We’re still “here” if we’re not “there”. Online meeting etiquette.

Today’s post is a bit of a rant, and a bit of an etiquette note about meetings which involve groups of participants from different locations meeting either via teleconference or virtually online.
I was recently in a meeting which was conducted via teleconference and webinar and some of the behaviour in this meeting made me uncomfortable, [...]

An LMS meeting on a different note… hopefully

As I have been freed to move on from webinars to other projects one of my next focuses is deciding on an LMS. We’ve gotten to the point that our list of requirements and their priorities are defined so we’re interviewing potential providers to see whether they can meet our requirements and if their L&D [...]

Recorded webinars: Why they are not god’s gift to absentees

I recently had someone request a recording of a webinar they had missed and I refused to give it to them. I was not being difficult or trying to show some display of my (not so awesome) political power. Infact, in my eyes I was trying to provide them with the best service possible.
In [...]

What makes a good webinar?

Lately I’ve been involved in the introduction of webinars to my organisation. Webinars are like a really interactive online meeting, kind of like a cross between a powerpoint presentation, a teleconference, a whiteboard, and an instant chat message session. We are holding several hundred webinars in a few months, which is an absolutely herculean effort [...]

Not everyone is a born writer… My lesson in webinar design

So.  The text tool in a webinar. A lesson in knowing your audience. When I designed our small pilot webinar series about 12 months ago I observed something which really influenced my designs in the current project we are running. It wasn’t something I’d explicity learned working as a moderator in another role, and I [...]

In search of meaning…

As I was writing my last post “The Sound of Silence”, I decided to seek a definition of  “webinar” as I understand the term. Surprisingly, this proved a difficult task. Most definitions seemed to limit webinars to information conveyence, some made reference to interactivity, and a surprisingly large amount suggested that interactive features be disabled [...]

The Sound Of Silence

Last night I was musing over what is, why it is so, and what could be. This isn’t something out of the ordinary for me – I do it on a regular basis really. But this particular session was about a project I have been undertaking at work lately. We are rolling [...]

What does e-Learning have to do with saucepans anyway…

I had a meeting with some Human Resource managers yesterday about how geographically broad companies can induct their staff. I had seen a presentation at a seminar about a new induction sytem one of the banks uses which had some good underlying principles, but staff still had to travel great distances, so uptake was [...]

Transactional Trainers and Web2.0

A dilemma I came across recently was that of the transactional trainer in an e-Learning 2.0 environment. Do transactional trainers fit in this landscape? My answer after being subjected to an online lecture is, well, no not really. Can a “banking” concept of learning fit in what is essentially a collaborative environment? [...]