Brand contamination

The concept of brand contamination is familiar to marketers, who strive to protect brands from negative associations. Once a brand is “contaminated”, who will ever trust it again? Just ask Gerard Ratner, who described the jewellery sold by his eponymous shops as “crap” and lived to regret it – the business continues, its products still sell, but you won’t see any Ratners stores in the high street any more, as the brand was irredeemably contaminated.

“E-learning” may not strictly be a brand, but I wonder if the name is irredeemably contaminated?

The case that digital technology is all-pervasive in the modern world is surely now irrefutable. The idea is not so strange that people should be as comfortable using digital technology and the Web for learning, just as they do for day-to-day work, for information gathering, for mobile communication, for games-playing, for music downloading, for movie watching, etc, etc, etc.

Yet the 2008 CIPD learning and development survey yields two disturbing statistics: only 50% of respondents (HR professionals) think e-learning is an important way of learning, and hardly any of them rank it in the top three methods. Perhaps they have negative associations with the name.

This is not a conclusion I approach lightly. My own book on e-learning is now complete, although you won’t be able to buy it until April of next year. Will the term e-learning – and my book title – be obsolete by then?

Step away from the screen!

Yesterday I heard a devastating critique of e-learning, from a source not just close to home, but actually in my home.

My wife is preparing for her ACCA professional accountancy final exams, and was explaining to me why she – and many of her accountancy colleagues – chose to attend classes rather than take the e-learning option. Basically, she spends all day slaving over hot spreadsheets, and doesn’t like the idea of spending even more time in front of a computer. This led into a discussion of the precautions she takes to avoid RSI, and how she always chooses, whenever there is a choice, to do things away from the PC.

As more and more of us spend more and more of our work time in front of computers, is this the fundamental problem with e-learning?

I think this helps explain why some people are reluctant to choose online courses. But it also illustrates a common misconception about what e-learning involves – it’s not all self-study in front of the PC.

Most importantly, this critique is not actually about learning at all. Instead, it points at how we interface with digital technology in general. See my post of 14 May re new interfaces – the time is near when we’ll no longer use a keyboard and mouse, but instead will use more natural interfaces. This is the problem my wife was highlighting, and for the time being, it remains an issue not just for e-learning, but for all applications of digital technology, especially those we deem less urgent or important.

And no, that's not my wife in the picture.

Zealots

The other day, a prospective client asked me if I was a zealot – an e-learning zealot. I thought it was an odd question. I responded that I regard e-learning as one of a number of useful approaches to learning and development, alongside classroom-based learning, work-based learning, coaching and mentoring approaches, innovative approaches, and others. This response seemed to go down well – apparently I had demonstrated that I wasn’t a zealot.

But who exactly are these “zealots” that my prospect – and perhaps other learning and development professionals – fear?

Surely there isn’t anyone out there now (there may have been ten years ago) who seriously believes e-learning is the best or only approach to learning, or should be the default approach? Surely nobody actually thinks we should abandon all – or even most – of our learning approaches and put everything online?

I used to think trainers who feared e-learning meant their jobs would be replaced by computers were hopelessly naïve, but perhaps this sort of fear is more widespread than I thought?

What sort of message have e-learning vendors been getting across for the past ten years if this sort of fear persists?

Birthday greetings!

This blog is one year old: yesterday was the first anniversary of my first post - and this is my fortieth post.

This week also sees me complete my forthcoming book, How to Implement Successful E-learning, which will be published early in 2009. I hope to discuss the ideas in this book, as well as some other stuff, in the months leading up to publication.

My resolution for this 'new year' is to try to network this blog more. I’ve mentioned my LinkedIn network already, and I’d like to invite all readers to join me on LinkedIn.

I’m also going to create some links to other blogs with similar themes to this one. I’d like to expand the readership of this blog, and build it into more of a community. Any further suggestions for ways to develop the community would be very welcome.

Innovative approaches to learning

A couple of years ago I was introduced to the chocolate factory, a large-scale learning exercise offered by the Wizards Network. In this exercise, groups of learners work together to design, manufacture, and package luxury chocolates, using the finest Belgian chocolate, under the supervision of a professional chocolatier. The exercise may be used to learn about teamwork, team building and team leading, communication skills, customer focus, and much more. A skilled facilitator may use learners’ experiences to help them achieve all sorts of learning outcomes that may have real meaning for their business. And of course, it has particular appeal for chocolate lovers.

The point of this sort of exercise is to find ways to engage learners, in order to get them into a positive frame of mind for learning. Rather than the same old boring routine of sitting in a classroom, looking at a flipchart or a PowerPoint presentation, the idea is to excite minds by doing something new and different – without losing sight of the learning, and business, objectives.

Of course, the chocolate factory wouldn’t excite factory workers in the food industry, or perhaps any sort of factory workers. But it would be extremely innovative for most of the rest of us. What I recommend is finding out exactly what interests a group of learners, and designing a learning experience around that – be it sport, art, music, animals, the outdoors, magic, drama, or whatever.

Unfortunately, many people perceive this sort of thing as frivolous, but there’s a wealth of theory about innovative approaches to learning, and why they are successful. For starters, my 2006 article on the subject is here.

There are many situations where innovative approaches work well, and I’d be happy to discuss them further. Any interest?

Don Draper on e-learning

BBC Four has just finished the first series of Mad Men. If you haven’t caught this drama about advertising execs on Madison Avenue in 1960, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Super-cool creative Don Draper opens the climactic pitch to Kodak with these bon mots:

“Technology is a glittering lure. But there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash”.

He was talking about the slide carrousel (1960, remember) but today he could have been talking about e-learning.

Many people are drawn to new technology applications because of their “glittering lure”. Elsewhere, I’ve described this as the “gee whiz factor”. But just because technology is impressive doesn’t mean it’s going to work for e-learning. The reason certain applications engage the e-learning public is because they are effective tools to create interactive learning experiences. And that derives not just from the intrinsic properties of the technology, but also from how imaginatively the learning experience is designed.

I’ve seen some great technology applications that offer simulations, games, 3D panoramic images, avatars, dynamic mind maps, and all sorts of other techno-doowhackery. Without exception, each vendor believed theirs was a world-beating product, but most of them turned out to be no more than a “glittering lure”. The successful ones partner with learning and development professionals, if they want to get beyond flash and engage learners.

New interfaces

How’s this for a piece of over-engineered old technology? I heard recently that the standard keyboard we take for granted is actually counter-intuitive. The QWERTY layout was apparently designed to slow down typists. In the 19th century, old manual typewriters had a design flaw – when typing speed increased, the keys used to stick. So some bright spark had the idea of laying out the letter-keys in such a way that it was more difficult to type quickly. The more commonly used letters (a, e, s, etc) were placed at the (weaker, for most people) left hand, and the more common letters were also placed towards the edges, so that they had to be struck by the weaker fingers like the pinkie.

Amazingly, nearly twenty years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, with almost everybody using a keyboard every day, we still haven’t got round to replacing it with something more intuitive, more natural to use.

But I don’t think that day is far off. Voice recognition software, touch-sensitive screens, handwriting recognition software are developments that point the way ahead. When Mr Spock first talked to the computer in Star Trek, it must have seemed impossibly futuristic, but now that day is near. And the keyboard and the mouse are on borrowed time.