Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

Moving the Needle at TrainingIndustry.com’s Partnering for Performance Conference

By Pam Boiros, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Skillsoft

This week, I’m presenting at the TrainingIndustry.com’s Partnering for Performance event in Raleigh, N.C. The sixth annual Partnering for Performance Conference is an event that helps learning leaders obtain the information, insight and tools needed to leverage partnerships for driving performance improvement.

I look forward to presenting the results of a recent joint research project partnership between Skillsoft and the learning industry metrics leader KnowledgeAdvisors.  I am co-presenting along with John Mattox, Director of Research for KnowledgeAdvisors.  Built on the results from Skillsoft’s 2011 Moving the Needle: How Skillsoft Learning Impacts Performance of Individuals and Organizations report, this new study compared the 2011 findings to two new benchmarks: classroom training and in-house developed elearning.  A previous blog post recapped the key themes of the study. 

If you’ll be at the Partnering for Performance event, please attend my session Wednesday, May 1 at 1:15 p.m.   If you’re not able to attend, follow the discussion about the event on Twitter via the official tweets from @TrainingIndustr. 

Interested in this study?  We’ve published a whitepaper containing the results, Challenge the Status Quo with a Smarter Approach to the Global Talent Crisis. Download your complimentary copy today.  

Throw back Thursday: learning cultures

We receive so much valuable content from our customers, partners and internal subject-matter experts. On Thursdays, we thought it would be fun to do a “throw back” and bring back an older post that was valuable to our audience. Today’s throw back is about creating learning cultures.

 

Creating effective learning cultures

Studies show that making learning a priority can positively affect your organization in a number of ways. Employee engagement improves and there is higher retention and satisfaction. Business processes also become more efficient and streamlined, resulting in a higher ROI and long-term success.  Research from Bersin & Associates indicates that companies with learning cultures have higher financial returns over a 10-20 year period. To achieve these desired outcomes with learning, your organization needs to encourage continuous learning and create a supportive environment.

When learning is a part of your company culture and supported from the top down, employees can make learning a frequent part of their routine. According to a recent blog post by Ladan Nikravan, from Chief Learning Officer, “creating a culture focused on continuous education and skill building can help an organization adapt during unanticipated dilemmas.”

In a global economy where competition is fierce, only the smart will survive. Continuous learning helps your organization remain innovative and stay at the forefront of your industry. With established learning cultures, there are no boundaries within departments: employees can problem solve with other groups, promoting a fresh flow of ideas and perspectives. This type of environment makes your employees more inclined to receive feedback and accept changes that could positively affect your business.

Talent Development Reporting Principles

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from John R. Mattox, II, Ph.D., Director of Research for KnowledgeAdvisors, a learning measurement software and solutions company focused on improving the effectiveness of learning. John’s colleague, Jeffrey Berk, Chief Operating Officer for KnowledgeAdvisors, will be speaking during the Impact Analysis: Strategies for Success workshop at Perspectives 2012.

By John R. Mattox, II, Ph.D., Director of Research, KnowledgeAdvisors

Frequently, L&D professionals are challenged to communicate the impact of learning efforts to business leaders.  They are asked to answer seemingly simple questions:  How effective is our curriculum?  Is training cost-effective?  Is L&D supporting business initiatives?

Those simple questions often mushroom in voluminous reports that may or may not provide relevant answers to the executive audience.  And L&D leaders  who have presented to business leaders—CEOs, CFOs, COOs—quickly learn what this audience does NOT want—information about Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation, or knowledge gain scores, changes in behaviors or the number of people trained.  The c-suite has a short attention, and L&D leaders don’t get invited back to the table if they don’t bring relevant information.

Bersin & Associates Research Bulletin Reports that SkillSoft’s Evolving Portfolio Keeps Pace with the Changing Nature of Leadership Development

Bersin & Associates recently released its report, Next Generation Leadership Development: SkillSoft’s Evolving Portfolio Exemplifies the Changing Nature of Leadership Programs,” which discusses the changing nature of today’s leadership development programs. The report by David Mallon, vice president, Bersin & Associates and Laci Loew, senior analyst, Bersin & Associates, explores the evolution of blended formal and informal development programs, the importance of developing leaders at all levels and how SkillSoft’s solutions address today’s leadership development needs.

The report finds that having flexible and blended development solutions such as SkillSoft’s platform is essential when looking to step up to the evolving needs of today’s leaders.  Mallon concludes that “SkillSoft’s solutions are on-point with the evolving needs of the industry, offering an expanded portfolio of resources that includes social, on-demand, mobile, storytelling and other next generation methods. Such leadership development solutions go a long way to address development gaps for leaders at all levels and to arm them with 21^st-century skills.”

