Career Mantra’s Official Blog

Today, learn­ers are pro­lif­er­at­ing, but the instruc­tor pop­u­la­tion is strug­gling to match learner growth rates. Learn­ers are in every city, town and vil­lage. And, all yearn for qual­ity edu­ca­tion. But the qual­ity edu­ca­tion givers are few and far between. So how do edu­ca­tion plan­ners and imple­menters rec­on­cile with this mis­match?
Dis­tance learn­ing was thought to be the answer. Indeed, it still is. But there is a dif­fer­ence today in the deliv­er­ance because of tech­nol­ogy and Inter­net. The qual­ity gap between face-to-face learn­ing has been bridged as has the dis­tance gap been vir­tu­ally bridged.

Learner Cen­tric Edu­ca­tion

The way we learn has evolved. Users have truly become the cen­ter of the learn­ing process. Often times the learn­ers iden­tify the appro­pri­ate mate­r­ial and way they want to learn. The time avail­able for learn­ing courses has been tele­scoped for want of time. The good news is that the time period for online learn­ing is shorter and learn­ers apply the learn­ing directly to their work sit­u­a­tion to remain com­pet­i­tive. The oppor­tu­ni­ties for learn­ing are expand­ing. Tech­nol­ogy pro­vides access to new ways to learn both for­mally and infor­mally. The younger gen­er­a­tion grew up with tech­nol­ogy — and demands online access to infor­ma­tion, research, processes, and new skills. Step in e-learning.

What is dif­fer­ent about e-learning?

e-learning helps learn­ers to reach pred­i­cated lev­els of com­pe­tency faster. e-learning allows learn­ers to assim­i­late con­tent at their own speed. If they under­stand mate­r­ial, they can skim; if it’s new mate­r­ial, they can spend time on the unfa­mil­iar con­tent. Con­trast it with the class­room; instruc­tion moves at the will of the instruc­tor, who gears the class pace to meet needs of the major­ity of learn­ers, not the needs of indi­vid­ual learn­ers.
Learn­ers can engage in learn­ing any­time, any­where, and from any loca­tion. Learn­ers con­trol when and where they want to do their learn­ing. Some choose to learn from home while oth­ers take a “learn­ing break” that breaks the monot­ony of the work­day. Some even access learn­ing from their mobile devices as they travel. This free­dom to learn based on per­sonal pref­er­ence makes for hap­pier, more engaged learn­ers who find it eas­ier to stay up-to-date on their knowl­edge and skills.
Con­sis­tency of eLearn­ing deliv­ers uni­form con­tent to all learn­ers. No mat­ter where the learn­ers are located, they receive the same con­tent, elim­i­nat­ing con­tent vari­ance that is often present with instructor-led learn­ing.
Travel sav­ings are sig­nif­i­cant. e-learning elim­i­nates a sig­nif­i­cant amount of air, train and auto travel.

But what of the qual­ity of e-learning, vis-à-vis face-to-face learn­ing?

Class­room And Online Self-Study Prove Equally Effec­tive.Out­side of sub­ject areas where face-to-face inter­ac­tion is inescapable — for exam­ple, say a med­ical stu­dent is doing the rounds of the ward with her instruc­tor — recent research indi­cates that no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences exist in the effec­tive­ness of learn­ing through class­room, online, or self-study. This is because of the fol­low­ing:
Metic­u­lously crafted graph­ics and visu­als help explain new con­cepts. Visu­als, graph­ics, sim­ple sim­u­la­tions, and even short videos con­tribute to a more visual approach to under­stand­ing con­cepts. This, com­bined with instructor’s audio help, ensure good learn­ing. In fact, some ani­mated sequences in eLearn­ing would be dif­fi­cult to dupli­cate in the class­room.
Responses through blogs, wikis, and dis­cus­sion boards help learn­ers see other points of view. The dan­ger of iso­la­tion of online learn­ers is mit­i­gated by a plethora of inter­ac­tive tools used to rein­force the learn­ing.
Con­tent is avail­able to review mul­ti­ple times. The oppor­tu­nity to access spe­cific sec­tions of the learn­ing con­tent as many times as nec­es­sary to grasp key con­cepts pro­vides for a bet­ter over­all under­stand­ing of the topic. Also, choos­ing the best time to learn puts the learner in a bet­ter frame of mind to learn.

