Author: TechCommGeekMom

Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She was very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, serving and chairing on several STC Board committees, and most recently was the STC Board Vice-President before the organization closed.. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog. All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.
Posted in Uncategorized

Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction applied to Game Based Learning

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

Following on from a recent post The Pedagogies in Game Based Learning, this article will look at how Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction can be applied to game based learning.

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

Ah, good ol’ Gagné! His Nine Events of Instruction are one of the gold standards of instructional design, and for good reason. They make sense. This is a great article that shows how well-written gamification used for learning follows Gagné’s rules very well. It sure explains why my video-game addicted son learns so much as he plays! Excellent article. 
–techcommgeekmom 

See on www.avatargeneration.com

Posted in Uncategorized

The Technology of Massive Open Online Courses

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

Online learning used to be synonymous with shady diploma mills that offered a questionable product. Now it suggests something much better and more technologically sophisticated.

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

Another excellent article about the future of MOOCs. It’s definitely a growing business, whether it’s internally in higher ed or going corporate. This article also stresses the challenges in providing the same quality content as the classroom experience. Definitely a must-read. 

–techcommgeekmom

See on www.technologyreview.com

Posted in Uncategorized

MOOCS, Online Learning, and the Wrong Conversation

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

“The fact that MOOCS and online courses have sparked new conversations on your campus about teaching and learning is a terrific development. We should be grateful whenever attention is paid to teaching. The problem is that neither MOOCS or online courses are, in themselves, a strategy to meet the challenges we all face in higher ed. MOOCS and online courses are a means, not an end, and should be understood as such. The real conversation that you should be having on campus is about your institutions’ goals around teaching and learning.”

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

This is definitely an important conversation to have in the correct way. I’ve been the recipient of an online education through a MOOC used effectively. Just like any course going from classroom to online, or for that matter going from e-learning to m-learning, careful thought has to be done to ensure that content is not lost, and that an essential part of learning–interaction–is included. It’s a different dynamic than in a classroom, thus how a MOOC is used should be planned out accordingly.

–techcommgeekmom

See on www.insidehighered.com

Posted in Uncategorized

New Learning Opportunities Create Self-directed Learners

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

What if learning took care of itself in your organization? What if your staff knew what they needed to know, or learn, to do their job successfully? Would you say, great! Go for it. Or would you say, wait a minute not so fast.

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

I think this is a very common problem in many organizations. I’ve even been in the situation where the response would be, "Great! I’m glad you found something that could help you, but we can’t afford to send you to _____."  This means that individuals end up learning things on their own anyway. But if more resources–especially good ones online–become more available, this will allow not only better training and learning opportunities for self-directed learners, but it will also allow for better cost savings long term. 

–techcommgeekmom

See on networkedblogs.com

Posted in Uncategorized

You want more tech comm info? Let’s dig for buried treasure.

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

MP900262716I was mentioning to my husband that the stats on this blog have been rather low as of late. I figured that the holidays had something to do with it, but I wasn’t convinced that was all of it. I couldn’t put my finger on what I was doing wrong.

It was at that moment that my husband stated the obvious–one of those “DUH, why didn’t I think of that?” ideas.

“You need to put some new content in,” he said. 

He’s totally right. As he pointed out, when he goes to his favorite websites, he’s often looking for what’s new to read. And I admit, while I have been adding content here, it’s not been a lot recently. The holidays kept me busy, and as it is, with my new job, that will most likely keep me busy too. I was aiming to try to put more original content on this site–more items written by me directly, but I also realize the value of curating good content when I can, and taking advantage of my ScoopIt account to help me post great content to share.

My new job is going well so far. It’s only been one day of orientation, but since my computer and password info weren’t ready yet, I got a couple days off before training commences. This allows me to have a couple of days of “catch-up” here to curate some content. My new position is that of “web publisher“, and from what I’ve been told, it’ll be a good mixture of all things tech comm, like user and content strategy, content management, and even a little bit of web design and video editing.  So, I imagine that much of the content I add in the next year or so will be related to those topics, as I’m hoping the new job will provide some inspiration. It’s been harder to come up with ideas for posts as of late, and even that, I’m sure, has been contributing to my lack of posts as well.

Alas, there’s no e-learning components related to my job, but I want to keep informed on all things e-learning and m-learning as best as I can, because I still think it plays a huge role in content creation in the world. Thus, I’ll be still digging up content related to that as well.

So, this blog isn’t going anywhere. It’s been a little sleepy lately, but I’m hoping with the next several posts that I’ll be curating, we can rouse it from its sleepy state…perhaps a little content curation will be like the much needed morning coffee for this little blog.

If you have any suggestions for blog topics you’d like to see here, please let me know! I’m always open to explore new ideas in tech comm and m-learning, as you know!

So, I’m off to go dig for some buried (content) treasure! And better yet, I won’t be keeping all the spoils to myself, but rather sharing it with all of my readers. 🙂