The Boom and Bust of Social Media

Okay, I’m predicting another mass dot-com die off within 18-24 months of this writing. This evolutionary catastrophe will pale in comparison to the scope of the dot-com era demise in 2001, but it’ll be just as bloody, quick, and meaningful. What I’m talking about is the consolidation, re purposing, demise, and afterlife of social media. We are due for a mass-feeding, a frenzy of acquisition and merger, and rapid re-channeling of investor capital.

So here are my reasons:

1. Time isn’t elastic. Time is scarce. It’s finite. Certainly there’s not enough to go around. The average consumer of social media can only watch so many Tweet’s, post so many pictures, read so many updates to people’s lives. Even with the use of mobile applications, there’s only a finite number of things humans can pay attention to and absorb. At some point, consumers make practical decisions to abandon maintaining their blogs or Facebook page, or, reading digital content, and will scale back their activities.That diminishes demand and diminishes readership/views.

2. Too many outlets. There’s an abundance of social media channels these days. Too many, actually, given the time scarcity problem.

3. A lack of monetization. Right. Financially, all of these companies are fiscal disasters and nobody has come up with a way to make a lot of money from them.  They are huge resource drains requiring ever-more attention to software, database, and telecommunications resources. The bigger it gets, the more it costs, and there’s no monetization model feeding the growth, or, building off of the economy of scale. What is built is brand, and online community, and maybe somebody smart will come around and leverage those things. Right now, however, online advertising revenues are at record lows and nobody knows how to make money with these assets.

4. Investors will wise up. It’s been five years since Facebook launched. Hence, that five year itch will creep in; somebody – somewhere – is going to ask: “Hey – where’s my 20%”? There’s no mass IPO (Initial Public Offering) hysteria anymore (that was _so_ 1990) so there’s no get rich quick scheme for investors. Sooner or later, investors will want a plan for returning their investment and in the face of these other problems (the elasticity of time, rampant competition, diminishing ad revenue rates, no real business model), the prudent investor is going to determine they can invest their money in something else.

5. Too Much Noise. Twitter is great and I use it all of the time, but I think I spend more time ignoring it than reading it these days, simply because it’s just intellectual pollution. Click this, buy that, save these things, see my pic here… Twitter hasn’t developed a practical way to control spam so the medium risks irrelevance.  It’s getting to a point where I feed Twitter through RSS which really isn’t novel, but, it does allow me to control the spam and focus-in on reading stuff that matters. Same with YouTube – it makes “99-percent of everything is crap” proof-positive.

So, I’m gearing up for another dot-com die off, and in particular, the remnants of the Web 2.0 and social media population boom. What’s interesting is to think about where the content will go: where will all of our thoughts, pictures, ideas, conversations – petabytes of data stored on private assets liquidated to return something to shareholders… where will all of that go? I think it’s an extraordinary idea: the collective imagination of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people disconnected from the grid, then, archived somewhere, like in an Indiana Jones-like warehouse, the intellectual capital just a wasted return for a for-profit enterprise, or fossil’s stuck in a tar pit for later archaeological investigation. Fascinating…

R

A Magic Quadrant – Differentiation vs Cost Leadership Strategies with IT Spend

Business guru Michael Porter espoused for generic competitive strategies: industry-wide differentiation, focused differentiation, industry-wide cost leadership, and focused cost leadership. Let’s think about Porter’s ideas in the context of tech spending.

Differentiation Strategy

Companies that seek industry-wide differentiation have a competitive advantage in a broad range of industry segments. On the other hand, companies looking for focused differentiation attempt to create a competitive advantage in fewer industries. In either case, the company is better than other competitors in terms of scale, quality, features, support, distribution, or delivery.  Indicators of a successful differentiation strategy is premium pricing or ownership of unique intellectual property.

Cost Leadership Strategy

Industry-wide competitors look for competitive advantage by offering lower prices than anybody else on products or services in a broad range of segments, whereas focused cost leadership limits the strategy to a smaller set of industries. Because the company is trying to outdo its competitors on price alone, the principle problem the company faces is infrastructure: automation and efficiency is necessary to keep downward pressure on costs.

