Limits of e-learning?

People often tell me that they believe e-learning is great for information exchange but not for behavioural change, that it’s good for factual, knowledge-based learning, but not skill or competence development.

I don’t think this is true.

The reason people believe this is because of the limitations of e-learning programmes they have seen or can imagine, not the limitations of e-learning’s potential. It would be true to say that, so far, it is easier to develop e-learning that meets knowledge rather than skill needs, but this is changing.

I’ve created a matrix to show the impact of different kinds of e-learning. Each of the two dimensions that form the axes of this matrix is a continuum. On the horizontal axis, the continuum is from knowledge to skill.

Learning can include varying proportions of knowledge acquisition and skill development, some learning being very fact-based and other learning being more about acquiring a capability. Thus all learning can be placed somewhere on this continuum.

On the second, vertical, axis, there is a continuum from generic to bespoke content.

The content of a learning programme can be common to the needs of any organisation, or it can be specific to the needs of a particular organisation. It needn’t be entirely generic or 100% bespoke, but can be placed somewhere along the continuum.

Putting the axes together yields a classic two-by-two matrix, so beloved of consultants. In the bottom left-hand box, we have most e-learning programmes, especially those offered by vendors of off-the-shelf courseware, typically very generic and very knowledge-based – I describe this as the cash cow. But few vendors of generic courseware offer more skills-focused programmes, so I call programmes that fall into the bottom right-hand box question marks. Companies implementing e-learning, perhaps for new employee induction or to introduce corporate systems are getting quick wins in the top left-hand box – these are stars.
But we’ll know when e-learning has really arrived when organisations can readily develop bespoke programmes that impact on employees’ skills and competences – thus the top right-hand box is the holy grail.

There are many ways to use this matrix, but I hope it at least shows it is possible to do more with e-learning than simply transfer information from one to another. Perhaps I’ll revisit this in future posts.

Happy New Year!

At this time of year, I'd like to wish my family and friends, clients and associates, and everyone who reads this blog, all the best for a peaceful and prosperous 2008.

May the New Year bring you everything you want, and if there's anything I can do to help bring that about, please let me know!

Reflections

It's been a busy year! In the spirit of "what I did in my summer holidays", I thought I'd share a summary of my activities during 2007. I've concentrated mainly on consultancy work, although I've also carried out some writing assignments, and got involved in some public training workshops.

This year I have:

Helped a client establish a corporate university
Helped a client initiate a talent management system
Helped a client implement company-wide e-learning
Written an e-learning strategy for a client
Helped a client review e-learning providers
Helped a client select an e-learning provider
Reviewed the strategy of an e-learning vendor
Helped a client review its approach to e-learning
Facilitated sessions on e-learning strategy for a client
Started to review a client's e-learning strategy
Started to organise trainer training for a client
Started to develop a further learning scheme for a client
Helped clients and prospects understand e-learning better
Facilitated a public workshop on e-learning strategy
Organised public workshops on e-learning tools and e-learning support
Written a chapter on e-learning for a learning and development manual
Written an article on e-learning strategy for a magazine
Written a newspaper column on e-learning
Started a blog!

It's been a good year. I hope 2008 is as productive, and as rewarding.

Talent

Recently I was speaking to the Managing Director of a large engineering company, and described his new corporate university as a tool for talent management. "That's just waffle" he said, before I had the chance to expand on my theme. I was taken aback, but on reflection I have to admit that there was a time when I would have been inclined to agree, and to see this as just another bit of HR jargon.

Not any more. Once you investigate talent management, it becomes clear that it's the sort of common sense, good practice that many managers and many organisations simply don't do. Therefore, it needs to be systematically explained, and it needs a name.

One of the problems with those who can see beyond the cynical view of the MD I spoke to is that they still tend to view it too narrowly. Some see it as being just about nurturing the most talented people in an organisation, while others see it as the new name for succession planning. It is these things, but it's also so much more.

One of the key concepts in talent management is about identifying key talent in your organisation and finding ways to retain and grow, manage and utilise, develop and reward them. Which, in defiance of the Peter Principle, can mean keeping good engineers as (recognised, respected, rewarded) engineers, rather than promoting them to managerial roles where their engineering skills are wasted, and where they may be of significantly less value to the organisation.

