The future business of Learning (or whatever name we finally settle on) lies in providing organisations with the tools, techniques and environments to support them in building employee capability and performance in an increasing range of areas. It certainly doesn’t lie in the provision of ‘ training’. Traditional training may have a role in the picture going forward, sometimes, but it will certainly be only a minor role.
In The Future Business of Learning for Suppliers Charles Jennings shares his perspective and experience from Reuters. I’ve noticed that when we moved to e-learning the mainstream approach was to stick an “e” on industrial, classroom training and have away with it. When that didn’t work, the mainstream started talking about “blended” learning, meaning stuff bolted on to the original system. Now we’re getting collaboration and informal learning slapped on legacy systems, but much of it is lipstick on a pig. The pig hasn’t changed, it’s just a different shade of lipstick.
After 15 years of being in some way involved with web-centric learning, I’m seeing glimmers of hope that we’re going to dump the “horseless carriage” metaphor of e-learning. The financial system collapse and peak oil are two major factors, as we have hit a wall in doing things the old way. We also have a generation entering the workforce who don’t know what life before the Web was like. They don’t know a world where you can’t connect with anyone at anytime and with the device of your choice.
What needs to be jettisoned is the concept of learning as receiving information. We are swimming in information. We need to make sense of our connections and relationships. Connections should be made between several fields of practice and the best taken from each. I think there is great potential in combining the best of organizational development, knowledge management, training, human performance technology and information technology to develop methods for working and learning in digital networks. I wonder though, if we’ll take the easy route and just buy the next version of silicon snake oil that comes along.
What are you selling? Lipstick on a pig or something that works? What will you buy?
Join us at The Future of Learning as a Business on 23 July to discuss these issues and more.
Love this. I read this as applying to people who deal primarily with digital information or who have an adequate Internet connection to participate in digital networks. For “the rest” making meaning from information (I think) is fostered (or not) by their learning environment and the methods used – same as it’s always been. Perhaps in digital environments we forget techniques. methods, and environments more often than we should. And, perhaps that’s because the new channels of delivery are still foreign for many.
Thanks, Janet; yes this is very much in the context of working in, with and around digital networks.
I have to concur with your observations. The next key obstacles will be the IT Crowd with their firewalls and the refusal to accept open-source software and the learning atmosphere that has been pounded into us from our school years that we should all line up like little ducks and follow the mother duck/sage on the stage.