Onlignment Archive

SkillsJourney is a project initiated by Clive Shepherd and Barry Sampson in 2009 and now integrated fully into Onlignment. The purpose of the SkillsJourney project is to help in meeting the e-learning skills gap. What skills gap, you ask? Well, take a look at this presentation on SlideShare.
The e-learning skills matrix
One of the first tasks undertaken within the project has been to define an e-learning skills matrix. This has been designed to help organisations to assess the impact of e-learning on the roles of learning & development professionals, subject experts, e-learning specialists and other personnel, to identify skills gaps, and to locate resources that would help in bridging any gaps. For this process to work well, each learning and development position has to be assessed against the matrix, to see which skills apply and at which level; each job holder has to be assessed against the skills applicable to their particular position; and each available learning resource and intervention has to be reviewed to determine the skills that it addresses and to which level.
You are welcome to download the e-learning skills matrix and take a look for yourself. We’d be interested to know if we’ve missed anything important. I’m sure you’ll let us know.

We are all learning machines, constantly adapting to the ever-changing threats and opportunities with which we are confronted. We learn through experience, whether consciously or unconsciously; we learn by seeking out the knowledge and skills we need to carry out our day-to-day tasks; we learn by sharing experiences and best practice with our colleagues, and by taking advantage of opportunities for development, both formal and informal.
The new learning architect designs environments that enable specific target populations to take maximum advantage of all these opportunities for learning. To do this they need to understand the unique characteristics of their clients and the business challenges they are facing; they need to find just the right balance between top-down and bottom-up learning initiatives, between the formal and informal.
The new learning architect is at the vanguard of the next generation of learning and development professionals, taking advantage of the latest tools, technologies and thinking to help organisations meet the acute financial, time and environmental pressures of the 21st century.
In the next month Onlignment will be publishing my latest book The New Learning Architect. This will be available not only in hard copy and in a variety of e-book formats, but also as a series of posts to this blog throughout 2011. Each month we will be publishing here a whole chapter of the book, as well as a profile of an exemplary learning architect from around the world. These posts will not only enable the whole work to be made available for free, they will also allow for comment and discussion on what are some major issues facing learning and development.
Expect the first posts by the end of this month.

In Why you need to set limits, Cathy Moore explains why it is sometimes necessary for the content developer to say ‘no’. Only so much is achievable with one piece of content – if you try and please everyone, you end up pleasing nobody.
I couldn’t agree more. While your learning objectives define the end point for a learning intervention, your target population can be seen as the start point. If your target population is relatively homogeneous, the route from start to end will be clear to see. However, if you have a diverse target population, with very different characteristics, then you are going to need to plan some very different journeys. There’s no guarantee that the same content (or any other ingredient in your intervention) is going to do the job on each one of those paths.
So what is it about a particular target audience that could make a big difference to the route you take? What are the characteristics that really matter?

• Demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.): Sure these might matter in some circumstances, but you’ve got to be careful not to let your prejudices get in the way. There are more important factors.
• Preferences: There are more than six billion people in the world and each one’s brain is wired differently. What there are not are clear-cut categories of preferences that will help us to design content. See learning styles don’t exist, then keep looking.
• Prior knowledge / skill: Now, here we have something important. Those with a fair amount of past experience with a topic or skill are going to find it much easier to extend and enhance what they have. They have all sorts of well-honed mental models in place which help them to come to terms easily with new ideas. Novices need structure and support, because they are easily overwhelmed. Experienced people don’t need all this and might find the whole process patronising and frustrating.
• Degree of independence: Psychologists use the term ‘metacognitive skills’ to describe the attributes of independent learners who seem to be better than most at working out what they don’t know, what they need to know and how to bridge the gap. Like experts, they don’t need as much support and structure.
• Interest / motivation: This is a big one, because if some of your audience is going to take some convincing that your content is important to them, then you’re going to have to take whatever measures are necessary to sort this out. If you go through this process with well-motivated learners, you’ll slow them down and frustrate them.

Obviously there will be times when you can organise your material in such a way that you can accommodate more than one user type. What you have to recognise is when the client is asking too much and it simply isn’t possible. As Cathy says, you need to set limits.

In case you haven’t already seen it, I thought I’d mention that the eLearning Network is running a virtual advent calendar on tips relating to online learning. Mine was published today and is a little advice on preparing for a virtual online session. You can read it here.
Clive’s post on writing a voiceover script was published yesterday.

