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E-learning Strategies E-learning Strategies How to get implementation and delivery right first time Don Morrison Copyright 2003 by Don Morrison Published in 2003 John Wiley & Sons Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone (+44) 1243 779777 Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): cs-books@wiley.co.uk Visit our Home Page on www.wileyeurope.com or www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to permreq@wiley.co.uk, or faxed to (+44) 1243 770620. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Other Wiley Editorial Offices John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741, USA Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Boschstr. 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 33 Park Road, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clementi Loop #02-01, Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809 John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd, 22 Worcester Road, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada M9W 1L1 Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morrison, Don. E-learning strategies : how to get implementation and delivery right first time / Don Morrison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-470-84922-3 (alk. paper) 1. Internet in education. 2. Employees— Training of — Computer-assisted instruction. I. Title. LB1044.87.M65 2003 658.3′124′02854678— dc21 2002192444 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-470-84922-3 Typeset in 10/12pt Garamond by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production. For ABB and NTD Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi Part I E-learning primer 1 1 Defining terms: Get comfortable with e-learning 3 2 The new learning landscape: E-learning is here to stay 41 3 ROI, metrics, and evaluation: How can we tell if we’re getting it right? 52 4 The e-learning cycle: Once is not enough 84 Part II Learning strategy 97 5 Business drivers: The real reasons for implementing E-learning 99 6 E-learning strategy: Dramatically improve your chance of success 112 Part III Implementation 135 7 The project team: Who you need ... what they do... 137 8 Infrastructure: Denial isn’t an option 150 9 Vendor relationships: Good partners help you learn and move fast 161 10 Learning management systems: The engines of e-learning 174 11 Testing: Mission-critical, not nice to have 202 Part IV Delivery 219 12 Multi-channel delivery: Leveraging the learning value chain 221 13 Learner support: Learning with the aid of a safety net 231 14 Developing curricula: Signposted paths to performance improvement 236 15 E-learning standards: Protecting investment and leveraging technology 243 viii Contents 16 Instructional design: Must try harder 253 17 The content development process: Managing e-learning’s payload 273 Part V Case Studies 301 18 PwC Consulting case study: Integrating learning and knowledge 303 19 BP case study: Embedding an e-learning capability 322 20 The Royal Bank of Scotland Group case study: Delivering in an immature market 336 21 The Dow Chemical Company case study: High commitment, High ROI, high volume 347 Part VI Future Directions 355 22 Future directions: Where e-learning is headed 357 Appendix 1 E-learning newsletters 364 Appendix 2 Online resources 367 Appendix 3 Glossary 374 Index 389 Acknowledgements I first want to thank Julia Collins who was a partner at PwC Consulting with global responsibility for Knowledge Management until the summer of 2002 when she decided it was time for a dramatic change in lifestyle. Without her very practical and effective support, there might not have been a book. I would also like to express my thanks to everyone who helped me develop the case studies. I had been sceptical about including e-learning case studies because those I’d come across previously had proved disappointing. In the end, the four case studies turned out to be some of the most interesting material to research and write. That was due to the generosity of Amy Wright, David Dockray and David Stirling at PWC Consulting, David Appleton at BP, David Buglass and Brian McLaren at The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, and Sonya Davis at The Dow Chemical Company. Other people at PwC Consulting were very supportive too — providing advice, feedback and miscellaneous contributions. My thanks to Frank Barczak, Ian Bird, Martin Black, Holger Heuss and Patrice Pope. I am also grateful to the following souls for their kind help: Andrew Abboud, PricewaterhouseCoopers; Clark Aldrich, SimuLearn; Virginia Barder; Chuck Barritt, Cisco Systems; Laurie Bassi, Human Capital Dynamics; Amy Corrigan, Technology Solutions Company; Rob Edmonds, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence; Bryan Eldridge, Sunset Learning; Alan Gabrel; Bill Lee, American Airlines; Victoria Macdonald, BMW of North America; Lindsay Mann, Click2Learn; Shiree Moreland, University of Notre Dame; Gabriel Morrison, Lee Newbold, PricewaterhouseCoopers; Harold Stolovitch, Harold Stolovitch Associates; Eilif Tronsden, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence; Alison Walker, BizMedia; Richard Winter, Winter Corporation. Many thanks — and grovelling apologies to anyone I’ve left out. Introduction ... people learn in order to achieve desired forms of participation in communities and activity, in order to affect positively their sense of their meaning in the world. People learn not just in order to do, but in order to become ... we stress the learners’ sense that they are contributing to the life and success of an enterprise that matters to them and to others, and that they in turn matter to that enterprise. A worker engaged in mindless or meaningless activity learns a good deal—about meaninglessness. Learning in and for Participation in Work and Society1 Show me the army with better trained soldiers and I will show you the victor of the battle. Sun Tzu In just a few days, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will publish the first tranche of material in its OpenCourseWare programme. The aim over the next 10 years is to make the university’s materials for nearly all its courses freely available on the Internet. OpenCourseWare is a such a remarkable undertaking that the university has admitted to being surprised at its own audacity. MIT’s programme is just one of many signs that the long-term success of e-learning is inevitable. The ability to deliver cost-effective, personalized, relevant, interactive learning whenever and wherever it is needed is simply too beneficial to teachers and learners alike not to succeed. The challenges for e-learning lie in the short and medium term: in the short term because enterprise learning departments are being tasked with making e-learning work effectively using what are still embryonic tools; in the medium term because all e-learning practitioners are struggling to develop a clear and imaginative vision that will give direction to their current efforts and mollify those making substantial investments in e-learning’s promises. This book is about meeting those challenges in a post dot-com reality and in the context of learning in the enterprise. Everyone has learning needs; no one has e-learning needs. That tells us e- learning is a solution not an end in itself. Implemented right, it can be a powerful way of meeting learning needs. It’s turned out that implementing e-learning successfully is harder than we at first thought. There are technology hurdles to get over, and e-learning creates significant change across the enterprise — if it doesn’t, there’s no point. As everyone knows, change is almost always uncomfortable. For xii Introduction No strategy, no implementationStrategy, no implementationImplemented, met all success criteria(temporary state)Implemented, met some success criteriaFigure 1— The e-learning continuum some time to come, anyone working on an e-learning project will be a pioneer but not an early pioneer. There have been enough implementation successes and failures for lessons to have been learned and best practices forged. You’ll find many of them in the pages of this book. They will help you get implementation and delivery right first time. It seems to me that there is an e-learning continuum and every enterprise finds itself at one of four key points on it (see Figure 1). The aim of this book is to provide strategic guidance for decision-makers, implementation teams and delivery teams at all four points. Since the dot-com crash, I don’t hear people talking about e-business. That doesn’t mean it’s gone away, just the opposite. The e-business lessons we learned about nimbleness and connectedness are applied routinely in every business that aims to stay in business. The same thing happened with e-learning. Even though many enterprises have moved into a comfort zone where the traditional learning delivery channel — face-to-face training in a classroom — is used alongside e- learning channels as a matter of policy, the lessons e-learning taught us have changed everything. The headline lessons are: • Learning should be driven by business requirements not training requirements. • The learner not the training department is at the centre of learning in the enterprise. When training met learning Expressions can be Trojan horses delivering radical messages hidden inside conspicuous ones. In the early 1960s, Avis Rent A Car launched an advertis- ing campaign with a tag line that is reckoned to be one of the 10 best ever: ‘‘We’re No. 2. We try harder.’’ By turning self-deprecation into a selling point, Introduction xiii Avis’s advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, resurrected an ailing car rental company. But the campaign secreted a message into the consumer’s conscious- ness — that Avis was the number two company in car rental. It wasn’t. The sleight of hand enabled Avis to leapfrog over a slew of competitors and wrest second place from the incumbent. ‘‘E-learning’’ was a Trojan horse too. While everyone focused on the ‘‘e’’, the hidden message — that training was being replaced by learning — slipped into our collective unconscious. So what is the difference between training and learning? In David Mamet’s film State and Main, a Hollywood film crew descends on a small town in Vermont. Joe White, the film within a film’s screenwriter, makes the acquaintance of Ann Black who runs the town’s bookstore and amateur theatrical group. Making conversation, Joe observes: ‘‘... small town. I suppose you have to make your own fun.’’ With homespun wisdom, Ann teaches the writer something about his own business: ‘‘Everybody makes their own fun. F’you don’t make it yourself, it ain’t fun, it’s entertainment.’’2 For me that exchange goes some way to explaining the difference between training and learning. Everybody makes their own learning. It’s a commitment we make to ourselves and our employers — to remain capable of consistent peak performance through a process of lifelong learning. If you don’t make it yourself, if you don’t have a role to play in the process, if you just sit back and consume what’s pushed at you, it ain’t learning, it’s training. The raw content of learning and training might be the same; everything else, as you’ll see, is different. What you need to know, what you need to do The head of the technology team on an internal e-learning project at Pricewa- terhouseCoopers would routinely interrupt meetings with the caution: ‘‘We’ve started talking about how. We should be talking about why.’’ He was right. But making strategic decisions about e-learning is tough. Skipping over the thinking and jumping straight into the doing is very attractive; it’s also dumb. In the course of implementation and delivery, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of questions you need to answer. Without sound strategies to guide the process, you might end with e-learning but chances are you won’t end up with an e-learning solution. To help you move towards the solution that’s right for your enterprise, I’ve designed most chapters in two parts: • What you need to know to answer the question Why? • What you need to do to answer the question How? Controversial topics Two of the most controversial topics in e-learning are return on investment (ROI) and instructional design (ISD). There is a wide range of opinion about xiv Introduction the most appropriate models for both and even a debate about whether either has a place in e-learning. Although ROI and ISD have nothing in common, they share a common cause for the controversy that surrounds them. Both practices are rooted in pre-Web, industrial models that struggle to stay relevant in the knowledge economy. At the same time, newer more appropriate models are struggling to establish themselves. The gap between old and new is characterized by a — possibly apocryphal — retort fired at a disgruntled investor by Intel’s chairman Andy Grove: ‘‘What’s my return on investment in e-commerce? Are you crazy? This is Columbus in the New World. What was his return on investment?’’ Chapter 3 tells you what you need to know and do about ROI; Chapter 16, about ISD. Clarifying terms When you’re new to a subject, it can be confusing if a number of expressions are used to mean the same thing. Let me clarify some common e-learning synonyms used here. Online learning and e-learning mean the same thing. Generic content, off- the-shelf content and third-party content all refer to the same thing: courses or learning objects that have been developed by content publishers for use in more than one enterprise. Custom content and bespoke content have equivalent meanings: courses or learning objects that have been developed to meet a specific business need in a specific enterprise. Custom content is always used in the USA; bespoke content is common in the UK. Self-paced learning and asynchronous learning both describe e-learning courses taken by learners on their own at a time of their choosing. Face-to-face learning, classroom learning and instructor- led learning are synonymous. Finally, live e-learning, synchronous learning and virtual classroom all mean the same thing. Depending on context, I refer to dollars ($) or pounds (£) when talking about money. Dollars always refers to US dollars; pounds, to British pounds. References and the Internet Much of the research I did was on the Internet. Wherever possible, I have provided a URL as part of references to online material. Unfortunately, the widespread adoption of Content Management Systems by content publishers — a good thing, by the way — means that URLs are getting both longer and more abstract which is fine for computer systems but unhelpful to us humans. I apologise for the unwieldiness of some URLs. I operated on the principle that you’d rather know than not know. There is a second shortcoming to online research. The ephemeral quality of the Internet means that some of the pages and documents I refer to will have been Introduction xv removed by the time you try to access them. All is not lost. Google, my idea of a great search engine, has responded to the Net’s constantly changing landscape by keeping a snapshot of every page it indexes. Even when the original page vanishes, there’s a copy in Google. To access the copy, just click on Cached near the end of a search hit. You’ll find Google at <http://www.google.com>. There is another place to search for pages that have been removed from Web sites: the Wayback Machine <http://www.archive.org>. Remarkably, 10 billion pages are stored in this Web archive. Maybe the page you’re looking for will be there. The Mission Statement for the Learning Organization As I’ve already indicated, implementing and delivering e-learning isn’t easy. Team morale is important, so I’ve tried to keep the substantial benefits of e-learning in focus throughout the book. If you keep sight of what you’re struggling towards, it helps — and on that note, I recommend The Mission Statement for the Learning Organization as an antidote to sagging spirits: ‘‘The world changes and we cannot stop it. Our products will change, our markets will change, our customers will change, and some of our employees will move on — we hope to greater things. But these things will not change. We will learn faster than our competitors, We will learn across our organization from each other, and from teams, We will learn externally from our suppliers and our customers, We will learn vertically from top to bottom of our organization, We will ask the right questions; and use action learning. We will anticipate the future and create scenarios to learn from it, We will practice what we learn, and learn from practice, We will learn faster than our environment changes, We will learn where no man or woman has learned before, Therefore we will survive and prosper.’’3 If you would like to share any insights about e-learning or to comment on anything you read here, e-mail me at: don.morrison@knowledgedonut.com References 1 Greeno JG Eckert P Stucky SU Sachs P and Wenger E (1999) Learning in and for Par- ticipation in Work and Society [Presentation] How Adults Learn Washington DC, 6–8 April 1998 [Internet] Available from <http://www.ed.gov/pubs/HowAdultsLearn/ Greeno.html> Accessed 12 Oct 2001. 2 Mamet D (2001) State and Main: The Shooting Script New York, Newmarket Press. 3 Fulmer R Gibbs P and Bernard Keys J (1998) The Second Generation Learning Orga- nizations: New Tools For Sustaining Competitive Advantage Organizational Dynamics Vol 27 No 2 pp 6–21. Part I E-learning primer 1 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning ... the promise of the Internet: • To center learning around the student instead of the classroom • To focus on the strengths and needs of individual learners • To make lifelong learning a practical reality Report of the Web-based Education Commission to the US President and Congress1 A digitally literate citizen will be able to: • communicate digitally; • choose, apply and keep up to date with digital tools; • search, process and use information in a discriminating and responsible manner; • learn and take responsibility for continuous, personal learning development and employability. European eLearning Summit 2 What you need to know E-learning is to training what e-business is to business. Using technology as an enabler and process as a framework, e-learning has the power to transform how employees and enterprises learn in the new economy where knowledge is prized and change is constant. With power comes the responsibility — placed on the enterprise and the employee — of creating a learning partnership. The enterprise needs to invest in its human capital by delivering high-quality learning experiences to employees through multiple channels. Employees need to engage with the learning that is provided with the aim of achieving a state of readiness to compete. If either partner ducks their responsibility, some learning might take place but no transformation. If e-learning is a response to the information age, we need to know something about what we are responding to. Dr Charles Reigeluth, Professor of Education at Indiana University and an authority on learning theory, provides what he describes as ‘‘key markers’’ to help us understand the environment in which e-learning needs to function (see Figure 1.1). What is interesting is how closely the characteristics of e-learning are aligned with Reigeluth’s key markers for the information age. 4 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning INDUSTRIAL AGE INFORMATION AGE Standardization Customization Adversarial relationships Cooperative relationships Autocratic decision making Shared decision making Compliance Initiative One-way communications Networking Conformity Diversity Compartmentalization Holism Parts-oriented Process-oriented Teacher as “King” Learner (customer) as “King” Centralized control Autonomy with accountability Figure 1.1— Key markers of the information age paradigm3 Towards a definition E-learning means different things to different people. It’s understandable. The telephone, television, even the book all mean different things to different people. There are dictionary definitions but we prefer to define these everyday media according to how we use them — and how we use them defines how we buy them. That’s important. How you use e-learning should define how you buy e-learning. Most definitions of e-learning you’ll encounter reflect agendas you might not share. A custom content developer talks about e-learning differently than a generic content publisher. A Learning Management System vendor influences prospective buyers to think about e-learning differently than the vendor of a content authoring tool. In the end, you need to develop your own understanding that reflects the needs of your business. For now it is important that you understand how the term e-learning is used in this book. Here is my definition: E-learning is the continuous assimilation of knowledge and skills by adults stimulated by synchronous and asynchronous learning events — and sometimes Knowledge Management outputs — which are authored, delivered, engaged with, supported, and administered using Internet technologies. Let’s focus on some of the key words and phrases in the definition. Stimulated 5 Adults E-learning in the enterprise, the main focus of this book, is almost always for the benefit of learners who have finished their formal education. They are adults who have become lifelong learners, some motivated by certification or compliance requirements but most by the desire to reach high performance levels — they want to be good at their jobs. ‘‘We are living in a world where what you earn is a function of what you can learn,’’ observed Bill Clinton and that resonates with adult learners.4 While much of what is covered in this book can be applied to e-learning in primary, secondary and higher education, it’s important to recognize that the characteristics of adult learners — their atti- tudes, expectations, life experiences, and goals — are not interchangeable with those of full-time students. The design of adult learning needs to reflect the differences. In his book The Modern Practice of Adult Education Malcolm S. Knowles, an influential professor of adult learning, appropriated the term andragogy to differentiate the principles of adult learning from those of pedagogy. For all their demographic diversity, Knowles held that all adult learners share these characteristics: • Adults need to know why they have to learn something. They want control and responsibility over their learning — and must believe it will deliver a personal benefit. • Adults need to learn experientially. They have had rich life experiences and want to bring them to their learning. • Adults approach learning as problem-solving. A practical solution-centric approach to learning works better for adults than a theoretical approach. • Adults learn best when content is of immediate value. Assimilation is facilitated when adults can put learning into practice soon. In 1970 Knowles anticipated e-learning with surprising accuracy: ‘‘We are nearing the end of the era of our edifice complex and its basic belief that respectable learning takes place only in buildings and on campuses. Adults are beginning to demand that their learning take place at a time, place, and pace convenient to them. In fact, I feel confident that most educational services by the end of this century (if not decade) will be delivered electronically ... Our great challenge now is to find ways to maintain the human touch as we learn to use the media in new ways.’’5 Stimulated I have used the word stimulated to keep the definition honest. Real learning, the assimilation of knowledge or skill, usually happens only when what has been ‘‘learned’’ is applied. That might be during an interactive exercise, simulation 6 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning or discussion that forms part of an e-learning event but it is just as likely to be in a real-world context after the learning event has ended. E-learning has a responsibility to stimulate the learner by providing explicit knowledge but the responsibility of transforming explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge — taking personal ownership of it — can only ever be the learner’s. Synchronous events A telephone conversation is a good example of a synchronous event. Both parties are present — remotely — and spontaneous interaction happens with no time delay. A video conference is another form of synchronous event. Synchronous learning is a learning event that takes place in real time, for example, a virtual class or peer-to-peer communication based on Instant Messaging technologies. In the virtual class there is real-time interaction between instructor and learners. The learner can interrupt the instructor to ask for clarification. The instructor can ask the virtual class if everyone understands a concept that has just been explained. Usually, synchronous learning happens at a fixed time. Like their physical counterparts, virtual classes are scheduled — so everyone knows when to ‘‘turn up’’. When synchronous learning is instructor-led, it is sometimes called