Association eLearning

Jazzing Up PowerPoint

I am at the ASAE/The Center's Great Ideas conference madly updating a few things before my presentation later this morning.  I wanted to post the link to the wiki for this presentation:

http://associationlearning.jot.com/GreatIdeas

This page has the resources from this presentation plus a few cool tools that assist in delivering a PowerPoint (check out Ovation by a company called Serious Magic).

We are also blogging live from the conference.  Be sure to check out the blog at: http://blogs.centeronline.org/greatideas/.

Conference Blogging - Great Ideas San Diego

In just a few weeks, ASAE/The Center for Association Leadership will be hosting their Great Ideas conference in San Diego.  A group of approximately 8 individuals, all from various fields in the association industry, are blogging the conference.  We actually did this for the GI conference last year, and for the GI conference in Orlando in December 2005. 

Visit the blog at http://blogs.centeronline.org/greatideas/

The experience is rather interesting in that the group of bloggers, all volunteers, write on a range of topics including their thoughts on presented topics, keynotes, major issues in the industry, etc.  Some of us took photos at the conference in order to show readers exactly what we were talking about.  (I think photos add a great deal of context to blogs, so don't hesitate to do that!).

Onboarding - Time to competency for new hires

Onboarding is a relatively new (and highly illusive) term used primarily by companies in reference to the process of orientation and training of new employees.  The concept is that by introducing a new hire to information early in the employment process (sometimes even before they show up on their first day of work) you can get a new hire up to speed quicker - thus making them profitable at an earlier point.

The concept of onboarding also formalizes what tends to a be a rather informal training process for many employees.  If your association doesn't have the term on your radar screen, you may want to think more about it.  The concept can impact just about every segment or industry and can have bottom line results.

I just got back from ASTD's TechKnowledge conference where Onboarding was a topic of interest.  Randstad (the staffing company) is doing some great things with Onboarding.  They shared their case study at the conference.  Randstad did an impact study of their new program and estimated that in the first six months of 2005, the new Onboarding program helped to generate an additional $4 million+ in sales revenue (a 338% return rate). 

The program includes online courses, coaching sessions with the new hire's supervisor, tests, and other trackable activities all delivered through a Learning Management System (LMS).  The Onboarding process is not a training department function, but a managerial function supported by the training department. 

I am impressed by the the 16 week Onboarding program at Randstad and am spending time researching other Onboarding processes to see if we can identify some best practices.  The concept is a new one with significant bottom-line impact for organizations.  In the association world it is important to keep in mind that these types of training issues impact your association - regardless of whether you are a trade or professional organization.

I guarantee you'll hear more about Onboarding in the future!

Content is Critical to a Good eLearning Strategy

Last night I was at an association industry event and was asked about the types of projects that we are currently working on.  Reflecting on that conversation today, I wanted to post my thoughts on the importance of creating some sort of game plan (or strategy) for education technology for in association.   This posting is also a precursor to a virtual seminar that I am doing for ASAE/The Center on March 15th on the topic of eLearning strategy.

Creating a short-term game plan based on insightful information is a very good idea.  Many organizations used to get wow'd by the technology "cool factor" and simply selected technology for the sake of claiming that they are now offering "eLearning".  A trend, that I can only hope, is slowing down.  The hype of eLearning is diminishing which is a good thing.  And those who know me also know that my overall philosophy about eLearning is simply this...

                                       eLearning is nothing without good content.