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The Big Question – What I Learned About Learning in 2009

Abhijit Kadle — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:26:47 +0000

The Big Question posed on Learning Circuits this time,as always, is thought provoking –

What did you learn about Learning in 2009?

I think my learning for 2009 was focused around three primary areas; this obviously derives from my focus on innovation in elearning and is biased, but here goes.

Mobile Technologies – 2009 was the year that mobile technologies have exploded on the scene. We learned that there isn’t one single workable solution for mobile technologies. Having said that, it’s quite evident that the convergence of high-speed networks, powerful and capable personal computing devices (mobile/cell phones) will lead to a point where the need for desktop or laptop personal computers ceases to exist. The computer and communication device rolled into one is ideal for delivering learning interventions and tools. This year I’ve spent a fair bit of time learning about mobile technology. It’s going to radically alter elearning and I must understand what we need do to continue delivering effective learning solutions.

Some posts that were interesting related to mobile learning on our blog:

1. Five Myths of Mobile Learning
2. Mobile Learning in India
3. The Social Media and Mobile Computing Explosion

Games and Simulation – Gaming and simulations are rapidly becoming part of mainstream culture and learners have started demanding experiences that mimic or are similar to games, rather than have purely content driven learning. This is another area we’re learning much, from how expensive games are to develop, to the debates about games, simulations, where they might be suitable and what’s a predictable development process for either. The second challenge involves learning the intricacies of game design, and while learning games seem like a niche area, they cover a wide variety of game genres. Each genre involves a different type of design, and each genre is particularly suited to a type of learning outcome. More on that next year.

Interesting posts related to games on our blog:

1. Patterns at Play – Fundamental to Games
2. Can Fun Help Change Behaviors?
3. These Are NOT Serious Games!

Social Learning – Social learning has made it big this year. At Upside we built a version of our LMS that came with a whole range of social networking and content sharing tools built in. We’ve learnt that if we’re blending learning, we might as well make best use of technology to encourage both formal and informal learning channels in an organization. Implementing a solution that provides a backbone for social interaction vastly enhances the learning environment. While there is a certain loss of organizational control associated with such systems, organizations must learn to trust employees with such tools.

All these technology components just make blending learning more complicated. While we’ve proposed some solutions to customers, there’s been a steep learning curve. As these solutions are rolled out, we’ll learn much more about which of these technology components work and how they support and influence learning and performance outcomes.

Some interesting posts on our about Social Learning and Tools:

1. Six Social Media Trends
2. Blending Learning with Social Technology Components
3. How the Fastest Growing Companies are Using Social Media

You just read my last post this year; I hope you’ll continue to follow our blog next year. Happy New Year!

The Big Question: Time Spent

Abhijit Kadle — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:02:21 +0000

The Big Question posed on Learning Circuits this time is thought provoking – Where is your time spent?

It causes one to pause and reflect on our state of being. Where am I spending my time?

I’d say my waking time is spent on three distinct areas:

Work – quite obvious since I have to feed the family and myself. Currently consists mostly of consulting internal development teams on instructional approach and design, and the design of interactions and user experience. Lately, I’m seeing more work related to the design of games and simulation, far more fun than the conventional eLearning fare I’ve subsisted on in the past.

It goes without saying that Web 2.0 tools are integral to the work experience; with teams, consultants, customers scattered in various parts of the globe – its only technology that lets such geographically disparate teams function. It’s not local, it’s global.

Play– play, recreation, relaxation, whatever you want to call it – is an essential part of my life. Typically I use the verb ‘play’ because that’s what I do in the spare time I get. Play is ingrained deep in my psyche, a result of being addicted to and playing a variety of digital computer games. I’m not addicted like I once was and have learnt to limit my game play period, however I still play, it’s important to my well-being.

Web 2.0 has rapidly become a part of the game play experience too. Games now have online social components, so it’s no longer an isolated experience. These days, I coordinate Warcraft raids with a hundred or so clan members, go on quests, and create my own levels/maps for others to play – all part of the social game experience.

