The future of LMS

Tony Karrer has put a post about the future directions of LMS.

It's funny because we've been working on some thinking similar to this internally within Elearnity. Some recent corporate discussions together with some of our futures research has also pointed us towards rethinking the model underlying the LMS, but to be honest, not necessarily many of the drivers for wanting an LMS.

Its interesing about you and Lee likening it to Google Analytics. Our current thinking is that the LMS will become like Google - a diversified mix of services and interfaces - anarchic but inherently with underlying structure and connectively. Systems that can optimise our experience of it are critical, but so are systems that can optimise how the connections work behind the scene. This is potentially what the LMS will become.

... an interesting discussion ...

DAVID

Collaborative learning?

Donald Clark has turned his attentions to collaborative learning.

Here are my thoughts ...
Collaborative learning is slow learning??? Donald - to be honest, I think that's rubbish as a generalisation, although I do agree that poor collaborative learning can be slow and ineffective - just as poor individual learning can be. Unfortunately there's probably far too much of both.

The issue, as with all learning, is to understand the dynamics of what will make collaborative learning more effective rather than to trash it completely. An awful lot of effective learning and education is heavily reliant on a collaborative learning as a fundamental part of the learning process - with or without the 'e' bit.

Gill Salmon has written extensively about her experiences in the academic space, and our experiences back that up. Were Epic's projects with Arena all failures?

Collaboration may be natural but it is also difficult - even face to face it is difficult. People learn to be good collaborators - unfortunately often compensating for poor early experiences in our education systems. My belief is that the nascent e-learning market was hijacked by the e-course companies - both generic and custom (!?). Using technology to enable people to people interaction for learning is as important as using technology for access to static and dynamic information and knowledge.

Much of the new parts of the Internet you advocate are reliant on people-centric approaches rather than content centric. Let's look for more of this, not less.

;) David

What is e-learning?

Clive Shepherd has posted a presentation on his site attempting to reposition e-learning away from just e-courses, to a more diversified view including collaboration, simulation, live e-learning and so on. A view I would strongly endorse.

Here's my comments on his post ...

Clive - I like the walkthrough, and predictably the de-emphasis on e-courses as the only form of e-learning. I've always felt that was wrong (see an old white paper from 2000).

But you still haven't actually defined what e-learning is ... just listed out a number of forms of it.

I also think the inclusion of informal learning as e-learning is mistaken. Why is informal learning e-learning any more than it is book learning or video learning or people-talking-together-learning??? I know it is trendy to bang the informal drum now, but artificially adding it to the e-list is not very illuminating or productive. Sure some aspects of e-learning are informal, but why is informal, e-learning?

The Future for E-Learning

David Wilson is founder and Managing Director of Elearnity and one of the leading authorities on learning innovation and e-learning in Europe. He speaks to TrainingZONE about the present and the possibilities for e-learning.

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Has e-learning come of age, or does it still have some way to go before it reaches its potential?
An interesting question Claire, in reality I think both are true. E-learning is definitely a mainstream capability in many of the leading corporate adopters, and there has been a well established and fairly robust supply-side market for e-learning for a number of years. So e-learning is now a fairly mature and is becoming increasingly pervasive in many market sectors and companies.

But that doesn’t mean it’s like that everywhere, or that e-learning is fixed in what it can do. We still encounter large organisations that have little use of e-learning, or are only piloting it. Whilst there is a perception that this is driven by learner acceptance, actually we see it as more of an L&D cultural issue first, and then a combination of infrastructure and learner acceptance second.

While e-learning might be a mature capability it’s still evolving rapidly. It’s diversifying away from the structured e-course model that came from computer/web-based training, towards a more holistic view of technology-enabled learning with many approaches and solutions.

Where does e-learning truly excel and where do you feel it has its limitations?
If by e-learning you mean e-courses, I would say they have a role in supporting basic knowledge or skills development in almost in any area. The key thing they deliver is a consistent learning approach on a scalable distributed basis. That’s a huge advantage for a large organisation or for training large numbers of people. This especially works well for the “acquisition” part of the learning process, and for some subjects, also for “practicing” it too. This is especially true for anything involving an IT system, or that can be modelled into an online role-play or simulation.

Other aspects of e-learning, such as e-assessment, can be used very broadly for all forms of learning, both for formal testing and assessment, and also for personal diagnosis to streamline the learning process. Both of these areas are very interesting now and very generally applicable in most mainstream learning programmes.

I haven’t just said use e-learning for compliance, which has been a massive driver for e-learning over the last few years. It’s not that I think e-learning isn’t any good for compliance, of course it is. But e-learning has been unnecessarily pigeon-holed as a tool purely for compliance and mandatory learning in many organisations. Clearly there are big benefits for compliance; both in terms of consistency and scalability, but also because of the automatic tracking and reporting benefits as well. But e-learning can and should be being applied more generally, both as a standalone solution and integrated into blended programmes, and also for assessment, performance support, specialist advanced learning and so on.

What is it not good for? I think e-courses definitely have their limitations, partly because of the constraints for doing them properly, and sometimes due to subject matter. People often focus on subject matter limitations but I am less convinced. I think you can find high quality and effective e-learning on almost any subject you can think of. But delivering structured e-courses that require 30 minutes plus to complete obviously creates constraints. Elearnity’s research shows a shift towards performance support and referenceware materials for just-in-time needs, and collaborative learning tools for deeper learning needs. It’s about horses for courses, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

When it comes to rapid e-learning, often members ask which tool is best. In your opinion is there much difference between products, and what are the limitations of rapid e-learning?
In my opinion, there’s much too much attention at the moment on the tools part of the rapid e-learning question. There’s no doubt that rapid e-learning is a growing area in nearly all corporates, and much of the current debate is about tool selection. But Elearnity’s research doesn’t endorse this. Yes a bad tool will be a barrier, but a good tool is not a guarantee of success. The biggest issues are around process and expertise rather than tool. And by process I mean the whole process, not just the development task.

Rapid e-learning for most companies is part of what I described as the diversifying of e-learning. It is about collapsing the supply-chain for e-content and pushing it closer to the subject expert, either directly with them doing it, or with someone they can work with closely. To do that you need tools than can be used by non-e-learning specialists, and you need to create valid learning, and that is the challenge. Companies have comprehensively proved with PowerPoint that they can generate tons of presentation materials, but how much of it is high-quality learning? Rapid tools can aggravate that problem further – especially if the people producing it don’t have instructional expertise or understanding. They may know about the subject matter, but do they understanding “learning”?

Content is only useful if its accessible and usable, and if its valid. There are big challenges for organisations with many people creating content, but then trying to push it through a narrow pipe (called their e-learning team) to get it loaded onto the corporate LMS.

In short, rapid e-learning concepts are an important part of the diversification of e-learning, and have a real role to play in enabling local content creation. But they are part of a much larger story, and the short term exclusive focus on tools is misplaced.

There is a good deal of talk about how a VLE/intranet can facilitate informal learning. Do you feel that the potential of technology is being explored by organisations in this respect?
Informal learning emerged last year as a big topic amongst the market commentators, but I don’t think it has really impacted mainstream corporate thinking yet. Some of the leading corporates have been publicly talking about it, but most organisations are still focusing on their formal learning agenda. I don’t expect this to change much this year, but maybe it will become more of an explicit issue in 2008 and beyond.

I do think that technology has a role to play with informal learning, but we need to understand what we mean by informal first. This is where all the discussion of “80% of all learning is informal” starts getting a bit vague. For example, is coaching formal or informal? Is spending some time with a colleague to learn how to do something, formal or informal? Is accessing some performance support materials live in the work process, formal or informal? A lot of learning in companies is not managed or tracked by L&D but that doesn’t make it informal. It can very structured, and facilitated or delivered by professional training staff or coaches, but it isn’t described centrally as a formal programme or course.

Technology can clearly help facilitate informal processes of learning, both through search and through access to content and to people. Arguably the biggest learning tool on the planet is called the Internet, and one of its main LMSs is called Google, but that’s not how people think about it. Adoption of more informal thinking internally within companies, coupled with tools for live collaboration will be the start. But I also expect to see more pressure on integration of learning processes and content with work processes and content. At the moment they tend to be pretty distinct in most companies, but informal learning will blur the boundaries. At the back-end, this will also mean growth in content management and integrated search as well.

How have technologies such as podcasting, wikis etc added to the potential of e-learning?
As someone who spends most of their life learning online and informally, especially over the Internet, I find podcasts on their own to be too limiting. I have to listen to the thing to find out whether it’s worth listening too, which is nonsense. Having said that, I still feel it’s an important direction, especially for delivery to mobile and non-visual devices.

