Nelson Croom's Blog

Webinar Part II: Wait for me!

by Angela Smith

I’ve already been fair about the webinar, so now let me be harsh, as real learners often are. The webinar in question purported to be about creating effective online learning, but would more properly have been named ‘Why not use a webinar?’ which raised my hackles more than a little. However, as I said before, I went into it with open eyes, having Googled the speakers.

Here I turn away from what I did and didn’t agree with philosophically and get down to what it was actually like as an experience…

When I finally joined the webinar – to start with I couldn’t get through on the phone to listen to the speaker because ‘all the lines were busy’ – things were in full swing. Unfortunately I’d missed the explanation of how to use the tools, but on the plus side they were quite self-explanatory.

I found myself listening to two speakers in the presence of a silent administrator type and an unknown number of other attendees. On screen, slides were coming up one after another and the presenters talked us through each point, just like any other presentation. Actually, sometimes the slides and the chat were way too similar, not to mention being ugly and too texty, but I’m not here to diss the providers’ presentation skills.

The webinar provided a useful questioning tool. This allowed one of the attendees after about ten minutes to say what we were all thinking: ‘isn’t this just a PowerPoint presentation delivered over the internet?’ I did ask some Excellent Questions, of course, but I can’t claim this one for myself. I agreed though and was slightly disappointed with the whole experience for this reason: a ‘webinar’ sounds much more exciting than an ‘online presentation’.

Anyway, by way of trying to explain why this was not just an online presentation, the presenters described the technologies available for monitoring the attention level of your audience etc. However, I had a bit of a problem with these technologies: they assume that you can tell whether someone is interested in a session by their interaction with their computer and browser. Of course I may appear to be listening because I have the webinar toolbar up, but who says I’m not also staring out of the window, or looking at lolcats, or talking to someone on the phone (which I was at times)?

They also pointed to the interaction tools, which of course don’t enhance the seminar-style experience, they seek to recreate it. However, all too often, they recreate it poorly. For example, the ask a question functionality: when you stick your hand up in a seminar, the thing stops, you ask your question, everyone has the benefit of the answer and then it continues; when you want to ask a question in the webinar, you have to type it in. Now, perhaps this says something about me, but I found it almost impossible to keep track of what the presenters were saying while I was formulating the right wording for and typing in my questions, so I got left behind.

All this brings me to one of my main frustrations with the webinar: interruptions. Busy professionals who are learning in the workplace or at home can’t help being interrupted. Whether it is colleagues, family members or the cat sitting on the keyboard and refusing to move (which he was at times) there’s always something and the webinar just didn’t seem to account for that. My opinions about this were set in stone when, interrupted by a call from work, I went away from my desk for five minutes and came back to see that my Excellent Questions had been answered. They were helpfully highlighted to tell me this. Of course everyone else listening had had the benefit of the answers to my questions, but I’d missed them totally.

It might have been at this point that I gave up paying proper attention, though I couldn’t say for certain.

To be fair, this was the only webinar I have ever attended, but that was what it was like.

In summary, the webinar slide for this blog entry would say:

- Paying attention for an hour is a big ask face-to-face; it’s an even bigger ask online
- Feeling left behind is one of the worst feelings a learner can have
- You can’t have a ‘looking at funny pictures of cats’ break when you are timetabled in for an hour of listening without getting left behind

Webinars Part I: Common Philosophies

by Angela Smith

I recently attended a webinar. A whatinar? A webinar! This was a new experience for me and while the session didn’t really cover what it said it would and was essentially a marketing exercise – as they say ‘there’s no such thing as a free webinar on how to create effective online learning’ – it was interesting nonetheless.

Here are my thoughts on what they had to say about creating effective online learning (in the context of a webinar!)…

The webinar took the form of a live online presentation enhanced with tools for interactivity. The presenters made some interesting points about the importance of interaction, a hot topic here at Nelson Croom. The best of the tools offered were those which allowed the learners to ask questions and give their opinions. Questions were stacked up and the presenters answered them as they went along. As this was a marketing webinar with a large and unwieldy audience, this did not work as well as it might have, with questions queuing up long past the point of pertinence. However, with a small tutorial group, I could see this working well. Another tool was used for polling the learners. It allowed the presenters to ask questions of the audience as a whole and then report stats back to the learners. This, unlike the question log, seemed to work better with a large audience and provided useful feedback for the presenters.

