Michelle Everson joined eLearn Magazine as a monthly columnist after writing some of our most popular articles. Her first column is Why Should Educators Blog? She joins our regular columnists Roger Schank and Bob Little as well as those who write less frequently.
I interviewed Michelle about her new role and about her role as an online teacher:
When people ask me about my background in e-learning or my background in technology, I have to fess up that I don’t have either.
My educational and training background are rooted in journalism and English literature (in other words, reporting and critical thinking). I’ve come to learn enough about technology to be able to ask the right questions, speak to the right people, and read the informative resources — and that’s essentially how I gather information. I don’t do e-learning myself, but I still feel I am accepted among the community based on those other credentials.
Rick Nielsen, who has hosted a podcast about e-learning for the last five years, put together a primer for first-time podcasters and presented it at DevLearn 2010 this week. DevLearn is one of the largest e-learning conferences in North America, held in San Francisco this year November 3-5.
His talk covered the how-to’s of podcasting: an overview of the process, some tips on quality, and a selection of tools on a modest budget.
Overview: The 7 Steps Podcasting Process
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Do you have advice or suggestions for Dave M, who wrote: We have been asked to develop 8 week online courses, but my faculty are concerned that the 8 weeks limits the course too much (and that science and math in particular are more difficult to do online). We have the concern that 3 credits are given for both versions of the same course when one (full semester) is rigorous at the college level and the other (8 week) covers much much less.
Do you have advice or similar experiences? Please let us – and Dave M – know!
In the e-learning world, what’s the difference between knowing and doing?
It’s a question that trainers struggle with, whether they realize it or not. Martin L. Cohen of Breakthrough Performance Tech gave a talk this morning at DevLearn that focused on “e-performance” — the do part.
Cohen’s premise is that training in the business world should be like training in the sports world. That is to say, training should be practice, or doing with an emphasis on repetition. Sports players always warm up, but there’s no warm up in business, says Cohen. “In true e-performance, you train daily.”
Additionally, Cohen sees a need for immediate and directive feedback. Again, using a sports analogy, he likens it to a golf pro giving a student a bucket of balls and then leaving the driving range while the player hits balls. “You would never pay a sports coach for training that’s not directive,” Cohen says, meaning it’s the golf pro’s job to stick around and advise the player on her swing while she’s practicing. And yet the kind of training and feedback that happens in the business world is very often after the fact.
While Cohen supports his approach with results from cognitive and behaviorial research, one area where I question his method is his dismissal of theory.
Cohen spoke about theory as if it is a waste of time — the very thing that prevents people from taking action and learning right now. His sense of immediacy carries over into his rationale, saying that the brain needs to be constantly reinforced for people to truly learn and know how to do certain tasks. The brain works on a “use it or lose it” policy.
However, without theory, employees and learners can’t understand the bigger picture, and are thus less flexible when it comes to more creative problem-solving or advancing in their careers. If employees are trained repetitively to do, what will happen when they need to think at a higher level, to see the entire system that is their organization in order to make more complex decisions and understand the effects they will have along the entire chain?
ePerformance is all about doing, and doing things now. While employees or learners will certainly walk away from e-performance training confident in their ability to do the task at hand, will they be prepared to advance their careers and grow into new positions?