At last week’s eLearning Network (eLN) meeting, ‘Proven Recipes for e-learning Success’, the agenda included not only sessions from recent eLearning Award winners for excellence in e-learning, but also a Pecha Kucha.  The organisers at the eLN events work hard to make their events interactive and as interesting as possible, and the insights and experiences of the e-learning professionals who have all created award winning solutions really kept everyone’s attention.  But it’s always during that particularly notorious after lunch slot where everyone is a bit too full and a bit too tired to concentrate (especially as the food at the Holborn Bars venue is excellent!) when it can be a challenge to keep the audience engaged.  But at last week’s event, this session was taken up by this Pecha Kucha.

Pecha Kucha is usually pronounced in three syllables as "pe-chak-cha", is the Japanese word for the sound of conversation. The equivalent term in English is "chit-chat".  In a business context, it has been developed into a condensed presentation format allows speakers only 6 minutes and 40 seconds to make their point, using 20 slides of just 20 seconds each.  The eLN has launched this as a competition for its members with 4 ‘volunteers’ taking part in the first one.  There was no specified topic, so the speakers had free reign to discuss whatever they wanted.  It was a very enjoyable session as all the presenters approached it slightly differently but all put in a little of their personality to their presentation.  The winner was Matt Brewer of Chubb Insurance who did a fantastic job of the timing yet made his presentation humerous and interesting about what Chubb has achieved as a result of e-learning and what they hope to achieve in the future. 

The approach reflects much of what we are trying to achieve in e-learning; break down the message – whatever that might be - into bite-size, manageable pieces that are easy for the audience to digest.  Even if they have only just finished their lunch... 

Call for user group members

The eLN has recently established a focus group for users of e-learning.  It’s designed to be a community based around what’s important to users’ needs and a chance to pose and answer questions, share knowledge, attend webinars and roundtable discussions.  They are actively recruiting new members so if you are in an organisation currently using e-learning (no vendors please!) and would be interested in joining the focus group, email usergroup@elearningnetwork.org