distance learning which is defined as online learning that takes place without the instructor being physically present. Confusingly, for many years before the arrival of e- learning, the term distance learning was used to describe any training that was delivered using any media, for example, videotape, broadcast television, satellite, CBT and CD-ROM. Today, a number of terms have emerged to describe synchronous learning: live e-learning (LEL), virtual classrooms, real-time learning and real-time collaboration. Asynchronous A book is a good example of asynchronous communication. The reading process is time-independent of the writing process; a book can be read any time after it has been written. E-mail is asynchronous communication. The nature of e-mail technology means interactions between sender and receiver can never happen in real time — unlike Instant Messaging technology. Asynchronous learning takes place when the learner, not the author, wants it to. Usually, authors have no idea when their learning content is being used; learners engage with a self-paced e-learning course without any interaction with the author. The creative use of interactivity in a self-paced course can give the impression of a synchronous learning event but it is just an impression. Like the book, all content has been authored and locked down in advance of the learning event. Asynchronous learning is sometimes called distributed learning which is defined as online learning that takes place anywhere and any time it is needed. Knowledge Management (KM) 7 The flexibility of Internet technology creates grey areas around the notions of synchronous and asynchronous. While a virtual class starts life as synchronous learning, it can be ‘‘recorded’’ and ‘‘played back’’ at any time even by learners who were not ‘‘present’’ at the original event. The instructor and the learners who participated in the original class become the authors of an asynchronous learning event that can be viewed by other learners at a time and place of their choosing. Simulations are another interesting discussion point. In the past, what passed for e-learning simulations were no more than simulations of simulations — elaborately constructed exercises in branching that gave the learner the impression anything could happen when in reality all outcomes had been scripted in advance of the learning event. E-learning developers are starting to build authentic simulations based on rules engines and vast databases. These simulations contain an almost infinite number of variables. No one — not even the author — can predict all outcomes. Aircraft flight simulators are a classic example of genuine simulations. They happen in real time and the only constraints on the outcome of the crew’s actions are the engineering constraints of the aircraft itself. The question arises, are authentic e-learning simulations synchronous or asynchronous events? The answer comes in two parts. • They are synchronous in the sense that there are real-time spontaneous interactions that produce unscripted outcomes. • They are asynchronous is the sense that the ‘‘world’’ of the simulation — whether a potentially explosive boardroom meeting or a factory floor pro- cess — has been defined before the learner interacts with it. The learner cannot move outside the boundaries of that world. Knowledge Management (KM) In Smart Business Dr Jim Botkin offers a crisp high-level definition of Knowl- edge Management: ‘‘... the process of capturing, sharing, and leveraging a company’s collective expertise’’.6 That could pass for a high-level description of the e-learning cycle. (See Chapter 4 for more about e-learning cycles.) In fact, the overlap between e-learning and Knowledge Management is now widely recognized and smart enterprises are already in the process of inte- grating the two to better leverage learning resources and eliminate duplicate activities. (Chapter 18 provides a case study of just such an initiative.) (See Figure 1.2.) E-learning and Knowledge Management do the same thing in different ways. E-learning delivers processed knowledge — it takes subject matter expertise, puts it through an instructional design process and presents the result in an obvious framework. KM delivers raw or, at the very least, less processed knowledge. Nancy Dixon, organizational knowledge consultant and author of Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know, makes the same 8 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning Completely Integrated 25% No KM Strategy 10% Other 2% None/Limited 25% Early Phases 25% Enabler 13% Figure 1.2— What is e-learning’s role in your KM strategy?7 Reproduced by permission of Linkage, Inc point slightly differently when she talks about sanctioned and local knowledge: ‘‘Most knowledge sharing is done between peers, and the organizational ‘‘sanc- tion’’ for this kind of exchange, is an implicit recognition that local knowledge is important ... Local knowledge always competes with ‘‘sanctioned knowledge’’, i.e. knowledge that the organization has declared as valid. Sanctioned knowledge may come from outside the organization, or it may come from internal experts or task forces.’’8 A holistic view of learning would provide learners with access to both processed/sanctioned and raw/local knowledge. You can have a successful implementation of e-learning without KM which is why my definition isn’t absolute about its inclusion. Internet technologies Internet technologies — and protocols — are the enablers of e-learning. Self-paced e-learning courses are hosted on Web servers and always delivered in a Web browser though some browsers are so customized, they look like something else. Peer-to-peer collaboration through Instant Messaging is an example of e- learning delivered outside a Web browser but still using Internet technologies. To leverage the power of the network, e-learning support and administration should also be browser-based. Telephone support is usually delivered using conventional telephone systems but using Voice over IP technology, it could be browser-based. By contrast, most mainstream content authoring tools are desktop applications. Others define e-learning more loosely. I have seen definitions that include any learning delivered through any electronic media including CD-ROM, videotape, audio cassette, SMS text message, broadcast telephone message, and so on. These might all be effective channels for the delivery of learning but they are not e-learning any more than a fax — no matter how effective — is e-mail. Time-critical: the key differentiator 9 The e-learning industry Content, technology and services are the three key segments in the e-learning industry (see Figure 1.3). No single e-learning vendor provides a true end-to-end solution though many have formed alliances and partnerships with the aim of providing everything an enterprise needs through a single umbrella contract. For example, Docent, a Learning Management System vendor, has alliances with the big five business consultancies and more than 50 content publishers. Increasingly, e-learning vendors border-hop to provide offerings in more than one of the three segments. Large generic content publishers like SkillSoft and NetG offer Learning Management Systems and hosting services. (To learn more about e-learning vendors, see Chapter 9.) CONTENT Generic Course Providers Content Developers Simulation Developers Test/Assessment Services Content Aggregators Subject Matter Experts TECHNOLOGY Learning Management Systems Content Management Systems Collaboration Applications Virtual Classroom Applications Authoring Tools Plug Ins KM Systems SERVICES System Integrators Content Hosting/LMS ASPs Learner Support/Mentoring Streaming Media Authors/Hosts Learning Needs Assessors E-learning Consultants Knowledge/Data Providers E-LEARNING INDUSTRY Figure 1.3— E-learning industry sectors Time-critical: the key differentiator Human attention is our most valuable and scarce commodity. When our time is what we have to offer the world, we look at technology differently. We aren’t distracted by the sheer novelty of what it can do. We want to know how quickly it can help us get where we want to go, do what we need to do. Wayne Hodgins, Director of Worldwide Learning Strategies Autodesk Inc 9 When it comes down to it, learning is about one thing: the time-critical value of information. Tom Kelly, Vice-President of Worldwide Training Cisco Systems 10 10 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning For your business and your competitors, time is either a competitive asset or a competitive disadvantage. There’s no middle road. If your business makes decisions and implements them faster than your competitors, time is an asset; if you don’t, it isn’t. E-learning can help your business operate, as Bill Gates says, at the speed of thought. It’s that quality that sets e-learning apart from every other channel in your learning value chain. E-learning leverages time in four ways. Speed of delivery: E-learning can deliver content anywhere in the world as soon as possible — no other learning channel delivers faster. If your business needs just-in-time learning, your business needs e-learning. Efficiency of delivery: E-learning means that once delivery has been made, learning happens as fast as possible. E-learning reduces time to performance by about one-third. Today no employee has a surplus of time or attention; every task is in competition with every other task for a share of both. Because e-learning enables a learner to learn about three times faster or three times as much in the same time, downtime and opportunity costs are minimized.11 Continuous delivery: Because it is available whenever and wherever the learner needs it, e-learning overcomes the barriers associated with time zones. Availability is critical for enterprises that work across continents and time zones and need to keep their employees’ learning harmonized. Dynamic delivery: No other learning channel is as responsive to the dynamics of e-business as e-learning. Whether your learner base is local, regional or global, e-learning delivers the shortest lead times for updating and publishing. Design your e-learning application right and change that originates in the board room can be communicated to a global learner based in hours — day after day. By leveraging asynchronous and synchronous learning as well as collaborative tools, e-learning is able to support both an established curriculum and ad hoc responses to those events no amount of business planning can forecast. No other learning channel provides this degree of flexibility. Cisco Systems delivers both ‘‘structured learning’’ and what it calls ‘‘emergency learning’’. The emergency doesn’t need to be at enterprise level — if one employee feels under-prepared for an important meeting, that’s an emergency and one that can be quelled with an ad hoc e-learning session. All the employee needs is a computer and access to the intranet. The elements of e-learning Looking at the e-learning experience from the learner’s point of view, e-learning appears as combinations of the following elements: • Logon process • Registration process The elements of e-learning 11 • Personal profile • Competency and skills assessments • Course catalogues • Course enrolment processes • Pre-defined learning paths • Personal learning path • Customizable home page • Online courses — custom built or bought off-the-shelf, usually containing some combination of these elements: • Pre-assessment • Text • Graphics, photographs • Streaming animations, audio, video • Simulations • Interactive exercises • Online and downloadable tools • Quizzes • Bookmarks • Online notepads • Post-assessment • Feedback forms • Downloadable courses or course elements • Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) • Moderated message boards (formal peer-to-peer communication) • Peer-to-peer message boards (informal peer-to-peer communication) • Peer-to-peer Instant Messaging (informal peer-to-peer communication) • Virtual classrooms — live and archived • Online mentoring • Other collaborative applications, e.g. Lotus Anytime, Webex, Groove • Web casts — live and archived • Links to public or subscription Web sites • Access to proprietary or third-party Knowledge Management databases • Online help files • Online help desks • Telephone help desks From the enterprise’s point of view, you need to decide which of these elements your learners need and whether to buy or build them. In addition, there are elements which the learner does not see but which are essential from the enterprise perspective. They