Bottom-Line Performance

Leannne standing on the green screen.

Happy Fourth of July! As I thought about all of the pyrotechnics of the coming holiday, the special effects the video crews will use to produce that TV special with the Boston Pops and the fireworks from the White House lawn, I had to reflect on my own special effects moment from earlier this week, a green screen video shoot.

The project we’re working on has a learning agent that guides participants through the course. We’re using a combination of still photography and audio along with green screen video. The shot went great, but we did learn a few tricks for future green screen videos:

• Use a teleprompter. Even if it’s just a few short sentences, it’s hard to remember marks and the script. And since you really want the talent to hit the marks, lessen the burden on the script side.
• Bring sticky notes! If the learning agent is pointing to buttons on screen, you’ll need to mark them off on the green screen, but sticky notes on the monitor will make sure the people watching know the agent is hitting the mark.
• Keep it short. Green screen videos are shot in one take, if possible. Thirty seconds to a minute is really about all you need. Another reason the teleprompter is key, too.
• Use props. The learning agent feels more comfortable when he or she has something to do, besides walk across the screen. Props that illustrate key points give him or her action to take. Picking up a book from a table can be easier than trying to talk to the camera.
• Set cues for moving hands or changing position. Not everyone feels comfortable on green screen. Offering suggestions of when to move their hands or even walk a bit on screen can be helpful for new talent. We recommended keeping your hands above your waist, as you’re more likely to gesture with them naturally as you speak.
•  Have hairspray. Editing green screen can get complicated if the learning agent has lots of fly-aways. The hair will get edited out when the background is removed. Our wonderful talent was thoughtful enough to bring her own, but next time I know I’ll have an extra can with me!

If you’re getting started with your own green screen video shoot or any video shoot for that matter, check out I Came, I Saw, I Learned for production tips and tips on purchasing the correct equipment for green screen.

What other tips do you have for producing green screen? I definitely want suggestions before I do our next video shoot!

We get lots and lots of proposal requests from current and prospective clients…and I’ve been writing a ton of proposals lately. Some are much easier to write than others, and the ease/difficulty is 100% dependent on the quality of the request.

Some of the RFPs – requests for proposals – we receive are very good requests with detailed information; others give us the opportunity to do lots of follow-up. We find ourselves asking a lot of questions as we attempt to accurately pinpoint the scope of the project and provide concept, price, and time line information. We end up spending quite a bit of time formulating questions and then talking these questions through with the client. I often wonder how many hours a client might save himself or herself if their RFP had been put together a bit more carefully. I do recognize the difficulty of communicating clearly about a project in which you’ve probably been immersed for a long while. It comes difficult to discern what’s obvious -and what needs to be explicitly explained for a vendor to understand your needs.

If you are someone who outsources work to vendors, you can make your job easier – and your vendors’ job easier by assembling a solid RFP – or request for proposal. The information that follows is straight from a document we created titled, “Creating a Good RFP.” We provide it free-of-charge to customers who don’t have any experience creating RFPs…or who’ve provided us with RFPs in the past that lead to lengthy Q&A sessions to understand what they want/need. Most of them tell us it’s a really helpful guideline.

Company and Logistical Information

Sounds stupid, but a lot of companies forget to put basic contact information in their proposal. Be sure to include:

• Company name and address
• The name and contact information for the person making the request. If YOU aren’t the one to answer questions, then please include the name/contact info for the person who is supposed to answer questions.
• Any parameters we need to follow in submitting questions or requesting additional info.
• The due date of the response. (Please make this very clear and easy to find!!!)
• The anticipated decision date and how you will communicate this decision.

