LinkedIn Connections and Generic Invites

I know many bloggers have an open connection policy, and that’s great for them, but I am generally more restrictive in who I connect with on LinkedIn. I prefer to connect with people who I could actually say something intelligent about if asked for an introduction. However, over the past few months, I’ve noticed an increase in invitations from people whose names I don’t recognize.  The majority of these invites use the generic boilerplate text (something like “I’d like to add you to my professional network”). Frankly, if you can’t be bothered to write one sentence to customize an invitation, you’re probably not a particularly beneficial connection to have.

When I get an invite from someone I don’t know, I sometimes reply with a message similar to the one below. I’m borrowing heavily from Scott Allen’s example in How to Politely Decline a LinkedIn Invitation, so give him all the credit for the idea and most of the actual text:

Thanks for inviting me to connect on LinkedIn. I would love to start a dialog, get to know each other, and find out how we might be of service to each other. Feel free to send me a message here through LinkedIn.

However, I do use LinkedIn as they recommend; I only accept invitations from people I know well professionally, and in most cases have actually worked with on some kind of project. I’m looking for conversations before connections. Generally, I interact with someone for several months before accepting or sending an invitation.

If you’re truly interested in a relationship and not just a link, I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Christy Tucker

My experience is similar to Scott’s; maybe 5% of people actually reply to a response like this.  As he aptly observes, “Makes me wonder how much value there could possibly have been in that link in the first place if they aren’t even willing to start a dialog and get to know anything about each other.”

I generally accept invites from people whose names I recognize from Twitter, #lrnchat, blogs, etc., even sometimes when boilerplate text is used. But if it’s a generic invite, you’re relying on my memory to immediately place the name, and I probably don’t always make the connection between a real name and a Twitter name. So please, if you’re going to send me an invite, please take the time to customize the message and remind me how I know you. And if I don’t know you, please start with a blog comment or some other communication rather than using the LinkedIn invite as the first contact. It’s not that I won’t connect with you ever, just that I’d like a conversation before an invitation.

What about you? Do you accept invitations from anyone, or do you filter them? Am I the only one with a pet peeve about generic invites, or do you find them irritating too?

Image Credit: LinkedIn Outdoor Banner (2007-0032 0002) by tychay

Designing e-Learning for Maximum Motivation

These are my live blogged notes from the Designing e-Learning for Maximum Motivation webinar by Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions. Any typos, mistakes, incomplete thoughts, etc. are likely mine, not the presenter’s. My side comments in italics.

Quick Summary of the Motivation Rules

1. Say less
2. More challenging
3. Delay judgment
4. Content-rich feedback
5. Levels of difficulty
6. Learner control

Introduction

“The goal of e-learning is to create meaningful performance change in the learner.”

Organizations choose e-learning for other reasons (cost, access, etc.), but as an instructional designers, we’re focused on the performance change

Assumptions about Learning

• Learning is active
• People learn best in highly particular ways
• Learners must actively construct meaning

“Learning isn’t a transitive verb; I can’t “learn” you this.”

Why should we care about motivation?

• Learning process must be initiated actively
• No one else is present at learning even
• Cannot rely on social motivators (well, you could blend traditional e-learning with social learning, via social media or traditional forms…)
• Rewards are indirect or absent

Learner Motivation

Cynical thoughts, but most learners aren’t intrinsically motivated

• Media/animation isn’t enough. (Avatars are cool, but aren’t enough unless they are doing something instructionally)
• They want the shortest, least painful way through a course. They look for shortcuts.
• Traditional path: reading text without purpose, unhelpful feedback, memorize trivia, long unbroken narratives (I think “narrative” here just means long blocks of text)
• “Expedited” path: Hit next without thinking, multitask, guess without consequence, random actions until give up. Most people will pick this in traditional e-learning.

IDs need to create experiences where learners won’t aim for the expedited path

What we want

• Read text to satisfy a need
• Active involvement in meaningful tasks (task-oriented, not content oriented)

What we need

• Don’t rely on default navigation
• Tasks require attention
• Guesses is unproductive
• Failure leads to a dead end rather than default completion

Question about kinesthetic/tactile learners
Answer: He’s being careful to not totally discount learning styles, but to say we’re not in specific boxes that way. “Auditory” learners still can learn visually. Think about learning through multiple channels, but not focus on specific learning styles

Question on overused Flash features
Answer: Superficial animation, stuff that is visually appealing but meaningless instructionally

Instructional Interactivity

Not all interactivity is instructional. The clicky clicky bling bling concept, although he’s not using those words

• Context
• Challenge
• Activity
• Feedback

Content is important, but only as far as people will use that content to do something.

Six Rules to Create Motivation

These can be used even without the full CCAF model.

