It’s time for another edition of our new feature, the Learning and Development Roundup! See also volume one which was posted in mid-April, and volume two posted at the end of May.
ASTD International Conference and Exposition 2009
The first week of June included the 2009 version of the always impressive ASTD International Conference and Exposition, this year held in Washington, DC. Element K was an exhibitor of course, and we'd like to thank everyone who stopped at our booth to discuss their learning challenges and the learning solutions we can provide. We'd also like to thank everyone who attended the two sessions that Element K gave: "Serious Gaming Frameworks: Architecting Reusable, Customizable Games" "Generating Business Impact: A Four-Phase Approach to Learning Design and Implementation."
Many industry bloggers who attended the conference have been writing their perspectives and key take-aways. For now I'll provide links to two of them:
- “Perfect Storm? Or Perfect Opportunity?” by Ellen Wagner
- “Conferencing Reflections” by Clark Quinn
About Instructional Designers and the Names Used
In early June, Jonathan Atleson wrote a provocative blog posting titled "The Various Roles of Instructional Design." Jonathan describes the many overlapping job roles that people variously mean when they speak of "instructional designers." On a similar topic, Ellen Wagner wrote two good postings this past month: "On eLearning, ID, and Learning Technologies" and "Why It Matters What They Call Us."
New Roles in Learning and Development
And speaking of job roles in our industry, Jay Cross continued sharing his provocative thoughts in his June column in Chief Learning Officer magazine: "More Human Than Human." He notes:
"When my colleagues and I advocate cutting back on workshops and classes in favor of building “learnscapes,” we aren’t suggesting firing the instructors. Rather, we recommend redeploying them in new capacities, serving as connectors, wiki gardeners, internal publicists, news anchors, and performance consultants."
Then, after describing some of the tasks and skills that will be increasingly needed in organizations, he concludes with:
"These tasks won’t happen by themselves. Furthermore, people throughout the organization will need to share the burden of helping everyone learn. Distributing learning throughout the social fabric of an organization requires storytellers, mentors, bloggers, community elders, schedulers, and editors. We’re all in this together.
Some instructors will continue to instruct, but they will increasingly do so with network support and in smaller bursts. It’s a better use of their time. Face-to-face instruction packs a punch but is difficult to scale. Economics dictate that traditional instruction will play a diminishing role in corporate learning.
Traditional instructors and instructional designers are ideally suited to excel in these roles. They understand how adults learn and how to transform information into learning. It’s important for corporations to benefit from their learning people, not give them pink slips."
Supporting the Increase in Social Learning
Along similar lines, Jane Hart concluded a three-part series of presentations on the subject of Social Learning. This last installment, "Supporting Formal and Informal Social Learning", focuses on "some of the people issues involved in implementing a social approach to learning." In this presentation, Jane goes over some of the key ways that learning professionals will need to adjust what they are doing to help their learners to better self-manage their learning, use new learning tools effectively, and share, communicate, and collaborate with their fellow learners. Watch Jane's entire slideshare presentation to get all of her key insights.
The MASIE Center Provides a New Learning Leaders Fieldbook
The MASIE Center recently announced their latest free e-book, the Learning Leaders Fieldbook. In addition to the text content, there is a series of podcasts about how the book's contributors became learning leaders and the "day-to-day realities of their unique roles."
On Brain Rules
For the past several months, Clive Shepherd has been reading and commenting at his blog on the book Brain Rules, by John Medina (see the Brain Rules website). He has now concluded this undertaking with a good summary posting, with not only his conclusions but also links to each of his 12 chapter-by-chapter postings. Clive's journey makes for good reading, either in conjunction with reading the book or as a teaser.
— Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com)
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