In some recent research we did only 13% of early adopter companies were using Wikis for learning on a regular basis. So they are not mainstream yet (for learning). But the concept of collaborative self-generation of learning content is a really powerful idea – especially when if you can everyone engaged as an active participant. Research shows that retention of learning is significantly enhanced if you become the teacher rather than just the learner.

This dynamic is under explored currently and I think it has potential to be very useful, particularly for developmental learning rather than basic knowledge acquisition. But as with any collaborative approach, there are the problems of non-contribution (lurking), editorial control, and so on. But these can be resolved. I expect we will see more use of Wiki-like approaches in the future, although probably with embedded learning structure in the Wiki templates to make it easier to manage and validate the learning process and outcomes.

And finally, how do you feel we will be learning in five years time?
Ah the million dollar question! Well I guess that partly depends a bit on how you are learning now!

If you are currently (individual or organisation) still pretty much focused on formal and traditional learning approaches, then I think the next five years will see slow but increasing change. Increasing pressure of business will force you to change your assumptions about how, where and when you learn. You will have to be learning online and probably by mobile devices just to keep up, and keep compliant.

You will be using e-assessment to focus your learning time as well as to certify you’ve completed it successfully. Much of your learning time will be tracked and reported (you’re in that kind of company), and tracking will help you access learning that is more relevant. Much of this is available today, but it will have become pervasive, at least within large organisations.

If you already learn online, and mainly informally or through your own research on the Internet or through your personal network, then I think things will change even more significantly.

Learning anywhere will become a key requirement, via any connected device. Much of your learning will be informally delivered, but through formal mechanisms to help you find it, access it, and deliver it using a variety of media types depending on your context. Much of this will be about access to people, not just access to content. All of it will need to be focused on your specific needs or context, and to be integrated with other learning mechanisms to add more depth or context when you need it. More learning will be collaborative rather than individual, both synchronous and asynchronous.

Companies will need to offer a holistic learning environment, skewed to delivering the above services rather than generic learning content. Formal learning programmes will still exist but be a lower proportion of recognised learning time. Programmes will be blended learning processes, utilising e-learning and face-to-face learning time to maximise value and impact, and to maximise flexibility.

There are other new areas of learning for which we expect to see increasing adoption. I have talked about wikis and collaborative tools already. We also expect to see increasing use of gaming and complex simulations, and use of intelligent learning agents to aggregate and to personalise learning for you. Will this happen in five years? Yes, at least in part, but many of the mainstream implications of it will be beyond that period.

In summary, much of the technology to do this is around today, but it’s not well-connected or pervasive. The challenge for many big organisations will be to be able to consume this fast enough to stay up with some of their more nimble competitors. This is especially difficult on a global stage, and when you have to migrate a corporate IT infrastructure. But there will be an increasing realisation that not learning like this is an indulgence that the majority cannot afford, either in cost, but most of all in terms of time.

David Wilson will speaking at the Learning Technologies Conference on 31 January.

The Big Question - Rapid or Quality

Clive Sheppard has posted an interesting response to Learning Circuits Big Question for January. As I quite like the point he is making, I'm commenting to that rather than the original question per say. I like the sentiments but think he's (maybe deliberately to state his point) misinterpretting the question.

Rapid e-learning is a marketing label being put on the use of a new form of tools for use by non-elearning specialists for creation of e-learning content. This will tend to be done rapidly as its a more collapsed development model - especially if its the SME doing the development. Or that's the theory anyway - and quite a popular one at this point in time.

But I don't really buy that.

If tools are more rapid, then they should be being used by the professional developers anyway. That's unless they turn out not to be very good, flexible, reliable or expensive. The reality is that these tools often have limitations. The ones that don't are often complex to use and therefore are just a more modern authoring tool.

But the issue for rapid e-learning is not about the tools, it is about the process, and about the expertise of people in the process. A collapsed development model also means collapsing the expertise involved. With SME production that means minimal e-learning or even learning expertise (e.g. instructional design). It also often means limited technology understanding or knowledge of the tools and associated standards. "What do I have to do to get this to create SCORM 2005 conformant content that can be uploaded into the LMS?" is not necessarily a question we would expect a SME to ask.

In many ways, this the essence of the debate; rapid versus professional content production.

