Nelson Croom's Blog

Learning in Victorian times

by Rachel Bruce

My five year old daughter is currently doing a project at school on what things were like at school in the Victorian era.  She has become fascinated by three things: firstly the use of corporal punishment (“children got hit with something called a cane just for being late, I can’t believe it!”); secondly, that girls had to play in a separate playground from the boys; and finally that asking questions in class was not tolerated; children just had to be quiet and listen.

Not being permitted to ask questions in class is something that my daughter has found astonishing.  “How would I find anything out?” she wants to know.  The project has got me thinking about the passivity of the Victorian education system, and how in “the olden days” children were just made to listen at schools rather than being encouraged to be inquisitive and actively participate. 

It has struck me that actually bad online learning could be described as Victorian in its approach.  Learners just made to sit in front of a computer and either listen to a talking head, or read through a screen before being told to click onto the next one.  With this archaic approach the learner is not in control of what and how they learn, yet sadly there is online learning out there like this.

I love being reminded through various guises (in this instance, my daughter’s history project), that what we do at Nelson Croom is good.  Online learning where the learner is in control of what they do within a course, how they navigate through it, and with the opportunity to actively participate via a range of activities. Advocates of the Victorian way of learning we are not. 

It's a "nelson" for us at Learning Technologies 2010

by Victoria Clarke

Did you know that the number 111 is also known as a “nelson”?

So, it’s very apt that we will be exhibiting on stand 111 at Learning Technologies 2010! Superstition has it that if you score a nelson in cricket you should hop in the air so that neither foot is touching the ground (no mean feat) and then stand on just one foot until the score has moved on. Don’t worry, we won’t be expecting any gymnastics on our stand (luckily for me!), so if you’re attending Learning Technologies on either the 27th or 28th January do pop by the stand and say hello.

Members of the Nelson Croom team will be on hand to discuss your online learning needs and plans, and to answer any questions that you may have about our services. If you’d like to make an appointment to speak to us then just get in touch.

If you haven’t registered yet, then there’s still time. Learning Technologies will be held at London’s Olympia 2, 27th-28th January. The show is now in its eleventh year and is Europe’s premier showcase of organisational and learning technologies. This year, Learning Technologies is being co-located with a brand new exhibition: Learning and Skills.

We hope that you can make it, and we look forward to meeting you!

Ethical dilemmas and a new course structure

by Nicola Dann

All of us at Nelson Croom know Imago, the technical shell that all our courses are built in, really well. This means that when a client is explaining their vision for their online learning project we can quickly assess if Imago is the right tool for them to do it in. Where it isn't we are pretty straight forward about saying so, as we can't see the point of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The end result has to be satisfaction for our clients and if that means they need to go to another company to have their vision realised, then so be it.

Recently we thought we were in exactly that situation, where a client was explaining how they envisaged their online course working (a bit like one of those "turn to page 90 if you think Elgor should slay the dragon or page 131 if you think he should turn and run like a headless chicken" books) and we thought it might just be too different to what we normally do. Before saying it wasn't possible though we thought we'd put our heads together and look at the content in detail to see whether it was worth suggesting an alternative structure for the client's learning (there wasn't a large budget so they may have struggled elsewhere!). After a few 'I suppose we could try....' and 'what if we just changed.....'  questions to ourselves, we ended up with what turned out to be pretty much the client's original vision, and a new way to use Imago by creating an alternative course structure that a couple of other clients have already jumped on.

The original issue was that we were dealing with a subject matter that didn't often present a clear right and wrong, but covered many grey areas that needed to be taken into consideration. To reflect this and to present the content in the most suitable manner for the topic, a linear approach wouldn't have worked, so instead we created a variety of pathways to allow learners to choose the route they felt they would naturally follow in a specified situation. This allowed us to replicate the multiple choices often faced with ethical dilemmas in the real world. Activities were incorporated throughout a weaved structure, all based around a central case study. This encompassed a number of reflection style activities supported upfront and at the end with learning style screens to ensure no vital information was missed.

