e e learning

learning futures markets

one thing i've always liked about elliott masie  is that when it comes to new gadgets and toys, he's like me.  he has to play with them now.  what's great about elliott is that he loves to share.  the latest toy he's playing with is inkling's predictive markets tool.  predictive markets are used to gauge possible future trends or reactions to new ideas or products.  participants are given a sum of money to invest in the trends, ideas, or products they believe will be successful in the future.  this simulation/game approach mimics the real world actions and reactions of groups in dynamic settings.

elliott asks "what will employees, in 2009, use as their primary tools for everyday learning in the workplace?"   today is a  listing of all the options you can invest your initial $5000 of play money in.  you purchase stocks in the technologies which you think have the best bet of being the primary tools in 2009.   but added to the mix is the economic incentive to invest in a stock that hasn't peaked in value yet.

i'm doing pretty good so far as you can see from the box to the left.  i'm currently invested in phone/mobile, on-the-job training/learning, unknown technology/techniques, and gaming and simulation.

this specific market has a few problems  like the category of eLearning, which truly encompasses many of the others.  classroom teaching really isn't much of a daily learning tool.  obviously, "unknown technology/technique" is a bit wide open.  elliott did heed the participants calls for adding cellphone/mobile technologies to the list - a glaring miss given the real world. 

there is a very lively forum regarding the market that you can participate in as well.   all in all a great group tool and lots of fun.  although I could be saying that only because i'm doing so well.   the market is open until april 1.  come on over to inklingmarkets.com and give it a try!

what's wrong with workplace learning?

in my previous post i talked about how jay cross' observation that training, like psychology, has historically been a field built on a cornerstone that we come to understand and improve human abilities by identifying weaknesses and deficiencies and fixing them.  psychology is slowly being brought out of this negative perspective by the positive psychology movement and the discoveries enabled by new brain imaging technologies.  but what of training?

as I began writing my follow up post, my ideas expanded and i realized that I had two posts (at least)  to play out, so here's a post on what's wrong and I'll follow it with a solution.

well, first we need to understand what the desired change is. for the purposes of this discussion i'll put forward this overarching goal for learning:

to serve our organization as a integrated strategic contributor helping to drive profit and shareholder value by assuring that the workforce has the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to meet their individual and collective performance goals.

obviously, i'm addressing the strategic aspects of the learning function as a whole. while there are specific issues to be addressed by course designers and developers, facilitators, delivery support personnel, technologists and the other specialist who work under the learning umbrella, i believe there is a critical need for a rethink of the underlining purpose and orientation of the role of learning in the organization. one of the things that came out of learning circuit blog's december big question was that as a profession we are generally unsure of who we are and what we are supposed to be doing. until we know what we are trying to achieve, we'll never bring an end to this occupational cakewalk we're in.

are we a m*a*s*h unit?

employees are shipped off to us when they can't do what they need to do. when something goes wrong, a good day or two of training is just what the doctor ordered. stat! we've gotten darn good at triage and meatball surgery. working with impossible deadlines to create learning instances just in the nick of time is our forte. we know it's not the best that can be done, but we happily take the pat on the back for having pulled it off again.

but while we are operating in this crisis management mode, we're falling into a trap of having to do more with less yet faster. don't believe me? let's look at the numbers according to astd's 2006 state of the industry in enterprise learning report - considered by many to be the standard source for industry data in our field.  t+d magazine trumpeted that US organizations spend $109.25 billion on learning and development. while the huge amount of money spent on learning each year is remarkable, the reality is that  we are being pushed to produce at a rate greater than the increase in investment.

(note that I am using these numbers as possible indicators of issues that may exist, not as facts.  they are compelling, but more definitive and precise research needs to be conducted to consider any of this to be factual.  My point is this summary data points to issues to be explored further.)

