Harold Jarche

Performance Technology – the missing piece

by

This week at the LearnNB quarterly meeting the key area of focus was gaming, especially Serious Gaming. The interest in gaming reminds me of the interest in online learning around 1997. I think that e-learning, however you define it, and serious gaming, however you define that too, each have their place – as possible interventions for improved performance.

However, there is still a lack of pertinent discussion around the essential component in this whole business – analysis, or figuring out what solution is best. We have to better understand how we get from perceived problem to viable solution when dealing with human performance. How do we go from, “Our sales staff aren’t producing” to “let’s use the sales simulation game”. ISPI provides a venue for those discussions, but sometimes it’s a voice in the wilderness.

Another source of information is Jay Cross, with workflow learning, based on some of the principals and theories of HPT. Jay recently highlighted some excellent presentations from Training 2005, and Harold Stolovitch’s handout is a great aide-memoire for any HPT practitioner. You have to have some background in the field to decipher these notes, as the detailed explanation is lacking, but just the section on feedback is well worth reading. Feedback is often misunderstood, and frequently misused. Jay also refers to a Rummler-Brache white paper on business defragmentation (neat term), in this post. As anyone in the field knows, Geary Rummler has advanced much of our praxis.

Until we extend performance analysis into the everyday business workplace, we will continue to chase after each new performance tool. Every tool has its place, but good diagnostics, based on validated theory & practice, will help to make real progress in improving performance.

CSTD Learning Innovations Symposium

by

For the first time, the Canadian Society for Training & Development (CSTD) will be holding its Symposium outside of Ontario. The 2005 Learning Innovations Symposium will be held in Fredericton on 16 & 17 May. We expect an intimate gathering of about 200 attendees and another 200 or so for the live webcasts. The event will be digitally archived. The host agency is LearnNB, of which I’m a member and I will be presenting, with my colleague Albert Lejeune, two sessions, one French & one English, on a case study of a healthcare project that we did with my partner company, Mancomm Performance.

Apprentissage et communautique en services de santé
En 2003-2004, l’équipe Mancomm Performance a collaboré avec le Centre hospitalier Pierre-Le Gardeur (Lachenaie, QC), à  la mise en place d’un cours en ligne pour les infirmières portant sur l’approche McGill, ainsi qu’à  la création de communautés de praticiens. Depuis l’analyse de la performance au travail jusqu’à  la livraison sur des plateformes MOODLE et MAMBO (logiciels libres), l’équipe a travaillé étroitement avec le personnel hospitalier au moyen d’ontologies de domaine. Dans cette séance, vous allez :

  • Apprendre comment faire une analyse de performance avant de recommander l’apprentissage en ligne
  • Comprendre l’importance des ontologies dans la création des bases de connaissances.
  • Comprendre les bénéfices des logiciels libres pour le support à  la performance.
  • Comprendre la méthodologie, DECLICK, utilisée par l’équipe.


eLearning and Communities of Practice in Healthcare

During 2003 to 2004, Mancomm Performance Inc worked with the Pierre LeGardeur Hospital in the Montreal area to implement online learning for nurses as they adopted the new McGill nursing care methodology, as well as the creation of virtual communities of practice for social workers. From the initial performance analyses conducted on the hospital wards, to the implementation of the open source Moodle and Mambo technology systems, the consultants worked closely with the hospital staff in the development of their knowledge base, using domain ontologies.

  • Learn about the need to conduct a performance analysis prior to recommending any e-learning intervention
  • Learn how ontologies can help with the creation of shared professional knowledge bases
  • Learn about the benefits of using open source software for workplace performance support
  • Learn about the DECLICK methodology developed by the Mancomm team

Other guests include Clark Aldrich, Jay Cross and Stephen Downes. The price is very reasonable [as low as $(CA) 299 or $(US)247] and you can get a discount on CSTD membership as well. Hope to see you there.

OS Portals in Education

by

I came across this reference from Linux du-Québec to a study (in French) on the comparitive costs of proprietary and open source portals in education. The study was conducted by Michael Wybo, a visiting professor at the Montreal business school, HEC, who specialises in open source. According to Wybo:

Les coûts d’acquisition de la solution logicielle libre sont approximativement la moitié des coûts d’acquisition de la solution propriétaire le moins chère, et cela en tenant compte des coûts de migration d’une technologie à un autre.
[My translation: Acquisition costs for open source are about half the costs of the cheapest proprietary solution, even when taking into account any system migration costs]

The OS system in question is based on the MILLE project (an open source framework for education). According to the comments on the extract, the complete report is available from CRIM, but is not readily available to the public, even though it appears that public money was used to fund this study.

Does anyone have any more information on this study?

Questioning our Models

by

Elliott Masie reports from Hong Kong that e-learning in Asia may have some advantages due to its later start than in North America.

Many Asian countries have skipped the first phase of e-Learning. They didn’t have the model of porting CBT (Computer Based Training) to the web. Instead, they started using e-Learning more recently, avoiding a number of growing pains. For example, we see fewer organizations in the midst of LMS remorse and more sophisticated use of “Google” like search modes rather than long portal lists on learning offering pages.

