Element K Blog: Learning and Development Roundup (vol. 20)

It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)

Training Top 125
We'd like to congratulate all of the organizations in the latest class of "Training Top 125," as recently announced by Training magazine. An interesting article in the January/February issue provided "Training Visions" from the leadership at these best-in-class organizations, giving readers a glimpse of their key learning and development initiatives, agendas, and trends. The responses were varied, but of those that mentioned modalities, technologies, and focus areas for their L&D efforts in the coming year, the following were some of the recurring items:

Social/informal learning
Measurement, with a focus on connecting with real business value
Leadership development/the war for talent
"Learner at the center"/personalization/individual development plans
Mobile learning
Quick and relevant video clips
Shorter content
Blended learning
Performance support
Trainers and the L&D group more broadly becoming "facilitators" and "enablers"

Horizon Report 2011
The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE have recently published their annual Horizon Report 2011 (PDF). This volume "examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. It is the eighth in the annual series of reports focused on emerging technology in the higher education environment." For those in academia, this is must-reading. But even for those in L&D roles in corporate or government contexts, the Horizon Report is a great read, as a glimpse into the future of learning technologies for people who will soon be joining the workforce. For 2011, the report indicates two technologies in each mainstream time adoption period:

Time to adoption of one year or less: Electronic Books and Mobiles
Time to adoption of two to three years: Augmented Reality and Games-Based Learning
Time to adoption of four to five years: Gesture-Based Computing and Learning Analytics

For complete details, download the Horizon Report 2011 as a PDF file.

March's Big Question: Assessing Learning Initiatives
The ASTD Learning Circuit's "Big Question" for March is "How do you assess whether your informal learning, social learning, continuous learning, and performance support initiatives have the desired impact or achieve the desired results?" See the initial responses from such industry thought leaders as Jay Cross, Clark Quinn, Tom Gram, and others.

Research on Forgetting
Will Thalheimer provides interesting research results in the L&D field, and a posting from December was on a topic important to anyone in the field: "How Much Do People Forget." That is, how much do learners forget from training/learning programs, and specifically, what are the factors involved and to what degree do they vary? This blog post provides some key summary points, and a link to the longer report.

The Latest on Mobile Learning
The past year has seen increasing interest in mobile learning -- leveraging the many mobile devices in our lives for learning and development purposes. Here are some of the best writings on this subject from the past few months:

"Getting Started with Mobile Learning" -- by Gary Woodill, the Learning Blueprint column in the December issue of T+D magazine. Gary is the author of the new book The Mobile Learning Edge
"M-Learning: The Future of Training Technology" -- by Julie Brink, an article in the February 2011 edition of T+D magazine (not freely available online).
"Are We Wired for Mobile Learning?" -- an informative and thought-provoking "infographic" about various facets of mobile learning.

The Latest on Social Learning
There continues to be a great flow of good articles, blog postings, and resources on this popular and important subject, so I will again list a few of the best from the past couple of months here:

"Learning With and From Others: Restructuring Budgets for Social Learning" -- by Dan Pontefract
"How Does Social Learning Measure Up?" -- by Karrie Willyerd and Gary Pease, in the January issue of T+D magazine.
"Are You Committing Learning Malpractice" -- Clark Quinn's column in the February issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine.
"Social Learning: Take Me To Your Experts" -- from Bersin and Associates analyst David Mallon.
"10 Steps for Working Smarter with Social Media" -- content from Jane Hart's recent webinar for the Learning and Skills Group.

Updates from Element K
As usual, I'll end this roundup posting with links to our newsletter service that we launched last year. Each newsletter includes several articles of relevance to the Learning and Development field, as well as updates about Element K events and our latest product releases. You can see the latest newsletters here: January, February, and March.

— Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com and on Twitter @ThomasStone)