The end note there­fore is that while e-learning maps eas­ily with fast for­ward learn­ing, the learner has the power to press the pause but­ton at her will. Clearly, e-learning has arrived.

Recall that in my pre­vi­ous arti­­cle ‚I pointed out that there are hun­­dreds of e-Learning author­ing tools in the mar­ket today. Selec­t­ing the proper tool for devel­op­ing con­­tent is not a triv­ial task.

In this arti­­cle let us look at some dom­i­­nant fac­­tors that should influ­ence your deci­­sion while choos­ing the best con­­tent author­ing tool that is right for your Learn­ing Man­age­­ment Sys­tems.

Here is a list of ques­­tions you should ask dur­ing the eval­u­a­­tion process of con­­tent author­ing tool. This will save you time and money.

• What type of train­ing are you pro­vid­ing?
• Is it a blended learn­ing (partly online and partly class­­room) expe­ri­ence?
• Will you pro­­vide train­ing on CD/DVD or other media?
• Do you aim to get your learn­ers cer­ti­­fied on a prod­uct, ser­vice, or pro­ce­­dure?
• Is a cer­­tain soft­­ware appli­­ca­­tion being taught?
• Do you have the resources to sup­­port the type of online train­ing you wish to develop and con­duct?
• Do you have graphic design­ers?
• Do you have appro­pri­ate sub­­­ject mat­ter experts?
• Does the train­ing needs to be refreshed per­i­od­i­­cally? Say, any­where from 6 months to a year or beyond?
• Do you have resources for ren­di­­tion of voice over?
• Do you have video pro­­duc­ers?
• Do you have mod­­els to ani­­mate the con­­tent that you want to develop?
• Do you have pro­­duc­­tion Design­ers?
• What hap­pens after the train­ing has been devel­oped?
• Will any tests be asso­­ci­ated with the train­ing changes?
• Will you have the right resources and sup­­port in place for any ongo­ing e-leaning con­­tent devel­op­­ment needs?
• Does the author­ing tool sup­­port all mul­ti­me­­dia file for­­mats which are required by your e-Learning course con­­tent?
• What level of inter­ac­­tiv­ity is required for the train­ing?
• Sim­u­la­­tions and other dynamic learn­ing activ­i­ties are great to have, but are they really appro­pri­ate or needed for the type of Com­­puter Based Train­ing that you are devel­op­ing?

Flash has become the stan­­dard tool used for many inter­ac­­tive e-learning activ­i­ties. Do a rain check to see whether your tools are com­­pat­i­ble with Flash.

• How much is bud­geted for the project?
• What things are spe­­cific to the type of train­ing and may be com­pro­mised if out­­­sourced?
• How steep is the learn­ing curve asso­­ci­ated with the tools you are think­ing of using for the project?
• What plat­­forms will the train­ing be deliv­­ered on?
• Does the online train­ing have to work across a com­bi­­na­­tion of plat­­forms such as Win­­dows, MAC, Linux or oth­­ers?
• Does e-learning con­­tent have to work across a var­i­ety of browsers?

Total sys­tem cost

It is always best to eval­u­ate any soft­­ware by look­ing at the total cost of own­er­­ship (TCO). TCO is a finan­­cial esti­­mate. Its pur­­pose is to help con­­sumers and enter­prise man­agers deter­mine direct and indi­rect costs of a prod­uct or sys­tem.

The TCO would include the cost of the appli­­ca­­tion, train­ing, upgrades, main­te­­nance, and any other costs asso­­ci­ated with the own­er­­ship of the prod­uct over its life­­time.

Some Sit­u­a­­tional Para­me­ters: Be mind­­ful that not all tools are appro­pri­ate for a given train­ing deliv­­ery method. It is impor­­tant to con­sider the con­­text in which con­­tent author­ing tools will be used. As you gather infor­­ma­­tion, keep in mind that as long as your com­­puter based train­ing (CBT) is founded on good instruc­­tional design prin­­ci­­ples, the inter­ac­­tiv­ity pro­­duced by the author­ing tool you choose will strengthen the learner’s expe­ri­ence. So con­sider train­ing objec­­tives while choos­ing the author­ing tool.

