Spring has arrived today and winter is finally over.

We want to wish everybody a happy spring! This is the time of flowers in bloom, nice weather and a radical spring cleaning. Spring also is the time of innovation; the time to start something new. How are you going to shine this spring? 

The team of aNewSpring

We are very excited to announce that we are going to showcase aNewSpring at the ASTD: ICE  conference in Denver.

THE training and development conference

ASTD stand for American Society for Training & Development. They bring people together through conferences, workshops and the internet. Their mission is to empower professionals to develop knowledge and skills successfully. We are going to showcase our platform at ASTD: International Conference and Exposition. This is a large, world class EXPO with attendees from more than 70 countries. There will be more than 250 educational sessions from industry-leading experts.

Receive a discount

We decided to join the Dutch / Belgian NVO2 delegation at ASTD. This means that we can give you a discount when you want to visit this conference. You can use the code 201202022. There are two ways to register with the NVO2 delegation code:

1. You are not a member of ASTD, you do use the NVO2 delegation code.
You will pay the special delegation price of US$ 1.400 (instead of US$ 1.800)

2. You are a member of ASTD and you use the NVO2 delegation code.
You will pay the special delegation price of US$ 1.100 (instead of US$ 1.500)

With the discount code INTL 139, you get a US$ 30 discount on the E-membership. With this code, the costs of the yearly ASTD membership are US$ 139 (instead of US$ 169). When you sign up for this membership, you get another US$ 300 discount on this conference.

Will we see you there?

This year, ASTD: ICE will take place in Denver, Colorado, USA from May 6 - 9, 2012, at the Colorado Convention Center. Want to learn more about this conference? Check out their website.

Thursday March 1st, a new release of aNewSpring will be at hand. With this release, we will significantly improve the usability of the platform.

Showing recent messages

When you see a reaction in your message centre that you would like to read, you can click on the reaction to go to the specific page where the reaction is shown. Up until now, you always had to scroll down to get the message that you were looking for on the page. With this release, the page automatically scrolls to the reaction that you clicked on.

Improved message centre

A couple of little improvements have been made to the message centre. From now on, you will find the inbox, all messages (including sent messages) and the trash can on the left side of the screen. This provides a better overview of this page. The sent messages are also easier to find.

Improved discussion functionality

The discussion possibility below the activities will become clearer with this release. The topics with the latest activity will be placed on top and only the 2 most recent reactions are directly visible. The other reactions are folded in by default. When you want to read all the reactions, you can expand them.

Add an image to a course part

From now on, it’s possible to show an image in front of a course part. This way, you can visualize what the course part is about. You can add this image in the settings menu when you are editing a course part.

Conditions made visual

With this release, we made it possible to see if a course part or block is available or not, by displaying a lock icon. When there is a closed lock left of the block or course, this block or course is not available yet or no longer available. When there is an open lock, then this block or course part is available until a certain date.

Finished course parts

When a course part is finished successfully, a check mark appears left of this course part. This way, it is clear for the student which course parts he already finished and how many course parts he still has to do.

Skill assignment within content player

A skill assignment is a course part that does not contain content. Students can use it turn something in, like an assignment that they can upload within this course part. From now on, the skill assignment is shown within the course player, which results in a better course flow for the students.

Improved progress bar

The progress bar has been adjusted. We added numbers so the students can see how many pages there are in a lesson and how far they are. The design of the progress bar can be adjusted. Please contact our helpdesk for this (helpdesk@anewspring.com).

aNewSpring attended the ASTD Techknowledge 2012 in Las Vegas from January 25th to January 27th. About 1200 eLearning professionals have attended this conference in the Rio Convention Center. One of the keynote speakers was Stuart Crabb. He currently is responsible for learning and development at Facebook. Learning at Facebook includes leadership and management training, acculturation of new employees and sales training.   

The Y generation

Stuart talked about the 5 big lessons that Facebook learned in the past years. He showed the audience some things that he found out through trial and error. These lessons have everything to do with the differences between generations when it comes to learning. Almost all the employees at Facebook are from the Y generation. This generation is value driven and peer-orientated, they are flexible in life and they prefer collaborating with their colleagues. This needs a different approach.

1. Learning from each other
You can learn from everyone around you, not only from those who have more experience than you. Learning needs to be a social experience.

2. Excellence
At Facebook, they assumed that excellence is defined by what you know and what you can do well, but they found out this is not the case. For the Y generation, excellence is defined by your strengths and what you can transfer to others. This requires a different approach when it comes to learning.

3. Progression
Stuart Crabb assumed that progression in a career is vertical & logical; it’s about your title, how high you are in the company’s hierarchy and your level or compensation. He made the mistake to connect this to the learning within Facebook. For the Y generation, career development is about your strengths, learning and self-improvement (experiences). It’s not about going up, it is all about reaching your goal.

4. Effective learning
Effective learning is not done in class and rooted in books, but small bites of real time learning on the job are most powerful. Real-time feedback is very important. At Facebook 70% of the learning is done on the job, 20% by coaching and 10% by formal learning.

5. Feedback
Not only the performance review helps the employees stay on track & grow, constant real-time feedback helps them get better every day. People want direct feedback on their job. At Facebook, people give feedback to each other on an internal platform. Everybody is able to give feedback to their colleagues.

Always improving

These five lessons described by Stuart show us what learning needs to be about in the Y generation. We try to adapt to the needs of our customers by continually improving our platform and we think we’re on the right track with our social learning possibilities. We are of course very interested in your ideas on these topics. Let us know in a comment on this post!

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS – Hundreds of secondary school and secondary vocational teachers from Rotterdam are going to take a language test. Those who do not pass this test have to take a course to improve their language skills.

A spokesman of the city of Rotterdam reports this to the press today. This regards an online language test, developed by aNewSpring, also based in Rotterdam. The city earlier promised to increase the use of the local creative industry. Rotterdam already has more jobs ready for this sector in our port city.

Teachers that do not pass this test will get the chance to improve their knowledge through the adaptive language module in aNewSpring until it reaches the desired level. “Every teacher is a language teacher”, states Hugo de Jonge, education counselor. He refers to the fact that for example gym or biology teachers should also be able to correct the children in the area of language. Ultimately, the goal is to improve the language level of school children in Rotterdam.

[in Dutch]