Tag Archives: wordle

Quick links and resources from BP’s Future of Learning

4 Replies

FutureOfLearningAt the end of November, I flew over to Houston for a two-day internal conference organised by Nick Shackleton-Jones called ‘Future of Learning’. I tweeted a lot throughout the event, using the #BPFOL12 hashtag, and I’ll be writing up some of the key sessions and takeaways in subsequent posts.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to try and pull together some of the really useful links and resources from the backchannel: even though we were a relatively small group tweeting, there were a lot of websites, videos, infographics and tools shared.

I should say that this is almost certainly not a complete list. In my backchannel curation naivety, I didn’t realise that you need to get in there very quickly before Twitter erases all evidence of the hashtag stream! I did manage to find the majority of tweets on Topsy, but I’m fairly sure it was an incomplete record. If you tweeted a link or resource which isn’t mentioned below, let me know and I’ll add it in.

Conference summaries and overviews:

Resources shared or mentioned by Nick Shackleton-Jones

Resources related to Nigel Paine‘s session:

Resources and websites mentioned in or related to Greg Williams‘ session:

Resources and websites mentioned in or related to NeuroSky’s session:

Miscellaneous tools, resources and websites:

User-focused design for gold-standard compliance training

3 Replies

I’ve already described how I determined the content of my recent eLearning Network session, which was about designing user-focused compliance e-learning that:

  • Makes them care
  • Shows them it matters
  • Helps them live it

Over the next few days I’ll be posting some tips from each of those areas but, for anyone who can’t wait, I’ve uploaded the slides from my ‘user-focused design for gold-standard compliance training’ session to SlideShare or you can take a look below.

How I used Wordle as a basic TNA tool

14 Replies

Last Friday I spoke at the last eLearning Network event of the year, ‘innovation in compliance training’. I’d been really looking forward to the event for weeks, because (as regular readers will know) I’m a big advocate of breaking the mould of the same old dreary, dull compliance training we’ve all seen before.

I also wanted to make sure my presentation wasn’t just the same old thing either. I wanted to make sure that I delivered something that really addressed what people wanted to get out of the event. So I decided to do a bit of research and use Wordle to help me achieve this.

In preparation for my session, I asked Good To Great readers, the Twitter community and eLN event attendees to sum up their last compliance e-learning experience in three words. After about 10 days, I plugged all the responses into Wordle, and you can see the result here. (For anyone not familiar with Wordle, the biggest words are the ones that appeared most frequently in the responses.)

There are some positive words there: visual, engaging, interesting and action focused are all good things. Unfortunately, the most common words are less positive: boring, tedious, forgettable, tick box exercises are the things we need to get away from.

None of this, though, is particularly new or surprising, which is why my survey was a two-parter. As a general rule in my experience of e-learning people find it easier to talk about what they don’t like than what they do like, so this was just a warm up exercise. I then asked people to describe the compliance e-learning they want to see more of.

The first thing that struck me was that there are fewer words in this case (and I had a similar number of responses to both questions). This is good, because it means we’re all on broadly the same page in terms of what we want compliance e-learning to look like.

When I took a closer look at the responses, I realised that most of the words fall into one of three categories, each of which can be summarised by one of the three headline words that appeared most frequently:

  • The user experience (stimulating, interactive, surprising, fun – or engaging)
  • The relationship of the e-learning to the user’s work (practical, meaningful – or relevant)
  • The user’s ability to apply the learning (transferable, reducing risk – or effective)

(These words also happen to be my top three words for all good e-learning, so perhaps compliance e-learning doesn’t need a different design approach, just a different attitude?)

Anyway, these categories are all about the experience and reality of the user, so rephrasing those three headline words into something more user-focused, I came up with three things that we should all be aiming to do with our compliance e-learning:

  • Make them care
  • Show them it matters
  • Help them live it

Throughout the rest of my session (slides to follow shortly) I took each of these aims in turn and offered some tips and suggestions for achieving them. By letting the e-learning and compliance communities determine the content of the session, and then offering practical tips and examples, I hope that I delivered something that was itself engaging, relevant and effective!

Help me write a Wordle: three words about compliance e-learning

15 Replies

I’m undertaking some very unscientific research for my presentation at next week’s eLearning Network conference about innovation in compliance training.

I’d very much like your contribution!

It’ll only take five minutes (maximum) of your time – I promise. Just follow the three simple steps below.

  • Step 1: Think of the last compliance e-learning course you took.
  • Step 2: Sum it up in three words.
  • Step 3: Let me know your three words (in comments below or @StephanieDedhar on Twitter).

That’s it! Easy.

For extra brownie points, what three words sum up the compliance e-learning you want to see more of?

In return, I’ll pull all the responses received by Friday 19 November together into a Wordle, which I’ll post here after next week’s event.