The Future of Learning

Session #9: http://www.learningwiki.com/900
Wayne Hodgins, Autodesk, Inc.
CONTEXT & FOCUS: What is next in the world of learning? What are our futures? And what levels of change can we, might we, must we create? We'll discuss a compelling perspective on learning in the age of personalization.
LET'S DISCUSS: Today's reality and tomorrow's potential. Current projects that point to the future. Taking the expansive view.

Wayne's job is to live at least 5 years in the future. He travels, continuously, around the globe, exploring new ideas and by doing so finds emerging trends. He shared with us many of his thoughts (at the speed of sound - he talks very fast). Here are a few of the nuggets I captured:

• We have to get over things having to look nice.
• People may say they prefer it, but in the context of having to choose something we have to look at their choice behavior not their stated preferences. People will choose based ont he situation (conditions, environment, restrictions, opportunities).
• He'd like everything to have a 3 second feedback loop associated with it - relevant to its value for the task at hand.
• The Long Tail Concept - a business model used by Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody - online retailers - who make more money on the volume of marginal business (the tail of the curve) than the brick and mortar businesses make in the center of the curve.
• Brand recognition - the value is depreciating. Look at a google search - many sources, do people really care about source. Do kids today know what network is serving up a show ...
• Distribution model for long tail business concept - the cost of the model can't increase as the volume of content increases.
• You won't get there incrementally. A large shift is needed.
• We didn't learn to fly until we gave up trying to flap wings and go beyond to other principles of flying. We need to stop the flapping wings model of elearning. To do so, we need to find the "essence" of great learning.
• His 3 Cs - Context, Compentencies, Content.
• We need to break the barrier between HR owned competencies and Training/Learning.

Tuesday PM - Summary

SumTotal Vendor Conversation

Kelly and I lunched with Jim Federico from Sum Total Systems. We talked about issues such as cataloging, search, expanding scope to include other organizations learning activities. And we asked his opinion about areas that we should focus on first as we migrate to Sum Total 7.1.

• The search capabilities should be much improved in 7.1.
• He suggested we learn first about the Open Activity Architecture. This is the new framework for all learning elements - the old terminology of documents, course, session is gone. We don't need to make changes at the same time as upgrade, but we'll definitely need to determine how to best position or activities for the near future.
• We should explore how users are defined via audiences
• Look at the expanded capabilities of user notification (think of standards across domains - differences could impact user experience).
• The bigger improvements in registration aren't out until 7.2.
• Regarding domains, we should be able to find ways to expand MAIS LINC use by other organizations in ways that would be seamless and useful to the user base.

Laurel, will you please ask Mark to give us user ids/passwords to access Sum Totals User knowledge center so that we can start to explore that.

CLO Dashboard

Session #6: http://www.learningwiki.com/670
Learning executives are continually under pressure to show the value of their initiatives. Join this session to learn about CLO Dashboard, a balanced learning and performance scorecard system that measures and predicts the outcomes of your strategic learning goals. The session will present the underlying measurement framework, including a demonstration of CLO Dashboard, and case studies of how leading organizations like NCR and Defense Acquisition University (DAU) are using CLO Dashboard to measure and monitor their performance.

For Laurel, more on learning analystics. This one is a vendor product referred to as the CLO Dashboard. Very detailed measurement of specific objectives, that support goals, and ultimately a major area. Vendor website: http://www.getzeroedin.com/.

Thin Sliced & Tipping Points

Tuesday's First General Session: Author Malcolm Gladwell

Very interesting thought leader. Two recommended books - Blink and the Tipping Point.

Thin Slice - we all do it, it is our way of processing information quickly. The more expert you become, the more you thin slice. For example, driving a car. You might think the 18 year old has quicker reactions to a situation. In fact, the 60 year old driver is quicker. Why? Thin slicing. The younger driver is less experienced and must process more The older driver, years of expertise, can quickly thin slice the situation and react. For me this frames conversations about upgrade training - how do address different levels of experience. And, it helps frame the discussion about SMEs ability to create content. One reason it is tough for them is thin slicing. They do it automatically and must really process to get to levels of inexperienced users.

The Tipping Point - in the global human world, we are on the verge of many. But lets talk about something more relevant to our work. First an example, then a learning topic. Retirement options, it's been shown that too many choices reduces participation - it's due to the tipping point too much going on. Now for a topic many of us love to hate - wikis and blogs. Tipping Point wonderfully describes the value of information. At some point, the value is so marginal we stop going back. That is my fundamental problem with wikis and blogs as learning tools. For short term, intense collaboration - certainly. For longer periods, not a chance.

Stories - Foundations for Learning

Session 5: http://www.learningwiki.com/571
Come learn how fictional narratives and real-world "tales from the trenches" can enable transformation of the tedious to the memorable and the abstract to the concrete. This enlightening and energizing approach to leveraging the ancient art of storytelling is being used to impact the learning challenges in today’s corporate environments. See how StoBLs (Story-Based Learning Objects) utilize multimedia elements to bring learning content to life and achieve interactivity in the truest sense of the word – beyond mere mouse-clicks and multiple-choice questions. Subject areas that can benefit from StoBLs include the “Abstract” (soft skills) and “Uninspiring” (compliance/regulations).

