Gee writing grant and funding applications can really take it out of you. The process of getting together the project team, coming up with the project concepts and putting it all into a format that will win the grant is both a skill and an art that is just the tip of the project iceberg. Then when you get the news that you have won the grant you think that all that work has finally paid off. Well let’s not talk about pay just yet…. and if you have won a grant before you know that the real work is still to come.

I have had a great start to the year with the news that We-Learn, in conjunction with BJ Network Consulting Australia, Brightcookie and eLearning Catalyst won a grant from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) to develop a Toolbox for the Asset Maintenance Training Package, we call the project Squeak eClean. My role is Project Manager and so far it has been a very interesting experience to say the least. We have delivered our Proof of Concept and are now awaiting feedback from the National Reference Group before moving on to the next phase of the project. I have to pass on my huge congratulations and thanks to the team especially Catriona Ward from eLearning Catalyst who is providing the instructional design for the project and also to Damien Walsh from BJ’s who is working like a trooper on the content. Between the two of them they have done the bulk of the work to now and still have a lot in front of them. Their work quality is to be comended. Leo and the folks at Brightcookie are now dilligently working on the technical cogs that sits behind the Toolbox content and I have no doubt that the final product will be extremely useful to RTO’s delivering Certificate II and III in Cleaning throughout the country for many years to come.

The Framework have also released their 2010 Innovations projects and I am happy to announce that We-Learn will be managing the Video-Line Project for Subrosa Solutions. Video-Line will be integrating Streamfolio into Moodle to allow for use of video technology for RPL, assessment and enrolment. The exciting project will further embed e-learning at Subrosa and take innovative use of video in education to a new level, firmly placing Subrosa at the head of innovative RTO’s in the security sector.

As these two projects unfold I will be providing the occasional update on tools we are using and systems and procedures as a way of sharing our experiences. I hope you will join me and share these updates via your social media tool of choice.

So now the announcements are done, I better get back to it.

Here is the text and below the article as it appeared in the E-learning and Training Magazine.

Embedding E-learning in Small Businesses:

Why they don’t, why they should and how they can.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are over 750,000 small businesses in Australia employing up to twenty people. How many of these businesses are getting on the web2.0 wave and taking advantage of the many benefits of e-learning? A report recently published by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (AFLF)[1] has shown that barely a third are involved with e-learning for their staff and those that are, likely use a Registered Training Organisation to deliver the training for them. With some careful planning and some well placed mentoring, small businesses can take advantage of the flexibility that e-learning can offer their staff and take control of it like never before.

Why They Don’t

There is no doubt that training is a priority for small business owners but with pressure from the recent Global Financial Crisis and the current credit crunch in Australia, many business owners are reluctant to spend money on costly training programs. You don’t need to mention ROI if there is no “I” to discuss.

Knowledge of what is available and how to do it is undoubtedly a barrier for many small businesses. The survey commissioned by the AFLF ¹ found that 60% of the businesses surveyed felt their knowledge of e-learning was inadequate. On the bright side, this figure has improved markedly from the previous survey in 2007, but this low knowledge level of e-learning amongst small businesses is a problem.

As a small business owner myself (though not employing anyone…yet) and having worked in many small businesses, I know that time is of the essence. Training new staff is a task that needs to be slotted in amongst doing the accounts, selling the product, networking with clients …. and the list goes on. How are business owners supposed to fit in an e-learning plan for their staff amongst all these things?

Visualising how e-learning can have relevance in their business and industry is a stumbling block for many. For businesses in the traditional trades or other practical industries, making the connection between the computer they do their accounts on and a learning hub for their staff is a big challenge for many business owners.

This is all looking a bit grim so let’s take off the black hat for a while and consider why businesses need to embrace and embed e-learning.

Why They Should

Strategy: With e-learning and web2.0 strategies making ground in the corporate sector, the small business owner needs to join in the revolution to keep pace with their bigger opposition. Creating an e-learning strategy that aligns with the business’s web2.0 strategy will also make it easier for employees to wrap their head around the difficult concepts of digital footprints and how they can impact future employment.

People: Good employees are difficult to keep and they demand training and professional development to maintain high job satisfaction levels. High staff retention also means keeping knowledge in the organisation. With the use of tools such as wikis and blogs, small businesses can retain knowledge in a format that can be searched, shared, stored and built upon for the benefit of both current and future staff members.

For those businesses with a traditionally high staff turnover rate onboarding new staff is a necessary and costly evil. One proven way of reducing costs for businesses is setting up an online staff onboarding program for completion before a new staff member’s first day. This will save many hours of tedious form filling and tour guiding on the job bringing onboarding costs down through reduced wages time and productivity gain.

