We were fortunate to have GamblingCompliance CEO Greg Kilminster stop in this week for a chat during a visit to their Washington office. Headquartered in London, GamblingCompliance is your classic online publishing business, putting out strong content that they sell through the various channels.
We’ll have more on Greg in a future member profile. One thing in particular that struck me is his commitment to eLearning. While the rest of the world conjures who should work in pajamas vs. the possibilities of my innovating with my co-worker Katrina in the kitchen at lunch every day, I feel the potential of eLearning should register higher for us. I’m staring at a headline in The Washington Post this week: “U-Va [University of Virginia] embraces the online lecture model.” Says Professor Philip Zelikow: “True, it’s a lot of conversations to have with the professor, and you don’t get to talk back directly. But on the plus side, you get to stop, pause, fast forward, rewind—or if you get tired of the professor, just turn him off. So, welcome to The Modern World.”
What seems to make eLearning so attractive these days is just what SIPA members often speak about in a more general sense—it fits into customers’ workflows. They can watch it any time, and as Zelikow—who served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission and is a member of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board—mentioned, you can go back and forth as other technologies and real life interrupt.
Zelikow refers to the advantage of being able to “read particular passages from a textbook or another source just as that information is most relevant: when a student is about to watch a related lecture.” This struck me as very similar to what SIPA is doing with our Book of Models webinars. If you’re signed up for this Wednesday’s webinar, you get the related chapter in Dan Brown’s highly regarded book. This reinforcement can be a crucial tool for learning. Zelikow is also delighted to be freed up to lead discussions with his students every Tuesday, instead of just reciting the material. He calls it the “most powerful design” in his 20 years of teaching.
How do you get started? If you’re doing webinars, you’re probably more than halfway there. There was a wonderful SIPA webinar given by Jonathan Ray of Access Intelligence and Bradden Blair from Contexo University last March that members can access on our website. (Both the recording and transcript are there.) You can be sure there will also be much discussion on eLearning at SIPA’s Annual Conference, June 5-7 in Washington, D.C.
Ray and Blair said the key to getting into eLearning is getting to know the ADDIE model, an instructional design standard with five phases—analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. They go into exceptional detail in the webinar. They also delve into instructor compensation, pricing—they sell programs per seat—and engagement, where they agree with Zelikow about the importance of a live component. Said Blair: “I think the empirical research out there on just human learning and cognition has shown that the more that you can engage the learners and ask them to do something in response to that content, the greater likelihood there is going to be a retention.”
Zelikow’s massive open online course (MOOC) offers people around the world a free dive into higher education at its best. In all, about 47,000 people registered for it. Yes, it’s free—it’s a huge industry; Coursera, edX and Khan Academy are some of the huge players—but for specialized publishers offering their highly niched content, the profit potential is obviously high.
It can also create some personalities in your ranks, never a bad thing. And the bottom line—well, besides the actual bottom line—is that both students and instructors seem to prefer eLearning. Even the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William Kirwan, said both factions are “more satisfied.”
As Kilminster left our office—excited about SIPA’s London Conference in September—we were excited to see a member looking to take his classic publishing business in new directions. We’re happy to both lead, as we did with the webinar, and follow closely as he and other members pursue this road. More reports to come.
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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @RonnatSIPA