Our (Elearnity) view is that rapid is a necessary part of a diversification of e-learning away from a pure e-course model (which was always too limiting) towards a more holistic technology enabled learning model. We also believe that tools for supporting mass internal production need to be more connected or shared in order to be more scalable and manageable. Individual local content production replicates the bad experiences of unmanageable document-based content. Finally, for the "rapid" elements, the whole process must be rapid, not just the development process. Rapid content needs to be able to be quality assured and tested, uploaded deployed and accessable, and maintainable or removable all in a rapid timescale at low cost.

David

Virtual Classrooms - do we need specialist tools?

Donald Clark has raised a point about Virtual Classrooms tools as part of a post he made on Vapid Development Tools. "And while we're at it, why bother with all of this fancy virtual classroom stuff when we have messenger, netmeeting and Skype. If you want collaboration, it's already there, usually on your toolbar!"

I agree with the sentiment, the case for VC as distinct tools is much more marginal than it use to be. That was always part of Microsoft's long game - to embed the capabilities for collaboration into their core infrastrastructure. Don't forget that Microsoft bought Placeware (one of those VC tools) to for a core component of its Live Meeting capabilities.

Innovation with messenger/sametime tools and voice over ip services like Skype have accelerated this further, but more importantly made these services highly available with a very low cost of entry, i.e. free or virtually free, especially for the individual user. But there is still a reality gap for those stuck in corporate IT infrastructures. For those of us outside them who are able to use any tool we think will add some value to how we work it is much easier. As a small business we frequently find our options for live collaboration and virtual meetings decrease with corporate clients! A virtual classroom that provides a single integrated capability can still have some value here, but less than it used to.

The other key factor with VC tools is the specialist functionality they have embedded to streamline use of the tool for supporting learning events. This used to (5 years ago) include whiteboard tools and app sharing but now this is common in the collaboration tools. But there's other functionality too. Standard web collaboration tools can be fine for virtual meetings, and webinar tools are fine for large 1 to many events, but running high-quality structured learning with a group of 10-20 people can require additional help to make it work effectively. A good example of this is virtual break-out rooms.

But this kind of functionality will also make its way into the basic web collaboration tools too - if it proves to be really useful. That's why I find the discussion of functionality has become second in this post rather than first. A few years ago it would have been the other round. Now the limitations of the popular web collaboration tools are much less and their reach is much greater. The challenge for the VC vendors is to continue to differentiate their products or to integrate them into other solutions that have sufficient commercial value to give the VC away within an integrated offer. Our guess is that this is where the LMS/e-learning suite vendors will be forced over time, even if (as in Saba's case) it currently represents a significant revenue stream currently.

David

5 things meme

I'm not a lover of chain letters or similar but Don Taylor has just tagged me with a 5 things meme, after he himself was tagged by Clive Sheppard. So in the spirit of the new year and peer collaboration, here goes nothing ... five things you may not know about me:

1. It's now been over ten years since I escaped serious employment and founded Elearnity. My longest period of serial employment in one organisation, and means I'm probably borderline unemployable by anyone else!

2. At 6 foot 7" (or 2.01m in new money) I have significant challenges with door ways, cute cotswold cottages and beds with foot-boards. All of which result in recurring headaches and occassional lacks of consciousness. Or maybe that's the alcohol ...

3. I would describe my taste in music as eclectic. My wife describes it as awful. Afraid my early rock roots were well as truly polluted by a hairy-hatted cousin who introduced me to Gong, resulting in life-long interest in the off-the-wall view, as well as the music! Ou est mon camembert?

4. About ten years ago, I started playing golf, after seeing all these corporate sales guys spending half of their "work" time on the golf course. This turned out to be more challenging than I expected - both to get the time to play, and then to manage to hit the ball in the direction it was supposed to be going. I now play off 17 handicap on an irregular basis, but working in the L&D/HR field is seemingly not a rich vain for potential golf matches. All reasonable offers gratefully received.

5. And vaguely back to subject, I spend almost my entire working life learning, but haven't been on a formal training course in years. I guess being an analyst is almost the perfect role for an habitual learner as I spend most of my time trying to understand the story beneath the story, both corporate and vendor. The downside of this that sometimes Elearnity becomes too interested in the exceptions rather than the rules, the alternative rather than the mainstream. But heh, I guess we should reference point 3 above for the cause of that!

Not sure who to stitch if anyone on this, but for variation let's try:

Barry Sampson

Susan Smith Nash

Wolfie

Ron Edwards

John Curran

Have fun .... David

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year and best wishes for a busy and prosperous 2007. Work life is looking good at the moment with some really interesting research and client advisory work on the table, which hopefully is reflecting a positive direction and commitment for innovation in corporate learning!

