The rapid eLearning blog

A very nice blog written by Tom Kuhlmann about techniques to use in eLearning.  Very professional. Usually simple ideas but very effective, generally supported by multimedia presentations; a great resource for professional development.

You can subscribe to “Rapid e-learning” and you will receive emails every time a new post is published.

Literature Road Map model

The Department of Information Studies from the University of Sheffield has developed a very interesting way of presenting literature reviews, the Literature Roap Map.  Here’s one on Learning Technologies in the Workplace.

It presents the literarure review in a tree structure, with links to the publications organised under headings. It is a very innovative way to organise existing publications on a given topic and share this with other researchers. There is no explanation as to how the map tool has been developed, is it a simple database with some Flash animations?

L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning

T&J, a magazine in workplace training and L&D (learning & development), is conducting a research project that will look at “what may lie ahead for L&D professionals in the future”. Here’s an excerpt of the description of the project:

Imagine the world of work in 2020. Flexible working has grown enormously and is now common especially among white collar and professional men – and in manufacturing and construction one in five men work full-time hours over four days rather than five. Moofers (Mobile Out of Office Workers) are those growing numbers of people who don’t have a specific place of work; they work in a location best suited to the task in hand – often in restaurants and clubs with designated rooms and office services so moofers can make their deals and recharge themselves and their equipment at any time of day, or night.

These are just some of the possible scenarios proposed in the first stage of an ambitious research project being conducted by TJ and the Institute of Employment Studies; entitled Learning and Development 2020: shaping change in learning the aim is to look at what may lie ahead for L&D professionals in the future.

The researchers have looked at four key questions:

• How will changing demographics and workforce mobility affect the nature of learning required?
• How will the changing nature of business and work affect the type of employee development required?
• How will developments in neuroscience, psychology and adult education influence how people learn?
• How will new technologies, communications and social networks support people’s development?

The first stage of the project is completed and the findings are available at <http://www.trainingjournal.com/assets/documents/TJ-Survey-Report-2008-v3.pdf>

Using social media to improve learning and performance in the workplace

What are social media tools and why are they important?

Jane Hart, Social & Media Consultant for the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies explains in her presentation.

Using Social Media2

View SlideShare presentation (tags: social media learning performance)

Learning Design – an introduction

Image via Wikipedia

James Dalziel was an Featured Speaker at the recent Sakai conference in Paris, and gave a general presentation about Learning Design and its potential for the future of e-learning.

The video of this presentation is now available at rtsp://video.cpm.jussieu.fr/Archive/visio/sakai/ad080701_2.rmvb (requires Real Player). This is a useful general introduction to Learning Design with some examples from LAMS.

The slides, which are a little blurry in the video, can be downloaded at
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/educationalcommunity/lamsresearchdevelopment/forums/attach/go-to-attachment?object_id=635570_id=635572

Good article on LAMS

Dr Christopher Alexander, Language Laboratory Coordinator and Assistant Professor at The University of Nicosia in Cyprus, has just posted a link to a good introductory article about LAMS which includes many embedded links to additional resources.

While the article is a useful introduction for all areas, it has a special focus on the potential of LAMS for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages).