learning re-imagined

Social Media Impact during a crisis and beyond.

As news of the devastating earthquake continues to come out I find myself pondering the role of Social Media in so much of our lives.  Not so long ago, our only source of what had happened would have come from traditional print media – the daily paper or perhaps the weekly news magazine.  Even sources like CNN might have only had some basic information while they got the right people in place to let us know what was going on.  But last week the earthquake happened and almost instantly the world was finding out about it.

The information was coming directly from people  there.  Immediate.  Instantaneous. It is the power of the social media that I find amazing.  Survivors tweet “I’m alive.”  Families search for loved ones through Facebook.  A donation to a charity can be texted from a phone.  It not only makes us aware, it makes it personal. 

We can talk about social media in learning, but really isn’t it almost all about learning something?  Immediate.  Instantaneous.  Relevant.  Learning about events far away and their impacts at home.  Learning about how you can make a difference.  And perhaps that is the power that we are only starting to explore. 

By: Stephanie Pyle

Epiphany on iTouch

OK, let’s first establish the context – I am a Baby Boomer (well, really, on the very youngest edge of that generational divide).  My peers think that I’m a technology genius since I work in elearning, after all – but really I feel that I’m falling behind every day.  I asked for an iTouch ^TM for my last birthday so that I can read MapQuest on the big screen to find my way around, and because I love the way you can zoom in on photos with that finger-stretch action.  Last night, after a ten hour day of working on my laptop, I shifted from my home office to the living room sofa to transition to “leisure time.”  (There really is a connection to learning coming soon.)

The home page of my iTouch has a YouTube icon.  As a way of getting acquainted with my iTouch, I was systematically  tapping all the icons and menus, including YouTube.  I’ve launched very few YouTube videos, because I’ve not been too interested in the Dancing Babies and other “educational” subjects you hear about on the evening news.  But I eventually tapped the “Most Viewed” icon and what came to the top of the list was a video called “Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn” (Cosmos Remixed).  Now this title appealed to my passion for academic inquiry, and so I launched.

The music, the images – captivating.  I mean, a DJ re-re-remix, you know? But within, the pearls of wisdom: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”  I’m mesmerized by the quality of the image on the screen, the clarity of sound through the ear-buds: “A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise – a morning filled with four hundred billion suns, the rising of the Milky Way.”  Science, poetry and thought, together in the palm of my hand: “The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean; recently we’ve waded in, and the water seems inviting…”

Leisure, learning, recreation, learning, music, learning, imagery, learning…blended til the boundaries are impossible to discern.  (This being my own poetry, almost as mystical as Carl Sagan’s.)  The point, dear reader, is that the immediacy of the learning opportunity is what drew me into my learning moment.  And so we observe the very equal importance of content and delivery.

This is the idea behind SkillSoft learning portlets.  Portlets bring access to learning out of the Learning Management System and into the familiar online sites where employees already spend time.  In the course of day-to-day work, an employee is one click away from problem-solving information or personal enrichment.  With all the priorities competing for the time and attention of today’s knowledge worker, convenient access is as critical as engaging content.

By: Darlene Frederick

Halloween Candy and Bite Sized Learning

On this Halloween eve I am thinking about (and of course eating) candy. Like many people I tend to take a treat from the various bowls around the office, a Hersey’s Kiss® from here, a MaryJane® from there. (By the way, check out this great interactive Hershey’s site where you can build a custom Kiss and email it to a pal.) For some reason, stopping to enjoy some bite-size bits throughout the day seems perfectly acceptable.  Of course I wouldn’t dream of eating an entire regular size candy bar.  That would be fattening! So much for logic.   

In some ways we’ve seen a similar trend in learning.  Many learners are put off by the idea of a “regular size” course.  Two-three hours seems like an awfully long time in the middle of a busy work day.  But a smaller serving of learning that’s right at your fingertips is fine.  In the past several years SkillSoft has introduced a number of learning assets that are shorter in duration than traditional courses, and the response from customers has been a resounding “More please!”  So, you’ll see SkillSoft continue to produce a stream of learning products that fit into our learners’ hectic schedules, everything from one-hour courses to the diminutive Learning Sparks.  And of course we’ll continue to expand our on-demand resources such as Books24x7 collections and Leadership Development Channel—great for quick answers and inspiration.