David

Human Capital Reporting - Don Taylor

Don Taylor has posted an interesting discussion of the state of human capital reporting. A very interesting post/article and quite thought provoking, and some useful references too. I agree that the lack of real metrics is a big limitation in moving the perception of people value in business. Our research also shows that most organisations do not even understand their basic data very well, let alone be sophisticated enough to really understand added value in either performance or human capability.

But even if the lack of metrics is a problem (which it is), I do not believe it is the cause of the problem, just an effect. The real challenge is in getting business leaders to truly understand the relationship between human capital (if that is the term we want to use) and business performance - both current and future.

In the majority, business leaders are simple animals. Their behaviour (as opposed to rhetoric!) is largely linked to what will drive results. If they definitely know that investment in people improves bottom line results more than cutting costs or increasing marketing then they will do it more often. Unfortunately they don't really know that, although plenty of people may try to tell them. In this sense, the human capital debate is in more of the "faith" business (like marketing in some sense) than it would like to be.

Metrics and models help to develop the discussion and start to provide a robust basis for moving from faith to evidence. But this is a long road, and, at least in the short term, basic is better!

David

Subject Matter Experts as Trainers - Implications for Rapid E-learning

Wendy Wickham has posted a comment on her blog about Subject Matter Experts as trainers. I think this is a very interesting point she is making about the mindset, focus, interest and commitment of subject matter experts in the learning process. I'm sure we can all think of SMEs that are very motivated to pass on their knowledge, and try hard to help their learners really understand their subject. But unfortunately this is still all too rare.

I think a key reason for this is that SMEs assume that learners are in their (i.e. the SMEs) context, not the other way around. Wendy's point 3. The learner typically has to make the leap of understanding to be able to relate what they are being told back to their own needs or problems. In reality this is very challenging, unless the subject is very easy, and of course if it is that easy, they could probably have worked it out for themselves anyway! Context is critical for learning.

One key area of interest for me currently which directly relates to this discussion is the growth in rapid e-learning activity and its potential challenges and limitations . (See the discussion linked to some trends for 2007.

Rapid e-learning has emerged as one of the key trends for e-learning, and in some ways, rightly so given the cost and time to produce custom e-learning content. A big part of this assumes that SMEs can also become e-learning authors, but as you have pointed out SMEs are generally not great trainers, let alone educators. They might be able to generate lots of powerpoint slides but that doesn't necessarily equate to good learning content. Now the problem will potentially be magnified as they start to produce lots of bad e-learning instead.

I say magnified because this problem already exists in current e-learning, and it also exists in SME driven training. But with rapid e-learning, we don't even have the SME face to face to give us a chance to ask questions or examine our context. Their potential to crank lots of bad learning reaches new levels.

Of course this is a risk, and more enlightened organisations are aware that they have to manage quality. But our research with large corporates shows that this is not an easy battle, often taking the form of damage limitation rather than added value!

David

KM and Learning

Jay Cross has posted a relevant (but not necessarily new) question on his blog about the difference between Knowledge Management and Learning. Personally, I think this is a question that the learning technology industry has been debating for some time, and not terribly productively. KM and Learning are still largely separate functions in most corporates we work with. They have separate agendas, separate teams, separate budgets and separate systems. Why?

One of the reasons I think is historical. When KM first appeared it was high-jacked by the IT industry. I remember doing lots of work with Lotus and IBM in those days who were early adopters of the KM story, and have subsequently made large investments of their own resources, and of their customers in progressing the KM agenda. At the time learning was mainly about "training", and maybe it still is in many companies. I believe that, at the time, it was in the vested interest of the KM afficianados to distance themselves from training, and to create a parallel knowledge agenda, which has largely led us to where we are today.

Does this separation make sense? I would argue no, but only if we've well and truly got the message that learning isn't training. This is of course why Jay is currently asking his question. With his current focus on informal learning, the separation looks incredibly artificial. Once we focus on learning from medium other than formal learning materials, i.e. course books or their e-equivalent, the differences between KM and learning very blurred.

For us to view knowledge as something distinct from learning implies that knowledge has a purely transactional value, distinct from it being retained or used by the person accessing it. Yes there are other processes around knowledge, but similarily their are other processes around learning. I think it would be much more useful if these were part of the same not separate agendas.

