Learning is fun, right?

Games and Learning marks my tenth and final class in my online graduate program and it's one I've had my eye on. I was sold on the title, really. I love games, puzzles, challenges, and competition and I absolutely believe that games are a part of learning and learning is a part of games. However, video games are not really my thing. I much prefer strategic board games, party games, or puzzles.

My interest in this class, though, goes beyond an affinity for games. I do sales training for a technology company. Thus far, this degree program has been a guided tour through every aspect of digital learning and, at each stop, I have looked for ways of incorporating the new-found learning into the workplace. The sales reps that I work with each day hail from all over North America yet they all seem to have very similar characteristics. Chief among those characteristics is a tendency to be competitive. It's a common trait among A-type personalities. In my experience, sales reps love to compete when it comes to revenue or earnings but we fail to adequately tap into this motivation when it comes to training. Therefore, my true motivation and curiosity for this course is to learn how I can use games as a learning tool.

I am a big fan of play, especially when it comes to playing with and/or against other people. I mentioned before that video games weren't really my thing. But really, I do enjoy playing when the video game is the medium for people playing against each other. (Right now, there's an online golf game that seems to being taking up considerable time for me and a handful for buddies.) In addition, I quite enjoy sports, board games, or even physical challenges. I believe what compels me is having a framework of rules which then requires a strategy to operate within those rules. What can be even more fun is creating the rules.

Making up games with my brothers was a big part of my childhood. There weren't a lot of kids in our neighborhood growing up so we only had each other for entertainment most of the time. We enjoyed most traditional games but often had to tailor the rules based on a given space or circumstance. To this day, my brothers and I still enjoy the creativity of making up fun. For example, even though we are all grown up and have families of our own (in different parts of the world), each of us has some type of box or container in our homes where we keep a collection of balls. These could be tennis balls, racket balls, stuffed basketballs from the carnival, rubber balls, etc. To this day, one of our favorite past times while visiting each other is to pull out the box of balls in the livingroom and invent some type of game or challenge (I know, I know, any mothers reading this blog are cringing at the thought of balls flying through the livingroom..). It's good fun. It's creative. And sometimes you learning something you didn't know before!

INTE 5340: Learning with Digital Stories - Final Portfolio

Why is it important to tell stories?

My final portfolio for INTE 5340 showcases a number of digital stories or critiques created throughout the term with an emphasis on Corporate eLearning. Each of my assignments was posted on this blog and shared via Twitter. Below are some links to various assignments including DS106 assignments, digital story critiques, and reading responses. Please review and feel free to provide commentary.


DS106 Assignments (Click the links to view artifacts)

Web Assignment: Way Back Time Machine
In this web assignment, I utilized the Internet Archive to view snapshots of the same website at different points in time. I chose to examine elearningindustry.com to see how this changed over time.

Design Assignment: Maze Infographic
I wanted to design an infographic and came acros this maze assignment in the design section. I combined both ideas to create an infographic demonstrating the need for eLearning, specifically within a corporate environment.

Mashup Assignment: Something doesn't belong here
Mashup is a fun concept. In this assignment I combined images from two popular kids movies. Take a look and see if you can find which picture does not belong!

Design Assignment: New Team Logo Design
The original assignment called for designing a new team logo for a fictitious team. I put my own spin on it and designed a new team logo for a new high school in my city. In addition, I discussed the importance of telling a story in logos and organizational graphics.

Digital Story Critiques (Click the links to view artifacts)

Digital Story Critique: Scrolling Mashup
An example and critique of parallax scrolling - an effect that allows the background to change at a slower pace than the scrolling to create a 3D effect. This effect enables an interesting storytelling experience using scrolling and a directional message. This digital story was critiqued using Lankshear and Knoble.

Digital Story Critique: Photoshopping at elearningindustry.com
elearningindustry.com posts a number of articles from industry professionals and most are accompanied with an image to illustrate the article. I found a couple images that were photoshopped to do just that. This digital story was critiqued using Lankshear and Knoble.

