Why has elearning seen such phenomenal growth over the past two decades? After starting out clunky and chunky, it has successfully adapted to meet today's business needs, says Chris Parr.
Traditionally, elearning was notorious for simply putting manuals online. In its infancy, elearning was characterised by a rather unintelligent 'just in case' usage, centred on a desktop computer. It had a very long way to come before it began to wow its audience.
So what changed? Nowadays, elearning is tuned much more to engaging the learner and providing a positive and rewarding environment. Modern day elearning allows the classroom to come alive. Lessons are packed with sights, sounds, quizzes and games.
A student in the elearning environment can now become part of the class through the interactive nature of online learning. Employees can not only learn but explore through visuals as well as text. It is also more accessible to international students, as it touches on all the senses, particularly sights and sounds.
Less chunky
Once presented in relatively large chunks, elearning in its early days did not help the learner to remember information. It did not motivate the learner to complete the course either. In fact, it had a negative effect on the learner, daunting them with the sheer amount of material they had to learn in a one-off session.
"Previously, elearning courses were designed for desktop computer use, confining the learners to the classroom. Now, after a long wait, elearning 'on the move' has arrived."
The popularity of elearning has grown because the learner is now placed at the heart of learning. And so they should be! The individual is ideally situated to know what they want to learn and in what format. To cater for the needs of the student, elearning materials have become available in smaller chunks, increasing the range of contexts in which content can be used. Elearners can digest the content more easily and with increased flexibility.
Let's start shaking things up!
The use of scenarios and games have also made elearning much more popular, allowing for experimentation and reflection, encouraging an environment in which mistakes are allowed. Why should learning be dull? Flexible material tailored to the learner allows for a non-threatening learning space, where students can progress at their own pace and can actually enjoy the experience.
More confident learners are produced, achieving the qualifications they truly deserve. Elearners with basic IT skills can also experience the world of online learning on fun, user-friendly
platforms.
Discover through elearning
In its early years elearning was presented as a 'tell and test' activity. Employees would be told the content that they must learn and then they would be tested. Learners were unable to discover new information: this was seen as a huge downfall!
The learner nowadays can be part of a 'try and see' process, where learning is presented as a route to discovery. This method is 100% more motivating as it builds on prior knowledge. Exploratory questions are provoked, therefore spurring on discussion between the learner and online tutor. This is just as it should be: active learning environments are places where questions should be asked and answered.
Elearning designers have cleverly introduced character simulations that engage the online learner in a social experience where a 'real person' guides the pedagogical delivery. These characters take on personality through their visual impact, choice of language and even voice. Given all the advances that gaming and social technologies have made in recent times, why shouldn't elearning incorporate some of these engaging and interesting components?
Beyond the classroom
Previously, elearning courses were designed for desktop computer use, confining the learners to the classroom. Now, after a long wait, elearning 'on the move' has arrived. Available on mobile, tablet-form computers, modern elearning caters for those employees that live life on the move.
Being able to use handheld technology, employees can dip in and out of their training whenever and wherever convenient. This supports the current lifestyle of today's learner. These days, most of us are permanently attached to our mobile phones and laptops, and are accustomed to accessing what we want, when we want it!
Elearning for the digital generation
The increased popularity of elearning has also come about because of a change in the types of materials presented. The digital natives of the 21st century seek blogs, discussion forums and web pages that allow them to initiate their own styles of learning. These online pages provoke thought and debate, allowing learners to explore their understanding.
With the use of network technologies to deliver and facilitate learning, 'anytime anywhere' learning is rapidly growing in today's business world. Elearning gives people the competitive edge to lift performance, raise standards and guarantee best practice. Ultimately it facilitates a modern and forward-thinking approach.
Article courtesy:trainingzone.co.uk
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Informal learning
This topic interests me a lot and I found a lot of information while studying recently too. This article sheds more light on the topic which is still blurred for many people.
Informal learning - the next big thing?
Informal learning - the next big thing?
Richard Straub explores the rise of informal learning in a culture of change, and considers the new tools and attitudes that will shape the future of learning.
IBM has a tradition of taking the pulse of many CEOs worldwide every other year. Earlier in 2008, more than 1,100 CEOs were interviewed about key challenges of the present and future. This study provides important insights into what keeps them awake at night.
Bombarded by change?
A key finding from this study was that the CEOs feel their organisations are bombarded by change and their ability to keep up is diminishing. The gap between expected change and the capacity to manage it has tripled since the 2006 CEO survey. On the other hand, the CEOs view more demanding and informed customers as an opportunity.
