Nelson Croom's Blog

And the winner is …

by Alan Nelson

 

So the judging of the e-learning awards is finished for the year. This is the first time I have acted as a judge, so how was it? Well firstly, it’s quite a lot of work. Overall I had forty submissions to read in two categories, which took me more than a day. Some were good, some had flaws but all were interesting. There were three judges in each category and we talked through the entries to establish a shortlist. This was fairly straight forward. Basically if the project was noticeably good in some way and didn’t fall significantly short of the mark in any of the stated criteria, it tended to get onto the shortlist.

Next was judges houses. I want the groups. I want the groups. Only kidding. Next was two days of face to face presentations, one for each category. I turned up wondering what it would be like. I have been on the other side of the fence presenting submissions, but I hadn’t been in the judges’ shoes before. I had done my research though. I had practiced being Simon Cowell (“I don’t like this.....[long pause] I love it!”) and Louis Walsh (“This is just what the elearning awards are all about”). But I quickly found that such preparation was unhelpful. What we did, for those looking for tips on how to win, was to listen to the presentations and decide how we thought they stacked up against the stated criteria for that award. Nothing more mysterious than that. If you want to win outright, you need to be good on every count.

For obvious reasons I can’t go into much detail about the entrants and our decision making but I can say a couple of things:

• I was impressed by my fellow judges. They took the job seriously and thought deeply about how to arrive at the fairest outcome.
• The quality of the entrants was high. All the shortlisted projects had something about them that was admirable.
• I was impressed with the honestly and openness of the candidates. Straight questions got straight answers, even when they weren’t exactly what they would have wanted to tell us.
• It is hard for a project to be good in every way. Was the need properly researched? Did it have a strong theoretical underpinning to the learning design? Were the outcomes measured? Did the results demonstrate clearly that the objectives had been met? And once they had scored a yes in all of those, there remained the question of whether we thought it was an example of excellence in itself?

So well done to everyone. They can’t all win and while it is true that all the shortlisted candidates are winners, having been on the other side both successfully and unsuccessfully, I do understand that the former is infinitely preferable. But I will be looking forward to the awards evening in November and the chance to celebrate the quality and commitment of all those involved with the finalists.

Last Minute Learners

by Andrew Turner

 

People learn best when they are engaged, interested and having fun. This was always true for me and it is clear, when I spend time with my young niece or watch my partner, who’s a primary school teacher, planning her lessons, that it is the case for children of all ages.

And this shouldn’t stop when we leave educational institutions. There isn’t an ‘off switch’ which flips when we no longer have a teacher in front of us. Why would our learning style change once we reach a certain age? Yes our interests and approach to learning are likely to be very different, but the fundamental aspects of how we learn are a constant throughout our lives.

This is something that e-learning can capitalise on by offering a ‘student-centric’ approach to adult learning, whether it be for CPD, qualifications or personal fulfilment. For many people the thought of being taught in a classroom with a teacher taking you through a topic, is not a pleasant idea. It’s unlikely to be fun, interesting or engaging. E-learning offers a unique way for learners to remain immersed in their learning. By putting them at the centre of the experience they are able to pick the route best suited to them and which provides the best results.

Not all of our learning habits are good though. I for one was always a ‘last minute learner’ staying up late to meet a deadline, with a week to complete a 12,000 word essay! I like to think pressure helped me perform but some of my friends said I was unmotivated and ‘lucky’ to get away with it. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to work this way.

This is certainly born out each year as I watch professionals sign up to complete their CPD. No matter what good intentions we all have, in my experience, the majority of CPD is completed in the last two months of the year. That’s also where e-learning comes into play. How much CPD have you got left to do? How are you going to complete it?

With e-learning you can complete the courses when you want. You aren’t tied down to the dates when a learning provider could secure the hire of a suitable room, or when you can get time off work. All you need is a computer and internet connection and you can do the course when you want.

Of course this isn’t the way everybody learns, and e-learning isn’t just aimed at those who do this, it truly is there 24/7 365 days a year. But this is an added benefit of learning online, and another way that it caters for the learning preferences of those ‘last minute learners’, who like me, like a bit of pressure.

Contributions to enrich the learning experience

by Crispin Best

 

It's always good to talk to peers, hear their points of view and share experiences. So, we try to create courses that enable users to do just that, courses that have the flexibility to allow engagement with other learners as well as reading the thoughts and opinions of subject matter experts.