Skills: The Employer E-learning Benchmarking Survey 2009 also showed that over two thirds of businesses surveyed believed employees need good computer skills and 70% believe that e-learning improves these skills. 81% of those businesses surveyed said that they would encourage their staff to use e-learning. They want it, they like it, but they don’t know about it. So how can we, as learning professionals change the status quo and how can businesses embed e-learning in their organisation?

How They Can

Strategy: Small businesses are diverse in every way and there is no one size fits all strategy. Working out what the strategy should be will require a little bit of navel gazing, some research and some external and experienced eyes. There are plenty of case studies of previous projects and many free and inexpensive online and face to face workshops available to learn from the experiences of others and aid in strategic planning. Ning sites, Facebook groups and user forums abound where folks gather to discuss what their business or institution is doing that works or doesn’t work and what pitfalls and successes can be expected. Embrace the technology early on as part of the research and it will come more naturally when the same technology is being used as part of the learning.

People: Probably the biggest key to embedding e-learning into any organisation is a champion. The best scenario is for the organisation to have that champion in-house. In small businesses finding that person can be difficult. One tip is to look for any staff member who is interested in the internet and web tools. They need not necessarily be an e-learning leader (though that would help) but they definitely need to show enthusiasm for the online format. Often champions will emerge unaided but when they have been located they must be nurtured and supported.

Bringing in an external consultant to mentor the organisation and particularly to aid in nurturing the champion is a strategy that has proven to work quite effectively with many projects. The mentoring does not even need to occur face to face so organisations are not geographically tied to a particular pool of consultants from their city or even their own country (though I am an advocate for using local talent whenever possible). Mentors bring knowledge and experience that will prove to be the maker of success for an e-learning project. Find a mentor that fits the organisation culturally and the chances are the project will be a roaring success.

Tools: For small businesses looking at dipping their toe into the e-learning waters there are three things to remember about choosing tools for their early projects:

(1) Open Source

(2) free and

(3) Open Source

By trying out free and Open Source tools, small businesses can rest easy in the knowledge that they are not allocating vast chunks of the budget to software. If the tool has been tried and tested but does not fit the organisation’s needs, cut it out of the strategy quickly and move on, no capital has been injected into it. If the tool fits but you want something shinier, there will be plenty of proprietary tools ready to take its place. If a Learning Management System is required (and for small businesses that may not always be the case), Moodle is Open Source and can be installed and hosted for peanuts. Hosting packages can be found for as little as $3 a month with unlimited everything and a Moodle installation can be up and running in a matter of a couple of hours at the most.

Content: No e-learning chat is complete without mentioning content. Getting content into an e-learning project is easier all the time. Widgets, embed codes, RSS feeds, Creative Commons, Flexible Learning Toolboxes and user generated content are all making rapid e-learning development an achievable goal for every project. Everybody can unleash their inner instructional designer when they are no longer hindered by the need to know Flash. Changing, updating and growing the content is less of a burden when there is so much freely available content around.

The barriers for small business to embrace and embed e-learning are being conquered by more and more organisations. The costs are falling and the depth of knowledge amongst consultants is getting ever deeper. The tools are more accessible and user friendly every day. Small businesses can jump on the e-learning wave now and ride it all the way to success. All they need is a strategy, a champion and a mentor and they will inform the tools and the content. It is a basic recipe for success that is achievable by all employing small businesses.

Rhys Moult

Director and E-learning Consultant

We-Learn

Email rhys@we-learn.com.au

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¹ Australian Flexible Learning Framework, 2009 Employer E-learning Benchmarking Survey

I have had so many requests from small businesses for websites that I can no longer ignore that it is an important part of what We-Learn offers. So I am pleased to announce that I have put together a couple of great packages for Wordpress installations focused on small business. But in true We-Learn style there is an emphasis on empowering organisations to DIY their own websites.

Here is how the Wordpress Business + Mentoring Package works and how we can do it so fast:

• I get together with you in my office or yours and we nut out how you want the site to look
• We build the theme together using web design software called Artisteer and I upload it and install the new theme along with some plugins to your hosted wordpress installation. (To do this you need a hosting provider that supports PHP and allows you to install a database. I like using cPanel because it is easy and quick to do a Wordpress installation especially with Fantastico installed.)
• As I install the plugins I show you how to do it and get you to do some yourself
• I mentor you and get you to put the content in yourself with my assistance so that you are learning to operate your CMS
• We get the framework and the look and feel sorted in 2-4 hours then you go and do the rest yourself
• You have access to me for a month after via email, Skype, twitter or phone to iron out any problems you have along the way

This package is designed to empower business owners and provide them with skills and knowledge to manage their own site.The mentoring includes tips and tricks on how to incorporate web2.0 and Social Media into your business and website, analysis of your business to see what plugins would best meet your business needs.

