Sherman Lee
Hello everyone, Like many of you have mentioned, this was another amazing term here in MET. There were some rough times throughout this term, but I think we did a great job! I have learned a lot in regards to ventures. I don’t think I am meant for it, but at least I know a […]
Continue reading Participation Portfolio – Course Suggestions Posted in: Uncategorized Hello, I am Sherman Lee, CEO of cDesign. I work with a team of dedicated instructional designer and corporate training strategists in partnership with Level-5, a video game company to put together this course design tool that does not only let you create, but also guide you through instructional best practices. Launching into the $130 […]
Continue reading Hello, I am Sherman Lee, CEO of cDesign…. Posted in: Venture Forum
Hello Sherman,
Very clear and well laid out Elevator and Venture Pitches. Your slides are easy to follow and presented neatly. I like your idea of creating a partnership with other companies and not rivalries.
One critique I might add is that I would have like to have seen you present more of your future plans and go beyond just the first year outlook for C-Design.
Good work,
Donna
Hi Donna,
In hindsight, I do want to project more into the future of cDesign. Stepping out of my CEO role play for a bit, while I was writing up my venture, I question my source of information. Since this is not a real venture and we don’t have budget to work with, I didn’t have real market information from surveys. From that standpoint, I reserved to saying that I will make 1% of the market in first year because of the lack of information on resistance and saturation point of the market. It would definitely be interesting to know though. If this venture was real, I would conduct a survey before I even do this pitch.
Thanks for reading 🙂
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
I think you presented your company very well. I was happy to hear your voice and see your picture. However, the power of video presentation has become evident to me in this course and might be a consideration for “next” time (I am guilty of NOT doing that myself). Other than that I think your idea has GREAT potential and you were very clear on your “ask”.
Thanks for sharing your idea,
Ronna
p.s. I would invest!
Hi Ronna,
Thank you for investing in my venture! I have to thank Dragons Den and Kickstarter for my “ask” section. I was too shy to do it at first because I have never really pitched before and I am very used to just letting people offer whatever they think I am worth, but my boyfriend, who’s a web design freelancer showed me a couple of real pitches and coached me through the process he would go through when he is doing a pitch. I think it really helped me.
I agree with you 100% on the video part. I regret not doing it but I was in a toggle of between doing a video feed or just voice over. The funny story behind this stems from the project I worked on in my company. I had to come up with an introduction to our teaching program to our business partners and originally we thought, you know, since our core project group know the project inside out, it would be good to film one of us in the intro instead of hiring an actor or getting upper levels to do it. That proposal was rejected and marketing explained that the age and voice of the person has a lot to do with the buy in of the user. And the comment was my team was pretty young so it would deliver a stronger message if we have someone older doing that. Anyway, that was my rationale of not putting my face on there. Looking back though, there are a lot of young venturers so I think I was thinking too much about what the marketer said to my team.
Thank you again for investing in my business 🙂
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
As a potential investor I am very interested in what CDesign has to offer, though I have a few questions as well. Your pitches were very well organized, clear, and professional. As Ronna said, it would have been nice to see you speaking a bit. You highlighted some key points that give strength to your venture, in particular the information about expected retirements creating a gap in the next few years drew me in. I also liked the use of word clouds.
I am curious, however, about what you mean by interactivities – does cdesign include templates for games? discussions? What other types of interactivities? As well, in your information about the potential market you mentioned that the first number was simply for one corporation – were the national and North American numbers also based solely on one corporation? If so, what are the larger possible market numbers. My last question comes from the suggestion of partnering with large lms providers – do you think that your competition would be willing to work with you when cdesign could replace large aspects of their company?
I would be curious to see the answers to these questions, but am encouraged by your pitches and would be a strong potential investor!
-Meggan
Hello Meggan,
Thank you for your interest in cDesign. My team certainly put a lot of effort into creating this web application. The interactivies cDesign delivers include games, quizzes, puzzles, quests and simulations. Our game development partner, Level-5, offered a lot of expertise in terms of presenting challenges to users in many different ways. If you are interested in seeing some of the samples of Level-5 interactivity, you can definitely refer to their well-known role playing game series – Professor Layton. The only difference is, our users will get to be a part of the game design and twist the professional game interface to fit their own content. Imagine how this could help engage learners and how much more effective this would be in a classroom versus our ordinary course authoring software.