If we use the expenditure per employee as a baseline number and compare it's year on year percentage increase to the rate of increase (or decrease) of the data that relates to the workload of learning professionals, we begin to see some interesting data. in mosts cases the increased demand on the workplace learning professional is substantially greater than the increased investment. For example, in bmf companies from 2005 to 2006 astd projects a 25.54% increase in the number of hours of learning that will be provided per wlp staff member. but astd is projecting less than a 1% increase in expenditure per employee at the same companies. you might assume that much of the increase in the number of hours will come via reuse of digital content, but the report projects a 16.13% increase in repurposing of content.

similarly, while there is a decrease in the number of employees each wlp is hypothetically responsible for, the increase in the number of hours received by each employees results in an overall increase in the workload for wlp's.

these productivity gains are, on the whole, a positive for the learning function.  in large part, our ability to decrease costs and increase efficiency is what improved our standing with in the organization and got us "a seat at the table."  but an alarm went off in my head when we discussed our instructional models back in november on lcb.  most of the suggestions were for cutting back on parts of the models we use.  cut back on assessment or reduce design efforts.  much of the thrust of the rapid elearning movement is to cut out development time.

all of this feels like it comes from a very strong focus on project management.  decrease the scope, cut the budget, lessen the time to delivery.  all tactics to increase efficiency and productivity.  true, we work in a business environment, but efficiency and productivity really don't have much impact on human learning.

not assessing what needs to be learned makes designing an effective learning experience a matter of random luck.  developing content without the expertise of someone who understands adult learning will likely lead to demotivation of the learners.

we are so busy fixing problems, reducing costs, and increasing productivity that we may be missing the boat on what we need to be doing to insure our corporate survival.  tending to the wounded is all well and good, but i'd rather avoid finding myself in a similar position as hawkeye pierce on m*a*s*h was, when overworked and under appreciated with no sign of let up, he went awol to go to the frontlines to get them stop fighting. 

the learning needs of our organizations will only increase in the future.  for our own sanity, we have to find a better way to meet them.

training is a negative science

like many other people, i've long kept a list of quotes that i find inspirational, insightful, or  just plan funny.  some are from famous names in history, other by common folk who just happened come up with a sound bite that made it far enough for me to see it, while others are contemporaries of ours who have great thoughts.

in this last category i've got a quote from jay cross that i lifted from a post of his on the internet time blog some time ago.  jay wrote:

"Training, like psychology, is inherently pessimistic. Both fields are built on a core belief that people are deficient or dysfunctional."

to be honest, it's always struck me as odd that I put this one in my collection.  it is insightful for sure.  psychology,until recently, has determined what normal is by studying abnormalities.  particularly in the arena of how our brains work.  if sam has damage to a part of his brain and he can no longer add 1 + 1 and know that the answer is 2, then that part of the brain must be responsible for mathematical reasoning.  not surprising the number of things we were wrong about now that we can look at the brain's activity during normal functioning via imaging technologies.  however, the positive psychology movement, led by respected researches like marty seligman, mihaly czentimihaly and barbara fredrickson along with neuropsychology's discoveries is shaking the psychology world to it's core.

training too is guilty of focusing on our deficiencies.  every major design and development model has some version of a needs analysis and most focus on identifying a learning or performance gap.  this gap is no less that an analysis of how deficient or incapable current employees are.  our job has been to fill that gap or at least create events that everyone agrees will be sufficient.  given the various studies that have been done, i'd guess that 50% of the time more the folks in the learning group have no idea whether their beautifully designed and developed program will be successful or not.  but it doesn't really matter since most of the time the challenges will have changed and nobody will be held accountable.

so is there an equivalent to positive psychology in the learning world?  check out my next post for my answer.

 

am i a blogger?

once again tom haskins has a post that just sends my brain a spinnin'  (fyi, that's a good thing in my book).   beware of blogging is inspiring at times and a bit depressing at times.  tom grasps the way blogging is effecting him and i think many of us as we learn a new way of learning.  he says that bloggers are shaking the foundations of what we've come to expect in regards to ourselves and the way we interact with the world.

one aspect of what he has to say that has really hit me at home is that if you are posting to a blog and no one is responding then you're really not participating in the blogosphere and thus not truly a blogger.  he feels that a blogger makes a difference when he/she creates reaction and change in those who they are in dialogue with.  without commentors, it's not blogging.