I went to this session to remember and reinforce the importance of learnig through stories. In our ERP world, with our limited technology, I often skip the story telling part of instruction. I think that is wrong. Even in our environment. In our ILTs, I leave it up to the instructor to tell - maybe I can do more to encourage that. In our ELTs, I haven't been using them. I need to start. Though I'd like to do more with audio or video to enhance this, it can be done with images and text.

Monday - End of Day Thoughts

Session formats, throwing a pot, wikis and blogs ...

IBM's Work Embedded Learning

Session #3: http://www.learningwiki.com/379
For an organization to become more responsive to today’s market requirements, it needs to integrate people, processes and information. This session will focus on how to get people truly engaged in processes, have them make more informed and timely decisions and help them execute new tasks with a high level of quality. James Sharpe, Director of e-Learning Technology for IBM, will explain and demonstrate how work embedded learning environments enable people to be more productive in their jobs while decreasing time to competency. He will present future learning scenarios and discuss how to close the distance between working and learning.

Via a Service Oriented Architecture, Jim presented how IBM serves a learner-centric model of delivery. Via a personal portal, learning objects can be pushed (show what and by when) and/or pull (learner searches) to get results on learning objects, discussion groups, and experts.

The details are two techy to explain. I've asked Jim if he'll post a link to the video presentation on the Learning 2005 Wiki.

Learner-centric is where we need to be. This is a closer solution than any LMS, LCMS, KMS or DMS I have seen. Just not sure how we'd get there with our software (don't think we can).

What is Learning Analytics?

Session #4: http://www.learningwiki.com/443
This session will describe the business case for learning measurement, present research results for current trends in measurement and define learning analytics. Case studies illustrating how analytics can be applied to the Kirkpatrick and Phillips models will also be discussed, along with suggested approaches to grouping analytics reports. Each participant will also be eligible to receive, free of charge, primary research on best practices in learning analytics we did with over 100 organizations.

Key points for me:
Reasonable data faster is better than detailed data later.
Reduce your time readying data so that you can spend the time making decisions on data.
It is possible to standardize, automate, and template.
Need to determine the right questions and measures.

Check out KnowledgeAdvisors website: http://www.knowledgeadvisors.com/
I've emailed the presenter and asked him to send me the full presentation, the analytics study, examples of measurement instruments, research on change mgt and analytics, and benchmarking data.

Monday Morning

Here is a summary of the morning sessions I attended. All these sessions are on a wiki, click the link to see presentation info and follow-up discussions.

Session 1: http://www.learningwiki.com/125
Topic summary - In large organizations with multiple training departments and various authoring tools used by numerous instructional designers and content developers, managing learning content at the enterprise level becomes quite complex! How are organizations dealing with learning content management issues such as reusability, content taxonomies, metadata, media and tool selection within a shared environment?

Unfortunately, this topic was a bust in regards to learning something about taxonomies and metadata. However, he presented an interesting Learning Architecture which could be useful for organization wide discussions. I'm hoping he'll post this model for me. If not, I'll sketch it out and post.

Session 2: http://www.learningwiki.com/216
Archived virtual sessions - Can anyone find that "magic" session 6 months later? Can anyone tell quickly what's in them? Can they find the relevant 10 minutes without having to wade through an hour-long session to get to them? Why not? Alternatives?

Three parts - 1) Technical Issues, 2) Content Design, 3) Learner Invitation

I was hoping for more on #3 above, but everyone was looking for that great idea, nobody had it. Discussion centered on #1 and #2.

I thought this might provide interesting tidbits to consider during the search for a web conferencing sessions. Most people in the group used Centra. A few used WebEx, though said more complicated. WebEx guy said they are moving back to an avi format which will imporve editability and delivery.

Lots of discussion about lenghth of programs. Standards to keep to 15-20 minutes.
Bandwidth was big topic - need to be choosy, not just talking heads.
Flash does good file compression.
Camtasia is one product several folks spoke highly of. Captivate, Interwise were others.

General Session: I have time to relay just one tidbit ....
Associations - 90% of post-college training is done through associations. In our profession, we know that could be true. But for our end users not so applicable. But, it just reinforced the power of our internal associations. People go to a known organization, who they trust, to provide them with information and contacts. For us, this is groups like the Timekeepers Network.

Bye for now, Mary - P.S. I have no idea what the weather is like outside.

A demonstration tool

Camastia

http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/default.asp?CMP=KAC-CGoogle

Heard about this during a session on viewing web conferencing, after the event. More on that in next post.

Just getting started

I explored LearningLand when I arrived yesterday. In summary, it's a space to network and discuss specific topics. The space has a number of large bulletin boards with paper to write issues and ideas. The keys to learning in this area are self-motiviation and hooking up with a few of the 1500 people that can provide insight and ideas. I'll post my success at the end of today.

5 conversations I'm looking foward to.

Orlando is just days away. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the volume of emails and podcast messages sent prior to the Learning 2005 conference. I imagine I'll feel that way for the next several weeks, if not months.

To take one step in a new direction, I've created my first blog. With this blog, I hope to provide my team and network of peers with tidbits of learnings/knowledge acquired and to post information, content, links that may be helpful to those I meet at the conference.

Cheers - to moving forward. Mary