My first number for the potential market was for a single corporation. The second number is the total of all corporations within Canada. In other words, if we reach ALL corporations (which, of course would be a HUGE success) we would be dominating the $18 billion market nationally. This is the same for the North American market.
Partnering with large LMS providers is actually quite possible. I think cDesign threatens not the LMS providers but the corporate training consultants. LMS is a tool, and the corporate training consultants does what cDesign offer, but at a much higher price. The partnership between LMS and cDesign is one that would take over consultation firms. I see that we will have a challenge in regards to building the trust in our potential client. As some of our potential customers express worries for not having a real person to talk to and put together courses for them. Although our forum and ongoing support to our customers is in place, I propose that a trade show presentation and trial versions be distributed to show the ease of this tool. If anything, cDesign only make LMS more powerful and appeal to the unexplored market of smaller companies with too little resources at this time to even attempt eLearning on their own.
Please let me know if there is any other point that is still cloudy, I would be more than happy to clear those up for you.
Again, thank you for your interest in cDesign.
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
Your presentation in the pitch is rather neat as I am sure you worked very hard on it. The voice over was very clear, the graphics and fonts were good. I was really looking to see the founder/CEO/Executive Director. I am not sure who is speaking. The CEO speaking in person to me would show more credibility and would give the potential investor your commitment for your venture. You also did not make mention of the management team. I might take a negative inference based on the fact that the CEO was unwilling to talk about the team.
Nevertheless, there’s potential for Cdesign, I think it needs more information though on the target and global market for me to think about investing.
~Shawn
Hi Shawn,
First of all, thank you very much for your time in reviewing my venture. It is my regrets that at this time a lot of our team members are still tying up other work they have with outside companies, so their identities were not to be revealed.
(jumping out of the role play for a second, I actually put down a couple of big names for the executive team, but I was thinking that this video would be loaded onto YouTube and I took a step back and deleted all of them. In hindsight I really should have asked David if we could or could not role play all the way in a new venture like this. I was concern about privacy and freedom of information issues even though this is a school project. I was thinking a bit too much).
I will definitely take your advice to heart and make an appearance in my future pitches. Perhaps I will ask my executive team to give a speech too to build trust with interested investor like yourself!
Sincerely yours,
Sherman
love your spirit Sherman! All the best!
~Shawn
Sherman, you have carried the CEO role of your company well!!!
You have outlined your company direction, product and vision clearly and directly. The market potential and partnerships will certainly help with your returns. I found your option to turn competitors into partners quite interesting.
I’m not familiar with how corporate training occurs, but your venture indicates that LMS may be a possible opportunity for improved distribution. For smaller corporations, your product combined with an LMS delivery system would appear to give your product a competitive edge.
I would agree with others that have already commented that having your ‘presence’ in the venture and/or elevator pitch, even for a portion of the presentation, would help investors gain ‘buy-in’. As it is, your venture is worthy of investment, your personal pitch presence would make it a sure thing.
Helen
Good evening Helen,
Thank you very much for your interest in cDesign. Corporate training is usually on a very tight budget and because most of the knowledge is sensitive to changes in company targets and direction of the year, many of the training is not built to stay. Therefore making training a very expensive aspect to sustain should it be constantly contracted out. Of course, we are then left with only subject matter experts to come up with courses, which, as I have mentioned, is not the best way because they have no or little pedagogical knowledge. Hence, cDesign leverage on the fact that corporation would spend money on the migration over to our company in exchange for a long term saving.
As I have said to other investors who had mentioned my lack of presence, I will definitely present myself more clearly as the CEO next time. I like your idea of presenting at least for a portion of the presentation. I will keep that in mind.
Thank you for your investment!
Sherman
Hi Sherman
I thought that you had an excellent venture concept, which was well researched and supported. I really liked how you addressed the fact that your competitors offered similar products in terms of the tools, but that you had the advantage with actually providing the training and experience.
The market would appear to support the growth and development of such a venture, especially if you could move into the North American Market.
As an investor I was interested by both your elevator pitch, and venture pitch, and would like to move on the next step of seeing the full-scale venture plan and implementation.
I would agree with others that you could work to carry a little more weight and emphasis in your voice, but you were clear and easy to understand.
Great Work.