Project Information

• Description of your project. Tell us what the project is and who it is intended for: “We need a training course on XYZ developed for XYZ audiences.” Or…”We need help in analyzing what we DO need because we have no idea.” (I’m being a bit sarcastic here, but truly, so many customers aren’t really sure what they do need – and we end up looping back to do some needs assessment before we can ever move forward. They jump to solution before they’ve fully thought about what the problem truly is.)
• Give us background on your intended audiences – what do they already know? Where are they located? What entry-level attitudes or behaviors should be considered as we bid the project? What is their education level and language skills? What unique traits should we consider? (e.g. The need to eventually  translate a finished solution into multiple languages is something that’s nice to know when we bid the project since it affects the way we might program a solution. This, in turn, affects time required.)
• List of deliverables and services you need. Services may include needs analysis, curriculum or course design, graphic design, performance analysis, etc. Deliverables might competency model, analysis report, curriculum design, course design, course materials, e-learning course, webinar, job aids, etc. If you don’t know what deliverables you want, we’ll have a very hard time giving you a price. When you are really unsure of what the deliverables should be….strongly consider requesting support for analysis and design – with no other deliverables. Once analysis and design work have happened, you can request a proposal that focuses exclusively on development and testing of your solution.
• Anticipated project time line that factors in the review cycles required on the project. Here is where many clients stumble a bit. They request a completion date that cannot logistically be accomplished ON THEIR END.
• Description of the available resources. This includes source content and subject matter experts. Depending on the project, it may include other, very specific resources as well.  Remember: “source content” is only source content if it exists on hard copy or electronic copy somewhere. Telling a vendor you have all the content…and then surprising them in the kickoff with an intro to a SME who is going to tell them everything they need to know is NOT good.

Budgetary Constraints or Timeline Constraints

Please, please don’t withhold budget information because you worry that the vendor will use every penny of what’s available to spend. The worst scenarios are when someone only has $10K to spend – and describes a project that clearly requires $50K to produce.  You are NOT going to get audio, complex Flash animation, and a full-branching scenario in 4 weeks and for less than $10K.

If you can give budget parameters or expectations upfront, we can help guide you and tell you what features/functionality/services are typically part of a $10K, $20K, $50K, or $100K solution. We can also probe for the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. If you merely want to share information, you really don’t need to spend $50K on an e-course to communicate new policies. Ethical vendors will point this out – and save you money.

Evaluation Criteria

Let’s be honest here. There’s always one or two things that are MOST important to you. Sometimes it’s your timeline. You need something fast…and your top evaluation criteria will be how well a vendor can meet your timeline. Other times, you have a high-profile project and what you’ll value most is a vendor who can truly partner with you in thinking through needs and optimal solutions, and then produce a high-quality, creative solution.

Though some vendors will tell you it’s possible to do good, fast, and cheap all together…that’s relative. We can be two of those three things, but most vendors cannot be all of those things. Simply letting the vendor know which two are most important to you can help you get responses that are useful to you. We’ve had some terrific honest discussions with clients – and declined to respond – when we’ve discovered their top priority is not one we feel we can honor. (We just had a client who wanted us to bid a project two ways: 2) super-fast with lowered quality standards and 2) high-quality with lengthened timeline.)  After considering what “super-fast” would mean (just about absolutely killing everyone on the project in order to complete it in four weeks), we replied back that we felt we could only bid on Option 2. The client was fine with this…and the evaluators can go with what’s most important to them.

Summary

The best projects happen when there is a high level of trust and good communication exchange throughout the proposal process. We start consulting from the moment we receive a proposal so we make sure our response truly addresses the needs the client has – which often are nowhere on their RFP.

Clients who have a rock-solid RFP help themselves. They get responses that better match their vision. They also minimize the risk of the project scope expanding on them because it wasn’t fully thought through at the RFP stage.

I welcome any other tips folks have on what makes a great RFP. Any war stories can also be shared and enjoyed. I suspect most of us have at least one!

Confession time: I like reality shows, especially those that show personal transformations. One of the shows I catch occasionally is Hoarders on A&E. It’s a fascinating look at people who can’t get rid of the stuff in their house…and has the side benefit of motivating me to pick up the house! What does Hoarders have to do with Sharepoint collaboration spaces and training? Often when I explore client collaboration spaces, it makes me think of a hoarder’s house:

There seems to be more stuff than could ever possibly be managed, and it has little organization; files have just been piled on top of each other with no thoughts as to how they will be found by the learners. And the problem is that in an online environment, there seems to be unlimited room to add files – unlike in a house where the walls set the boundaries of how much can be brought in.

