When Helene Blowers first asked me to put together a tutorial to kick off Learning 2.0, I had no idea that it would be seen by so many people. The feedback I’ve received has been amazing.

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners was actually my first attempt at creating online training. I thought I’d share what I’ve learned as a result.

1. When you put yourself out there on the Web and ask for feedback, you are going to get feedback! I have received hundreds of emails with comments about the tutorial. 99% of the comments have been positive but I have to admit the negative ones do sting a bit. You have to develop a thick skin because not everyone will offer constructive criticism. Take it with a grain of salt, learn from it, and move on!
2. Brevity is key! 14-minutes was a little long for this tutorial. 10-minutes is the maximum for any training segment (this goes for face to face training too). If you are going more than 10-minutes you need to break the tutorial up into smaller chunks. In the book The Ten-Minute Trainer Sharon Bowman explains that, “Television has conditioned us to expect fast-paced, attention-getting methods of informational delivery.” Television programs usually have 10-minutes of programming followed by 5-minutes of commercials. We have become conditioned to expect this type of programming. We do more for our learners if we accept and work with this idea rather than try to fight it.
3. Alternate voices. Ideally alternate between a male and female voice. This keeps the attention of your learners.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so imagine my surprise when I received an email from a teacher who asked if she could recreate the tutorial and gear it towards K-12 educators.Shelley Paul, a teacher from the Atlanta area, has done a marvelous job repurposing this tutorial for her staff’s Learning 2.0 program.

Shelley used a free tool called VoiceThread to create the tutorial. I really like the way VoiceThread lets viewers leave not only written comments but recorded comments as well. I enjoyed listening to all the different voices and reflections that her learners had during the tutorial. I can’t wait to try this tool for my next project! If you have a few minutes check out Shelley’s version below.

Last Monday on my way home from work I pondered the logistics of Oprah’s online class. Since I did not even register until an hour before the class it’s pretty obvious there is no limit on seats. I wondered how they would manage the chaos of a million people in a single chat session. Not to mention the bandwidth they would need to stream to that many people.

According to Oprah nothing like this has ever been done before. I can see why! What a huge undertaking!

For those of you who did not attend the session and are curious about it here’s how it worked. You register for an account on oprah.com and sign in about 30 minutes early to claim your seat. There is a quick download of a plugin after that you get to watch commercials until the show begins. Oprah appears in a live Internet broadcast with Eckhardt Tolle. Oprah interviews Tolle and they have a discussion about the book A New Earth. After about 20 minutes a Skype caller asks a question via video. Oprah and Tolle answer it. Every so often another question comes in from the viewers.

As I mentioned in my last post I had trouble accessing the site live as did many others. So I watched the recording the next day. I have not read the book and was not really interested in the content of the class. I was really there to observe how they did it and what the reactions were from the public. So far I’ve heard mixed reviews. Some people who were really interested in the topic enjoyed the conversation. I’d have to say that the experience for me was much like watching an episode of Oprah on TV. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I was expecting either. It’s hard for me to be at my computer and stay focused if I am not actively engaged in the learning process…via chatting, whiteboarding, some sort of interaction. As you can see from the screeshot below there is a workbook that you can fill out and the option to talk with others via a message board. Each message board has over 1,000 posts though! So it is a lot to try and keep up with.

If you are participating in the class I’d love to hear comments from you on your experience.

It’s Monday night. After a long day–first day back after being out for a week with the flu–I’m here at the computer. I’ve been anxiously awaiting Oprah’s online class.

I looked over the prework, performed my system check, logged in 30-minutes early.

It’s now 30-minutes into the class and I’ve already checked my email, read my RSS feeds, and started a blog post. I’m not engaged. I’m not learning. Oprah has lost me.

40-minutes into the class the audio and video is garbled. There are definitely bandwidth issues.

I check the site’s FAQ and read that if you have these problems exit and try to reenter. I can’t get back in. As a last resort the FAQ says to come back tomorrow and listen to the recording.

Sigh…at least I get to go to bed early now!

Earlier this week Tom and I delivered our first synchronous training to staff at PLCMC. We delivered three Learn to Learn Online* sessions and had about 10 participants in each session. The sessions were great. We only had one major technical problem and luckily that was on our side not the participants side.