Digital Story Critique: How To Develop The Best Employee Training Through E-Learning
A critique of a video commissioned by the European Commission as a way of promoting tourism. I found the video an interesting sign of the importance of eLearning within government and enterprise organizations. I critiqued the video using Jason Ohler's assessment traits.

Digital Story Critique: University of Florida eLearning Teaser Trailer
The University of Florida created a teaser trailer for their new eLearning platform. I evaluated this video using Jason Ohler's assessment traits.


Reading Responses: Lankshear and Knobel, New Literacies

Reading Response: New Literacies Chapter 8 - Social Learning in Formal Education
In chapter 8, Lankshear and Knoble tie it all together with some real to life examples of social learning among post graduate students and grammar school students.

Reading Response: Lankshear and Knoble Chapter 7 - Social Learning
Perhaps the best chapter in the book, formal education is regarded as outdated and ineffective. The authors explain the paradigm shift from push to pull and the value of social learning.

Reading Response: New Literacies Chapter 5: Blogs and Wikis
Chapter 5 explores wikis and blogs as tools for social learning.

Reading Response: Post-Modernity and a New Ethos
Another highlight chapter, new literacies does not mean a departure from the old but rather a transformation into something better. For my response I found an early 1900s newspaper that used to print social updates - perhaps a precursor to facebook and twitter?

INTE 5340 Learning with Digital Stories: Final Reflection

 Life and Learning through Digital Stories

After seven intense weeks in an online, social media whirlwind Professor Remi Holden’s INTE 5340 Learning with Digital Stories class at the University of Colorado Denver is coming to a close. But before I can take a much needed breather, it’s time to reflect on my experiences throughout the course. To finish, I am including one last response to accompany my final portfolio. I will discuss the following topics:

·         My understanding of new literacies, social practice, and digital storytelling

·         My experience with digital storytelling and DS106

·         Applying my learning to corporate eLearning

Understanding new literacies, social practice, and digital storytelling

I started this class with a feeling of frustration. Right out of the gate, I had a week to complete half a dozen assignments and read a textbook chapter on some abstract concepts related to redefining the word literacy. I admit my initial impression was not a good one. The assignments felt like trivial busy work and the text seemed irrelevant to eLearning in general. In addition, everything we did needed to be published and shared via social media which is still a little outside of my comfort zone.  I had experience utilizing Facebook, LinkedIn, and some blogs but I’m more of the passive observer rather than active participant. Having everything accelerated into an eight week period didn’t help my attitude either, especially with the busy work and home schedules I had to manage at the same time. What I did not realize at the beginning was that the class and its underlying principles would come full circle by the end of the course.

I know now that the key to this course was changing the mindset and the way we think about learning. Redefining literacy was a big part of that and a necessary first step. It’s important to know that literacy extends beyond just the ability to read and write. It encompasses different mediums including various technologies and forms of social media, which were highlighted in this course. Once that definition is understood, we can then see how various groups or individuals exercise those literacies in everyday life. I think this is a major component of social theory. And within social theory we can examine two things: 1) how social learning takes place and 2) how social learning is put into practice.

The most interesting concept, for me though, was learning about the paradigm shift from pushing curriculum onto students to having students pull information based on their own desired learning trajectories. I believe this shift is a long time in the making but today’s new technological literacies have accelerated the shift. The web makes it possible for people to have information at their fingertips and learn what they want to learn. And now with Web 2.0 and the ability to collaborate across the internet, the student has the ability to become the teacher. Therefore, within this learning ecosystem, I can get some ideas of how to implement social learning practices into my professional learning career.

As for digital storytelling? That’s the fun byproduct of new literacies.

Digital Storytelling and DS106

In my opinion, nothing exemplifies new literacies more than DS106. I think the site and the movement altogether is incredible. I was immediately interested. I love creative projects and the fact that the site is sustained through the contributions of others. What made me uncomfortable was the social media aspect – which I mentioned earlier. Many of the assignments require sharing either on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media sites. Again, I’m more of a passive observer on social media than an active participator.