Don’t get me wrong, SharePoint is tool that can work to support learning quite well. Most of us have easy access to it at our companies and so it seems like we should be doing something with it – we’re just not sure what. And more importantly, we’re not sure how to get our employees to use it the way that we want them to! I’m going to address two common issues that arise when using collaboration spaces (whether SharePoint or another tool) 1) Organizing the content and 2) Building community.

Get organized

1. Create clear naming conventions. We learning professionals love our jazzy titles. But a collaboration space needs to have clear naming conventions so that users can easily find what they are looking for. So instead of “Keep Calm and Carry On”, use “Troubleshoot Alarms”.
2. Use consistent navigation. Users need to be able to remember where things are each time they revisit the site. It’s incredibly frustrating for them if they can’t. Below is a screen shot from a site we recently developed for a client. The top navigation never changes within the site. Users can always get back to the main sections of the site. The left navigation does change based on what’s found on each page.

3.  Clean out the junk. One of the benefits of a collaboration space like SharePoint is that many people can share and upload content. But someone has to be responsible for ensuring that the content is in the right spots and that it is relevant. If a file hasn’t been viewed or downloaded in a year, it probably needs to be removed because no one is finding value in it.

Make it a positive (ie. useful) experience for learners

1. Create a site view that makes sense for what you’re doing. SharePoint doesn’t have to look like the above screen show with left and top navigation. It can be made to look like any website. So, if you create a site to support an instructor-led course that has a graphical organizer, the graphical organizer could be the navigation on the site as well to access related topics and support information. Or if you’re supporting a time-based process, the timeline or process graphic could be the course navigation. The possibilities are endless!

2. Provide “need to have” content. Often we get excited about the possibilities, and lose sight of what learners will actually participate in. “If you build it, they will come” does not apply to internal collaboration spaces. But “If they need it, they will come” does apply. Need to have content could include:

• Webinars, podcasts, or blogs given by internal experts
• Discussion boards. These are especially great if the learning or development is around a topic where learners will want advice from peers.
• Updates or changes to procedures
• News items and links that impact the work they do
• Answers to their questions. These could be questions received in a training session or posted on the site before or after the learning took place.

What’s need to have versus nice to have will differ for every organization and every learning project. But be sure to ask the question, otherwise your site might start looking like it is managed by an information hoarder!

3. Start small. Don’t expect that your learners will embrace every aspect of your collaboration site immediately. Short webinars or podcasts given by internal experts are a great place to start. The technology has been experienced by most employees already, so they know how to use it. Also, the communication can be more robust than what would be provided in an email.

For example, if your organization requires employees to complete performance management training when the begin, often those lessons might have been forgotten by the time annual reviews roll around. Ask a senior leader to record a short webinar on the importance of performance management and the key deadlines and tasks for both employees and managers.

Another example might be for training around a change initiative. Once employees have had a few weeks or months to implement the change, publish a webinar detailing how well the change is going – what employees are doing right, questions they are asking, and where they need to correct their course.

You can easily track how many employees view the site and even allow comments to the webinar for employees to ask questions or clarify points. Once you’re doing a few things well, then you can add more content and interaction opportunities.

4. Embrace two-way communication. Too often I hear, “We don’t want employees to be able to post frequently asked questions. We’ll post the frequently asked questions so that the questions are ones we want on the site.” The point of a collaboration site is to collaborate – which implies two-way communication. I’m not suggesting that you need to allow rants or inappropriate communication on your site, but that’s not a frequent problem in my experience (most of us value our jobs too much). More often, groups want to exert control over the site. My contention is that if people are thinking it anyway, I’d rather deal with it directly on the site.

Going back to the performance management training example, if someone posts that the form is cumbersome and takes too long to complete, great! Then you can respond directly on the site the rationale behind the form and suggestions for how to complete it quickly.

I hope these tips are helpful for you. If you’re interested in learning more, the Social Media in Learning blog is a great place to start!

I love working with SMEs. (OK, most of the time I love working with SMEs. But really, I only love working with people in general most of the time.) Subject matter experts are great because they’re subject matter experts. I get to learn stuff from them. Sometimes, it’s cool stuff, and sometimes it’s just mildly interesting stuff, but’s always new to me. 

