BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTING COURSES - from traditional to blended delivery...

Working with five locations in Calgary and 30 locations across Canada, we formed small groups of Project Champions to add online and e-learning components to various one-year business programs.  With an array of diploma-level courses, including Accounting, Business Administration, and Management, transitioned course delivery from traditional classroom to a blend of both traditional classroom and online learning.
Course delivery included flexible scheduling for mornings or afternoons, five-days per week, with approximately 30-weeks required for full completion of diploma courses.  Traditional classroom lectures were provided optional online activities, MyLabs exercises, and online quizzes, in addition to in-person proctored exams and group projects.
I also served as LMS Champion and Scheduler to move course delivery away from paper textbooks to the use of online e-Textbooks, LMS Course Outlines, and integration with Apple iPad devices.  In the span of 300-days, over 90% of training programs were successfully transitioned into a fully online resource environment, and maintained compliance with provincial legislation.
Overall, our e-learning developments connected with over 3,000 students per year in the Alberta region, and thousands more across the nation. In Calgary, we also developed on-site group networking activities and work simulations: we partnered students with real-world business partners and developed training projects to showcase their work to local organizations.  Yearly, four out of five students gain employment in their field of interest immediately upon completing their training and program requirements.

Quid pro quo will define the author-publisher relationship

 
Quid pro quo will define the author-publisher relationship
Published on O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. | shared via feedly mobile
In a recent interview, author and digital book producer Peter Meyers talked about what we can expect as publishing comes into its own in the digital era. He said customized book apps will largely go by the wayside, and HTML5 as a format will be a bit of a hard-sell to consumers. And using his own experience as a basis, Meyers said publishers aren't in danger of becoming irrelevant.
Highlights from the interview (below) include:
Different kinds of books gravitate toward different kinds of formats — Meyers said the majority of books in the future won't be customized apps. The ones that will be apps will be the ones that require interactivity. [Discussed at the 0:19 mark.]
HTML5 is still a wild card — Meyers said HTML5's core question is transactional: Are people willing to pay for web-based content? Consumers have been reluctant thus far, but as HTML5 gets fully supported, we'll see more experimentation. [Discussed at 1:40.]
Amazon's Fire tablet will be a problem for B&N — Even though both tablets are similar in a lot ways, Meyers pointed toward Amazon's ecosystem and said B&N just doesn't match up to Amazon's content and service offerings. [Discussed at 4:54.]
Will publishers become irrelevant? — Meyers said no. Using his own experience as an example, he highlighted the fact that his publisher (O'Reilly) provides a platform to publicize his work and technological support to produce works in particular formats. What he doesn't get — and said few authors do — is hand-holding, individual attention, detailed line editing, cheerleading and so forth. Meyers said authors need to go in with the expectation that they'll have to do as much for their publishers and their books as the publishers do for them. [Discussed at 5:26.]
You can view the entire interview in the following video.
Meyers' new book, "Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience," will be released in the next couple weeks — you can nab a free preview copy now — and he'll host a workshop at TOC 2012.

Most Hackable E-Reader

I'm interested in purchasing an e-reader of some kind (i.e. must use e-ink tech, no LCD screens) and wondering if anyone has any suggestions about which reader lends itself most to tinkering / extending / hacking? Are there any that make it possible to install your own software? (It would be cool to see i.e. Emacs running on one.) Nook Color, hands down. Unfortunately, your eInk criterion limits you to cheap knockoffs. If you're willing to go LCD, you won't be disappointed with a Nook Color. Cyanogen makes the ROM for it, and they are nearly impossible to brick. Heck, you can run a custom ROM right off the microSD card, never putting your warranty in jeopardy. And, because it's Cyanogen, you can read nearly anything, and have full Android Market access. -- Christopher Nook Color $249 Available from and manufactured by Barnes and Noble

Jeff Jarvis and I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion.

Usage-based billing not off the table at Telus

The book is dead — long live the ebook

Source: Calgary Herald

Google launches eBooks in direct challenge to Amazon

Source: Herald, eh?

COMPUTER SUPPORT TECHNICIAN - online learning with proctored exams...

Provisioned several cohorts of students to participate in a one-year diploma program to achieve certification as Computer Support Technicians.  Our training programs were designed to maintain compliance with North American standards for the industry, along with provincial legislation requirements.  Students progressed synchronously through each module, booked at two-week intervals, with flexibility to work at their own pace within each module; work could be done on-site with in-person guidance, or remotely with telephone or email support.
Scheduled meetings allowed for in-class lectures, group work, and hands-on work project activities.  Additional consultative support was delivered according to individual requests.  All students graduated with over 85% academic success rates, and garnered full time employment in their field of interest. 

PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTOR EDUCATION - from content experts to Instructors...

