What did I learn about E-learning development when I worked at Netflix six months ago? Before I share some thoughts, let’s look at the numbers.  Just this year, Netflix sales have topped 910 million dollars with 414 full-time employees at the helm. Seem improbable? Welcome to the 21st century and the consumer side of information management as a service—as these numbers suggest, it can be extremely profitable. Sure, Netflix also pays workers who ship DVDs and answer customer service lines, but the main focus of the 414 full-time employees is ultimately to tame the customer-facing website that enables the latest movie titles to land in your mailbox or play on your computer.  

Is it possible to design viable E-learning courses at a company like Netflix where business moves at the speed of light? The quick answer is “yes,” and “no.”  Having an amazingly short development timeline constantly forced me to isolate the most important steps of the deliverable creation process and collapse as much of my process around these key areas.  Content review, prototype evaluation, user testing? Check, check, and check.  High-end aesthetic treatment, dynamic navigational scheme, lots of formative evaluation? Not so much. A lightning fast development model is usually the only option on the table for an environment that is adverse to process and time expenditure since its web-based “storefront” reorients itself as quickly as a desert landscape in a windstorm.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this business model: Who doesn’t love the service that Netflix brought to the market?

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 91% [?]

Here’s a PowerPoint presentation I posted to Slideshare about how the generations in the U.S. move through time, from 2000 – 2030, based on Census Bureau population data and projections:

Popularity: 85% [?]

Many people think of Twitter as ego-centric micro-blogging: “Hey, world, I’m at McDonalds eating a Big Mac for lunch.”

Yeah? So what?!!

Twitter is called micro-blogging because it limits the user to just 140 characters, and as the above example illustrates, most tweeters use these precious characters to provide the world with a slice of their life.

The reason Twitter keeps tweets to 140 characters or less is that it uses the cell phone text message standard, providing anyone the ability to tweet from their cell phone. If you are really interested, here is the Twitter article at How Stuff Works.

Twitter can be used as an effective communication tool. Many people tweet with interesting factoids or websites they stumble upon. Others use Twitter for customer service questions or to listen in on what others are saying about their company or organization. Take a look at Lifehacker’s blog post on Six Ways to Use Twitter.

An Oregon company, GoSeeTell Network, is enabling visitor bureaus to use Twitter to answer tourism questions from the general public, letting brand enthusiasts (i.e., local citizens who follow the visitor bureau) tweet to answer the questions.

Someone might post a question like, “I’ll be in your city this weekend, where is a cheap place to go for a few hours?”

A potential response might be, “Take the light rail to Forest Park and walk through the award-winning rose garden or take metro bus #12 out into the valley and taste some amazing wines.”

University admissions departments could use Twitter to let current students answer potential student questions about the school. The Extension Service could enable Master Gardener volunteers to answer gardening questions via Twitter (and reach a younger audience at the same time).

Many universities around the U.S. are using Twitter to keep people informed about campus-based news. For example, Oregon State University is leveraging social media with a Powered By Orange campaign (essentially a what’s happening at OSU campaign) that encompasses a website, Facebook group, Linkedin network and a Twitter account. The campaign is intended to educate current and potential students, their parents, alumni and faculty about the cool things happening at OSU (including news items that don’t make the traditional news media).

And Online Degree World has created a list of the Top 100 University Tweeters where you can find out what other institutions are doing with Twitter.

Written by Mark Crossler and Dave King

Popularity: 75% [?]

I recently had a family vacation turn into a nightmare. But that nightmare was mitigated in part due to the power of social networking.

There is a lot of discussion about the value of Web 2.0 tools in educational settings. But I want to share this decidedly personal experience about how a social networking tool—a blog— helped my family make it a through a time of extreme emergency and stress, both physically, and emotionally.

While staying with friends in Bonaire (in the Lesser Antilles, part of the A-B-C islands, 50 miles north off the coast of Venezuela) my wife suffered a life-threatening infection to her lower intestine. While Bonaire has a relatively effective local hospital, it quickly became obvious that my wife would need more sophisticated health facilities if she were to survive.

Skype was literally a lifesaver in the resulting frenzy of phone calls to contact our stateside insurance carrier and coordinate international communications between the hospital in Bonaire and distant health providers. Within eighteen hours, I was able to arrange an air ambulance to retrieve us from the tiny island and fly us to the nearest qualified medical facility in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

But now I found myself three thousand miles from home in an unfamiliar place with no friends, no family, no connection to the community, and my unconscious wife going into surgery. That’s when I found a whole new dimension to social networking.

A friend called to offer support, and told me about CaringBridge, a nonprofit, free online service developed to keep friends and family connected during critical illness, treatment and recovery. CaringBridge offered what amounted to a well-designed blog where I could publish our story to friends and family, keep them informed of progress with journal entries, and post pictures taken with my cell phone. As much as I liked phone calls from concerned friends and family, it would quickly become exhausting to repeat our drama to each caller. The blog solved this problem elegantly.

And most importantly, the blog provided a means for others to post messages in a guestbook, that I (and later my wife) and site visitors could read. It was here that I recovered my connection to friends and family that sustained and guided me through some very difficult emotional terrain. The power of a social network lies here, in developing community.

I have been very involved with Web 2.0 technologies, both at work and in my private life; but this particular incident will stand out in my memory as the most powerful on-line experience I have ever had.

Popularity: 83% [?]

Using small, modular components as the building blocks of educational programs is nothing new to curriculum developers. But many relatively new technologies such as widgets and micro-blogs now provide greater options for delivering educational content in tiny sizes to massive audiences. In nearly every media, “the short version” seems to have growing cachet as users experience growing demands on their time and attention.

The 60-second “microlecture” has recently gotten some attention as a possible viable new format to replace to the traditional college course lecture.

Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station has responded to the needs of the short attention span culture with “Microdocs”: 2-3 minute video documentaries. These videos demonstrate that the minute is the new hour. But do they go far enough? Is the second is the new minute?

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 90% [?]