Nelson Croom's Blog

London 2012 is missing a social media trick

Anna Faherty, author of 5 Nelson Croom courses, explains why the London Olympic Games Organising Committee are missing out on the opportunity that Social Media presents.

by Anna Faherty

For most people, their social media strategy is either non-existent or based on strict rules about what their organisation says they can or can’t say. But if you’re organising one of the biggest sporting events in the world, you need to think more creatively than that. You also need a lot of people and a lot of time to make the most of social media around your event.

Almost a year before last weekend’s US Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, marketing company Raidious set-up a city-centre office to manage the event’s social-media strategy. Packed with 50 employees and student volunteers working around the clock, they then got blogging, tweeting and Facebooking.

Of course the social media command centre was sure to be sending out messages to market both the Super Bowl and the city in which it is taking place. But it also monitored the use of 300 keywords across different social media. If someone spotted a question or concern they could respond to, or a fun experience they could share, they got to work. Plus they also created new content – sourcing photos, videos and stories to share on their Highlights blog.

With our own major sporting event just around the corner, perhaps London 2012 can learn a thing or two from Super Bowl XLVI. So far, we’re not doing so well. Despite encouraging competitors to make this the ‘Twitter games’, the London Olympic Games Organising Committee (LOGOC) didn’t win itself any favours when it recently announced that anybody volunteering at the games would be banned from using social media – hardly the way to get people talking, sharing and promoting the games online.

LOGOC’s approach might not be so surprising if you take a look back at the 2010 Winter Olympics. In an article for Mashable, blogger and social media marketer Teresa Basich says most of the Twitter action for Vancouver 2010 was ‘pushing’ agreed messages out, rather than engaging with audiences in any real sense. Perhaps if LOGOC heeded Basich’s advice to listen to people, connect with them and foster links between people with shared passions things might be different. Because, as a recent article in Forbes magazine confirms, social media today isn’t about broadcasting, it’s about meeting like-minded individuals, participating in meaningful conversations and collaborating to make a difference. That’s true for LOGOC. And it’s true for you. Don’t miss the trick…

A big change for Imago

by Andrew Turner

 

Everything thing we do at Nelson Croom is based in our technology system Imago. Imago is constantly working to ensure every course is accessible, every report works and every learner can get the most from each course.

On the 13th of January Imago got a facelift and we have to say we are very happy with the results, she has never looked fresher or younger.

All in all we there are four great things to come out of this facelift, three which are immediately visible to all, and one, perhaps the most important, which is not:

1. A fresher more intuitive navigation panel– You will notice the menu on the left hand navigation panel has changed., In response to user feedback we’ve made the menu more intuitive and modern looking
2. A new Imago Manager – We have fundamentally redesigned Imago ManagerDon’t panic though, every report or tool  is still there, they are just presented in a different way. Instead of one long list down the page, the headings are attractive tabs across the top. When you click on them the list of headings appear in a left hand column. Select the appropriate heading and the reports and tools will appear. (See below)



3. A more attractive out of the box gateway page – So if clients don’t want to customise their gateway page we’ve made the out of the box version nicer to look at.
4. HTM5 – this is the change you won’t see but it is a major step to ensure continued compatibility with all browsers, the possibility of more exciting interactive design (without resorting to flash) and easier implementation of accessible features.

These are all important steps in keeping our technology current and up to date. If you have any questions or would like any more information, we’d love to hear from you.

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.

SYP – An opportunity through social media

by Andrew Turner

 

A friend who I met whilst doing my Masters in Publishing at Kingston University recently contacted me about the opportunity to join the committee of the Society of Young Publishers (SYP). The SYP was established in 1949 and is open to anyone in publishing or a related trade – or who is hoping to be soon, catering especially for those with fewer than ten years experience.

The opening was to join this friend, Tina Mories, on the committee as an Events Coordinator. The SYP hold monthly events, for members and non members, which aim to focus on interesting topics from the world of publishing which can help those in, and looking to get in to, the industry.

I am extremely happy to be on the committee and with the opportunity it gives me to help those looking to get in to publishing and also expand my own network. This put me in mind of our recently launched course Social Media for Professionals which stresses the importance of social media as a way of maintaining your network as a whole. Not only is this new role a great way for me to network, I wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for the network I already had. This network is one which I maintain primarily through facebook and twitter. I did meet Tina through my Masters but we maintained our friendship online, speaking through facebook and twitter, as everyone from the course does. In fact even when we do meet for a drink and a catch up, we organise it through our facebook group.