So some time during the day, I’ll find the time to fire up the PC, PSP, PS2 or PS3 – it should never be all work and no play.

Family and Friends – the part of my life that’s not completely online yet. While more and more family and friends have an online presence, it’s not quite the activity stream that I’d like it to be, but they’ll get there gradually. Till then, I have to find the ‘time’ to spend with them in the real world, so some part of my day is devoted to them. Play factors in again, as I do make it a point to spend time playing with my five year old.

In my non-waking hours, I sleep – the most critical part of my life; the one thing I CANNOT do without; it recharges my creative functions, let’s me dream, and helps with physical recuperation. Seven hours a day, completely offline. I like to think of it as system maintenance and upgrades.

How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?
I spend between 3-5 hours on new things, reading blogs, blogging, twitter, social networks. Luckily for me, my current role involves a fair bit of use of social technologies, both for marketing and research & development purposes. This lets me use time at work for a fair bit of these activities. Note however, this doesn’t mean that the social network doesn’t follow me as I leave the office; using an internet enabled cell-phone let’s me access and use social networks regardless of where I am. Rather than a focused period of activity around social networks, I’m constantly using them, to project a stream of consciousness into cyberspace.

What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?
I’m doing far less people management. Hurray! Five years ago, my focus was around design, development and delivery of eLearning solutions. All these involve teams of inviduals that have to be led and managed. I don’t have to all that often now. It important to state that the focus is unchanged, however the very nature of the solutions being delivered has changed. It now involves the extensive knowledge and use of internet based technologies to deliver learning frameworks, and not just the design of instruction and interactive content.

eLearning is dead, long live eLearning.

My media consumption pattern has changed radically in the last 5 years or so; from being a regular consumer of mass media – radio, television and newspapers – I’ve become one who consumes media far more sparingly. No TV, no Radio, no newspapers; the web has replaced those with on-demand media.

I’m sure there’s loads of other things I’m doing far less off, to the extent I can’t even recollect what those are.

Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?
No, I have more of a life. I’m more connected, more in touch with the vibe, and have a glorious sense of community.

Life has been and always will be; it’s up to us what we choose to fill it with. Technology won’t make life any less or more worth living; it’s what we do with its potential that establishes its relationship to and impact on life. Technology hasn’t intruded into my day to day life; I’ve invited it in and left the door open, deliberately.

Just Do It!

Amit Garg — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:26:13 +0000

The Learning Circuits’ Big Question this month is: How to Get Unstuck?

I’m responding to this question from a business owner’s perspective. My company, Upside Learning—which I co-founded with Amit Gautam—turned 5 earlier this month. In the last 5 years we have grown quite well and now have ~ 150 people in our team. Based on my experience working with all our team members (past and present), here are my thoughts on How to Get Unstuck.

