It's time for another edition of the “Learning and Development Roundup”! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Talking about Blended Learning Learning and development expert Clive Shepherd recently provided a series of videos that give an extensive overview of blended learning. You can watch either the entire 43 minute interview or you can view it broken up into five parts: Foundations, Analyzing the situation, Selecting methods, Selecting media, and In conclusion. Along the way, he shares his perspective on a couple of dozen specific questions, such as: What's the case for blended learning? When is blended learning appropriate? How should someone set about designing a blended solution? How do you begin deciding which methods to use? Why start with methods rather than technologies for learning? What guarantee is there that you'll end up with a solution that is both effective and efficient?
The Working Smarter Glossary In the April issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, industry expert Jay Cross's column provided an outstanding resource called the "Working Smarter Glossary." Provocative even when providing an alphabetized reference, learning professionals would be wise to consider carefully Jay's perspective.
Learning and Forgetting Curves As noted in the previous "Learning and Development Roundup," Will Thalheimer provides interesting research results in the L&D field. I noted his recent blog posting "How Much Do People Forget?," but since then he has released a very interesting video titled "Learning and Forgetting Curves -- In Depth" This is a great video for all learning professionals, from instructional designers and trainers all the way up to Chief Learning Officers.
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:
"2011: The Year of the Media Tablet as a Learning Tool" -- by Jeanne C. Meister, Evgeny Kaganer, and Rick Von Feldt, in the April issue of T+D magazine. This article provides some key industry data about the rise of the iPad and other tablet devices, and their relevance for learning and development. See the link for buying the article from ASTD, as well as this blog posting by Jeanne Meister with highlights from the article.
"The Pad and the Pod" -- a blog posting by Clark Quinn, author of the new book Designing mLearning. Here he shares some of his tentative thoughts about the differences in using a smartphone and tablet for mobile learning and support. See also his recent posting "10 Mobile Questions."
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:
"Undeniable Connector" -- by Marcia Conner in the March 2011 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine.
"Building a Personal Learning Network (PLN)" -- Jane Bozarth's latest "Nuts and Bolts" column at Learning Solutions Magazine gives tips on how to build your personal learning network, with special emphasis on Twitter and the benefits of the weekly #lrnchat as an example.
"Social Networks Enhance Employee Learning" -- Phaedra Brotherton's Intelligence column in the April issue of T+D magazine reports on recent survey data on the use of social media to enhance informal learning.
"Mapping Informal and Formal Learning Strategies to Real Work" -- a blog posting by Tom Gram that provides a categorization of typical job roles into routine, technician, craft, and knowledge work areas, and then considers each in terms of learning approaches (informal learning, formal learning, performance support, and more.)
"Should Employees Be Incented to Use Social Technologies?" -- a blog posting by Dan Pontefract, which gives a balanced consideration of a controversial but important question for any organization considering or already using social technologies.
Updates from Element K As usual, I'll end this roundup posting with links to the latest editions of our newsletter, which include 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: March, April, and May.
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
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:
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:
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.
Back in October of 2009 I wrote a posting titled "The New Learning and Development Virtual Cocktail Party," which was about the weekly "chats" that occur on Twitter amongst dozens of learning professionals. Known as #lrnchat (think "learn chat"), these occur each Thursday at 11:30 a.m. EST and 8:30 a.m. EST. Each week has a topic or theme, and several pre-determined questions to keep participants all generally talking about the same subject. (For more information visit http://www.lrnchat.com/.)
Frequented by many top experts and thought leaders in the Learning and Development industry, these Twitter chats can be very powerful learning opportunities. But they can also be hard to keep up with, especially for newcomers, but even for regulars as well. These exchanges can be a firehose of facts, opinions, speculations, questions, links, and more, and it can be hard to keep up with it all, let alone reflect upon what you are being bombarded with.
That is why I was so pleased when my friend David Kelly started writing blog postings that serve to gather together his learnings from the lrnchat events he participates in. While each participant will naturally have somewhat different key takeaways, being able to read one participant's reflections can not only provide intrinsic value, but also help you to clarify some of your own thoughts on what you read in the chat.
Kelly started providing us with such postings at his relatively new blog Misadventures in Learning in October. Since then he has summarized his reflections on the following lrnchat events:
If you miss a lrnchat event, you can always read the transcript posted quickly to the http://www.lrnchat.com/ website. But now, another option is available from participants, like David Kelly, who take the time to reflect on the discussion and organize some of the key points into coherent blog essays. Much appreciated David!
