Rapid e-learning papers

Elearnity has just announced some new research on Rapid e-learning, including a couple of white papers and a new research project. See this press release for some more information.

The Myth of Rapid Authoring Tools

If you look at the debate around Rapid e-learning then a myth seems to be emerging it's all about rapid e-learning tools...

The problem is that this is a rather narrow view.

Now, I'm not against myths. They are very powerful stories that hold an inner truth, even if when they're taken literally they don't always hold water.

If you look at Rapid elearning objectively, then really there are two things that are fundamental to a rapid outcome - the intent and the processes . These are the two things that make rapid e-learning truly rapid. Why intent...? because if the project can streatch out for 10 weeks it probably will... and why processes....? because if you don't accelerate your process of scoping through to development and launch then you still probably won't complete your project rapidly. Sure the tools are geared up to work in a streamlined way and they are a pivotal part of the story, but if you think Rapid e-learning begins and ends in authoring tools then you’re really not looking at the whole picture. It's not just about squeezing development.

So, where is the true power of Rapid e-learning? If you look at Rapid e-learning as a philosophy and methodology as much as it is a tool set then you are going to drive some strong value for your team and your organisation. That's because the inner truth about rapid is it's relentless focus on the effectiveness and efficiency in every stage of the process of delivery. And that has some very powerful overtones for all e-learning production - internal and external. Goodbye scripting documents!

But, the real story of Rapid e-learning is still being written. Leading corporates are using a wide range of ‘Rapid’ approaches and tools, but there has been no analysis of what really works best in different contexts. There is a massive blind spot in the comparative effectiveness of materials, production models and implementation techniques. This means that most of them may not be realising their full potential because two of the most important questions have yet to be answered..

· How effective is Rapid e-learning?

· How sustainable is Rapid e-learning?

Whilst the market presence of Rapid e-learning continues to grow at an exceptional rate, the full ramifications of pursuing this strategy longer term has yet to be resolved with some real research and tangible data.

Tech play at HRD

A small observation.

Went down to the CIPD's HRD show at ExCel centre this week. Was its usual eclective self - manor house training venues, lots of leadership and soft skill trainers, and the occassional bloke sprayed blue walking around promoting something.

But something did strike me this year as being different - the reemergence of technology at HRD. Learning Technology and e-learning has never been a significant part of this show. Whilst CIPD flirted a little with it in the early e-learning years, it soon got dropped as a significant focus and the number of vendors dwindled. This year it seemed to have a quite strong presence, distributed around the exhibition hall.

Although many of the big vendors were still not there, there were a number of the serious emergent LMS companies including Cornerstone from the US, NetDimensions from UK/HongKong, E2Train from the UK and IMC from Germany. StepStone was there from the Talent Management arena accompanied by a raft of online 360 providers and similar. And there were lots of e-learning vendors; CrossKnowledge from France, Epic, Line Communications, Intellego, Information Transfer, and so on.

Not sure if this is a trend, but certainly I was encouraged that despite seemingly the best efforts of CIPD and many traditional training people to underplay the trend, e-learning and learning technology is clearly now part of the mainstream of learning and development.

Back in play

Apologies for the lack of blogging activity over the past few months. Life has been very busy and our focus on the blog has dropped off completely.

However, light is at the end of the tunnel and I hope to ensure this blog gets more activity going forward. There's a lot been happening. We've been working on some really interesting research which will start to be made available in the next month or so, and we also have more people and infrastructure to push the learning research forward.

Watch this space!

Regards, DAVID

Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations

George Siemens is putting together a free virtual conference on corporate learning called Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations and has asked me to present.

Here is the emerging wiki for the conference with speaker information.

Here is Tony Karrers' blog entry on the conference.

Research Knowledge Centre - Suggested enhancements

One of the reasons for the lack of front end activity was an investment in time at the back end on our IT infrastructure. The research knowledge centre is actually a Lotus Domino application, and we've recently upgraded our versions of Lotus Notes enabling us to do more creative stuff with the application and RSS feed.

Please email me if you have any suggestions on how to improve the EKC web interface or RSS feed.

Thanks, David

Research RSS feed - small fix

Have fixed a small problem in the RSS feed for the research knowledge centre. Hopefully now the published dates fields should be coming through correctly. Thanks to Mark Aberdour from Epic who pointed this out.

p.s. All the entries are set automatically to 9am GMT just in case you were wondering.

Too quiet!

Sorry the blogs been so quiet - no activity for 6 weeks. We've been very busy with some client advisory projects as well as doing some background research activities. Hope to start bringing these to the daylight soon ...

must try harder!

Jane Hart's Top Ten Tools

Jane asked me to submit my top ten tools for her listing. Reading the others, I thought this was quite an interesting exercise and can give some helpful pointers for anyone on tools to make themselves more productive.

Here's my list:

Firefox: My window onto the web. Much preferred to IE and loads of open source innovation.
MindManager: Our most important business tool. I use it to mindmap pretty much everything - research, interviews, analysis. Anyone that's worked with Elearnity will recognise this!
Google: The definitive search tool for the web.
Bloglines: My other window onto the web, this time for tracking blogs and news mainly. Read a huge volume via this.
Yugma: Tried a lot of live collaboration tools and this is one of the simplest and best for small group collaboration. Works well and very flexible.
MyBlogLog/Google Analytics: Real time analytics on our blogs and research sites. Also couple this with Google Analytics.
Dreamweaver: Great basic tool for maintaining our web sites
Blogger: Basic blogging tool. Not fab but simple and does the job.
Linked In: Been using this for some time and network seems to be slowly expanding. Sure I can make more use of it and Facebook (if I only had the time)
Lotus Notes: Been using this as our core infrastructure for 11 years, and still struggling to find a platform that offers the same breadth of flexibility for collaborative applications including our research knowledge centre. Email sucks but less virus targetted than Outlook.

Jane's list is prettier though with the logos and links!

The role of technology in Informal Learning

TrainingZone have just posted an article on the role of technology in informal learning which includes some input from me amongst others.