Onlignment Archive – Page 9 – Legacy posts from Onlignment

The non-formal learning toolkit

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we bring chapter 8 to a conclusion:

Top-down approaches

Employers have a wide range of non-formal options at their disposal that they can implement on a top-down basis:
On-job training
Coaching
Webinars
Podcasts
White papers
Mini-workshops
Rapid e-learning
Internal conferences
Online video
Bottom-up approaches
There may well be a plethora of opportunities available for top-down non-formal learning, but there’s still plenty of scope for bottom-up initiatives:
Open learning
Continuing professional development
Communities of practice

Conditions for success

To enjoy success, it is important for the l&d professional to recognise that:

learning needs to be continuous throughout employees’ careers;
not all learning needs to be packaged as formal courses, because more informal approaches are often perfectly adequate;
many, short inputs will have more impact than a few lengthy ones;
many players can contribute to the provision of learning experiences and materials, not just learning and development professionals;
skills in the development and provision of learning experiences and materials should be widely distributed within the organisation.

Coming next: We move on to focus on on-demand learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

New ways to distribute content: part 3

Whichever format you choose for your content, you need a way to make this accessible to learners. As ever, there are plenty of options:
Use your intranet or internet web site: A relatively simple option is to make your content available directly on your web site. It’s probable that your organisation uses a content management system (CMS) of some sort (such as Microsoft SharePoint) as a platform for your website, in which case you can work directly within this. As well as inputting the HTML content, you’ll need to upload any additional files such as Flash movies, audio, video, PDFs and native documents and either embed these in the HTML or link to them for download. This may sound complex, but it won’t take long before you know your way around the CMS. An advantage of having your learning content on your website is that it will be easily searchable and linkable alongside all your other website content. Note that, while you will be able to track the number of users of your content, you will not normally be able to identify them by name, nor will you be able to record how they fared.
Use a learning management system (LMS): If you need to catalogue and make available large volumes of formal learning content and to track learner scores or progress, then you are going to require some form of LMS or virtual learning environment (VLE). These systems are compliant with e-learning standards such as SCORM, AICC or IMS, which provide important functionality such as the ability to track learner scores and progress, to describe content with metadata (descriptive labels) and to specify the sequence in which learning content should be presented. None of these features are going to work unless your authoring tool is also compliant with the standards, but you can expect this to be the case.
Use a content sharing site: Another way to make your content available is by using site specially designed to allow users to share content. This could be a public site, such as YouTube (for video) or SlideShare (for presentation), or a system offering similar functionality but sitting inside the firewall. Content sharing sites are designed to achieve much more than deliver top-down, formal learning content: they allow users to rate, tag (categorise), recommend and comment on the content they view; more importantly, these systems allow users to upload their own content. Clearly a content sharing site is much more informal and collaborative in nature than an LMS, but they can work happily side-by-side; indeed some LMSs now include content sharing modules.
Distribute through an app store: Smart phone and tablet users can access content on any of the platforms described above through their device’s own web browser. In many cases this will be adequate. However, content distributed this way is rarely formatted with the mobile user in mind and may be slow and cumbersome to access. For regularly used content, a much more elegant solution is to create applications which can be downloaded using the device’s app store and then accessed with a single touch. Given the technical differences between the various mobile devices, this may for now seem a rather complex way to distribute your content, but the process of app development will inevitably become much simpler as new tools become available. In the meantime, some forms of content can be made available for mobile devices without being formatted as apps. Podcasts and vodcasts can be made available through Apple’s iTunes software for use on iPods and other Apple devices. Reference manuals and books can be formatted for use on e-book readers such as the Kindle or Sony Reader, or for smart phones and tablets.

