E-learning 2.0 Revisited

I am sure many of you are already familiar with Stephen Downes' vision for the future of eLearning, or eLearning 2.0. But whether you have read it before and need a refresher, or you are reading it for the first time, it's a great piece to put perspective on where things are likely going. The following excerpt gives a little of the flavor and direction:

" What happens when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is "delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read— and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual."

I think Stephen is absolutely on target (if not prophetic) and heartily recommend it for your consideration and reflection. Also of interest is a related commentary by David Jennings. In this blog entry Jennings refers to a new blog titled Learning 2.0 Tip of the Week--not sure how this is going to evolve, since it is so new, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Disintermediation @ Online Educa Berlin

I will be speaking at the Online Educa Berlin conference this coming Thursday, December 1. The title of my talk will be “Rapid eLearning: Disintermediate or Die." Readers familiar with this blog will be able to anticipate the focus of my comments: the world is changing much too rapidly and the amount of new knowledge being generated is much too vast to rely on training, eLearning courses, and LMSs to keep everyone informed. Disintermediation of the knowledge transfer process is the only realistic solution moving forward. And I’ll discuss the solution that our company, Altus Learning Solutions, has developed over the last seven years to do just that with companies like Cisco Systems, Applied Materials, Raytheon Professional Services, Network Appliance, and many others. Click here for a copy of my slides and here for a copy of my conference paper.

Podcasting at Cisco--A Case Study

Speaking of social media and eLearning 2.0, the next meeting of the eLearning Forum will focus exclusively on Podcasting in the enterprise. The meeting will feature an in-depth case study of how Cisco Systems has implemented Podcasting within their Systems Engineering Virtual Teams program to enhance their already robust knowledge transfer process. Speakers will include Juan Gamez, Cisco’s Virtual Teams Manager, along with presentations and demonstrations from Sebastian Grady and other members of the team from Altus Learning Systems (the company that provides the media production and knowledge distribution for the VT program). The meeting will be held November 2 at the Cisco Systems campus in San Jose. Click here for further information about in-person and remote participation.

Yahoo Leading the Movement to Social Media

Back to Rapid eLearning from my recent and extended tangent on the 'flat world,' there was a fabulous article in the San Jose Mercury News this week about Yahoo’s mission to take the lead on 'social media.' Yahoo just hired Marc Davis, a media professor at the University of California-Berkeley, to help "chart a course through the rapidly evolving world of 'social media' -- from blogs and social networking services to interactive mobile devices." Some excerpts from the article follow:

"The concepts that form the core of Flickr -- tagging, sharing and community -- are spreading through Yahoo's many departments. Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and her husband, Stewart Butterfield, visited with most Yahoo departments to understand how a Flickr approach might help their products by involving users more. It's what Yahoo executives are now calling the `Flickrization of Yahoo.' Yahoo's attempts to 'Flickr-ize' its search engine have also given birth to a service called My Web 2.0, which lets people bookmark and tag Web pages that interest them."

"The next major shift is going to be about more than which search engine has the most documents. What's next is an experience that is personalized, that gets better the more I use it.''

"Yahoo's embrace of social media and user-generated Web content is evident elsewhere, too. The company launched a social networking and blogging service called 360 this year. It recently acquired Upcoming.org, a Southern California Web site whose events calendar is assembled entirely by the public. It has plans to let people create and share their own audio podcasts. And it recently began including blog content in its news section, elevating grass-roots journalism and writing closer to mainstream media."

"Increasingly, you're seeing the barriers to entry, to creating content, being lowered,'' said Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president of search and marketplace. "Increasingly, technologies are allowing people to create, develop, produce, market and sell content in ways heretofore unimaginable... We want to create a platform so that the knowledge in people's heads flows onto the Web for the benefit of others.''

The implications for learning in the enterprise should be clear—the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge will be driven increasingly by user generated content and the experience will become increasingly social and personalized. It will be interesting to see how the learners of the future (today actually), who have been brought up in this alternative learning reality, will respond when confronted in the enterprise with formal courseware and learning management (control) systems. We need to learn how people are learning in the real (consumer) world and rapidly adapt and adopt. Web 2.0 will inevitably drive eLearning 2.0—we just need to figure out what that really means. Look to Yahoo and others to point the way.

(And not to belabor the point, but Web 2.0, social media, and eLearning 2.0 are simply manifestations of all the flat world trends and technologies we've been talking here about for the last few months.)

Educational Space Race

There was an interesting article recently by Steve Mills in the San Jose Mercury News. He starts out quoting Friedman: ``the generation of scientists and engineers who were motivated to go into science by the threat of Sputnik in 1957 and the inspiration of JFK are reaching their retirement age and are not being replaced” And he cites the prediction of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards that software development and engineering will be among the Top 10 fastest-growing occupations through 2012. However, “According to UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, the nationwide percentage of incoming college freshmen who want to major in computer sciences declined by more than 60 percent from 2000 to 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than peak levels in the early 1980s. The proportion of freshmen women who showed interest in computer sciences as a major has fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970s.”

Again, world flattening forces pose both a challenge and a significant opportunity for the U.S. and other post-industrial economies. But, are we prepared top use flat-world educational technologies to maintain future competitive advantage?

Competing in a "Flat" World by Richard Straub

Dr. Richard Straub, Director Learning Solutions, IBM EMEA and Chairman of the European eLearning Industry Group, will be giving a keynote presentation at the upcoming ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN conference titled: “Competing in a "Flat" World - The Transformational Power of E-learning. His talk with be part of the Opening Plenary session on Thursday, December 1st. The following is a brief excerpt from his overview:

“Technology has contributed to leveling the playing field in global competition – in this sense the world has become 'flat', a notion popularized by Thomas Friedman. However, the transition towards a more integrated global economy poses some monumental challenges for many European democracies, burdened by inflexible and engrained structures and cultural rigidities An environment of continuous innovation must be created as innovation is becoming the key driver of economic success. This will require a significant transformation in the fabric of corporations, governments, education, and research institutions… The combination of a robust, industrial-strength technology implementation and an open-standards-based ecosystem for learning will provide a sound foundation for implementing true innovation in learning that results in new pedagogical models, new virtual collaboration environments, and digital content that can be seamlessly shared across the continent. With this, we may finally see our societies evolve towards a genuine culture of lifelong learning. As a ‘learning society’, Europe may be able to live up to the Lisbon objectives – even in a ‘flat’ world.”

I think this should be one of the high points of the conference and I am looking forward to the hearing his thoughts in more detail and hopefully have the opportunity to talk with him in greater depth during the conference.

China’s Looming Talent Shortage

I'm on a "world is flat" tangent these days, so here is more. The McKinsey Global Institute released a study on what it calls China’s “looming talent shortage.” McKinsey’s data lend backing to anecdotes one hears about the bidding-up of the cost of managerial labor, particularly among foreign companies, which often require English language skills of their managers in addition to leadership and technical ability. McKinsey estimates that, over the next five years, about 70% of the capable grads could be taken up by multinationals alone, never mind domestic firms. Hence, it predicts a “war” for talent. Yet, the study points to a mismatch between the educational system and the needs of the workforce. McKinsey’s study cites the example of engineering: this year, China will graduate 600,000 engineers. However, of the country’s total of 1.6 million young engineers, barely 10% could qualify for work in a multinational company, about the same number as in the U.K. The problem is that engineering programs in China focus too much on theory and not enough on projects and working as part of a team. Another flaw identified by the study relates to archaic residency requirements that mean the vast majority of places are saved for local students, denying some highlyqualifiedstudents university access. I guess this must mean that the world is not quite as flat as Friedman would have us believe. Engineering talent is clearly not an undifferentiated commodity, and there is value in looking under the covers of some of the broad statistics he cites.