Don’t get me wrong, our customers still want and need in-depth learning resources to support compliance, certification and other mission-critical needs.  Just like every once in a while I give in to the urge for the full size Baby Ruth® (and be sure to take a moment and give in to the urge to check out this hysterical Baby Ruth site!).

By: Julie Ogilvie

Two Studies (Large and Small) Support Online Learning Effectiveness

It’s not unusual to run into people who listen politely to my spiel about how great online learning is, and then ask “the” question:  is it as effective as classroom training?  It’s a loaded and somewhat unfair question (from my point of view); loaded because it suggests the classroom is the gold standard against which all other forms of learning are judged, and unfair because it’s too broad to be meaningful.  

You could ask the same question of any learning modality.  Is the classroom effective?  Well, depends on the quality of the teacher, the material being taught, even the classroom itself.  You could also ask what the definition of “effective” is.  Are you referring just to individual learning outcomes, or are you asking if it’s effective in supporting overall business goals? Are you taking into account the constraints most companies have for cost and resources?  Have you considered how the learning will be delivered to global populations?

So often my response to “the” question is the answer: “it depends.” That sounds like a cop-out.  But thanks to two recent studies, I can answer that not only is online learning as effective, it has been found to be more effective than classroom training.

The first study that comes as music to the ears of any online learning proponent is the US Department of Education’s “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning:  A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.”   In a review of 176 studies conducted between 1996 and 2008, the researchers found that online learning is actually more effective than classroom.  It’s great to finally have statistical research showing the effectiveness of online learning, and undoubtedly this will come as a shock to some folks who would assume that face-to-face is always superior. 

In many ways the study provokes as many questions as it answers.  One of the key findings was that the use of video does not improve learning outcomes.   It made me wonder about what kind of video had been studied.  It also questioned whether the positive results for online learning had resulted from the fact that the online courses took place over a longer period of time.  They may have been on to something there.

The second recent study of note was conducted by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University.  This study looked at how different types of training resulted in different types of memory formation.  Specifically the study looked at the difference between training events spaced out over time and “massed training.”  The study found that “trials distributed over time were superior at generating long-term memories.”

The McGill University study was looking at memory formation at the molecular level, and the study subjects aren’t ones that we see much of in the corporate world: a type of mollusk called Aplysia (aka sea slugs).  However, the researchers believe that the chemical process of memory formation is likely to be the same from mollusks to higher life forms, so the results are something to pay attention to.

What struck me about the second study is that for years now, many of our customers have been talking about the desire to deliver learning in smaller chunks, spaced out over time.  They may not have had a scientific research study on memory formation to back them up, but they were definitely headed down the right path.

Just don’t mention to your next class of high-potentials that their learning program is based on sea slug research. They might not be flattered by the comparison.

By: Julie Ogilvie

Many training organizations I speak with are intrigued by Enterprise 2.0 technologies and their promises for creating a viral collaborative community within the organization.  At last count, there were more than 400 companies out there touting ‘e2.0 technologies’ … everything from wiki and blog products, to products that promise a safe Facebook-like or Twitter-like platform that can be rolled out behind your firewall.

Admittedly, some of these products are quite impressive, but they all share one common thread.  They are all enabling technologies. Just software.

Early efforts with these products are mixed at best.  Many early adopters or experimenters with these technologies report a lack of success in creating a sustainable collaborative environment. 

McKinsey, in a white paper entitled Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work,published in February 2009, observed the same phenomenon and described it this way:

“Perhaps because of the novelty of Web 2.0 initiatives, they’re often considered separate from mainstream work…Thus, using Web 2.0 and participating in online work communities often becomes just another “to do” on an already crowded list of tasks.”

Does this mean that social environments can’t work in the enterprise? Emphatically no.

But I am suggesting that there is a better way. 

There are three ingredients to creating a sustainable collaborative environment:  1) enabling technology; 2) abundance of content; and 3) enthusiastic community. When brought together, these three ingredients can produce a delicious collaborative result.

So the call to action for those learning professionals seeking to leverage collaboration to drive new levels of learning is simple.  Think about starting not with the enabling technology, but with your existing content and your existing active community of users who are already coming to your learning destination.  For instance, if you are currently using a product like Books24x7 from SkillSoft, why not think about the millions of pages of professional reference content that you already license as “seeds of discussion” for a thriving collaborative environment.  