include: • Activity tracking mechanisms • Reporting tools • Certification processes 12 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning • Course catalogue management tools • Competencies and skills profiles database • Links to HR and other enterprise-wide applications • Classroom resource management tools • Localization tools • Content authoring tools E-learning content All e-learning content has three dimensions: • subject matter — the content of content • focus — an indicator of the breadth of the learner base • intention — how the learning is intended to affect learners Subject matter At first, e-learning subject matter was dominated by technology. In 2000, accord- ing to IDC (International Data Corporation), IT subject matter accounted for 72% of content demand worldwide.12 That shouldn’t come as a surprise. First, there is harmony between form and content — you’re using technology to learn technology. Secondly, you can assume that learners who need to learn about technology will know how to use it well enough to take advantage of e-learning. Thirdly, it’s easier to develop learning content about hard skills than soft — and technology learning is based on hard skills. The dominance of technology-based subject matter won’t last; enterprises have too many other important learning needs. The amount of technology learning will grow but its proportion of all e-learning will fall. IDC predicts that by 2004 non-IT content will account for over 54% of worldwide revenues.13 Typical non-IT e-learning subject matter includes: • business skills • communication and interpersonal skills • customer service • executive development • financial skills • management skills • sales and marketing skills • team work There is a bias against using e-learning for soft skills, based on the perceived difficulty of (1) handling soft content and (2) influencing learners’ behaviours. It is more difficult to handle soft content than hard content but providing you can E-learning content 13 bring creativity, humanity and technological innovation to the design process, it is very possible. As the technology becomes more powerful and interfaces richer, I believe that we will see increasingly more soft skills content in e-learning, for example, in the form of simulations. Focus The focus of e-learning content extends from low to high. The lower the focus, the larger the potential learner base; the higher the focus, the smaller the learner bases. Focus can be expressed under four content headings: • generic — low focus • sector-specific — medium focus • legislation-specific — medium focus • business-specific — high focus There is a hierarchy of content sources that reflects both the cost of acquisition and the value to an enterprise in terms of performance improvement. The most valuable content is business-specific; next comes industry- or sector-specific content, and then generic content. Generic Generic content can be used across a number of industries. Typical generic content includes courses about how to use Microsoft Office applications or courses about soft skills like team leadership and how to conduct a job interview. Generic content is relatively inexpensive and can be made available very quickly. However, because it does not touch on core knowledge and skills, its impact on an enterprise’s performance is limited. Thousands of generic e-learning courses are available from content publishers like SkillSoft and NetG. Sector-specific Industry- or sector-specific content is sourced from knowledge that is common to an industry or sector. It can be sourced from within the enterprise and from industry-wide databases where these exist. It can be bought from third-party information vendors, for example, Gartner focuses on a number of specific markets including telecommunications, healthcare and government. Where a sector is large enough or in sectors that are learning-intensive, third-party publishers will recognize a market and develop e-learning courses designed to meet sector-specific needs. Financial services and telecommunications are examples of sectors well served by sector-specific content. For example, DigitalThink offers a series of courses developed with the American Bankers Association and aimed at the financial services sector. 14 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning Legislation-specific There are areas of learning that are driven by legislation, whether at regional, national or, in the case of Europe, EU level. Learning content about health and safety issues, for example, tends to be driven by legislation. Most countries have data protection laws that impact on daily business. Employment law is another important area that will require legislation-specific learning content. Here again, content publishers will recognize a market and develop e-learning content that reflects local legislation. Business-specific Most enterprises have learning needs that cannot be met with content pub- lished by third parties. Areas where there are specific learning needs include corporate culture, proprietary processes or technologies, and intellectual prop- erty owned or developed by the enterprise. Usually, learning in these critical areas will be the most important learning the enterprise does. It is also in these areas where enterprises will be prepared to invest in the development of custom e-learning content, drawing on their own subject matter experts as a source of knowledge. The process of content development makes tacit knowledge explicit and accessible across the enterprise. This does not mean that the whole process of developing business-specific content needs to take place in-house. The experience and skills of external content designers and developers should be leveraged. It does mean that the enterprise has to initiate development and provide the raw content, simply because it is not available anywhere else. Intention The intention of e-learning content should be determined by an up-front per- formance gap analysis designed to answer the question, why aren’t employees performing at required levels? The answer will point to one or more intentions. Information: If the performance gap is the result of a lack of information, the intention is to tell learners what they don’t know. That might be details of a new business strategy emanating from the board room, the features and prices of a new product range, or updates about how a newly acquired business will be integrated with the parent company. Learning information uses the learner’s cognitive skills. Process: Process builds on information by turning it into action. The reason employees aren’t performing the way they’re expected to is because they don’t know how to do something. It could be something as simple as raising a purchase order, or something as complex as managing a global project. Some processes are strictly cognitive — filling in an expenses claim; others have a Build e-learning around the learner 15 psychomotor aspect — giving a patient an injection. E-learning excels at delivering and assessing the cognitive aspect of a process — understanding the correct sequence of events, the functions of different controls, the settings to use under different circumstances, but most people assume that it has little to offer for psychomotor aspects. That’s not true — providing designers are prepared to move beyond the keyboard and mouse as input devices. One of the most interesting applications of technology-based learning I have ever seen was developed in the 1980s for the College of Aeronautics at La Guardia Airport. As part of its aircraft maintenance courses, the college taught oxyacetylene welding. It’s a complex, hard to master skill; it’s also dangerous and dirty. Traditional training proved expensive and took too long. The solution, developed by David Hon’s Ixion Inc, was based on synthetic reality and tactile interfaces. Briefly, a touch-screen PC monitor was set facing up — the screen acting like the top of a work bench. Two photo-realistic metal plates were displayed on the monitor screen; the learner’s task was to weld them together. The learner worked with a real welding rod and an authentic mechanically-simulated torch. The skills and knowledge of experienced welders were built into the system’s responses, so the appearance and quality of the weld developing on the screen accurately reflected the skill with which the learner manipulated the torch. Because a typical learner was unlikely to be either computer- or text-literate, no computing or reading skills were required to use the system. The approach also had the advantage of integrating feedback and evaluation with content; you don’t need a text or spoken message to tell you that you’ve moved the torch too slowly, you can see a puddle form on the screen. Video was used to display the weld; today we might use real-time graphics. The point is, it is possible to realize this type of psychomotor simulation using e-learning technology. All it takes is imagination and inventive implementation. Behavioural/Attitudinal: Here employees are performing below requirements, not because they don’t know something or how to do something but because they are not behaving the way they should. This situation often arises during periods of change. A new process or tool has been introduced; employees have learned how to use it but choose not to. It can arise with corporate culture; employees know from their induction learning that they should back up their data regularly yet they choose not to. In other cases, employees in a call centre might not know the best behaviours to use with customers who complain, or the best behaviours for maximizing cross-selling. Used creatively, e-learning has the power to persuade; it can change behaviours. It can also provide learners with a safe area where they can try out new behaviours. Build e-learning around the learner Adoption is a land mine on the road to e-learning. Other higher profile challenges you can see a mile off: management support, project management, infrastructure, 16 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning security, vendor selection, system integration. When you’ve dealt successfully with all those — and are beginning to feel invincible — adoption will be waiting, ready to undermine everything you’ve accomplished. For e-learning to succeed, employees need to use what you’ve built; more than use, they have to adopt it as a new way of working that is capable of creating a fundamental shift in learning. So what can you do to defuse the adoption land mine? The single most effective action you can take is to think of your learners as customers, to look at everything you build from their perspective. Is your e-learning offering ergonomic, in other words, is it easy to use? Does it make effective use of learners’ time? Does it deliver what they need when they need it? Does it look attractive and feel comfortable? Successful adoption hinges on the answers to those questions. There’s a distinction to be made here. Your learners are your only customers but they are not your only stakeholders. Build an e-learning application that delights management but no one uses and you fail management and the learner. Build an e-learning application that delights the learner but does not meet the needs of management and you just plain miss the point. Like any business, the needs of customers and other stakeholders need to be met. Building e-learning around the learner — that is, having a learner-centric approach to e-learning — is a recurring theme in this book and a critical suc- cess factor for your implementation. While learner-centric learning has become a commonplace aspiration for e-learning practitioners, its roots lie elsewhere. Some understanding of the development of learner-centric learning might provide an insight into what it is and how to build it into your e-learning initiative. It begins with the American psychotherapist Carl Rogers who as early as 1940 was develop- ing the concept of ‘‘non-directive counselling’’ for individual and group therapy. Later, Rogers began to call his work ‘‘client-centred therapy’’ to emphasize that it was clients who were at the centre of the process not techniques or methods. Fifty years ago Rogers encapsulated his thinking about a client-centric approach in an if–then statement that can readily be applied to e-learning: If the individual or group is faced by a problem; If a catalyst-leader provides a permissive atmosphere; If responsibility is genuinely placed with the individual or group; If there is basic respect for the capacity of the individual or group; Then, responsible