...and I got a certificate and everything!

So my 3 days of "e-learning fundamentals" are complete. All in all, I don't think it was 3 days wasted, but I'm not sure some of my classmates would feel the same way. Some of my classmates were a little surprised that I wasn't disappointed with the outcome, considering that I've had been involved in e-learning in one form or another for about 5 years now. My logic was this: I'm never opposed to learning new stuff, and there's a lot of stuff I've had to figure out for myself over the last year or so when e-learning really started taking off where I was working. It was nice to learn that I'd made some of the right decisions. That has a value for me that's pretty tough to underestimate.

I'm inclined to give the facilitator a bit of leeway for a couple of reasons: one, it was the first delivery of the course; and, two, he had a really wide range of skills and expertise and personal agendas in the class.

Yeah, there were some flaws, and some clear misses about the message regarding e-learning, but the course has some serious potential. I have a pretty good rapport with the program director for the Adult Ed. certificate and she wants to sit down with me, and some of the facilitators to talk about how to reposition the course so that the messages are clearer.

I really had to work at restraining myself from throwing too much of my own expertise into the delivery mix. I mean, I felt bad for the facilitator, but there were a lot of experiences (not just mine) he could have drawn upon to help illustrate his points.

Today, for example, I passed around a sheet asking any of my classmates who wanted a list of some of the resources and tools and links I'd used in my own discovery of the e-learning process. There were 20 of us in the class, including me and the other program staff...I got 19 signatures and email addresses.

Wow.

So I'll have to figure out just how to compile all this stuff, because its going to be a lot more work than I thought. I'm not sure if I'm going to create an email, or upload the content to my consulting site, or even start an e-learning blog separate from this one.

If only I'd had these opportunities when I was consulting... *sigh*