Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTubers lately. It’s one of my favourite ways to take time out and get my head out of work mode. One of my favourite video styles to watch are vlogs, because they give you a glimpse into the lives of others. Now, I know that sounds creepy, but sometimes it’s just refreshing to get out of your own head.

What is a Vlog?

A vlog is a video-blog. Instead of blogging traditionally, as I’m doing now, the user video-blogs or vlogs. These videos are often done in a day-in-the-life style, but can also be optimized for training and development, akin to webinars or screencasts.

Vlogging has a huge presence in the YouTube content creator community for obvious reasons, but there are many Instructional Designers and IDs who are creating similar content. One cool way that I can see a day-in-the-life style working might be to set up your camera behind you while you work to create some cool time-lapse demos.

Another approach could be similar to the beauty gurus you see on YouTube – these content creators often explain how to achieve different beauty looks. You can use this approach as an opportunity to create brief tidbits of instructor-led training.

When thinking about this post, I really just wanted to emphasize the importance of thinking outside of the box with regard to your training, and leveraging approaches that are working well in other contexts!

First off, I have to address something I didn’t pick up on until this morning – last week was one year of Terminology Tuesday posts. Sure, I didn’t hit every single Tuesday as I had intended, but there have been 52 terms discussed (53 today), and that’s just bananas!

This week, I wanted to talk a bit about the concept of reusability in e-learning, and perhaps veer from the traditional concept discussion that’s often related to SCORM.

Reusability in E-Learning

When I think about reusability in e-learning, I think about objects and content that can be reused in a variety of contexts. Developers often run into this when working on large projects or in industries that involve trade-specific courseware development. My first experience with reusable assets was working with clients in the Defence sector. Often times we were working on projects for the same aircraft (although perhaps several years between projects), and it became quickly beneficial. For instance, one client had provided us with a 3D model of the aircraft, whereas another client several years later did not have access to this same model. We were able to reuse the initial model to suit the needs of the new project. Reusability also came in handy when developing component installation courses and then removal courses (we simply had to reverse the interaction, but could use the same objects).

Being mindful of reusability is critical as it can save you time and money in the long run. Reusing previously established assets (for the same client, of course – in the Defence sector example, the end client was the same, whereas the contractor may have been different, so the end client ‘owned’ all of the assets) will reduce the amount of development various departments and/or individuals have to spend.

Best practices for reusability might include creating your own content repository and defining a file naming convention that will make it easy for you to find what you’re looking for. If you’re extra savvy, you can create a coded database, but that might require a lot more effort than you have time for.

If you work in a specific authoring tool, it may save you time on a new project to have a repository of developed themes and/or interactions; this can help shave time off in the initial prototyping phase, and provides you with an arsenal of ideas for what you might be able to do from a design perspective, and can prove invaluable if design is not your forte.

Yesterday I had a discussion with the university about something I’m very excited about. It’s really the potential that I’m excited about, because it’s too early to tell whether anything will come of it or not. As part of my take away, I will be conducing a needs assessment, and as part of that needs assessment, I will need to conduct an environmental scan.

Environmental Scans

Environmental scans are a means of data collection aimed at gathering information on internal and external factors related to whatever it is that you’re researching. Environmental scans allow you to compare what other organizations/institutions, etc. are doing and where they’re doing it. Are they doing something comparable to what you want to do? If so, what is their target audience? Will their program deter individuals from participating in your program? How much competition is there? What does the target audience want?

These questions can easily be answered by conducting a thorough environmental scan. These scans will help you determine whether there are any needs or gaps and how you can meet those needs or fill those gaps. Furthermore, an environmental scan may help you prioritize. For example, if I wanted to create a new program on How to Bathe a Cat, I would look at what others are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether their audience or instructors are experiencing any gaps. My priority would be to address any gaps identified in the environmental scan within my program to ensure that I maintained a competitive advantage.

Resources

Environmental Scanning – What it is and how to do it by Thinking Futures

Environmental Scanning by James L. Morrison

What’s the purpose of the environmental scan and how do we get this? By Nonprofit Answer Guide