Where Tech is Applied

Under both strategies, technology is applied to both products and processes. Technology can be used to enhance products and give them more features than similar products from competitors; that differentiates the product. Technology can be applied to business processes to create more reliable scheduling, less defects, faster order processing, and better economy of scale. And generally speaking, the first is a problem of revenue (how many units of X-product can I sell? How many hours for X-service can I bill for?) versus a problem of expense (how can I control the erosion of my margin? How can I continuously improve to lower waste and scrap costs?).

Managing the Technology Portfolio

In thinking about these ideas, business managers have to look at their business strategy and think how their tech portfolio – the hardware, software, database, and telecom assets they’ve invested in – complements their objective. Unfortunately, what we usually see is a mis-match between the portfolio and business opportunity.

Differentiation Example:

1. The industry-wide differentiators maybe blows a bulk of its IT spend on sales, production control, and accounting software instead of R&D. It never introduces new features or takes pole-position in the market with new products. It follows industry leaders. It fails to innovate on its own. It never gets closer to its customers.

2. The focused differentiators maybe blows its IT spend on a broad online marketing campaign rather than honing-in on search attributes that bring it closer to its own geographic region; or, it doesn’t spend money on creating value-added self-service apps that bring them more “organically” closer to the consumer.

Cost Leadership Examples:

1. The industry-wide competitor maybe wants more market share and places strategic emphasis on broad marketing and advertising. This improves sales and increases volume. However, without an investment in infrastructure, their costs increase exponentially: their economy of scale isn’t refined. So, as more orders come in, the less efficient they get, missing deadlines, harming their brand, and pulling in more over-time, eroding margins.

2. The focused competitor may have invested significantly in cost controls and internal process automation. However, intake may still be manually compiled or hand-entered. They made a huge back-end investment to improve process automation, but a similar investment on in-taking the order into the process wasn’t made, so you get a bad GIGO effect (garbage in, garbage out), which diminishes the initial tech return.

Align the Tech Portfolio with the Business Plan

If you’re looking at your business plan, consciously think about where tech dollars are being spent. Is it being spent in a way that complements the business plan? Is IT spending helping you innovate and differentiate your products to a bunch of customers, or, is it helping to bring your niche customers closer to you, or, provide extra value in the transaction?

Instead of saying, “We need PC’s so we can use email and make spreadsheets”, how about, “We need a tablet PC so we can automate order inflow and ensure accuracy, meeting our focused cost leadership strategy”.

Instead of saying, “We need to sell more – online, onground, anywhere!”, how about, “We need to balance our ad-spend with IT-spend so we can create an efficient economy of scale first, and then push broad advertising”.

Instead of saying, “We need a website”, how about, “Most of our customers call from the field. We need a search strategy so when customers in our geographic region and industry want our products, and they’re on their mobile phone, we’re the first name that pops up, and the first number they’ll dial.”

Instead of saying, “We need a good order management system,” how about, “How, specifically, can this system automate my business process and reduce my labor costs? Where can I reduce headcount or touch points… friction?”

So, think of this as a simple quadrant/magic box diagram (x: broad, narrow | y: differentiation, cost). Where is your IT spending generally hitting? Thinking in these terms will help create a lens by which to view your tech spending, balance where your tech portfolio is leaning, and see where the spend complements your business plan.

R

Press Release: Announcing a Google Apps Authorized Reseller in Vancouver, WA

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Russell P. Mickler, CISSP
Principal, Mickler & Associates, Technology Consulting
www.micklerandassociates.com

MICKLER & ASSOCIATES, INC. EARNS GOOGLE APPS AUTHORIZED RESELLER STATUS

Vancouver, WA – Friday August 14, 2009 – Mickler & Associates, Inc. of Vancouver, Washington – a technology services provider – has been selected as an authorized reseller of the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools. As an early adopter and advocate of cloud computing, Mickler & Associates, Inc. is enthusiastic at the opportunity to deliver the power and ease of use of Google Apps (used by over one million companies worldwide) to  small mid-range businesses in Portland, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington.

“The Google Apps Reseller program will help us enhance the value we bring to our clients,” said Mickler. “We simply feel the future of computing is ubiquity: information, everywhere, and acquiring immediate capability at fractions of the cost of ownership. Google Apps is the platform that will help take our clients there.”

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations. With Google Apps, users can use applications such as Gmail(TM) webmail service, Google Talk(TM) instant messaging service, Google Calendar(TM) calendaring service, Google Docs(TM) program, Google Sites(TM) web application, and Google Video(TM) for business on their own domain to work together more effectively. Best of all, it’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.