U.S. Without a Flat-World Clue

Friedman tries to sound the alarm for U.S. policy makers about how the nation needs to respond to the challenges of the "flat world." Foremost among his recommendations or urgings is a pollicy that promotes education in math and science as a national priority. Unfortunately, our elected leaders don't have a clue and are in fact acting in a highly destructive manner--disadvantaging future generations of Americans even further relative to global competitors who place a very high priority on developing a technically competent workforce. The following news excerpt summarizes the misguided thinking in Washington today that values tax cuts and war over investments in social and economic security:

"Republican leaders of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce introduced a bill last week that would cut up to $15 billion from the government’s student-loan programs over the next five years. The reductions would meet the panel’s obligations as part of a broader congressional effort to reduce the federal budget deficit. The new bill increases the savings from the student loan program from the $8.6 billion cut proposed in the reauthorization bill for the Higher Education Act by reducing the subsidies private lenders receive from the government and by making it more expensive for borrowers to lock in fixed interest rates when consolidating federal student loans. The new bill incorporates that measure and adds to it, increases fees charged to lenders, and makes it still more difficult for borrowersto lock in below-market rates."

Contrast this with another news item this week: "China Luring Scholars to Make Universities Great. In an effort to transform its top universities into the world’s best within a decade, China is spending billions of dollars to woo big-name scholars and build first-class research laboratories. According to the New York Times, the model is to recruit top foreign-trained Chinese and Chinese-American specialists, set them up in well equipped labs, surround them with the brightest students and give them tremendous leeway. In a minority of cases, they receive American-style pay; in others, they are lured by the cost of living, generous housing, and the laboratories."

The World is (Still) Round

This may seem like a departure from Rapid eLearning, because it is! But I ran across this brilliant critique of Tom Friedman and felt the need to share it. Below is a brief excerpt from a book review written by John Gray, professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics (not completely coincidentally, the former institution of higher learning of none other than the also brilliant and often maligned Karl Marx):

"In any longer perspective what we are witnessing today is only the most recent phase of worldwide industrialization. In the nineteenth century the world was shrunk by the advent of the telegraph; today it is shrinking again as a consequence of the Internet. Contrary to Friedman, however, the increasing facility of communication does not signify a quantum shift in human affairs. The uses of petroleum and electricity changed human life more deeply than any of the new information technologies have done. Even so, they did not end war and tyranny and usher in a new era of peace and plenty. Like other technological innovations, they were used for a variety of purposes, and became part of the normal conflicts of history."

Competing and Learning in a Flat World

If you need a concise definition of the “flat world,” and what the U.S. has to do to remain competitive, just read an interview with Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy. It’s an excellent interview and is a great follow-on to Friedman.
“…sourcing capital from where it is cheapest, sourcing talent from where it is best available, producing where it is most cost-effective and selling where the markets are -- without being constrained by natural boundaries.”

And if you want to see one vivid example of the “flat world” implications for learning, just read another article in today’s San Jose Mercury News: “Offshoring Education: Growing trend of using online tutors from overseas raises some concerns.”

Europe Leads in Understanding Informal Learning

A meeting of the eLearning Forum will be held on October 21, 2005 to address the subject of the “Leveraging Informal Learning for Improved Business Results” (www.elearningforum.com). Speaking at this meeting will be Bob Mosher (Learning Evangelist for Microsoft), Jay Cross (CEO, Internet Time Group), and myself. In preparing to moderate the meeting, I was lucky enough to be included on an email thread with Gunnar Brückner, CEO of coachingplatform Inc., with offices in Canada and Germany (http://coachingplatform.com). In his correspondence with Jay Cross and Eilif Trondsen (former and present CEOs of the eLearning Forum), Gunnar made us aware of the extensive work that has been going on for several years throughout Europe to better understand how to recognize, assess, and validate informal learning practices. Having not been previously aware of this excellent body of work, I am indebted to Gunnar and heartily recommend the following three articles/studies as a primer on the subject. Thanks Gunnar!

“http://www2.trainingvillage.gr/etv/publication/download/
panorama/5164_en.pdf

“http://www.kenniscentrumevc.nl/site/documenten/Bjornavold.pdf

“Non-Formal Learning: Mapping The Conceptual Terrain. A Consultation Report.” Helen Colley, Phil Hodkinson & Janice Malcolm provide a very helpful overview of different discourses around non-formal and informal learning and find that the boundaries or relationships between informal, non-formal and formal learning can only be understood within particular contexts.
http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/colley_informal_learning.htm

Informal Learning Hits IBM Europe

The Informal Learning bug that is finally infecting the U.S. has has been at work in Europe for some time now. This is exemplified by a presentation that will be made soon by Mia Vanstraelen. Mia is responsible for learning, education and training services at IBM Europe. In that capacity, she leads a European team of learning leaders, professionals, instructors, tutors, and coaches. Mia is also a member of the IBM Learning Team responsible for defining the Learning and Knowledge strategy for the IBM Corporation, the strategic learning plans in the business units, and driving advanced Learning Architectures and Designs into each of the Learning and Knowledge programmes and curricula. The following is an excerpt from the overview of a presetnation she will be giving in December at Online Educa--Berlin.

According to the US Dept of Commerce, “at least 80% of employee learning happens in the workplace.” A recent US Department of Labor study found that “workplace learning is widespread across many employee interactions and serves to fulfill most learning needs, perhaps as much as 70 percent.” The learning is “... ongoing, often unrecognised, and involves knowledge and skills that are attainable and immediately applicable”. Whether the number is 70% or 80% or even 50%, it’s large enough for us to rethink how best to leverage the workplace to enable employees to learn ever-changing, essential knowledge and skills.

So for learning providers, this requires a shift in emphasis, from “bringing the worker to the learning” (for example, sending employees to offsite learning centers, hotels or websites) to “bringing the learning to the work” – using the work tasks, workflow and work portals themselves as environments for learning. Tapping the workplace for learning in a purposeful, informed and guided way is the focus of IBM On Demand Learning.

In her presentation at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN about “On Demand Learning at IBM” (GPP23, Thursday, December 1, 2005, 14:00 – 16:00 hrs), Mia Vanstraelen will explain the building blocks of IBM’s On Demand Learning model and illustrate it with practical examples, demonstrating how technology can help leverage the workplace to transform employee learning.

Related note: Mia will be speaking in parallel with my own presentation at Online Educa entitled: "Rapid eLearning--Disintermediate or Die." I'm hearing a very consistent informal learning theme these days...

Course Development Takes Too Long

Results of recent Flash Poll by Maise, entitled "Development Time & Speed Satisfaction," indicated that 65% of training directors are still dissatisfied with how long course development takes. Here are the results of 659 respondents:

What is the average time in your organization to develop an e-Learning course?

• 1 to 6 Days--31%
• 1 to 2 Weeks--4%
• 3 to 6 weeks--25%
• 7 to 12 Weeks--20%
• 13 to 18 Weeks--9%
• > 18 Weeks--11%

Satisfaction with your organization's time to develop an e-Learning course?

• Very Satisfied with Development Time--9%
• Satisfied with Development Time--26%
• It needs to be Somewhat Faster--28%
• It needs to be Much Faster--37

Flat World: Metaphor and Context

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Friedman’s "The World Is Flat" is stimulating a great deal of conversation these days in the learning world. It is providing a much needed unifying theme or context for exploring and better understanding the many seemingly disparate changes we see going on around us everyday. Here are three examples of initiatives started in the last several weeks focusing on this theme.

The board of directors of the eLearning Forum recently agreed to use the flat world as overarching programming theme for the upcoming year. The details have yet to be worked out for the related topics for the individual months, but starting later this year all programs will be explicitly tied to exploring the implications of the flat theme.

The implications of the flat world will be the subject for the September conference call of the HRForum membership. Eilif Trodsen and I, representing the eLearning Forum, will join the HRForum's executive director, Aryae Coopersmith, to facilitate a lively discussion.

And the Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society is planning to co-sponsor an interview series (a podcast) with leading Silicon Valley executives and leading academics on the implications for education and workplace learning in a flat world. The initial interviews are tentatively scheduled to begin in late October and will be conducted by Prof. Geoffrey Bowker (SCU), Eilif Trondsen (SRIC-BI Learning on Demand), and myself (Altus Learning Systems).