while early on I worried about counting the number of comments I got,  realized that I probably would never be one  of those bloggers who got 10 comments on every post.  heck, take a look and you'll see that I'm probably luck if I get 1 every ten posts. 

but i've come to judge whether my blogging is worthwhile by two other means.   

first and foremost, i'm learning.  in the three years that i've maintained eelearning and the two i've served as the blogmeister of learning circuits blog, i've learned more than i'd ever image i could, my writing has improved (it still needs work), and i've connected with some great people i would have never met if it weren't for blogging.

second, if i use other statistical guidelines like traffic statistics, technorati rankings and link information, or feedburner stats, i know that i have a growing collection of readers and feed monitors.  i wouldn't be in your feeds and blogrolls if you didn't value at least part of what I have to offer.

i'm sure tom overstated is case and didn't mean to exclude me or similar bloggers from his definition of what it means to be a blogger.  but his posts did make me think about what is important and what makes me consider myself a blogger.  to quote martha, "and that's a good thing."

getting all worked up about similarities

in his post corporate elearning strategies and development: the february big question! brent schlenker raises some soul searching questions.  but upon further reflection it's not as strong an argument as at first read. before i go further, i do agree that his questions are good ones to ask.  it's his assumed answers that I find  objection to.

in comments to the post, karl kapp and mindy make many of the specific arguments i would make. 

karl defends the value of isd work and i totally agree.  isd is not automatic.  yes, some of the specifics may not be unique to isd, but no one ever claimed isd was a separate academic research field. learning professionals have long been alchemists of sorts. we take concepts from where ever we can find them and meld them together to  lessons and materials that advance human knowledge. simply throwing pieces of content together  with no concern for design ultimately doesn't work for the majority of learners.  the rapid elearning folks who advocate this "eliminate design" approach will soon realize this.

related to this is the concept of trans-disciplinary practitioners that mindy brings to the conversation.  the aspect of this concept that mindy doesn't stress is that what type of practitioner you end up being is determined by the mix of disciplines your bring to your practice.  the uniqueness then comes from the different aspects, not the similar. because scott mccloud uses the concept of text-near-graphics in comics, I may use it in a job aid, a web designer uses it in a catalog, and a street sign maker uses it for traffic control doesn't mean we are all text-near-graphics practitioners.

so to answer brent's ultimate question, what do we bring to the party?  my response is that we bring the same thing every professional brings to the table - a unique set of knowledge, skills and abilities that enable us to bring unique value to our interactions with others.

now let us back up to his first question, why us? simple because we are those unique individuals who seek out the answers to the mysteries of human learning.  now, if we don't do a good job of letting people know what it is that makes us unique that makes us bad communicators and marketers.

asking questions

the topic for the february big question at learning circuits blog is probably the biggest question we can ask of ourselves as learning professionals - what questions should we be asking?  i even had the advantage of knowing what question we were asking a few days ahead of time and i still find myself struggling with where to begin.

some of the large-in-scope questions i believe we need to be asking include:

• what does it mean to be a learning professional?
• how do we earn the respect of our colleagues so that we can be professionals?
• how do we get out ahead of the practical day-to-day challenges so that we can be more strategic (and I believe more valuable to our organizations)?
• how do we gain support for exciting informal learning learnscapes in our organizations?
• how should we evaluate our efforts to assure that we are credited with having impact (assuming we truly do)?
• in the end, if we are successful, what will we have done to change our organizations?

i could go on, and i will in the future, but i've decided to try to drill down on one of these questions because it's been on my mind recently.  it's the third point above.  rephrased in the spirit of the big question, i'll put it it this way:

what questions should we be asking to put ourselves in a more strategic posture?
and who should we be asking?