This also therefore brings me to maybe the real reason why learning and KM are mainly separate - organisational vested interest. Ultimately, in most corporates, these two functions exist as distinct groups, often in different reporting lines within the organisation. Why? If what I've said is true and they should be a continuum of the same thing, surely they should be integrated. The reason why they haven't is maybe more down to organisational politics than it is to an understanding of the real differences or similarities.

David

Back again

Sorry guys - been out for a while - back on stream now.

David

SaaS for Enterprise Learning?

I have long though that there was a significant potential role for ASP or Software-as-a-Service learning solutions for large enterprise organisations, but I'm not sure whether the vendors really see this (beyond those that SaaS is their main offering anyway). Yes they get the fact that SaaS is a good approach to sub-Enterprise customers (mid-tier etc), and that it is a useful tactical tool for accelerating enterprise customers. But they don't seem to see it as the long term platform of choice for them, believing that privately hosted or behind the firewall are the likely options.

I'm not sure I agree. Tactical platforms have a habit of being more long term than originally envisaged - especially given the challenge with the strategic ducks lined up! I'm also unconvinced that the perceived cost of SaaS over the longer term is disadvantageous compared with fully-costed internal or externally hosted solutions. And you would seem to get much greater flexibility with SaaS, both in terms of commitment, and in terms of flexibility of service, compared with the detailed terms and conditions that a hosting service or internal IT department wants to impose.

I'm interested to know what you think ...

Corporate e-learning trends - headlines for Europe

I know it seems a bit early to start the "what's the trends for 2007" stories, but someone just asked me for such a view based on our corporate research. Thought you might also be interested in the answer. As always, happy for feedback.

For 2007, we expect the key developments for corporates to be around a) reconstructing and expanding the e-learning supply chain, b) reengineering and integrating learning management processes, and c) a diversifcation of e-learning content including experimentation with alternative delivery approaches.

A big part of a) is adoption of rapid e-learning inside corporates, and we expect most organisations to acquire tools and grow activities (if they haven't done so already). But we expect corporates to also start to realise the limitations of the rapid model, not least, the challenges for managing quality, educational value, and technical assurance. Whilst we are advocates of rapid e-learning, we also believe it is significantly over-hyped currently, and more sophisticated approaches are required. In addition, we also expect to see more changes in the ways corporates use external custom e-learning developers with increasing pressures for lower-cost, more rapid external solutions as well, and for self-maintenance.

b) Many corporates are reevaluating their LMS strategy going forward, and now increasingly interested in integrated talent and performance management. Although consistent with the grand ERP/HRMS story, and often the overall direction for extending use of their ERP platform, the HR sub-functions are sceptical of the fit of these products to their specific functional needs. We expect to see tactical successes for the LMS vendors in the performance and talent space, although longer term we still expect to see pressure from IT for a single integrated HR/ERP solution.

c) Although Wikis and podcasting maybe very trendy currently, most corporates are not really using them. We expect to see more experimentation in 2007, and some very interesting project successes, but we do not expect this to become truly mainstream in corporate usage. We also expect to see a shift away from traditional large e-learning course-based content towards smaller, more granular just-in-time e-content and performance support. We also expect to see referenceware growing in popularity relative to traditional e-learning courses, and greater adoption of virtual meeting/classroom technologies, which have now matured and are more widely available.

Across all of the above we expect to see more externalising of the infrastructure to deliver it, i.e. further growth in ASP or Software as a Service delivered infrastructure and solutions.

Key corporate drivers: immediate solutions, lower cost, more flexibility, more connected/aligned, bypassing internal constraints

SkillSoft's acquisition of NETg

I'm really surprised not to have seen more ripples from SkillSoft's acquisition of NETg from Thomson Corporation. Having acquired Smartforce previously, and now acquiring NETg, SkillSoft seems to be finally closing the cycle on the once lucrative e-learning content business. With its origins from a group of ex-NETgers, and living under a cloud of lawsuits in the early days, SkillSoft has gone from strength to strength, now consuming both of its major adverseries.

What are the implications of this move for corporate customers? Good question. Many corporates have a commitment to either the SkillSoft or the NETg e-content libraries, and I don't see that changing that rapidly because the supplier has changed. The fact that there's now only one big content gorilla might affect competition, but to be honest, I think that was already changing anyway as corporates reconfigure their requirements and commitments. (see this note on generic e-learning we published last year for a view on this).

