Bottom-Line Performance

All month we’ve been talking about new technologies for learning and teaching. But, particularly in the world of technology, what’s new today will be out of date sooner than we want to admit. So I thought I’d use my last post on new technology to talk about what’s coming down the pike in the future.

New Media Consortium and Educase recently released the 2010 Horizon Report, which describes technologies likely to be adopted near, medium and long term for learning and teaching. Here’s an overview of their predictions:

One to Two Years

• Mobile Computing
• Open content

Two to Three Years

• Electronic Books
• Simple Augmented Reality

Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based computing
• Visual Data analysis

Learning Circuits Blog big question for January is around Predictions and Plans for 2010 . There are some favorites here, including Tony Karrer, Jay Cross, Clark Quinn and many others.

I’ve got some predictions about the future, too.

Informal learning will continue to be important for organizations. As people (otherwise known as learners or employees) get more used to having questions answered by facebook or twitter or whatever other social networks they are a part of, they will begin to look to those networks for answers at work. Corporations may get behind this, or they may try to block it, but they will not be able to stop it.

Technology will continue to make just-in-time learning easier and easier. More than once in the past month I’ve been sitting somewhere away from my computer when a question came up in conversation and I answered on my mobile phone. That’s another skill people will use in their personal life first. For example, the first websites I bookmarked on my smart phone when I got it were local movie theaters, so I could be at dinner and answer the question “what’s starting about the time we’ll be done eating.”

Performance metrics become more important than ever. The economic world continues to be a scary place, making the ability to prove your value to an organization more important than ever. Proving the value of training hasn’t gotten any easier – in large part because it rarely happens in an isolated vacuum. Finding a way to measure what Jay Cross calls “time to performance” is critical.

The tools will keep getting cooler. Finding ways to use them appropriately will also continue to be critical. As Jen suggested in her recent post, we have to be careful not to suggest thing just because they are cool, lest we lose credibility in the eyes of our business partners.

A good system for knowing what information is available may be the most important tool of all. Great content is useless unless your learners can find it when they need it. Development can’t stop when a course is launched – you have to think through how people will get to it.

What predictions do you have about the future of technology in our business?

Jennifer’s last blog post makes the excellent point that it’s important to resist getting overwhelmed by the cool factor with Web 2.0 tools. An evaluation process, like the one she references, is critical.

When Sharon and I were working on documenting our evaluation process, we had a recurring argu… discussion over the first step in the process. Is it best to start by scanning the horizon for new technologies, so that you could find ways to integrate them into your corporate learning? Or is the correct approach to set your technology priorities and look only at those products that meet a defined need?

There are argu…discussion points on both sides. If you don’t have your priorities defined, wandering around the internet looking for tools can eat tremendous amounts of time. On the other hand, if you don’t widen your focus a little past your immediate needs, you risk being blindsided by new technology.

The end result of our conversations we decided the key is to balance some awareness of the general technology landscape with a more pointed focus on technologies to meet specific, project-driven needs. So, whether it’s your or your second step, looking for tools will be a part of your process at some level.

There are literally thousands of online tools that can be used for learning. Jane Harts’ E-Learning pick of the day blog has one of the most comprehensive lists out there. Since she started her learning tools directory in 2006, she has cataloged nearly 2,000 tools. Nearly 1,400 of them are free, which is a benefit. (Note: Don’t get too excited about the possibility of free tools. The hard cost of software may be zero, but learning to use the tools always takes time).

ZaidLearn has also put together a tools list, here.

Remember that the tools are only ever the means to an end. They won’t ever replace good design, or good content. But they can make it more fun to put together.

The past few weeks have given us several exciting technology announcements and rumors, most notably the new android phone from Google and the Apple iTablet/Slate.  It’s easy to be excited by tools like these as well as augmented reality and other technologies. But as learning professionals, how do we go from “that’s really cool.” to “this is how I am going to use this as a learning tool in my organization.” My concern is that the cooler the technology is, the less we think about how we’ll actually use it in our organizations. We just assume that we’ll be able to use it somehow, and that we’ll figure it out once we have it! There are a couple of consequences to this behavior:

• Our stakeholders think that we don’t possess  evaluative, decision-making skills.
• We lose focus and spend time flitting from one new thing to the next.
• Our learners don’t end up with a tool that meets their needs.

So, what’s the solution?

• Keep any eye on the trends, but always with a healthy dose of skepticism. For example, here’s a compilation of the mobile trends (in general, not related to learning) for 2020 as predicted by leaders in the mobile industry. Do any of these folks really know what will be going on in 2020? No, but it is good for us know what they are at least thinking about.
• Try stuff out. But I think we want to avoid using our learners as our testers as much as we can. If they think that you’ll be moving onto the next great thing within a month, they won’t embrace what you’re giving them now.
• Create a concrete implementation plan including how it will be used, by who, and how you’re going to evaluate it’s success.
• Be willing to pull the plug. If your learners aren’t using it, and people aren’t learning – it’s not working! Set a hard timeline for how long you’ll give the technology or tool to get up to speed before you abandon it.

Sharon Boller and Lisa Meece from BLP recently did a presentation on what comes before implementation, evaluation – below is a very helpful graphic they created to outline the evaluation process learning professionals should work through. If you’d like the full evaluation worksheet, post a comment here asking for it and I’ll send your way.

What do you think? Do you agree that learning professionals need to take more time to think throuh evaluation and implementation when it comes to new tech tools? Or do you think I’m just being grumpy and the only way that we can determine if it has learning potential is to try it out?