It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Plenty of Industry Data Around this time of year, several updated industry reports typically surface to give learning professionals a fresh high-level look at the Learning and Development industry.
Training magazine released its 29th annual “Training Industry Report,” and a summary was published in the November/December issue.
The latest IDC survey of Chief Learning Officer magazine's Business Intelligence Board (BIB) focused on where companies are investing their training dollars in learning technology and learning services areas and whether spending on training will increase or decrease from 2010 to 2011. Cushing Anderson reported on the results in "Where CLOs Are Spending" in the magazine’s November issue.
Training's Top 125 Announced Similarly, another Learning and Development annual tradition is Training magazine's announcement of the “Training Top 125 winners." Now in its 11th year, at this time they have announced only the 125 finalists, as the actual rankings will be revealed at the Training 2011 Conference & Expo, February 7-9 in San Diego, California.
Questions No Longer Being Asked The November ASTD Learning Circuits "Big Question" was "What questions are you no longer asking? What are your new questions?" This inherently provocative subject was actually triggered by an earlier posting by George Siemens at his blog, elearnspace, where he provided six questions in the realm of learning and development that no longer interest him. The post by Siemens generated many comments, and the similar Big Question posted at Learning Circuits produced blog responses from a half-dozen industry bloggers. Clive Shepherd in particular provided an interesting take, noting both questions he is no longer asking and related questions that he is still asking.
The Latest on Mobile Learning This 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 recent weeks.
Designing mLearning -- A new website to accompany Clark Quinn's forthcoming book of the same name. See also this recent blog post from Quinn, an extended abstract of a talk on mobile learning he delivered at the ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN conference.
The ADL Mobile Learning newsletter -- Do you keep up with this weekly collection of resource links? The newsletter describes itself as: "Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) weekly report on news and findings of interest related to mobile learning in the military."
"Are Apps the Future of e-Learning?" -- A blog post from Clive Shepherd, where he considers mobile apps for learning and development from several perspectives: viewing content, creating content, collaborating with peers, collaborating live, and performance support.
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 recent weeks here.
"Where Social Learning Thrives" -- A blog posting from Marcia Conner, where she describes the kind of culture needed in an organization before social learning will truly flourish.
"Get Serious About Social Learning by Focusing on What Matters" -- An article by Eric Davidove at Learning Solutions Magazine, where he stresses the importance of looking beyond the technologies involved in social learning, and emphasizes the critical importance of solid "strategy formulation, community design, rewards and incentives, content quality, and benefits tracking."
"What Constitutes a Social Learning Culture?" -- A blog post by Sumeet Moghe, where he considers why social learning generally works so well at his company (ThoughtWorks). He even abstracts from these insights specific questions for you to ponder when considering your own organization's culture.
"Twas the Night Before Social Media" -- Given the holiday season, it seems appropriate to end this Roundup with David Kelly's insightful, humorous, and all-around brilliant twist on a classic.
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: September, October, November, and December.
It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Jane Hart's Top Tools for Learning for 2010 Jane Hart's annual list, "Top 100 Tools for Learning," is now complete, and she has posted this year’s results online. As she has done in previous years, she has provided the complete list of results and also created a SlideShare presentation. This year she had more contributions than ever -- a total of 545 from learning professionals worldwide. Interestingly, the top tool from 2009 retained its crown: Twitter. Seven of the top ten from 2009 remained in the top ten for 2010, though rankings shifted up or down for each. Newcomers to the top ten this year are Skype at 6th place, Facebook at 9th, and Moodle at 10th. Hart has analyzed the results further by providing the following three resource pages:
Elliott Masie Launches a New E-Book Elliott Masie and The MASIE Center have published a free, Open Source book for and by learning professionals titled "Learning Perspectives: 2010." The book includes contributions by 40 global learning leaders, and its articles cover a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives on the changing nature of learning. It includes articles from both Learning and Development veterans such as Allison Anderson, Larry Israelite, and Nigel Paine, as well as new voices coming from their "30 Under 30 Learning Leaders." Contributors come from organizations such as Google, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, Alliance Pipeline, Farmers Insurance, Veterans Administration, Cleveland Clinic, CNN, Liberty Mutual, CIA, and Luxottica.