The Power of Us

Speaking of the world being flat, and for those of you who don’t have the time or patience to wade through 500 pages of Tom Friedman’s tome, here’s a great article that says the same thing—but in a way that seems much more immediate and personal to tech-savy readers.

My friend, colleague, and fellow eLearning Forum Board member, Eilif Trondsen, just forwarded me the link to the Business Week article: The Power of Us: Mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business—and I wanted to pass it on immediately. The article discusses bright new companies (including Meiosys, Skype, Kazaa, Bit Torrent, and obviously Google) that are taking advantage of mass collaboration and disparate new technologies to shake up their respective industries—ranging from entertainment to telecommunications. And industry giants, like Proctor & Gamble and Dow Corning, are “becoming much more porous and decentralized” to speed up product innovation through the intentional “democratization of science.”

Here’s but a sampling of the excited phrases uttered by the editors of BW: there’s a fundamental shift in power happening; peer power; sweeping changes; new economic order; economics of networks; sea change in the economy; new market ecology; citizen journalists and participatory journalism; personalized products; and the cornucopia of the commons.

The discussion of “peer production” is particularly interesting and relevant to the training and learning business. File sharing, blogs, wikis, social networking systems, and many other disparate Internet-enabled technologies are, in the words of publisher Tim O’Reilly, creating an “architecture of participation.” And quote eBay’s Meg Whitman makes the power of peer production even more poignant: “It is far better to have an army of a million than a command and control system.” To contend with this “rising people power,” the article concludes, “corporations will have to craft new roles for themselves and learn new ways to operate in order to stay relevant.”

Bringing this a little closer to home I would say, to contend with this rising people power, training departments and learning professionals will have to craft new roles for themselves and learn new ways to operate in order to stay relevant. Far better to have an army of employees sharing their knowledge so that all can learn, than a command and control system of structured curricula, instructional design methodology, and learning management systems. The democratization of learning content is the next disruptive wave for enterprise learning—let’s start paddling furiously now so we can catch it and ride it into shore!

A Guidebook for Free-Range Learners...

I recently had the opportunity to read and comment on a very early draft, musings would probably be more acurate, of an upcoming book by eLearning guru Jay Cross, tentatively titled: Informal Learning, A Guidebook for Free-Range Learners and Frustrated Managers. It's going to be a fun and insightful book and can't wait to see the final copy. I include this plug for Jay here for two not-so-important reasons: 1) I was looking for an excuse to use Jay's provacative phrase "Free-Range Learners" (wish I had come up with that!), and 2) he mentions my company in a section called: Instant Information and the CoPs that Produce It. Sorry, couldn't help the self-promotion, so here's the relevant quote:

"A CoP is a community of practice. Most of us are members of several CoPs but don't realize it. Think “guild” or “special interest group” or “professional group.” Cisco set up a dozen of them around issues such as security or VoIP. Once or twice a year, opinion leaders in a specialty get together for a week to share insights, hear about new developments, and listen to customers. Every moment is videotaped, for the discussions become content for those who cannot attend in person. Altus Learning Systems slices and dices the presentation so that anyone can call up sort of an in-house Google, and within a minute be looking at, listening to, or reading precisely what they requested. Instead of the frustration of wading through a presentation to find what you need, this content is indexed to the individual sentence (see example from International Conference on Global Knowledge Sharing). You can even subscribe to subjects as a podcast to listen to while driving or at the gym."

Well said Jay, thanks. Here's hoping this seminal passage survives the editing process and makes it into the published version! For more insight from the ever-creative and irreverant Mr. Cross, just mosey over to his personal website.

Flat World Economics

If anyone has any doubts about how quickly the world is flattening and what the implications are, two recent news items demonstrate the point well. First is the laying off 14,500 HP employees, after the thousands that were already laid off under Carly. This is a new CEO’s desperate response to dealing with a flat world and the implications for the company, the employees, and the industry are devastating (and this is after the announcement of IBM selling its ThinkPad business to China’s Lenovo...). Not sure there is a viable role for the venerable HP in the flattened world, and, if so, it surely won’t look anything like the respected industry leader of the past.

The other article in the San Jose Mercury News today was about “Our society’s middle is shrinking from view.” In the last three years, the number of families in Santa Clara County (read Silicon Valley) earning below $15K rose 30% and the number earning $15-35K has grown by 25%. The number of families earning $35-50K has stagnated and the number earning $50-100K has declined by 9%--while the number earning over $100K increased by 4%. The economic implications are pretty clear—low wage, low skill service jobs are on the rise, middle class jobs are on the decline (through outsourcing, off-shoring, reductions in force due to increases in productivity, etc.), and those at the top will continue to do better.

As Friedman warns in Chapter 8 of The World Is Flat, “This is not a test.”

If Only We Knew What We Know

To reiterate a principle that underlies this entire blog, I believe the essential knowledge that can create competitive advantage for companies (at least in a round world!) is proprietary. I suspect that Seely and Hagel (in The Only Sustainable Edge) would say that it may not be wholly proprietary—it’s the ability to turn knowledge from inside and outside the company into new, distinctive capabilities. And the most important proprietary knowledge is locked in people’s heads, usually inaccessible and certainly not effectively shared and leveraged throughout most organizations.

If I sound disdainful of courseware from time to time (OK, always), it is not because I don’t think it has an important role in workplace learning—it does. But critical corporate IP usually doesn’t make it’s way into courses and mining that corporate gold should be our primary objective.

What brought this to mind again vividly was the opening chapter or two in a must read book (not new but very insightful) titled, If We Only Knew What We Know, by O’Dell and Grayson of the American Productivity & Quality Center. I’m still reading, but I wanted to share this great paragraph:

“Only those organizations that methodically, passionately, and proactively find out and transfer what they know, and use it to increase efficiency, sharpen their product-development edge, and get closer to their customers, will not only survive, but thrive.”

More later...

Informal Learning Momentum

Is it just me, or is it true that informal leaning is finally getting much more attention from a variety of quarters in the learning business communities? I know I am biased, or should I say a bigot, about the importance of informal learning, so maybe I’m just drinking too much of my own Kool-Aid. But, it’s in the air and everywhere these days. Here are two more references I stumbled on this afternoon (even Microsoft is getting involved and it's a hot topic in Europe!):

• The Power of Informal Learning in CLO magazine by Bob Mosher, Director of Learning and Strategic Evangelism for Microsoft Learning.
• Informal learning cited top challenge for educators at London and Amsterdam events.

So, what's the relationship between Informal Learning and Rapid eLearning? If it's not perfectly clear from my previous posts, I apologize. I see Rapid eLearning (as I have selectively defined it here and implemented with our clients) as a primary tool for capturing elusive corporate IP and facilitating even more effective (search-driven) informal learning.

Masie on Podcasting for Learning

I have been planning on digging into the uses and benefits of "podcasting" for enterprise learning, especially after my company's recent successful pilot project with Cisco--podcasting the latest product and competitive info to their thousands of technical sales reps. More on that later.

But it is very interesting to see the godfather of eLearning, Elliott Masie, get on the informal learning content bandwagon and his recent podcast on podcasting is worth a listen. According to his site:

"Informal Content & Conversations in Learning: A 15 minute audio streamed or PodCast program from Elliott Masie focusing on how our organizations will start to leverage informal and colleagues based content as part of our training and development programs. How do organizations prepare for PodCasts as part of Executive Leadership Development, for example?"

Weblink and RSS feed available.

Natural Knowledge Flows

I need to take a quick time out from world flatness to discuss a recent article in CLO Mag entitled Making Rapid E-Learning Work, by Josh Bersin.

Let me start by reiterating my previous comments about Josh—he gets it. Josh has a solid understanding of Rapid eLearning—the business imperatives that drive it, the adoption trends, growth projections, and where it fits in the full spectrum of learning from informal to formal. Josh understand that different methods are appropriate to address different circumstances, objectives, learners, and subjects. His description and analysis of where it fits in the spectrum is on target. The article is a must read if you haven’t read his paper on the subject (for sale) on his website.