I try to make sure that SMEs don’t mind working with me. Because for all the SME jokes in our industry, they’ve got to have just as many about us crazy instructional designers. Afterall, we ask a lot of them. We want their expertise, but we want to have the right to change anything they tell us to make it more understandable. And we want to pull knowledge from them that has become so second nature they don’t even know they have it. Usually, we’re asking them to give us their time on top of everything else they have to do for thier job. When you think about it, we have to be kind of exhausting to work with.

So I want to make it as pain free as possible. For many of my projects, I spend a good chunk of time creating content worksheets or interview guides after I have a finished design. Leanne Batchelder wrote about our Mad Libs approach with content templates before.  That works great if I can’t meet with the SME face-to-face. If I can get face time, I usually use a six-step process:

1. Ask the SMEs to review the design before the meeting. I’ve encountered instances where my SMEs for a project were not the same group of people that helped me design the program. I want them to know what the goals are before we meet.
2. Go through the design document. I wrote it, edited it, read it a million times over, but I still need to go through it and pull out every question I have. This keeps me from forgetting to ask all of my questions. I don’t want to trap my SMEs for three hours in a meeting, then have to send 5 follow up emails because I fogot a key question in my meeting.
3. Create an interview guide or content worksheet. I have a background in journalism, so I prepare for every meeting like its an interview. I write questions like I will ask them, in the order I will ask them.  This is not always the order I intend to use the information in the course. 
4. Compare the interview guide against my source content. I want to fill in anything I can before I go into the meeting. Then, I can just have my SMEs confirm what I know or correct what I only thought I understood. It saves everyone time to have something to start from. At this step, I send a list to my SMEs of any documents I think they may already have, like standard operating procedures, forms, or plans.
5. Review the design one last time and print everything. Chances are, I still forgot something. So triple-check my work against my design. Then I print all of the source material and head off to my meeting. 
6. Send a summary of the meeting back to the SMEs. Often, SMEs need to provide me with additional information, documents, or forms. I try to send a list of anything they promised me to them within a few hours of our meeting. It helps me make sure I get all of the information I need and keeps them from having to remember one more thing.

I recently presented a case study at the central Indiana ASTD fall conference. The focus of the case study was on using e-learning templates to facilitate rapid design. But as part of the presentation, I talked about how we managed a large group of SMEs (over 40 total) on the project. The room became alive and there were so many questions and comments I had to halt the discussion. I had obviously hit a hot topic!

Working with SMEs can be a challenging part of the design and development of learning solutions – but it doesn’t have to be! Here are my tips for working successfully with subject matter experts:

1. Get everyone in the same room (physically or virtually) to kickoff the project. Even if the SMEs will be working on different phases or aspects of the project, it is best for them to hear the same message, and for them to raise questions or issues at this meeting for all to hear. I recently did this for a project and it became clear after about an hour in that the SMEs weren’t all on the same page regarding the job function, much less how to teach it. Uncovering this issue early allowed us to avoid massive rework down the road.

2. Give SMEs a clear job description with detailed authority parameters. One of the frustrations we often have with SMEs is that they either don’t do what we want them to, or they overstep what we thought their boundaries were. Either way, this problem can be mitigated by being very clear up front what the job is. And as learning professionals, we need to remember that the project isn’t the SME’s full time job – we have a responsibility to educate them! I recommend providing an actual written job description. The one I use is about two pages and includes:

• Course development phases and SME responsibilities at each phase (how much time should they set aside to review a design document? What kinds of edits do we expect at alpha vs beta versions of the course? etc.)
• Who’s responsible for scheduling meetings.
• Rules for deadline days (I meet my deadlines, you need to meet your deadlines. What time is “end of day”?, etc.)
• How should they share source content (collaboration space, email, etc.)? Who needs to receive source content?
• Team member roles and responsibilities.
• What’s already been decided by stakeholders that outrank the SMEs. If your stakeholder has already told you what the objectives have to be, be honest about that. Don’t let the SMEs work under the impression that they have more power than they actually do. It just leads to frustration for everyone down the road.

