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.