In next part of the series we will take a closer look at some of the pop­u­lar e-Learning Con­­tent Author­ing Tools.

There is now com­pelling evi­dence that online learn­ing has pipped face-to-face learn­ing at the post. The nose is just ahead though. But this is sig­nif­i­cant since till now it was felt that the race between online learn­ing and face-to-face learn­ing was a dead heat at best.
A study con­ducted by U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Office of Plan­ning, Eval­u­a­tion, and Pol­icy Devel­op­ment Pol­icy and Pro­gram Stud­ies Ser­vice has con­cluded that online learn­ing has surged ahead of face-to-face learn­ing. The report is now in the pub­lic domain.

The moti­va­tion of this study was: Online learn­ing — for stu­dents and for teach­ers — is one of the fastest grow­ing trends in edu­ca­tional uses of tech­nol­ogy. The National Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics (2008) esti­mated that the num­ber of K-12 pub­lic school stu­dents enrolling in a technology-based dis­tance edu­ca­tion course grew by 65 per­cent in the two years from 2002 – 03 to 2004 – 05. On the basis of a more recent dis­trict sur­vey, Pic­ciano and Sea­man (2009) esti­mated that more than a mil­lion K – 12 stu­dents took online courses in school year 2007 – 08. (Page 12)

The gen­e­sis of online learn­ing is dis­tance learn­ing. Dis­tance learn­ing has been around for over a cen­tury now. But the advan­tage of the World Wide Web has caused the online learn­ing to explode.

The study focuses on the two main pur­poses of online learn­ing:

(a) Learn­ing con­ducted totally online as a sub­sti­tute or alter­na­tive to face-to-face learn­ing
(b) Online learn­ing com­po­nents that are com­bined or blended (some­times called “hybrid”)
with face-to-face instruc­tion to pro­vide learn­ing enhance­ment

Find­ings:
The over­all find­ing of the meta-analysis is that classes with online learn­ing (whether taught com­pletely online or blended) on aver­age pro­duce stronger stu­dent learn­ing out­comes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruc­tion. (Page 38)

This is a sig­nif­i­cant tilt towards online learn­ing. Ear­lier stud­ies had con­cluded that online learn­ing is only as effec­tive as face-to-face learn­ing. The sec­ond area of study also gave thumbs up to online learn­ing. It said:

Blends of online and face-to-face instruc­tion, on aver­age, had stronger learn­ing out­comes than did face-to-face instruc­tion alone (Page 39)

Clearly, it makes sense for com­pa­nies to move over to online learn­ing and elearn­ing, where pos­si­ble. Not only will it cut costs but will also be a sub­stan­tially bet­ter expe­ri­ence both for learn­ers and teach­ers.

Over the last months we’ve been pay­ing closer atten­tion to e-Learing con­tent cre­ation tech­niques and con­tent author­ing tools and have tried to under­stand how each of these tools work and how they can ben­e­fit other learn­ing con­tent cre­ators. Such techniques/tools are often hard to find much less the method­ol­ogy to use them. It would worth explor­ing all these tools in detail. Career Mantra team will cover these in a series of posts.

In these series of arti­cles will help you to under­stand  the top e-learning author­ing tools that can be use­ful for your upcom­ing courses. There are many soft wares that can help you to weave learn­ing con­tent  faster and effec­tively.

First, let us look at the glos­sary of some e-learning terms; their def­i­n­i­tions and descrip­tions.

Learn­ing Man­age­ment System(LMS)

Learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem is an appli­ca­tion used to plan, imple­ment and assess learn­ing processes related to online and offline train­ing, admin­is­tra­tion and per­for­mance man­age­ment.

