Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

Learning Solutions Through Technology
Lori Reed and me!

Lori and I were presenting together in one session. My topic was a program, Tech2Know, that I tried to get implemented at my library (tried). Lori's subject matter was the eLearning tools she has been using at her library, and she presented first.
Lori started by by talking about Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County's Learning 2.0 Program. She told the back-story about why it was created. They have 23 locations with over 500 employees and Lori is the sole trainer for all of the employees. They didn't know how to provide the needed training with the resources they had, so Helene Blowers came up with the 23 Things idea to solve their crisis. Lori is presenting later this month to her local business community about Library 2.0 and how they can use it in their libraries. This is the first time in history that we will have four generations of people in the workplace simultaneously. Technology is literally part of the newer generations – they have grown up with it and they expect technology-based services from us. She talked about the possibility of losing our learners to other organizations because of our lack of response to their needs. Another consideration is time and money. At our library they have a 5% budget cut this year, so need to measure the efficiency of everything they do. From the southernmost to the northernmost location, it is 44 miles. Since the library pays mileage and for travel time for their employees, there is as huge cost savings by using eLearning instead of face-to-face classes. Just for mileage, that comes out to $9,680 per year in costs for training. Travel time to and from classes comes out to an additional annual loss of $20,204 of staff time. [Sarah's note: I really like this idea as a way to plug eLearning.] Their 7 1/2 habits program was the first eLearning program that Lori offered to her staff. There are 3 types of eLearning solutions: asynchronous, synchronous, and blended training. Synchronous learning can be done on several different platforms: Horizon Wimba, OPAL, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect, and Dim Dim (a free one!). You need to have bandwidth to be able to provide eLearning using these tools. She showed a Blackboard screenshot from one of the classes she is taking as a student. In a few days, there have been almost 200 new posts. She pointed out some of the difficulties in a platform like Blackboard. "Blackboard is not eLearning," says Lori, "it's a correspondence course." Her library is now using Horizon Wimba, which costs the library $2,000 a year. They use it for staff meetings as well as trainings. Compare that to the nearly $30,000 a year they were wasting on travel time and mileage costs. She really likes Horizon Wimba. She showed some exxamples of blended learning – Twitter, email, IM, face to face discussions, virtual social spaces like Facebook or MySpace, etc. Lori talked about putting the Learning back into eLearning. The best learning is informal and blended. The information that people need to have to do their jobs is what training should include, but that's not the case with most trainings. One of the most common mistakes that people make when they start with eLearning is that they use way too many 2.0 technologies, and focus on those instead of on what their actual information needs are. Who is your audience? All staff? Circ staff? The public? Who? Guide the training to exactly who they are and what they need. T is for Training done through a free tool called TalkChute (?). This would be a great way to have manager meetings. It's recorded, podcasted, etc. It's free. Awesome! WebJunction offers webinars to library staff all across the country. The State Library of North Carolina's Master Trainers have a Facebook group and have used that as a way to communicate. If all of your staff are on Facebook, connect to them there. She did note that people have said they don't feel like this is invading people's personal space. Twitter can also be used to train. There are people following the conference Twitter feeds and learning through the short posts being shared by people who are here. Lori then gave us some final tips on implementing eLearning. She recommends getting support from the top and from IT as well, including them in discussions early on. Trainers need to train themselves on the eLearning tools first. Don't put speed over quality. Have an actual plan. Be prepared to demonstrate ROI to stakeholders. Enlist the help of tech-savvy staff to help with the process. And fnally, look for support from local businesses.

I can't live blog my own session (awww) but you can see my slides on Slideshare (see below too for an embedded version).

CIL2009