1% Rule - Can You Fight It?

I just saw a post - Solving the 1:10:100% problem by Phil Wainewright on the Fast Forward blog. He reminds us of the 1% Rule. In his post he said:

There is no workaround for the 1% rule. Instead, recognize it exists and work with it. With luck, you’ll find it’s more like a 3% or 5% rule among knowledge workers, since middle-class professionals (and their offspring) are more predisposed to posting content online than other demographic groups. But still accept that most of what they contribute will be irrelevant, inaccurate, superseded or redundant, and build the system in a way that allows users to discover and recognize the most useful items.

He also points out how hard it may be to convince management to spend money on something that hits 10% and that only 1% actively contribute to.

Previously I had mentioned that DevLearn: Ze Frank Keynote - Level of Engagement suggested that we have to think about modifying participation so that participation can happen more easily and at more levels. In some ways, that's the beauty of the web and some of the models emerging on the web. For example, consider the levels of effort involved in:

• Visiting a web page
• Voting/rating something
• Transacting - Buying/subscribing
• Commenting
• Composing

A click to visit a web page takes almost no effort. Yet it's an interesting data point to see who what the most viewed pages are. And it continues up the scale. Obviously, the value increases as you move up the scale. See also: Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers.

I'm still not sure if you can fight the 1% rule all that well. But certainly, you can by making more levels and more seamless with the work itself.

Course Authoring and Rapid eLearning Tool Satisfaction

I don't know if I've seen this reported by the eLearningGuild, but their reports showed some interesting information about satisfaction levels reported by members on course authoring and rapid eLearning tool satisfaction levels.

Unfortunately, my blog is not wide enough for these images, so click on the image to go to a page with the full size image.

Courseware Authoring Tool Satisfaction -

Rapid eLearning Tool Satisfaction -

I'm only showing tools with 15 or more evaluations.

List of Tools and Vendors:

Keynote —
KnowledgePlanet On-Demand..
Articulate Rapid e-Learning Studio
Microsoft Word
Articulate Engage
Articulate Rapid B-Learning SN..
Microsoft PowerPoint
Articulate Presenter
StudyMate
Adobe Captivate
Flashform Rapid eLearning SN..
Lectora
QMIND Design Collaboration P1..
Raptivity
KnowledgePresenter
Brainshark Presentations
Respondus
Elicitus
WebEx Presentation Studio
Vuepoint Content Creator
Adobe Acrobat Connect (Pro/Br..
Impatica for PowerPoint
KnowledgePlanet Firefly
RapideL
Lectora (OpenOffice-Impress/T..
RapidBuilder® (Software Simul..
Second Life
ReadyGo Web Course Builder
Desire2Learn Learning Environ..
Corel WordPerfect Office
OnDemand Presenter
Apple Computer
KnowledgePlanet
Articulate
Microsoft Corporation
Articulate
Articulate
Microsoft Corporation
Articulate
Respondus
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Rapid Intake
Trivantis
QMIND, Inc.
Harbinger Knowledge
KnowledgePresenter
Brainshark, Inc.
Respondus
Harbinger Knowledge
WebEx Communicatio..
Vuepoint
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Impatica Inc.
KnowledgePlanet
Brainvisa
eLearning Consultants..
XStream Software
Linden Research, Inc.
Readyco Inc.
Desire2Learn Inc.
Corel Corporation
OnDemand Software
SumTotal Systems Inc.
Skillsoft
Learn.com
SumTotal Systems Inc.

Lists of Course Authoring Tools and Vendors:

Articulate Rapid E-Learning S..
Raptivity
Know ledgePresenter
Elicitis
DEVELOPED IN-HOUSE
Know ledgePlanet On-De man..
Articulate Rapid E-Learning S..
Adobe Captivate
Macromedia Dreamweaver fr..
Articulate Presenter
Lectora
Macromedia Flash Profess ion..
Flashform Rapid eLearning St..
Articulate Engage
CourseBuilder Ibr Dreamwea..
Altova XMLSpy
CustomDoc
Macromedia Authorware fro..
Lectora (OpenOffice-Impress..
Des ire2Learn Learning Enviro..
OnDe mand Personal Navigator
Vuepoint Content Creator
Quest
Too IBook Assistant
RapidBuilder® (Software Sim..
Too IBook Insiructor
OulStart Trainer
LearnCenter
Blackboard Academic Suite
Sakai Suite
Custom eLearning Content
Designer’s Edge
SkilISoft Course Customizatio..
Cornerstone OnDemand Ente..
RWD Info Pak
Articulate
Harbinger Knowledge Pro..
Know ledgePresenter
Harbinger Knowledge Pro..
In-House Development
KnowledgePlanet
Articulate
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Articulate
Trivantis
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Rapid Intake
Articulate
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Altova
OnDemand Software
Adobe Systems, Inc.
eLearning Consultants Pte..
Desire2Learn Inc.
OnDemand Software
Vuepoint
Allen Communiction Learn..
SumTotal Systems Inc.
XStream Software
SumTotal Systems Inc.
OutStart
Learn.com
Blackboard, Inc.
Sakai
Integrated Performance S..
Allen Communiction Learn..
Skillsoft
Cornerstone OnDemand
RWD Technologies

Use of Wikis as Compared to Other Tools

For an upcoming panel session that will be looking at where eLearning is going, I was trying to get a ballpark sense of how much eLearning is being done with various tools as an indicator of where we stand in terms of adoption of eLearning 1.0, 1.3 and 2.0. Heidi Fisk suggested I look at the eLearningGuild research reports. It gives some interesting indications:

Number of evaluations by eLearningGuild Members of the use of the types of tools:

• Courseware authoring tools - 4,000
• Rapid eLearning authoring tools - 3,000
• MediaWiki - 40 users

This analysis is very crude as compared to the rich data. For example, I've not included use of software simulation tools, etc. However, it gives you a rough idea of where it stands.

One thing I would say is that I would expect that we'll see adoption of Wiki tools a lot more - but many of the uses will be more as a replacement of web page creation than as a eLearning 2.0 kind of approach.

Continuing Thoughts on Questions

I've actually found the BigQ this month - What Questions Should We be Asking? - to be really interesting, but not quite the way that I expected. You can see a list of questions gathered by Dave Lee a few days ago at: http://learningcircuitblog.pbwiki.com/bigquestions. I really like how Dave provided a "When" column that showed that the questions included things to be asked during needs assessment or are macro questions. What you quickly see if you just scan that column is that the question types are all over the place.

What I was hoping to see as part of the process were questions that:

"offered a fantastic opportunity for discussion and understanding of the subject."

Part of my expectation is that I'm not sure if there are any interesting discussions and understanding anymore around a topic like "designing and building courseware." Are the issues really well understood? Or is there some debate question or challenge that people face today? For example, five years ago I presented and wrote articles (1, 2) on the design choices in creating software simulation eLearning. At the time, this was relatively new and not well understood. Now if you pick up a copy of Captivate, you'll find that most of the design ideas are incorporated in the product. So, the question about what design choices you have in Software Simulation eLearning is no longer interesting.

If you read my blog, you know that I was just lamenting Is the Big Question Half-Full or Half-Empty? basically saying that I wasn't sure I was getting much value from the questions. Luckily I just saw Action on Informal Learning - Leads to Great Questions and then I read and had a brief back and forth with Jacob McNulty around his post What’s in a Question? Our Future. Jacob points out that questions that point us forward are the ones we likely want to focus on. We also discussed that likely every questions has a number of levels to it or a tree.

I was also pointed to How to Ask Questions the Smart Way by a discussion on TrDev. While the focus is asking questions in a discussion list and is more focused on specific, technical issues, it contains some wonderful information about how to ask better questions.

So, what I've been really learning is what I personally find more compelling about certain questions and a bit about asking better questions (but I still need lots of help).

Of course, the net of a lot of this discussion around questions should be to help find important questions, with real challenges, that will have interesting discussions, and will help generate understanding - OH, and that I can use for future Big Questions or as part of a group discussion in a panel or at a morning breakfast table at a conference.