The Google Apps Reseller program includes resellers, consultants and independent software vendors that sell, service and customize Google Apps Premier Edition for their customers. Mickler & Associates, Inc. received training, support and deployment services from Google, as well as access to APIs for integrating Google Apps into their customers’ business operations.

Founded in 2004, Mickler & Associates, Inc. provides IT consulting services nationwide. Russell Mickler, Principal Consultant, has over 15 years of professional experience leading and managing IT organizations. In addition to earning his Master’s Degree in technology, Mickler is a Computer Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE).  Mickler teaches technology courses for many universities across the country.

Google, Google Apps, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video are trademarks of Google Inc.

Google Apps: Recommended Steps for Importing Mail

Hello Friend…

If you’re reading this, some of you may have already tried what I did. When implementing Google Apps and using the Microsoft Outlook sync tool, you may have found that the mail import process either bombed or was incomplete. As a work-around to that problem, you were clever, and you imported a backup of a *.pst using Outlook’s import tool into the MAPI Google Apps profile. But then you found that you can’t copy or move email into mail folder objects in Outlook, and Outlook produced the following error message:

“Can’t move the items. The folders you are trying to change do not support this operation. Could not complete this operation because the service provider does not support it.”

You see, the *.pst import your did dumps to a local Google Apps *.pst in the user’s profile. This content isn’t acknowledged by Google Apps so it’s never sync’d, and, you can’t move objects around.

So here’s a fix – and my recommended setups for importing mail from Outlook (either a stand-alone MAPI config or Exchange config).

1. Go into your Google Dashboard and under the Advanced Tools, at the bottom under User Email Uploads, make sure the checkbox to Allow users to upload mail using the Email Migration API is checked true. Like me, you may have been doing your tests using an administrative account, which isn’t subject to this toggle, and for whom the API is _always_ on. Right. Makes a big difference.

2. Verify minimum requirements with Outlook and Windows. Appropriate service packs and what not.

3. Login to the web manually and authorize the user’s account. If the user account hasn’t been used yet, they still need to confirm the Terms of Service. Do this first. Make sure your setup password works as well.

4. Run the Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

5. Provide the user account’s credentials.

6. When offered to import from another MAPI profile, at this time, check all but email. Leave email unchecked.

7. State your preference for error reporting to Google.

8. Outlook will launch. Select the new Google Apps profile.

9. Outlook will then start populating as the Google App utility in the System Tray begins initial sync. Allow this to play out until it’s done with initial sync.

10. Close Outlook.

11. Go get the Google Email Uploader. If the machine is regularly patched, it’ll install quickly and do nothing; launch it from the icon created on the desktop. If the machine needs the more recent .NET framework, it’ll download it.

12. Launch the uploader, targetting the user’s Google credentials. The Uploader will identify the MAPI profiles to the Exchange Server and/or of Outlook Express. Select the folders you want to pull over – in my opinion, select the email containers you want to bring over.

13. Allow the tool to convert/enumerate the mail containers into Labels. This will create the mail hierarchy in Google Apps.

14. Proceed. This sync can take a long time and the user has to remain out of Outlook. It’ll take hours for really big containers, many thousands of email messages. The app will announce when it’s done.

15. Open Outlook and select your Google Apps profile. You can now move around content and the material is sync’d to Google; note the disclaimer that it may take a day or two for all of the content to appear online and to be sync’d back in to the Outlook thick client.

After this is done, your user will be very disappointed that the autofill for Outlook is no longer working. This is because their old Outlook.nk2 file that stores the autocomplete info is still named in the name of the old profile. To address this, follow the instructions from Microsoft, but you’ll want to rename or copy the *.nk2 file to the exact name of the Google Apps profile in MAPI. I’ve had the best success actually copying this profile name into the filename of the object. Restart Outlook; your autocomplete should be just swell.

In situations where you have already done most of this but are having the problem with the users folders, instead of starting over, try going into Outlook under the Google Apps profile. Then, manually delete the folders. This will remove them from the local Google Apps *.pst file. Then, exit, and launch the Mail Import Tool we were just discussing.

After that, it should work like a charm.

R

Education: Free for All

I’m taking a class with other instructors right now and we came across the issue of the future of education.