We need more converts to talent management, and we need more talent management programmes. As the Talent Management Pocketbook puts it, "every business needs a talent mindset".

Evaluating learning

Evaluation has got a lot tougher. It used to be if you were evaluating learning, you reached for Kirkpatrick – his four levels of evaluation have been the gold standard for as long as most of us can remember. http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/k4levels/index.htm

But lately this has been questioned. Don Morrison, in his 2003 book E-learning Strategies, suggested ROI (Return on Investment) was a fifth level. Don and I will have to disagree on that one – I reckon ROI is just a measurement approach for the fourth level.

Meanwhile Valerie Anderson is questioning ROI, and suggesting we should instead consider ROE (Return on Expectations). http://www.cipd.co.uk/Bookstore/_catalogue/LearningAndDevelopment/9781843981961.htm?IsSrchRes=1

Then along comes Kaliym Islam with his book on Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way – the E-learning Guru website suggests this may be a valid alternative to the whole Kirkpatrick approach.

Have I mentioned Kevin Kruse’s E-learning Guru site before? For me, it’s the best American online reference source for e-learning – often contrarian, always thought-provoking (hope you appreciate the recommendation, Kevin!)
http://www.e-learningguru.com/

Overall, this has to be a good thing. If learning is to be taken more seriously, we need to get more serious about its impact. This debate helps.

Storm in a teacup

About a year ago, I was facilitating a workshop on e-learning strategy, and I suggested we “brainstormed” the benefits of e-learning. I was surprised when a delegate tut-tutted that I was being politically incorrect – she wasn’t actually offended, she just thought others might regard it as offensive. I vaguely remembered this issue arising before, so I made a point of looking it up after the workshop – first on Google, then on Wikipedia (the first result a Google search yields, as with so many things).

The Wikipedia entry basically slammed the criticism as political correctness gone wild, which pleased me so much, I emailed the info to all the workshop delegates.

This summer, I had a sense of déjà vu when I was facilitating a session for a corporate client, and somebody mentioned brainstorming ...

When I looked up the entry on Wikipedia to send my conclusive (!) email after the session, I was surprised to find a much more balanced consideration of the topic. Basically, the page had been ‘cleaned up’. Now there was a summary of both sides of the debate over whether it was politically correct or not, and a series of references at the end, supporting both cases.

On looking it up for this post, I find the entry has changed again, and once more leans heavily on the side of the pro-brainstormers. “It is an urban myth that the term ‘brainstorm’ is offensive to those people with epilepsy”. References support this conclusion.

This seems to me a good example of how an entry on Wikipedia evolves, and gradually becomes more authoritative. Which is not to say the current version is the definitive one, but then, that’s what the real world is like – the debate moves on, and attitudes change over time. Try picking something controversial and monitoring it over a period of a few months or more – see for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

Don't be evil

Last night I went to see a stand-up comedian - Frank Skinner - at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow. He was talking about Googling words, and stopped to wonder "how do you Google Google?" Not an original piece of comedy, granted, but it prompted me to try it today. Of course, if you Google Google, it just points you to the search engine, although my search yielded 3.4 billion returns, which shows how much we're talking about this phenomenon.

Then I remembered a conversation I had with a client last week (he'll be reading this, so hi, Steven!) when we agreed that the first place we both go to look up stuff now is Wikipedia. So I looked up Google on Wikipedia, and of course, that was much more helpful. For example, I didn't know what the Google slogan was, but I do now (it's the title of this post). Of course, there's always the possibility the Wikipedia entry is wrong ...

The thing is, as Wikipedia gets more sophisticated, you can recognise more authoritative content - where there are sources and citations. And more and more entries are populated with this more reliable content. I also like the way it keeps me constantly thinking "is that right?" or "why would they say that?". This is the sort of enquiring but sceptical approach we should take to everything, from every source. I've got a good example of this, but I'm going to save it for another post, as now I'm starting to ramble on a bit.

The illustrations of this post will be meaningless to anyone who hasn't seen Frank Skinner on his current tour. Anyone who has should hopefully recognise the spirit in which it is intended.