The number of assignments to complete each week was a little overwhelming. But for the DS106 assignments, I found the variety to be very intriguing. The daily creates and assignment bank projects included a vast number of different mediums illustrating the breadth of new literacies within technology. This helped me realize a number of things. First, there are quite a few online tools available and I have very little experience with any of them. It amazes me that, today, the average internet user has the ability to do web design, audio, video, and a number of other capabilities. For one assignment I needed to create my own maze but after a simple google search I quickly found a number of online tools that made the task fairly easy. Second, I found myself gravitating toward certain mediums. Audio, video, and photography are not really my thing. I would much rather do design, web, and writing assignments and generally sought those out for weekly projects. What ultimately made these assignments intriguing was the framework in which they were presented. I believe it was the text that mentioned that creativity requires restraints – you can’t just tell someone to go into a room and “be creative”. The framework starts the thought process but the ambiguity (a common attribute throughout the course) enabled the creativity.

When it came to critiquing digital stories, it was interesting to note that stories are everywhere. At first, I thought that digital storytelling would naturally come in the form of a video, such as a montage, documentary, or trailer. In reality, a story can be told in many different forms. When it came to finding digital stories to critique within our focal themes, I found myself going to elearningindustry.com quite often and found a number of great resources mixed in and around the publications. I think it was altogether a worthwhile practice. Anytime you can break something down into its smallest parts and take a critical view, a world of insight is opened up.

Apply my learning to corporate eLearning

Corporate eLearning has been a common theme for me throughout my masters studies. I considered choosing a different area of focus for digital storytelling but ultimately I wanted all of my efforts in school to contribute to my professional pursuits. So I again chose corporate eLearning. I am currently loosely affiliated with our enablement/training team at work and am looking for a full time position. I’m definitely glad I kept the theme for this course.

I’m excited to apply the learning from this class to my professional life. The biggest take-away is new perspective on eLearning. I originally though eLearning was solely comprised of self-paced learning modules and online courses. But that is just one component. Understanding the paradigm shift from push to pull has opened my eyes and given me a number of ideas of how to create an ecosystem at work where employees can pull the information needed to perform their work. It has also helped me realize that a “pull” environment is already in place but the lack of information and access has made the learning experience inefficient and cumbersome. Social learning is already taking place to some degree as employees often rely on tribal knowledge to get ramped up. And, those that work within the sales department at my company are those that benefit most from pull-based learning.

There is a major opportunity that I see and the potential to maximize learning or “enablement” as we call it is great. I believe it starts with understanding the current social learning practices and expounding upon them to make a greater learning experience.

 

DS106 Assignment Bank: Way Back Time Machine

I found an interesting web assignment in the DS106 Assignment Bank for this week's assignment. There is a website called the Internet Archive Way Back Machine which keeps an archive of websites over time. It's really interesting. Go to the website and enter the url of a favorite website. You can see snapshots of the site from previous years and, therefore, see the evolution of the site over time. This DS106 assignment is exactly that.

My first thought was to look up my company's website to see the changes over time. But in keeping with my focal theme of corporate eLearning, I decided to look at a website that I've been visiting quite often since beginning my graduate education: www.elearningindustry.com. Here are some snapshots:

June 2012

January 2013

July 2013



 December 2013

June 2014

December 2014



July 2015

 

The website, elearningindustry.com, started out as a blog in 2012. It's only 3 years old which is a bit of shortened timeframe. I'm sure if we were to look up some other companies that have been around a lot longer the contrast would be much more stark. However, what this does show me is how much the elearning industry (and this website being a representation of the industry) has evolved.

 

Content is not the only thing that changes. A website is not only a repository of information, it is also a map. Over time, the user experience will change in order to better orient the visitors to the information that is most applicable. As a blog, elearningindustry.com transformed from having a simple blog-like appearance to being more of a library of resources, of which blog posts are a major category.

