Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

Learning Tricks: Suggestions For Making Time for Learning

 

I’m not one of those people who feels overloaded by information. I am excellent at multi-tasking and unless something completely throws me for a loop, I normally don’t drop too many of the balls that I’m constantly juggling.  I field instant messages, email, RSS feeds and people walking into my work space all day long. I don’t skip a beat. My work gets done.

But, all of that goes out the window when I’m trying to learn something. I need quiet. I need peace. I need a way to zone out and allow myself to fully engage in the learning situation I’ve embarked on.  And, that’s not easy to do in the chaos of a normal work day.

So, here are few tricks that I learned along the way.

• ·I try to find a quiet conference room and hide. People assume that I’m in a meeting and I don’t get too many people looking for me.  I also shut off my email and my instant messenger.  I confess to being one of those people who cannot let an email go by without reading it. So, shutting my email off completely takes away the temptation.
•  Blocking time off in my calendar shows people that I’m busy and usually stops people from pulling me into last minute meetings. And, if I can, I try to schedule that time first thing in the morning before I get caught up in the day and decide to put it off.
•  Earphones go a long way in quieting the chatter around me if I’m sitting at my desk. And, I don’t mean iPod ear buds. I use the old school, big, honking ear phones. People can easily see that I’m listening to something as they walk by my door.  
• Finally, I really try to focus on only the learning – for the duration of the learning event – without allowing myself to be interrupted. Stopping and starting gets confusing. It also forces me to go back a bit when I re-start because I have trouble remembering what I started to learn during my previous session. Spending uninterrupted, dedicated time stops me from spending extra time re-doing work if I have to start and stop a few times.

Our learning consultants suggest a range of other useful tactics as well. They suggest a door tag – much like a hotel room ‘do not bother’ tag - that indicates learning is in progress and to please allow for some privacy. They also suggest a learning version of caution tape; A funny way to make the same point.

We all agree that learning is a critical piece of growing on the job. But, time isn’t usually on our side. The trick is to find what works for you and utilize those tactics to ensure that you give yourself the time and space to learn. It’s not always easy but it’s surely worth the effort.

By: Rachel Levine

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

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

Dovetails

 

   

The word “dovetail” creates an image of furniture in my mind.  In the land of furniture, dovetail features mean quality.  Drawers that have dovetail joints are far more durable than staples or glue.  In a metaphorical term, dovetailing creates value in conversation as well as in furniture.  In my maiden posting to this blog, I will take the liberty to dovetail on Julie Ogilvie’s recent blog entry about a conversation.  Conversations can dovetail and create quality as much as furniture joints can create quality.

Julie wrote about Café and conversations and work feeling like an extended family.  She points to the customers that are an extension to our work family.  I am fortunate to work with a group of amazing professional Learning Consultants (LC).  The Learning Consultant team extends the SkillSoft family into our customer base, as Julie shared.  The LCs work with our customers on a daily basis collaborating on business objectives, program planning, marketing and communications and value measurement.  Clients benefit from years of combined experience and consistent best practices through partnership with our Learning Consultants.  As I have conversations each day with my team, they truly personify the extended family that Julie refers to. 

 

When it comes to family, I know I can count on my sister to tell me if my hair is a mess or if I have spinach in my teeth.  As a manager of this team, I can always count on the straight-shooting input from these consultants.  The sibling-like relationships we have across the team make it easy to pick up the phone and get the real story about what is happening across various industries.  They know what is important to customers.  As I ponder blog postings, I know I can count on the expertise of the LC team to share their ideas around those things that matter to me, to SkillSoft and to the extended family of customers. 

 

Dovetailing on Julie’s post is a fine start.  Dovetailing on what is happening across our customer base and in the world of our Learning Consultants creates a strong method that we will all find value in.  In future posts, I will expand on some of those strong joints and partnerships, allowing for learning.  Truly, isn’t that what this is all about?

By: Lori Neblung