Why Use Computer Games For Learning?
Robin Good on the use of games in classrooms. He builds on an in-depth report (PDF file) on this subject by the Learning & Skills Development Agency (LDSA) in UK.gaming Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 15, 2004
Case Study: Intranets, Usability, and Value
Nice case-study approach by Jeffery Veen to solicit feedback on some real common intranet situations. I like this case-study approach; it provides more context to understand the 'noise' that Jeff is trying to get across.intranets, usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 15, 2004
Do you manage a website or a warehouse?
Good bit of advice from Gerry McGovern on treating content as an asset: "Quality metadata, classification, navigation, and layout are crucial to the success of your content. The people you are trying to reach, whether they are staff, consumers, citizens or students, are being asked to spend their most valuable resource on your website: their time. Waste so much as a second of this highly impatient reader and you risk losing them."Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 15, 2004
Science’s Next Big Score
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is catching on with researchers. The Ars Electronica festival in Linz had researchers talking about using SNA techniques in scientific research. "Imagine a brilliant scientist who has been working for decades in undeserved obscurity, never having scratched the right old-boy backs. A network graph could make the worthy researcher pop out of the background while outing the usual lazy timeservers as pigs with their trotters in the trough. Imagine the transformative mayhem that would wreak on the moribund status quo! "Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, November 10, 2004
The Hidden Cost of Buying Information
Interesting research report on the tendency of giving more weight to information we pay for: "We all need good information to make decisionsinnovation Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Examining Worker Productivity
Kathryn Shaw's research on worker productivity on steel finishing lines found a relationship between innovative HR practices and ROI: "After months of observation of 36 integrated steel finishing lines, Shaw found that plants that used the most innovative human resource management system were rewarded with a gross annual payout of $2.24 million more annually per line than those with traditional systems." And here are some of the innovative HR practices she found: "...flexible job design, ongoing training in skills and problem solving, work teams, information sharing, elaborate pay for performance plans, employment security guarantees, and extensive employee screening."Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Classrooms or E-Learning, Instructors Remain Central
Tom Kelly of Cisco on nuturing a corporate university: "The difference with e-learning will be that the control will rest with the learners, allowing them to engage when they are most motivated and most interested. Organizations will recognize learning as a strategic advantage, a key retention tool and a means of nurturing talent. E-learning in corporate universities will help drive engagement, creativity and business success."Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Acting on User Research
Jakob Nielsen on the need to act on user research studies: "User research won't generate an additional penny of profit unless you understand it and act upon it."research Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 08, 2004
Personas: Empathetic Focus
Donald Normal believes that persona creation should be simple and easy to execute and should be aimed at helping design team communicate better. "So to me, the Persona is a tool for focus and an aid to communication, and for this purpose they only need to be realistic, not real, not necessarily even accurate (as long as they accurately characterize the user base). Although it is often fun to read the detailed descriptions of Personas and to pry into their private and social lives, I have never understood how these personal details actually aid in the design process itself. They seem completely superfluous."personas Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 08, 2004
Designing engaging activities
Michael Burke lists different types of activities that can be used in an e-learning course. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but at least he gives some examples.Add tag Permalink | Friday, November 05, 2004
SafetyProcedure
Very interesting infographics related video on safety instruction cards found in planes. [thanks interactive narratives]infographics, instructional design Add tag Permalink | Friday, November 05, 2004
How To Quantify The User Experience
Nice article that shows not only how to quantify the user experience along some variables, but also how to present them to your clients.Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 01, 2004
What is usability?
An in-depth article about the role of usability in design. "There is some confusion about what usability is and whether businesses are 'doing usability' or not. There are many aspects to usability - more than just running a usability test at the end of a project. This article provides an overview of what usability is (and what it is not)."usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 01, 2004
Why categorize?
Good primer on the need to categorize digital information and the different types of categorization. "As collections of information have grown, it has become imperative to figure out how to improve information finding. And that is why you see the ferment of activity today that surrounds taxonomy building, categorization and faceted navigation. Classification and categorization projects, however, come with some significant costs attached to them. Therefore, it is important to understand why you need to categorize before you undertake a major project."Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 28, 2004
Less for Success
Interesting stories of KM implementations going for the slow incremental approach rather than the "I want half a million to put up a content management system" approach.Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 28, 2004
E-learning Showcase
E-learning Guru's e-learning showcase lists demos of award-winning e-learning courses for all to view and learn. Great service. Thanks Kevin.Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 28, 2004
The power of a good brand story
There are some ready useful articles at Brandchannel. This one is on the need to craft your brand story. "[Brands are] a special kind of storyAdd tag Permalink | Monday, October 25, 2004
Jay Cross on eLearning Producer 2004
Jay gives this nice account of the eLearning Producer Conference. Here is a snippet: "Bob is Director, Learning and Strategy Evangelism, for Microsoft Learning. He told us,Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 25, 2004
Labeling game
Try this: ESP Game "Labeling an image means associating word descriptions to it.. Computer programs can't yet determine the contents of arbitrary images, but the ESP game provides a novel method of labeling them: players get to have fun as they help us determine their contents. If the ESP game is played as much as other popular online games, we estimate that all the images on the Web can be labeled in a matter of weeks!"Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 25, 2004
Using Personas to Create User Documentation
Personas can be used in aiding many domains of design. Here Steve Calde of Cooper Design writes about how technical writers can use personas. Using personas to guide your user-documentation creation-process helps you:- Determine the primary and secondary audiences for your documents
- Prioritize technical writing tasks by giving you a tool for identifying which aspects of the product are most important to your readers
- Write documentation in a way that helps your users achieve their goals, instead of simply cataloguing all of the product's features.
personas Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 22, 2004
Metadata for the Masses
Peter Merholz 'ethnoclassification' -- the type of folk classifications we are seeing in sites like Del.icio.us and Flickr. "Ethnoclassification systems can similarlymetadata Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 21, 2004
Categories of eLearning
George Siemen's has drawn a nice concept map on the different categories of e-learning. His core categories are:- Courses
- Informal learning
- Blended learning
- Communities
- Knowledge management
- Networked learning
- Work-based learning (EPSS)
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 20, 2004
KM, Rushing the Technology Curve and Failing
A frank interview with Jim McGee on his experience in rushing the KM tech curve. Jim talks about a video based expert system that his company built in 1995 but which was so far off the tech curve that they had to let it die a quiet death. His learning: focus on bottom-up KM rather than on top-down KM.Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Journal of Information Research
The Journal of Information research has just published an issue on information seeking behaviors in various contexts. Some papers look very interesting (e.g. Choosing people: the role of social capital in information seeking behavior).research Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 20, 2004
KM Asia 2004
Knowledge Management Asia is here again. It is held in Singapore from 2-4 November. Keynote speakers include Peter Senge, David Snowden and Karl-Erik Sveiby. What I like about this year's conference is the case-study approach taken by all conference presenters. This conference promises to deliver tons of KM practitioner experiences.knowledge management Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 18, 2004