What really interests me is whether this event will accelerate the shift away from large generic content libraries rather than the other way around. Although maybe slightly contradictory (just as one vendor emerges with a huge content library), I wonder whether the battleground has finally shifted to niche content battles rather than library wars, and whether, in the end, the content (at least the traditional click and turn e-courses of the past)is actually becoming a more marginal part of the customer value proposition anyway. Let's see!

David

A fragmented identity

Clive Shepherd has put his book collection (or the bits he's prepared to admit to at least!) on a site called Shelfari.

Another interesting niche site, but there are hundreds of these kinds of sites out there these days, all providing a nice way of describing some aspect of your life/work/interests etc. This is an inevitable consequence of capitalist opportunism and entrepreurial behaviour, but do how do you deal with such a fragmented approach to managing our own identity? I heard some venture capitalist on Radio 5Live recently going on about another site for "helping managing your digital identity" - which of course she happened to be an investor in, but that turned out to be another "personal website" space. How do we manage these identities and niche content on a sustainable basis with so many fragmented niche offerings???

Blogs and Wikis for corporate learning?

I have recently had a number of conversations with some different corporates about their interest in using Blogs or Wikis within their corporate learning programmes. Most of the individuals in these conversations are actively blogging themselves, but it made me wonder how many companies were actively using them already. Or are these just an interesting idea, or not even that.

Maybe you could let me know your view by responding to the web poll on the right of the page. Thanks in advance and PS the answers so far will be displayed once you've voted.

David

Personalisation - a slogan in search of a meaning?

Seb Schmoller has just put an interesting post relating to personalisation in learning. In it, he cites some recent articles and a recent Guardian comment and expresses scepticism about the reality of personalisation in education.

We have looked a little at personalisation within our research the corporate learning and e-learning area, and its a topic that I feel needs much greater exploration. Firstly, I agree with your sentiments about its use as a slogan in search of a meaning. Like many of terms in the learning area, it has become used as a bandwagon without much reality of substance. A sense of a good idea, without much in the way of tangible execution.

But having said that, I also feel it very important, and in many encapsulates the shift in thinking from training to learning. If we are to make progress on the potential for personalisation, I think our research would support the view that we need to tackle it at two levels - and I feel some synergy here with your arguments and Kevin's comments. Personalisation impacts structure at the macro-level, and it impacts choices and options at the micro-level. Much of the debate about the meaning of personalisation at an institutional level is about my macro-level; the structure of services, how they relate to the learner, and the organisation providing them. Without a fundamental rethink or realignment of current structures (in both academic education and corporate training), it is difficult to see how personalisation has much real meaning or difference.

But if that is true, personalisation at the micro-level is still very important. The choices that individual learners are offered or make related to their specific learning process; the resources they choose to engage with, the way they use or interact with peers, even to a degree, the role they expect from the teacher, trainer or facilitator. These are all areas of much greater flexibility and potential for personalisation than we give them credit for - already.

We must be wary of rejecting the concept of personalisation, but we must also be realistic about understanding its challenges. My personal view is that learning becoming more personalised, is an inevitability.

David

GooTube to impact corporate learning?

Google's acquisition of YouTube could result in some interesting side-effects in the learning world.



Despite its many problems, not least blatant infringement on copyright of many of the commercially produced video that has been clipped onto the site, YouTube seems to me to be a very powerful tool to support learning. It is a fantastic mechanism for rapid distribution of video-related content that could support learning programmes, or for just-in-time learning support.

But it is also the culture of video creation and sharing that has been encouraged by the users of YouTube and other similar services. With the rapid in growth in cheap video cameras and increasing availability of video capture from mobile phones, there is an enormous potential for creative learning processes and knowledge sharing using these tools.

I also think this represents the final confirmation that we have now passed the tipping point on video as a pervasive media in web information and learning content. Historically it has tended to be an important but niche component, but now with the diversity of tools to generate video, and pervasive tools like YouTube for its distribution, the video genie is well and truly out of the lamp!

David

The cost of innovation

Seb Schmoller has posted an interesting comment on private provision of infrastructure for schools. His point at the end of the post about (what I would call) the cost of innovation in the ICT or learning infrastructure I think is very valid in a corporate environment too. Too often this is seen as a static IT cost rather than a dynamic environment which needs to be evolved and allow innovation. Recent interest in blogs and wikis as learning tools is a good example. Most of these projects have to be done outside the gaze of IT or formal budgets. The danger is that the budget for infrastructure, just like the training centres of old, is a reflection of learning past rather than learning future.