Jane Bozarth on Accessibility and Evaluating E-Learning Jane Bozarth's two most recent “Nuts and Bolts” columns at Learning Solutions Magazine are again excellent reads. In "How to Evaluate e-Learning," Bozarth provides and summarizes the approaches of Kirkpatrick, Brinkerhoff, and Stufflebeam, and urges instructional designers and training practitioners to stop treating evaluation as an afterthought and choose the approach that is most relevant to your specific needs. In "Do You See?" Bozarth then tackles another common subject in e-Learning design and development: the issue of designing content that is accessible to all. She focuses on the issue of the use of color in e-Learning content, and gives instructive examples that demonstrate best practices designers should be following.
More on the Great LMS Debate Back in June of this year, I wrote a posting titled "The Great LMS Debate," which noted a growing debate in the Learning and Development industry about the future of Learning Management Systems (LMS). I linked to several prominent thought leaders who had shared their perspectives on this timely subject from a variety of viewpoints. One thing is certain: the debate is far from dead, as noted by the October issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, which included the article "Is the LMS Dead?" by Ed Cohen.
The Need for a Core Set of Flexible Skills Charles Jennings makes a persuasive case that we need to help workers develop a core set of flexible skills in his article "Key Skills for High Performance" in the Fall issue of Training Industry Quarterly. The skills he focuses on include search and "find" skills, critical thinking skills, creative thinking skills, analytical skills, networking and people skills, and logic skills. I've been arguing for much the same thing to anyone who will listen for a long time, and not just noting this need for corporate learning, but arguing that much of these same skills need to be focused on in the K-12 education system as well. This has long been true, and Jennings is correct to note that these needs are becoming ever more intense because of the Internet and the ubiquity of content and information.
The Latest on Mobile Learning This 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 recent weeks.
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 recent weeks here.
"E-learning Goes Social" -- by Anne Pauker Kreitzberg and Charles B. Kreitzberg, in the Sept/Oct. issue of Elearning! Magazine. Points out several common areas of resistance to social learning, and gives ten tips to getting started.
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: August, September, October, and November.
In the past several years, in the area of "social" tools and technologies, I've witnessed the rise and fall of various related concepts and terms, both in the Learning and Development industry and in the business world more broadly. By "rise and fall," I don't mean to imply that the popular early terms were in some way incorrect -- they are still valid concepts and still get used when appropriate. Rather, I'm referring to the evolution of what we as an industry are comfortable talking about, and what we feel best captures the points we are trying to make at that moment. Let me spell out how I've experienced this over the past four years, and see if you've seen the same trends. Then, let's speculate about what might come next and why.
Several years ago, learning professionals followed the broader trend and adopted the term Web 2.0 to describe Internet technologies that provided for much greater two-way interaction, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and so on. There had always been some of this on the Internet (e.g., discussion boards, newsgroups, guestbooks, and so on), but as blogs, wikis, modern discussion forums, and eventually social networking sites and social messaging services (e.g., Twitter) arose to great prominence, the term "Web 2.0" became a crucial concept -- and at times, an over-used buzzword.
But "Web 2.0" as a term had a few problems for those not at the forefront of this trend. For one thing, on its own it doesn't convey its meaning in a transparent way: the "2.0" just indicates some sort of evolution or change from the past, but what has changed exactly? After all, during the same time that things like blogs and wikis arose, e-commerce continued to grow rapidly--so someone not in the know might wonder if "Web 2.0" was referring to e-commerce rather than collaborative, social technologies. Further, "Web 2.0" has a certain awkwardness to it when trying to describe the use of these kinds of collaborative technologies used privately, inside an organization. In such cases, you typically are using the same underlying tools as the public counterparts (a web browser, HTML, etc.), but you are accessing forums and blogs and so on that are on an internal network. Therefore, the use of "Web" in "Web 2.0" can for some be a bit confusing.
For these and other reasons, many started to refer to these technologies more often as social media rather than "Web 2.0." This was clearer on both counts mentioned above: the word "social" captures the direction of the technological evolution, and it was less awkward when describing internal technology use.
Our terminology evolved further as many in the industry started to notice that this evolution was potentially an even bigger change than initially considered. The concept of Enterprise 2.0 is used to capture this notion: the use of social media, whether internal or public, can radically alter many if not all aspects of modern enterprise organizations. Some of the changes will be unexpected; some will be hard to manage. But the effects will be far-reaching--and have been so at many organizations that are at the forefront of implementing the cultural changes and new tools that "Enterprise 2.0" involves.