This group does more than just enable us to organise a drunken catch up. We tell each other about job opportunities ask advice on things in our work life and discuss books, films and the publishing world in general. Not once did we sit down and plan this group, or plan to communicate so frequently through social media, rather it was just the natural way to maintain contact with a like minded group of individuals. Without it I do wonder how many of us would have stayed in contact with each other, and how I would have maintained my knowledge of the broader publishing world rather than just having a focus on my interests and my job. In fact, I wonder how these relationships were maintained before Social Media.

You may shout out - through phone calls, emails and ACTUALLY meeting people. I still do these things but, for me, they do not offer the same constant access to my network, and potential network, as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do. And it isn’t just the young workforce either; recent Nielson figures reveal that the 50+ demographic are driving the growth of Facebook and Twitter.

For me this is a realisation that whilst networking is possible without an online presence, your network isn’t complete until you have one.

New course: Social Media for Professionals

by Andrew Turner

 

Nelson Croom has launched a new course aimed at helping professionals use social media more effectively in their work. Written by Anna Faherty, Social Media for Professionals shows learners how social media can help them to achieve their professional goals, explores some of the most common social media platforms and looks at how other organisations and individuals use social media in a professional context.

You can find out more about the course here and if you would like to offer it to your learners contact us.

Let it breathe

by Hamish Long

 

If we have something we want to show off or draw attention to, it doesn't make sense to surround it with clutter - detracting from its beauty. Think of an art gallery - you can fully appreciate the exhibits because they have plenty of space between them.

Let's apply this to a webpage. In this example we have a series of four photographs/products that we want to show off; each has a title and a short blurb. A webpage layout for such an example could look like this:

For me, there's too much going on - the products are not taking centre stage and I feel I should be taking in all the information at once. There may be other issues: to see a detailed version of the image I'll need to invoke a pop-up window or perhaps a layer, causing further clutter; some of the content may be off the bottom of the viewport so I won't see the full series without scrolling up and down.

Let's try it a different way:

Decluttering and giving your images the attention they deserve may require you to build a few more webpage’s but you can recoup the time by using a template so go on... take a deep breath, and let it breathe...

Internet Explorer 9 today

by Jacqui Nelson

You may already have read that today Microsoft release the BETA version of IE9. It probably won’t affect many of you for a while yet but at Nelson Croom it’s really important that we are ready when IE9 released fully.

Because our technology, Imago, is a hosted solution we’re updating it all the time, and when a new browser is released we are interested for two reasons. 1. We need to make sure that Imago, all its features (and there are 1,000s) and all the courses built upon it, work with the new software and 2. We want to explore what new possibilities the new browser presents for our learners.

IE9, we are pleased to hear, is likely to be about faster speeds, better graphics and being more social. Our online learning’s always been about learning from each other, as much as it is about learning from the experts, so ‘more social’ suits us.

We love the idea that new browsers will play video and animations without the use of flash, because we know that so many of our learners can’t see flash based content, and that’s only getting worse with the ever increasing popularity of our itoys. 

We’ll have to wait for further information about the full extent of the new functionality but the word is that IE9 is going to be major step forward for Microsoft.  We’ll be ready for it when it comes and we’ll monitor closely what proportion of our over 100,000 learners turn to it, and when...but realistically we don’t expect to see vast usage for a couple of years.

Formal vs informal learning: a thought from Training Zone Live

by Jacqui Nelson

I had a great day on Tuesday at Training Zone Live. I learnt a lot, particularly about social media which was my main reason for attending. I’ll write more about that later but I wanted to share (that’s what social media is all about!) a couple of stories. Here’s the first;
The last session of the day was an ‘Ask the panel’ event. The panel included Peter Honey, Jim Kirkpatrick and Charles Jennings (who has appeared often in this blog). It was good to hear the majority (if not all) of the panel talking about how we need to move from thinking about ‘training’ people to thinking about enabling people to ‘learn’.

‘Facilitating learning NOT teaching’ is a concept central to what we do at Nelson Croom, and has been for 10 years. I think, it’s particularly important with online learning because the internet should be about freedom not constraint. It is in no small part due to the popularity of the internet that people now expect to be able to learn what they want to learn in a style that suits them. People want to discover not to be told. People want to learn, not be taught.