•	Do you sometimes feel stuck? Feel like you have so many more ideas about how you could help your organization or your clients, but that What Clients Want is just some training?
	I feel your chances of being stuck depend on two factors – how large an enterprise you work for and where in the hierarchy you are placed. If you are at a lower level in a large organization, you are more likely to feel stuck. If I were to visualize this I would imagine something like:
•	Should you attempt to get unstuck? How hard should you push your internal or external clients to get them to see the full range of what is possible? Or should you give them what they ask for?
	Of course you should make sincere attempts to get unstuck, otherwise you’ll never develop either professionally or personally. I firmly believe an organization’s growth stems from the learning, development, and growth of its people. The two are too closely interlinked for one to happen without the other. How hard should you push? Quite simply, as hard as possible. After all it is your career and your future, and you are responsible for it. It’s also your sense of satisfaction; feeling stuck would likely cause you to feel dissatisfied, so why not push hard? Of course, you do run a risk of losing a client or antagonizing your boss if you push too hard. But then selling ideas is never easy. I recommend these steps: Discuss benefits. Showing them the larger picture and talking in ‘their’ language certainly helps. For instance while selling eLearning as a concept to your boss/client you may need to bring up cost savings, better retention, 24/7 availability, less manpower requirement etc.—basically anything that your boss/client is bothered about and that you know can be resolved with your ideas. Prove. Trends or survey results could come in handy to show proof of adoption of new ideas. If you as an HR Manager wish to introduce social learning in your enterprise, survey results from Elliott Masie would be useful to share. The same goes if you as an instructional designer wish to include a social learning component into the learning solution you propose to a client. Concrete evidence helps your idea to be viewed objectively. With proof like this, your boss/client may not see it as just your idea but an idea for which some others out there are vouching. This should make things easier. So Google your ideas and find some published information to back them up. You could go one step further and also create a prototype to make your point more strongly. However, while creating the prototype might be relatively simple, demonstrating results may not be easy. We all know that measuring training efficiency is a difficult and long-term activity. Demonstrating the effectiveness or worth of your ideas may be just as difficult, so be prepared to expend personal energy and time on this. Taster samples. If you are not able to convince your boss/client with benefits and proof, consider taking smaller steps. This would probably mean giving clients what they want—for starters. Sometimes clients are not willing to go in for a higher-level solution just because of higher costs. As a first small step, see if your organization can afford to give your client a taste of something better, for free. The client would appreciate your sincere desire and efforts to move them (as a company) forward. Also, in the process, you would have ensured your client notices you possess the necessary higher-level knowledge and skills for their future requirements. Naturally, they would be more likely to come back when they ‘get it’.
•	Is it okay to learn a lot about all kinds of different solutions, but to primarily work on simple training solutions?
	No, it is not okay to just keep learning but not apply what you learn in your solutions. While writing this post, I read this tweet from Mike_Wesely: “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet“. This just fits in so well here… By learning a lot about different solutions, you are getting prepared. Wait for an appropriate opportunity, and strike.
•	If you are stuck, should you be concerned about your future?
	Yes, for obvious reasons. If you have tried to get unstuck and failed, you should seriously worry about your future. We have seen some brilliant people become complacent and stop to ideate once their worth in the organization has been recognized. A safe job with a decent salary provides a comfort zone and they no longer feel challenged or motivated to do anything different or new. They like being stuck or simply don’t realize they are stuck.

So while many people would feel stuck at some point or another—some more often than others—it is imperative for them to at least try their hardest to get unstuck. Else they might find themselves (actually) stuck in a rut.

The Future of Workplace Learning

Amit Garg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:41:01 +0000

This month’s Big Question from the Learning Circuits blog asks:

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? …

One could consider the topic from a sci-fi viewpoint; learning modules à la MATRIX – like Trinity asking Tank to run the training program for a B-212 helicopter. Well, we aren’t quite there yet. Thankfully!

To respond to the Big Question, I put on my futurist glasses, set them to 10 years forward, and this is what I see:

1.	In organizations 2.0, a large proportion of employees (aka consultants) work from home. Thanks to technologies like Cisco TelePresence, there is no need for an office. Offices still exist, but as a place to meet and socialize. Other organizations still have a large proportion of employees working from offices, more often than not due to the constraint imposed by the type of business they are in – like car manufacturers. We will of course, still need cars in 2019.
2.	Employees are ‘responsible’ for their own work and any learning required for completing their tasks. So most learning is pull-learning while push-learning still exists for compliance and regulatory training. Learning is part of the job, truly just-in-time and work-flow based.
3.	Content is available in different formats: mini-courses, podcasts, videos, blogs, corporate-wikis, thought leader blogs (internal and external). The workforce demographics have changed and games and simulations have become the preferred mode of learning. Nintendo has emerged as the largest game-based learning solutions company. They supply pre-packaged and self-customizable games to the corporate world.
4.	The visions of devices Microsoft and Nokia articulated a decade back are now a reality. Employees wear PDA-type devices which give them a sixth sense – a combination of computers and mobile phones which make work and learning on the move truly possible. The device is all encompassing – bringing together the Internet, phone, virtual worlds, and cloud-computing. The device stores learner data like knowledge, skills, and competence. Depending on the current task being performed, the device suggests content to be read or worked with – in true EPSS style. The device even holds a personal virtual agent to help and guide the employee should there be a need. The employee can choose to voice activate the agent in human language for things that she is thinking about and that are not anticipated by the agent on the device.
5.	Collaboration has reached very high levels – it’s now seamless with any work you do. Hierarchies have been pretty much trashed. Wirearchy rules. Employees with the intellect and power to innovate are regarded as thought leaders and assume power in the organization by virtue of those. They all have company-supported, individual blogs aimed at educating partners and customers.
6.	Training departments are quite small and are known as performance support units. Their key responsibility is to ensure performance by making frameworks, systems, and content available. They do lots of analysis with internal data and trends on employee performance and correlate this with employee skills and knowledge to ensure essential learning content elements are available in the organization. As most learning content is generated during work processes themselves and is captured and structured into searchable repositories by the Knowledge Management engine, their tasks are much lesser on this front.

