The New Learning Interactivity

Just in from our friends at learning research firm, Bersin & Associates is a blog post about eLearning becoming less interactive and more expert centric. I quote in part:

"A recent study, The Corporate Learning Factbook, showed that, with spending and staffing on the decline, today’s training organizations are developing courseware that is less interactive. Instead, more companies are now using "rapid e-learning" tools, software that converts PowerPoint documents to online learning materials. Rapid e-learning tools allow content to be created relatively quickly and easily (and cheaply), and also put power into the hands of SMEs to develop their own training and communications. Over the past several years, these tools have been an entry point for many organizations in adopting online training. Today, more organizations are turning to these tools due to resource constraints."

Yes, as we've been saying here at Altus Learning Systems for years (way before this economic meltdown!), the transfer of knowledge within organizations must become disintermediated--coming directly from experts to learners. But what is missing in the blog post's focus on "interactivity" is findability and accessibility--busy people care less about interacting with their learning maerials than they do about finding what they need to know quickly and being able to do directly to the point of interest. And the type of interactivity that people DO want to engage in is different than eLearning learning exercises--they want to be able to rate, comment, ask questions, find the expert, add their own user generated content, form communities of interest, etc. This is the new intereactivity that has been born out of people's experiences with web 2.0 and social networking.