Ironically this week Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project Blog delivered her first webinar. She wrote a great post, 9 Lessons I Learned From Running My First Webinar. Inspired by Michele’s post, I’ll share what I learned this week about delivering synchronous training.

1. Plan, develop, practice, then plan some more. Anyone who has delivered or for that matter taken online training will tell you it is more work than a face to face class. A lot more work! Give yourself plenty of time to plan and develop the training. Then try it out. Then revise it.
2. Don’t try to wing it. I can’t tell you how many face to face sessions I’ve had to teach with little or no time to prepare. The very first computer class I ever taught was on Microsoft Project and I’d never used Project before. Though it’s not a good idea, you can pull it off in a face to face class. But in a live, online class forget it! Why? Keep reading.
3. Silence is not golden! Silence will kill you in a synchronous environment. The minute you stop speaking without warning the participants will think they’ve lost their connection and confusion will begin. If you are starting a brainstorming activity, let the participants know by saying, “You have 30 seconds to _____ during that time you will hear silence. I will let you know when there are 5 seconds left.”
4. Script or notes? Know your style. Because you don’t want any silence, you need to have a script at least when you start rehearsing. Tom and I practiced a few times with a script then by the time we had our first class I was down to just a copy of the slides, an outline, and some key phrases I wanted to say. Some people, like Tom, are great with a script but when I use one it is painfully obvious that I am reading. I do better with just a few notes.
5. Have a producer. This is actually one of the most important lessons. Since we are going to be offering at least 60 LTLO sessions, I thought I could do some of them by myself. Tom and I quickly discovered why it is so important to have a producer. You want an active class. You want lots of participation. In order to keep that pace going, you need two people. One person just cannot talk continuously, annotate slides, and monitor and respond to chat. Additionally in our last session, Tom ran into a technical difficulty with his microphone. Had I not been there to back him up, the class may have come to a halt only 10 minutes in.
6. Record the session. I hate the way I sound on recordings! But I was able to pick up a few things after the first session and improve them for the subsequent sessions. For one, all that talking makes you want to talk fast. Don’t! Remember to breathe.
7. Let participants know up front who is monitoring chat. I noticed after watching the recordings that a few people were sending me private chat messages. I was not able to facilitate and monitor chat so some of the chat questions went unanswered or recognized by me.
8. No one knows when you make a mistake, so don’t call attention to it. This is true for face to face and online training. If you click on the wrong slide and it’s not glaringly obvious, just roll with it. The participants don’t know. Your presentation will seem more polished if you let the little mistakes go.
9. Each facilitator/producer needs to have two computers logged in to the live classroom. One computer needs to be logged in as the instructor and one needs to be logged in as a participant. You need to see exactly what your participants see. This is especially helpful if you are using application sharing. Additionally if you have technical problems on the instructor PC you can quickly grab the headphones and move over to the participant PC. This happened to both Tom and I during separate sessions.
10. Have fun! Yes it is a totally different experience to deliver live, online training. I was incredibly nervous before the very first session on Wednesday morning. But once we got going I started to have fun and forgot about how nervous I was. In fact once we really got going it was all about the learning and I didn’t even think about the two computer screens in front of me.

That is the goal with live, online training. It’s about the people and the learning and not the technology. I have to give credit here to Jennifer Hoffman and Kassy LaBorie at InSync Training. If you are still unsure about online training, take a free course from InSync. Once you experience synchronous training done right, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to jump in.

*These sessions were adapted from the Learn How to Learn Online sessions developed and offered by InSync Training.

WebJunction broke a record earlier this week with over 200 people attending the 10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008 webinar. If you missed Ed Rossman’s presentation you can view the archive here.

To recap, here are the 10 things:

1. Use technology
2. Train, train, train
3. Polish your comportment
4. Reduce clutter
5. Handle noise
6. Handle conflict
7. Have a plan
8. Develop partnerships
9. Create great programs
10. Build camaraderie

All of these are great tips! I especially like #2.

Tom and I are presenting a pilot Learn to Learn Online class next Wednesday, January 23 from 10-11:30am EST. The session is one hour with 30 minutes tacked on at the end for feedback. The objective is to introduce staff to the synchronous learning environment. Eventually this will be required for any staff who take online classes. The session will be held online using Horizon Wimba. All you need is a computer with high speed Internet access. You can access the audio portion via VoIP or a landline (although the landline number is long distance).

