Enspire Learning’s Recipe for Blended Learning

Bjorn Billhardt, CEO Enspire Learning

Bjorn Billhardt, CEO, founded Enspire Learning Inc. in 2001 so he knows that instructional designers have been guilty of creating boring e-learning programs for a long time. Authors today still fail to use audio-visual features of multimedia-capable PCs, mobile smart phones, and Web 2.0 tools to create interactive personalized learning. In fact, he says its tough dealing with reactions of fellow airline passengers when he introduces himself as an e-learning developer because corporate online training has such a boring reputation. But, he and Enspire Learning have tried from the beginning to change that popular perception with engaging e-learning games and simulations.

Enspire Learning believes the recipe for successful online e-learning consists of three ingredients: Stories, Simulations, and Social Learning. Bjorn explained why these ingredients are effective to Austin ASTD members on November 19, 2010 and with his kind permission I recorded his talk so you may listen to it too.

Video: Web 2.0 in Learning Environments

Web 2.0 is a rapidly growing part of university teaching.  Faculty are more frequently asking students to build learner eportfolios, create multimedia presentations, participate in authentic group projects, and reach out with social networking to new audiences. But what evidence has been collected thus far in the research journal literature?

Debby Kalk, Gregg Orr, and Lance Kinney, U. of Texas at Austin doctoral students, recently completed a literature survey of 148 journal articles (76 theoretical and 72 research) that reported on the use of blogs, wikis, virtual worlds, podcasts, and social networking in university teaching. They summarized their conclusions to an interested audience of ASTD Austin Chapter members.

Recorded July 16, 2010 in Austin, Texas. Length: 47 minutes

Watch My Video

ASTD Austin – Web 2.0 Tools in University Classes from learningman on Vimeo.

Needs Assessment from a HPI Perspective

ASTD Austin Chapter members listened to Lannette Bailey, CPT, explain how she approached assessment of learning from a Human Performance perspective.

Lannette Bailey, Assessment from a HPI Perspective

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

http://s3.amazonaws.com/stlth/static/production/swf/audio_controller.swf

Captivate 4 Text-to-Speech and Captions

Adobe’s Captivate 4 software easy text-to-speech feature makes it possible to add spoken captions for ADA compliance to e-learning course content. Members of Austin ASTD Instructional Design SIG are shown how this can be done by guest speaker Hiram Kuykendall, MicroAssist CTO. How lifelike are the voices? Can you save time and money over recording human voice talent? Hiram demonstrates the software and summarizes the pros & cons of his rapid development strategy.

By the way, Hiram is also involved with organizing the May 26, 2010 E-Learning Symposium in Austin.

Watch my video on Vimeo. Duration: 36:00.

Is Captivate Speaking to Me? from learningman on Vimeo.

Improve Lectures with Interactive Learning Experiences

Games can make learning fun.

Jane “Star” Fisher presented to the Austin ASTD ID SIG how adding interaction to training improves attention, retention, and overall learning impact. Despite their effectiveness, why do trainers not use games more often? Why do they persist in boring, death-by-powerpoint slide shows? How can trainers improve their teaching presentations? Star guided the ID SIG members through “Reverse Brainstorming” and “Envelopes” group activities that allowed us to discover our own answers to these questions.

Vernon Rooze on Constructing Good Questions

A recording of Vernon Rooze’s  January 24, 2007 presentation to the Instructional Design SIG of the ASTD Austin Chapter.

This presentation on Constructing Good Questions included topics such as special considerations in online testing, writing good test items, common grammar mistakes, and how to write multiple-choice questions that test  Bloom’s taxonomy’s higher levels such as evaluation and application. At the time of this presentation, Vernon was an instructional design specialist at Apple in Austin.

Listen to this presentation now.

Rapid ID according to Thiagi and Star Fisher

In 2007,  Star Fisher attended a Houston workshop with Dr. Thiagi, famous advocate of fun and games in learning design. She summarized Dr. Thiagi’s 14 rapid development principles and 8 design steps for the ID SIG of the Austin ASTD chapter on October 22, 2009. Star’s 2-page handout can be downloaded by clicking  Rapid ID Handout by Star Fisher. Star is a Curriculum Designer with Time Warner Cable who builds training materials for new hire employees. She has over 15 years experience designing training and is an ASTD CPLP.

Contextual Design Methodology – July Austin ID SIG Meeting

ASTD Austin ID SIG Meeting of July 23, 2009.

Its been many months since I attended an ID SIG meeting but the topic drew me in so I drove downtown at rush hour.

It was well worth my time. Robin Brandenburg, Director of Momentum and Innovation at Six Red Marbles did not disappoint, giving a smooth, articulate presentation to about 15 assembled instructional designers. Robin used the slick new slide program called Prezi to good effect.

How should I revise playtherapygames.com?

Norma, my life’s better half, has created many useful publications to help play therapists work with children, especially hyperactive ones. She’s sold thousands of her Directive Group Play Therapy: 60 Structured Games for the Treatment of ADHD, Low Self-Esteem, and Traumatized Children. I’ve helped her over the years with publication layouts and editing since English is her second language.

Audio: James Caras – Characteristics of E-learning 2.0

On July 25th the Austin ASTD Instructional Design SIG members heard a presentation by Dr. James Caras, President of Sapling Systems on “Characteristics of e-learning 2.0.” Sapling Systems has developed their own sophisticated Flash-based authoring tools for math and science courses. You can learn more at the company web site.