3. Make sure that SMEs understand the domino effect of their decisions. One of the biggest challenges is getting SMEs to meet deadlines to avoid project delays. The first thing we need to do as project managers is to ensure that the deadlines we set are actually realistic. And I mean realistic. Even if the SME says that he/she can meet a deadline, usually you can tell when that’s not 100% accurate. You might need to call shenanigans if you see any of these signs:

• Shifty eyes. If they can’t look you in the eye when they agree to a 24 hour review time, don’t hold your breath.
• Avoidance. When they see you in the hall, they immediately remember an important errand on the other side of the building.
• Meetings start by the SME telling you how they have become good friends with the cleaning crew during their evening work sessions.

Once you’ve determined that the deadlines are realistic, then have honest conversations when SMEs want to make changes and additions to the solution or change the timeframe. Be sure they understand what that means for other courses, the budget of the project, and the overall quality of the project. By nature, the SME often has a narrower focus than we do because they are the expert. Part of our job is to help them see the forest for the trees and consider all options before making a decision.

4. Keep SMEs updated. At BLP, we often use a weekly/biweekly status report to communicate how things are going with the project. It’s just an excel spreadsheet that lists the project phases, who’s involved, where things are, and what’s coming up next. For SMEs, the most powerful part of the report is the icons we use to indicate status. It’s a great visual way for them to see our perception of the project. We use icons to indicate:

• Things are great!
• SME hasn’t been responsive.
• Phase needs immediate attention.
• We have some concerns/cautions.

I hope these tips were helpful! What do you to make the devleopment process a happy one for both you and your SMEs?

I can take absolutely no credit for this. I have a printed copy taped up near my desk, and I think clearly shows the number one conflict between SMEs and IDs.  SMEs want to pass on all knowledge immediately because it is all important and necessary. IDs want to organize that into comfortable chunks for the learners.

To give credit, this is from one of my favorite blogs, Usable Learning.

Sorry about the quality, I scanned in my copy!

We've all had to sit through this course...

I have a colleague who once created a presentation called “Herding Cats: Working with SMEs.” Needless to say, her viewpoint on the value of SMEs was influenced by some negative experiences.

Cats have often been used to describe SMEs - independent and impossible to control...but still lovable.

Can subject matter experts (aka SMEs) make good developers? How do you manage them and keep them focused? Can you shift them from a content (input) focus to an outcome focus? How do you keep them from derailing your project by overloading you with content? If a SME doesn’t know anything about instructional design, how can you involve them in designing a learning solution? What about deadlines…how do you hold them accountable?

In our experience, which spans a lot of years, subject matter experts are critical to most of our projects’ successes. Conversely, they can also become the Achilles’ heel that hinders success or makes a project take far longer than it should to complete. How to you ensure the former scenario and prevent the latter one?

That’s what our February blog posts are about. Over the next four weeks, we’ll share our tips and tricks for maximizing the relationship with SMEs. Specifically, we plan to talk about:

• Managing expectations between the SME and the designer/developers and techniques for clarifying roles/responsibilities.
• Tools that can make it easier for SMEs to function as developers – and designers.
• Techniques that make it easier to hold SMEs accountable for delivering what they say they will deliver.
• How to speak the language of the SME rather than trying to teach the language of learning design to the SME.

We welcome your thoughts and ideas as well. If you’ve identified a great strategy or technique for partnering with SMEs, share it! If you have a question or a challenge, let us know that too and we’ll try to address it here.

Also look for a couple interesting interviews with SMEs. While we view them in a particular light, it’s always good to view the world from their stance as well.

How often do you find yourself with a request for “training” that is really more about sharing information? The ultimate goal isn’t training learners to DO anything; it’s about building awareness, providing details, or just communicating a message.

Sometimes “Telling” is the goal, not “Teaching” and, believe me, both are needed and helpful, if packaged effectively. My colleagues and I have been thinking about the best way to “Tell” and we’ve developed a prototype of an eMagazine, or eMag, as an alternative to page-turner e-learning courses. We had several goals we wanted to achieve. We wanted our eMag to be:

• An online solution that is rapid to develop
• A great way to address projects that are really more information than training.
• Highly engaging
• A good use of “new” media (podcasts, videos, social networking, etc.)
• A solution that enables user exploration rather than a linear approach
• Easy to share (via Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• A “quick hit” but with option for more depth
• Easy/intuitive to navigate

Our eMag is called “Lessons on Learning” to complement this LOL Blog and the LOL Live learning seminars. The topic of our specific eMag is learning design, from analysis through project management. Our eMag solution is designed to support LOTS of different topics, not just the one we chose. For instance, you could have an eMag on “Lessons on Management,”  “Lessons on Customer Service,” etc.