 

One other factor that has changed over time is the inclusion of social media icons on the main page. As you can see, those did not appear until 2014. That gives us a clue of the industry is adapting to the demands of social media and creating a greater platform for collaboration. In 2012, which was only 3 years ago, I could submit a blog post.. Today, I can do that and so much more. I not only get to learn from the industry, I can also participate in it.

 

I now not only wonder what this website will look like 3 years from now, I wonder what the elearning industry will look like.

 

Reading Response: New Literacies Chapter 8 - Social Learning in Formal Education

The final chapter of New Literacies, by Lankshear and Knobel, beautifully ties together the discussions around social learning and practice with the examination of two very interesting case studies in learning – one with adult learners and the other with grade school students. As one trying to enter a brand new field (eLearning) I find these studies eye-opening and inspiring. I credit the authors for the way they organized the content of the book with principles building on each other. I admit, in the beginning chapters on “new literacies” and how they’ve become defined, I asked myself, “Who cares?” I now see how important it is to understanding literacies, especially in today’s learning culture. It’s through these literacies that the paradigm shift in formal education can take place. These empirical examples in the text illustrate this.

Within this last chapter I found a few sentences from the authors that I feel highlights the message of this book:

The ideal for all learning at every point in time - and which is especially significant when thinking about learning within formal education institutions - is that it be efficacious. For learning to be efficacious, 'what a child or adult does now [wherever they are along their trajectory] must be connected in meaningful and motivating ways with "mature" [insider] versions of related social practices'. (2011, p. 252)

The words meaningful and motivating were written throughout the description of the second learning study as attributes that aided the students throughout their experience with such a new learning platform. What’s interesting is how the platform incorporated games as part of that experience. I’m sure some old school thinkers believe games to be trivial and distraction. But games absolutely can bring meaning and motivation – so why not make it a tool for learning?

The main question that came to mind from this week’s reading was how I can establish a collaborative learning platform where I work today. I’ve mentioned this in previous posts but I work for a large technology security company - tied to the sales department. Our onboarding and training for newly hired sales reps is atrocious. Learning modules are boring and outdated, information is scattered everywhere, and there is no sign of an onboarding plan anywhere. However, because of a lack of “push”, new hires today are already relying on social collaboration and what resources they can find online. The problem they face is the immediate expectation to hit sales quotas regardless of product knowledge or other process aptitude.

This situation is a perfect example of “tribal learning” which is really a form of social learning. It makes me believe that not only is the shift to pulling a necessity, it is also a preference – especially when it comes to corporate learning. The personalities of those working within a sales organization are more adept to pulling information in order to meet their personal desires and motivations. Sitting through a day-long training or logging time in a classroom does not appeal to them (or their attention spans), in my opinion.

There is a great opportunity within workplace learning to create a platform where information can be pulled and shared through collaboration and gaming. Yet where there is pulling and trajectory, there needs to be guidance. I believe eLearning is the solution to providing that guidance and making corporate learning, as the authors put it, more efficacious.

The Daily Create: Shadow Caster

Here is The Daily Create from a few days ago: casting a shadow. My brothers and I, growing up, used to try and do shadow puppets at night once the lights were turned out. This one was one of my best ones. Does it look like a dog?

DS106 Assignment Bank: Maze Infographic

For this week's interest-driven assignment bank, I wanted to find an assignment where I could create an infographic to illustrate corporate eLearning. I came across this assignment to create a maze and thought twice about it. Then I likened it to my own corporate situation and this is what I came up with:

 

 

I mentioned in previous blogs about the inadequacies surrounding my own company's training program. Essentially, newly hired sales reps are thrown in the deep and....like a maze...are expected to find their own way, often times through trial and error. I thought a maze would be a good representation.

 

Allowing students to learn on their own isn't necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the personality types that become sales reps are actually kinetic learners. However, going to one extreme can be ineffective. In today's paradigm shift to "pulling" information, enabling reps with eLearning can be the necessary guidance to get them through...well... the maze.