These features are one of the main facets of our courses that consistently get a great response from our learners and clients, and so that's why we've spent a good deal of time expanded and updated this technology.

We've recently been working to design, build and launch a new initiative called "Contributions". The functionality allows learners to add bits of professional experience or opinions into courses. Doing this works to build on and enrich the knowledge on each topic. Learners can read, reflect on and respond to other people's contributions, creating a learning experience that can be different and interactive in various new ways.

The functionality also allows learners to rate each other's contributions, as well as flag any that are inappropriate.

We're looking forward to seeing what this new initiative leads us towards, and will keep trying to create new ways in which our courses can engage the learner.

100 months of registrations

by Alan Nelson

 

At the end of every month, our online professional development web application, Imago, sends me a message telling me what it’s been up to during the month - all sorts of more and less interesting things such as which courses have been most popular (interesting), how many active learners it has (quite interesting) and how many activity records it is storing (I have to pretend to be interested, otherwise it gets upset).

Each month I copy the number of course registrations onto our KPI dashboard. As I filled in the number for July I realised that I had now been doing this for 100 months, so I have a table that shows me the stats right back to April 2003.

What does this tell me (other than that I have an empty and meaningless life)? Well firstly it shows that a lot more people are using our courses. In the first month on my schedule there were fewer than 200 registrations. The monthly total is now generally around 4000. That’s not to say that it’s only recently that we have had higher course take-up. The average for the whole period since April 2003 is 2425 a month.

Another change is in the type of registration. Our learners are now much better looking than they were eight years ago.* Many more of them have paid for their course and fewer of them are doing it because they have been told they have to.** Of those that are paying, the vast majority are purchasing a course that we have published at our own expense (as opposed to those we develop for our clients as bespoke commissions) – so we are now reaping the rewards for having put our money where our mouth is.

As well as all these changes at the registration end of the process, we have made changes at the other end, pushing people much more emphatically to tell us what they thought through course completion questionnaires. The results overall are very positive, with 98% of people saying that the course they completed met their needs and 93% rating the experience as either good or excellent. But it is the detail that is so useful with many of the enhancements we make now coming from suggestions from users.

So what will the next 100 months of registrations bring? I don’t know. That is what makes it so interesting. Our professional communities are responding very enthusiastically to all the new social learning features we have added. That is clearly a trend that will not be reversed. Our approach to creating learner centred resources rather than trying to teach remotely, which has served us so well for the past 11 years, looks set to stay at the heart of our approach.

* This is a lie

** This is true

That'll learn yer

by Alan Nelson

 

I was recently asked to write an article for the Solicitors’ Journal commenting on the Solicitors Regulation Authorities review of the rules governing solicitors CPD. Apart from getting side-tracked into a bit of a rant against provider accreditation schemes that seem to be little more than money making exercises for the professional body or regulator, I did come up with some conclusions that are more generally applicable:

1. Systems of measurement
The debate about inputs or outputs based system of CPD seems to me to be unnecessary. The argument here is between those that support inputs, or hours based schemes, generally because they are easier to measure, and those who support outputs regimes – where you identify the professional development issues you will need to address and then report on how you have done so – because they are seen as less of a box ticking exercise. In fact the best schemes I have seen combine the two. Engineers Ireland have a neat system which is outputs based, but with clear guidance about minimum acceptable hours. Alternatively start with a number of hours of CPD but ask for a development plan as well as part of the submission.


2. Keeping up with the times
We live in a Web 2.0 world and professional bodies need to keep up with the times on what counts as CPD. I use twitter as my way of reflecting on development activity and write blogs to discuss issues that I am grappling with. The recent Bar Standards Board recommendations disallow writing blogs , leading to the farcical situation that writing a blog doesn’t count for you, but reading it does count for others! A more flexible approach is needed. No serious learning and development professional any longer believes that learning equals courses and nothing else.


3. Deciding what to focus on
With up to date technical information easier and easier to access, we need to ensure that we are valued as professionals for more than just technical virtuosity. Most consumers wouldn’t rate it as the most important issue. When I take legal advice at work or at home, I am rarely asking any hard questions. The lawyer who negotiates my contracts knows her stuff, but I am sure she isn’t the world’s expert. What I like about her is that she doesn’t upset my customers by being pompous or picky, or by scoring silly legal points. As far as I am concerned a good lawyer is one with rounded skills. Can they conduct a divorce without making the couple hate each other anymore than necessary? Can they negotiate a contract to deliver business objectives rather than simply to be “right”? Can they buy a house for me without wasting months on trivialities?

