E-Learning Challenges of Old and the Way Forward

Published on Trainingindustry.com

By: Sumeet Anand and S M Nafay Kumail,

SLOWING BUT GROWING

The evolution of e-learning was a big change for both learners and educators. It caught the fancy of people across the board, although, initially, e-learning was a bigger hit in the corporate training world. K-12 was slow to adopt it but has caught up since. In higher education too, there was a resistance in the beginning. Things are changing though. Almost 100 percent of universities have a Web presence, conducting some or most part of its business online.  Some recent trends show there is an overwhelming demand for e-learning in schools from students, parents and educators alike. Not to be left behind, the governments across the world are focused on the initiative. So despite untimely obituaries of e-learning that continue to be written in some quarters, it continues to grow. However, the inherent problems and changing socio-technological environment have taken some sheen off it.  

CHALLENGES ABOUND
Despite the fact that it is still growing, e-learning of 2011 and beyond is not and will not be the same as e-learning of the 1990s. If static courses with an overload of multimedia elements dominated most of the ‘90s, the trend now is clearly towards collaboration with social networking tools, telephony and various kinds of computing devices coming together in a way that the world had never experienced before.

In between, there was a time when the Learning Management System (LMS) reigned supreme. However, a sizable majority of LMS buyers have shown dissatisfaction with the mammoth applications they bought and fault the LMS with lack of alignment with the business needs and seamless integration. LMS providers went into overdrive to add collaborative features as open source technologies helped free LMSs enter the scene, which were lighter and easier to use. Jury is still out if this has worked and whether or not LMS players will regain the status they once enjoyed.

The trend of social computing and related technologies poses yet another challenge to formal “course”-driven e-learning. The heavy focus on treating content with unwanted multimedia decoration has often proved detrimental to learning. For example, simple features of an application were better left mentioned on the plain real estate of a screen rather than visualizing each bullet point as a conceptual graphic only because you could have graphical representations.  

Similarly, in the quest of making courses interactive, people tried complex animations to teach simple subject matter. Pre-assessments, post-assessments and practices were built in abundance in a course without really exploring if we could make learners aware of a few things without having to profusely test them on those things.

Thus, the necessity to have a good computer/Web-based “course” led to an overdose of multimedia elements and superfluous instructional design thrust. 

THE WAY FORWARD
Practitioners of e-learning need to seriously analyze their own space and changing technology around them where new-age publishing, the ability to curate, and collaboration offer a completely fresh set of paradigms to work with. The fixation with “course” is no longer tenable. This new approach should also be in “sync” with a completely different set of communication tools the new generation is growing up with.

New technologies allow people to work with content in a variety of unrestricted ways.  You can blog, use wiki, insert audio and video, and hyperlink. Learners, educators and experts can collaborate and dynamically structure and curate content in a single searchable environment. People looking for a certain type of content will always reach a structured body of evolving content from known sources. The cycle goes on, achieving the goal of learning as a continuous process.

The Business Benefits Of Social Learning

Sumeet Anand and Nafay Kumail -  7/14/10

Published on CLOMedia

One thing repeatedly emphasized among learning and development professionals is the importance of getting “a seat at the table” – making their presence known to and establishing regular interaction with a company’s senior leadership. CLOs with the right technology and business perspective can change the face and fate of a company, but they need to be seen and heard to do so. Toward this end, CLOs need to go beyond procuring and implementing necessary training solutions and programs to directly connect their roles with the business outcomes of a company. The best way to do this is to improve workforce performance and demonstrate the effect of this on the bottom line.

Information technology, of course, plays a role. Ever since the advent of IT, it has dominated solutions offered to improve workforce performance, from computer- and web-based training to virtual classrooms and social-media-based knowledge preservation and transfer. Interactive learning conducted via the Internet and the accompanying mechanisms that capture and store the entire learning process for future use have become critical across a broad range of industries. The pace of adoption here has been rapid.

It is also worth noting that people learn where they spend most of their time. Learning doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s a function of communication and motivation. But learning has not yet been made as social as it could be. Using web-based social networking tools for learning and development can facilitate cost savings, which is a direct way to demonstrate the business impact of learning.

As any CLO knows, building out, delivering and maintaining a training program is costly. Web-based social networking tools can be rolled out comparatively inexpensively and meanwhile help people learn collectively. CLOs can help companies and individuals build their own learning networks and ensure that these are scalable. This is particularly essential in reaching younger employees. CLOs should recognize that young professionals have grown up with social networking tools and thus focus on phasing out entrenched legacy technologies such as e-learning modules that may be outdated in favor of interactive social networks.

This can only be achieved if collective knowledge is shared, curated and dynamically updated on a single platform that also allows knowledge collaboration and networking. Learning and development professionals should seek out a platform that enables them to not only save time spent on learning, but also solving day-to-day work-related problems faster – something that will increase employee productivity and customer satisfaction. This will also leave an active knowledge reservoir for new employees who can better navigate the intellectual capital of an organization. The end result is a learning process essential to the business overall, which ensures learning’s seat at the table.