Use	When
Your internet or intranet web site	You want users to be able to easily search for and link to your content from within your website You don’t want to have to set up a new platform for your content
An LMS	You want to include your content within formal courses You need to record learner progress and scores
A content sharing site	You want your content to act as a catalyst for peer-to-peer user interaction You want users to be able to upload their own content
An app store	You want your content to be specifically tailored for mobile use You want to provide the quickest possible access to your content

Part 1 Part 2
Coming in part 4: Establishing copyright
First published in Inside Learning Technologies, December 2011

Then why not formal learning?

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we continue with the third part of chapter 8:
We’ve already argued the case for formal learning, but it should be clear that, although running a course can often be the right way to address a need, there are many more cases where an alternative will be more effective and more efficient. Back in 1970, Peter Honey pleaded for us to ‘stop the courses, I want to get off.’ He argued that organising courses was the easy option, but that to create effective learning situations which were meaningful in terms of the job called for much more effort, imagination and innovation.
Nearly forty years later, Donald Clark took up where Peter Honey left off: “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that great staple of train the trainer courses, is typical of the simplistic junk that is thrown about in the training world, but he did have one great line: ‘If you walk around long enough with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail’. That’s training, folks. Our hammer is the ‘course’ – the pat solution for every problem.”
He elaborated as follows: “Courses are also at odds with the psychology of learning. We know that ‘spaced practice’ is a necessary condition for almost all learning, yet almost all courses do the opposite, delivering large, single doses. We also know that most skills need a ‘learn by doing’ approach, yet most courses are skewed towards knowledge. We know that learning is about long-term memory, yet most courses focus on short-term memory and assessment. We know that learning needs to avoid cognitive overload, yet most courses suffer from an obesity of content. We know that learning benefits from being situated in the context in which the learning is to be put to use, yet most courses pluck people out of this context. I could go on and on, but perhaps the greatest problem is the sheer lack of knowledge and awareness of the basics of the psychology of learning, and its application in training. It’s like engineers who build bridges but know nothing about physics.”
Perhaps, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s just a case of horses for courses. There are many good reasons why some learning should be formal, why some should be conducted in groups, why some courses should be carried out in real-time as opposed to being self-paced, and why some should be face-to-face as opposed to online. And there are equally good reasons for doing the opposite. In the end the choices you make should be made on the basis of the particular situation, not familiarity, prejudice or predisposition. And if that choice is made well, effectiveness will then depend on how well you carry the job out.
Reference: Stop the courses, I want to get off by Donald Clark, TrainingZone, March 2009.
Coming next: The non-formal learning toolkit
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

New ways to distribute content: part 2

Learning content can be distributed online in a number of formats. Let’s compare them …
Native document: By this we mean the output format of a proprietary application, most commonly Word, Excel or PowerPoint. These applications have sophisticated editing and formatting capabilities, but were never really designed as a means for distributing finished content. The consumer has to have their own copy of the application that was used to prepare the original document and often in a particular version. The documents can be bulky to download because their file formats are not optimised for online use. They are slow to display, because the application has first to be loaded into memory. Perhaps most annoyingly, it is all too easy for multiple versions to be in circulation at any one time. There will be exceptional circumstances where the native document format must be maintained, perhaps because learners will be required to edit the documents, perhaps because the functionality of the native format is critical (you could be using Excel as the platform for a simulation), but more often than not, you will be better off using one of the other formats below.
PDF: This is the Portable Document Format as developed in 1994 by Adobe, but now an open standard. It’s original purpose was to get round the problem of users having to have their own copies of the applications and typefaces used by writers and designers to prepare documents and artwork. When you consider the cost of office applications, let alone sophisticated desktop publishing and graphics software, you can see why this format has proved so valuable. Having said this, PDF was never originally conceived as a format for online distribution. Where it really scores is that it preserves all the formatting of the original document, which is important when you have applied a lot of expertise to the design. Most importantly, by staying faithful to the original, this allows for highly professional-looking print-outs. To view a PDF file, users require only the free Adobe Reader. To create PDF files, it used to be necessary to own a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, but now many applications, including those in the Microsoft Office suite, have a built-in facility to save to PDF. As of 2011, some 150 million PDF documents were available online on the World Wide Web.
HTML: It is with Hypertext Mark-up Language that all web pages are formatted. While the format has been extended enormously over the years, and a great deal of programming capability has been integrated (using JavaScript), it still works in much the same way that Tim Berners-Lee first designed it. Because HTML resides within the public domain and can be used freely by anyone, it has been widely adopted as a standard on just about every computing device that accesses the internet. While HTML has many capabilities, it has not until recently had much functionality to offer in terms of animation, audio and video, a gap that has been filled largely by Adobe Flash. However, the next generation of HTML, version 5, promises to remedy these deficiencies and could eventually lead to the demise of Flash.
Flash: Flash was developed originally as an animation tool called FutureSplash Animator. It was acquired by Macromedia in 1996 and by Adobe in 2005. Flash grew in popularity as a way to provide sophisticated animation and multimedia facilities on the World Wide Web and has proved particularly popular for games, adverts and e-learning. Flash files, or ‘movies,’ can be created using Adobe’s own Flash Professional application, or by any number of e-learning authoring tools. The movies are then integrated into HTML pages for viewing online by any user who has the Flash plug-in installed (which is just about everyone). While not as versatile as pure HTML for everyday internet use, Flash excels where sophisticated multimedia and interactivity are critical. This would explain why the overwhelming majority of e-learning materials are distributed in this format. The future of Flash is currently in question, largely because of the refusal of Apple to allow Flash on its iPhone and iPad. With a future that looks increasingly mobile, many e-learning authoring tool vendors are looking more closely at HTML5.

