industry – particularly, why is it that at the first sign of trouble, organisations cut their training budgets? Surely any form of logic would tell you that it should be the other way round. In times of trouble, we should be investing more in our people because we want them to achieve more.

I think the answer lies with us, the L&D professionals. For too long we have viewed training like chicken soup – its good for the soul and how can you argue that it won’t make you better? Unfortunately, this no longer washes with the CEO who has a million competing priorities. Often he or she is faced with making a decision between a business plan that has a clear return and a training budget where the benefits are hard to quantify. Unsurprisingly, it’s the training budget that gets squeezed.

We have to do better in this area if our organisations are to get the support that they deserve from L&D. We have to look at every programme as if we were paying for it ourselves. In this situation, would we spend the money if we could not quantify the return? We often hear that it is not always possible to determine the return from a training programme. In which case I would say don’t do the training – save the money. What about compliance training, I hear you say, we have to do this. I agree, but it’s a myth that you can’t measure the return from compliance training. The number of completions is an obvious measure but you can also measure the before and after effects in terms of, for example, the number of breaches or the calls to the help desk. By thinking about the return and measuring tangible results, we not only create financial benefits for the organisation but we help to make the training more palatable for the learners.

One project that comes to mind is some competition law training that we delivered. Initially the course was scoped to be a long programme that laid out the law. When we looked harder at the business benefits of the programme, we could not justify the costs. The subject matter expert, when confronted with this, admitted that actually learners did not need to know about competition law, only how to recognise the risks. They would then call a help line. This thinking resulted in a shorter, more effective course that actually had the desired impact. The change of heart came from looking at the training as a business proposition rather than an obvious foregone conclusion.

In my view L&D is not a support organisation, it’s a business unit and like all business units it needs to demonstrate tangible benefits – if we can’t do this, we may find that very quickly we are out in the cold.