EducationFor Providers

Content Surge: Training Developments and Resources to Anticipate

By William Murillo, Assoc. AIA
Manager, CES Provider Training

With a new year comes a whole host of new projects and initiatives that have led to very exciting moments here on the CES Team. Whether attempting to stay on track with course submissions and policy updates or exploring marketing strategies and curriculum development, as providers, you will begin to notice a veritable surge of new information, trends, and resources that will help in the advancement of your business. Let’s highlight what is readily available and what you should be marking down in your calendars:

New 2013 CES Workshops: Our 2013 CES Workshop Calendar is complete and our registration sites are now live. CES workshops are audience-centered, informal, and dialogue-friendly. Our workshops tend to cover an overview of CES policies and procedures, CES Discovery Training, and tips for developing learning objectives and effective presentations necessary for designing courses in the context of Quality Education. Lately, we have discovered, to the benefit of most attendees, ways for sparking organic conversations useful for sharing best practices.

Live Tweeting: If you are active on Twitter, you may have noticed a spike in CES activity on January 15^th. This was the date of our workshop at AIA Georgia and our trial run of live tweeting during our programs. If you can’t make it out to one of our 2013 locations, join the conversation on Twitter and follow along as we stream questions and comments as well as business tips and tricks throughout the day.

Workshop Videos: Yet another experiment at AIA Georgia was filming the day’s events. We captured some great footage thanks to our hosts AIA Georgia and Cooper Carry Architects. It also created a forum for our attendees to sound off on their impressions throughout the day -Many thanks to all of our willing interviewees.

CES Director Call: At the beginning of this month, Alla Orlova, Director, CES, hosted a call with over 250 providers to clarify the recent mainstreaming of sustainable design as a credit designation. Due to the overwhelming support and interest as well as proactivity, the CES team has decided to hold encore events of this program, so that providers may have a direct response about all questions, comments, and concerns.

YouTube: Last month, CES launched its first YouTube Channel with the hopes of posting webinars, interactive tutorials, and other video resources for providers. Thanks to all of you, the providers, for your support and views. Currently, we have 3 webinars uploaded and will be adding new resources and videos throughout the year for new and seasoned providers.

So why content surge? With current technological advances and the rapidity of information sharing, we have all experienced a “media overload.” However, the CES system and the provider network are unique in that no one of our providers is alike. Whether it’s through business models or course content, all of you learn, teach, and approach architects in very different ways. We would like to account for this diversity in practice and the multiplicity of business methods that exist in our network of over 2500 providers by creating a resource feed.

In 2011 at Lotusphere, one of IBM's annual user conferences for customers and partners, the tech firm expanded its typical social media strategy. They created a “social media hub”, a single online landing page providing:

Live stream of blogs

Twitter comments through the hash tag #ls11

Flickr photos

Videos of keynote sessions

Interviews from the conference

Before reaching the culmination of this event, which takes place from January 30 to February 3, there were already more than 20,000 tweets tagged with the #ls11 hash tag, and the site's video channel had garnered 34,000 views. Following the tech conference, there were more than 35,000 tweets with the #ls11 hash tag. IBM calculates that the campaign collected more than 41 million total impressions or views on Twitter. The lesson to be learned from these efforts, aside from the inherent marketing potential, is the strategic aggregation and organization of resources to create visibility and awareness of content that should be referenced and leveraged. Through our workshops, we have noted many of your concerns:

How do we market our courses/education?

How do we reach architects?

How do we identify educational/topical trends for courses?

How do we develop a sound curriculum to uphold quality education?

As we move forward, we seek to deliver valuable and practical tools beyond the logistical training involved with Discovery to give all of you a foundation from which to start and ways to stay informed on trends and how to engender effective learning. That’s all I will reveal for now, but here are some things to look out for:

Online Tutorial Series: We are condensing all of our PDF tutorials and hour long webinars into 5-10 minute long interactive video clips instructing you on basic administrative functions in Discovery. Learn the fundamentals of being an AIA/CES Provider, how to submit courses, or how to submit attendance all on your own time and through short bursts of learning. We will also feature special tutorials on how to utilize Facebook or YouTube and set up your own social media projects.

New Web Series: CES will be launching a new webinar series for this year where you will hear from everyone on the team and content related to Provider Audits, Provider Training, Course Review, Marketing, and Communications. Upcoming webinars will also cover topics like:

Emerging Trends for Course Development

Effective Marketing Strategies

Instructional Design for Providers

Social Media Potential for Online Learning

Reaching Architects Beyond the Classroom

CES Podcasts: Join us through AIAPodnet, the AIA’s podcast channel, and hear from industry professionals on trends in education, from the CES Director, and from providers like you sharing best practices.

CES Resource Feed: An all new blog format functioning as a constant feed for all CES content. If you are looking for tutorials, articles, podcasts, videos, or daily CES updates, visit our blog set to launch at the end of February 2013.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!