Clueless does podcasting....

My first podcast - so very exciting!!

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Now - regarding how this could potentially be used in education - I see tons of potential. Students could be required to keep an audio journal of their thoughts or experiences related to the course content areas and share those journals with the other classmates. Peers could then be required to listen to the podcasts of the classmates to prepare for class discussions or other assignments. The use of this technology would be intimidating to quite a few students and time would need to be taken to familiarize the group with the process.

Great list of instructional strategies...

I am currently working on some pre-work for a training on a new custom content development tool our department will be using next year. During the process - I came across a link to a great site that list hundreds of examples that really give a hint to the full range of possibilities out there. The site is most-cleverly named "Glossary of Instructional Strategies". You can check it out at http://glossary.plasmalink.com/glossary.html. So much we can do....if only we can remember them all :)

And the beat goes on...

Received word at the end of the week last week that the proxy server settings have been adjusted globally to allow for mpeg files from Auralog to enter our network. Very exciting news! Even with our global ICTO (Internal Communications & Telecommunications Organization - very fancy) - [mind you - this group was called IPS (Information Processes & Systems) last week!] - there are still so many local intricacies and modifications made to the corporate standards - that you still really need to go country by country or at least region by region to get things set properly. So - we have just extended our intial pilot group for two weeks to allow them to make up for the time lost due to the network issues and also - began an extension of the pilot to include the 100 key contributors...should get interesting....still - the biggest headache in all of this is those darn headsets/microphones - getting them out to the participants is a pain - need to work on a better process for that...any ideas?

Now it's getting political...

OK - why is it that getting the attention of your own internal IPS group is sometimes such a challenge? I went into our S-cubed (PeopleSoft) system today to check out my ticket on the whole Auralog audio issue and found the ticket marked with and Error type of "reproducible" and the Priority level of "Low".....

That did not make me feel good even a little bit. Seems that rushing to help me out is not on the top of the list at the moment - boo hiss. So - I updated my ticket and explained that the Auralog pilot is being monitored by the corporate VP of HR and guess what...

Magic happened - they called me next to immediately and have raised my priority flag two notches. Guess I should have thrown the higher up card sooner....

Anyway - I'll let you know what happens...

Corporate e-Learning in a "secure" world...

OK - my latest topic to wallow in regarding online learning in the corporate environment is the thrill of dealing with corporate network settings. We go back to our language training quest as the cause of my misery...

First of all - of course - it is VERY important to have a secure corporate network. Virus problems and other network nightmares would most certainly come without one...however...at times - I find things are a little out of control.

As you know from an earlier post - we are currently piloting the language vendor Auralog and also doing a smaller evaluation of Global English. Other than the huge hassle of getting headsets out to all participants all over the world (nevermind what this will be like if we actually purchase the resource for 20,000+ employees) - I have been having all sorts of audio issues caused by various local network settings. Now we do have a primary corporate network (which I checked prior to the pilot to make sure the applicaiton would run - however - come to find out that proxy settings can vary country by county. I know that this is the type of thing that a pilot is supposed to find out - but geez - I had no idea how tight we kept things in some places. In Japan and Mexico .wav files (in addition to mp3 etc.) are blocked for fear someone may actually spend time doing non-work type activities involving sound files - nevermind that there are tons of business related reasons to have access to .wav files.....

In my opinion - we are trying to get network security to do a managers job of making sure an employee is working. So - now - just to get the pilot participants proper access is a challenge - also - keeping them motivated to participate while these things are sorted out....

More to come...

The cubicle dilemma in corporate online learning....

OK - I'm not yet running the world - so I'm in a cubicle at the office. Normally this is not much of an issue for me - other than when I have to call for medical test results and other such personal matters - however - I do believe that it has a huge impact on online learning in the corporate environment on a number of levels:

1. No door = no way to prevent interruptions - yes - I have seen all the fancy "e-Learning in progress" crime-scene tape and other such devices - but they tend to have the exact opposite effect from the desired...people are stopping by to see why in the world you have your cube marked off and is there a gossip topic involved...
2. No door = no privacy. There are lots of issues here - so I'll create some sub-bullets
• Audio - do you have a headset? If not - what do you do about audio? Can't really let it blast through the workspace....actually - some people think it is perfectly acceptable to have your phone on speaker and other audio blasting through the office - but really - not a good way to keep your colleagues on your good side.
• Speech - most people get self-conscious rather easily - it's a fact. I don't tend to all that often - but I have to say - I was running through some demos on the Global English languague training site and I was asked to try pronouncing a few things into the speaker to record my voice - and I didn't really want to do it while my neighbors were around (thus the topic choice). You just sound silly saying random things in other languages in a voice loud enough to be captured by the mic! And then - if you do it - you end up back at issue #1 - where you don't have your door - so people interrupt and ask you why you are saying these weird things and so on....
• Are you really working? - this is a huge one for the folks at my company. The corporate culture (particularly in Europe) sees no issue with sending people off to a 5 day training course on the ins and outs of the mail merge (topic choice is hopefully a joke...) - but does seem to have a problem with someone sitting at their desk for 3 hours to go through a self-paced or synchronous online course. While the logic continues to escape me - the reality of this scenario continually surrounds me. We hear it all the time - people just "feel funny" taking training at their desk - they feel like people think they are not working. Of course - if you had a door....no one would know!

I'm sure I could ramble on about this for quite some time - but I'll spare you all for now. Basically - I think I just want an office :)

Can you learn to speak Spanish online?

My past month or so at work has had me doing quite a bit of research on online language training. I work for a global Information and Communication Technologies company that attempts to use English as the primary business language - not always successfully. As much as some would like to imagine - many of our employees cannot speak English. We also function as a help desk for many companies in many countries and language skill improvement, pronunciation enhancement and accent reduction become very important for customer service. In addition - many of our English speaking employees would benefit greatly if they could learn some basic conversational level of another language - particulary Dutch - as they are the bosses after all!

How can a company that is trying to keep a cost-conscious mindset handle the huge training goal of teaching adults a new or improving the skills in a second/third etc. language? Instructor-led on a large scale becomes out of the question financially. So - we end up where we are now - evaluating online language training. After some initial assessments of a number of companies - we are down to two: Auralog and Global English. Both companies include a variety of exercise types designed to build skills in vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, speaking etc. Auralog is interesting because they offer instruction in 7 languages and have a very advanced speech recognition component. Global English on the other hand - only offers training on the English language - however they have a great "Community" section that allows for 24x7 VoIP access to an English tutor for conversation practice and a Global English toolbar (just like Google or Yahoo) that includes a translation tool, personal word list and one click access to your GE learning portal.

So - at this point - the jury is still out. GE seems to have a better English product - but do we want to limit learning to just English? Not sure? We just started a 30 day pilot with Auralog for 15 employees in various business lines and geographic locations - so that should bring some more details.

I will continue to bring you updates on our progress...I just hope we end up actually contracting with a vendor...sometimes these corporate exercises end up as dead ends - with dried up funding pools and lost interest. I'll just have to do what I can to keep this one on the list of things to do! More to come...