Early on in the hour-long session, the presenters gave advice on technology. They said that in terms of technology, you should aim your online learning at the lowest common denominator to avoid the risk of excluding people. This is something that we have always been big on at Nelson Croom – if all of your learners are in local authority offices, for example, they aren’t going to get far if they’re all trying to watch a piece of video on the same skinny internet connection.

Another subject that the presenters touched on that is close to our corporate heart was the issue of customisation. By using feedback tools, presenters using the webinar system were in theory able to change or reorder their slides, change the level at which they were pitching their talk, speed up or slow down. With a small group, it would therefore be possible to tailor your webinar as you go along.

One of the things we say about Imago, the Nelson Croom system, is that learners can learn at their pace and their level, dipping in and out, digging in further to topics they need or want to know more about and skipping the things they want to, essentially taking control of their own learning. The webinar leaders could adapt to what their group were thinking and how their group were reacting. However, unless they were working with a very small group they would have to be satisfied with going for the average ability and level of knowledge and hoping that those at the bottom and top of the spectrum didn’t give up out of frustration or boredom respectively. So while I agreed with them on the point I’m not sure that they carried through and achieved it very well in the context of the webinar.

In summary, the webinar slide for this blog entry would say:
- Interaction is key
- Customisation improves learning
- If you Google the speakers on a webinar and one of them turns out to be a salesperson, you’ve only got yourself to blame when you end up sitting through an hour long sales pitch

Technical need-to-know: the next version of HTML

by Nicola Dann

Our Technical Director, Tony, briefed us last week on HTML 5. HTML started life as a very simple language. It is constantly undergoing revision and evolving to meet the demands and needs of the growing Internet audience – we’re currently using HTML 4 to build our pages. Tony tells us that work is underway on HTML 5 and although it’ll be at least 3 to 5 years before it is extensively supported by the standard browsers it’ll have some interesting implications for our elearning technology.

Due to its initial simplicity, HTML included very few advanced features and so companies started to produce add-on programmes like Flash to fill the gaps. We’ve intentionally avoided using browser add-ons so that we can ensure our courses are accessible to everyone (for example some groups of learners that we work with are prohibited by their employers from downloading Flash onto their computers). However, the technology that we have developed still means that we can provide four key things to our clients and their learners:

• An intuitive and engaging learning environment
• Collaboration and communication tools to minimise the feeling of isolation
• Comprehensive and flexible learner management system
• An easy to use content management system 

Our avoidance of plug-ins means that whilst others who are heavily dependent on them may need to redevelop their systems to use HTML 5 – it’s even possible that in time (perhaps 5 to 10 years) a growing number of corporate users will find that they don’t have Flash support on their PC – we’ll have the foundations to build an even better Imago without having to make any fundamental changes to our development strategies.

Welcome to Crispin Best

by Angela Smith

I'm happy to announce that we have appointed a new Development Team member.

We welcomed Crispin Best onto the team in the role of Online Learning Developer two weeks ago and he's already putting his skills to work on one of our forthcoming portfolio courses.

Crispin successfully survived our June company meeting, during which we subjected him to such inane questions as "What is your favourite sandwich?" (Club) and "Is there a Crispin Worst?" (he claims not to know).

Crispin is also a keen writer, so keep your eyes peeled - he'll be blogging before you know it. Oh, and if anyone has a badly painted portrait of him kicking about, please feel free to send it in ...

Helping professionals through the recession

by Alan Nelson

The recent CPD Forum meeting included a briefing from the retiring Chair, Joni Tyler of RIBA, about their efforts to help members suffering from the effects of the recession.

This is a difficult time for architects. They are experiencing intense pressure from clients for reductions in fees, projects are being suspended, jobs are not coming in and they are finding finance difficult to secure.

Interestingly it is also a time of great creativity. Many of them are being highly innovative – RIBA is seeing lots of start ups as displaced people try something new.

To help, RIBA has established a free toolkit on how to survive and what to do if you find yourself out of work. The Chartered Management Institute have done the same and although both admit that the term “Toolkit” is a bit grand for a collection of useful information and tips, it does sound like a useful service and just the sort of thing I would expect my professional body to do to help.

