Undergraduate Degree

Monday, 9 February 2009

Index Page

I saw a post by Ken Allan discussing what he calls an Index Page. Part of the inspiration for his index page comes from my First Time Visitor Guide page. As I describe on this page, the challenge that it tries to address is:

It can be daunting to visit a blog for the first time. The author(s) have been writing individual articles for months or years. This is my attempt to help you get a sense of topics of my blog and find some of the more interesting past articles.

Ken's Index Page description seems to try to tackle a similar, but possibly different issue:

my intention is to provide an index to popular posts and those of general interest only.

In fact, Stephen's recent discussion about Serialized Feeds while focusing quite differently, got me thinking again. He points out that the flow of information via an RSS (and thus how a reader experiences is most recent first). However, it was produced and the story is really from oldest to newest. And isn't a blog is best experienced through on-going reading over the course of time? Which leaves us with a question:

How do we create resources on our blogs that will help a
new reader or a
search visitor
understand what's there and orient themselves?

I distinguish the two types. A new reader is going to pick things up from there. A search visitor is going to explore and may come back periodically, but will not subscribe. I definitely do not have the right answer here, so I want to raise some issues and then I definitely would like to get ideas and help.

Index Page as Jump Off Point

Ken has some interests statistics collected around his Index Page. He looks at time on page and numbers of views. My statistics suggest that the Index Page is used as a quick jump off point to other pages. It actually has a fairly low exit percentage, but a below average time on page. Most people spend a significantly longer time on pages with meatier content.

Thus, I see one of the primary goals of the index page or however, we define these resources as being a place where you can understand the various topics of the blog and find the best posts on those topics.

Large Index Pages - Daunting

Ken Allan and I have discussed this before (see the First Time post for some of the discussion). Ken told me that his experience with my page:

It all made more sense to me on second time through, some months on though. At first reading, I found it a daunting post to take in.

I completely agree. That the size of both my page and Ken's page are quite large and overwhelming. This is probably the classic "wanting to tell everyone about all the great stuff."

The thoughts that we came up with was that realistically an Index Page needs a couple of parts:

First Time Visitor information that gives just a few seminal posts that will get someone into the flow.
An Index Page with lots of the topics and the best stuff related to that topic.

Index Page Worth the Effort?

I find myself updating the index page about every six months based on posts like 2008 2009.

However, it is a lot of work to manually keep this page up to date, so unless I've already pulled the information together, it's doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

Ken suggested that it would be better if I periodically post to remind people to visit the page. This certainly increases the value.

At the same time, Index Page needs to be easy to keep current.

Design of an Index Page?

I'm not quite sure I get what a good Index Page design would have on it.

I'm hoping folks will help me with design ideas. How would you structure your page? Or better yet, create your index page?

Automated Index Page?

And here's the rub. The technology that is currently running eLearning Learning has some capability to produce something pretty close to an Index Page. It can show me the "best" (based on social signals) of my blog:

Best All Time Posts on eLearning Technology

It has best based on particular keywords:

Best eLearning 2.0 Posts from eLearning Technology

Which then quickly springboards into

Best on Adoption and eLearning 2.0 from eLearning Technology

Or it can show recent and best for a topic:

Recent and Best for eLearning 2.0

I regularly find myself using it to find my own content because the search is better than Blogger's search. For example, as I was creating this post, I looked at eLearning Technology Blogging.

Right now, there is no view for a blog that is like an Index Page, but maybe we can create it. So, let's start with what an Index Page should look like, and then I will try to figure out if I can help create something similar automatically.

In fact, I wonder if this raises a bigger, more interesting questions:

Should the design of a blog be for regular readers or for first time and casual readers?
Should there be multiple views of a blog?
What should those views be?

Wow, this could be a very interesting conversation with potentially big impact. I hope you will join in and help.

Thursday, 5 February 2009

What Goes in the LMS?

Recently I posted on Learning Materials asking the question -

What Goes in the LMS?

The responses via comments were truly fantastic. In fact, they were too fantastic to have them "buried" as comments. And I wanted to add some of my thoughts, so I'm post again on this topic.

Oh, and, as always, the answer is "it depends" - but let's try to come up with a few suggestions...

Should go in the LMS -

Only finished content.
Anything with per-learner, strict tracking requirements.
Certification/Accreditation management: companies still need to know who went through which course and when, and what was his/her score at the end of it.
Learning paths: some competencies require that content is presented in a specific order, an order that could be hardly reproduced in informal learning by learners without direct guidance.
Content that's associated with the course content.

Should not go in the LMS -

Content that doesn't need strict tracking.
Content that needs fast access

Other thoughts -

Put things in both places
Build a rich web of connections to make sure they connect together

Wednesday, 4 February 2009

More on ASTD Keynote

I know that Jon didn't create his post - ASTD TechKnowledge Comments in order to get me to post and link to him. But it certainly made my day when he said -

It was Tony Karrer (number one eLearning Blogger) who was awarded my five stars for his engaging Thursday morning opening speech that put David Pogue’s message in a context that made sense for attendees.

Considering that David Pogue is always highly entertaining and engaging - and plays the piano and sings at his presentations - I was somewhat worried having to be the next day's keynote following such a dynamic presenter. But in many ways, Jon is exactly right that David set the stage discussing Twitter and other aspects of social media. I was able to come in and discuss what that means for Concept Workers and for learning professionals.

If you want get a sense of what I discussed in the keynote - go to ASTD Follow-Up.

Thanks for the nice words Jon.