In many ways, e-learning is doing well. The Towards Maturity Impact Indicator report published last December showed that many UK organisations are experiencing significant benefits from e-learning in terms of efficiency and business agility. Learning Light’s recent survey of the UK e-learning market showed growth of 8% in obviously difficult economic circumstances.

However, it took the more recent Towards Maturity2010 Benchmark Report to show that the true picture is rather less encouraging. It would appear that face-to-face classroom courses are being converted lock, stock and barrel into self-paced, self-directed, online courses as a panic solution to a lack of funds. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that these decisions are being made hastily and unimaginatively as a defensive measure, and certainly not out of a heartfelt desire for e-learning. Most depressingly, the report suggests that a high proportion of users feel that the e-learning they are being offered is irrelevant to their jobs, probably as a simple tick-in-the-box compliance measure. When you consider how rich a learning environment the Internet is capable of providing (and does do for many of us outside work), this is a tragic waste of a wonderful opportunity for enlightened change.

The term e-learning is only a little over 10 years old, but in its most common form (interactive, stand-alone, self-study tutorials) it actually dates back to the late 1970s and has therefore been around long enough now to be considered traditional. This format certainly is efficient and agile, as the figures suggest (and when resources are tight, these benefits are definitely worth having), but they’re not the only measures that matter. Efficiency and flexibility only matter if you are doing the right things in the first place. What really matters is whether e-learning is delivering in terms of improved competence.

While there is much really excellent traditional e-learning, much of what is inflicted on learners falls short in a number of ways:

The end result is that e-learning is neither as popular nor as effective as it should be. It is time to envisage an alternative e-learning – just as efficient, yet more flexible, more engaging, more responsive, more powerful.

With alt-e-learning, the lengthy, interactive tutorial will be only one of many options available. The emphasis in terms of content will shift instead to tightly-focused, highly-modular media objects that can be employed on both a ‘push’ basis (as elements in top-down learning interventions) and ‘pull’ (accessed on-demand). Not all of these objects will originate with the l&d department, as subject experts from across the organisation become empowered and incentivised to contribute to the learning of their peers. The objects will be accessible on all sorts of devices (often as mobile apps) and come in many forms:

Importantly, this content will often be integrated with a wide variety of collaborative online experiences:

Alt-e-learning provides an online experience that mirrors how we use technology outside work, which your typical traditional tutorial certainly does not. It also blends seamlessly with face-to-face activities and offline media such as print. Many of the elements of alt-e-learning will already be available to you or can be put in place at low cost and without heavy reliance on outside specialists. And because alt-e-learning is so modular, the elements are easy to re-use, enhance and maintain.

Onlignment is committed to the alternative e-learning. We’d like to think we’re not alone.

This YouTube video was created by Common Craft for GoTo Training to explain the benefits of the virtual classroom:

For some reason, there are lessons that take a long time to learn – however often an action leads to negative consequences, you just seem bound to repeat it. One lesson I really hope I have now learned is that reading from a script doesn’t work – at least not for me. In the past few years I have tried this in numerous situations:

• giving speeches (such as at the E-Learning Awards a week or so back)
• when presenting a Pecha Kucha (that’s 20 slides each displayed for 20 seconds if you’ve yet to be initiated)
• when recording a screencast (it sounds so much better when improvised)
• when recording a podcast (free-form interviews work much better)

There are good reasons for thinking that reading from a script will work. After all, the best TV presenters do it convincingly. And you can be absolutely sure that you’re going to cover every point clearly. However, reading from a script doesn’t work well in a face-to-face setting because it forces you to lose eye contact with the audience for sustained periods. And even when you’re recording a voice-over it’s really hard not to come over as wooden and rather boring.
Can it be made to work? Well, perhaps, but professionals have one of two advantages: either they’ve got the luxury of a teleprompter, which allows them to retain eye contact with the audience or camera; or they’ve rehearsed well enough that they’ve got so familiar with the words that they only need to refer to them periodically. As Mark Twain said,”It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”
I’ve made two resolutions. First, to avoid having to use any type of script if at all possible. Far better to trust in your instincts and talk around some key headings. Second, where a tight structure is absolutely essential, make sure I write the words to be spoken and not read, and then put in the hard work as actors do and learn your lines.
As a natural speaker, my father is my model here. He would quite happily get up and speak at any occasion. He never prepared and he never had a single note. He just said the right thing without fuss and sat down again. No slides and few jokes, but effortless.