My message wasn’t typical: the economies of scale afforded by online learning will make it the more desirable modality for teaching. Administration burdens will go down; the number of students self-servicing their education will go up – so, school administration will be disintermediated. Further, consumers will come to expect an online component even when attending onground universities. As materials can be easily replicated and copied, then the delivery of education becomes more like delivering any digital content, subject to Moore’s Law, which will bring the marginal costs down to zero. The future of education is tailored to the interests of each specific student, available anywhere at any time – even to the most impoverished of society – and free. Totally costless: both in delivery and in receipt.  What could possibly be unique and not digital, thus difficult to replicate, is the instructor: methods, style, experience, to bring the issues closer to the student. That could possibly be offered at a premium. But, in the next 25 years, I would suggest an 80/20 rule will be in play: 20-percent of post-secondary education will be tuition-based and offered online and onground; 80-percent will be exclusively online, and either a combination of free/tuition-based.

A good discussion and some interesting support came out of it. An article from FastCompany discussing “edupunks” trying to transform the system, and, examples like WikiVersity and MITCourseware. Generally speaking, the only differentiator that universities will be able to provide will be the talent and skills of its adjuncts and professors. I’m looking forward to that bidding war (grin).

Over the next decade, I think we’ll experience a dramatic earthquake of change in post-secondary education that revolves around choice, self-service, free, digital distribution and replication, and mobility. These forces will dramatically alter the accessibility of education and truly make learning available to all. Whether or not that educators and administrators are prepared for the change, though, is another matter entirely.

R

How to Enumerate Fields in an Access Table

Okay.

Imagine you want to copy one record in a table to another record in a table. Difficult to do with a nested SQL statement because it’d want to over-write the autonumber Primary Key; Access would return an error. Also, at times, you may wish to perform some level of validation over the data you’re inserting.

Usually, you’d have to pull all of the table into a recordset and deal with each insert/update by specific fieldnames. Well, instead, here’s a fast piece of code to open up the data definition of a table and cycle through its fields:

Dim frst As Recordset
Dim f As Field

Set frst = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(“tbl_name”)

For Each f In frst.Fields
msgbox f.name & ” ” & f.type
next

rst.close

Pretty cool, eh? What this code does is cycle through the table name you define and display the fieldame as a string, and, returns the type of field as an int. That allows you to control the update statement to your target record based on the data type and a SELECT/CASE model. Here’s an example – notice that I’m avoiding updating two PK/FK’s that I’m wanting to play with:

If f.Name <> “rent_id” And f.Name <> “property_id” Then

Select Case f.Type

Case 1  ‘ Boolean

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = ” & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & ” WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 4  ‘ Long

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = ” & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & ” WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 5  ‘ Currency

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = “”" & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & “”" WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 7  ‘ Double

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = ” & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & ” WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 8  ‘ Date

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = “”" & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & “”" WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 10 ‘ Text

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = “”" & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & “”" WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

Case 12 ‘ Memo

If Nz(DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”)) <> 0 Then
DoCmd.RunSQL (“UPDATE tbl_rent SET ” & f.Name & ” = “”" & DLookup(“” & f.Name & “”, “tbl_rent”, “property_id=” & property_id & “”) & “”" WHERE control_number = “”" & control & “”";”)
End If

End Select

End If

Next

In each of these CASES, I’m handling the quote characters (“”"”) a little differently based on Access’ understanding of what is a number and what is a string. I’m also updating the PK/FK’s elsewhere in my code and avoiding over-writing them with the loop. Essentially, it’s just a way to conditionally handle the inserts and updates by data type. You can turn it into a useful function by passing the tablename.

Just one for your notes – it saved me some _big_ time.
R

Googly Ambitions

You know, there’s nothing wrong with assertiveness. Or ambition. But sometimes, there comes a point to decide where you begin and where you end, what you’re good at, and maybe what you’re not good at. Even, perhaps, what you shouldn’t do, even though you can.

I think Google is one of the most successful companies in American history. I respect it immensely and not just in terms of its financial accomplishments but for its continued enthusiasm to make the world searchable – even if a fraction of their endeavors are actually commercial opportunities. However, I can’t help thinking that it’s headed down the wrong path.