The report also underscores the fact that the most effective value development experiences come from organizations that utilize a true blended, also known as a 70-20-10, approach of formal and informal development. More specifically, Bersin & Associates’ research found that the most mature companies leveraged both formal and informal learning.

Free Download: Next Generation Leadership Development

Download Bersin's latest leadership development research to learn how to prepare your leaders to meet the current and future business demands of your organization

ASTD 2011 State of the Industry Report Finds Continued Investment in Employee Learning and Development

Despite the global economic instability, organizations dramatically increased spending on learning and development in 2010, according to the ASTD 2011 State of the Industry Report. The report, sponsored by SkillSoft, confirms that organizations continue to be committed to the delivery of knowledge and the development of employees at every level.

In the report, the American Society of Training & Development (ASTD), the world’s largest association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals, revealed that in 2010 employers spent more on employees' development than ever before. Businesses in the United States spent $171.5 billion on employee learning in 2010, up from $125.8 billion in 2009.

Advice on Avoiding Scrap to Make e-Learning Effective

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from John R. Mattox, II, Ph.D., director of research for KnowledgeAdvisors, a learning measurement software and solutions company focused on improving the effectiveness of learning.

By John R. Mattox, II, Ph.D., KnowledgeAdvisors

What is Scrap Learning?

Scrap learning is learning that is lost after training.  Three great minds give us context and provide a better understanding of the concept:

• Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist, and in the 1880’s he elegantly demonstrated that memory fades exponentially with time.  By extension the knowledge and skills gained during training fade as well.
• B. F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist, stated, “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”
• Lastly, Brinkerhoff extended the idea and provided the label, scrap learning, by focusing on application.  If learning is not applied, it is lost.

E-Learning Effectiveness Blog Series: Are Your Training Initiatives Reduced to Scraps?

By Kieran King

Do you ever wonder if your employees are using the skills that you are teaching in your training initiatives? You are not alone. Today more than ever organizations are focused on getting their money’s worth on every dollar spent on learning. One important aspect of this is ensuring that employees actually use the learning being delivered. The term “scrap learning” describes the measurable amount of training that is delivered but not successfully applied to the job. Dr. Robert Brinkerhoff, an internationally recognized expert in training evaluation and effectiveness, estimates that the scrap learning rate (the learning that is delivered but not applied by the learner) can be as high as 80%. The common scrap learning range is often between 55% to 80%.

According to a recent independent study conducted by KnowledgeAdvisors, a learning measurement software and solutions company focused on improving the effectiveness of learning, 86% of SkillSoft learners were able to apply what they learned within six weeks of the training. That means SkillSoft’s scrap learning rate was 14%—far below the norm.

 

Be The Market Surprise

Much of the conversations we get engaged in with customers often involve discussion of “How did other companies do it?” - discussions around benchmarking processes.  Yet most of the emerging ideas in leadership and talent development we hear from eminent thinkers, researchers and writers warn of benchmarking to mediocrity.  Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads, has a dynamite quote buried in the middle of his book:

“A smart strategist gravitates toward ill-defined and ambiguous opportunities.  That is because once everything has been defined and reduced to standard operating procedure, there is no money left to be made.” - Stuart Hart

The point he is making, and the same point Jeffrey Pfeffer, Jonas Ridderstrale, Lynda Gratton and others have made in our interviews, is the same - to be the market surprise, instead of be surprised, you need to create unique and original ways of conducting your business.  Lynda Gratton calls this “signature processes.”  Red Hat is a great example.  We were chatting with a senior executive at Red Hat and I explained part of a presentation we could provide which would showcase companies with leading implementation practices and he stopped me and said, “Look I don’t mean to interrupt but I can’t bring that story in here.  At Red Hat we do it the Red Hat Way.”  He went on to say of course they don’t ignore the market landscape or operate in some creative oasis, but that once they make a bet on a product or service, they execute their way.  By doing it the Red Hat Way, they also build great culture and engagement because everyone feels they are part of true creation.

A lifetime ago around 2001, while leading a small start-up we got together our customer research and stories and dreamed up an online system which could aid the learner and leader to use, apply, track, and campaign on our video learning assets.  Then we built the system and when we took it on the road test, people said, “Oh you’ve built an LMS.”  A what?  “You’ve created a a Learning Management System, although it’s got some stuff we haven’t seen before.”  We had indeed built an LMS before we had ever heard of one.  Instead of benchmarking LMS vendors (whom we didn’t know existed), and listening to our customers instead, we created something unique and did it with passion and energy because we believed in our originality and our ability to create a killer app.  The tip coming from emerging leadership is this: pay attention to the market yes, but be bold and original in what - and importantly how - you execute.

By: Shawn Hunter

 

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