This seems to me to be true for a wide variety of professionals. I like the concept of the T-shaped professional. The vertical bar of the T is about a professional’s functional/technical skills whereas the horizontal bar represents the ability to apply knowledge across situations.

You can read the full published piece here. As always writing an article has forced me to research and to reflect and has been valuable personal CPD. Writing this blog a couple of weeks later has been a great way of reflecting.

T-shaped professionals for Engineers Ireland

by Jacqui Nelson

 

I’ve attended a number of events recently which have addressed the question ‘What is a professional?’  Professional bodies are rightly engaged with this, and it’s interesting to see how different organisations are interpreting their role.

At a recent PARN event, Aidan Harney from Engineers Ireland talked about research that they’d conducted into what employers wanted from them and how they could better prepare professionals for the workplace. Engineers Ireland had expected to find that employers wanted a fast track route to chartered status for their engineers. In fact they research showed the opposite. Far from demanding further development of technical engineering skills in their professionals, what the employers are looking for is, what Harney terms, the T-shaped professional.

The concept of the T-shaped professional has been around for the past 20years or so. The idea is that the vertical bar of the T is about a professional’s functional/technical skills whereas the horizontal bar is where a professional displays the ability to apply knowledge across situations – making a more rounded professional.

For Engineers Ireland this horizontal bar was made up of a range of broad business skills that help their engineers to operate more effectively in the corporate (albeit Engineering) world. Their research indentified four key areas:

• Communication
• Critical Thinking
• Collaboration
• Creativity/Innovation

Nelson Croom is supporting Engineers Ireland in all four areas through the courses we offer. Earlier this year Engineers Ireland launched a range of our online CPD courses to their members as part of their initiative to develop T-Shaped professionals. And it’s not just in engineering that we’re seeing this. In a whole range of professions we’re increasingly seeing the professional body looking to offer business and personal skills training and not just industry technical training.

It this is something you’re interested in hearing more of, do get in touch.

Assessing completion in CPD

by Alan Nelson

 

A recent BBC article about learning by rote to pass GCSE exams raises an old question:

"Why do we test people’s retention of facts that they will never need other than to pass the exam?"

This rang bells for me because it is a subject that frequently comes up with regard to our online CPD courses.

The problem for me is that people associate testing with rigour. I can to some extent understand that with qualifications but it is really counterproductive in the case of CPD. The purpose of CPD is to help professionals to maintain and develop the skills and knowledge they need to continue to practice effectively. What that constitutes will be different for each individual depending on their experience and current role. Most professional bodies we work with specify that CPD must be "relevant", but the detail of what is and is not relevant is rightly left to the individual professional to determine.

The assertion is that the completion certificate can’t be worth much if you don’t have to pass to get it. But that implicitly assumes two things:

1. That testing is appropriate for all topics; and
2. That the alternative is to hand out certificates to anyone who turns up irrespective of their level of engagement.

The futility of validating completion by assessment becomes apparent if you look at some examples of the different sorts of topic they might engage with:

1. Developing skills

Our course Networking Skills helps professionals to establish and maintain their professional networks. It is popular, despite or perhaps partly because we don’t promise to get everyone to the same specified end point. Success for the course could be defined as having enabled each user to acquire new skills and gain confidence, hardly something which can be assessed with a few multiple choice questions. What makes the process valuable for the learner is the process of digesting and reflecting on what is being learnt.

2. Keeping up with the changing world

Our new course Social Media for Professionals provides a briefing on key developments in social media and suggestions and tools for using them in your professional life. I would regard a successful outcome to be that a learner had found out some useful and relevant things about the subject that they didn't previously know and that they had come up with a plan for how that could benefit their professional activity.

3. Engaging with an issue or debate

Our most popular course for accountants is Ethical Issues for Accountants. It takes the form of a series of case studies. These present real world problems where it is genuinely difficult to decide what the right course of action is. We ask participants to suggest what they might do. In return, they get tips from the author on the key issues, and the chance to see what everyone else has said. I cannot imagine what an assessment could add to this process.