It’s like this: when I talk to my students about strategy, I talk about “core competency” – what does a business need to do, and do _well_ in order to succeed at its business plan. Google’s core competency is specialized talent, huge resources, unique algorithms and knowledge, and an economy of scale that makes it cheaper (everyday) to offer their services. They do search well. Owning ~70% of the search market is pretty cool. Even when they began investing in space and power R&D – which seemed really “out there” for a search engine – I could still see the connection: electricity is one of the only cost components in their model they can’t control. I get that.  Space and information flow, satellites, imaging. Okay, I can get that, too.

Recently, though, Google has been extraordinarily aggressive in breaching areas of technology that already have good commercial and non-commercial niche players.

Example, Chrome. Despite the fact that Google subsidizes Mozilla’s budget, and FireFox is a pretty decent open browser, they created a competitor. Their introduction of Chrome creates a schizsm in the “open” world and refocuses attention between two open products, syphoning talent and creating divisions within user and developer communities.

Example, operating systems. Despite the fact that there are really competent distro’s of Linux out there, like Ubuntu, Google is dead-set on creating their own operating system.

Example, phones. Android directly completes with iPhone o/s and has recently prompted the withdraw of CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple’s Board, citing among other things, too many conflicts of interests.

I believe there’s a danger in being too many things to all people. That’s never really worked in tech (Microsoft, IBM, AOL…?). In particular, I think Google is in a position to help support and reinforce what great open and commercial products are already in the marketplace – rather than try to compete with what already works, exists, and is thriving, instead, Google should do what it can to promote these solutions and integrate well with them, to offer real choice to consumers. Ubuntu is great! Support Ubuntu. FireFox is great! Incorporate your Chrome ideas under Mozilla. Skype is great – acquire it, fix the problems and licensing issues with the tech, and Googlize it!

I also think there’s a danger in spreading your core competencies (resources, talent, economy of scale) too thin. You can be really good at one thing, but you cannot be great at all things. Not only that, governments (US and EU particularly) don’t like the smell of monopoly, and when one company wants to be your o/s, your browser, your search engine, your productivity applications, your merchant services, your cell phones, your mail routing and content filtering system, your mapping system, your shopping cart and business system… whew! Well, you get the picture. That’s not sustainable and will likely be questioned. And you thought Microsoft was bad? Yikes!

I believe in Google. I still think they’re a force for positive marketplace competition and change. However, I have to say that, lately, Google is making more enemies than it had before and is putting its friendships and alliances on unstable footing. What’s really great about Google has been its historically complementary approach to “open” computing and an agnostic approach to compatibility. This is changing – Google wants to own it all, and it seems to be blinded by its own greatness. And that can only lead to its destruction.

Man, I hope that they refocus on what they’re really good at (Search, open standards, integration, cooperation) soon; get back to “core competency”. Hey, I love these guys! Yet I’d hate to see them collapse under the weight of their own hubris.

R

Online vs Onground Learning – A Comparison

Just some homework that I had to do this week for a class that I’m taking…

What differences do you see between the online classroom vs. the face-to-face classroom?

There are a number of different facets about online learning that make it distinctive from traditional onground settings (Gibbons & Wentworth, 2001).

1. Asynchronous Delivery.

2. Andragogical Theory.

3. Self-Awareness.

4. Repetitive Framework.

5. Socratic Teaching Methods.

Taken in aggregate, the online experience is a self-directed endeavor performed at the student’s own time and pace, demanding their own management and attention to deliverables, who’re engaged in a well-structured process that encourages dialog to relate course concepts to real-life events.

This is probably why we see all online universities have a well-defined, scheduled, and refined delivery process for teaching online courses that is modeled in their software implementation. As well, there are ample resources available in Angel to allow the self-directed learner to research their problems using convenient online tools; instructors can augment these resources by bringing in their own materials available from the online world, particularly leveraging open standards as will be discussed in the next module. And fundamentally, many online teaching experiences center around case studies and evaluations carried on within discussion boards; Bryant & Stratton is no different in all of these aspects.

I’ve found that successful students leverage the online modality: they leverage the network multipliers and economies of scale to produce their deliverables rapidly, manage electronic citation, communicate and negotiate with other learners, use search very proficiently, and can abstract their “presence” online as being connected to their “presence” in other forms of social media or content found on the web. It also means that we instructors must talk less and provide value in other ways that extend our knowledge and skills.  The successful online student will “immerse” themselves and don’t allow the tech to become an obstacle but a tool – a tool that interconnects their ideas, variety of subjects, their work, their play, and their learning all together in one aggregate experience.