But even Josh may have fallen into the trap of thinking about learning and courses as being the same. He states: “The key to successful rapid e-learning is having tools and templates that make it easy for virtually any professional to quickly create a meaningful course.” Rapid eLearning does not generally serve the same purpose as courseware with all the bells and whistles of instructional design, testing, tracking, etc. We don’t need SMEs to create more “courses”—we need them to share their knowledge, quickly and easily.

Since the most common way for SMEs to share their knowledge one to many in organizations is by giving presentations (not by building courses), the key to successful Rapid eLearning is capturing those presentations, whenever and wherever they occur—and making them quickly and easily accessible to those who need them. Relying on every SME in a large company record their own individual presentations whenever they feel the need to communicate, using one of a growing number of self-production tools, is certainly one way to do it. But the more practical and effective way, used by Cisco Systems and a number of other leading companies, is to identify the “natural knowledge flows” in the organization and capture the knowledge as it is already being transferred. Examples of mission-critical, pre-established knowledge flows include: new product introduction seminars, sales meetings, technical transfers of information, web-conferences, etc.

The key knowledge in any organization has got to already be flowing somewhere, more or less effectively, or the organization could not function. The trick is to identify those flows and be there to capture them. Some companies have designated meeting or conference rooms they routinely use to transfer knowledge. Some use whatever meeting facilitates are available. Some companies use web conferencing and conference calls, and most use all of the above. In a Rapid eLearning world, the secret is knowing where and when the knowledge is flowing and be there to record it one way or another.

Enabling SMEs to create their own learning content is a great thing, no doubt about it, and Josh is a great cheer leader for this important development. This trend will continue to grow in this era of the “democratization” of content and learning, where everyone can be a publisher, collaborator, and a learner. But self-production is usually not sufficient to ensure that the critical IP is systematically captured and made available to the many audiences that nee it. A robust Rapid eLearning strategy and infrastructure must be focused on a company’s critical knowledge flows and designed to accommodate the variety of ways knowledge is transferred on a daily basis.

The Key Skill in a Flattened World

One of Friedman’s ten “flatteners” is “in-forming,” and he recommends a strategy for workers to become “untouchables” by waking up every morning wondering how to become: “special, specialized, highly adaptable, or more securely anchored.” In this brave new world of learning, every person is in charge of their own IP and “learning how to learn” becomes a [the] core skill of the survivors of global flattening.

What does workplace learning look like in a flattened, time-shifted world of global collaboration? How should corporate training departments cope and adapt when the skills that are most difficult to train (such as innovation, invention, and customer intimacy) become the most vital skills in a flattened world? And what strategy must we in the learning profession adopt to help our organizations and learners thrive in the ever-flattening world?

As Ross Perot used to say, "I'm all ears" if anyone has answers to these questions...

If It Can Be Trained...

Friedman urges us to quickly abandon any illusions that America will naturally maintain an unassailable position of superiority in the global marketplace for products and ideas. As we stumble into this frightening new economic order, America faces hungrier and better educated global competitors who have the ambition, resources, and strategy to eat our lunch. We have helped turn the global economic tables—only to find out that they are no longer tilted in our favor. The only question now is what we are individually and collectively going to do about it. And specifically, what are the implications for workplace learning?

One implication seems ver clear: What can be trained, by definition, can be outsourced or off-shored—unless it involves a geographically “anchored” service, to use Friedman’s term. Food preparation, craft work, and nursing care come to mind. But what about the rest of us? Friedman suggests that America must collaborate to more rapidly invent new technologies and create new markets that we can exploit to our advantage—or risk falling further behind. So what and how must we learn in order to create ever-newer heights to the economic food chain?

The World Is Flat--Now What?

Having recently read Tom Friedman’s latest book, I’ve been wrestling with the potential implications for workplace learning from a “flattened world.” Still wrestling, no overarching theory in response yet. But the book does kind of take the wind out of your sails when confronted by the full magnitude of the global shift that is taking place much more quickly than most of us would like to acknowledge. Reading the book, while intermittently reflecting on the enterprise learning profession, brought to mind the analogy of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. While we debate the merits of instructional design methodology and the demerits of hyper-PowerPoint, we risk becoming irrelevant and unemployed in a flattened world. I have been absent from the blogisphere recently contemplating the implications—it’s going to be a longer-term process…

But, a couple of quotes from Friedman and others he quotes seem apt in support of the basic philosophy of Rapid eLearning I have been laboring to develop lo these last few months:

• “Informing is the ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain—a supply chain of information, knowledge, and entertainment. Informing is about self-collaboration—becoming your own self-directed and self-empowered researcher, editor, and selector of entertainment, without having to go to the library or the movie theater or through network television. Informing is searching for knowledge. It is seeking like-minded people and communities.” Thomas Friedman
• “The democratization of information is having a profound impact on society… And people have the ability to be better connected to things that interest them, to quickly and easily become experts in given subjects and to connect with others who share their interests.” Jerry Yang, Yahoo! cofounder.
• “Search is so highly personal that searching is empowering for humans like nothing else. It is the antithesis of being told or taught. It is about self-empowerment; it is empowering individuals to do what they think best with the information they want… Search is the ultimate expression of the power of the individual, using a computer, looking at the world, and finding exactly what they want—and everyone is different when it comes to that.” Eric Schmidt, Google CEO.

More from Friedman and workplace learning implications coming--this is going to take a while, so please join the conversation…

Maximizing ROI

For Highest ROI, Stay Above ‘The Line’
Findings #2 and 3 give clear guidance about how to achieve higher job competence and, thereby, the highest return on our learning investments. The point in the ROI graph below at which the curves for the declining value of formal learning methods and and the increasing value of informal learning methods intersect identifies a key ‘learning maturity’ milestone. This is the point at which the return on further investments in formal learning diminishes and further investements in informal learning methods really makes sense. At this theoretical cross-over point, a worker has developed his or her foundation knowledge and skills and possesses the cognitive framework needed to effectively assimilate and apply new knowledge independently. Drawing a horizontal line through this point shows where investments in learning will bring the highest return. The highest returns will be obtained from investments made above the line, with below the line investments being made selectively.


Highest Return on Investment


Target Formal Learning for Less Competent Workers.
Investments in formal learning methods should be targeted primarily for less competent, presumably newer, workers. These would include investments in instructor-led training, e-learning courseware, etc. This approach will provide these workers with needed foundation knowledge and skills. Additional investments in formal learning beyond the point of learning maturity should be made selectively, since more competent workers will, generally, not benefit proportionately from these methods.

Target Informal Learning for More Competent Workers.
Investments made to facilitate informal learning should be targeted primarily for more competent, presumably more experienced, workers. Competent workers will benefit disproportionately from investments made to build the social and technical knowledge-transfer infrastructure of an organization. Supporting the establishment and operation of strategically focused communities of practice and expert knowledge repositories will help more competent workers build on their existing capabilities to acquire the knowledge updates needed in a rapidly changing world. Conversely, investments made below the line for informal learning for less competent workers should be limited to methods that are specifically appropriate for them, like new-hire mentoring programs.

Summary
So, which school of thought is right--those who think that all learning must be instructionally designed or those who believe that facilitating informal learning is the only viable approach? Both are right and both are wrong because both approaches are vitally needed. We just need to make sure we use the most appropriate methods available to provide people with the learning resources they require based on their level of learning maturity. And, happily, helping people learn in the ways that are most useful to them will also support the business outcomes we desire and give us the highest returns on our learning investments.

p.s. I added a missing graph and made a few minor corrections to the previous post.

Findings from NSF Study

Sorry for the recent hiatus--I went fishing for a week and then there was a Blogger technical problem, but I'm getting back on track...