By focusing on the case study, we created a story that unfolded in response to the choices the learner made. The results and impact of the learner’s decisions were then revealed as they worked through the choices in the case study. By making the course structure highly flexible in design we have created the option for the learner to work through the case study a number of times, making different decisions each time to see how their choices play out and the impact on the outcome. At key stages of the unfolding story they are asked to think about what is happening and enter their thoughts about the situation. They are then presented with alternative pathways which force the learner to make a choice.

The result of this structure should be the learner acquiring knowledge without feeling like they are passively being told what to think, as they are actively seeking out the responses to situations themselves. By using feedback pages in the various stages of the case study we can then present them with the recommended responses in these situations and allow the learner to judge for themselves whether they were thinking along the right lines or not. Allowing them to feel in control of the decisions they make is closer to what they would have to do in the real world, where they would have to make a choice and then deal with the consequences of that choice. The course reacts to their decisions. From the feedback we have had it is a great way to hold a learner's attention, as the way the course develops in very personal. And the client was really happy to!

Hurrah!

by Alan Nelson

This is the day of the year when we have in the past gone a bit quiet. Last night was the annual E-Learning Awards Ceremony and this is the morning after. We are proud of our record of being recognised in these awards. However, the cynical among you may have observed that we make a lot of noise about being shortlisted, but then go a bit quiet after the winners are announced. Why could this be?
 
So last night we got dressed up in our DJs and posh frocks and hopped on the tube over to Green Park. There we met up with Paul Marvell and Amanda Shepard of the Institute of Fundraising. The course we created with them, All About Fundraising, had been shortlisted in the category “Best online or distance learning project”.
 
A champagne reception was followed by a three course meal – food pretty good considering they were catering for 450 people – and then we were on to the announcement of the winners.
 
Despite the fact that it is a real honour to be shortlisted and winning in any of the categories is extremely unlikely, as the winners are announced and your category approaches, you cannot help but get a little bit hopeful. Jacqui Nelson and Paul Marvell had come back from the presentation they made to the judges saying that it had gone well. Not only that, but as a company we had also been shortlisted for “Elearning Development Company of the Year”, so we had two chances of winning.
 
The first of our categories to come up was the Best Online or Distance Learning Project.
 
And the winner is…….
 
Damn and blast! Sorry I mean of course, “Congratulations to Department of Health e-Learning for Healthcare.”
 
I really thought we had a good chance. At least I could relax now. Silly to get excited - I always tell myself not to. Then the names went up for the E-Learning Development Company of the Year. There are so many on the shortlist that they have to run it onto a second powerpoint screen. “Not a good sign.” I think.
 
“And the winner of the Silver Award for E-Learning Development Company of the Year is….. Nelson Croom!”
 
Cue everyone going potty! (Everyone on our table that is.) Up we go to accept the award and then back with grins on our faces. Happy now. More champagne and we hit the disco until the early hours. A great night!

Now in the sober light of the next day it still feels pretty good. What is particularly satisfying is the explanation the judges gave about why the chose us. I won’t repeat it here – you can read it in our press release. They describe the two reasons they gave us the award: the remarkable levels of customer satisfaction; and the emphasis we place on facilitating people’s learning rather than trying to teach them remotely. This is great because it means we have been given an award because they have recognised the very things we are most proud of.

I don’t think they are separate things either. I think the reason why we have such high customer satisfaction levels is in no small part due to the fact that we focus on pleasing the end user and not just on making sure the person who is paying us is kept sweet. In the long term that is the only way to maintain the relationship.

One final note of caution. I have worked in organisations before that have received awards, and I know from experience what a fine line there is between being proud of what you are good at, and being complacent. I know that it is important that we continue to work towards improving in every way we can, so we won’t be sitting our laurels.

Well done to the team here and thank you to all the customers and partners who make it possible by choosing to work with us. I promise we won’t become complacent but allow us just a day of being a bit smug!

And the winner is ...

by Victoria Clarke

Nelson Croom! We’re delighted to have won the silver award as E-Learning Development Company of the Year in the E-Learning Awards 2009.

Last night, we dressed up in our very best and attended a glitzy ceremony at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel for the fifth annual E-Learning Awards. It was great news to have been shortlisted and we didn’t dare to hope, but …  thank you to everyone who kept their fingers crossed for us!

