I really like the ASTD Learning Circuits  Big Question this month, which is “What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?”

This hearkens me back to a blog post I wrote yesterday, Whose Objectives Are They, Anyway? I want have better conversations, discussions, buy-in, and agreement of learning objectives between learner and instructional designer / trainer / instructor within higher education. 

The current system of instructional designer designing objectives based on a needs analysis that often does not acknowledge direct input from the learners does not respect the experiences and freedom of an adult population. While I follow the ADDIE process in everything I do, as a higher education instructor I create the objectives based on university expectations and often give them to the students without their input and buy-in. Common for higher education, but unaccaptable for adult education that seeks to acknowledge the active role of the learner in the learning process.

So, what do I hope to improve? Collaborative agreement on learning objectives within higher education.

Tags: Instructional Design, learning objectives

It seems social network aggregators are becoming all the rage, and why not? Who has the time to visit every site to see what friends / colleagues are doing? Enter–FriendFeed, a service that will track our activities on a variety of the social media sites where we enter information.

OK, I am game, so I signed up. Now, here is the problem as I see it–how do I find and then follow and then track my colleagues and friends? With email alerts? RSS feeds? Suddenly the good idea seems like a lot of work as I have to look for everybody (again). Sorry–don’t trust any of these services to search my contacts and then add them.

For those of you interested, my FriendFeed stream is http://friendfeed.com/jeffreykeefer.

I think I again need some help–has anybody discovered any best practices out there for using this type of service?