Social collaboration offers great potential to help informal and formal learning, but the most effective path to accomplishing this will be to leverage what’s already working.

By: John Ambrose

Fall CLO Symposium

 

I’ve just spent three great days in Colorado Springs attending CLO’s 2009 Fall Symposium on Peak Performance: Pushing Your Enterprise to the Top. It was a great chance to spend time with top training and development professionals from around the country and hear their thoughts on the issues and concerns that are foremost in their minds. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some thoughts that I took away from the event.

1. If you’ve never been to Colorado Springs, it’s beautiful. It’s hard to really grasp the beauty of the Rockies till you’ve seen them up close.
2. When it comes to training solutions, one size doesn’t fit all. It can be tempting some times to look for one solution that you can use with all of your learners to meet all of their needs. While there are many great solutions available to choose from - and many can serve multiple purposes - you definitely still need to match the solution with your audience and their specific learning styles and goals.
3. Leadership fundamentals haven’t changed all that much. While some competencies are becoming more important – flexibility, communication – in response to today’s dynamic and more multi-generational and cultural work place, the core leadership skills remain the same. Leaders still need to provide vision, direction, and motivation.
4. As more companies recognize that a robust leadership pipeline is fundamental to long term success, they are looking at new ways to make leadership training available to more people (to build the pipeline) and with greater frequency (to maximize impact). While the competencies haven’t changed all that much, people are looking for new ways to teach those core leadership competencies and are turning to technology-based solutions as an economical solution to reach more people.
5. What are your thoughts on the future of leadership development? Or, if you were lucky enough to attend, what did you take away from CLO’s great recent event?

By: Tim Hildreth

Book Review: Aligning Training for Results

 

We are constantly adding new titles to our Books24x7,On Demand reference collections.   For example, the new book Aligning Training For Results: A Process and Tools That Link Training to Business by Ron Drew Stone (© 2009, Pfeiffer) was recently added to the BusinessPro collection.   

Ron Drew Stone is an author and an international consultant and presenter, and one of the world’s most recognized and accomplished authorities on improving training and performance interventions and measuring results. Ron is president of the Center for Performance and ROI.

Stone advocates his Performance Alignment and Linkage Process (PAL).   Written for training professionals and consultants at all levels, this book will help you learn how to identify , measure, and sustain alignment throughout your training and performance process.  You can use the PAL methods and tools presented and integrate them with what you are doing now to improve results, or start from scratch with new methodology.  

This book is designed to get you thinking about your programs, and inspire new ways of measuring success. BusinessPro subscribers can access this book on Books24x7.

 

By: Pam Boiros

 

Innovation - Look into the Future!

One of the reasons why I love Twitter is how fast I can get information. (I admit it, I’m a Twitter addict!) I don’t have to search the Web and read through a lot of data when what I really want is a nugget – a baseball score, a status update, a quick bit of information about a news story. But, then there are times when I want more data; when I want to understand something and get a full, rounded view of a subject. That’s when I look for an expert – someone who can talk to me about something, explain something and give it meaning. And, even more value is added when I can hear from other people who are interested in the same subject as me. What are other people saying? What are they thinking? What do they care about?

That’s one thing that I love about my job. I am able to facilitate an environment – through SkillSoft events – where I can invite people to join in a conversation about corporate learning. It’s like the ultimate large scale search, where people can learn, listen and understand in an environment where they’re with their peers, people who face the same challenges.

These days, I hear our customers talking about a few immerging trends in learning. How does mobile learning impact corporate training? How do you gain leverage from leadership training? How will social networking impact learning, today and in the future? These are not the kinds of questions that you can Google. The subjects are broad; they’re big; they’re multifaceted. But, they’re important and need to be talked about, noodled, addressed.

SkillSoft’s upcoming three part Innovation Webinar Series with Training Magazine is a great place to join the conversation. These are important, timely topics that are being discussed in conference rooms around the world. And, personally, I’m excited to join the conversation. We have to discuss what’s next for corporate learning so we can get there together.  As Brad Paisley’s new song says, “Welcome to the future!”

By Rachel Levine