RIBA have also run a range of events on a variety of related topics:

• How to attract new clients
• Employment law
• Survive and prosper
• Getting new qualifications
• Reskilling courses

I was curious about why the take up of these has varied so significantly from region to region with high attendance in the North West but very little interest in the South West. Answers on a postcard!

The good news is that overall, RIBA – and other attendees from other professional bodies - feel the trends are starting to look more positive – workflow seems to be picking up.

Among contributions for the floor was one from Engineers Ireland, who are offering reduced membership fees to unemployed members (250 Euros reduced to 35 Euros) and reduced prices on training courses. They are starting to wonder whether they should check that people applying really are unemployed!

Another suggestion was that unemployed members could be encouraged to contribute time to their professional body in return for free or reduced membership/other services – contribute articles, take part in conferences etc. This seems to be to be an excellent idea. A lot of members would I think be prepared to use the spare time they suddenly have to help and they might be able to network usefully as they do so.

Overall I thought that this was a piece of sharing that should continue. There is not single solution to helping members in difficult times and the more ideas that are forthcoming the better.

CPD as a necessary evil

by Alan Nelson

At yesterday’s CPD Forum meeting I enjoyed a presentation from Ana Catalano of the Chartered Insurance Institute. They have recently completed a review of CPD and a survey of members’ attitudes towards it.

I was struck by the fact that although there is evidence that the public at large expect professionals to have rules about how they stay current, members too often see the whole thing as a necessary evil. The job of evangelising the value of good CPD clearly requires organisations not only to communicate effectively but also to display considerable stamina!

In response to a question asking people to identify the benefits of CPD, 67% of respondents agreed that it was partly to keep up to date, which seems high until you consider the alternative, in which case 33% of people not ticking that box seems even higher! 9% of people ticked the box that said “no benefit”, which is fairly depressing, and only 45% thought it would improve service to customers.

I was particularly struck by the luke-warm response to the question “How would you describe the CPD process?” Answers such as “another box to tick”, “adequate” and “time consuming” are disappointing, although less so that “slightly inconvenient and evidentially mistrusting”.

People seem to come to CPD with the question “what do I have to do?” This compliance approach leads to a range of unfortunate answers to the question about what they understand as their responsibilities with regard to CPD. Perhaps the most honest was “To get 100 points a year.”

All credit to CII for conducting the research and facing up to the problem. I don’t think the results are very different to what would emerge in other membership bodies and we won’t solve the problem unless we acknowledge it.

Marketing the experience - practice as we preach

by Alan Nelson

Yesterday an accountant in Africa sent through a message using our feedback button to say how impressed he was with our online CPD courses. He said he thought the service would be particularly useful to people in the third world.

Gratified not only that he had liked our course, but also at the suggestion that it might help people less able to access conventional CPD for both logistical and cost reasons, I took a look at which course had inspired his enthusiasm. It turned out that he was a member of the Association of International Accountants and had been looking at a new demo we have created for them – a cut down version of Due Diligence in Mergers and Acquisitions.

We have had demos on our website for some time and they are a great way for people to get a real feel for the sort of thing we can do. We take a course that’s maybe 4 or 5 modules long and hide everything except the first module. This leaves the curious punter with a good 45 minutes of material that they can explore and get a really good feel for what we do. This has generated quite a lot of enquiries from people who I think might have otherwise gone away from our website interested but not quite hooked enough to make contact.

It’s all very appropriate that we should do this of course, as we separately publish the Institute of Sales Promotion’s distance learning course on experiential marketing. Never let it be said that we do not practice what we preach!

Recently, we have been working with some of our professional body partners to create similar demos for their versions of our courses, so that they can offer the same taster to their members and customers. The professional bodies are also starting to use the tools in the management system within Imago. The list of people who have registered is held in Imago. This list of prospects can be downloaded into other systems. Alternatively Imago enables our partner organisation to communicate with the prospects directly, pulling up lists of people who have registered for the demo or who have bought other courses, and contacting them with information about new courses.

The commercial relationship we have with these partners means that we only make money when they do, sharing a proportion of their income from sales, so it is in our interest to help them to market the service. It really is a partnership where all our interests are lined up.