The formal vs. informal learning debate seems a little silly at times, since both are needed. At one end of the spectrum are instructional designers who insist that formal learning methods are the only valid ones. At the other extreme is the recent ‘workflow learning’ crowd that insists that trying to design courseware to effectively deal with today’s accelerating information overload is a fool’s errand. So, which approach is right? Apparently, they are both right and both wrong. The point is that they are two approaches to learning that are both mjore and less appropriate under different circumstances.

Preliminary results from a recent National Science Foundation-funded research project give us some simple, but very powerful insights about the kinds of relationships formal and informal learning methods have with business outcomes and how to optimize an organization’s learning delivery system to achieve the highest ROI. The group studied was a large group of technical account reps within a global hi-tech company.

Finding #1
Job competence of sales engineers demonstrated a statistically significant positive correlation with customer satisfaction. Job competence was measured by manager-validated self-assessments and customer satisfaction was measured through a company-wide customer survey program. Organizational units with higher mean job competence ratings also had higher customer satisfaction ratings. Since learning professionals cannot impact customer satisfaction directly, any meaningful ROI assessment must first demonstrate that it is correlated with job competence. If competence is positively related to customer satisfaction, and learning methods can be demonstrated to correlate with competence, then a value chain from learning to business outcomes can be inferred. So the first step was to statistically validate what we would intuitively believe--that higher competence leads to improved business outcomes, in this case higher customer satisfaction.

Finding #2
The extent of participation in formal learning demonstrated a statistically significant negative correlation with job competence. Yes, you read this correctly—a negative correlation! (See the Correlations graph below.) Does that mean that the more workers are engaged in training, the less competent they become? The more likely explanation is one that we intuitively understand from our own experiences. Less competent workers need to develop baseline knowledge and skills and, therefore, engage relatively more often in formal learning experiences. More competent workers, by definition, have already developed that foundation and, therefore, take relatively fewer classes. They're the ones who probably teach the classes or transfer their subject matter knowledge to others to develop and teach the classes!

Finding #3
Informal learning methods demonstrated a statistically positive correlation with job competence. (See the Correlations graph below.) In this case, informal learning methods included a well organized ‘communities of practice’ program supported by extensive, expert knowledge capture and retrieval processes and technologies. Does this mean that informal methods are more effective than formal ones? Again, a more likely explanation exists. Less competent workers do not have the cognitive framework needed to effectively assimilate new knowledge independently, and therefore, utilize informal methods relatively less. More competent workers, who have developed the needed cognitive framework, seek to enhance their existing understanding as things constantly change by using informal learning methods more frequently.

Finally, A Definition

OK, on with a more complete definition. Rapid eLearning (as in all learning) involves at least two parts or aspects: capture and accessibility. Although not nearly as succinct as I would like, here’s my definition of Rapid eLearning at this point--or at least a list of distinguishing attributes.

Part #1—Capture:

• The goal of Rapid eLearning is to keep people knowledgeable in a fast-changing world.
• It is best suited for updating a person's exisitng knowledge in the midst of quickly changing conditions.
• The strategy for accomplishing the goal is to disintermediate the transfer of knowledge from experts to learners—to create the shortest path from experts to learners.
• The methods for implementing that strategy normally involve electronically capturing (recording) and transferring expert knowledge directly for synchronous and/or asynchronous access.
• Synchronous tools include everything from webcasting (live audio/video streaming) and web conferencing (like WebEx, Live Meeting, etc.), to tools with more robust learning-oriented functions (from companies like Centra, Interwise, and Macromedia).
• Asynchronous access options range from self-production tools (from companies like Articulate and Accordant) to complete enterprise solutions (from companies like Altus Learning Systems).

Part “2—Accessibility:

• The other goal of Rapid eLearning is to make knowledge easily accessible so people can find exactly what they need, when they need it.
• A key accessibility factor in a viable Rapid eLearning solution is searchability. Level 1 searchability involves keyword and metadata-based methods. Level 2 searchability is more comprehensive and involves full-text search.
• Raid eLearning ideally provides granular, point-of-interest access to exactly the specific content needed (not just the file level, but the subtopic level).
• An emerging accessibility method that is beginning to gain traction in enterprise learning is subscription (such as RSS)—the ability to subscribe directly to sites with exactly the content a specific learner is interested in or needs to know about.

More Rapid eLearning Confusion

In Dianne Archibald’s recent article, “Rapid E-Learning: A Growing Trend,” she states:

“The definition of rapid e-learning differs among experts, but generally it’s considered to be e-learning that can be developed quickly and inexpensively. REL uses tools and processes that decrease development time (and costs) dramatically.”

Who could argue with that? Faster for many kinds and training and many situations is a necessary (if, for some, not a completely desirable) thing. Although Diane does an excellent job in her article in manways, and I recommend it highly, it is also an good example of the fundamental and pervasive confusion on the subject.

Diane mentions the term “courseware” fourteen times in her brief article. Clearly for her, Rapid eLearning is a way of creating “courseware” more quickly. And Diane is not a lone in this interpretation—doing what we have done before as trainers, instructional design, but doing it more quickly. And there’s the rub. According to this interpretation: on-line courseware = Rapid eLearning; courseware = training (eTraining); therefore, Rapid eLearning supposedly = Rapid eTraining. There’s nothing wrong with Rapid eTraining—it’s desperately needed. So, to avoid confusion in the future, let’s all agree to use the term Rapid eTraining when we are referring to methods and tools for rapid courseware development.

Rapid eLearning, on the other hand, is actually about learning—not courseware development. There are many ways to help people quickly learn what they need to know. Building courses more quickly may be one of them, but that’s not the essence of Rapid eLearning. The essence of Rapid eLearning is creating the shortest path between those who have knowledge and those who need it. It’s about disintermediating the process of transferring knowledge, not intermediating it more quickly. Rapid eLearning is about transferring time-critical knowledge as quickly, easily, and as cheaply as possible--it’s not about courses. The essence of rapid eLearning is subject matter knowledge—not instructional design.

Diane says, presumably for the benefit of those who are resisting Rapid eLearning because may compromise the integrity of instructional design: “By blending REL with other forms of training, it may be considered a part of a valid e-learning solution…” But, the preferred recipe should be: “The optimal eLearning solution is achieved by blending various forms of training (including eTraining), which provide foundation knowledge and skills, with Rapid eLearning, which keeps people knowledgeable in a fast-changing world.

For the term Rapid eLearning to be meaningful, it's not just about doing things differently--it's about doing different things. Let's focus not on courseware--let's focus on learning.

Knowledge on the Hoof

I read a very interesting article in CIO Insight magazine, April 2005, titled “Hide and Seek.” It only goes to reinforce all the other information we are seeing these days about the struggle to find and leverage corporate IP. Again, “...over 80% of corporate data is ‘unstructured,’ or does not reside in an indexed, organized, or easily searchable database.”

Quoting the executive director of knowledge transfer (nice to know such a job exists!) at QCSI, a medium-sized software development company: “About 90% of the company’s information resided in the heads of about 10 percent of out workforce.” The term that comes to mind here is "Knowledge on the Hoof." Maybe the 1950's TV character Rowdy Yates is the appropriate metaphor for the learning manager of the future. The cattle are going to move wherever the grass is greener, whether you're there or not--so you might as well be there to facilitate their movement in a direction that maximizes financial gain at the end of the trail. Keep them doggies rollin', rawhide!

Estimates from companies larger than QCSI stay closer to the 80/20 rule, but the point is still well taken—organizational IP is isolated (trapped!) and can’t be readily accessed by others who need it, let alone leveraged by the enterprise for competitive advantage. This knowledge transfer director went on to describe the search solution his company developed, and proudly reported “...the search application saves each employee 20 minutes per day, which translates into roughly 150 hours of freed-up time per week, companywide. That’s big bucks.” Sounds to me like this company has its priorities straight and is making good progress--while the rest of the industry is focused on training. When QCSI goes public, I'm going to invest.

My conclusion? Either a number of people have started drinking the same Kool-Aid recently, or there is a growing consensus around two points: the most important corporate knowledge is currently inaccessible (since it's on the hoof), and people waste a heck of a lot of expensive time trying to find what they need know--and are operating in the dark at least half the time.

So Much Knowledge, So Hard to Find

A couple of more informal learning factoids came to my attention this week. One major tech company I work with estimates that "E-mail 'noise' results in $60M productivity loss" annually. As an example of people's desperate need to transfer knowledge within organizations, this same company says they have over 60,000 email aliases in their email system and sales people subscribe to 30-60 on average. Holy smokes! Imagine the hit to sales productivity if sales people are spending that amount of time managing their email to try to keep current with the knowledge they need to do their jobs.

In a study conducted by BAE Systems, they estimate that 80% of employees waste on average 30 minutes per day retrieving information. That's over two full work weeks each year per person. At a very conservative $30/hour salary for a typical knowledge worker (burdened cost is much higher), that would equate to a $13,500,000 cost per year for a 5,000 person company. That ain't peanuts, and it's probably a significant underestimation if we reflect on the previously cited IDC study. Again, IDC estimates that knowledge workers "spend 15-30% of their time seeking specific information and these searches are successful less than 50% of the time." That equates to at least 45 minutes per day of wasted time per person desperately seeking needed information unsuccessfully. If IDC is correct, that would raise the cost for the 5,000 person company to $20M a year. Either way, the opportunity for improvement in increasing the efficiency of the average worker's and knowledge search and retrieval process is enormous. And just think what the real cost is if we consider the productivity impact is of people not being able to find what they need to know 50% of the time! That number would really be scary...

Part of the explanation for this is "Over 80% of a corporation's business critical information is locked in unstructured formats," according to a recent estimate by Forrester Research. No wonder people are having a hard time finding what they need--the important stuff isn't even available in a readily accessible format! So, the real challenges for us in the learning business are twofold: 1) how to make a company's "business critical information" (their corporate IP) available in an accessible format, and 2) how to increase the efficiency of the search and retrieval process. Making progress on those two fronts will be a significant step forward for workplace learning.

Formalizing Informal Learning?

I attended an on-line webinar sponsored by CLO magazine yesterday entitled, “Formalizing Informal Learning." One colleague of mine asked, why would you want to do that and another said/asked, isn’t that akin to organizing spontaneity? And the webinar was less than news worthy to boot. But, all of that aside, there was one interesting factoid I had never seen. Quoted from IDC, Analyze the Future:

“IDC research indicates that knowledge workers spend 15-30% of their time seeking specific information and these searches are successful less than 50% of the time. For the Fortune 500, the cost of the fruitless searches represents between $60 and $85 billion in direct costs and twice that in opportunity costs.”

Who knows how anyone quantifies such things, but the essence of it rings true to me. Informal learning is essential and inevitable and trying to formalize it past a point seems counterproductive and silly. But making it more efficient by providing more specific knowledge repositories and more precise tools to access them makes a lot of sense—and the payoff, in terms of increased productivity, would be enormous. There are practical ways to do that, and I'll get to them soon.

The same presenter also quoted a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finding that 70% of workplace learning is informal and only 30% formal. Jay Cross and others quote the percentages as 80%-20%, and I would say in high-tech industries, it is more like 90%-10% informal to formal. But at least everyone seems to be in agreement about one thing--that formal is merely the tip of the workplace learning iceberg, with the vast majority lurking out of sight below the surface.

If anyone has more quotable factoids like the IDC and BLS reports, please share them--thanks!

Disintermediation: Back to the Future

We must interrupt this Rapid eLearning blog at this time for a brief cliché, a theory, and a little historical perspective. The cliché: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Related to this is the theory of social progress that states that we really corkscrew through life, rather than advance in straight lines or vectors. Inherent in both is the observation that space and time turn back on themselves and that the past becomes relevant anew in changed circumstances. OK, what does this have to do with the future of workplace learning?

In the new circumstances in which we find ourselves (speed it king, knowledge is exploding, budgets are shrinking, etc.), disintermediation of the knowledge sharing process is paramount to success. Hence, the current obsession with Rapid eLearning. That is to say, we must once again create the shortest path between experts and learners to succeed in the marketplace. Once again? Yes, there once was a time when workplace learning was completely disintermediated. That was in the pre-industrial age when craftsmanship was predominant; when learners (apprentices) learned directly from subject matter experts (journey-level crafts people). In the apprenticeship model of learning, the learner, the expert, the learning, and doing the work were highly integrated. And key to success in that period was superior workmanship, not mass execution of repetitive tasks and mass production of identical products.

But that cozy relationship was not to last with the advent of the industrial revolution. The ‘dis-integration’ of work into repetitive tasks and the principle of division of labor were the fuel for industrialism. Since workers were no longer responsible for producing a completed products, but simply performing their tasks, individual responsibility was replaced with management in order to provide needed integration of all the tasks. In order to give workers the skills needed to perform their individual tasks, apprenticeship was replaced by training. And with training came a new group of workers whose job was no longer to actually do work or even manage work, but to instruct others how to do it. Industrial-era scalability required the disintegration of work, the division of labor, and the separation of learning from working.

But “times they are a changing.” Actually, times have already changed and we just need to wake to our new post-industrial reality. The United States has been transformed into the poster child for post-industrialism, and third world societies have been transforming themselves into the industrialists of the our times. Any repetitive tasks related to products that can be exported are being “off-shored” (we are already way beyond simple outsourcing). And what we are left with in our post-industrial economy are the tasks that cannot be readily off-shored. Invention, innovation, creation—in short, knowledge work.

And there’s the rub. We are still clinging to our industrial-era learning model, training, in our post-industrial world. By definition, whatever can be trained will be off-shored. The more efficient the training, the more rapidly the subject of the training can and will be off-shored. Training in a post-industrial economy is a facilitator of the inevitable—the transfer and loss of trainable jobs.
So where does that leave us? Back to the future, where we must once again disintermediate the learning and knowledge sharing process—where we must again unite experts with learners and learning the work with doing the work.

The job is now disseminating new knowledge more quickly so that it can be leveraged by other knowledge workers to facilitate ever-more-rapid innovation, invention, and creation. Today’s successful companies are knowledge factories, not production factories, where the product is knowledge itself. Successful companies of the future will manage their IP (intellectual property) as effectively as their predecessors managed their workers, inventories, and capital. They will be the companies that realize learning is their most essential business process and our job is to improve it.

Disintermediate or Die!

A few more critical factoids are needed to round out the picture of where we have gone (wrong!) in our thinking and how we can get back “on message.” In the same “The Rapid eLearning Development Research Report,” produced by The eLearning Guild, they asked another important question: what are the content areas most likely to derive the greatest benefit from a rapid e-Learning development? Not surprisingly, training on products and technology led the pack with over 50% positive response. This category dwarfed the next highest, compliance training, which lagged far behind with only a 29% positive response.

Not only is Rapid eLearning most appropriate for product and technology training, but such training is now dominating corporate education budgets. In a recent Chief Learning Officer magazine report , CLOs said “product knowledge training” is the front runner expenditure category, currently accounting for 20% of their educational spending. The next highest category of training expenditures was management and supervisory training, with a mere 15% of the budget.

OK. So what do we know for sure at this point?

• The differentiating knowledge in any organization is proprietary.
• SMEs are the primary source of proprietary knowledge.
• The largest impediments to speeding up the training development and deployment process are the lack of access to SMEs by instructional developers to derive their knowledge and review and approve instructional content.
• Product and technology training are the areas most likely to benefit from speeding up.
• And, while product knowledge training is now dominating corporate educational spending, 70% of respondents to the eLearning Guild survey said that their organizations were demanding lower costs for the development and deployment of eLearning.

If that’s what we know, what should we conclude? Apparently, 81% of eLearning Guild respondents believe that instructional design skills are most critical for staffing projects requiring a Rapid eLearning framework. Again, say what?! This reminds me of the definition of insanity: when people’s behavior does not yield the desired results in their lives, they do more of the same and do it with increasing intensity (instead of changing their behavior to be more appropriate to the situation)! Since SMEs have the knowledge and we can’t get their time to suck their brains and then validate that we have not munged their knowledge in the transformation to instructional content, we obviously cannot instructionally design our way into a solution for Rapid eLearning.