Dave
Hello Dave,
Thank you very much for your investment in cDesign. I agree 100% that if I make an appearance with my team, we would probably have drawn more people into our venture. I look forward to contacting you and going over the full-scale venture plan and implementation. It will definitely be even better than what you have viewed so far as our team has learnt from the pitch experience and made improvement to the overall planning.
Looking forward to prospering with you in this venture!
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
Your presentation is clear and effective, however, it would have been nice to see your enthusiasm rather that only hear it.
As for the company, I am curious about the partnership with level-5 and what their stake in the company is. Is this a contract agreement with them or is it a business partnership/subsidiary? I think knowing the answer to that would make me understand full what I would be investing in.
I would be interested in also seeing an early version of the program and how the templates and system works for the actual users. That would definitely convince me to invest my money.
Thanks,
Kenton
Hello Kenton,
Thank you very much for your interest in cDesign, and for your further inquiry in our business structure. Hopefully I will be able to provide you with a satisfactory answer to our vision here.
cDesign and Level-5 is in a business partnership. Level-5 is actively developing the next game in the Professor Layton series. In this partnership, cDesign has made an agreement to provide them with pedagogical expertise in return for their animation work for our project. A lot of the templates are results from the development of the new addition to the Layton series.
We can arrange a time for you to either come to our headquarters or connect with you through gotomeeting, so we can show you the power of this program.
Talk to you soon,
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
Your presentation is engaging and its supporting data is well researched. It’s fresh to see a venture that targets corporate training. This market is significantly larger and more willing to spend money than the K-12 and post-secondary markets. Kudos for having this big vision. As for investing, it would help if I could test out a prototype. I also have several questions/concerns:
1. You said that there are a wide-range of tools developed after surveying educators world-wide. What are some of these tools? How are they different from (or better than) your competitor’s existing ones. (It’s hard to visualize without trying it hands-on)
2. Different companies have different needs. How does it recommend best practices if the needs are different? A “one size fits all” solution to instructional design does not make sense. Please clarify.
Assuming these questions are properly addressed and cDesign has moved beyond proof of concept, I am willing to invest financially.
Colin
By the way, thank you for sharing this wonderful concept with us.
Hello Colin,
Thank you very much for your interest in cDesign. You are correct that the corporate training market has a greater potential than the K-12 and post-secondary markets, and the spending power of these corporation is, to say the least, amazing.
In regards to your questions, here is some clarification on my stand points:
1. Aside from the typical tools such as assessment makers, calendars and reporting tools, cDesign also offer a built-in lesson planner. Teachers can either plan using their own tools and then build the course directly into cDesign or they can choose to build starting from this lesson planner. The lesson planner guides the user through the essentials in a lesson plan, such as objectives and assessment model.
Another tool that I would like to highlight is cDesign’s reference engine. This reference engine allow the user to search and bookmark any internet resources and even import it directly into their lessons! This tool also help with the citation of these sites (this is done automatically when you import the material), which would avoid any copyright issues. This citing engine can be tweaked should the corporation have different rulings on external reference usage. This function is similar to what you would find in safe search in search engines.
2. Certainly, ‘one size’ does not ‘fit all’ in instructional design. Recommendations are set as default unless the user make changes to it. One of the tools that the users have access to is the instructional design standard tab. This tab allow the user to input any executive decision on how their courses should be structured. For instance, if my corporation decide to have no interactivities at all or have 30% interactivities throughout the entire delivery time, all you need to do is type this into the system and away you go. This tab also serves as a guide to help standardize courses within the same corporation, so that learners have a common structure to go by even if the courses are developed by users from different departments with different expertise.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can help clarify, I would be more than happy to connect with you.
Sherman
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I think this is an exciting venture–one that I am interested in investing.
Hi Sherman,
I’m glad to see a venture about corporate instructional design. Your venture pitch is fantastic and very nicely presented! It contains strong reasons supporting your venture, simple images and not a single word was wasted! This is the most effective use of wordles I’ve seen. Your tone of voice and speech rate were great. Your enthusiasm and confidence are clearly evident!
What concerns me about this venture is that it seems to negate the need for knowing learning theories, applying multimedia instructional design principles, differentiating skills vs. knowledge, targeting the level of learning objective (Bloom’s taxonomy) vs. the degree of proficiency, knowing how to motivate students or engaging them with a hook and so on?