The E-Learning Awards celebrate excellence in the elearning industry and received a record number of entries in 2009. Here’s what the judges had to say about us:

Statistics are rarely as convincing as this: every single one of Nelson Croom’s customers would recommend the company to other businesses. With an extremely diverse client base, Nelson Croom dismisses the idea of trying to teach people online as a non-starter and looks instead to facilitate their learning. Each learner will have different things they want to learn and different preferences for how they want to learn it, and the company creates resources to suit their learning style. Nelson Croom’s strong results focus and a very high level of long-term customer retention make it an outstanding company.

If you’re a regular blog reader, or friend of Nelson Croom, you’ll know that we take our philosophy very seriously. In fact, some might say that we’re a bit evangelical about the benefits and possibilities of online learning. All of the team put learners at the heart of all of their work, and we’re very proud to have this recognised by the industry as a whole.

Before you go ...

by Victoria Clarke

We believe that learners should be in charge of their own professional development, which is why the vast majority of our courses are non-linear. I think that I’m fairly safe in saying that our clients and partners who offer our non-linear courses like the fact that it means their professionals are thinking for themselves, taking charge of their development and that they don’t have to waste time on stuff that they already know! However that’s not to say that we don’t get asked “how do we know when somebody has finished the course?”  If learners are following a non-linear route through a Nelson Croom course then it’s unlikely that they will all finish on exactly the same page.

With CPD for example, professionals have a clear set of objectives and a clear outcome that they want from the online course. It doesn’t really matter whether they start at the beginning and work their way through, whether they start with the final test and then go through the course to fill in gaps in knowledge or whether they flit about from module to module. All of these learners will consider themselves to be “finished” at a different place in the course but from their point of view it’s important that they can demonstrate that they have completed the course with their CPD certificate.

So, we’ve just launched a new area in our courses – the Course Completion Area. This brings together some old and new functionality to provide a point at which learners can download their completion certificate, complete a course questionnaire and be recommended similar courses that they might enjoy. This has just gone live across our Accounting and Finance partners and will be rolled out across our Professional Development Portfolio partners soon. In time, we also plan to offer a customised version for our bespoke clients. In the meantime we’ll be watching how this area is used and we hope that our clients and their learners find it useful.

Inclusionists and deletionists

by Alan Nelson

You may have noticed that Wikipedia recently reached the milestone of 3 million articles in English. It is a remarkable phenomenon, and although I know it causes much debate in academia about its reliability, for the rest of us ordinary mortals it is an invaluable, constantly available, desktop reference.

But amidst all the hype, there is a more interesting story. The rate of increase in the number of articles is, for the first time, slowing. Some commentators attribute this to a power struggle between what they call the “inclusionists” and the “deletionists”. As their names suggest, the former are more concerned with enabling as broad a base as possible to contribute, while the latter are more concerned to safeguard quality. The move towards the latter seems regrettable to me but it is entirely understandable as the project has matured, a stable group of high level editors has become increasingly responsible for controlling the encyclopaedia, while casual contributors feature less and less prominently.

All of this got me thinking about the emphasis we place on quality. Coming from a book publishing background, we have always believed that we understand the processes and controls necessary to ensure our finished courses are as good as they can be. For most of our work this is entirely appropriate. But in some cases, I wonder whether the inclusionist approach is worth considering.

For some projects, perhaps timeliness is the most important thing. Professionals need to learn about some new developments immediately – a properly crafted learning experience that arrives two months late is no good to them at all. That’s not to say that standards can be dispensed with entirely – the user should still expect the content to be accurate and free from typos. We have been experimenting with resources that focus on presenting brief pieces of content and then framing the right questions. Participants add their comments and get to read each other’s contributions. It is quite clear what is officially quality checked and what is the unmoderated observation of a peer - both seem to be valuable to the community.

So sometimes perhaps the challenge should be “What is the best thing we can do by 3.00pm tomorrow?”

 

Nelson Croom reaches finals for two E-Learning Awards!

by Victoria Clarke

We’re excited to announce that Nelson Croom is a finalist for two prestigious E-Learning Awards 2009! The first is for E-learning Development Company of the Year. Nelson Croom has also been shortlisted for Best Online or Distance Learning Programme with the Institute of Fundraising.