• i'd like to learn more about your business, could I spend a day or two shadowing you or some of your key people?  (to my line of business partners)
• my goal is to help you achieve your goals, how could i be doing that better than i have been in the past? (to any of my stakeholders)
• what's your biggest concern regarding your team being ready to meet your strategic goals a year from now?  two years from now?  (to any of my stakeholders)
• are you willing to participate in our organization's learning by developing the skills it takes to facilitate your employee's and others' learning both in the classroom and day-to-day in meetings and casual encounters?  (to every manager in the organization beginning with the ceo)
• are we willing to accept that unless there is a clear business imperative for learning, then no matter how good what we create "on paper" is, it's a waste of resources for the organization? (to myself and everyone involved in  the learning group)
• will you support new  methods designed to leverage the latest in  technology and human resources to deliver learning to more employees faster at the same cost or cheaper than traditional classroom learning? (to key stakeholders, especially my executive sponsors)

i'm not being naive here.  i'm fully aware that these are tough questions to ask.  they require political saavy and organizational standing.  but these are the questions, or questions like them, that we should be asking.  if we don't have the skill or position to ask them, then that's our learning gap that needs to be filled.

 

holy blidget, batman!

widgetbox has provided the ultimate tool in grabbing the blogosphere's best imitation of warhol's fifteen minutes of fame.  in literally 3 minutes or less, you can create a blidget (i assume it's short for blog widget ) which features the latest posts from your blog.

what's so unusual about that? you're right, nearly every blogging software allows you to do that.  and most rss readers have some means of helping you render any blog's content on your site.

but a blidget also lets you author a widget that is ready made for anyone coming to widgetbox can load up to their website like any widget.  check it out.  mine is over there in the right sidebar where my "recent posts" list used to be.  or you can check it out for uploading to your computer either in the widgetbox catalog. or by clicking the button below my recent posts blidget.

make our garden grow

konrad glogowski recently shared his personal disappointment caused when he realized that he had been shutting down the  blog communities of his 8th grade classes each june at the end of the school year.  his post, i will be a gardner is worth reading both for what it has to say about building communities but also as an example of the power that honest introspection  conducted before the blogosphere can hold.

as the blogmeister for learning circuits blog, I've been looking at ways to nurture an online community as well.  konrad's thoughts regarding building a communal history and building the means to assure that  contributions to the community will not evaporate for some trivial reason (the end of the school year for example) are well taken.  he further says he used to think of himself as the architect of the communities his students formed but has changed his metaphor to that of a gardner.

having lived in boston, the home of urban communal gardening, i think the metaphor of gardening is a apt one. 

konrad's points are well taken.  when leading or seeking to build a community it's important to let the individuals explore the topic(s) at hand freely and openly.  but at least as importantly, they must be able to explore their own growth path as a member of the community.

konrad's thoughts jive well with a great blog post i recently stumbled upon by bud gibson on the community engine entitled high octane blogging — how to form business community.  gibson sets out three dynamic components he describes as vital to building a vibrant community.

• creating an information space where participants can see each other as well as other related information from outside the community.
• giving participants their own soapbox where they can say what they want and getting them to say it.
• giving participants feedback so that they know what they are writing is having an impact.

while they are a bit broad in nature, i think we're seeing evidence in conversations around The Big Question feature at LCB.  (more no that in a post on LCB soon.)  add to this list, konrad's emphasis on archiving a communal history and I think you have a solid set of guidelines for community building.

I'll close with the lyrics from the finale of bernstein's classic opera, candide, which see quite apropo.

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!

quality vs. speed - we've created a monster!

over on learning circuits blog the january big question is about instructional design and the trade offs between wanting to build the best possible learning experiences and the continual pressure coming from rapid e-learning efforts. 

while i'm a tad slow off the starting line for this month's big question, it's been nice to have a chance to read through all of the great posts already written in response.  as I was trying to solve the technical snafus that blogger, cocoment, and mysyndicaat threw at me, i did have the chance to check out what everyone else was saying.

one of the things i have enjoyed about the big question in it's first few months on lcb is the diversity of thought and opinion being expressed side by side.  this month has been no exception.  so the bulk of my answer will stitch together some of the thoughts I agreed with from the other replies.   sort of a frankenstein's post if you will.

i'm with geetha krishnan who questions whether quality is really a variable.  i like his definition of quality:

quality in e-learning is something that delivers what the learning objectives necessitate, what the content merits, and what the learner needs.  it is about the nature of the learner's experience with the learning product.