The idea of combining all of this with game design templates seems like a lot, given that game design alone is complex, never mind using it for instructional purposes. The only way out of all of these issues would be to have thorough instructions at every stage of course development. Even then, would the “designer” understand what they are doing? Not to mention that graphic design has an impact on instructional effectiveness…
There is certainly a great advantage to using the subject matter experts and forming partnerships with LMS companies, but I’m not certain this is the best way. I would have to see how the program works in different situations to be convinced to invest. I think your marketing plan is realistic with a start of reaching 1% of the Canadian market share. However, I would have liked to see references indicating the legitimacy of the data. I like that you would be listening in on discussions in the forum to obtain user and educator feedback.
Once again, I think that your pitches are presented very professionally.
Cheers,
Dan
Hi Dan,
Thank you very much for your advice and interest in cDesign. It is very true that ultimately the understanding of learning theories and principles is very important to delivery the most effective lessons. At the same time, corporations that cannot afford instructional designers and only has enough time to enlist subject matter experts into a training project can definitely use this tool. It takes years to build that professional grasp onto the concept of instructional design and what cDesign offer is a fast track for those who do not have a starting point.
cDesign is by no means there to replace professional instructional designers, but it is there to provide a solution which may not have even existed given a corporate structure usually would bypass anything they cannot afford to go for the less costly.
However, I do appreciate your comments, Dan, as it will help guide cDesign towards betterment. From your suggestion, we will try to make our design guidance as clear as possible. We will also consider providing a more accessible route for users to contact us for assistance if required.
We hope to draw your interest in the future, once we have deployed cDesign and be able to present to you more solid data.
Should you be interested, please subscribe to our newsletter at http://www.cDesign.ca (this is fake… kind of want to just complete my role play).
Cheers,
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
Thanks for clarifying how your services would be used. I’m ready to invest in your venture.
Cheers,
Dan
HI Sherman,
I too really appreciated your elevator pitch and venture pitch. You were enthusiastic, the presentation was crisp and clear. Like others I would have liked to have “met” you in the elevator pitch, but I wasn’t too concerned about it being video. – the way you presented on the venture pitch would have been adequate. I also think you could have slowed your delivery just a bit in the elevator pitch – it was perfect in the venture pitch.
I was enthused to go on to view the venture pitch by your elevator pitch and remained very interested in investing in your venture. I think you would present well to in the corporate world and this would also encourage me to invest in the venture.
Some of the previous posts have made comments I would have made too, so I won’t repeat them. I did think that it really is a solution for supporting pedagogy of online learning without having to have professional instructional designers and would mean that much more could be achieved in an organisation without the time and wait for the professionals. I don’t think this concept is limited to the business world…
It would have been good to see some of the designs and screens that cDesign uses (but it was a hypothetical).
I certainly would be considerig investing after these pitches.
Denise
Bryan Falcon, Allen Angell and Reynard Hilman are founders of Haiku Learning Management System. Haiku provides a mean of managing curricular content in an online environment that could be used for both blended or virtual classrooms. Their service packages are geared towards both school districts and individual teachers. This system includes features such as website […]
Continue reading Harmonious Simplicity of Haiku LMS Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Hi Sherman:
Haiku sounds and looks like it has potential. This is another cloud-based LMS entering a competitive market. It seems as if ventures like these are “lucky” because it takes the right people at the right time with matching vision to pull it together. You are right in saying that a lack in unified vision can be deadly.
Tim
Hello Tim,
I agree that it is a rather competitive market out there. What I wonder as well is what gives the successful company that edge to best the many others. Luck is one of them, but relying on that solely surely would not last for long. A team must stay updated and informed of what the users / customers want in order to keep up with the market. That type of analysis in itself calls for a sharp sense to trend in the company lead and also a keen team to keep tapping into the opinions of users and potential user groups.
Sherman
The ability to forecast the future trends is extremely important to educators, and even more so to learning technology venture. Â Regardless of the scale of learning technology implemented, it is an investment temporally, financially and sometimes, even emotionally. Knowing where the technological pathway is gearing towards would help prevent loss and accelerate decision making while […]
Continue reading Gartner’s 2012 Technology Forecast Posted in: Uncategorized Good evening fellow classmates! My name is Sherman Lee. I had been popping in and out of this blog throughout today and I saw quite a number of familiar names (glad to see you all again) and many new names as well (nice to meet you). I am a full-time insurance instructor under the business […]
Continue reading Introducing: Sherman Lee Posted in: Uncategorized
Hi Again Sherman
It looks like you are joining a number of us crazies who taking a couple of courses and working as well. Should be entertaining.