We embrace this in our courses; but for some of the panel this is not enough. They would like to take it further. Perhaps there should be no formal learning at all, just the learning that is part of our everyday life. The information we absorb, learning on the job etc.
I can see the point, and there is no doubt that more and more ‘learning’ is outside of a formal ‘classroom’ setting but I still think there is a place for a ‘course’. Here’s why.

I’ve been learning lots about social media recently. My learning has been purely self-directed and much of it has been ‘informal’ learning. (The best advice I got was to ‘follow a teenager around for a week – that’ll teach you about social media!’) But a good part of my learning has been formal too. I’ve watched videos on you tube, attended a webinar (ok, only lasted 8minutes then did my emails and got back on google)………… and I went to Training Zone Live, didn’t !?

I’m happy with my informal learning but there is a point where I want to interact with an ‘expert’ and that’s where I will look to ‘formal’ learning.

Knowledge will always be power

by Angela Smith

Like Alan, I also read Charles Jennings' recent article Less is more: A different approach to L&D in a world awash with information. Sad to say, it left me a little unsatisfied, but it did set all sorts of thoughts pinging off in my mind. I thought Jennings made some good points and would like to see him take them further – apologies to Mr Jennings if he has already elaborated elsewhere – I’m sure he has!

To quote Jennings, “Is it better to get people to commit information to memory, knowing that it will be short-lived (and possibly out of date when they come to use it), or help them become skilled in the approaches and techniques to find the current, correct information quickly when they need it? Think for a few seconds and it is obvious that the second strategy is the better one. Teach people to fish rather than providing them with fish.”

I have to disagree – I’m not sure that it is obvious that the second strategy is the better one unless we are talking only about pure information, rather than knowledge in the sense of the sum of the facts, skills and awarenesses of a person or group of people. This narrow definition of “knowledge” seems to apply only to a tiny proportion of the training and learning that goes on, particularly with adults in the workplace. And if Jennings is indeed simply talking about information, try applying his fishing analogy and where it seems to leave you is not “teaching people to fish” but “teaching people to find out what the current fishing techniques are”. Only really useful, I’d argue, if you already know how to fish. Or perhaps he’s talking about teaching them how to find out how to teach themselves to fish. Anyway, the metaphor is a bit wobbly. When do I learn to fish? I’ve got to do it some time.

The core of learning is not about straight information. It is about learning the background knowledge which allows you to put that information into context, the skills you need in order for the information to be useful to you and the attitudes you need to form to make the right judgements based on the information. You don’t look up your attitude whenever you want to know how to feel about something. Similarly, a skill is something that you possess, not something you can take out of a box and wear for half an hour.

Yes there should be a focus in basic education on helping people to develop the skills to navigate the minefield of information that's out there, to assess and assimilate what they find and to make reasoned decisions based on the information they find. However this is a separate issue to how we enable people to learn specific subjects. It’s a bit like saying that all we needed to do before was teach people how to find the bookshop, pick the right book and read it.

I'd argue that what Jennings is talking about is a specific general need of society, not an approach to training. What might this mean for learners? Time spent learning how to find up to date information is just a small element. The real implication is that it means more time spent on learning the key information needed for context, shaping attitudes and engaging in practice of the skills required.

It is also true that while we won’t necessarily want or need to learn everything about a subject, that doesn’t mean we won’t need to learn what is current as a basis from which to understand all the constantly updated information that is put to us. There must be a baseline and context in which to place what we learn. We wouldn’t say that because the IT world in constantly changing, developers should only ever look up what they need – you simply can’t begin that way. To pick up on Alan’s medical analogy, a surgeon who hasn’t learned the core skills of surgery is not a surgeon – he is a butcher with a book and you should get out of there fast.

Reading back over Jennings’ article to check I wasn’t wilfully misunderstanding him (I do enjoy disagreeing with people) it occurs to me that he makes a very interesting point at the beginning of the article about the current move towards social knowledge and knowledge sharing. However, he doesn’t, in this article, then go on to look at the real implications that this has for learning and training – how can we use this trend to enrich how we facilitate learning, but that’s a whole other blog…

 

10 years on: how has our philosophy changed?

by Alan Nelson

As part of Nelson Croom's 10th anniversary celebrations we are been looking back at how things have changed.