Hot List - Second Half of January

As I was at ASTD last week, I missed doing my Hot List for the week. You can find out more about this in Hot List and Hot Last Week. So, I've compiled the list for roughly the second half of January.

Hot List - 1/17/2009 - 1/31/2009

Posts

Items

HP Learning Center - free online software, business, marketing and IT classes for small and medium business

Keywords

Notes on the list.

The posts come from the primary sources for this group. Other items come from other sources.
Keywords are based on occurrences this week in addition to other social signals.

Corporate Social Media Policies

There's a very interesting set of questions in the post Happy New Year! AND do you have opinions about social media governance? This is by an IBM employee, Jen Okimoto, who works in the domain of Web 2.0 and is asking about a very important issue ...

Access to and Governance of Social Media Tools in Corporate America.

This is a big issue. I've posted before a list of Corporate Policies on Web 2.0 and you can see some of the patterns that have emerged, but these don't necessarily help answer the questions being raise. I have some numbers in Web 2.0 Corporate Access that shows that a significant number of corporate policies are to shut down access to the tools.

Her questions are right on the mark. These are problems that I heard during my sessions last week as I mentioned in ASTD Follow-Up. Here are the questions she posted (with significant additional commentary).

1. How detailed should social media guidelines be?
2. When introducing social media into the workplace, how do we address HR concerns about reduced employee productivity?
3. How do you guide employees or manage employees in navigating the gray with respect to posting content that is or is not appropriate in the work environment?
4. What about content that falls squarely in the HR domain? What if employees use social media to publicize HR issues, or to gain "supporters" to their cause?
5. Do we have IBM or client examples of stats, use cases or any other stories that address these concerns?

This is an important discussion to be conducted. I hope you will visit her blog for details and post your thoughts.

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Social Job Seeker Resource

Yesterday, I was lamenting on the lack of resources available to people seeking jobs who don't know how to use social media. I had blogged about one technique in the past - Networking to a Job. But we realistically need a whole lot on this topic.

I just saw that Michele Martin has set up the Career Commons. Knowing Michele, this will be a fantastic discussion and resource. I don't have time right now to get directly involved, so I hope that people who participate will create resources that help provide practical advice for job seekers.

She has her first informal webinar for February 9, 2009 at 12 noon (EST). But she's limiting participation. I'd suggest you move quickly if you want to participate.

ASTD Follow-Up

Last week at ASTD TechKnowledge, I did a keynote on Work Literacy and eLearning 2.0, an online Q&A Session for the Virtual Conference and a session on using Web 2.0 Tools for eLearning. You can find the handouts for the last session via TK09 Handouts.

I thought I'd capture some links and thoughts around these sessions.

Learning from Our Kids

In my keynote, I mentioned a Fourth Grade Wikipedia Update. Part of the beauty of this example is that I believe that through watching what's different with my kids, I can learn a lot about what's different. But I also see things that I feel need to be addressed. For example, we still teach Cursive Writing instead of Touch Typing to kids.

Improve your Work Literacy

I would highly encourage going through the recent series of posts all about Tools and Methods for Work and Learning:

Keynote Links

I mentioned in Twitter Conference Ideas that I was sending messages and links during the keynote. Here is a larger set of links that go with the keynote. In fact, it almost tells the story of the keynote.

Take Action to Get Results

If you felt that you should be doing something after hearing this, I would highly recommend taking the following immediate steps:

I'll be doing posts periodically as follow-up to this session, so I'd highly recommend taking this as an opportunity to subscribe to my blog via email or an RSS Reader.
Review the post - Information Radar - and use the information there to set up your radar and start a new blog.
After you've started your blog then make sure readers can find you.

Fantastic Questions Raised

In the Virtual Q&A Session, there were a lot of really great questions being raised. I will try to use these as inspiration for upcoming posts. If you find these compelling and you post about them, please let me know so I can point folks there.

How do you recommend we stay up-to-date with the changing technology?
What resources would u recommend for a baby boomer 2 become proficient in blogging, social networking, wikis, etc?
Or more correctly...how do you find them? There are so many to keep up with.from
What are the top 5 things as a learning professional we need to learn immediately.
I’ve seen X and am not seeing much participation.
New Hire Blog - I love the idea of a new hire blog. Do you set it up so that only internal employees can view it?
Are there any companies have done a good job in implementing the tools you described?
Can you discuss the cultural implications of these changes? Can a highly regulated and slow to change Insurance Industry adapt these new methods of learning?
Could you please discuss methods for encouraging users to use collaborative methods? I spend a lot of time developing SharePoint options for a department, but colleagues are more likely to spend their 2.0 time on personal FaceBook pages and then still email documents back and forth...
Is there a simple way to convert info from a blog into an existing training program, such as a new employee orientation (so you can edit and update the orientation program as you discover things that need to be covered from your new employee's blogs)?
How does this apply to non-knowledge workers? For example, ditch diggers?from
Maybe the ditch digger is really a closet Social Networking expert.
We will shortly move to Outlook 2007, with the RSS capability. I thought of introducing this tool to management by creating a blog on leadership topics with an RSS (as a useful illustration of its ability). I have no idea how to create an RSS. Any tips/resources?
Can you share an emerging technology that you are excited about? Or do we have enough tools for now? Can you articulate what Web 3.0 or Learning 3.0 or Social Networking 3.0. would look like?
I develop training for a call center. These workers are required to answer calls. However, this type of collaboration can help them learn and personally grow. Supervisors, Baby Boomers and Traditionals, do not believe or understand social networking. How do you get them, including thier supervisors, to use these collaboaration tools.
even our millennials, who use these tools all day long--don't view them as work tools yet. Steep learning curve?