Look forward to working with you
Dave
Hi Dave,
Yes, it will be a very interesting journey these few months! I do look forward to working with you this term. Let’s see if we have the luck of being on the same team this time.
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
You have some interesting challenges ahead. It sounds like your timing with taking this course is perfect.
Claire
Hi Claire,
Yes, I do think this is the perfect timing for this course. I am certain that the lessons I learn from this course and from all of you will help benefit me for more than just this one project though.
Sherman
Hi Sherman
Nice to see you again. I am also taking 2 courses this term and expect to be very busy. I did 530 last term and really enjoyed it. Good luck with the course work. I look forward to learning with you again this term.
Valerie
Hi Valerie,
I will be looking for your hints later this term about 530 perhaps 🙂 Hope we get to work in collaboration more often this term!
Sherman
Hey Sherman,
Good to see you on this side! All the best with both courses!
Shawn
Hi Shawn,
Hey good to see you here too! I am rather lucky to have others who takes exactly the same courses with me this term 🙂 Looking forward to working with you for the next few months!
Sherman
Hi Sherman, nice to meet you! And good luck with 2 courses! I am also doing 2 so we can perhaps enjoy an insane moment or two together! Your background will bring a unique perspective to the course. I am looking forward to hearing more! Danielle
Hi Danielle,
Yes, we can certainly celebrate those insane moments together and perhaps cheer after we have successfully finished this course! I hope I will be able to contribute different ideas to this course in a beneficial manner. I would love to hear more from you as we move on as well!
Sherman
Hi Sherman. We are also in the same ETEC 530 class as well. I look forward to working with you.
Hi Colin,
Woohoo! That’s great to hear that you are in the same ETEC 530 class as I am. I always feel like I have found an ally when that happens. I look forward to tackling this term with you as well!!
Sherman
Hi Sherman,
Nice to see you again! Looking forward to working with you this term!
Cheers,
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Nice to see you again as well! Hope you are ready for some fun this term!!
Sherman
Hi Sherman, your projects ahead sounds very challenging, and right on-site for this course. Hope to hear your ideas, especially those you find just blocking your project’s way. Those we would have to face and solve too. Looking forward to working with you!
Hello Ping,
I will definitely share them. In fact, I think one thing that challenges me most right now is the fact that I do not know a thing about claims. I have had several years of background in insurance, but because I am working with the claims project now (there’s a huge gap between the two) I have a really steep learning curve to go through. Not to mention that I feel that I have a lack of contact for me to leverage knowledge off of (which I think is delaying my learning if we look at it from a constructivist point of view). I’ll update you more on this 🙂 perhaps it would shed some light on our work this up coming term!
Sherman
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vawells 3:00 am on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Sherman
I like your idea. It is a good way to check for understanding and at the same time promote participation.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Valerie
Donna Forward 9:59 am on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello all,
I’m not sure what a pulse check is. I saw it in this last optional participation improvement assignment but I’m still wondering.
Cheers,
Donna
Sherman Lee 10:07 am on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Donna,
Pulse check is a regular check in to see if team members are still surviving. In this case, what I refer to as pulse check is a bi-weekly check-in post by students to state how they are doing within the course. It is simply a post where students express how they are feeling in class, which I think would help keep the class on track. This will also allow other students to give suggestions as to how they are tackling certain task that the author of a post may express difficulties in.
Sherman
Donna Forward 8:48 pm on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Sherman,
When David had mentioned Pulse checks in the final participation portfolio outline, I thought that there was actually a button that we could press where we could vote on how we felt about others’ assignments:)
This is what was written:
4.Use the PulsePress tools to like/dislike other students suggestions, and possibly comment on them to add value
So, I thought the Pulse tool was actually a button.
Yeah okay, time for a break I think!
Yours,
Donna
Denise 12:58 am on August 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Well I am with you Donna – I too thought it was a button – like the votes for the pitches.
Denise
gillian 10:44 am on August 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Sherman,
With better understanding of your idea – thanks to your elaboration, I think it is a very sound one. Although there is participation within the OER’s each week – there does seem to be a disconnection within the course log itself.
A quick check in would help build a community of practice and give learners an outlet to vent and perhaps seek answers to questions.
gillian