Reaching the milestone of our 10th birthday has made me temporarily reflective. Much has changed in the last 10 years but some things have stayed the same. The philosophy that underlies what we do is a mini example of this.

When David Croom and I first established Nelson Croom, we didn’t know much about e-learning. We were educational book publishers by background and although we knew a fair amount about the web, we had no experience of creating stand alone online learning. So we decided to get some help. We turned to a man called Trevor Bentley. Trevor was an organisation development consultant with a background in screen based learning that went back to the 70s. Over the course of a number of sessions, Trevor explained to us his central theory, that when dealing with remote learners, you had to let go of ideas of trying to teach them, and instead look to facilitate their learning. At first I thought this was a purely semantic distinction, but over time I came to see how important it was.

In practice what Trevor wanted us to do was to ask people what they wanted to learn and how, and then offer them each a route through material appropriate to their preferences. At the time, this all made a lot of sense to me. I have never much liked being told what to do and the idea of following a prescribed route through material, clicking on a next button, would never have appealed to me. This was backed up by some early work with focus groups, who pushed back hard on anything within our early offerings that attempted to control their movement around a course. So I went along with it innocently, never realising that acceptance of the approach would put us fairly significantly in left field in the emerging elearning world. Some people thought we were mad and certainly there were some areas where our apparently anarchic approach was never going to play well. It was a couple of years later that Trevor admitted to me that he had been trying to persuade Xebec McGraw to adopt his approach for some months and got nowhere. Indeed he told me that he nearly fell off the chair when our initial response to his suggestions was “OK. Sounds like a good idea to us. How do we do it?”

Looking back I think there were two reasons why we were so able to accept what others couldn’t:

• Firstly, we had less baggage. We were new and so we weren’t preoccupied with how to get our CD-ROMs to work over a dial-up connection, or how to convert our John Cleese videos into online learning. I was sold on the Internet and I wanted to use the browser as the navigational tool, not some interface that was dreamt up for a different medium.

• Secondly, as book publishers, we had spent much of the latter 90s discussing what a book would look like when it was online, only to realise that it was a pointless question. It would be a website not a book and once everyone understood websites, they wouldn’t feel the need to compare them to books anymore. So I was sure that I wasn’t going to spend any time thinking “What would a one day seminar look like as a course?” The question I was interested in was “How can we get people to learn this stuff using the internet?”

 

So that was how we set off on what was a fairly distinctive course. While it no doubt ruled us out of some work, particularly in the corporate sector, it was also a real asset, even in the early days. We became expert at dealing with diverse groups of learners, all starting with different pre-knowledge and in some cases with different objectives also. Inevitably, we gravitated towards the professional bodies. They were attempting to provide services to members all over the country, with differing levels of experience and different specialisms – highly intelligent and vocal individuals, not slow to criticise anything that doesn’t work for them.

So philosophy was not just an abstract concept; it became the foundation of what we did. Out of a simple and clear set of beliefs grew expertise and competence that informed the development of the business. The focus broadened over the years to include government bodies providing a service to the public and professional services firms with diverse clients, but we have always focused primarily on enabling organisations to extend the reach of their professional development services to individuals outside of their control.

Now of course the idea seems much less radical. The whole Web 2.0 movement is based on the idea that the users are in charge. We have enthusiastically welcomed many of the new social tools that have emerged because they have enabled us to bring some of our ideas to life. The whole concept of a community of learners creating a place where they can learn is tremendously exciting. The courses we create now get better when they are used – much better.

As a result of our approach we became obsessive about learners. Thinking about everything from their point of view is something of a mantra. So when last year we won an award for Elearning Development Company of the Year, and the judges cited our record of achieving results by focusing on the needs of real learners, I was particularly proud. As someone who has been rightly criticised in the past for flitting from one idea to the next, to have stuck with the same one for ten years, and eventually to have been proved right, was quite an achievement.

The idea that we aren’t completely in control of what the learner does is really what excited me about the web in the first place. Print publishers are obsessed with the layout of the page and hate the idea that a browser might present something different dependent on the user’s setup. Personally I always found this difference exciting. After so many years of discussions about line length and orphan paragraphs, I was able to admit that I had never really cared!

So, looking back over 10 years, has our fundamental philosophy changed? No, I don’t believe it has. What has changed is that we are much more flexible. I guess this comes with confidence. We have done it so many times now that we know how to change things with out losing what matters.