"Informal learning is currently at a tipping point – not of being 'formalised' but of becoming more effective, through the use of new ICT tools and capabilities."
Nearly all CEOs are changing and adapting their business models: two-thirds are implementing extensive innovations. The CEOs pinpoint market factors, people skills and technological factors as key drivers of change. More than 40% are changing their enterprise models to be more open and collaborative.
Challenges ahead
This tells us something about the challenges that the learning function is currently facing. L&D professionals are coping with change and enabling change by helping management and employees to learn in 'real time'. As we've known for a long time, most learning doesn't take place in formal settings (traditional education activities) but informally, on the job. This is happening at the level of individuals, teams and communities.
Learning in this context means dealing with new challenges, such as finding new answers to emerging customer requirements, adapting existing plans to new opportunities, improving process implementation based on real-time feedback from stakeholders, and exploring innovative business models.
Conscious v incidental learning
Some of this informal learning occurs between employees, and between employees and business partners, as well as clients. Some of it is incidental, so that those involved don't even notice they are learning, but an increasing amount of it is becoming conscious and deliberate, through embedding an active reflection element into the process.
"The new generation coming to the workplace (Generation Y) seem to have this 'learning mindset' in their DNA. Others will have to make a deliberate effort to overcome the protective and possessive attitudes of the past."
Informal learning is currently at a tipping point – not of being 'formalised' but of becoming more effective, through the use of new ICT tools and capabilities. The development of Web 2.0 has given us a set of tools and applications with the potential to radically increase the productivity of knowledge workers in our organisations by enhancing informal learning.
Web 2.0 has given us new ways to find experts who may help in particular situations, allowing us to tap their knowledge and experience. It provides new ways to create operational content in global virtual teams; share experiences from recent projects; and access knowledge from outside the enterprise through vertical peer-networks.
New openess required
But we need more than the mere tools to take advantage of these new opportunities. A new openness and an active learning mindset is required from management and employees. It is not enough to solve issues on a case-by-case basis and leave it there. It is becoming essential to reflect on what has been learned and what might be reused, added to and shared with others.
The new generation coming to the workplace (Generation Y) seem to have this 'learning mindset' in their DNA. Others will have to make a deliberate effort to overcome the protective and possessive attitudes of the past, where the aim was to keep knowledge to yourself because knowledge is power.
"We are on the threshold of a paradigm shift in learning. We have new learning environments and tools that enable us to access knowledge more effectively and to share and collaborate in better ways."
With these things, and an open mind that is keen to learn every day, we are starting to address the challenge that Peter F Drucker has set out for 21st century management: achieving a quantum leap in the productivity of knowledge work, similar to the productivity increase in manual work achieved in the 20th century.
Although I firmly believe that informal learning is becoming the 'next big thing' - enabled by Web 2.0 and new personal learning environments and fuelled by a new lifelong learning culture - traditional formal learning will continue to have its importance and will by no means disappear.
We will still need to learn concepts, methods, knowledge required for our profession, regulations for compliance, etc. This will be provided through formal approaches, some of it in the classroom, though the share of classroom work will further decrease. Meanwhile, the 'dark side of learning' (i.e., the less visible one) will become more apparent and will propel the productivity of knowledge to new levels.
Article courtesy:Trainingzone.co.uk
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
We don't need no education: A profile of the revolutionary Roger Schank
I found this article very interesting for the fact that it throws light on how to design effective learning modules in a subtle way.
Mike Levy interviews educational revolutionary Roger Schank, a world authority on learning theory, and finds that he hates courses, traditional teaching methods, oh, and old-style elearning as well...
Talking to Roger Schank can be exhausting. One of the world's leading figures in artificial intelligence, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments, he thinks and talks at broadband speed.
"I am currently doing three or four new things at the same time", he says with the customary enthusiasm of a grandchild with a new toy. The analogy is apt – one of Schank's latest ideas is the online product 'Grandparent Games'.
"My grandson is thousands of miles away from my home in Florida so I designed a set of fun interactive activities that helps kids learn to read, do math, history and geography." The learning comes out of the virtual conversation between a grandparent and child, it develops naturally.
Learning, says Schank, should be organic. "Whatever it is that interests him, I can turn into something else, something new to learn." Learning through 'conversation' and the harnessing of natural interest seems to be the core of Schank's learning philosophy.
Building meaningful and natural online learning comes naturally to this distinguished John Evans Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. Traditional learning and training is one of Schank's bugbears. "The problem with school and the problem with training is the same: people are usually employed to tell you stuff. That is a waste of time - people just do not learn that way. The question is: how would you do it some other way?"