Across Canada, we hired content experts to teach an array of courses selected from a library of approximately 1,000 topics. For content experts without formal Instructor training, we created "train-the-trainer" courses by implementing Professional Instructor Education (PIE). PIE was a collection of asynchronous online courses tied with online certification exams that could be completed on an individual basis. Once a specified number of online courses activities were completed, including multiple choice quizzes, games, and short answer responses, an individual was provided with an online certificate of completion from PIE.

The collection of PIE courses were offered to over 500 staff, with a 100% adoption rate.  Completion rates after a semi-annual assessment for the Alberta region was approximately 85% for staff instructors.

E-LEARNING - Philosophy of whether to design a new program, and how to manage development...

Why does an e-learning course deserve to exist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5M4KCfTwo

How to manage the development of a new course
in seven easy steps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WURExEwxU2M

QUOTATIONS FROM THE FAST AND FRIENDLY CLOUDS!

Feel free to use some TANTALIZING QUOTES related to Twitter and Google for spicing-up your speeches, discussions, and board (bored?) meetings...

From Vogelstein writing in Wired magazine, August 2009:

“Google is big. Very big. Its millions of servers process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every [60 minutes]...bigness is the very point of Google...its competitive advantage-is its ability to find meaning in massive sets of data. The larger the data sets, the more potential meaning can be derived...”

By the by, one petabyte (PiB) is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes (B), and each standard byte contains eight bits (ones and/or zeros). Impressive, isn’t it?

Eric Schmidt, one of the founders of Google, repeatedly reminds his employees that Microsoft could crush Google at any moment. To wit:

“...because Microsoft is a follower, there is a concern that it could use its Windows monopoly to restrict choices”

Here's a couple from Jarvis in his What Would Google Do? book:

“When China’s Sichuan Province suffered its horrendous earthquake in May 2008, people who felt it firsthand shared their experience via Twitter...people in the quake zone would use Twitter to update friends...If I were going through a quake, I’d want to tell family and friends that I was safe, wouldn’t you?”

Note that back then, the Twitter service was only 600 days old – this is a reflection of the significantly swift adoption rate that y'all have for web services that “just work” connect you with your friends and family.

What Would Google Do?:

“...those of us that teach students in rapidly changing arenas...must get better at keeping up with – no, getting ahead of – our students, industry, and society.”

We're standing on the shoulders of Giants, right?

We're enjoying the multitudes of free web applications that are being developed nowadays to "just work," with the software vendor getting out of the way.

How do some of the newer, smaller, web vendors that "give away" free online services pay their employees, though?
The Web 2.0 conundrum...
Any brilliant ideas about this?

I keep hoping that this Golden (Google?) Age of developing free "just work" web applications lasts for a while.

If not, change will be brutally and significantly swift, too.

Talk about these ideas soon, eh?

MULTIPLE FLAVOURS OF CERTIFICATION

The lifelong CIU certification recently developed at IRM is specifically geared towards a software application that manages associations and non-profit organizations.







There are more generalized certifications for training professionals that can work hand-in-hand with virtually any software system. A few examples are as follows:





INSTRUCTIONAL SKILLS WORKSHOP (ISW) PROGRAM

The Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) Program is a comprehensive three-tiered instructor development program that serves as the foundation for several professional development activities.

The second tier is the University Teaching Certificate (UTC) Program.









CERTIFIED TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL

Obtaining a CSTD designation demonstrates you have a thorough understanding of the common body of knowledge of our profession. Both the Certified Training and Development Professional (CTDP) and the Certified Training Practitioner (CTP) designations are based on the competency categories outlined in the Training Competency Architecture, commonly called the 'TCA", a common body of knowledge for the training and development profession.







TECHNICAL TRAINER CERTIFICATION

Individual trainers may pursue certification of their skills as a trainer. Applicants who are full members in good standing and have successfully completed the Advanced Train the Trainer seminar may apply to be certified as a Professional Technical Trainer (PTT) for a period of three years. Members may apply for recertification. The PTT certification is valid only for full members in good standing.







TAP LEARNING SYSTEM

The Training Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the status of L&D practitioners to that of genuine Professionals. True professions demand a credible Qualifications Framework and continuous professional development. As a career trainer, you may feel that traditional certificates in training practice, often achieved many years ago, may not reflect the full range of practical skills you need in today's fast-moving L&D world.

ACADEMY CERTIFICATION - from on-site training to webinars to e-learning...

Initially transformed on-site training to a blend of telephone consultation, synchronous webinars, and on-site training, which dramatically reduced expenses and increased efficiencies.  Later, we moved training content to movies, online documentation, and a collection of articles in our knowledge base.
Took one-on-one consultative projects and 'flipped' the work back to the clients, using online documentation, shared spreadsheets for data transformations, and data import validation.  Developed an industry-first certification process for on-boarding of new clients, new staff, and new users through an online educational Academy, with automatically provisioned certification process.
Access to the online training Academy movies and certification exams was given to both internal staff and over 500 organizations across North America, amassing over 100,000 end users.  The yearly completion rate for certified IRM Users was approximately 95%, and the advanced IRM Administrator certification rate was approximately 85% per year.