Use	When
Native documents	You want users to be able to edit the documents You want to preserve some unique functionality of the native format, e.g. modelling in Excel
PDF	You expect users to print the content You need to preserve the exact look of the original document
HTML	You want to provide the easiest possible access to your content You want to be able to edit the content easily
Flash	Your content is multimedia-rich Your content incorporates interactivity that is not easily achievable in HTML

Part 1
Coming in part 3: Choosing a platform for your content
First published in Inside Learning Technologies, December 2011

So why non-formal as opposed to on-demand learning?

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we continue with the second part of chapter 8:
On-demand learning is just-in-time performance support – it’s there when you need it. But, although performance support has many advantages, it is not a panacea. Alison Rossett and Lisa Schafer have identified four situations in which you need to have the knowledge and skills before you undertake the task:
When aided performance would damage credibility: There are times when you would look amateurish if you had to go seeking out information that others might expect you to know. The obvious example is when you are dealing directly with customers or clients. No-one’s going to be bothered if you have to obtain help to deal with an unusual situation, but they would be justifiably annoyed if, say, you were a sales assistant in a retail store and couldn’t operate the till, or were an electrician who couldn’t wire a plug.
When speedy performance is a priority: In some jobs, there simply isn’t the time to go tracking down the right information or asking for help. A lawyer may have time to consult the books, but an airline pilot needs to be able to respond to an emergency using their own resources; a business person may be able to consult with a specialist before determining a strategy, but a professional sportsperson has to be able to swiftly select the right tactics to deal with a situation that arises unexpectedly.
When novel and unpredictable situations are involved: Some jobs are relatively stable and it may be possible for an employer to prepare performance support materials or systems to cope with every eventuality. Many other jobs are much less predictable and it is vital for the employee to be equipped with the core skills and problem-solving strategies to deal with the unexpected when it occurs. Take the example of an investment banker: although much of their work might be routine, they have to be able to deal swiftly with crisis situations that sometimes have no precedence.
When smooth and fluid performance is a top priority: Performance support is disruptive – it interrupts the task and disturbs the flow. No audience is going to wait while a presenter consults Wikipedia to look up a fact or asks for help in operating PowerPoint; similarly a telephone sales representative will not want to keep the customer waiting while they consult with a colleague.
Reference: Job Aids & Performance Support by Alison Rossett & Lisa Schafer, Pfeiffer, 2007
Coming next: Then why not formal learning?
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