Did we meet our goals? We think so, but we need YOUR help to know for sure. Curious? Well, now’s your chance to explore our eMag prototype and give us feedback!

NOTE: Since this is just a prototype, only three of the “headlines” on the cover page are functional: Design it right the first time, Do they really need training, and the Table of Contents.

Once you’re done exploring, complete our survey to give us your feedback. Look for the link in the header of all interior eMag headers–you can’t miss the monkey in the “Survey Monkey” link.

Click HERE to begin.

Have fun and thanks in advance for your help!

We’ll be presenting two breakout sessions at this year’s annual CIASTD conference. If you’re in the Indy area, I encourage you to register for the conference and plan on meeting us there! The sessions we’re presenting are:

Better, Faster, Smarter: Using templates and management techniques to efficiently design and develop e-learning

• Tired of e-learning projects that take too long to design and develop?
• Feel like you’re reinventing the wheel each time you create a new course?
• Need help managing the expectations of subject-matter experts as well as course programmers and writers?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then this session is for you. In the workshop, Shelby Watts and Jennifer Bertram will share what they learned on a recent project where they managed the concurrent design and development of 10 e-learning courses in a curriculum.

______________________________________

Beyond Page Turning: Which technologies should you choose?

Presented by Gayle Beebe, Lisa Meece, and Sharon Boller, you’ll:

1. Explore an array of technologies and social networks and assess
the pro’s and con’s of each as a learning tool.

2. Identify key considerations when deciding whether to incorporate a
new technology or tool.

3. Identify a process for exploring and evaluating a new technology.

4. Leave with an evaluation matrix that will help them do ongoing
evaluations as new technologies and tools emerge.

As Jenn first told you in July, Lessons on Learning has a whole new format. We’ll be covering a new topic each month, and I’m in charge of August. This month, we’ll be focusing on Learning Management Systems. We’ll explore:

• Definition and features of an LMS.
• Differences between an LMS and an LCMS
• Questions to ask when creating a course for the LMS
• The future of learning management systems: Web 2.0 and beyond

Learning Management Systems: The Basics

If you work in corporate training or higher education, chances are you’ve bumped into an LMS or two since ASTD reports that 91% of organizations use them. But do you know what a learning management system really is? According to PC Magazine, an LMS administers instructor-led and e-learning courses and keeps track of student progress. That means that an LMS can actually be anything from something like a very complex Excel database to a top-of-the-line information system that integrates with HR and CRM software. 

Learning management systems have a range of features and functions. The most common include:

• Tracking regulatory compliance.
• Measuring course usage.
• Managing logistics of instructor-led training.
• Assigning e-learning courses.
• Tracking course satisfaction and feedback.
• Centralizing all learning functions.

With every thing an LMS promises, the results aren’t always what we anticipated. The 2007 eLearning Guild Annual Report on learning management systems found that nearly 30% of survey respondents plan to upgrade their LMS and around 11% plan to abandon their current LMS and move to a different vendor. Some of these changes are due to the complexity of the LMS. As TD’s Kodak case study from 2003 reveals, implementing a new LMS is challenging and you may not need all of the bells and whistles you think you want.

So how do you know what’s right for you? Each year, several reports review all of the different LMS options. Brandon Hall, Bersin & Associates, and the eLearning Guild all do a thorough job, reviewing between 75 and 90 products, focusing on a variety of functions. If you read even one of the reports, you’ll find the options are truly endless.

If you’re looking for a simple LMS, one low-cost solution that BLP is focusing on this year is Moodle. Moodle is a course management system that helps with the creation and distribution of quality on-line content. It’s open source software, which means it’s free and allows for personal customization. Sharon will have more on Moodle later in the month.

I’m looking forward to sharing our experience with Moodle and other learning management systems throughout August; be sure to check back for more about the basics of an LMS. As always, I’d like to hear from you. What questions do you have about learning management systems that I can answer? What advice can you give?