4. Technical topics

In some cases our courses focus on ensuring that users stay up to date with a technical topic. Our short briefing on Irish Capital Acquisitions Tax is a case in point, as is the course on the concept of the Going Concern principle in accounting that we put together because of its significance in the recession. These courses focus primarily on knowledge and we do tend to include assessments. However these are presented as part of the learning experience rather than as a way of qualifying for the completion certificate. Even here, I would argue that assessment does not equal rigour. Imagine you are a tax expert. It’s getting close to the end of the year and you are running out of time to complete your CPD. You decide to enrol on the basic course on capital acquisitions tax. You don’t bother with any of the course itself because you know the subject inside out. You just complete the assessment and print off the certificate. An hour’s CPD completed in ten minutes flat.

These examples should, I hope, have put to bed the idea that assessment makes CPD more rigorous, but what about the second point about the certificate being worthless without the requirement to pass a test?

We define completion with reference to what we call an ASK analysis, which analyses the learning outcomes of a course. ASK is an acronym that stands Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge. The definition of completion depends on the balance between the three. We are careful not to be specific to avoid attempts to meet our criteria cynically, but the certificate is accessed only when the learner has met criteria that will generally include the amount of time spent in the course, the proportion of the screens they have visited and the extent of their engagement with the exercises that solicit their reflection and their contributions.

In case you still aren’t convinced by my arguments I have constructed a short multiple choice exercise to test whether you have been paying attention.

1. What exams, happening at the moment, inspired the original BBC article
   1. SATS
   2. GCSE
   3. 11 plus
   4. Driving Test Theory
2. Which of the following are implicitly assumed by the assertion that completion certificates must be accessed only if you pass an assessment (tick all that apply)
   1. Testing is always appropriate
   2. Professionals aren’t to be trusted
   3. The alternative is handing out certificates to anyone who turns up
   4. The earth is flat
3. What does the acronym ASK stand for?
   1. Aristotle, Sartres and Kant
   2. Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge
   3. Aardvarks, Antelopes and Kangaroos
   4. Always Salute the Kaiser
4. Which of the following most accurately describes your thoughts on this assessment as part of the blog
   1. A useful exercise that adds rigour to the experience
   2. Ha!

OK, so I have trivialised it to make a point, but I’m not sure what questions would have been better. A much better learning experience would be for us all to conclude this piece by spending some time thinking about it and sharing our thoughts.

And since this is a blog, why not add your comments below?

Engaging with ethics

by Jacqui Nelson

 

Last week I attended an event organised by the UK Inter-Professional Group (UKIPG) on ethics and professional bodies. The event focused on the role these bodies have to play in promoting ethics in the professions, and how to get members to engage with the issues. There were lots of good examples at the event and here are just a few of the tips that I picked up during the day which, I think, Professional Bodies should consider when engaging their members with ethics.

Don't get into the detail

The first speaker of the day was from Shell and was responsible for promoting the ethical behaviour of Shell employees across the world. She felt strongly that it was important to stick to 'principles' and not get into the ‘nitty gritty’ of rules. Her belief was that the more detailed you get the more likely it is that clever people will dispute what is there, and in time justify why these rules don't apply to them.

With rules you also run the risk of never being able to cover everything. Someone will always discover some eventuality that isn't covered. By sticking to the principles and promoting attitudes, you help people make the right choices themselves rather than trying to do that for them. 

Make sure the information you give is appropriate

Ethics is a big subject. Professionals need to engage with the topic but they don't need to become experts in philosophy. Aristotle may have an important role to play in ethics but I can't see how that helps today's professional.

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) were also kind enough to share their experience of developing a website dedicated to ethics. By their own admission the site is an amazing resource, but far more information than any professional needs. This is contrasted with the University of Leeds who, to their credit, seem to have got this right. They have brought together experts in philosophy and ethics with the dental faculty to ensure that their dental students have the very best grasp of ethics from the beginning of their career. Despite involving the philosophers in teaching ethics to their dental students they have kept it relevant, providing only valid and useful information which forms a base on which to build their career.

Didactic learning isn't enough when teaching ethics. People need to learn from experience.

This is, I think, fairly obvious and what we at Nelson Croom have been saying for years. You can't make people behave ethically by telling them to. That's why our CPD courses on Ethics takes people through a range of case studies and asks learners to consider how they would behave in a range of circumstances. Once they've thought about their own personal behaviour they receive guidance from the experts and the opportunity to see how fellow professionals would behave. This really enhances their learning, broadens their thinking and opens their minds to differing points of view.  Click here to try a sample; I'd be really interested to hear what you think.