More narrowly, in the Learning and Development field, we naturally wanted to consider "social media for learning and development" contexts. That is too wordy to bandy about very often, so for a while we suffered through the temporary use of Learning 2.0 as an industry term. Thankfully, we seem to have quickly evolved beyond that to the now popular term social learning.
There are two new and powerful books in this area that use these terms in line with my evolutionary story here. The first is Social Media for Trainers, by Jane Bozarth. Here Bozarth is specifically considering the use of social media technologies (internal and external to the organization) in the context of training. Hence the term "social media" makes the most sense in her title.
The other is The New Social Learning, by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner. Here the authors correctly note that "social learning" as a concept is broader than, and pre-dates, the use of social media tools to enable learning, but that what is "new" is just how powerful the use of the new tools is in this regard. Hence they present it as the "New Social Learning." Simple and clean, and right on target. In the diagram below, it is the intersection that represents the "new" social learning:
I suspect that the term "social learning" -- whether properly defined as Bingham and Conner do, or more loosely used to refer to the use of social media in learning and development contexts -- will be a concept and term we will be using for many years to come. It has legs, and represents an important trend in our industry, not a mere fad.
That said, I wonder if this terminology evolution will continue, and what will the next terms be? Here are some candidates. I'm specifically wondering if leadership in organizations, the C-suite and the finance folks, will not always "get" the value of "social learning," and consider it too flimsy and vague of a term. If they refuse to fund the important shift to greater informal and social learning, then the learning and development professionals who believe in the powerful value of social media and social learning will need, to some degree, to "re-brand" what they are recommending the organization adopt. They could fall back on "Enterprise 2.0", which has the advantage of being broader than L&D, but this has the same lack of clarity in direct meaning "Web 2.0" suffers.
Another approach would be to accept that "learning" is not the ultimate goal. Keep the term "social," but replace "learning" with concepts that better capture the real goal, such as “social performance improvement” perhaps?
I've also heard industry experts suggest that with some leaders you may need to swap out "social" for another term, such as "collaborative,” "collective,” or “shared.” So then we might evolve to "collaborative performance improvement" (although CPI in the USA is already a common acronym, for Consumer Price Index!).
What do you think? Have you had success recommending "social learning" or "Enterprise 2.0" as important initiatives in your organization? Or have you evolved your terminology to something else that is more attractive to your leadership? If not "social performance improvement," what do you see as the next--more ultimate-ends and results-focused--term we'll all be using?
It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Measuring the Impact of Learning and Development Two recent items of note on the always challenging issue of measuring the impact of training, or learning and development activities more broadly. First, Josh Bersin's August column in the August issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, "A Memorandum on Metrics," describes three trends found through his firm's ongoing research on training measurement. These describe the continuing challenge that good measurement continues to pose for most organizations, the fact that the tools available continue to change (forcing organizations to adopt a variety in an attempt to obtain a complete picture), and lastly, the need to expand measurement initiatives to include informal learning.
The second recent article is "ROE's Rising Star: Why Return on Expectations is Getting So Much Attention," by James D. Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kirkpatrick, in the August issue of T+D magazine. This is a deeper dive on the subject, walking through what ROE is and how it contrasts with the more traditional ROI. The authors detail several key principles, including why:
The end is the beginning.
ROE is the ultimate indicator of value.
Business partnership is necessary to bring about positive ROE.
Value must be created before it can be demonstrated.
A compelling chain of evidence demonstrates your bottom line value.
How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? As noted in my previous roundup, Bryan Chapman recently performed a survey of the Learning and Development industry, asking how long it takes to develop various kinds of learning content. This was an update to his earlier survey results from several years ago. The results are now in, and he has provided them in a presentation hosted at SlideShare. Included are separate results for the creation of content for ILT, three levels of e-Learning development, and blended learning. These are very interesting survey results, and very valuable information for all in the L&D field.
