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.