and adequate analysis of the problem is made; responsible self-direction occurs; the creativity, productivity, quality of product exhibited are superior to results of other comparable methods; individual and group morale and confidence develop.14 Client-centred therapy proved a dramatic success. A university professor as well as a practising therapist, Rogers wondered if the principles underlying client-centric therapy could be transplanted to the university classroom. It turned out they could and ‘‘learner-centric learning’’ enjoyed notable success. In the The learning value chain 17 1980s Rogers moved his humanistic people-centred approach again — this time to primary and secondary schools as ‘‘child-centred education’’. In the learning environment, Rogers’ goal was ‘‘significant learning’’; this is how he described it: ‘‘It has a quality of personal involvement— the whole person in both feeling and cognitive aspects being in the learning event. It is self-initiated. Even when the impetus or stimulus comes from the outside, the sense of discovery, of reaching out, of grasping and comprehending, comes from within. It is pervasive. It makes a difference in the behavior, the attitudes, perhaps even the personality of the learner. It is evaluated by the learner. She knows whether it is meeting her need, whether it leads toward what she wants to know, whether it illuminates the dark area of ignorance she is experiencing.’’15 Significant learning is what e-learning strives to deliver. On p. 28 we look at how to apply Rogers’ vision as learner-centred e-learning. The learning value chain There is an often-expressed fear that technology will replace teachers. I can say emphatically and unequivocally, IT WON’T. The information highway won’t replace or devalue any of the human educational talent needed for the challenges ahead ... However, technology will be pivotal in the future role of teachers. Bill Gates16 There has been a shift from e-learning as a pure e-learning solution to what people call blended learning, that is, using a range of Internet-based and traditional media — in the broadest sense — to deliver learning. In practice, the blend often turns out be traditional instructor-led classes alongside synchronous and asynchronous e-learning. While the expression blended learning has become established, many people I know dislike it. I find it more helpful to talk about an enterprise’s learning value chain — of which e-learning is a part. A value chain can be described as a group of activities whose output is a product or a service delivered to a customer. It isn’t far-fetched to think about learning as a service delivered by an enterprise to employees, partners, suppliers, sales channels and customers. In this context, learning can be seen as a private vertical e-market place, in other words, a value chain (see Figure 1.4). It’s fair to ask why we’re having a discussion about instructor-led classes in a book about e-learning. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Trace Urdan and Cornelia Weggen were warning us that ‘‘... live classroom-based training is becoming too costly and cumbersome. Even if employees had the time to attend all the courses and seminars and to read all the books and reports they should to remain up-to-date in their area of work, the cost of such learning would be prohibitive. The need to transform how organizations learn points to a more modern, efficient, and flexible alternative: e-learning. The mission of corporate e-learning is to supply the workforce with an up-to-date and cost- effective program that yields motivated, skilled, and loyal knowledge workers.’’17 What happened to flip the enterprise’s view of the classroom from expensive and 18 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning BUYERS SELLERS Employees Partners Customers Suppliers Sales Channels TRADITIONAL LEARNING Classroom Workshops E-LEARNING Courses, Simulations, E-Collaboration, EPSS, Peer-2-Peer, Web casts, E-Mail, Virtual Classes, E-Mentoring OTHER LEARNING Knowledge Management Service Vendors Goods Vendors Unique Value Proposition LEARNING COMMUNITY Figure 1.4— Enterprise learning value chain inflexible to essential? I believe two different influences account for the adoption of blended learning. The first is a very human influence: fear. Buoyed with the enthusiasm of the dot-com boom, some enterprises latched on to e-learning the way a child might climb a tree. It’s a great adventure until the child feels the branches get flimsier — and looks down. ‘‘Oops. How did I get here?’’ A retreat to firmer footing follows. I think that some early adopters of e-learning have asked the same question — how did I get here? — and, in their efforts to get comfortable, have either reversed their move away from the classroom or slowed it down. We also need to acknowledge that e-learning has turned out to be more revolutionary in its impact and, it follows, harder to implement successfully than it first appeared. In taking a sideways step to blended learning, in restoring the role of the classroom, some enterprises have been giving themselves — and their learners — the chance to catch their breath in the race to transformation. E-learning author and IBM consultant Margaret Driscoll puts the case this way: ‘‘Blended learning allows organizations to gradually move learners from traditional classrooms to e-learning in small steps making change easier to accept. Working in a blended environment enabled instructors and instructional designers to develop the skills needed for e-learning in small increments. Training professionals can move small sections online as they develop the needed e- learning skills.’’18 While Driscoll puts a positive spin on blended learning, my concern is that it lacks the transformational power of e-learning, satisfying itself The learning value chain 19 with incremental change instead. Yes, blended learning provides an opportunity to re-evaluate work to date in e-learning and to reflect on the knowledge that the revolution might be more difficult than anyone thought. Is that enough, I wonder, to convince leadership that something fundamentally different is going on in learning? If it isn’t, leadership’s impatience with incremental change in a dynamic business environment will be understandable. The second influence behind the adoption of blended learning is highly practical: people believe it works. I’m dragging my feet here because it’s early days yet; by mid-2002 only one survey provided evidence of its effectiveness. That survey needs to be seen in the context of literally hundreds of other surveys elegantly if conservatively summarized by Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley, both with a deep understanding and experience of distance learning: ‘‘Comparing the achievement of learners (as measured by grades, test scores, retention, job performance) who are taught at a distance and those taught in face-to-face classes is a line of research going back more than 50 years. The usual finding in these comparison studies is that there are no significant differences between learning in the two different environments, regardless of the nature of the content, the educational level of the students, or the media involved ... [it is] reasonable to conclude (1) there is sufficient evidence to support the idea that classroom instruction is the optimum delivery method; (2) instruction at a distance can be as effective in bringing about learning as classroom instruction; (3) the absence of face-to-face contact is not in itself detrimental to the learning process; and (4) what makes any course good or poor is a consequence of how well it is designed, delivered, and conducted, not whether the students are face-to-face or at a distance.’’19 In fact, there is a second significant body of research that demonstrates that e-learning is not only as effective but more effective than classroom learning — see Chapter 2 for a fuller discussion of whether e-learning works. Based on what we know, it’s easy to assume that blended learning will prove as least as effective as pure e-learning. NETg, an e-learning content and services vendor, wanted more than assumptions; the company wanted to know: • How learners would perform using a new blended learning model. • What the ideal blended learning model should look like. • How much performance improvement, if any, would occur as a result of moving from e-learning to blended learning. To find out NetG ran an experimental study called Job Impact Study: Measuring Competitive Advantage.20 Organizations who participated included Lockheed- Martin, National Cash Register, Utah State University, University of Limerick in Ireland, Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Minnesota and Executive Service Corp. The study looked at three groups, each learning to use Microsoft Excel: • An e-learning group that utilized off-the-shelf NetG learning objects sup- ported — following the NetG e-learning model — by access to live mentoring. 20 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning • A blended learning group whose learning included a distinguishing fea- ture — scenario-based exercises (SBEs) designed to provide a real-world context in which to learn. • A control group who received no learning. The performance of the groups on real-world tasks was compared. The blended learning performed with 30% more accuracy than the e-learning group and 159% more accuracy than the control group. In turn, the e-learning group performed 99% more accurately than the control group. The presence of David Merrill, a Professor at Utah State University and leading instructional design authority, as Principal External Investigator lends weight to the study. That said, I have reservations about the outcomes based on at least one critical difference between the e-learning and blended learning designs. That difference, in my opinion, was arbitrary; if I’m right the study was not comparing like with like. By the way, this is the most common criticism of studies that compare distance and face-to-face learning. The SBEs taken by the blended learning group provided learners with access to the full Excel application; this turned out to be an important success factor in making the scenarios ‘‘real’’ and gave the group an edge in the subsequent real-world tasks. The availability of the full application is not an inherent differentiator. If scenario-based exercises worked for blended learning, the lesson to draw is not that blended learning is better but that the design of e-learning should be changed to include the same exercises. There is no reason why e-learning cannot adopt an EPSS (electronic performance support system) design that integrates learning with the full application. E-learning for adults needs to authentic, solution-centred, relevant and inte- grated with the learner’s work. Without those qualities — and others — e-learning and blended learning are bound to fail. (For more about the qualities of e- learning, see p. 29.) The study appears to set higher design standards for blended learning than for e-learning and then to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that higher standards result in higher performance levels. There are circumstances when sandwiching a classroom event with e-learning has advantages. Here’s a straightforward example. Learner feedback on instructor- led courses often reveals an impatience to get to the heart of the matter. ‘‘It got interesting on the third day,’’ is a typical comment. The instructor on the other hand feels obliged to set the scene so everyone in the room is on a level playing field. A blended learning solution can meet everyone’s needs by prerequiring all learners to assimilate the introductory material through e-learning. Those who already know the material can gallop through it, those who don’t can canter or walk. From the start of the first classroom session, the instructor can assume with confidence that all learners are ready for the interesting stuff. Following up the classroom event with online exercises, evaluations and collaborations can help embed the learning. This is exactly the approach taken by IBM in its Basic Blue programme taken by 5000 managers each year. Twenty-six weeks of self-paced How far has e-learning come? 21 e-learning culminates in a 5-day instructor-led session; if managers feel the need, they can follow up the face-to-face event with online peer-to-peer collaboration. (To learn more about Basic Blue, see p. 65.) There is no such thing as a shrink-wrapped solution to e-learning. If a blended solution meets your business requirements, use it. However, in the long run, I believe it will turn out to be a small levelling off in an unstoppable upward curve. The blend will shift from classroom and e-learning to synchronous and asynchronous e-learning. How far has e-learning come? To understand how far e-learning has come first you need to understand that it is a moving target. E-learning is a collection of technologies, products, services and processes — all in a state of constant evolution hurried along by the forces of competition. While some aspects of e-learning — like Learning Management Systems — display maturity and stability, the leading edge — simulations, for example — remains steadfastly on the move. That’s not going to change; it’s symptomatic of today’s technology based markets. What’s important is that you no longer have to invest in Version 1.0 of a product — unless you want to; many LMSs have already reached Version 5 or 6 and display the stability you’d expect from a mature application. On the other hand, if you’re a visionary and want to work with companies at the leading edge, there are new products and services designed to capture your imagination (see Figure 1.5). One important indicator of how far e-learning has come is the number of success stories out there — in many sectors, on many scales, with many configurations, and meeting many business needs. Implemented correctly, e- learning works; if it’s not working, you’re not doing it right. As playwright David Mamet is fond of saying, ‘‘Just because you’re lost, don’t think your compass is broken.’’ Industries whose learning demand is high and constant — for example, those bound by compliance requirements or legislation — have been quick to realize the benefits of e-learning. (See the case study of the Dow Chemical Company in Chapter 21.) Financial services, aerospace and automotive are sectors where e-learning has enjoyed wide and successful adoption for other reasons. Because there are real success stories to point to, the hype surrounding e-learning has diminished but not disappeared. The better informed the buyer, the better they will be able to make the critical distinction between a vendor’s aspirations and a vendor’s products. E-learning standards is an area where there has been steady progress. The US Department of Defense’s Advanced Distributed Learning initiative has successfully focused the efforts of all e-learning standards bodies on a single integrated model. Even though the publication of a full set of internationally agreed standards is still a while off, the future evolution of draft standards is well signposted and that is already protecting investments in e-learning. So far, development work has been on standards for asynchronous self-paced courses built from learning 22 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning Learning-Object Exchanges Wireless Delivey and Management Learning-Object/LCMS Platforms Hosted E-learning Enterprise LMS Synchronous Platforms Training-Management Software Content Libraries CD-Rom Media Videodisc Media Stand-Alone Software Client–Server Networks Internet/ Intranets Wireless Connectivity Game-/ Simulation- Authoring Tools Peer-to-Peer Platforms Integrated Content/LMSs Competence-Management Tools Streaming Media Collaboration Tools Assessment Tools Web-Based Training Content CD-ROM−Based Simulation Market Growth 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 LCMS = Learning-content−management systems; LMS = learning-management systems; CD-ROM = compact-disc read-only memory. PC-Based Training Figure 1.5— Technology evolution in e-learning21 Reproduced by permission of SRI Consulting Business Intelligence objects; ahead lies the dual challenge of developing compatible standards for synchronous e-learning and simulations. Is there a downside? If you’re determined to implement e-learning successfully be prepared to (1) work hard, and (2) climb a steep learning curve. A successful implementation also hinges on making the right judgements about a number of key business considerations. The best way to do that is to make the development of rig- orously thought out e-learning strategy your first priority. Be prepared to invest serious time and energy in that project. (See Chapter 6 for more about develop- ing a strategy.) Here are some up-front considerations that some people might consider downsides but which I believe a good strategy can eliminate or mitigate. Cost While you can expect e-learning to deliver an attractive return on investment, start-up costs for an enterprise-wide implementation are significant, and so is the Is there a downside? 23 cost of developing custom content. Large enterprises need the full support of leadership to get sign-off on the budget and, as importantly, to protect it during implementation. Smaller businesses with learner bases of less than 2500 might have to manage ROI expectations or take a longer-term view of payback. Cost issues can be mitigated, for example, by a phased implementation, using a hosted e-learning application instead of building one inside the firewall, developing a curriculum based on generic content with only a limited number of essential custom-built courses. By taking just such an approach, BMW North America have developed a very successful e-learning initiative for a learner base of less than 1200 spread across 15 locations. Costs were controlled with a phased implementation initially based around Thinq’s hosted LMS and generic courses. Later, virtual classroom and collaboration functionality were added using a Centra hosted solution. Integration Integration is about making (1) e-learning applications work together, for example, an LMS and a synchronous collaborative application, and (2) e-learning applications work with other applications, for example, an LMS and an HR application like PeopleSoft. If integration is planned for and thought through in detail, it can be straightforward; if it’s an afterthought, chances are there will be a price to pay in time, money and frustration. The devil is in the detail. While a vendor might tell you that a specific version of their application integrates easily with a specific version of another application, some enterprises learn too late that there is no guarantee any versions of the two applications can be integrated. Vendors themselves might not realize that the latest version of their application won’t integrate in circumstances where earlier versions did. Don’t be a pioneer when it comes to integration. Get all the details on the table in advance and mitigate risk with careful planning. The elusive end-to-end solution Most observers expected at least one enterprise level software vendor to deliver a world class end-to-end e-learning solution that would dominate the market. Companies like Cisco, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, SAP and Sun have all demonstrated a commitment to e-learning but so far expectations of a killer e-learning solution have not been met. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that so far it hasn’t. The absence of a dominant e-learning vendor disadvantages the e-learning industry and means that even the largest enterprises have to work with a network of small vendors to build the solution they need. It’s a fact of life that large enterprises like to do business with other large enterprises — with good reason. Someone with responsibility for e-learning in a Fortune 500 company recently told me he was uneasy with records representing millions of hours of compliance learning being committed to a system developed by a vendor with a total head 24 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning count of 35. The absence of a dominant vendor also means that no one has had the market clout to enforce de facto e-learning standards for the industry to rally round. These kinds of issues are not unique to e-learning and most enterprises have the project management skills to integrate the products and services of a number of software vendors. The absence of an end-to-end solution might inhibit the adoption of e-learning but it shouldn’t prevent it. Supply-driven market So, if you want to sell to me, come into my office with a demonstrated solution to a problem I’ve got ... That means you’ve got to understand my business, how I make my money and what my problems are. Roger Krone, Vice-President and General Manager, Boeing Rotorcraf 22 Historically e-learning has been a supply-driven rather than needs-driven market. It is vendors who have shaped the market and its offerings. It’s not hard to understand how this happened. In a new market, vendors had two goals — to stimulate the market, then educate buyers. On the not unreasonable assumption that potential customers don’t know what they don’t know, vendors told them. After all, none of us knew we wanted portable music players until Sony told us we wanted Walkmans. Unfortunately, telling the market what it needs is a tough habit to break and vendors kept at it when they should have started listening to what their customers needed. This shortcoming led to the view that e-learning was a solution in search of a problem. Customers found themselves choosing from a menu of products none of which really met their needs. Because they weren’t listening carefully, vendors also tended to over-promise and under-deliver. They under-delivered usually not through any lack of willingness but when they got closer to their customer’s business requirements they discovered too late what they should have known much earlier — the challenge was tougher than it looked. As the level of understanding about e-learning increases, the market has begun to talk less and listen more. At the same time, potential customers have learned to ask tougher questions. The table has been turned; customers have begun to educate their vendors — and that points to a market better able to deliver the right learning solutions to real business needs. Content: quantity and expediency versus quality ... dull content—no matter how it is delivered— is not an effective way to teach people. Fortune Magazine23 Enterprises making a commitment to e-learning face the challenge of developing a full online curriculum in a short period of time. The typical response is to turn to the large generic content publishers and license hundreds of courses with a Is there a downside? 25 single purchase order. A mono diet of generic content might not be the best way to capture the imagination, attention and loyalty of learners during an e-learning launch. It’s not just off-the-shelf content that can leave learners with an appetite for more. Too much custom content turns out to be dull — exercises in reading from a screen with no attempt to exploit the possibilities for interaction that e-learning offers. ‘‘What are the major challenges to e-learning use?’’ e-learning Magazine asked in a User Survey. ‘‘Lack of interaction’’ said 39% of respondents.24 There are so many issues to manage in the course of an e-learning implemen- tation — infrastructure, standards, integration, interface design, browser versions, plug-ins, etc — that too often the notion of a quality audit for content becomes lost. All content is not created equal. One content provider or developer is not as good as the next. One course is not as good as the next. The quality of content cannot be sacrificed as a matter of routine to the conflicting demands of speed and cost. There will always be exigencies that demand speed of delivery above all else — the ability to expedite lies at the heart of the e-learning offer- ing — however, enterprises also need continuously to exercise discrimination about the content they deliver to their learners or accept the consequences as reflected in e-learning Magazine’s survey. Canada’s Committee on Broadcasting began its 1965 Report with these words: ‘‘The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping.’’25 E-learning could engage learners more effectively and earn their loyalty more readily by adopting as unequivocal a position about content. Skills E-learning is no different from any other area where expertise is required — the best people are in great demand. E-learning is different from some other areas because it is still a relatively new discipline and there are only a limited number of people with skills and experience. Some technology-based skills can be ported from other areas with a minimum of adjustment, for example, graphics designers, developers, system architects, system integrators and programmers, typically with experience in Visual Basic, Java, JavaScript, C and Perl. Finding good people with