New ways to distribute content: part 1

Before Sir Tim Berners-Lee did us all a big favour some twenty years ago by inventing the World Wide Web, the distribution of content was a very physical process. Regardless of the format – book, CD, DVD or whatever – some form of ‘master’ would be produced and this would be used as a basis for the manufacture of the finished goods. These would then be boxed up and physically distributed to wholesalers, retailers and eventually end customers. The books and CDs would end their journey neatly lined up on shelves or in racks, ready for consumption. How quaint this process is beginning to look come 2012.
While there is still a market for ‘offline media’ (the sort you can use without an internet connection), it is fast dwindling. Sales of printed media, CDs and DVDs are dropping rapidly as the price of computer memory drops and bandwidth increases. Why would anyone clutter up their valuable living space with piles of dusty books and CDs when they can store as many as they could possibly consume in a lifetime on a Kindle, on an iPod or somewhere in the cloud? Why indeed? No-one under thirty would even consider it.
Learning content obeys the same rules. Why burden employees with huge ring binders full of hand-outs and reference manuals to sit unopened on their shelves when the same information can be made available online at the click of a mouse? Information that can be easily maintained, indexed, searched and cross-referenced; and which costs nothing to replicate or distribute.
In the old world, learning content was a bit of an after-thought. The course stood central to all learning activity. Your course manual was not much more than a trophy; something to display in your office to show everyone how much you had supposedly learned.
With the shift from ‘courses’ to ‘resources,’ content becomes critical. No-one expects anymore to have to struggle to absorb large volumes of information during a course. Yes, they want insights into important new concepts and principles. But the rest they want to be able to access quickly and easily if and when they need it. How you distribute learning content is now central to the potential success of any intervention.
Coming in part 2: Choosing a format for your content
First published in Inside Learning Technologies, December 2011

The arguments for being proactive about learning

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we make a start with chapter 8, which focuses on non-formal learning:

What do we mean by non-formal learning?

We continue our tour of the contextual model with a look at non-formal learning. In a way we’ve already started, because both formal learning, which we reviewed in the last chapter, and non-formal learning are proactive approaches. Formal learning stands apart because it packages up the learning intervention in the guise of a ‘course’, with clearly established objectives, curriculum and assessment. In this chapter we look at the myriad of interventions which are much less formal, but still make a major contribution to learning and development in the workplace.
To refresh your memory, non-formal learning as we define it here is ‘learning to’ with a future perspective. It is not concerned with ‘learning from’ what we have done in the past, nor ‘learning to’ do something right now to address an immediate need. It occurs whenever we take deliberate steps to prepare ourselves for the tasks that we will be carrying out in the future or when others do this on our behalf. Some cynics label it ‘just-in-case’ learning, in contrast to learning that takes place ‘just-in-time’. Non-formal learning takes many shapes, but stops short of those interventions packaged up as formal courses.

The arguments for being proactive

Proactive approaches, formal or non-formal, are important because there are certain fundamental things we need to know and skills we need to have before we can make any serious attempt to function in our present jobs, or take on new responsibilities:
Induction and basic training: We are recruited as much as anything for the skills and knowledge we already possess, for our years of experience with other employers and for our qualifications. But every employer is different in terms of their culture, their particular policies and procedures, and the people that they employ. Even the most qualified new recruit requires some induction whereas, at the other end of the scale, many starters require weeks, months or even years of basic training.
Business change: Only rarely do jobs remain static – responsibilities change along with new strategies, processes and systems, creating new requirements for knowledge and skill.
Development: Looking ahead, organisations and employees themselves have an obvious interest in making preparations for employees to take on greater responsibilities.

Coming next: So why non-formal as opposed to on-demand learning?

Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
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Working with subject experts 4 – what when you are the SME?

