This was my second year at the Learning Technologies conference in London. I had the privilege of working with Patrick Dunn (who is leading the creative network which is The Difference Engine) to run a workshop session on Learning Ecosystems. It seemed to go down well with the few (carefully selected) people that I asked to give feedback.
Our workshop was followed by Andy Jones, speaking about his experiences of moving "from elearning to knowledge sharing" at Thomson Reuters. At the heart of that was the idea that trainers are not the right people to be taking new ideas out to the workforce. Instead, they pull in champions from the business to design materials, take ownership for them and then to spread the message back in the business. Makes perfect sense, and is a far more scalable and cost-effective way of supporting change.
There were two things that really grabbed me over the two days:
- The amount of evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, to support the concepts/ideas of social learning, communities of practice and learning ecosystems. This came from a range of sources, but primarily Josh Bersin and Mark Oehlert. As soon as their slides come online, I'll reflect more on this.
- The disconnect between what was happening upstairs at the conference and down on the 2nd floor at the exhibition.
Jane Hart described the exhibition as showing "first generation elearning", and I'd have to agree. When asked about what was down there, I described it as "same old, same old". It seemed like every stand was either trying to sell you a Learning Management System, a means of turning Powerpoints into online "learning" materials, or bespoke materials development.
There were exceptions of course. Caspian Learning stands out, with their Thinking Worlds games designer (review to come), and Infinity Learning, with their Involve system that takes ideas from Amazon in providing access to learning materials. Although I would like to take issue with their negative statements about free systems (I'm assuming they mean Moodle et al), which are simply spreading unjustified Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - especially when you consider their own website is built on the open-source Wordpress content management system!
Outdated products, which won't work
Vendors go where the money is. The people holding the purse strings are probably not the ones who are attending the conference. That's a pity, because if they did, they would see that they are, quite often, spending money on outdated ideas - many of which just will not really add any value to the business.
Outdated is a strong word. But let's take Learning Management Systems as an example. In the discussion below, please note that for me, learning does not equate to remembering. Instead learning = change.
Many (most) of the systems on the market today are based on the idea that you can deliver learning. That learning is a commodity which can be pushed into someone. Nowhere in any educational theory does this concept exist. Behaviourism says that behaviours can be changed based on a stimulus. Cognitivism says that people learn by organising knowledge into coherent structures. Constructivism says that we learn through the process of taking other people's ideas and building our own out of them. Connectivism says that we learn through making connections between internally and externally held knowledge. (For more on these start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_%28education%29 ).
Nowhere in these theories is there any space for the statement "delivering learning". Yes, we can deliver materials, lectures, workshops and spaces designed for learning to take place. We don't deliver learning any more than the Tesco's van delivers good health. Learning is an individual process of change.
OK. So can we manage learning? That depends on what you mean by management. For many, management = control. So that's what they look for in a learning management system. But can we really control the process of learning? Can we really say who should learn what, and when, and how? No. Not really. We can provide motivational factors, environments that are conducive to learning, and materials that are designed to help people learn. But no way can we say that any of these will ensure learning has taken place.
Most learning management systems are based around the "management" part, and very little on the learning part. As environments conducive to learning, they are sadly lacking. Similarly very little emphasis is placed on the cultural aspects and the motivating factors which Josh and Mark so eloquently described.
We like our systems. I like systems. They help us feel in control of things. Sometimes they're even useful. The trouble is, the individual process of learning just doesn't fit nicely in systems. Learning is messy. It happens at the oddest times, for the strangest reasons. Trying to systemise learning is like trying to pick up milk in your hands. Yes, some of it might stick, but that will be the exception rather than the rule.
We do need systems. But we need ones that will are based around learners and the various ways in which they will learn (NB. Not learning styles - they are a discredited concept - but the fact that we all have different factors at different times that will help us to learn better). Systems that are designed around the manager or around the business needs are not learning systems. They might be content delivery systems or tracking systems. But there's no way you can say they are supporting real learning. They simply provide measurements that are easy to make.
Return on investment - why bother?
The constant question that came up throughout the conference was "How do you measure the return on social learning?"
We're very hung up on that idea. So hung up that we try to measure anything that will stand still long enough. We track "progress" through SCORM packages - knowing full well that all it measures is the number of times someone clicked a button. We count attendance at workshops - although all that shows is your workshops were popular. We quiz people at the end of our materials - knowing that they will have forgotten most of it 20 minutes later.
We are making the measurable important rather than the important measurable.
What's important? Whether change has taken place in that individual that leads to measurable impact on the organisation.
These are hard things to measure. We need to accept that. Often only a university research project will collect the hard evidence that shows that it was your learning intervention that made the impact on the organisation.
I don't believe most L&D departments really want to face the cost of providing that sort of evidence. So, instead, we provide lots of numbers that demonstrate that people like what we're providing. By doing so we run the risk of the business treating the L&D department as irrelevant to the real business.
So what evidence can we provide that we're actually making a difference?
A lot of it is a matter of perception. Does the business trust us? Do we speak the language of the business? Do we understand what the business needs are? Are we ready to challenge the business when a performance or a compliance problem is immediately seen as a learning problem? (On that matter, why is compliance always seen as a learning problem? In my opinion it's internal communication and management that have the key roles to ensure compliance. L&D have wrongly taken responsibility for it, and thus diminished their standing within the business.)
As I said earlier, learning is a messy process. Similarly evidence gathering will have to be messy. It might be anecdotal, or based on case studies, or surveys of managers and learners. But it should always focus, not on the learning intervention, but on the change that was intended from it.
Summary
This rambling reflection has helped me to realise that effective L&D departments must:
- understand the needs of the business in depth and in detail.
- create environments, materials and interventions that are based on a solid theoretical understanding of how people learn.
- work to ensure that the culture within the organisation becomes more conducive to people sharing, learning and changing
- be prepared to use proper educational research methods to evaluate the effectiveness of their interventions.
Changes I would like to see to the conference
Just to finish off with. There are a few things I think would help to breakdown the disconnect mentioned above:
- More opportunity for vendors to be challenged by the speakers in public
- Small group facilitated conversations, perhaps organised by sector, by product or by idea. It is so easy to miss out on conversations that are taking place just because the conference is now so large. So let's structure it a little (not too much!)
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