This got me thinking about my recent conversations with Jon Husband :

… at the same time I keep being surprised by how deeply anchored in existing structures and the dynamics they generate are most peoples’ consciousness and daily work/life habits.
Our comfortable, established mental models slow us from accepting new ones. I guess that’s why it’s so much fun to work with the young.

One challenge in this business of designing learning systems is to constantly question our models and assumptions — a very McLuhanesque perspective: The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.

A saying we had in the Army was that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into an officer’s mind was getting the old one out [yes, I was an officer].

Eric McLuhan, “The new media won’t fit into the classroom”

by

I had the pleasure of sitting down and reading the Walrus Magazine this evening. There was a rather unflattering article on The McLuhan International Festival of the Future held recently in Toronto. This piece at the end of the article really caught my attention:

“As the last few intellectual thrusts of ‘Probing McLuhan’ wound down, a figure rose from the crowd and said a few words. The voice was eerily reminiscent of the Master, as was the rhetoric. It was Eric McLuhan. ‘The new media won’t fit into the classroom”, he told the audience. “It already surrounds it. Perhaps that is the challenge of the counterculture. The problem is to know what questions to ask.’

For the first time that afternoon there was silence, and it spoke volumes.”

All of the action is outside the classroom — blogs, wikis, IM, podcasting — you name it. Soon, the only place to get away from media will be inside the classroom. Hey, they don’t even have a telephone (c. 1876) in every classroom yet.

From the CBO to the Suits

by

Chris Locke, co-author of The Cluetrain Mainfesto and Chief Blogging Officer gives this latest advice on corporate blogging:

Moreover, nota bene, I’d like to not-so-humbly hint to all the suits out there in CorporateLand who are wondering how they’re going to "leverage" blogging in "their operations" that they should be paying close attention to what’s going on just beneath the radar here on CBO. Those aren’t Chinese subs, you fools! They’re potential customers. But if you create blogs that don’t tell stories, aren’t the least bit funny or irreverent, but only read like thinly disguised advertising copy, then those potential customers are going to treat you like Chinese subs — and send Tomahawk missiles straight up your RSS.

Ya gotta read the whole post though (note to self – get funnier).

Latest email scam

by

Just in case you haven’t noticed the increase in scams concerning bank accounts, here comes another one, this time for eBay. Even my Gmail filter didn’t pick it up, as the address was "service AT eBay.com". However, within 5 minutes of my marking it as spam, Gmail added a red warning to the e-mail – good work folks.

The scam is called physhing and is used to get personal information, especially credit card information, in order to commit fraud through identity theft. Never give out any personal information, and don’t follow an e-mail link.

NOTE: THIS IS A SCAM

FIP NOTICE: eBay Registration Suspension



Dear eBay Member,

We regret to inform you that your eBay account has been suspended due to the violation of our site policy below:

False or missing contact information – Falsifying or omitting your name, address, and/or telephone number (including use of fax machines pager numbers, modems or disconnected numbers).

Due to the suspension of this account, please be advised you are prohibited from using eBay in any way. This prohibition includes the registering of a new account.
Please note that any seller fees due to eBay will immediately become due and payable.
eBay will charge any amounts you have not previously disputed to the billing method currently on file.

you are required to verify your eBay account by following the link below.
[Link Deleted]
We appreciate your support and understating [note spelling mistake], as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade.


Thank you for your patience in this matter.


Respectfully,

Trust and Safety Department
eBay Inc.

My Gmail account is the address that I post on the web, so that it can be my spam filter. For the most part, it works well, and I would recommend it for any small business. The other option is to set up a form on your website, but that’s too much effort for me ;-)

The Long Tail

by

The long tail has been getting a lot of press lately. The basic premise seems to be that there is a larger market of those willing to buy unpopular items (or services) than all of those people who buy the “hot” items. It puts aside the traditional wisdom to only focus on items that can be sold many times because you may be missing an even larger opportunity. Instead, the long tail theory is to sell a few things to a few people at a time, but many times over. According to Joe Kraus, the same is true for software:

These three facts
  • every business has multiple processes
  • processes that are similar in name between businesses are actually often highly customized
  • there exist a large number of processes unique to millions of small clusters of industries.
means that there is a combinatorial explosion of process problems to solve and, it turns out, little software to actually support them.
Said another way, there is a long tail of very custom process problems that software is supposed to help businesses solve.

It’s like being a specialty bookstore, but with the right software development processes you could create niche software products and be able to sell just one at a profit. Look at his slide presentation for more details on this.

Seth Godin also talks about the long tail and how to approach it as a budding entrepreneur:

So, what I would say to the struggling entrepreneur or pundit or expert or consultant or musician or person spreading that important idea is this:
  1. it’s okay if it doesn’t happen fast
  2. don’t worry so much about getting the approval of those who came before and are farther along the curve
  3. keep costs as low as possible so you can do this without panicking when it doesn’t work so fast
  4. surround yourself with friends and colleagues who “get it” and root for you, even when it’s not going so fast
    (variant: fire the friends and mothers-in-law who aren’t supporting you so much!)
  5. realize that it’s not about you or the way you look or what you wear. It’s about the tail.

His advice is to be patient, persistent and keep your costs low – pretty good advice for any business.

and continuing on this theme …

You can also see the effects of the long tail in academic course blogging, and how the moderator can work with it to support the learning goals in The Learning Blogosphere(2): The Long Tail.

Tagback