LMS pro­vides a teacher, trainer or instruc­tor a means by which s/he can cre­ate con­tent, deliver con­tent, mon­i­tor learn­ers’ par­tic­i­pa­tion, and assess stu­dent per­for­mance. LMS also pro­vide learn­ers with inter­ac­tive fea­tures, such as inter­nal mes­sag­ing, video con­fer­enc­ing , event/calendar man­age­ment , dis­cus­sion forums, and other meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

In gen­eral LMS has its own online con­tent author­ing tool as part of the over­all sys­tem. There are many con­tent author­ing tools in the market.Although they call them­selves Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem they are  really just front end author­ing tools with lit­tle or almost no LMS func­tion­al­i­ties.  So the bot­tom line here is that a good Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem should be able to deliver the con­tent cre­ated using any con­tent  author­ing tool.

Con­tent Author­ing Tool

A con­tent author­ing tool is a soft­ware appli­ca­tion used to cre­ate a rich learn­ing con­tent typ­i­cally for deliv­ery on the World Wide Web. Con­tent author­ing tools may also cre­ate con­tent in other file for­mats so that con­tent can be deliv­ered on a CD or in other for­mats for var­i­ous uses.The pack­age of con­tent author­ing tools include HTML, Flash, and other types of e-Learning author­ing libraries.

Course Author­ing Tool

A course author­ing tool is sim­i­lar to con­tent author­ing tool. The only dif­fer­ence in course author­ing tool is that it can cre­ate a com­plete  course pack­age while con­tent author­ing tools cre­ate sub­ject spe­cific online con­tent. Sub­ject spe­cific online con­tent  has less fea­tures and func­tion­al­ity than  online course. Of course this also depends on the soft­ware used to cre­ate the con­tent.

SCORM/AICC com­pli­ant

SCORM is an acronym for Sharable Course­ware Object Ref­er­ence Model , which is a set of spec­i­fi­ca­tions , when applied to course con­tent, pro­duces small, reusable eLearn­ing objects. A result of the US Depart­ment of Defense’s Advanced Dis­trib­uted Learn­ing (ADL) ini­tia­tive, SCORM-compliant course­ware ele­ments are eas­ily merged with other com­pli­ant ele­ments to pro­duce a highly mod­u­lar set of train­ing courses.

AICC stands for the Avi­a­tion Indus­try CBT [Computer-Based Train­ing] Com­mit­tee, which is an inter­na­tional asso­ci­a­tion of technology-based train­ing pro­fes­sion­als that develop train­ing guide­lines for the e-Learning indus­try. They are very few e-Learning content-authoring tools that are fully SCORM/AICC com­pli­ant.  The point to be noted is , as long as the content-authoring tool is SCORM/AICC com­pli­ant (cre­ates SCORM/AICC com­pli­ant courses) and the Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem is SCORM/AICC com­pli­ant (works with SCORM/AICC courses), they always  work together seam­lessly.

In next part of the series we will take a closer look at the fac­tors to be con­sid­ered while choos­ing the con­tent author­ing tools.

In the June09 issue of Har­vard Busi­ness Review, Mr Robert I. Sut­ton writes about How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Econ­omy. His reme­dies for the Boss were pre­dictabil­ity, under­stand­ing, con­trol and com­pas­sion. He gives exam­ples to fur­ther his argu­ment about his reme­dies. While his expla­na­tion fol­lowed his rem­edy — it was pre­dictable – his exam­ple on com­pas­sion had me bris­tled.

First, a lit­tle digres­sion on com­pas­sion. These days we are bandy­ing around com­pas­sion as a skill. As if it were some­thing that one learns at the blacksmith’s or at the carpenter’s. It is our very innate nature, for God’s sake. It has noth­ing to do with man­agers or employ­ees or with roy­alty; it is mine because of being a human being. It is our sev­enth sense. Don’t ever call it a soft skill. Com­pas­sion is not a good thing to have. It is the right thing to have.

