The first in a series of Adobe eLearning Master Classes was held yesterday. The session, titled “Creating Inspired Activities and Interactions for Effective eLearning” was extraordinarily insightful and hosts Clive Shepherd and Allen Partridge soared through 60 minutes of deep discussion about hot issues in the creation, design and delivery of eLearning content today. You can view the entire session at the link below.

LINK: http://adobe.ly/mQIfwY

I’ve also provided the slides from the presentation here in case you’d like to get an overview.

During the session Clive and Allen were asked to provide samples of their favorite eLearning content this year. Below are the links to the content they provided.

Clive:
Clive pointed us to a wonderful blog posting from Cathy Moore, eLearning Rock Star, who describes “How to Steer your client away from an eLearning infodump” and is focused on action / activity based eLearning.

Allen:
Mouse Party from University of Utah’s Genetics Lab was genuinely cool. While it might not be the most effective in terms of producing learning results it’s definitely attention grabbing.

My favorite sample this year was the Haji Kamal simulation from World Warfighter. It’s an excellent example of scenario based soft-skills training, and the visual style of the work is equally impressive.

There were plenty of great contributions from participants during the session as well. Here are some of the highlights from the running chat.

Chat Transcript:
(Chat has been edited to remove misc. technical questions etc.)

Jim Potts:I like how Dr Itiel Droor puts it ‘It’s not what we teach but what they learn’ and learning is more than knowledge transfer…

Mary Barlow:Absolutely teach skills and let them practice especially in a task oriented training

Allen Partridge:http://blog.cathy-moore.com/
Allen Partridge:Clive’s presentation with Cathy – http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2010/05/the-big-mistake-in-elearning/

Lilybiri:Are we not too much relying on the ways most education instititutes are doing training? We all had that experience, not?

Jon @ Brighton:Also it’s because it’s easier to sweep up what the SME is telling you, rather than going out and finding what the learner wants to achieve?

Mitshk:Shouldn’t it be want the business wants to achieve?

Lilybiri:SME’s have sometimes trouble to separate ‘core’ knowledge from the rest, not?

Clive Shepherd:60-minute masters
Richard Munday:http://kineolearning.com/60minutemasters/
David:think I was at that meeting

Jon @ Brighton:Sometimes managers don’t really know what they actually want until they see something that isn’t it!
Betty Hornor:Jon – I agree. I get better feedback when there is something for SME’s, managers to critique.
Amy:I think this process would keep content fresh. in my organization, we spend so much time building a course, that we are reluctant to add/change/update anything.

Christie Fidura:I love the Mouse Party — so cute!
pwallens:had the fun factor but got caught up in the doing rather than the learning
Jim Potts:I agree on the hajikamal piece and have tried to get military this side of the pond interested in doing something similar
NSargent:Seems like the kinesthetic learner might not get as much out of eLearning as handling objects – for instance mechanic training.

David:manipulating items via pc would still engage what about kinect

Jim Potts:Simulation can improve effectiveness and efficiency of the overall blend but can’t replace hand-on entirely

Christie Fidura:But there are so many varying opinions on what ‘blended learning’ actually includes, aren’t there?

markatamilearning:how can we ensure deep learningf happens using e-learnng as opposed to just trvial fun at the moment?

Jon @ Brighton:Goes back to being learner focused

David:The blend would depend on what is required

Jim Potts:The danger is when global savings targets are set irrespective of the learning outcome (eg ‘make at least 20% of your F2F as simulation)

MediaSage:Back to the first design choice: which is the best delivery format for the objectives. See Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping for short-cutting the process of getting to the heart of objectives.
stuart box:I don’t think there’s much disagreement on what Blended learning is, rather it’s the quantities and elements of the blend.

Lilybiri:My definition of blended learning: have introduction F2F, then try to get group of trainees to learn from each other and from learning assets like elearning modules, simulations etc

Mary Barlow:We have hour long webinar on a software area then I break down the recording into sections 10 minutes or less for viewing on our webpage. The original is powerpoint and demonstration.

Lilybiri:Advantage of eLearning modules: available at any moment and at any speed

Jon @ Brighton:Deep learning – scenarios + forum discussion

Lilybiri:@Jon certainly learning from peeps is very important, not?

Jon @ Brighton:yes, especially for subjective stuff, attitudinal stuff

MediaSage:Would appreciate more good examples of elearning scenarios and activities.

Lilybiri:@Jon not only for that, I teach construction topics, students trying to get expertise in a topic to be able to explain to peeps, helps both of them

Jon @ Brighton:Ask the learner!