Formal vs. Informal, or a New Taxonomy for Learning? Rob Pannoni and Grant Ricketts in the August issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine wrote an interesting article titled "A New Taxonomy for Learning." I can agree with the authors that terms like formal and informal learning are used inconsistently at times in the Learning and Development industry. But with my background in philosophy, I am a stickler for clearly defining my concepts, and so I don't personally struggle with the formal vs. informal distinction and the line between them. That said, I think Rob and Grant have done us a service by clearly laying out a "new taxonomy for learning," that maps both learning modalities and organizational needs onto a two-by-two grid created by crossing organization-driven vs. learner-driven with developed resources vs. ad hoc resources. This mapping and terminology is easy to understand and I think should be helpful for many L&D professionals.
Tips for Effective Online Conferences The amazingly prolific Tony Karrer recently provided two blog posts to help you create better online conferences and learning webinars. The first was "19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences" and the other is a list of links to other resources, "Effective Web Conferences - 41 resources." If you have had inconsistent results with synchronous or so-called "virtual classroom" e-Learning, then these two resources should be very helpful!
The Pros and Cons of Podcasting Have you been considering the use of podcasts for learning and development? I recently described some of the many podcasts available for learning professionals, but if you are considering the use of podcasts for your own organization's L&D needs, you might find value in Mike Petersell's recent blog post "The Pros and Cons of Podcasting." Not all of his listed pros and cons will be relevant for your organization, but he provides good lists to get you started.
Rossett's Ode to Mobile Performance Support The eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions Magazine recently included Allison Rossett's article "Ode to Mobile Performance Support." In this excellent article, Rossett describes the important differences between mobile learning and mobile performance support. It is a must-read for anyone pursuing the use of mobile devices for learning and development purposes in their organization.
The Latest on Social Learning There continues to be a great flow of good articles, blog postings, and resources on this important subject, so I will again list a few from recent weeks here.
TheNewSocialLearning.com - The website for the new book of the same name, written by ASTD President Tony Bingham and consultant and social media expert Marcia Conner.
Enterprise Microlearning - Marcia Conner on the enterprise use of both Twitter and similar internal microsharing platforms.
The Evolving Social Organization - Harold Jarche gives an interesting history of enterprise evolution, describes the importance of social learning for modern organizations, and gives several examples of success stories.
Social Networking: A Platform for Training New Managers Online? - Bill Brandon considers first some history of informal learning groups from several centuries ago, and then provides insights on what makes such groups successful -- including those that are further enabled today by social media technologies.
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: June, July, August, and September.
Over the past several years, I've heard many people in the Learning and Development industry use jargon and technology terms in ways that aren't quite correct. At the very least this can cause momentary confusion, but at its worst it can seriously mislead, waste time, and even reflect badly on the person or organization employing the mistaken usage.
One term that I think is often used quite loosely, and at times incorrectly, is the concept of Community of Practice (CoP). Wikipedia puts it simply and succinctly: a CoP is a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. You can have many CoPs within an organization -- say the instructional designers, or the project managers, or the loan officers, or the web developers. Traditionally, they might meet regularly to share ideas or discuss issues of common concern, or they might have an email group list for the same purpose. And of course there are broader CoPs in society that span across workplaces. A recent column in Chief Learning Officer magazine by Jay Cross, "The Case for Communities of Practice," I think does a very good job of giving examples and capturing the essence of CoPs.
On the other hand, the mistaken usage of "community of practice" that I see most often is to imply that it is some sort of new technology, one of the many so-called "Web 2.0" or "social learning" technologies, on the same level as say wikis, blogs, forums, and so on. This confuses things, because a "community of practice" is not a technology per se, but a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. Such a group can be better enabled by the use of some of the latest social technologies. For instance, a CoP can have a shared wiki as an organic knowledge base, use a forum for asking questions and learning from each others' responses, and a group blog or micromessaging platform for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and so on. Typically, a CoP in an organization that is technology-enabled in this way might use several of these or other technologies -- but the CoP itself is not a kind of technology as such. Supporting the CoP, this group of people, is rather one of many strong use-cases for the social technologies in question.
A few of the technology terms I just mentioned also often get misused in our industry. Simply put, a wiki is a type of website, or at the very least a set of web pages at a broader website, where people can easily edit, add, or delete content, track changes over time, and so on. Individual pages in the wiki are just that: "wiki pages." Unfortunately, sometimes people confuse the overall wiki with the individual pages in a wiki, and say things like "Create a wiki for that topic" when what they mean is "Create a page in our [existing] wiki for that topic" -- and there is a big difference in terms of what you are asking the person to do!