We all want to be different

by Alan Nelson

We all want to be different – or do we? A query about a recent learner registration has prompted us to look in more depth at the details people submit when registering for a course.

As a hosted solution, with over 150,000 users, we have to think carefully about how we control access. On the one hand, it is critical for some of our partners that they know for sure that there is no way anybody unauthorised could access either their course, or get into one of their users’ accounts by chancing on the same combination of details on the registration form. On the other hand we all know how irritating it is when you get that message:

The username “AlanNelson” is already in use. Have you considered instead using “AlanNelson428”?

Where are these 427 other Alan Nelsons? It doesn’t make you feel very special does it?

So we take very seriously striking the right balance between security and user friendliness. As part of reviewing our process, Tony, our Technical Director, generated a list of the top 30 most used passwords. What, you may ask, came top? Our users are all adult professional learners. They are a sophisticated bunch. They’ll have come up with some inventive ideas for their password. Not so I’m afraid. In fact, 492 of them, presumably after some consideration, have had the inspired idea of using the word “password” (don’t try it – we are in the process of adding it to the list of disallowed passwords).

By looking down the list I can identify other facts about our users:

• Liverpool are almost twice as popular as Arsenal and Chelsea (strangely, no one seems to like Crystal Palace)
• Amongst lazy people, “123456” is way more popular than “qwerty” – presumably finding the second row of keys is too much like hard work for some!
• A lot of people have a loved one – partner, son, pet – called Charlie (assuming they aren’t referring to their habit)

But my personal favourite was pointed out by Tony. I didn’t understand why so many people would have chosen “LETMEIN”, until he wrote it out differently: “Let me in”.

How to Sell a Business

by Rachel Bruce

I wrote in a previous blog that one of our authors Peter Howson had agreed to write a further course for our Accounting and Finance Portfolio on selling a business.  Peter’s existing published course with us in Due Diligence in Mergers and Acquisitions is popular amongst our partners who sell it onto their members, and so we are really pleased that Peter has recently finished writing the content  for How to Sell a Business.  The course is now in development and due to be launched at the end of May.

In his usual style, Peter Howson has written a course that takes a practical and straightforward approach to selling a business and includes four modules on deciding to sell, launching the sale, negotiating the sale and completing the sale.  The content covers all these four aspects in detail while providing useful tips and guidance for the learner.  We are looking forward to it being ready for launch.

Working faster, smarter and harder: Imago database upgrade

by Victoria Clarke

One of the benefits of using a hosted solution like ours is that you don’t need to worry about any costly updates or maintenance of the system – it’s our job to take care of all of that. Not only do we work continuously to develop our technology to include new features of benefit to our learners (such as the improved discussion forums and new functionality for submitting and marking distance learning assignments) but we obviously need to make sure that the technology that drives all of this is working in tip-top condition.

You may have heard mention over the last couple of months about some upgrade work that we’ve been doing. For the technically-minded amongst you we’ve upgraded the back-end database from Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (32-bit), running on a Microsoft Windows Server 2000 (32-bit) server, to SQL Server 2008 (64-bit) on a Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) server (phew!). For those of you who’s eyes may have just glazed over (and there’s a few of us here in the office – just don’t tell Tony!) that means that our technology is fully up-to-date.

Server migration is a tricky business. All manner of things could go wrong which is why we’ve all kept our heads down, crossed our fingers and left our technical team to it. The good news is that the migration went well and that there have been no problems reported. The even better news is that it makes Imago, our technology, even better! Short-term benefits that you may have noticed include:

• We can now handle more data and more learners concurrently, and faster
• Faster, more stable fileserver hardware with much greater capacity
• System performance will continue to remain good when carrying out overnight back-ups and housekeeping routines (particularly relevant to our overseas learners and those of you partial to doing a spot of online learning at 3am)
• Complex reports will compile more swiftly
• Greater resistance to pesky hacker attacks

And, in the long term, this upgrade will mean that we can:

• House up to 20 times more data than before
• Accelerate some of our development work
• Make some code changes that will result in faster content searching
• Speed up reports
• And, generally ensure that our partners and learners continue to receive the excellent service that they have become used to!