Now, for that exam­ple on com­pas­sion. Let me quote Mr Sut­ton:

Quote

Jer­ald Green­berg, a man­age­ment pro­fes­sor at The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, pro­vides com­pelling evi­dence that com­pas­sion affects the bot­tom line in tough times. Green­berg stud­ied three nearly iden­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in the Mid­west that were all part of the same com­pany; two of them (which man­age­ment chose at ran­dom) insti­tuted a tem­po­rary 10-week pay cut of 15% after the firm had lost a major con­tract. At one of the two, the exec­u­tive who con­veyed the news did so curtly, announc­ing, “I’ll answer one or two ques­tions, but then I have to catch a plane for another meet­ing.” At the other one, the exec­u­tive who broke the news gave a detailed and com­pas­sion­ate expla­na­tion, along with apolo­gies and mul­ti­ple expres­sions of remorse. He also spent a full hour answer­ing ques­tions about why the cost cut­ting was nec­es­sary, who would be affected, and what steps work­ers could take to help them­selves and the plant. Green­berg found fas­ci­nat­ing effects on employee theft rates. At the plant where the curt expla­na­tion was given, the rate rose to more than 9%. But at the plant where management’s expla­na­tion was detailed and com­pas­sion­ate, it rose only to 6%. (At the third plant, where no pay cuts were made, the rate held steady at about 4% dur­ing the 10-week period.)

Unquote

It is unfor­tu­nate that he gives thiev­ing of employ­ees as an exam­ple to but­tress his idea about com­pas­sion for employ­ees. It would appear that researchers such as Mr Green­berg — as quoted by Mr Sut­ton - think that employ­ees by nature are prone to thiev­ing. Why else would one do such a gra­tu­itous research?
I would imag­ine that Mr Greenberg’s research hypoth­e­sis read:
This research estab­lishes a cor­re­la­tion between increase of theft by employ­ees and the abrupt­ness of lan­guage used by CEOs con­vey­ing salary reduc­tion news.
And from this research Mr Sut­ton got com­pelling evi­dence that com­pas­sion begets less thiev­ing!
I think this is absolutely unfair to employ­ees.

I have been asked this ques­tion as many num­ber of times as the world pop­u­la­tion. And of course, some peo­ple have asked it more than once. My answer is sim­ple: “Doesn’t Mat­ter”. You will get (or not get) a job either way.

Let me clar­ify that a com­pany basi­cally does not look for a Java pro­gram­mar or a .NET pro­gram­mer. First of all you need to be a pro­gram­mar. That is where most of the fresh­ers lack in the cur­rent world. If your com­puter sci­ence fun­da­men­tals are strong and apti­tude is good, pick­ing up either of these is a two months job. I have reit­er­ated this in many seminars/articles/talks.

Assum­ing you have strong fun­da­men­tals, which one you would pre­fer to take as a pro­gram­ming lan­guage of your choice?

As of now, there are more jobs in Java than in .NET but inci­den­tally the com­pe­ti­tion is a lot less in .NET .

Choose one…any one. And stick to it for quite some time. Does not mat­ter if you are not able to attend walkins/tests in the other stream. There will always be good num­ber of jobs in your own stream. And remem­ber, strong fun­da­men­tals would always be pre­ferred over syn­tac­ti­cal knowl­edge of either lan­guage.

Just out of col­lege or pack­ing your bag­gage to get out soon. We talked to var­i­ous fresh­ers and digged out some very com­mon myths or mis­con­cep­tion they have regard­ing IT job inter­view process. Though there are mil­lions (okay…thousands..or even hundreds..no less) of them we are only putting the most com­mon ones here. This might be dif­fi­cult for for a 10+ yrs expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sional to digest, but this how fresh­ers (or most of them) think. Can we help their thinking…yes..may be.

Myth #10: Low­er­ing Your Salary Demands Will Increase your chances of selec­tion.

When you are strug­gling for a job, some­times you may be tempted to lower your demand and grab the offer let­ter imme­di­ately. Unfor­tu­nately or for­tu­nately an IT com­pany does not think in the same way. It is more inter­ested in get­ting value from you (I mean your work..) rather than sav­ing money on your salary. While ask­ing for a much higher salary may show you a greedy, low­er­ing expec­ta­tion may lower the value per­cep­tion. If you know what the com­pany offers for a sim­i­lar skillset and expe­ri­ence, try to be in +/- 20% range.

Myth #9: A tie is a must for an entry level job inter­view.