More specifically, since product knowledge training it the most appropriate subject area for Rapid eLearning, and it is dominating corporate budgets at a time when the doors are being beaten down to lower our costs, it’s clear that in the time-to-market world of product training, instructional design is counterproductive strategy for reducing time and costs. We have to realize that we are the boulder in the path of progress. Rapid eLearning requires us to get the heck out of the way and help create the shortest path between SMEs and learners. We must disintermediate the knowledge transfer process or die!

It’s the Knowledge, Stupid!

We all probably remember the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It was made famous by political strategist James Carville, who hung it on a sign in Bill Clinton's Little Rock campaign office to keep everybody "on message" in the 1992 presidential election. And it worked. Well, I think we should revive the phrase immediately and hang it boldly in our cubicles to keep us all on message in the learning community—it’s the knowledge, stupid!

We talk a lot about training, instructional design, learning management systems, pedagogical methodology, etc., etc. In doing so, we inadvertently drown out discussion of the most fundamental factor in facilitating learning in the workplace: the knowledge. And the most important knowledge, as mentioned in previous posts, is proprietary—the knowledge that is walking the halls of every organization in the heads of employees. I’m sorry, I know this is going to offend some of my colleagues, but ‘It’s the SMEs, stupid,’ not instructional designers, who have the knowledge, and finding ways to get that mission-critical knowledge out of their heads and made easily available to learners when they need it is the key to achieving Rapid eLearning.

The eLearning Guild recently completed a very interesting survey, entitled “The Rapid eLearning Development Research Report.”

You will probably have to join the Guild to download the paper, so please do it—the Guild is a great resource. Let’s go through some of their findings:

• Is Rapid eLearning needed? 78% of respondents said that demand for faster development and deployment has increased. That looks like a yes.
• Where does the content (the knowledge) for eLearning come from? Not surprisingly, 86% of respondents said SMEs are the source.
• What is the most common tool developers employ with SMEs to obtain or derive their knowledge? 70% said interviewing.
• If a more rapid approach is needed, what are the main culprits slowing things down? 53% said “access to SMEs” and 60% said “content review and approval” (presumably approval by the same SMEs of the content that developers created after interviewing them).
• And what about the financial bottom line? 70% or respondents said they see a moderate to significant demand for reducing costs for eLearning development and deployment.

So, let’s try to weave these data points into a realistic narrative. More rapid approaches to eLearning are definitely needed. The source of the underlying knowledge is SMEs. Rather than enabling SMEs to make their knowledge directly available to learners, training developers interview them to find out what they know. But the biggest obstacles to reducing the time for development and deployment are the inability to get the time from busy SMEs for the knowledge sucking interviews and getting them to review and approve the content after the developers took the SME knowledge and tried to formalize it. And here’s the most interesting part, since we pretty much knew all of this already—only 6% or respondents thought that more efficient and effective use of SMEs is a defining characteristic of Rapid eLearning!

Say what? Let’s try this one more time. SMEs have the knowledge, but we can’t get their time to share their knowledge, then we can’t get their time to review the content we produce, and yet more efficient and effective use of SMEs apparently is not even perceived as an important characteristic of making eLearning more rapid! And what did they think is key to achieving more rapidly designed eLearning? 77% said infrastructure and technology… 70% said that reducing costs is a major prioity, yet we think the answer is buying more tools and techology?

How did we get so twisted in our thinking? Why is it that we can’t see the SME elephant standing in the middle of our eLearning development and deployment process? How do we get back “on message” and start addressing the root cause of our problem. The only viable strategy is to “Distintermediate or Die”—the subject of my next post.

Rant Alert No.1

From time to time people in the training community say things that are so wrong, so outrageously absurd that it sends me over the edge into a barely controllable rant. At such times I am told that it is healthier to blog in response than kick the dog, so here goes. (Back to “operationalizing” Rapid eLearning in a later post.)

The general subject of this rant is not unlike that of most of my rants. It is the tunnel vision, myopia, or what amounts to the ideology of many instructional designers, and, worse yet, instructional designers who have been promoted into management. They have somehow deluded themselves into believing, against all common sense and daily observations to the contrary, that “true learning” cannot take place unless the learning experience has been instructionally designed. I suspect this syndrome develops over time from going to too many training conferences, where like-minded IDers congregate and mob psychology takes over free will and individual intelligence and they convince themselves that ID is not just a methodology that should be judiciously applied where appropriate, but in fact should be used indiscriminately to bring enlightenment to an ignorant and heathen world. As my deceased mother-in-law used to say, “May God save us from fools and save fools from themselves.”

OK, back to the incident in question. I had a meeting this week with a manager from a very large and progressive company who had recently been promoted from their eLearning department (where ID has apparently reached an art form) to head up their well established and highly successful communities of practice operation. I say “operation” because this is brilliantly conceived and executed CoP program in the sales operations department that has been, strategically aligned, well funded, well incented, and, until now, well managed. It seems to optimally combine top-down and bottom-up involvement and has been determined through independent research to actually demonstrate statistically positive relationships with explicit and tacit knowledge, job competence, and customer satisfaction. Things would seem to be working pretty well on the CoP ranch…

Having come from recent success from the eLearning department, and having fallen victim of the ID syndrome he now wants to “fix” the CoP program by applying ID to all aspects of their knowledge exchange activities and knowledge capture and delivery system. There is apparently not enough structure to the seemly chaotic knowledge exchange and no evidence, statistical and anecdotal, will convince him that he already presides over a model CoP program. Its broken and must be fixed!

The latest target in the sights of his ID gun is “podcasting.” Podcasting has recently caught fire in some quarters as a new corporate [a.k.a. trendy] learning delivery method with great potential. In this case, it is one more method for delivering corporate knowledge technical in the form of downloadable audio files. So, he wants to ride the wave and be the first innovator on campus to implement podcasting. When it was pointed out to him that he is already the MP3 king, that the knowledge capture and transfer system of his CoP program has been producing MP3s for the last five years, and that there were nearly 4,000 voluntary downloads of MP3 files in the last year alone, he scoffed! Stunned and amazed at his incomprehensible response, I feebly muttered the somewhat obvious questions, “Why do you scoff? Why aren’t 4,000 voluntary downloads, downloads mind you that are not mandated nor tracked in any LMS system, why is that unprecedented level of activity not proof positive that the current MP3 distribution system is already a huge success?”

His response? The current MP3 files were not instructionally designed! People have apparently been downloading them just to have them, just in case they might need them, but it cannot be demonstrated that anyone is really listening to them, let alone learning from them. His answer to this pressing problem? The answer is that, moving forward, he wants to institute instructional design on the structure of knowledge contained in the MP3 files. Although it is equally impossible to determine whether anyone actually listens to or derives benefit from instructionally designed MP3 files vs. MP3s more informally transferred expert knowledge, podcasts with ID will make a big difference.

It will be interesting to see how many ID’d MP3 files will actually be downloaded in the future. MP3s created by CoP members for CoP members must go, and defeat once again must be snatched from the jaws of victory!

What Is Rapid eLearning Anyway?

Is Rapid eLearning a new methodology for “knowledge enabling” workers more rapidly, or is it a simply a faddish term that is merely a “nuance” on time-tested practices. Since the term is hot off the tongues of everyone from industry analyst Josh Bersin to industry giant Macromedia, it’s probably worth our time to sort thru the various interpretations. (I apologize in advance for the length of this post, and I encourage your patience—thanks!)