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year, and is feeling ready for 2010.

Our blog topic for the month of January will be Web 2.0 and training. There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about Web 2.0 and how it changes EVERYTHING. Then again, the term web 2.0 originated as a marketing strategy, and we all know that marketing claims have a tendency to be overblown.

Web 2.0 has come to imply a new way of sharing information online. Instead of a one-way push of information out around the world, Web 2.0 allows information to be exchanged in new ways. Instead of just publishing information, we can participate in creating new information (think Wikipedia). Instead of one expert categorizing information in taxonomy, lots of people can contribute to that categorization with folksonomy. Instead of a one-to-many relationship that look a lot like traditional publishing on a new type of paper, we can have many-to-many relationships that look a lot more like conversations.

In other words, Web 2.0 is all about new ways of making connections.

So is learning. At a physical level, learning means new connections between neurons. At a cognitive level, learning means new connections between prior knowledge and new information. At a personal level, learning means new connections between what we know and what we do. And at an organizational level (we hope), learning means new connections between what we do and how the business performs.

Web 2.0 hasn’t changed any of this. It didn’t change the Brain Rules. It doesn’t change the way our minds work, any more than the wheel changed the way our feet work. It has, perhaps changed the way we use them…

Memorization is less useful when I carry google in my pocket. Technology is less of a barrier when I can get a digital video camera for $150 and audio editing software for free.

But most of the time my end goals haven’t really changed.

Visual Blooms Taxonomy, by Michael Fisher

I want people to understand and apply information a lot of the time. Sometimes I want them to be able to analyze, evaluate and even create new information. The tools don’t change those outcomes – and I want to start the month stating that very clearly.

Because the tools are really cool – and it’s very easy to get carried away by just how cool they can be. And as we share this month all of the awesome tools we’re playing with, I want you to promise to keep in mind that learning itself isn’t changed by these tools. This isn’t learning 2.0 – because learning hasn’t changed.   It’s just Tools 2.0.

The blog carnival didn’t get quite the response I was hoping for this month, so I decided to go in a slightly different direction, and look to see what the higher education field had to share about e-learning. Higher education started out as all synchronous learning – and as they have branched into web-based solutions they have stuck with the synchronous model in many cases. They also like to do a lot of research and writing about theories, which makes for some good ponderables.

Higher education folks have put some thought into how adult learning theory relates to synchronous learning tools and techniques. This article concluded that in “order to create learners’ satisfaction and enhance their performance…(it needs) to be attuned to adult learners needs”, and listed the following as traits of adult learners that should be considered when selecting synchronous learning tools

• A store of real-life experiences
• An inclination to problem-centered learning
• Opportunities for continuous learning
• Operating from various learning styles
• Desire for meaningful learning
• Potential for self-directed learning
• Responsibilities beyond the training situation

The key point is that adults learn as a way of expanding their existing understanding of the world they find themselves in. The following tips were created for higher education, but generally apply in any learning situation.

• Learners require significant support and guidance to make the most of their distance learning experiences. This support can be achieved through a combination of student-instructor and student-student interactions.
• Learners need to be part of the learning process to feel involved and comfortable. Social presence for both the instructor and the student is important.
• Learners benefit significantly from learning in small groups that provide support and encouragement, as well as foster the feeling that if help is needed, it is readily available. This builds a learning community based on shared responsibility with individual efforts.
• Learners are motivated through frequent, structured contact with the instructor. Instructors often play the role of facilitator; in synchronous environments scaffolding and structure is very important for success.

When you take all of this into consideration, synchronous learning four advantages that asynchronous learning environments can’t match.

• Motivation – synchronous systems provide motivation for distance learners to keep up with their peers.
• Telepresence – real time interaction fosters development of group cohesion and a sense of community.
• Good feedback – synchronous systems provide quick feedback and support consensus and decision-making in group activities.
• Pacing – synchronous events encourage discipline in learning and help students prioritize their studies.

The next trick is to identify ways to leverage synchronous tools to hit these key adult learning practices. This chart provides a nice overview.

A lot of these tools are available for free. Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Tools is a good place to start finding tools that can work for you.

I wrote the first draft of this blog post from my smartphone on my way back from DevLearn 08 . I had my full-sized laptop in a bag at my feet…and I used my laptop on the plane ride out to the conference. From the middle seat. If you’ve tried that lately, I bet you can easily imagine why I my cell phone key board was the right tool for that particular job.

The trick getting people to adopt new technologies is finding a job the tool is right for. You can pound in a nail with a screwdriver – I’ve done it. But a hammer works better. You can create memos in PowerPoint – I used to work with someone who did it regularly – but Word works better.

The same holds true of Web 2.0. A blog can work as a knowledge repository, and a wiki can be used to publish a string of articles over time. But it’ll be easier to encourage adoption – for yourself or within your organization – if you find the tool that is best suited to what you are trying to do.

In our organization we use project specific blogs and wikis. (we call them basecamp messages and writeboards, respectively, and we mostly don’t even think of them as being related to web 2.0 applications.) We routinely share these tools with our clients, and it’s rare that we have trouble getting new people to adopt the tool. We introduce the tools as a means to an end, as a way of sharing information and facilitating project success, and suddenly the barriers to adoption shrink significantly.

That’s the key with any new tool- if it makes work or life easier, suddenly adoption is the least of your worries.

If you’re looking for cool tools, check out Jane Hart’s list .