Case studies work

Unsurprisingly professional bodies reported that they got far more engagement with case studies than any other resource. During the day different organisations ran interactive sessions where we were split into groups to discuss an ethical dilemma in the form of a case study. The challenge is to replicate this type of discussion and engagement, online.

This is a challenge that I think we’ve gone a long way to addressing with our current Ethics courses.

This confirms, in my mind, that Ethics is an important topic for the professions both right now and for the foreseeable future. As well as the number of courses on ethics we've developed for specific clients we will shortly publish our own course on Ethics in the Professions. If you are interested in getting involved and/or would like to consider offering it to your members, we'd love to hear from you.

Carrot, stick...or are you just curious?

by Jacqui Nelson

 

At Nelson Croom we talk about different online learning designs for different types of learning as a spectrum:  ‘learning for enlightenment’ at one end and ‘learning for compliance’ at the other.

Although we work in adult learning, I was reminded of our spectrum when I attended a session for primary school teachers on ‘how to teach outstanding lessons’.

The speaker explored extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators are the external forces that motivate people (including children) to learn: praise, rewards or punishment if they don’t. Compliance training relies heavily on extrinsic motivation. You have to do it or you’ll be sued, fined, sacked...

Intrinsic motivation is what people will do without external inducement: learning for enlightenment; learning because you’re curious, to broaden your horizons, to achieve a personal goal.

Two researchers, Malone and Lepper, explored intrinsic motivators 25 years ago. They identified seven factors: challenge, curiosity, control, fantasy, competition, cooperation and recognition. I was struck by how much of Malone and Lepper’s thinking has found its way into our online resources.

Giving learners control is at the core of our style to online learning. The research discusses people’s desire to control what happens to them and how we should allow learners to choose what they ‘want to learn and how they will learn it’. For 10 years we have implored our industry to dump the ‘next’ button and put learners in charge; this was music to my ears.

More surprisingly was the way Malone and Lepper’s ideas on fantasy chimed with our approach to online learning. Their research suggests learners are motivated best when they can ‘imagine themselves using the learned information in real-life settings’. We rely a lot on this type of exercise, particularly scenarios, to develop skills and change attitudes, but now I see it is critical to motivating our learners.

I’ll explore the way these factors can be incorporated into online learning resources in further blogs.  In the meantime you can find out more about this research at:

http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/edPsybook/Edpsy5/edpsy5_intrinsic.htm

Selling the Benefits of Online Content

by Alan Nelson

 

I read with interest this week that medical students at the University of Leeds are being given i-phones, providing access to medical textbooks online. The idea is that as they work away from the campus, in hospitals and GP surgeries, they will be able to access reference material online.

There has been much comment recently about professionals increasingly defining themselves by their competencies rather than their extensive knowledge, and this seems to chime with that trend. The i-phone won’t help them develop skills and judgement but it will enable them to work effectively without having yet learnt the vast array of facts that doctors end up storing in their heads.

This will be watched carefully by content providers. Textbook publishers have struggled over the last 15 years to develop significant revenue streams from their online content. Indeed Thomson sold its textbook business, Thomson Learning, because it had not been able to migrate towards the online renewable revenues that its parent company valued.

The main obstacle to this is the absence of a marketplace. Selling access to online content to students has been problematic. If a textbook is adopted as required reading on a course, a fairly high percentage of students will buy it. Ten years ago, the take up was as high as 60% for students on business, economics, science and engineering courses and just over 40% for humanities courses. These numbers have been hit as the web has provided a marketplace for students to trade their second hand books. Publishers have responded to this by jacking up their prices and that has created a vicious circle. So you can understand why the publishers are so keen to grow their online revenues.

However, with a growing belief among people of student age that content should be free, it has not proved possible to create a model where each student buys content and doesn’t immediately share it with their peers. Universities buy online research content centrally for their library, but all attempts to persuade them to foot the bill for online textbooks have been stone-walled – they see it as an attempt to transfer a student cost to them.

So this move by Leeds University may be more significant than it at first seems. Perhaps if publishers can persuade the academics of the reason why mobile content is required – students being off in GP practices and hospitals – they will have more luck.

That said, perhaps if they had spent more time thinking through their benefit statements rather than showing off about how clever their technology was, they would have got there sooner, or perhaps they just had to wait until Apple invented the i-phone!