Let me now take off the futuristic glasses and add some caveats:

I would imagine less than 50% of organizations would be considered under a ‘organization 2.0’ category. So we will continue to see ILT, eLearning courses (some of them page turners), and all the other stuff that we see today. These organizations would still have large training departments that create and deliver push-learning.

This post has been influenced by some of the responses to the LC Big Question and also some other articles on the web, all of which are not possible to attribute to at this time. However, ones I would like to specifically mention are the genesis of training and its future directions covered by Harold and Jay in their post.

I read somewhere that in predicting the future you could be “directionally right but specifically wrong”. I hope this one is at least directionally correct. Only time will tell.

Times are tough, but on our side

Amit Garg — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:24:32 +0000

February’s Learning Circuits Blog Big Question asks:

What is the impact of the economy on you and your organization? What are you doing as a result?

A quick brief about us:
We are a Learning Solutions company based in Pune, India. Our clients and partners all over the world have been outsourcing their learning solutions development to us for the last 5 years.

What has been the effect?
Well, this crisis has had quite an impact, unlike any other in the last 5 years. As individuals, we did see the 2001 slowdown, but this slump promises to last longer and go deeper.

Clients have certainly slowed down in terms of making decisions. Training budgets are being cut almost everywhere. Everyone wants to wait and see. Unfortunately, what they see every day on TV is not encouraging; and so there’s a downward spiral. The Obama rescue plans are eagerly awaited, as they are expected to have some impact on consumer and corporate confidence.

In more material terms, at Upside Learning, ‘capacity utilization’ has gone down during the current quarter [Jan-Feb’09] and we think it will be the same for March as well. However, we strongly believe that eLearning [and outsourcing of learning solutions] will emerge a winner from this crisis. There’s been a significant increase in the number of large-scale projects under discussion in Q1’09. Web enquiries have increased, and quite a few of our old prospects have restarted ‘discussions’. So we’re optimistic that good times are on their way.

What are we doing about it?
We find this is the best time to review processes and see how we could make them more efficient. We’re focusing even more on training our resources, as well as on innovation in our products and services – game based learning, mLearning, etc. And as Clark suggests in his response to the Big Question, we are also reinventing ourselves a bit with a new look website and this brand new blog.

Some other stuff that we plan to do within the next couple of months:
-Get our company bloggers to blog more – use their downtime to socialize with the world.
-Get resources on bench to create some of our own product demos – you never get enough time for these in ‘good times’.
-Assign each senior member to develop a new area of competence – which they can learn about, research on and train others.
-Promote less expensive solutions to our prospects – Rapid Learning Solutions and SaaS LMS [UpsideLMS OnDemand].
-Broaden our services to include Catalog Content from MindLeaders.
-Set up new partners and resellers for our products in untapped markets.
-Manage costs better to keep ourselves in good financial health.
-Increase our marketing spend to hopefully engage with more potential customers.

While these are hard times, they present a good opportunity to realign businesses. This way, we’ll be in a position to reap the benefits when the good times come back – which are no more than two quarters away.