Bottom-Line Performance

I can’t wait to use more video in my courses. I love it, because you can teach someone to do something in as little as two to three minutes.

Personally, I’m using how to videos on the Internet frequently, mainly for recipes (food is a high priority for me). Just this weekend while looking for how to make Indian Butter Chicken, I found a cool Web site called VideoJug – Life explained on film. The Web site has how to videos for a wide variety of topics. It is a great place to get inspiration for how you might incorporate video into your learning solutions.

Here is the link to the butter chicken recipe I used. This video isn’t quite as fun as others, but it is short and effective, as I successfully made butter chicken for dinner last Saturday. Check it out.

How to Make Butter Chicken

What are some of your favorite sites or podcasts?

Yesterday, I delivered a presentation on how to get started in podcasting. As part of this presentation, I showed several podcasts and web videos and we discussed what was good – and not good – about each of them. Each time I do a presentation on podcasting I make sure to include Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library podcast series. The reason? Because Gary’s initial foray into podcasting featured VERY low-end productions and yet he’s extremely successful as a podcaster. (Look at early episodes and compare them to later ones. His lighting is awful; his set is awful, etc).

Gary is now on his 600th episode) and he has over 4,000 subscribers to his daily show. He’s grown his business from a $1M endeavor to a $60M endeavor based on his podcast’s success in generating buzz and business – and he’s actually spawned a new business from the podcast. I”ll bet I alone have grown his subscription business by the dozens as I’ve told people to check out his podcasts for ideas.

The reason Gary’s podcasts work are primarily driven by his over-the-top personality (whether you like it/don’t like it) and his top-notch content. The guy knows wine, and his viewers love that he knows his topic.

If you want to get into creating learning podcasts here’s are four essential tips to follow:

1) Target your series very well to your audience.

2) Have GREAT content that is relevant and useful to your audience – not just entertaining.

3) Make sure the audio quality is solid. People will forgive less-than-stellar video quality, but they want clear, undistorted audio.

4) Build a relationship with your viewers. End your podcasts with some sort of call to action that sparks them to contribute to your show. Invite them to comment, share stories, pose their own questions, etc.

5) Have a great “voice” as your show’s voice. A monotone narrator on on-camera presence will kill your show. A boring voice is no better (and actually worse) on a podcast than they are in really life. Your show’s voice needs a personality. Like him or find him too intense, Gary Vaynerchuk as a LOT of personality.

If you’d like my entire presentation on getting started in podocasting, let me know. I’m happy to share it. Just drop me a linein the Comments section.

This week BLP’s quarterly Lesson on Learning seminar presented: Producing Video Podcasts: Getting Started. The seminar featured Andy Janning from FORUM Credit Union. Andy and his team demonstrate exceptional creative ability and use of humor in short educational vides. Writing a creative, effective, entertaining video script is a challenge that may feel overwhelming. One hurdle to overcome in getting started creating a podcast is the inspiration for the content.

Recently, I was watching one of my favorite cooking shows on the Food Network, Good Eats with host Alton Brown. As I watched I realized what a great inspiration the show is for using video to support learning. The show uses a blend of learning tools, which includes a clever script. Additionally, the show incorporates blackboards, graphics and demonstration. After the show you can go to the Web site for recipes, tips and additional demonstration, aka job aids.

Link to the Web site to watch some clips. I like “Broccoli with Butter” and “Perfect Popcorn”.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats-with-alton-brown2/video/index.html

Maybe there is some educational value in television. As you sit down on this Friday night to relax in front of the TV, look for some inspiration in getting started on your next podcast. If you have a few podcasts under your belt, where have you found inspiration for your videos?

We posted a podcast today that demonstrates our technique for getting subject matter experts to shift from a content focus to an outcome focus.  It’s a five-minute version of how we do a design meeting with our customers.  Click here to check it out:

Getting to Learning Outcomes

This content focus vs outcome focus is a very common – and very frustrating issue. When people roll out a new product, process, or system, they want to tell you ALL about it. They want to cover history, interesting details, what it does, how it does it, etc. They do not stop to consider what information out of their content list will actually be USED once someone is back in their job post-training. They confuse training and communication.

It seems like common sense to say that we only want to include what’s most relevant and that if we include both relevant and irrelevant material, learners will have trouble distinguishing…and learn less as a result.  (Ruth Clark is my hero, though she’s not everyone’s. Click the link and you’ll get an interesting dissenting viewpoint of her work and her principles of learning efficiency, one of which is the principle of relevance.)

People who live and breathe something for a long time (i.e. the folks who launch a product) know everything thing about it and they are passionate about it. They have a very hard time figuring out what’s important…and what’s just important or interesting to them. Our job as learning designers is to help get these folks shifted away from content and focused on outcomes they need for training to achieve. There are 5 key questions we ask to help subject matter experts make this transition:

1) What is your vision of success – what will the workplace look like if you are successful with training?

2) What do learners need to know and do to achieve this vision?

3) What do learners need to believe/feel? (Gets to motivation)

4) What common mistakes are learners likely to make?

5) What do learners already know? (This information is useful in helping you 1) dump unnecessary content and 2) figure out how to link to prior knowledge).

Hope the podcast is a useful support to this post and I hope the 5 questions are useful in your discussions with subject matter experts.

I have. Video podcasts are a great way to deliver fast effective instruction. I have watched podcasts for quick lessons on fitness, cooking and even home repairs. The videos I enjoy most are short, entertaining and relevant to my needs. One of my favorite video series is the 5-Minute Office Workout web series with Bob Harper, a trainer from TV’s The Biggest Loser. Check it out:

http://officeworkout.msn.com/

It is great to have a celebrity spokesperson and MSN’s budget for video production.  However, you can still create a good instructional video on a smaller budget without celebrity endorsement. I saw two very funny videos presented by Forum Credit Union at the CIASTD conference last week. They were designed to improve employee compliance in security measures such as protecting private information on their desks and locking up their PCs.  This was accomplished with a couple clever video vignettes with employee actors. As a result of the videos employee compliance on these issues improved. Instead of an hour long lecture on security and compliance the video podcasts were fun to watch and achieved desired behaviors.

Whatever your resources are, here are a few basic concepts to follow when creating a video podcast:
-    Know your audience and design the video content to speak to them.
-    Keep it short, use your time wisely and share only what the audience needs to know.
-    Make it interesting. A video of a dull speaker is still a dull speaker. Create fun stories that are engaging and make the audience want to see more.

Think about the best video podcasts you have seen on the Internet – what makes your favorites stand out?

What’s better for learners – listening to an audio podcast or watching a video podcast? It’s an interesting question because Podcasting News (April 16th edition) reports on research by Arbitron/Edison Media Research that most people (a whopping 75%) are viewing/listening to podcasts from their computer – NOT a media player. Other research finds that people who listen (as opposed to watch) tend to multi-task while people who are viewing a video podcast focus more.

I’d love to do a small research project to see which way enables people to actually LEARN more – listening only or watching/listening. If you’re interested in participating in such a research project, let me know. My thought is to create two podcasts – one audio and one video – on the same topic with the same post-test and see which way enables people to learn the material better. Post a comment or send me an email if you’d like to participate; if we get enough interest, we’ll create the podcasts and see what results we get!

Stories can make learning content go from forgettable to memorable. This episode explores several ways to use stories in e-learning, provides a couple of examples of stories, and shares a tool to help you manage the characters in stories than span several courses.