That other way, Schank believes, is through the same learning conversation that appeals so much to his three year-old grandson: "You learn by having someone help you talk through something – help you reflect, consider new things about the topic, offer challenges... A trainer should never be an imparter of information."
Schank's reasoning is based on a lifelong study of the learning process that has revealed that spoon-feeding information based on a pre-digested menu of trainer-led topics simply does not work. What we teach people by this old method is quickly forgotten. Why do we still do it then? "Because," says Schank, "we slavishly follow the methods designed by old universities to teach their next generation of professors. This is such a broken model."
Schank has a recent example to show his frustration with the old ways of learning. "I had a corporate client call me and ask for an online course in management accounting. I asked them, 'why would anyone possibly want a course in this subject?' They said, 'well it's very important for our people to learn management accounting.' Their people, it turned out, were guys who were going to be running a burger concession. I asked them if they would not prefer their people to learn how to run a burger bar? Of course, there will be financial issues that come up with the running of a burger bar but this isn't the end product." His end product was a long-running online simulation that taught people how to run a business, not just do the accounts.
Schank's point is that purchasers often do not fully understand what it is that their learners really need. They provide trainers (or the trainers offer) a prescribed menu of options which, thinks Schank, is usually more miss than hit. "People get caught up in designing courses", says Schank with more than a sneer in his voice. Courses, he thinks, maybe for horses but not for people. "Courses are designed to suit the teacher not the student. I am very happy to run a three-hour per week course for my undergraduate students. That may make their professor happy but it doesn't teach them anything." Yet the course-model is slavishly taken up by corporations, says Schank.
I ask if this is not a question of savvy trainers second-guessing what their clients need or providing a big enough menu of training courses. Surely one will be right? Schank dismisses this notion, "We have to re-orientate people – learning is not about a menu of courses that don't relate to each other. Learning has to be within the context of where we are and what we need." He also might add, 'what really interests us.'
Schank is fond of the learner driver analogy. "We don't teach learners the physics of the combustion engine – we get them behind a wheel and they learn by practice, and making mistakes." To Schank, making mistakes is an essential feature of learning. So is practice, and progress built through ever-more complex challenges to the learner. "You make things harder and harder".
Why are the old ways still well entrenched? Schank is sure about his answer: "We all went to school and remember how we were taught. Having a teacher-led set of courses seems the obvious way to do things. What we don't remember is that this archaic teaching method was designed for the elite of the elite of the elite – not for the ordinary person." In other words, we have been following a learning model designed to train professors of Latin or philosophy.
Yet Schank is equally damning of the modern computer-based course. "The corporate world is not getting the message. They are falling for the purveyor's line that ‘we have a great computer learning programme – just give us your content and we will stuff it in. What you get is elearning which I used to think was a good thing, but do not any longer. Putting a book on a computer is not any kind of advantage."
Isn't this the man that wrote 'Designing World Class E-Learning' though? Ahh, but here's the rub, there's a difference between just putting something on-line and calling it elearning and really making it work, he says.
"Elearning has not been done properly and has reverted to text sent to a person in a new way. I still like the idea in principle, of course - the revolution will not happen anywhere but on line."
Many years ago he devised some elearning which helped trainees deal with a large string of typical customer complaints for a British water company. The key, says Schank, is that they had real experiences and plenty of opportunities to practice (he actually is fond of repeating that word three times). Practising 'real' situations and giving people plenty of repeat situations, is the key to success.
"We have a lot of success with people practising skills in writing business plans and strategies. The important thing is to make it real and give opportunities for plenty of repetitions. That doesn't take a lot of computer memory – what is essential is that the trainee gets lots of online support and advice. It can all be on the web."
Schank's view of learning is that it is a journey and the trainers role is as guide and explorer. "What is the real outcome – and how do you teach people without telling them the answer?" In other words, training should be exciting, learner-led and at times, damned difficult. An exhausting thought.
Article from trainingzone.co.uk
Mike Levy interviews educational revolutionary Roger Schank, a world authority on learning theory, and finds that he hates courses, traditional teaching methods, oh, and old-style elearning as well...
Talking to Roger Schank can be exhausting. One of the world's leading figures in artificial intelligence, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments, he thinks and talks at broadband speed.
"I am currently doing three or four new things at the same time", he says with the customary enthusiasm of a grandchild with a new toy. The analogy is apt – one of Schank's latest ideas is the online product 'Grandparent Games'.
