I will be speaking at one of the last Idea Labs at the ASAE Technology Conference next Friday, February 12^th at  3:30PM.

After over seven years of speaking at eLearning and training conferences, I decided to concentrate my session speaking at conferences dedicated to a specific population.  The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the Association Forum of Chicagoland provide opportunities to reach the over one million associations operating nationwide.

At the upcoming ASAE Technology Conference being held in Washington DC on February 11^th-12^th, I will be sharing my knowledge on the open source learning management (and content management) system called Moodle. The Moodle platform is ideal for associations seeking to generate revenue through their professional development offerings— ranging from testing for credentialing to an entire certification curriculum. I will be co-presenting with Sharon Chaplock, the Director of Education at the Society for Clinical Data Management. Our focus will be on sharing two case studies to help answer common questions associations might have when managing Moodle for members:

The holiday season and the start of the year is often when we take a closer look at our lives: who we have become and where we want to go. We can compare our accomplishments to siblings, friends, or our past selves. However we measure success, whether it’s with small personal goals like losing a few pounds and quitting a bad habit or strategic goals like seeking higher monetary gain or devoting yourself to religion, our self-value is fueled by achievement. This is the time of year when we review our report card, and we are often more critical in grading ourselves than anyone else. How do we focus on goals that have been and need to be accomplished? Sales trainers use “Victory Logs” because they understand how much rejection and tenacity salespeople must have to land a sale. When it takes 25 or more calls for every hopeful conversation, logging the victories becomes an important tool to keep on calling. So it goes with the team you manage.

Jeff Cobb of Tagoras Inc. recently released a report focused on learning management systems for associations. Find below my interview with Jeff, discussing not only the report but also his life as an entrepreneur and his quest for a balanced lifestyle. Full disclosure: Web Courseworks’ LMS called CourseStage is one of the featured systems in the report. I am writing about the LMS Report because it is an invaluable guide for associations considering a business model involving eLearning. I am also intrigued by Jeff Cobb, the entrepreneur.

I recently came across an article I wrote this past February on building a team for game development, which headlined in the Training Conference daily newsletter called Game On or Game Over for Online Training. I defined the four critical components to effective management of immersive learning simulation (ILS) projects:

1. Defining a culture.
2. Setting goals.
3. Building a team.
4. Managing time, cost, and quality.

Upon further reflection, this article really can be applied to most highly interactive development projects.

One of my goals as an eLearning manager is to facilitate collaboration and efficient communication between my staff members, our clients, and their subject matter experts (SME).

The Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin has been supporting youth health education programs through their Children’s Health Education Center (CHEC) for the past twelve years.  In 2004 the Center started the www.bluekids.org program to focus their efforts on reaching youth, educators, and parents via the Internet. Over 12,000 students participated in CHEC’s teacher-facilitated game-based learning curriculum last semester alone.  When tasked with quantifying the impact of interactive web-based programs on youth behavior and attitudes, CHEC and researchers at the Children’s Hospital have come up with very positive preliminary results.

Ellen Behrens calls her new self-published book aLearning: A Trail Guide for Association eLearning.  If you are an association education director or you are tasked with re-igniting eLearning as a non-dues revenue source for your non-profit, then this book will serve as a handy reference guide.  In the following eight minute interview, I caught up with the retired association education director turned author while she as RVing on the West Coast.  Ellen highlights the importance of taking a good look at using the Internet to replace the loss of revenue from declining face-to-face workshop sales.  What peaked my interest was her insistence that the book is a necessity for an association hiring a professional vendor to develop a new eLearning initiative.

Individuals with careers in eLearning often started out as educational technologists or programmers, writers or creative educators. Few of us started this career path with expertise in business, management, not to mention sales. Most of us just don’t get it when it comes to selling products and services—the schools of education or computer science certainly didn’t focus on instilling business acumen or sales expertise. Yet in the real world, most of us (in both non-profit groups and private sector teams) will have to pitch to prospects and prepare a proposal for a potential project.

In the following six minute interview with eLearning consultant and social media expert Jeff Cobb, we discuss the ASAE Professional Development Council and Jeff’s thoughts on the recent ASAE conference in Toronto.

I was particularly interested in his ideas on the intersection of eLearning and social media with respect to associations. Jeff shares his thoughts on the “owners” of social media efforts in associations and reasons education directors should consider including it as part of their online education efforts.