We have several staff members attending but I’d like to have some input from other trainers or really anyone out in libraryland who feels he or she could contribute some constructive feedback.

Email me at lreed “at” plcmc.org if you are available and interested. Happy learning!

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s WebJunction webinar, 10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008. It starts at 2pm EST.

As you think about your resolutions for the New Year, why not resolve to make your library a great educational asset within your community? This webinar will show you how to leverage social networking tools such as del.icio.us and Librarything to enable knowledge sharing and create collections of information around professional development. Ten key themes are presented to empower library staff as well as to increase a library’s value within the community. Presented by guest speaker Ed Rossman, Interim Branch Manager for the Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library and author of Castles Against Ignorance: How to Make Libraries Great Educational Environments.

See you online!

Today Tom and I delivered two drop-in sessions where staff had a chance to try out our new online learning platform Live Classroom. The sessions went very well. We only had two participants who had technical difficulties and I believe those may have been because they were accessing the network over a wireless connection.

The sessions were voluntary. Staff only needed to register in advance so that we could make sure they had an up-to-date version of Java on their PCs. We had full-time staff, part-time staff, front line circulation staff, managers, supervisors, collection management, administration — a wide range of participants.

My biggest fear, and I’m sure Tom’s too, was that we would have major technical problems. Thanks to all of Tom’s hard work and testing and to our IT department for getting our infrastructure upgraded to support this technology, it all went smoothly.

Most of the staff expressed immediate interest in what classes we’d be offering next and how can they get training as presenters so that they can use this tool for facilitate meetings and/or their own training. It’s going to be a busy year!

Here’s a screenshot of one of our whiteboarding exercises. I love the artwork that was added. Additional screenshots are on Flickr. There are several comments on the whiteboard that this will take some getting used to. I whole heartily agree! I’m confident though that if we create a positive learning experience for staff that they will come to love online learning. When it’s done right, you don’t even think about the technology.

Synchronous learning is finally coming to PLCMC. I’m so excited! What a great start to a new year!

Here’s a snippet of the email I sent out to staff:

An exciting new development in learning has arrived at PLCMC, O2L2 (Open Online Learning Live).

O2L2 was developed by technology scholar Tom Cole. O2L2 is a new, web-based platform that gives us the tools to deliver live, online staff and public programs, training, and more. Share content and exchange ideas with others—all from a computer at your location. Eliminating the need to travel between branches for programs, training, and meetings, O2L2 will save both time and money. This is not meant to replace any existing training or programs. Instead O2L2 will provide us with another avenue for learning and communication.

Staff interested in exploring O2L2 are invited to register for one or both of the following introductory sessions:

• O2L2 Drop in Sessions: Drop in for all or part of the hour to get an informal tour of O2L2 from technology scholar Tom Cole.

• Learn to Learn Online: A structured one-hour class that covers the tools within O2L2, explores the qualities of an effective synchronous learner, and gives participants a chance to experience an online class from start to finish.

We’ll be using WebJunction’s Live Space program to deliver the training.

When you think about e-learning or online training what comes to mind? For me it’s college experiences using Blackboard which can sometimes amount to nothing more than a correspondence course.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the fact that colleges are offering online classes. I am the perfect demographic for these programs…working mom with a two-year-old and another on the way. How else could I do it all!

My first online course was about 10 years ago. I took a telecourse for Cultural Anthropology. This was an effective way to learn the material. Watching videos of different cultures really added to the experience. I took a Public Speaking class that was taught the same way. Again watching good and bad examples of public speaking is a great way to learn.

Since then I’ve taken close to a dozen online classes and while it seems to be taking forever for me to complete my degree, it has been interesting to see the progression of online learning over the years. This semester I am taking my second level Spanish class. I don’t have a great success rate with learning languages. I have dropped this course three times when taking it in a classroom because I am very intimidated in a classroom setting where no English is allowed to be spoken. I was happy to see that a local college was offering this entirely online, but I wondered how a foreign language could be taught online given my past experiences. I have to admit so far I am impressed.

The textbook is online and completely interactive. Click a word and the word is pronounced for you. There are graded activities as well. But how does the instructor know if you are really learning the material? Recordings. Each chapter has assigned exercises that you must record and submit online to the instructor.

What a great idea! Online learning has come a long way since the telecourses I took long, long ago. But the true measure of success will be can I get through this class!