I find a similar issue arises for blogs. A blog is website or section of a website where one or more authors can write essays that typically then get displayed in reverse chronological order (newest at the top), with the ability for readers to add comments to each essay. A blog is composed of blog postings, the individual entries or essays that make up the blog. This is fairly straightforward, and yet at times, I hear people confusingly say "You should write a blog about that," when what they mean is either "You should blog about that" (using "blog" as a verb) or "You should write a blog posting about that." Again, a big difference in what the person is asking -- do they want an entirely new blog to be created, or just a single posting at an existing blog?
A third technology term that often gets misused is podcast. Here, the problem arises when people provide standalone audio files available for download, perhaps even in the most common format used in podcasting (MP3), and then for marketing or other reasons, want to call what they have created a "podcast." Unfortunately, a true podcast is more than just a set of downloadable audio files: it is a series of such files that a person can subscribe to, and therefore get updates pushed to them as they become available. This is what provides the "cast" in "podcast" -- the ability to subscribe to the content in the ongoing series.
Are all of these subtle differences? Am I the only one who gets confused at some of these word usage cases? If so, then perhaps I'm becoming a cranky old man well before my biological clock would suggest I should. If not, then I hope this blog posting was a helpful one!
It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Elliott Masie on Facetime for Learning Elliott Masie recently posted an interesting video on the "Facetime" feature of the new iPhone 4 device. As many others have done, he provides a simple demonstration of the two-way video feature. But he does so in the context of learning and development, giving examples such as leadership programs that are blended programs including traditional e-Learning and then a conversation with a mentor or coach. Masie notes the current limitations of Facetime, but predicts that those limitations will be short-lived. For instance, he suggests that the future will bring a combination of high-quality telepresence suites combined with Facetime-like two-way video conversations. He also notes that in learning and development contexts, you could record the conversations and then use them as on-demand support content. There clearly is a lot of potential with this kind of technology!
How Long Does it Take to Create Content? Bryan Chapman, in association with Brandon Hall, has long provided some data about "How long does it take to create content?" This has included ILT content, PowerPoint-to-eLearning conversions, standard e-Learning, and robust simulations. He is now (from Aug. 4 - Aug. 31) updating his data with a new industry survey. You can participate in this survey, which he indicates should only take 5-10 minutes.
On the Potential Value of Avatars The eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions Magazine recently included "Animated Characters in E-Learning: The Benefits and Social Roles," by Audrey Dalton and Brian Friedlander. Read this short but excellent article to learn more about how animated characters (such as so-called "avatars"), when used properly, can enhance e-Learning by "providing a social context that motivates learners, thereby improving cognition and recall."
Tips on Getting Management Support for Training As Jane Bozarth puts it, "A thousand things stand between a learner and performance; among the biggest of these is the learner's manager." In one of her recent “Nuts and Bolts” columns at Learning Solutions Magazine provides lots of tips on this common challenge for L&D professionals: How can you get better management support for training? After all, you are working to improve their most important asset -- their people. So involving them in a team effort is natural and will produce the best results.
On 10 Lenses in Learning and Development Clark Aldrich wrote a very useful blog posting titled “The 10 Lenses to Overcome Blind Spots and See Opportunities in Organizational Learning.” He summarizes ten perspectives on learning and development needs and programs that any learning leader should consider when planning a new initiative or responding to a request for a new training solution.
On Evaluating Non-formal Learning Programs As I noted in my previous L&D Roundup, Michael Hanley of the E-Learning Curve Blog has been writing on the thorny issue of how to evaluate non-formal learning programs. He concludes this amazing series of 19 postings with a helpful table of contents with links to each.
The Latest on Social Learning There continues to be a great flow of good articles, blog postings, and resources on this important subject, so I will again list a few from recent weeks here.
“Facilitating Learning with Social Media” -- From ASTD's Learning Circuits, by Michele B. Medved and Terrence Wing. Includes a helpful list of ten key considerations.
“Looking Ahead at Social Learning: 10 Predictions” -- From the July issue of T+D magazine, by Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd, authors of the new book The 2020 Workplace. An interesting list of 10 predictions, although not all are focused on what is usually meant by "social learning."
“Collaboration and Social Networking in Today's Enterprises" - An article from Elearning!, and Government Elearning! magazines, summarizing the results of their Enterprise Social Collaboration Research conducted in May 2010. There are some interesting numbers, but this summary seems to mix the critical distinction between consumer tools and internal tools.