This is a great achievement and we’re very proud to have been shortlisted in two categories. This is the fifth year for the E-Learning Awards, which aim to celebrate excellence in the industry. A record number of entries were received by the judges this year so competition has been fierce.

The winners will be announced on 12th November at the E-Learning Awards Ceremony and Dinner. We hope that it will be good news but either way we’re excited to be finalists in the awards!

Converting content

by Rachel Bruce

The Nelson Croom Development Team has been busy over the last couple of months creating new courses for Nelson Croom’s publishing programme. We’ve just launched our new peer-enriched learning approach with courses Managing Through a Recession and Making Budgeting Work in the Real World as well as new courses about selling a business and communicating complex ideas.

At the core of what we do at Nelson Croom is content conversion. On the bespoke side of our business clients provide us with content in varying forms and guises that we use to create engaging online learning for their target learner group. The Portfolio side of our business is different. We commission content to develop our own courses for our publishing programme, and therefore you would expect the content we receive from our authors to arrive in a pretty standard format. However, just like the bespoke courses we create, the Portfolio courses can stem from content that has landed on our Development Team’s desk in a variety of formats. What we commission is high quality content from an expert in their field. The format it is provided in is irrelevant. Whether it’s a book (where the author has the  right to use the content elsewhere), presentations, activities and case studies, content written prior to being commissioned by us or content written specfically for us, we will take it and use our expertise to convert the content and create effective online learning.

One question that may spring to mind is how do we create courses of a particular level, quality and depth when faced with content coming in a variety of forms? The most important thing we can do to ensure we create a successful course is to work with a subject matter expert (who may or may not be the author) to create a syllabus around the subject we are commissioning that meets the needs of the learners we are targeting.

We have rules that we follow for each of our courses which allows us to assess and maintain the depth and level of the content once we begin conversion. So the syllabus is of course key. Then, once we have the content, it’s down to our Development Team to take the content and shape it to fit both the syllabus and the rules we have set for a course.

We are able to create courses from a variety of different forms of content. Our process gives the author freedom to write and supply the content in a format that suits them and ultimately means we get the best quality content from them. As an example, we are currently working on a course for our Accounting and Finance Portfolio, Ethical Issues for Accountants. The book is a series of case studies on ethical issues and we have taken these and designed a syllabus around the content from the book. With a syllabus structure in place and the content to hand, our Development Team have been able to convert the content from the book using our new peer-enriched learning approach and include case studies in the Resource Centre for learners to access. This content hasn’t been written specifically for us but in using our proven process of content conversion we have been able to take the content from the book, retain its identity and develop a course that fits with the rules, level and depth that we set our courses.

The power of web 2.0: Part 2

by Alan Nelson

I recently blogged about the impact of micro-blogging site Twitter on the box office performance of Sacha Baron Cohen’s film, Bruno. It got me thinking about whether the e-learning industry is as ready for Web 2.0 as it likes to think. I wonder whether we are being complacent.

It’s pretty clear that e-learning professionals are excited about Web 2.0. Whether through press releases and white papers on their websites or presentations at conferences and seminars, everyone is keen to promote themselves as the master of new collaborative technologies and their application to learning.

But do they really know what a Pandora’s box they are opening? Certainly few seem to see the irony of using Web 1.0 one-to-many vehicles, such as articles and presentations, to talk about many-to-many Web 2.0 technologies. Aren’t these the same people who have created the mind-numbing linear learning we have had forced on us by the tyranny of SCORM?

Having spent the last ten years being cast as left field because I had the temerity to suggest that it isn’t about “teaching” people but more about facilitating their learning, I find it incredible that these organisations, who for so long have insisted on their next buttons and “screen 1 of 48” navigation, should become the apostles of anarchy.

The topic of whether Web 2.0 is just a new set of tools for us to use or a whole new world with different rules and different attitudes, has been the subject of several blogs on this site (see here and here for examples). I for one am increasingly coming to the view that we underestimate both the scale of the challenge and how exciting it is. This is a revolution. The learners are taking over and they may not want the old teachers to stay in charge!