experience in developing and executing e-learning strategies is much harder; so is finding instructional designers with experience in e-learning. Most enterprises will have to look externally in order to recruit a project team with the set of skills required to deliver and operate a full implementation. (More about building a project team in Chapter 7.) Infrastructure Inevitably, e-learning adds traffic to the corporate infrastructure. The greater the adoption of e-learning, the greater the load it imposes. Even when the e-learning application and content are hosted externally, learners will add to traffic levels inside the firewall. One of the most important lessons of past implementations is to get the enterprise IT department actively involved in any e-learning initiative 26 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning from day one. It’s the only way to evaluate and mitigate potential risks to the infrastructure. What you need to do Turn push into pull What does turning push into pull mean and why do it? It is about the devolution of training from a centralized to a distributed model. Historically, the training model has been based on a centralized repository of knowledge from which trainers pushed out courses to trainees on both a need-to-know and just-in- case basis. Courses didn’t have to be pushed very far — trainees travelled to classrooms located in a centralized training facility. Everyone in the classroom was treated as co-equal — the same content was covered in the same time frame even though some trainees struggled to keep up while others two seats away fidgeted in boredom. Just-in-case training was driven by conformity and meant the enterprise made a high-risk investment in learning that might never pay off while at the same time incurring substantial opportunity costs. Look back at Reigeluth’s key markers for the Industrial Age in Figure 1.1. They are synonymous with the push model of training. In the Information Age where change is constant, where knowledge is in flux, where employees change jobs regularly, where technology offers a more customized approach to learning, the push model is no longer appropriate. It’s wrong to suggest that no one ever learned anything in the classroom. There were many rich learning experiences; there still are. However, what the centralized classroom can’t deliver is fast changing skills and knowledge to everyone in the enterprise. The need for learning will only increase and the classroom doesn’t scale well. E-learning provides the opportunity to change the model from push to pull. Instead of the learning department, place the learner with her shifting learning needs and shrinking lead times at the centre. Give her the responsibility for her own performance. Let the learner draw on the enterprise learning value chain to pull in the content she needs when she needs it and using the channel that suits her (see Figure 1.7). Think of the push model at one end of a learning continuum and pull at the other. Leverage the power and flexibility of e-learning to move your business along the continuum from a hierarchical state characterized by training attendance to a participatory state characterized by learning engagement (see Figure 1.8). The transformation from push to pull shifts both costs and responsibility from enterprise to employee. Savings in travel and instructors’ salaries are really made by employees who agree to instruct themselves at their own desks. Neither the cost nor the responsibility go away, they just move. No enterprise can expect employees to take up their new learning responsibilities unless and until the Turn push into pull 27 Centralized Training Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner Learner PUSH PUSHPUSH PUSHPU SH PUSH PUSHPUS H PUSHPUSH Figure 1.6— Push model of training Web cast Self- paced Course Public Internet KM Database Virtual Class Tools Down- load Skills Assess- ment Online Mentor Peer to Peer 3rd Party Data PULL PULLPULL PULLPU LL PULL PULLPU LL PULLPULL Classroom PULLLearner Figure 1.7— Pull model of learning 28 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning ENGAGED ATTEND PULL Just enough Just in time PUSH Just in case Just too late TRAINING Centralized LEARNING Learner-centric TRANSFORMATIONFigure 1.8— Push model to pull model leadership give a clear signal that the model has changed, so it’s essential that the transformation is supported by an effective communications programme that begins early enough to allow employees time to adjust their behaviours. Like any change programme, the clarity of leadership’s signal needs to be reflected by real change at all levels of management. For example, there is no point signalling a transformation in learning if line managers don’t allow employees an opportunity to carry out their new responsibilities. In practice, that means allowing them the time to learn in the workplace. A surprising number of e-learning initiatives have stalled and even failed because this didn’t happen. Line managers also need to reward employees for taking on the new responsibility. If employees do not see a personal benefit, they will shift cost and responsibility back to the enterprise by turning their backs on e-learning. Enabling the pull model of learning is more than implementing the technology that supports it — that’s the easy part. It requires a new way of thinking about learning in the enterprise. Create learner-centred content Learners in the enterprise are adults with the self-motivation to maximize their performance by keeping themselves informed. To support that motivation the enterprise needs to provide content that is designed and delivered with a focus Personalized learning 29 fresh interactive just-in-time granular authentic integrated with their work solution-centred self-paced relevant self-directed rich downloadable personalized engaging Figure 1.9— Qualities of learner-centred learning on learners’ needs. Learners want content that is available anytime, anywhere, increasingly, on any device — and with the qualities listed in Figure 1.9. Personalized learning The Internet is the biggest library in the world. It’s always open, you never have to return what you borrow, and, unlike its physical counterpart, borrowing a book or document doesn’t stop other people from reading it. What the Internet is not personalized. There is no Dewey decimal system to help visitors find what they want. In the absence of an overarching index system, it’s up to every visitor to devise their own search and acquire methods. In the world’s biggest library, it’s every visitor for himself. Compartments of the Internet, however, are very personalized. Take Ama- zon.com — when I logon to the US site, among the tabs that let me navigate to specialist shops, there’s one labelled ‘‘Don’s Shop’’. The first time I saw it, I wondered where it came from. The short answer is, Amazon built it for me — by tracking my interests through my searches and purchases. Look in Don’s Shop and you get a pretty good idea of the books, music and technology I — and my family and friends — like. Of course, building my virtual shop is a completely hands-off continuous process. Software does all the work but the outcome is no less personal, no less useful and no less endearing. My Yahoo is another very personalized pocket of the Internet but Yahoo go about personalization in a different way from Amazon. Yahoo helps me build a highly personalized portal by providing a structure and easy-to-use online tools. My Yahoo portal contains links to the news, weather and sport I’m interested in, a Web search function, a collection of my Web bookmarks, the latest prices of shares I track, a currency converter, local television listings, a place to store and share files online, Instant Messaging, e-mail, a calculator and — this is impressive — the complete contents of my Outlook Contacts so I can access that data from any computer in the world that has an Internet connection. I can add as many pages to my portal as I like and customize their layout and colour scheme. 30 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning A vision of e-learning that limits itself to making self-paced content available online turns its back on the Internet’s power to customize learning and, in so doing, build learner loyalty by engaging learners in a whole new way. How can we make e-learning personal? Figure 1.10 shows some of the ways customization can be introduced at different levels within the e-learning experience. CUSTOMIZATIONHigh Low E-LEARNING COURSE CATALOGUE No customization CUSTOMIZED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Based on learner profile CUSTOMIZED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Based on learner inputs CUSTOMIZED CURRICULA Based on roles and responsibilities CUSTOMIZED LEARNING PATH Based on skills assessment CUSTOMIZED COURSE PATH Based on pre-assessment CUSTOMIZED COURSE Based on needs assessment IMPLEMENTATIONDIFFICULTYHigh Low PREDICTIVE CUSTOMIZATION Based on learner behaviour Figure 1.10— Hierarchy of customization Use learner profiles to automatically create a localized learning environment that reflects the country and city where the learner works, the business unit and department they work for, and where appropriate the customers they serve. News, information and knowledge management content related to all those customization points can be displayed automatically on the learner’s home page. Following Yahoo’s lead, give learners the tools to tweak and enhance their personalized learning environment more accurately to reflect individual needs and interests. Design curricula specific to roles and responsibilities in the business, for example, a project manager’s curriculum, a line manager’s curriculum, an elec- trical engineer’s curriculum, a call centre agent’s curriculum, a security guard’s curriculum, and so on. Provide skills and competencies assessments that, first, help the learner determine where their learning gaps lie and, secondly, use the outputs of the assessments to create a personal learning path designed to close the gaps. In self-paced courses, design pre-assessments whose outputs customize the course to reflect what the learner already knows and needs to learn. Skip modules based on knowledge the learner already has. Give each learner at least one e-mentor — manager, supervisor, subject matter expert — who takes a personal interest in the learner’s progress. Through online collaboration, the Fresh learning 31 e-mentor challenges and nurtures, manages and monitors. The e-mentor also has access to the record generated by the Learning Management System for each learner, so she can track the progress of her mentees. Use automatically gen- erated e-mails to (1) remind learners about virtual classes, online collaborations and instructor-led classes they’re registered for, and (2) inform them about new courses and upcoming Web casts. Follow the lead of Amazon.com and develop smart, predictive personaliza- tion — by tracking behaviours — that offers learners what they need before they ask for it, even before they know they need it. A close study of Amazon’s features and functions will be rewarded with plenty of food for thought. Provide a list of courses that are relevant to the learner’s clients or business sector, or to software applications associated with the learner’s job. Provide peer content and virtual class reviews backed up with a rating system — at first, reviews might put content developers’ noses out of joint but (1) they’ll get used to it, even come to see it as a challenge, and (2) remember whose interests you’re looking after — learners’ not developers’. Look after both developers and learners with a feature that displays a list of courses developed by same subject matter expert, business unit or development team as the one the learner has just registered for or completed. Introduce the feature with copy along the lines of, ‘‘Learners who took this course also registered for these courses.’’ Plan for deeper levels of customization through dynamic course creation where a unique course is created on the fly — from a repository of learning objects — to meet a learner’s specific needs. To achieve this level of customization requires a commitment to the continuous development of reusable learning objects. Fresh learning ... we have a moral obligation to try to give people the tools to meet tough goals. I think it’s totally wrong if you don’t give employees the tools to succeed, then punish them when they fail. Steve Kerr, Chief Learning Officer, GE 26 In the connected economy, only employees working with the latest information can help the enterprise compete effectively. Superseded data may have historical value but when it’s passed off as current data, it has negative value. E-learning technologies and processes let enterprises provide learners with the latest cor- porate strategies, product features, thought leadership, processes, tools, changes in legislation, competitor news and market developments. Use that power to keep employees equipped with fresh learning content — and fully prepared to compete. In e-learning terms, fresh is relative. Some content changes constantly — tech- nology, for example. If your employees need to know about the leading edge of technology, expect to update technology courses continuously. Other content changes much less frequently. Courses about project management, quality man- agement, using PowerPoint, or interpersonal skills, for example, are unlikely to change monthly or even annually. 32 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning Historically, distribution has been a barrier to fresh learning, especially for enterprises with global operations. Dell Computers was an early adopter of e-learning and remains committed to it. At Dell, every course is assumed to be obsolete after one year. Two weeks before the year is up, the content owner is asked whether the content should be kept. If there aren’t sound business reasons for keeping it, the course is deleted from the e-learning servers. You don’t have to follow Dell’s example to the letter but it is important to establish a refresh cycle for all the content you develop or license. Just-in-time learning Fresh learning is about keeping content current. Just-in-time learning is about making sure current content is available just when learners need it. There is no point in keeping content fresh if it is delivered just too late. Historically, the process of duplicating, packaging and distributing CD-ROMs often took so long that at least some of the training content was out of date before the shrink wrapping was removed. E-learning eliminates the distribution lag associated with older learning channels. Content can be replicated regionally, nationally or globally in just hours. One of the shortcomings of the old training model was the practice of delivering learning just in case. The trouble with just-in-case training — no matter how important the content — is that its relevance is unlikely to be recognized. In other words, it’s way too soon learning. Adult learners don’t engage with content that has no obvious application. E-learning allows learners to access learning not only according to a centrally determined schedule but at the very moment the learner needs it most. That’s when it is most relevant and most likely to be assimilated. There are some practical considerations to just-in-time learning. First, it requires foresight and, secondly, good project management. Foresight is required because the learning department needs advance warning of what learners will need to know. Is there a new product or tool being developed? An important new customer coming on stream? New legislation coming into force? In all these examples, learners will need new knowledge at a specific time in the future. There needs to be a rolling process for delivering new requirements and raw content to the learning department early. Where lead times are short by necessity, rapid development methods need to be adopted — or live virtual classes and Web casts used instead. Project management is important to just-in-time learning because content — whether for self-paced courses or live virtual classes — cannot be delivered late. With just-in-time learning, missing the deadline isn’t an option. Authentic learning Years ago, while developing an interactive video training course for British Airways, I had a short sharp lesson in the importance of authentic learning. The Solution-centred learning 33 course was designed to change the behaviour of BA staff working on what’s known as the ramp — that part of an airport where aircraft are parked, loaded, fuelled and boarded. My approach was to present a realistic dramatization of how even casual abuse of ramp equipment could trigger a domino effect of operational delays that cost the airline money and, by inconveniencing BA’s passengers, put future earnings at risk. One day we were crammed into the flight deck of a 747 to film an exchange between a pilot, played by a real BA pilot and a flight dispatcher, played by an actor. According to the script the pilot was furious that his full load of passengers was being delayed simply because six meals catering for special diets hadn’t arrived. At the time, this kind of delay was common. The way I had imagined the scene, the pilot would give the flight dispatcher a stinging reprimand. The chastened dispatcher would scuttle away to castigate the next person down the pecking order. In the first take, the pilot played the scene differently. ‘‘Do you have a radio?’’ he asked the dispatcher in understated tones. The answer came back, ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Then use it,’’ ordered the pilot quietly. I was disappointed. Where was the stinging reprimand? I reminded the pilot of his situation: behind him 400 delayed passengers, his take-off slot lost — both consequences of a dispatcher not paying enough attention to detail. I asked the pilot to express the full force of his anger. Patiently and in the same understated tone, the pilot explained, ‘‘I just did. I humiliated the dispatcher in front of the flight crew.’’ Given the choice between taking my subject matter expert’s advice or forcing him to behave in an unrealistic way to satisfy my appetite for drama, I had the sense to choose the former. Had I done otherwise the exchange would have lost the ring of authenticity for its audience and, as a result, BA would have lost the chance of making its point. The BA story isn’t typical. Authenticity — presenting real issues realistically — is usually a much subtler quality but it is these authentic subtleties that cause learners to accept or reject messages. Learning content needs to reflect the reality of the work environment in form and content. That does not rule out aspirational messages — providing the aspirations are achievable. If learning content commends best practices that can’t be put into practice for reasons beyond the learner’s control, the learner will reject them. If learners are told to espouse corporate values not practised leadership, the learner will decide that actions speak louder than words and follow management’s example. Authenticity is about respect, about not trying to pull the wool over a learner’s eyes. Every time you don’t treat a learner with respect you lose an opportunity to improve their performance. Solution-centred learning Most adult learners earn a living by solving problems for their employers. You can engage and motivate learners by making learning solution-centred. Deliver solutions to real problems that employees are grappling with every day. Deliver 34 Defining terms: get comfortable with e-learning tools that employees can keep on using long after the learning event has finished. The power of tools in e-learning shouldn’t be underestimated. In Living on Thin Air, Charles Leadbeater explains why: ‘‘Humans became markedly more intelligent when they learned how to make tools, because tools store and transfer intelligence ... The most important stores of intelligence are not physical tools but words and books and especially recipes.’’27 In a business environment, recipes can mean something as simple as a checklist, a formula, a process or a template. It can mean simulations and electronic performance support tools (EPSS). E- learning consultant Elliott Masie talks about ‘‘multiple shots at learning’’ — that’s what tools deliver. You start to learn by familiarizing yourself with a tool in the context of formal learning but the learning continues every time you use the tool to solve a problem. The better the tool, the more often employees will use it; the more often they use it, the more they learn. Make solutions to real business needs the focus of all learning. Wherever possible embed skills, knowledge and information in tools. Relevant learning The notion of relevance figures in a number of the characteristics of learner- centred learning we have already looked at. Giving it a place of its own underlines its importance to the adult learner, first, because it is relevance that engages the mind. So many students sleepwalk through their education because they cannot see the relevance of what they are told to learn. It’s a problem you can’t afford to reproduce in the enterprise. What learners are asked to learn must have immediate relevance to them. Secondly, relevance is critical because no employee has time or attention to spare. They can only find time to learn what it essential to their work. Asking an employee to learn something that isn’t essential to their work is counterproductive since it takes time away from essential tasks. Relevance can be achieved only through a close working relationship between the learning department and business units. Subject matter experts from business units bring to content development an insight into what is important to their colleagues. Before content is published that insight needs to be double-checked through rigorous user acceptance testing. Rich learning Richness is the characteristic that determines the quality of the learning experi- ence. Somehow rich content has become synonymous with media-rich content, that is, content full of audio, video and animations. In fact, multimedia is only one aspect of richness — and the one that requires the most time and resources to develop. To be attractive to learners, content needs to be rich in all these aspects: Rich learning 35 • Value • Features • Functions • Interactivity • Presentation styles • Media Rich learning costs time and money to develop and as a result some people believe it does not support fresh learning and just-in-time learning. This tension between rich and fast is one that generates a lot of discussion among practitioners of e-learning. At one extreme, some people hold the view that speed is everything and if that means e-learning content is a collection of Web-enabled PowerPoint presentations, so be it. At the other extreme are those who believe that only a fully-featured course qualifies as e-learning. The answer, it should come as no surprise, lies somewhere in the middle. Rich cannot be an absolute standard. E-learning content rushed out, perhaps overnight, to a small audience to meet a critical business requirement should not be judged by the same standard of richness as a course with a shelf-life of two years and aimed at a large audience. We’ve talked about freshness itself being relative, how some content has a longer shelf-life than others. Richness and freshness are co-determined. How much richness you invest in a course must be related to its shelf-life. Practically, there simply won’t be enough time to develop exigent content with the same level of richness as content with a longer development cycle. The time-critical content rushed out overnight is very attractive to its small audience because it is rich in value even though its presentation is straightforward. One of the mitigating factors in the rich versus fast debate is the intensive use of templates in development. Imagine a content-free course sitting on a shelf. The screen layouts are there, so are the colour schemes, the navigation interface, even the assessments. All that’s missing is the content. With careful planning, template-driven development can ensure that even content developed in 24 hours can display richness of presentation styles, interactivity, features and functions. Templates also mean that none of those 24 hours will be wasted reinventing the wheel. This is a publishing model. Newspapers, whether printed or online, do not redesign their publication everyday. They create a number of styles and templates, set a number of presentation rules and focus their everyday efforts on creating new content to pour in the mould. In the real world, an enterprise’s e-learning offerings will have varying degrees of richness reflecting the different circumstances in which content was developed. What is important is that learners are not offered a steady diet of thin content. It might reduce development costs but if no one is engaged with the content, if no one’s performance improves as a result of it, you need to ask, At what learning cost are development savings being made?