1. Just say less
• Formal objectives (we need objectives, but we don’t need to tell learners the full formal objectives)
• Technical requirements/compliance documents, especially at the beginning of e-learning. Put it at the end if it has to be there. Make content-heavy resources available, but only when users choose
• Things that matter only to the SME
2. Make it more challenging
• Not just making it harder, but something that makes you think
• “Achievable challenges with appropriate risks”
• Withhold information until learner asks for it
• Ambiguity isn’t always bad
3. Delay judgment
• Goes contrary to what we usually think about immediate feedback
• Give time to think and correct yourself
• Include an “I’m ready” button
• Increases memory (I wonder if there’s research support for this about moving things to long term memory)
4. Content-rich feedback
• Wait until they are engaged and interacting to put content
• Consequences for actions
• Naturally chunks content based on actions
• Interest is high after you make a wrong choice; you want to know where you went wrong
5. Create levels of difficulty
• Challenges grow as skills develop
• Expand content & functionality as levels grow
• Vary how much help is provided
6. Give more control to learners
• Prevents “learner as victim”
• Give learners responsibility
• Places you could give choices: pace, sequence, review, construct answers, seek help, choose when to be tested

Question: How do you convince people that interactions aren’t a waste of time?
Answer: You may have to do some work to “sell” the course and convince people

Question: What if you really need lots of text?
Answer: Make a nice resource web page and give them a reason why they should read it. Don’t make it e-learning.

Question: Better to read on-screen text or not
Answer: Literally reading every word on the screen is the worst. Narration can do a good job for emotional content, but highly technical content may be better without narration. Text is easier to read and review. The more complex, the less useful narration.

Image Credit: Motivate 2 by tedeytan

Weekly Bookmarks (9/18/11)

• Taking the Load Off a Learnerʼs Mind: Instructional Design for Complex Learning (Paul Kirschner) – Academia.edu

  Kirschner uses the 4C/ID model to show how to reduce cognitive load for complex tasks. Some skepticism is warranted due to the heavy reliance on cognitive load theory, but there are some solid strategies here: simple-to-complex sequencing, just-in-time information (supportive and procedural), etc.

  tags: 4C_ID instructionaldesign cognitiveload

• van Merriënboer’s 4C/ID Model and Instructional Design

  Don Clark’s overview of the 4C/ID model, outlining the four components (4C) and the four instructional strategies for different audiences and types of knowledge

  tags: instructionaldesign 4C_ID

  • The Four-Component Instructional Design model or 4C/ID-model working assumption is that complex learning platforms can be described by four basic components (van Merriënboer, Clark, et al., 2002), which in turn creates a blueprint for the design of the learning platform:
  • Learning Tasks — concrete, authentic, whole task experiences that are provided to learners in order to promote schema construction for non-recurrent aspects and, to a certain degree, rule automation by compilation for recurrent aspects.
  • Supportive Information — information that is supportive to the learning and performance  of non-recurrent aspects of learning tasks
  • JIT Information — information that is prerequisite to the learning and performance of  recurrent aspects of learning tasks
  • Part-task Practice — practice items that are provided to learners in order to promote rule  automation for selected recurrent aspects of the whole complex skill

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Bookmarks (9/11/11)

• CAST: About UDL

  Overview of Universal Design for Learning, with links to examples, resources, and further information

  tags: accessibility instructionaldesign udl

• Making Learning Technologies Accessible

  Accessibility guidelines and support documents from Pearson. The guidelines are based on Section 508 and WCAG 2.0. The training and training materials aren’t openly available, but the guidelines and templates for accessibility reviews are.

  tags: accessibility e-learning section508 WCAG

• Nuts and Bolts: The 10-Minute Instructional Design Degree by Jane Bozarth : Learning Solutions Magazine

  Practical tips for those starting in the field who don’t have a formal background in instructional design, such as designing assessments first.

  tags: instructionaldesign newid assessment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Weekly Bookmarks (9/4/11)

• WebAIM: WebAIM: Web Accessibility for Designers

  Infographic with principles for accessible design

  tags: accessibility webdesign

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

eLearning Learning August Top Posts

The eLearning Learning site got a major upgrade a few weeks ago, with a new design that has more of a magazine feel and shows more images. I know many of my readers are new to the field of e-learning, or hoping to transition. eLearning Learning is a great site to get a snapshot of what people are talking about in the field without being as overwhelming as subscribing to dozens of individual blogs can be. Personally, I do subscribe to many of the blogs featured on this site, but not everything, and I often find little gems that I didn’t see through my other channels.

In the black bar at the top of the page, you can change editions to see different time frames. This is a quick way to see the top posts for an entire month, for example. I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my posts, Questioning Gagné and Bloom’s Relevance, at the top of the page for the August top e-learning posts. These top posts are selected based on various social signals like tweets, social bookmarks, etc.

Here are some other top posts you might enjoy:

• From Instructional Design to Enterprise Community Facilitation
• Top Resources for Instructional Designers
• PowerPoint 2010: Animating a Venn Diagram
• E-Learning: An Impossible Dream? 
• Questioning social media
• mLearning Best Practices: How Much Content is Too Much for Mobile Learning?
• iPad Applications In Bloom’s Taxonomy 
• Educate the Mobile Generation: Convert WORD documents to ePub and MOBI
• ID in the Wild: Instructional Video — and More — with Rouxbe
• How to Motivate Learners without Rewards: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

Thanks to Tony Karrer for managing this great resource. eLearning Learning refers about as much traffic to me as Google (if I add together all the different Google URLs), so I know other people are finding it useful as well.

By the way, if you’re wondering about that top referrer, that’s a support forum for WordPress.com blogs that links to my 2008 post on Hunting for Subscriber Stats. Three years later, there still isn’t a good way to see your overall RSS subscriber traffic for WordPress.com blogs, so people are still fumbling around with kludges like my method.