To learn more about what the service offers and to see the prices go to our self managed sites page.

So to celebrate the new product I am offering a free theme design for the first three people to commenter. This is a saving of $200.00! All you need to do is go to the comments section and post a comment to let me know you are interested in the package. I will use the email address that you put in the email field in the comment form to contact you to discuss how I can help you out.

If you know anyone in busness in Adelaide (or anywhere else for that matter) who you think might be interested in this service, make sure to retweet this post to them (or let them know some other way )

I know it was quite some time ago now (November 12 and 13, 2009 to be precise) but Edayz09 was a huge part of my year and provided me with masses of learning opportunities that will help me and my business well into the future. This week I have been doubting the effort I put in over that time and wondering if I would ever see any real return on investment for the time and money I put into the event. Of course it was just a pessimistic moment of self doubt but I thought it might be a good idea to take stock of the what I did for the event and what I gained and give back a little something to the community as penance for my self doubt. (more on that later)

Edayz, for those of you who do not know, is THE e-learning conference for South Australia. Like many of these events it is the product of the hard work of a few dedicated people led by the amazing and talented Marlene Manto. I was lucky enough to be on the working committee in ‘09 and this gave me a first hand look into the inner workings of the event. As a participant at a conference you never get a picture of the scale of these things. The planning (as far as the working committee is concerned) for Edayz09 started in February last year and lasted all the way through to our final Edayz wrap up meeting in December. Each of the members of the working committee took on different jobs throughout the year and all their efforts culminated in what was reported to be a thoroughly successful event. The working committee was not your typical sit around a talk type committee. We were active in the entire decision making process and were given quite a long leash in completing our tasks. For this reason my experience was invaluable.

So if everything was so valuable and successful what was my gripe? Well, We-Learn was a sponsor for the event and I was getting a little despondent that I was getting no solid returns on my investment of time and money. I had flyers in the conference bags, I presented two sessions, I networked, I sweated (it was bloody hot in Adelaide across those two days) and I have received not one call from “company xyz” to say “we saw you at edayz and we want you to be part of our 2 million dollar project”.  Yes I know, a very short sighted and narrow minded feeling given the other things I have gained both professionally and personally out of the experience. I must confess I did do a small amount of paid work on the Edayz09 website and for this I am grateful. But really my gains have been far greater than can be calculated or attributed to tangible ROI. The biggest gains have been the alliances and friendships formed with the members of the committee, the learning I achieved, and overall increase in visibility of my personal brand (which at this point in time is intrinsically linked with my business brand).

The experience of contributing to such a huge undertaking as edayz will be something I will have forever. The lessons I learned will continue to benefit me and my clients for the rest of my working life and perhaps beyond. So, much like e-learning itself, trying to put a ROI on my time and efforts for edayz is so intangible that the energy expended in such a calculation would be, and in fact was, a complete waste. I have read many articles about ROI for e-learning and learning in general but I am yet to be convinced it is possible to acheive a figure that is meaningful in any way (I will probably get shot for that statement).  ROI for learning is all about intangibles. Sure you can put dollar figures on this and that but attempting to calculate a figure that actually means something is in my opinion futile.

So having said that, to make amends for wasting my own time in attempting to validate what was obviously a hugely beneficial experience, I am making available the Moodle theme I designed for the Edayz site, based on the Central Blue theme. I make no promises or assurances that it will work for you and if you download it and use it and it breaks your Moodle I hold no responsibility for the consequences. Having said that you can see a working version of it at the Edayz09 site and a screen pic of it below.

By the way, kudos to Kerry J for her nomination for an Edublog award for the awesome work she did for Edayz creating the podcasts and videos. If you havn’t done so already you should listen to Professor Martin Westwell’s Friday Keynote as well a host of others by going here.

My twitter mate Sarah Stewart has asked me for some tips for setting up a consultancy business and I have been asked the same question from a few of my colleagues. These are not the only or even the most important but for me they have meant I have been able to go it alone and still keep the family fed. So without any further ado, here are my 7 tips for starting a consultancy business in no particular order:

1. 

   Anyone For Coffee?

   Self Promote.

   Shameless self promotion is essential, especially in the early days. Do it online, do it at parties and do it as often as you can. Let’s face it, you need to get food on the table and if you don’t love your own work how can you expect your clients to.

2. Network Face to Face.

   Meet with everyone and their dog. Go to every event you get invited to and invite yourself to those that you don’t. Have coffees with everyone and pay for them whenever you can.