It is not that unusual for the content designer also to be the subject expert. After all, many teachers and trainers started their careers by practising what they now preach. If not, then they certainly will have picked up a lot of expert knowledge over years of teaching. Being your own SME has one major benefit and one big drawback.
The benefit is that you have no-one to create a relationship with (assuming you’re feeling OK about yourself) and no-one to question. You can get straight on with the job of design.
The problem is that even teachers (some might say especially) suffer from the curse of knowledge. This means you have to display more than a little self-awareness and exercise a great deal of self-control.
A few years back, an informal community of instructional designers set about developing a guide for those people who were asked to get involved in design but for whom design was certainly not their principle activity (SMEs for example). The project was called The 30-minute masters, on the basis that 30 minutes was all the time a non-specialist would want to spend learning about design. By the time all the ideas were gathered and the curriculum finalised the project had to be renamed The 60-minute masters. So, even design experts find it hard knowing when to stop.
Perhaps it would be better if we left subject experts out of the equation altogether. As Jane Bozarth commented in her post Nuts and Bolts: Working With Subject Matter Experts: “The better choice isn’t always the most experienced worker, but the most recently competent one: that newer person who remembers what it was like not to know how to do a task, who remembers having to learn and what that entailed.”
There’s a thought.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
First published in Inside Learning Technologies, November 2011

Onlignment's learning pyramid

I’m sometimes asked to explain the difference between the role of the learning architect and the blended learning designer. I see it like this:
The learning architect is responsible for creating an environment that maximises the potential for learning. They carry out this work with a specific population in mind, however large or small. The work that the learning architect does is strategic and does not usually relate to a specific project or intervention.
The blended learning designer, on the other hand, is focused on a specific intervention. Normally this will be formal in nature, in that it represents some form of course, but the blended learning designer will often draw upon methodologies that are non-formal, just-in-time or experiential.
Here at Onlignment we are aiming to put resources and programmes in place that support learning architects and blended learning designers (who could, of course, be the same person), as well as those practitioners who put in place the online elements of the architecture and the specific interventions. At this point we have the following:
For learning architects: paperback and e-book versions of The New Learning Architect, as well as our strategic consultancy services.
For blended learning designers: paperback and e-book versions of The Blended Learning Cookbook (expect edition 3 in 2012), as well workshops on blended learning.
For designers of digital learning content: our new book, Digital Learning Content: A Designer’s Guide will be available in paperback and e-book versions in January 2012; see also our practical guides and workshop.
For facilitators of live online learning: see our free e-book Live Online Online: A facilitator’s Guide, which is also available as a paperback and for Kindle; see also our workshop on this subject.
For facilitators of social and collaborative learning: See our three-part series Getting Started With Social Media as well as our consultancy services.

The formal learning toolkit

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we bring chapter 7 to a conclusion:

Top-down approaches

Formal learning is most commonly organised on a top-down basis by employers for their employees. They have a wide range of options at their disposal:
Classroom courses
Outdoor learning
Self-study e-learning
Collaborative distance learning
Electronic games and simulations
Blended solutions

Bottom-up approaches

It might seem odd to conceive of formal learning interventions as being anything other than top-down, but there are frequent occasions when the initiative to undertake a course comes from the employee and not the employer. Principally this will occur when the employee wishes to obtain some form of technical or professional accreditation that will enhance their career prospects. Most employers operate some form of scheme to at least part fund these courses, sometimes with provisions for return of this subsidy if the employee subsequently leaves their job before a certain date.
Otherwise, formal learning that is initiated from a bottom-up perspective can take any of the forms described above under top-down.

Conditions for success

To enjoy success with formal learning it is necessary for the l&d professional to recognise the following:

that not all learning needs to be packaged up as a course – more informal approaches are often perfectly adequate;
that there are many approaches available for the delivery of courses, not just classroom delivery;
that sometimes no single approach will do the job and that a blended solution will be necessary;
that learning must be a process embedded in workplace performance, not an event;
that trainers are more likely to be effective as ‘guides on the side’ than as ‘sages on the stage’.

Coming next: We move on to focus on non-formal learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect