Learning and Development Roundup (vol. 7)

It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also volumes one, two,  three, four, five, and six).

The Future of the Training Department
I'll start off with the most provocative item in this roundup, a blog posting from Harold Jarche titled "The Future of the Training Department." Jarche begins with a whirlwind tour of the history of training, why it developed as it did, why it made sense and worked well enough, and so on. But then along lines similar to columns and postings written by his colleague Jay Cross over the past year, Jarche notes that the world has changed and that people in organization's "training departments" had better change too, or potentially face extinction as such. Jarche's thoughts on this subject, like those of Cross and others, are provocative to say the least, and should be a wake-up call to any learning leaders who are changing very slowly or continuing to do basically the same things they have always done. While you're at Harold's blog, see also his many other excellent posts from this past month, especially his "Increased Complexity Needs Simplified Design," which makes several valuable points about informal learning.

Low-Costs LMSs Do Exist
The August/September issue of Elearning! magazine included an article by Jerry Roche titled "LMSs for Less Than $20,000." In these tough economic times, where everyone is being asked to do more with less (or in some cases making the tough decisions to do less with less), understanding how to maximize value from your Learning Management System is critical for learning leaders. The article starts by noting the absolutely critical point: The trick is finding an LMS that meets your needs, while not buying more LMS than you need. In other words, hitting the sweet spot while spending as little as possible. With this as the context, the good news is that in some cases, a low price tag no longer equates to less functionality than you need. Some low-cost LMSs now include not only basic tracking of e-Learning, but also features such as ILT classroom management, advanced reporting, and even collaborative Web 2.0 features such as forums, blogs, wikis, and more. Element K's KnowledgeHub LMS is one such platform that provides all of these and more. While many in the industry know of Element K for our award-winning e-Learning and print ILT courseware content, in recent years we have spent a lot of effort into building out our KnowledgeHub LMS platform, so we are pleased to be included in this article's listing of low-cost LMSs you should be considering.

If you are in the market for an LMS, another good recent resource to share with you is Clive Shepherd's posting on "The 21st Century LMS," which includes a PDF of the results of a recent gathering of the eLearning Network, and in particular their activity to "identify what was required in an LMS that was fit for the 21st Century."

Don't be Scared to Evaluate
In the August/September issue of Elearning! magazine, Diane Valenti wrote on the importance of evaluation in "Scared to Evaluate? Return on Learning Is Your Lifeline." After introducing the subject and posing the normal difficult questions regarding training ROI, Valenti describes a good example of the role that accountability can play in driving ROI: it can be the extra push users need to apply what they learn from training to their actual jobs. She notes that ROI doesn't always need to be calculated, but does when training "is the solution, in whole or in part, to a specific business challenge. Such challenges could include an increase in customer complaints or employee turnover, a drop in sales or profit margin, or even a lack of leadership bench strength." She then walks the reader through the three high-level steps of determining ROI: determining the benefits of training, determining the costs of training, and finally calculating the value of the training. For each, step she gives useful examples to help anyone new to this process. A recommended read for both novices and veterans alike: you definitely don't need to be scared to evaluate!

Big Question: New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills?
The latest "big question" at ASTD's Learning Circuits blog is "New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills?" The list of more focused questions can be pretty well summed up with two concerns: multitasking and backchannel. That is, how can trainers and presenters best handle the inevitable multitasking and backchannel chatter that occurs during their classes and sessions? And what are the best practices for us on the other side, as learners and audience members? As a conference speaker myself, I've certainly been thinking about this a lot lately, especially as the phenomenon that is Twitter has made live-backchannel discussions a reality at almost every presentation at every conference. The response postings to this "big question" come from great industry bloggers including Tony Karrer, Clark Quinn, Clive Shepherd, and others. See also Karrer's additional posting highlighting some of the salient points raised by everyone else.

A Corporate Social Media Use Example: SabreTown
The September 2009 issue of T+D Magazine, in an article titled "Letting Go" (ASTD membership required), provided another good example of using social media technologies in a corporation, this time from Sabre Holdings. The center of their application, SabreTown, revolves around employee-completed profiles, complete with areas of expertise, and online discussion boards. When people ask questions, the system notifies the people it considers to have the most relevant expertise, an innovative way to drive conversation and knowledge exchange. The article details numerous best practices and lessons learned at Sabre, including the following and more:

• Maximize the value of the system by making sure it is used to the greatest extent. In particular, the advice given suggests keeping it simple, making the tool easy to use for all, not worrying about making it perfect technologically, building it to mimic how people already communicate (e.g., Q&A), and not letting it lose its meaning by building it into something larger
• Promote behavior that will increase trust in the system.
• Seed the system with questions and answers for the first month or two by selecting some people to "overuse it."
• In communications about the system, keep returning to its value.

The article notes that SabreTown is credited with substantial savings for the company, including $500,000 in direct savings in the first year. But, based on strong anecdotal evidence, that figure doesn't come close to representing the total savings they are seeing. A truly impressive case study!

New Whitepaper: Social Learning Introduction
Harold Jarche recently announced a new whitepaper, "Social Learning Introduction", from the new "idea lab" group Collaborative Enterprise. A group-authored whitepaper, each writer gave their unique perspective on the question: "How would you describe social learning and why is it important for today's enterprise?" Included are insights from Clark Quinn, Charles Jennings, George Siemens, Jay Cross, and eight others. 

22 Power Laws
Dion Hinchcliffe wrote an outstanding article at ZDNet.com titled "Twenty-Two Power Laws of the Emerging Social Economy." Definitely a good read, possibly one of the most thought-provoking things you will read all year. Some of the "laws" he covers will be well-known to you, such as Moore's law, the Long Tail, the Pareto principle, or even Metcalfe's law. But many of the others will be new to you, so I strongly recommend you read this article and consider which of these "power laws" are a major driver for your organization. And for additional reflections, see also Tony Karrer's comments on Dion's article.

Updates from Element K
I'll again end this roundup posting with links to our newsletter service that we launched in June. 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: June, July, August, September, October, and November.
 
—  Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com)

Learning and Development Roundup (Vol. 5)

It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also volumes one, two,  three, and four.)

Results from Masie's Survey on Learning Systems
As I noted in a recent posting, the MASIE Center released the summary results of a 69-question survey conducted earlier this year on Learning Management Systems. The survey participants were from the Learning CONSORTIUM and from their Learning Systems Roundtable held in mid-April. There were 199 responses received, and as Elliott notes, "The data provides interesting insight into how the world of Learning Systems is evolving."

More on Learning Evaluation and ROI
I recently recapped and commented on what I called the “Increasing Discussion for Learning Evaluation and ROI:” (see both Part 1 and Part 2.) The times we live in necessitate the continued focus on this area, and so the August issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine includes "Measure Smart: Trade ROI for IOB" by Timothy L. Hill. He reports: 

"According to a recent study conducted by the ROI Institute, nearly all CLOs measure their success by how many employees are trained. Three out of four CLOs measure the efficiency of training—how well it resonates with employees in terms of timing, content, and other perceptive logistics. Half measure the reaction of the employees to the training. However, these elements are the ones that CLOs admit offer the least value in assessing the overall success of their programs. Meanwhile, only 1 out of 10 CLOs measures the impact of training on the business—the metric that the overwhelming majority of survey respondents cited as the most important measurement to determine success of employee training programs."

After giving some differences between ROI (Return on Investment) and IOB (Impact on Business), he then challenges CLOs to "shift their focus from training to performance, "and lays out four steps for implementing an IOB model.
 
If you are interested in more information on the ROI Institute's study that Hill referenced, then you are in luck. The August issue of T+D magazine has an article by Jack and Patti Phillips (Chairman and President/CEO of the ROI Institute, respectively) titled "Measuring What Matters: How CEOs View Learning Success." (Login required, but you can also listen to this article as a podcast.)

The Increasing Role of Virtual Learning
In these challenging economic times, many learning professionals are finding these hard times are leading them to consider carefully a move from face-to-face ILT (Instructor-Led Training) to various forms of e-Learning. In many cases, the benefits of self-paced e-Learning clearly make it the best choice. But in other cases, such as when interaction with an expert instructor is vital, another option is synchronous e-Learning or so-called "virtual classrooms." The August issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine had an excellent article by Julia Young on this growing area, titled "Collaborative Learning in the Virtual Workplace." This article provides great takeaways such as a 15-point checklist for converting from a face-to-face to a virtual learning event, and nearly a dozen examples of when virtual learning might be advantageous.

Social Media/Web 2.0 Continues to be a Hot Topic
As I wrote about recently, it seems Everyone is Talking About Social Media. In that posting, I shared several links to some of the most important recent articles and blog postings for you to be aware of in the L&D industry. See that postings for several good recent articles in this area.

Twitter, Twitter Everywhere
And speaking of social media, the darling of the industry, Twitter, continues to get significant coverage in the industry magazines as well. The latest is "Twitter 101: Are You Tweeting?" by Marcia Connor (login required). I follow Marcia on Twitter, get a lot of value from her "tweets," and so can attest to her expertise in this area. She also is a leader of the weekly "twitter chat" focused on the L&D industry, called lrnchat (pronounced "learn-chat"). See the lrnchat site for more information on this great 90-minute online event held each Thursday event.

In her article, Connor attempts to convince those who are still skeptical of Twitter's value. She notes: "Yet people across the globe—people smarter and busier than you—use Twitter and its enterprise counterparts… .They may doubt its value at first, but when they wade into the stream, they find it invaluable and a complete surprise." She then goes on to tackle nine common "doubts" people have about Twitter—all of which I have heard voiced by my own colleagues and the many others I talk with the L&D industry. I recommend reading this article if one or several of these "doubts" have kept you from taking Twiter seriously or giving it a try:

• I have too much to say.
• I don't have time.
• I have nothing to say.
• It's not designed for the training department.
• I can't participate because my company blocks its use.
• It's only for young people wasting time.
• It's overwhelming.
• I don't know anyone using it.
• I don't know how to use it.

And be sure to see my recent posting "Update on Twitter for Learning Professionals," which includes a list of L&D industry leaders and experts you can follow, to help get you started with Twitter.

What Will Learning be in 2019?
Looking beyond today's focus on social media, Elliott Masie has again kicked off an interesting discussion at the LearningTown [www.learningtown.com] L&D industry social networking site. He asked the question: Learning in 2019…What will it be? As that year is now 10 years away, he was interested in views on "the nature, structure, experience, or technology of learning in 2019." Thus far, there have been 60 responses, and both the concrete ideas and the overall optimism make for interesting reading.

Masie has also asked the same question at a page at the website for the upcoming Learning 2009 conference. So far, that page has a few dozen responses, giving more interesting perspectives on this question.

Updates from Element K
I'll again end this roundup posting with links to our newsletter service that we launched in June. 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: June, July, August, and September.

—  Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com)

Increasing Discussion of Learning Evaluation and ROI, Part 2

I will now continue where I left off in the previous Element K posting, "Increasing Discussion of Learning Evaluation and ROI, Part 1." In this part two of two, I will describe and link to the two most provocative articles I've seen on this general topic in the past few months.

In the June 2009 issue of Training magazine, industry book author Saul Carliner gets a bit more provocative with his article "Maybe ROI Really Is a Waste of Time." He notes that one hurdle with ROI for training is that often "senior management is not interested in the evaluation because training isn't a significant part of their portfolio." That is, the total cost of training might be so small, relatively speaking, that cutting its budget will not have a significant cost-reduction impact on the organization. But Carliner then notes "That doesn't mean organizations lack interest in seeing a return on their investment in training. But the effort of showing how each course returned ROI provides little ROI—and that's why senior organizational managers don't actively seek it as much as some of the trade press might have us believe. "

He then raises the importance of non-quantitative approaches to training evaluation: "As suggested by the C-level study mentioned earlier, perceptions play a significant role in assessing the training function. Indeed, the survey by my research team found that word of mouth was the most common measure of effectiveness that training managers felt was important to their sponsor, ranking higher than ROI and course evaluations. "

Carliner concludes his "soapbox" column in this issue with the following advice: "In short, perhaps trainers should stop trying to collect ROI on individual courses because information about the ROI of individual courses requires resources that are rarely available to collect; does not provide a credible measure; and, most significantly, senior managers are not asking for it. Furthermore, because perceptions of training seem to have more credibility—and are more challenged among senior managers—and because other financial data is both more credible and provides more established evidence of the actual return on training, perhaps trainers instead should focus efforts on tracking and managing perceptions and following the broader measures that provide insights into the effectiveness of an organization's total investment in training rather than investments in individual courses."

And finally, in the July 2009 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, Jay Cross and Jon Husband take the discussion of ROI in a truly path-breaking direction with their article "Productivity in a Networked Era: Not Your Father's ROI."  The authors begin by setting up the discussion: "The network era now replacing the industrial age holds great promise. Networked organizations are reaping rewards for connecting people, know-how, and ideas at an ever-faster pace. Value creation has migrated from what we can see (physical assets) to intangibles (ideas). …Understandably, seasoned executives, chief learning officers among them, are having a devil of a time shifting from the industrial age mindset of logic, certainty, and bounded constraints to the network gestalt of interaction, self-organization, unpredictability, and fewer limits to potential. …We are shifting into an era in which knowledge work and learning occur where re-engineered business processes collide with a participative and interactive ecology of information flows."

Cross and Husband then introduce a new concept as follows: "In an environment of continuous flow and interaction, there’s a need to consider an emerging metric: return on investment in interaction (ROII). The working definition of ROII is the observable development of capacity and capability to create economic values out of intangibles."

In the rest of the article, the authors describe what traditional ROI was, persuasively convince the reader of the increasing value of intangibles, and note the inherent clash between this trend and the demand for ROI metrics. They describe the essential characteristics of business networks, and argue that ROI is simply not up to the task. They then give some assumptions for their analysis of ROII and describe some of the potential components that would be quantifiable. In doing so they include illuminating examples from such companies as Cisco, Ford, and Capgemini. In closing, they frame the challenge as being: "Network returns are asymmetric, so simplistic count-’em-up approaches are no longer viable. But how can one make a solid network-era case to an executive who is still playing by yesterday’s rules?" Read this entire article to learn their initial advice on how to answer that question, and to understand this ground-breaking conceptual proposal for the L&D industry.

— Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com)

Increasing Discussion of Learning Evaluation and ROI, Part 1

With the current economy's impact on Learning and Development budgets, it makes sense that learning leaders would have an increased desire to prove their worth and the worth of the learning and training programs they provide to the organization. At the same time, standards such as the Kirkpatrick model, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), return on investment (ROI), and so on are often criticized by many in the industry. In fact, during a recent Twitter LearnChat, several learning leaders included "ROI for learning" as one of the most overhyped aspects of our industry (alongside the use of virtual worlds, the use of reusable learning objects, and other topics).

At the same time, I've noticed a flurry of recent magazine articles and other resources on this topic, ranging from introductory basics, to good overviews, to provocative, forward-looking challenges. This posting to Element K Blog brings these recent resources together for you in one place.

For starters, if you need a quick primer on the well-established Donald Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation, check out this website's useful slide presentation.

Another good place where newcomers to the subject can start might be the eLearning Guild's newly published Guild Research report with the title "Building the Business Case for e-Learning." They note that this report is the "first in a new series of Getting Started Guides to help ramp up your organization quickly and successfully in e-Learning."  Written by Temple Smolen, the abstract is as follows: "E-Learning can feel like a bit of a minefield when first starting. It seems like there are countless decisions to be made, and mistakes can be costly. Overall, however, most organizations do meet their financial goals with e-Learning, and the majority yield positive returns. In an April 2009 survey of eLearning Guild members, 48% reported a positive return on investment (ROI) from e-Learning, while only 5% reported no return or a negative ROI. In fact, not only do most members generate a positive return, but 50% report a ROI greater than 15%. This report ... will focus on the evaluation phase of investing in e-Learning to determine whether e-Learning is the right delivery method for your organization or project. For most organizations, these decisions are subject to business considerations, so this report will tackle that evaluation from a business management and financial perspective. It will illustrate the early decisions needed, and demonstrate a high-level financial analysis with a detailed ROI calculation."
 
The May 2009 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine included "Overcoming Analysis Paralysis," by IDC's program director of learning services Cushing Anderson. Cushing provides several results from the January IDC survey of Chief Learning Officer magazine's Business Intelligence Board (BIB) on the topic of learning measurement. Amongst the numerical survey results, he notes: "There is little disagreement among learning professionals about the value of measurement. When done properly, measurement can demonstrate training’s impact on the company’s top and bottom lines. Key metrics may include employee performance, speed to proficiency, customer satisfaction, improved sales numbers, and more. As the BIB survey shows, the challenge lies in gaining access to these key metrics and finding the time and resources to conduct measurement." He concludes by describing three steps that CLOs can take to "help break the chicken-and-egg tension between measurement and relevance": define success early, establish metrics at the project or business-unit level, and set expectations up front.

The June 2009 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine included two articles on this general topic. The first was "The Real Reasons We Don't Evaluate," by Jack Phillips and Patti Phillips. The authors describe the following as being perceived barriers to "demonstrating the business contribution of learning and development:"

• It can't be done.
• It's too complicated.
• It's too costly.
• Evaluation takes too much time.
• It's not appropriate to evaluate learning and development.
• No one is asking for it.

In each case, they describe what they see as the reality as against these perceived barriers.

The second article in that issue is "CBA or ROI: That Is the Question," by Deanna Hartley. The author notes that while CBA and ROI are often used interchangeably, "people often denote benefit-to-cost as a ratio, while others in the HR and learning industries refer to ROI analysis as a percentage." Another difference is the perspective: is the endeavor being seen as a cost to be contained, or primarily as an investment? She then discusses the importance of aligning learning with business goals, and several key steps in conducting a cost-benefit analysis for a learning program.

In part two of this two-part blog posting, I'll describe and link to the two most provocative articles I've seen on this general topic in the past few months.

— Thomas Stone (Tom_Stone@elementk.com)