I'm going to need to go back through the questions to see what works in this context. But, I certainly have got value in understanding more about what I'm really looking for. Now I could probably write a much better Big Question that asked this question. :)

Action on Informal Learning - Leads to Great Questions

Great post by Ray Sims - What To Do On Behalf of Informal Learning? He provides a list of things he can do to help informal learning in his organization. A few that jump out at me:

• Help employees discover and refine their own personal learning environment
• Improve content findability. Obsessive attention to enterprise federated search, cross-linking, social tagging, content reuse strategies, etc.
• Improve people findability. Both expertise location applications and other means.
• Make outside connections easy. Funding for information and research services, conference attendance, guest speakers at company events, etc. A liberal blog policy and encouragement to blog
• For every new piece of formal learning, explore complementary informal learning opportunities — explicitly driving this exploration through process
• Culturally institutionalize After Action Reviews
• Require personal learning plans
• Encourage and support coaching. Considering what a “learning coach” might look like.
• Market and advocate on behalf of informal learning opportunities
• Make it easy to share and recommend sources (including via tag clouds, subscription lists, etc.)

Fantastic stuff! And at the level that helps us apply it. I would also suggest that each of these items suggest possible great questions for this month's Big Question - What Questions Should We be Asking? Just add "How can I/we ..." in front, so for example:

• How can I help employees discover and refine their own personal learning environment?

We further could generate fantastic questions by looking at particular common audience segments, e.g., new managers, distribute sales force, so:

• How can I help new managers discover and refine their own personal learning environment?

Activity in Last Six Months

I just updated my First Time Visitor Guide and I wanted to see what pages had been most visited over the past six months. I found some interesting things (at least to me)...

Here are the 25 most visited pages...

1. What is eLearning 2.0?
2. First Time Visitor Guide
3. Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog
4. Rapid eLearning Tools
5. Fun Headline Generator
6. Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective
7. Incredibly Cool! Vision of Future of Application and eLearning Development
8. Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools
9. Second Life and Learning
10. Software Simulation eLearning (w/ links to Tools)
11. Captivate File Size Tricks for Software Training via Simulations
12. Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?
13. How Do People Interact with Blogs?
14. eLearning 1.0 vs. 2.0 - Help Needed
15. Stephen Downes is Wrong? Is It Really Cool?
16. Better Questions for Learning Professionals
17. Shift in eLearning from Pure Courseware towards Reference Hybrids
18. Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups
19. Clark Aldrich - "Second Life is not a teaching tool"
20. Learning Trends Point To and Shape eLearning 2.0
21. Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge - Decisions Learning Professionals Make Everyday
22. New Kind of LMS?
23. Q&A - eLearning Standards Especially SCORM
24. Course and Courseware Fading - The Future of eLearning
25. Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Start-Up Guides

The referral sources showed that almost half of my traffic comes via various search engines rather than from RSS readers or from links on other blogs. One of the surprise sources of traffic was del.icio.us. I didn't think that would generate much traffic it was about 10th on the sources.

The other thing that surprised me is that it appears I have more readers than I thought back in November (see How Do People Interact with Blogs?) - when I estimated 500 subscribers. Now using the same crude approximation method, I would estimate 800 subscribers. Google Analytics shows that I've had 3,000 unique visitors who have visited 10 or more times over the past six months. Another 3,000 had visited between 3 and 9 times. When I reduced the time frame it seems to be fairly consistent that there are quite a few repeat visitors. I would have thought that most repeat visitors would come from an RSS reader and be subscribed. So, maybe I'm not counting subscribers very well or there are lots of folks who regularly visit blogs without using a reader.

Interesting Learning 2.0 Pattern

Found via Brent - 23 Microlearning exercises (23 Things). It has 23 Tasks over a 9 week period that helped them get you up to speed on what Web 2.0 is all about. It's a great list and the nice thing is that they offerred a free iPod as a reward for getting it all done. What a great idea.

It's a bit similar to what I had done in a learning experience that was a six week online course - see Collaborative Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools - A Summary.

Lots of interesting aspects: using blogger to direct people in the course - each lesson is a blog entry - and participants used blogs to communicate as well. Result:

In total 222 staff members completed the discovery learning quest and the
program has been picked up by libraries both nationally and world wide.

I also somehow ran across Matt's Learning 2.0 Blog where he's going through steps very similar to 23 Things. There's something really nice about this pattern!