Technology around us is evolving at a rapid pace and is in turn affecting a speedy evolution of learning technology. Work is changing and, to keep pace with it, training is changing too.
Which of these technology changes will impact training the most?
I think mobile applications are the game changer for training.
Let me explain why I think that way.
It’s been in the rumor mill for some months and was confirmed by Blackberry only recently. Now, they’ve gone ahead officially revealed the product and begun the marketing blitz.
“Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” – Plato
What Plato said then holds true for training today. From the days when training was deemed a crucial element in the development of an individual to today when it has come to become a bitter pill forced down peoples’ throats by HR. More often than not, there are glitches in the learning needs analyses, the design of the training content, the choice of delivery mode, the choice of the trainer, and other such. Sometimes it is the way the training is presented to the learners – not as an opportunity but almost like punishment.
This year has been truly remarkable for UpsideLMS.
First, there were the 3 awards from Brandon Hall Awards for Excellence in Learning Technology, then it was Brandon Hall, chairman of Brandon Hall Research, naming UpsideLMS amongst the ‘Five Emerging Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to Watch’ in Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine, and now its TrainingIndustry.com featuring Upside Learning in its inaugural ‘Top 20 Learning Portal Companies List’. We are on a roll and how!
Bryan Chapman from the Chapman Alliance informed me this morning about the completion of a study they started last month to collect data about the time and cost of custom elearning development. The report is available here. I had participated in the study and find the results align well with our own data.
Last week I came across a very interesting article – Will the iPhone replace the stethoscope? in Time’s newsfeed. The article refers to an iPhone app called iStethescope – developed by Peter Bentley, a researcher from University College London – that allows you to use the iPhone to measure heartbeat. The article reports that the app has already been downloaded by 3 million doctors. The Guardian while reporting on the same app mentions “experts say the software, a major advance in medical technology, has saved lives and enabled doctors in remote areas to access specialist expertise” Isn’t that fantastic?
TED has released this video of Dr. Sugata Mitra in which he talks about his experiments with education for children. He talks about some of the issues with education in developing countries. There are some interesting insights, check it out.
“’What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’”
Most of us agree that the use of images and graphics in e-learning help the learners make visual associations. However the images or graphics need to be relevant to the content being presented. They need to support the text and be used, not for diversion, but a clear instructional purpose.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward.
What other ways can you cut elearning to fit? 
I stumbled across an interesting paper linked to in a post by Karl Kapp. The paper describes a Professor of Reading’s teachers experience and learning from playing digital games and describes some of the learning principles good games incorporate.
We’ve recently been delivering simple content just-in-time for access through the websites that are designed to run on mobile devices.
It was easier said than done, here are some lessons we picked up along the way.