While it is impor­tant to be neatly dressed in for­mals, wear­ing a tie will not add any point to your score.Only if you feel com­fort­able with a tie, wear it.

Myth #8: Entry level salaries are fixed and can­not be nego­ti­ated.

While most of the big com­pa­nies adver­tise their entry level salaries, it does vary based on your col­lege, past expe­ri­ence, marks and your per­for­mance in the inter­view process. If you are being asked your salary expec­ta­tion you may have some room to nego­ti­ate.

Myth #7: Only the best per­son gets hired.

Hir­ing a large num­ber of fresh­ers (from an even larger num­ber of fresh­ers) is so stren­u­ous that most peo­ple resort to selec­tion by elim­i­na­tion. It may be on the basis of your marks, degree, FCFS (first come first serve) or any­thing. Do you really think that get­ting a 69% guy is in any way infe­rior to a 71% guy. As long as you have done full prepa­ra­tion you should not get unnec­es­sary com­plexes. If you have not done any prepa­ra­tion for job then any per­son get­ting selected is bet­ter (in fact much bet­ter) than you.

Myth #6: If I write many projects in CV it will catch their atten­tion.

No, It will get you more trou­ble than you can han­dle. High­light only big­ger projects (rather than every term papers you would have done in every alter­nate course). And, be fully pre­pared to answer every ques­tion about these projects.

Myth #5: Writ­ing both C#.NET and Java/J2EE will boost my chances of CV get­ting selected.

Half of the world is .NET and the other half is Java. If I write both skills in my CV I have the full uni­verse (super­set) with me. It is going to exactly dou­ble my chances of selec­tion…Wrong. It would reduce your prob­a­bil­ity to exactly half if not less. The only con­clu­sion a sane (read expe­ri­ence IT pro­fes­sional) per­son would draw is that you do not know any of these. Write (and also pre­pare) only one of them. Which one ? I will answer in a future post. So keep com­ing to my blog.

Myth #4: A flashy resume is more likely to get atten­tion than a sim­pler one.

Unfor­tu­nately the flash in only lim­ited to pan. A per­son who is fil­ter­ing has played it enough.Keep it sim­ple and do not promise that you are going to change the face of the com­pany. More tips on Resume Writ­ing later.

Myth #3: If a com­pany is not cur­rently hir­ing I do not stand a chance.

Though it may look very con­tra­dic­tory, but only 20 – 25% of over­all IT jobs are pub­li­cized in adver­tise­ment or oth­er­wise. Rest all is filled through ref­er­ences, unso­licited CVs and job por­tals. Now you know what to do.

Myth #2: If I have poten­tial, it will get rec­og­nized in inter­view.

If you do NOT have poten­tial, it will def­i­nitely get rec­og­nized in inter­view but if you have poten­tial there is no guar­an­tee of recog­ni­tion. Confusing..okay let me put it very sim­ply. What if you have very good tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and you also have good (inter­est­ing) hob­bies and your extra cur­ric­u­lar record is shin­ing. There is a def­i­nite chance of dis­cus­sion lead­ing to some other path and you not being able to tell the inter­viewer that you have it (what it takes to make a good soft­ware engi­neer). If needed inter­rupt him and try to take the dis­cus­sion to your strong areas. In the worst case sim­ply ask for it by specif­i­cally telling him your strengths.

Myth #1: IT com­pa­nies are more inclined towards stu­dents who have advance knowl­edge of C#.NET or Java/J2EE

This one is the most com­mon (and the bad one too). Kindly under­t­sand that tech­nolo­gies will change com­pletely at least 4 – 5 times in your soft­ware career. What is impor­tant for you is in-depth under­stand­ing of pro­gram­ming fun­da­men­tals and ana­lyt­i­cal skills. IT com­pa­nies real­ize that once your fun­da­men­tals are at right place you can quickly learn new emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and be pro­duc­tive very fast. Take my word, you are def­i­nitely not going to end you career with any of these two. It is impor­tant for you to spend suf­fi­cient time on your ana­lyt­i­cal skills and pro­gram­ming fun­da­men­tals which will serve as a base for your entire career.