In what ways do adult learners learn?

Adult learners learn best when they are able to perform goal-oriented work in a self-directed manner (Lieb, 1991). I’ve also come to understand that adult learners have to understand or be told “why” they’re learning something so that they’re motivated to learn it; just learning theory for the fun of it, or, without a constructive meaning, isn’t useful to the online learner. Further, Lieb suggests that the adult learner is practical – the work has to be relevant: if the tasks complement their professional experiences or interests, and if they can apply what they learned on the job the next day, that creates a sense of relevance with the learner and motivates their activities (Lieb, 1991).

Northern Arizona University Associate Professor Mary Dereshiwsky created a model for keeping the online student actively participating in a web-based classroom. Dereshiwsky calls it the ENGAGE process (Dereshiwsky, 2002):

E. Email.

N. Newsletter.

G. Group.

A. Applause.

G. Gradual.

E. Extra.

Dereshiwsky’s ideas may be a little dated due to changes in the technical spectrum but are nonetheless fairly relevant. She stresses the importance of staying in touch with students and creating a sense of dialog and encouragement; she stresses the importance of community, shared experience, and shared risk; she proposes that the online instructor should go out of their way to encourage the student and denote what they did right over time; lastly, Dereshiwsky focuses on the graduate introduction of material overtime as to avoid a sense of “information overload”, and any way that technology could be used to introduce concepts should be exploited.

I believe Lieb and Dereshiwsky provide a great conceptual framework for dealing with the problem of motivating and encouraging the online student.

In my own teaching experience, I have received the strongest commentary on when I can relate complex technical problems to issues found in the workplace. Positive reinforcement and constructive criticism is vital, but one must be cautious as to the “voice” heard in email, and sometimes, it works best to deliver critical critiques over the phone rather than by email.

In my lectures, I try to take the broad concepts and break them down into meaningful “chunks” of ideas that are easily remembered; example: speed, accuracy, and reliability… if there’s anything to remember about technology, it should do these things. If technology doesn’t do these things, then there’s a problem with implementation.

I’ve also received good feedback for teaching practical skills that students can apply tomorrow once they’re back in the workplace, particularly strategic skills that allow them to control technology and strategy outcomes.

And I’ve encountered a lot of success with applying my blog, video, and written resources to issues concerning the lesson plan – students are able to take advantage of a variety of modes to learn aspects of the lesson.

How can you transfer instruction to the virtual classroom to target all learning styles?

Fundamentally, the online instructor has to put the first foot forward and create an online learning environment that is fun and engaging. Going back to Lieb and Dereskiwsky, the online instructor must take it upon themselves to reach out to students to create a bond, shared experience, and shared sense of community. They must also try to condense complex problems into managable pieces that can relate to the things many students are doing in their own workplaces. And the online instructor has to be prepared to leverage the asynchronous nature of the modality for themselves – perhaps recycling useful content between courses to further engage and motivate students.

I also believe – from my own experience – that the onground lecturer must transform into an online facilitator; there is simply no delivery style online that has us talking for two hours with a blackboard and a piece of chalk. Instead, the instructor is more of a facilitator, a coach, that encourages the self-directed learning of the student, and pushes them to online resources in ways that can allow them to be successful in the classroom. At times, I’ve wrestled with how much help is “too much” – at what point does coaching turn into doing the work for the student? This is arguably a difficult question that every instructor probably has to reconcile on their own terms, but I think a large portion of my success falls in clearly articulating expectations and helping students find the resources they need to be successful. If you can provide a consistent, self-directed, andragogical, transparent framework like this (again, echoing Gibbons & Wentworth), then the adult learner has a foundation for being successful online.
R

1991. Lieb, Stephen. Principles of Adult learning. Found on the World Wide Web on August 2, 2009. URL: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/adults-2.htm

2002. Dereshiwsky, Mary; et al. GetEducated.com LLC. “Motivating & Retaining Adult Learners Online.” Found on the World Wide Web on August 2, 2009. URL: http://www.geteducated.com/images/pdfs/journalmotivateretain.pdf

2001. Gibbons, Wentworth. “Andrological and Pedagogical Training Differents for Online Instructors.” Found on the World Wide Web on August 2, 2009. URL: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall43/gibbons_wentworth43.html