"My grandson is thousands of miles away from my home in Florida so I designed a set of fun interactive activities that helps kids learn to read, do math, history and geography." The learning comes out of the virtual conversation between a grandparent and child, it develops naturally.
Learning, says Schank, should be organic. "Whatever it is that interests him, I can turn into something else, something new to learn." Learning through 'conversation' and the harnessing of natural interest seems to be the core of Schank's learning philosophy.
Building meaningful and natural online learning comes naturally to this distinguished John Evans Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. Traditional learning and training is one of Schank's bugbears. "The problem with school and the problem with training is the same: people are usually employed to tell you stuff. That is a waste of time - people just do not learn that way. The question is: how would you do it some other way?"
That other way, Schank believes, is through the same learning conversation that appeals so much to his three year-old grandson: "You learn by having someone help you talk through something – help you reflect, consider new things about the topic, offer challenges... A trainer should never be an imparter of information."
Schank's reasoning is based on a lifelong study of the learning process that has revealed that spoon-feeding information based on a pre-digested menu of trainer-led topics simply does not work. What we teach people by this old method is quickly forgotten. Why do we still do it then? "Because," says Schank, "we slavishly follow the methods designed by old universities to teach their next generation of professors. This is such a broken model."
Schank has a recent example to show his frustration with the old ways of learning. "I had a corporate client call me and ask for an online course in management accounting. I asked them, 'why would anyone possibly want a course in this subject?' They said, 'well it's very important for our people to learn management accounting.' Their people, it turned out, were guys who were going to be running a burger concession. I asked them if they would not prefer their people to learn how to run a burger bar? Of course, there will be financial issues that come up with the running of a burger bar but this isn't the end product." His end product was a long-running online simulation that taught people how to run a business, not just do the accounts.
Schank's point is that purchasers often do not fully understand what it is that their learners really need. They provide trainers (or the trainers offer) a prescribed menu of options which, thinks Schank, is usually more miss than hit. "People get caught up in designing courses", says Schank with more than a sneer in his voice. Courses, he thinks, maybe for horses but not for people. "Courses are designed to suit the teacher not the student. I am very happy to run a three-hour per week course for my undergraduate students. That may make their professor happy but it doesn't teach them anything." Yet the course-model is slavishly taken up by corporations, says Schank.
I ask if this is not a question of savvy trainers second-guessing what their clients need or providing a big enough menu of training courses. Surely one will be right? Schank dismisses this notion, "We have to re-orientate people – learning is not about a menu of courses that don't relate to each other. Learning has to be within the context of where we are and what we need." He also might add, 'what really interests us.'
Schank is fond of the learner driver analogy. "We don't teach learners the physics of the combustion engine – we get them behind a wheel and they learn by practice, and making mistakes." To Schank, making mistakes is an essential feature of learning. So is practice, and progress built through ever-more complex challenges to the learner. "You make things harder and harder".
Why are the old ways still well entrenched? Schank is sure about his answer: "We all went to school and remember how we were taught. Having a teacher-led set of courses seems the obvious way to do things. What we don't remember is that this archaic teaching method was designed for the elite of the elite of the elite – not for the ordinary person." In other words, we have been following a learning model designed to train professors of Latin or philosophy.
Yet Schank is equally damning of the modern computer-based course. "The corporate world is not getting the message. They are falling for the purveyor's line that ‘we have a great computer learning programme – just give us your content and we will stuff it in. What you get is elearning which I used to think was a good thing, but do not any longer. Putting a book on a computer is not any kind of advantage."
Isn't this the man that wrote 'Designing World Class E-Learning' though? Ahh, but here's the rub, there's a difference between just putting something on-line and calling it elearning and really making it work, he says.
"Elearning has not been done properly and has reverted to text sent to a person in a new way. I still like the idea in principle, of course - the revolution will not happen anywhere but on line."
Many years ago he devised some elearning which helped trainees deal with a large string of typical customer complaints for a British water company. The key, says Schank, is that they had real experiences and plenty of opportunities to practice (he actually is fond of repeating that word three times). Practising 'real' situations and giving people plenty of repeat situations, is the key to success.
"We have a lot of success with people practising skills in writing business plans and strategies. The important thing is to make it real and give opportunities for plenty of repetitions. That doesn't take a lot of computer memory – what is essential is that the trainee gets lots of online support and advice. It can all be on the web."
Schank's view of learning is that it is a journey and the trainers role is as guide and explorer. "What is the real outcome – and how do you teach people without telling them the answer?" In other words, training should be exciting, learner-led and at times, damned difficult. An exhausting thought.
Article from trainingzone.co.uk
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