tom haskins uses cool charts and graphs to make the argument that the best scenario is when there there is a concensus in favor of usability amongst stakeholders of a project.

along the same lines, anil mammen has a great statement about the focus of learning materials development:

Whatever be the instructional challenge, the focus should be to find the most appropriate learning solution that can be rolled out in “reasonable time” (when the content is still relevant, when things have to be addressed quickly, before costly mistakes are made...)

karyn romeis takes the argument that quailty is quality when she says:

Even when the schedule is tight, the end product must WORK. It must deliver the goods, or it has been time (and therefore money) wasted.      

she argues that when confronted with a schedule that is too tight perhaps learning professionals need aggressiveness training to help them push back for more time. 

david wilson turns the debate in discussing the role of technologies in shortening time on task which has a positive impact on development.  the downside of rapid technologies is to take the wrong people out of the process

A collapsed development model also means collapsing the expertise involved. With SME production that means minimal e-learning or even learning expertise (e.g. instructional design). It also often means limited technology understanding or knowledge of the tools and associated standards.

to this point, my frankenstein's post has a tremendous amount of strong advice and direction for us to consider on future projects.  it seems we are very focused on solving the problem within the project management framework.  but i really don't think it ultimately is the answer as it stands now.  no, my creation needs something more than more than refined project management skills.   igor, bring me the brain!

as have some of those i've quoted above, clive shepherd feels there is a need to think outside our bigger-better mindset.

Don't worry about creating sophisticated interactive multimedia materials - create a 'spark' in the form of a short thought piece, case history, quotation, picture or whatever and then allow learners to reflect on this collaboratively with their peers using forums, blogs, wikis or chat facilities. Much quicker and much more likely to have an impact.

to my mind clark quinn sews the key knot in my creation.

The point is that we need to be looking at a broader space of solutions than just elearning courses. If we move to a performance focus, we’ll see that there are times where just an update of how things have changed is sufficient, or we only need to change the references or job aids, and sometimes we have a need for a major change to skill set.

stitching all of these pieces parts into one coherent creation is quite a daunting task.  i've argued that what is required is an entirely new mindset to our creative efforts.  karyn hinted at one primary change - we need to be more willing to push back.  more importantly, if we get further out in front of the problem, more willing to be proactive  in building new consensus with our stakeholders we can avoid those schedule cutting, scope increasing problems.  we can find higher quality solutions, with less expense and in less time.

i'm not convinced that we have reached anything close to our potential when it comes to  leveraging available assets, technology and process improvements.   as clark argues, we simply can't expect different results if we keep doing the same things over and over, but just a bit faster and a bit cheaper.   Yes, what i'm proposing is risky, but then again, the stakeholders and learners are at the gates with torches and pitchforks in hand.  what do we have to lose?

technorati tags:project_management, rapid_elearning, performance, instructional_design, quality, speed

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my love-hate relationship with change

i love change.
i hate change.
over the years i've found that me and change have a sometimes delightful, sometimes frustrating relationship. 
change is an opportunity for renewal.  it is a time for deep reflection on what i am doing, where i want to be, and reconsideration my methods for getting there.  in the end, it has been my ability to manage and cope with change that has led to some of my greatest achievements.  when i've had the chance to lead others through change i've loved the experience and from all reports, i've made it easier for those i was leading.
but man, change isn't fun. whether i have a vision of where the change is leading or i'm trying to cope with the ambiguity that results from unplanned change.  No matter how well you manage it or anticipate it, it still causes distress. neurobiologist in fact have found that change actually causes pain in our brains.  that pain in turn causes the amygdala to fire the flight or fight response to threats. even as experienced as I am with change,  i still struggle with sleepless nights, questions of am i doing the right thing, am i missing something, why me, why now?  change shakes us to the core. it confuses us.  it scares us.

i've accepted heraclitus' belief change is all there is.  to cope with it, i know i have to check in with those around me who care about me to make sure i'm in touch with what's going on and what I want to stay focused on, and most importantly watch myself to see what I can learn about myself in the process.

"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." ~ Eric Hoffer