A recent blog posting on eLearnspace teed up the discussion perfectly, so I take the liberty of quoting in toto:

“Rapid elearning and workflow learning are two concepts that have been getting enough attention over the last year to be classified as ‘trends’. I'm not entirely sure what to think about either. We have a unique problem in the learning/technology field of giving every small nuance in a concept a new name. Then we declare the old name/concept "dead" (almost as if we are constantly struggling to stay with the ‘in crowd’). Rapid elearning simply means ‘we have limited resources and time, how can we get this stuff done faster’...and workflow learning simply means ‘learning integrated (an abused word that can cause a rash to break out in some tech workers) as a vital business process...while still focusing on the needs of each individual worker’.” [Posted by gsiemens at July 10, 2004 05:17 PM]

From this point of view, Rapid eLearning is simply doing what we have before (designing formal instruction), but figuring out ways to do it more quickly. This interpretation is consistent with that of the eLearning Guild, which is holding a conference on “Rapid eLearning Development.” The focus of the conference is to re-examine the instructional design process to figure out how to do what we have always done—but do it more quickly.

But sometimes in our rush to dismiss a new phenomenon as ephemeral, we actually miss the point of an industry-transforming trend. I am one who believes this is one of those cases. The point of Rapid eLearning is not just to do more quickly what we have done before, but to do things fundamentally differently. And the analyst who is on target in understanding this trend for what it really represents, is Jennifer De Vries, a Senior Analyst for Bersin & Associates (her recent article is worth a read):

“There's a new training category emerging, which we call 'Rapid E-Learning.' It is a whole new approach to Internet-based training - one that changes the development model, leverages new tools, and dramatically changes the economics of content development… In our research, we talked to companies who are creating e-learning content using rapid methods. We found that most of these methods are a cross between knowledge management and e-learning.”

According to De Vries, the distinguishing characteristics of true Rapid eLearning include:

• SME centricity
• Based on simple, ubiquitous tools, such as PowerPoint (sorry, it's what people use! more later on this)
• Ability to be developed in a few weeks, rather than months
• And, learning also occurs quickly

And, she continues, this new type of Rapid eLearning is most relevant in he following situations (and I quote):

• Delta: Teaching the difference between what was learned and what has changed
• Disposable: Content that has a short shelf-life and will go out of date
• Continuous: Topics that require frequent and regular updates
• Urgent: Problems that must be addressed immediately
• Introductory: Topics that may preface an instructor-led class or more detailed blended learning program

With this as background, I’ll continue the Rapid eLearning definition process in the next post.

Why Is Rapid eLearning Needed?

Rapid eLearning, like any trendy phrase, needs definition if it is to have any utility. One of the foundation principles laid out decades ago by quality guru W. Edwards Deming was that all terms have to be “operationalized.” I couldn’t agree more. However, I’m going to risk violating that principle for now and reserve meaningful definition of this often confused and sometimes abused phrase until the next post. For now, I want to lay the ground work about why an alternative approach to formal training methods is desperately needed. The following are eight organizational realities that make the immediate shift to Rapid eLearning imperative:

• Workplace learning is informal. Eighty percent of workplace learning occurs informally-without a course or learning management system in sight - while 80% of our learning related resources are spent addressing a much smaller percentage of learning that takes place formally. Rapid eLearning is needed to provide a method for capturing informally transferred knowledge and make it easy to access without having to register for and take a course.
  
• People forget. Learning retention is abysmally low. According to Rebecca Rupp, author of Committed to Memory: How We Remember and Why We Forget, "Memory, it seems, decays with awful rapidity: one hour after learning, 56% of the assimilated material has gone to the wind; one day later, 66% has evaporated; and after one month, 80% is gone." In the real world of workplace learning, the key technology is search-not learning management. On the job, people need the knowledge that is relevant to the task at hand, and they need it immediately. Rapid eLearning is needed to let learners access the exact knowledge they need as easily as doing a Google search.
  
• Critical knowledge is proprietary. The most valuable asset of most organizations resides in people's heads-not in training courses. Smart organizations know the key to success is transforming individual knowledge into an accessible corporate resource. Rapid eLearning is needed to capture informally transferred knowledge (their corporate IP!) on a daily basis and make it accessible as a resource throughout the enterprise.
  
• Speed is king. Courseware takes months to produce. Specification, knowledge harvesting, instructional design, development, testing, revision, and deployment are time consuming. Core company knowledge requires this level of rigor, but most knowledge does not. Sales people, for example, do not need to take a course on a product upgrade-they need to know what's different so they can sell it effectively. Disintermediation of the learning delivery process gets time-sensitive information out to the audience faster. Rapid eLearning is needed to radically reduce the time to delivery from months to days, and create the shortest path from those who have critical knowledge to those who need it.
  
• Knowledge is exploding. Business and technology are changing at alarming rates and the resulting growth of knowledge is exponential. Having a highly scalable method of capturing and disseminating this tidal wave of knowledge is critical. Formal learning effectively builds baseline knowledge and skills, but a process that takes months to deliver inhibits effective response to the sea of constantly changing knowledge. Rapid eLearning is needed to provide a highly scalable process that takes little time and few resources. What is needed is an approach the enables a small team of three to capture the knowledge from an all-day technology exchange meeting and make it accessible on-line within 24 hours--and be able to do that every day of the week. Rapid eLearning is the only viable way to keep pace.
  
• Budgets are shrinking. The cost of formal instructional design is very high. According to eLearning researcher Brandon Hall, the cost per hour of a simple eLearning course generally costs tens of thousands of dollars to produce, and an elaborate design can cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars. In a world where speed is king, knowledge is exploding, and budgets are shrinking, an affordable approach to learning delivery is sorely needed. Rapid eLearning is needed to radically reduce the cost of development and provide a viable approach for keeping up with today's tidal wave of knowledge.
  
• Classrooms are not scalable. Globalized audiences, the need for speed, and shrinking budgets have hastened the movement of instruction from the classroom to the web. But, 70% of all formal training is still instructor-led and every large organization faces the daunting task of how to migrate large volumes of classroom training to the web. Redesigning and reproducing it all as formal eLearning courses takes too much time and costs too much. Rapid eLearning is needed to provide a fast and inexpensive way to capture classroom training as it is being given and convert it to a web-deliverable format.
  
• Knowledge happens! The sad truth for formal training developers is that knowledge happens in every organization every day of the week--whether they are there or not. The proprietary knowledge, or corporate IP, referred to above is the life blood the flows through every successful organization. Knowledge is being generated and transferred informally all around us all the time and we just need to be perceptive enough to be there when it’s happening and be prepared to help facilitate it.

Maiden Bloggage

Not sure why I've been resisting blogging for so long. Maybe it’s the time commitment. Maybe it’s an innate resistance to self-promotion or an aversion to be grouped with those who I have previously deemed to be self-promoters. Whatever the reason, I’m committed to getting over it.

So here goes. My deep-seated philosophy of learning is best captured in a quip by Winston Churchill when he said, "Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I don't always like being taught." I chose the title Rapid eLearning to put the emphasis where it needs to be—on learning rather than training and on speed rather than perfection in instructional design.

As eLearning guru Jay Cross is wont to say, fully 80% of workplace learning happens informally, with only 20% of learning being accomplished through formal training methods. So why the heck are we spending 80% of our precious time and limited resources focused on training? Although often used synonomously, the distinction between training and learning is essential. According to my workmate Seb Grady, training is something that is done to you (for better or worse!) and learning is something you do for yourself.

Having been an internal training practitioner for 14 years and external provider of learning-related serivces and technology now for the last seven, I feel I can contribute productively to the dialog on learning in the workplace. And that contribution will be centered around a few key themes: speaking common sense instead of trainerese, appreciating how learning in the workplace really takes place, and understanding how workplace learning can be facilitated to have greater positive impact both on individual performance and business outcomes.

I'll share my thoughts and experiences candidly about how eLearning can live up to its potential and how we as learning professionals can make a positive impact on the learners, subject matter experts, and organizations we serve. And along the way I hope discover a few kindred spirits and probably stir up a little dust with those of you who disagree!

And I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend and colleague Jay Cross who serves as a role model for having the courage to speak his mind and taking the time to do so for our collective benefit. Thanks Jay!