“The Human Factor: Creating Opportunities to Participate in Social Learning” -- by Mary Arnold, at Learning Solutions Magazine. A short but helpful article that gives warnings on why some organizations struggle or fail when implementing technology-enabled social learning, with insights on what you can do to be successful.
“Why Focus on Informal and Social Learning” -- Insights from Charles Jennings at the Internet Time Alliance blog, providing eight key reasons to focus on informal and social learning in your organization.
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: May, June, July, and August.
It's time for another edition of the Learning and Development Roundup! (See also previous editions at the archive page.)
Top Tools for Learning 2010 I'll start by again noting that Jane Hart's annual "Top Tools for Learning" survey is well underway. For this survey, Hart asks industry experts and practitioners to list their top 10 tools for learning (broadly defined). Back in December, I wrote about her final survey results for 2009. I've participated in this survey since 2007, and have already updated my personal list in her index for this year. Read her recent blog entry on the subject and then join in the survey yourself!
On Cognitive Overload and Finding Your 20% Jane Bozarth's latest column at Learning Solutions Magazine is titled "Find Your 20%" and it hits on a critical subject for any instructional designer or learning professional: cognitive overload and the need to, as Bozarth puts it, "cull the must-know from the nice-to-know." After noting all of the common stakeholders and people who typically have input on a learning program, she advises "Before you begin designing, identify the two or three points most critical to successful performance on the job. What must the learner know? I call this 'finding your 20%'… Design starts here. Rather than take everything there is to know and try to capture it all in the course, start in the center – with the critical content – and work your way out. Once you have found the critical content, add on only what truly supports understanding of it." Read the rest of the column for Bozarth's specific pieces of advice on how to tackle this common challenge.
How Many Ways Can You Effectively Use Tables in E-Learning Courses? Tom Kuhlmann of the Rapid E-Learning blog wrote another wonderful, examples-filled blog posting, this time providing "10 tips on using tables in your e-learning courses." Any of us could think of several approaches to the use of tables, but 10? Given the amount of e-Learning that Element K has produced over the years -- both as catalog courses and as custom development -- I suspect our army of instructional designers and media developers have collectively used all 10 of Kuhlmann's techniques (and then some!) But I've never seen someone describe so many techniques in one place before, and do so as well as Kuhlmann has here. A great read!
When Mobile Learning is the Entire Show Determining when we'll see an inflection point in the uptick of mobile learning solutions by L&D departments continues to be hard to predict: where are we on the industry-wide adoption curve exactly? That said, there continues to be significant -- and clearly increasing -- interest in the possibilities for mobile learning. The eLearning Guild recognized this and so decided to hold a conference dedicated solely to mobile learning: mLearnCon, held June 15-17 in San Diego. If you missed the event, and didn't follow tweets that emerged from it either, you can still get a sense for the goings-on by reading the following excellent blog postings from the industry leaders who were heavily involved:
More on Mobile Learning The eLearning Guild didn't only hold a conference dedicated to mobile learning, their online Learning Solutions Magazine also ran a series of excellent articles on mobile learning as well. These have included:
Mobile Learning: Obstacles and Solutions - by Joe Ganci, wherein he asks three questions of seven experts, including Judy Brown, David Metcalf, Clark Quinn, and others.
The Latest Social Learning There continues to be a great flow of good articles, blog postings, and resources on this important subject, so I will again list a few from recent weeks here. The first two are from Talent Management magazine's June issue:
Just Read the Wiki - by Elaine Lees and Elissa Gavette. Includes two sidebars on the use of Web 2.0 tools at Swiss Re and Intel.
Taking Talent Inventory - by Grant Ricketts and Rob Pannoni. Considers both the benefits and range of use of social media tools in an organization, and also the role that metadata -- through social networking analytics -- can play in talent management.
Transforming the Learning Organization (PDF) - in the June issue of ASTD's LX Briefing newsletter, there is an interview with ASTD President Tony Bingham and social media expert Marcia Conner, specifically in regard to their upcoming book The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media.
Try Yammer, Maybe You'll Learn Something - Mike Petersell briefly explains how Pitney Bowes uses the micro-blogging/micro-messaging tool Yammer for learning purposes.
Michael Hanley on Evaluating Non-Formal Learning - a series of blog postings on this timely topic:
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: April, May, June, and July.