3. Network Online

   Use twitter. Use it wisely and use it often. Get onto Facebook and link to your site, who knows which of your friends may need your services. Join LinkedIn. Network network network (but be sensible, balance your networking and your self promotion…. you know what I am talking about)

4. Borrow Money

   It takes time to invoice and it takes time for clients to pay (thankfully mine have all been great, touch wood). This aint no salaried job. You need to have cash and you need an income. Bankroll your business however you can but make sure you have at least six months worth up your sleeve.

5. Ask for Help

   If you don’t ask you don’t get and you will be surprised at the sort of assistance available to new businesses. Go to seminars, learn new things, look for government funded business assistance. I went to the North West Business Development Centre to get some advice and now they are one of my clients! So this links in with point 2.

6. Update Your Website

   I say “update because” if you are reading this you have a website….right? If you don’t then you need one, NOW. Even if it is a static page with a phone number on it on a free hosted blog you need to have a website. It is dirt cheap to get your own domain and hosting. My hosting provider Just Host has been great and I recommend it to my clients because I have experienced value, ease and access. Potential clients will look for you online and if they don’t find a website there will be questions raised. But updating it regularly is essential too. You want people going back to it so they remember you and what you do.

7. Share

   Use YouTube, Slideshare, Scribd and Google Docs or whatever to share your knowledge. It gives you great traffic to your website, credibility to your brand and is good fun to boot. What’s more getting your brand on other people’s sites is hard to achieve but by sharing your knowledge using these social tools you might be surprised and find your knowledge and content turning up in all sorts of places.

2009 was a big year for me. I finally went out on my own and started my own business after being made redundant. At times it has been a struggle but largely the sailing has been smooth. I thought I would get 2010 off to a positive start by reflecting on the successes of 2009 and at the same time give some link love to some of my clients who have supported me so well over the last six months.

Subrosa Solutions

The projects at Subrosa, a registered Training Organisation (RTO) in Hindley Street focussing on Security, are both interesting and challenging. My role here has largely been instructional design but I spend a lot of time having to think outside of the box because Monika is so innovative in her thinking. Subrosa have been involved with e-learning for quite a few years now and for this reason they are always thinking of new ways to implement their ideas.
This year we will be looking at expanding on the successes of 2009 by extending the Moodle courses (Certificate II in Security Operations and Certificate III in Investigative Services) with more Articulate learning objects, Youtubes, and Moodle activities. We will be taking a very close look at e-assessment (in an innovative way that I need to be a little hush-hush about) and also working on streamlining the Subrosa suite of web offerings.
Please contact Subrosa to learn more about their Training and Investigations solutions.

Smith and Georg

Dave and Linda are the key people with whom I work at Smith and Georg, a RTO situated in Forreston in the Adelaide Hills. Smith and Georg won an Innovations Grant in 2009 and I was the e-learning consultant for their project. My role was predominantly focussed on mentoring the team through the hurdles of installing, developing and populating their own Moodle installation.
The ChemNet project proved to be an extremely valuable learning experience for all involved with Professional Development being one of the major outcomes. The course, which contains plenty of video and dynamic learning objects, is still being developed and is undergoing some student trials now but it is looking like being the best online Chemical Certification course in Australia.
If you know someone who is needs Chemical Certification send them over to Smith and Georg.

Quality Automotive Training

Tom from Quality Automotive Training, a RTO in Adelaide’s South, decided to make the move into e-learning this year and have jumped ahead in leaps and bounds. Initially brought on board to install and develop their Moodle installation, I later took on the role of mentoring them through the processes of DIY Moodle. Barry at QAT has taken to his new extended role of e-learning course developer with absolute passion. Aided by the use of objects from LORN, the courses are looking polished and engaging and will be huge for their VET in Schools students.
Please contact Quality Automotive Training to learn more about their training solutions.

I took the opportunity today to finally change my website from Joomla to Wordpress. When I first put my site together in Joomla it was a steep learning curve and I never really got to terms with the “articles” “categories” way that that Joomla worked.

Whenever I put sites up for clients I have found Wordpress to be much more user friendly as a CMS. The other great aspect of Wordpress is the sheer ease of adding plugins and widgets. My philosophy when it comes to building sites for clients is centred on creating sites that the client can completely manage themselves. For this reason I tend to recommend Wordpress as I believe it is the superior CMS based on usability and it also makes an ideal starting block for many small businesses.

I welcome any comments on this assertion especially as this is my first post on the new site and it marks the start of my New Years Resolution to start practicing what I preach and get some serious blogging happening again.