Just in from our friends at learning research firm, Bersin & Associates is a blog post about eLearning becoming less interactive and more expert centric. I quote in part:

“A recent study, The Corporate Learning Factbook, showed that, with spending and staffing on the decline, today’s training organizations are developing courseware that is less interactive. Instead, more companies are now using “rapid e-learning” tools, software that converts PowerPoint documents to online learning materials. Rapid e-learning tools allow content to be created relatively quickly and easily (and cheaply), and also put power into the hands of SMEs to develop their own training and communications. Over the past several years, these tools have been an entry point for many organizations in adopting online training. Today, more organizations are turning to these tools due to resource constraints.”

Yes, as we’ve been saying here at Altus Learning Systems for years (way before this economic meltdown!), the transfer of knowledge within organizations must become disintermediated–coming directly from experts to learners. But what is missing in the blog post’s focus on “interactivity” is findability and accessibility–busy people care less about interacting with their learning maerials than they do about finding what they need to know quickly and being able to do directly to the point of interest. And the type of interactivity that people DO want to engage in is different than eLearning learning exercises–they want to be able to rate, comment, ask questions, find the expert, add their own user generated content, form communities of interest, etc. This is the new intereactivity that has been born out of people’s experiences with web 2.0 and social networking.

When times get tough–the tough make changes. The hardships to companies and individuals in the current financial crisis cannot be overstated—layoffs are all too common and budgets are being slashed. But as some pundit recently said, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Companies are being forced to make difficult decisions, which may ultimately lead them to adopt much more efficient and effective ways of sharing knowledge than prior attempts using formal e-learning.

In better times, companies could afford to have a multiplicity of redundant learning/training solutions, technologies, and vendors. And they could afford the lengthy and expensive process of creating instructionally deisgned courseware. But no longer. The following are examples of the significant changes and consolidations that we at Altus Learning Systems see our customers making these days:

• A major storage systems company eliminated its annual sales meeting and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the essential training on-demand that would have occurred face-to-face in the meeting.
• A leading enterprise software company cancelled its annual customer conference and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the product-related training on-demand so its customers did not have to travel to the event.
• A major networking company eliminated travel for internal transfer-of-information meetings for the sales force and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the knowledge live and on-demand.
• Another electronics manufacturer discovered that it was using three knowledge sharing solutions and decided to reduce costs and improve the end-user experience by eliminating the other two vendors and consolidating with Altus. The same company is considering replacing a significant amount of its off-shored e-learning courseware development with on-demand presentations made directly by subject matter experts recorded in the Altus system.
• And an automotive company decided to abandon the expensive satellite television system it was using to broadcast technical updates throughout its domestic dealer network and substitute the Altus on-demand system for easy reference by automotive technicians.

In each case, companies decided to invest in Altus after reviewing all their options and coming to the conclusion that it was the most cost-effective solution for sharing mission-critical knowledge.

According to IDC learning industry analyst Cushing Anderson, “Respondents to Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Business Intelligence Board survey view the coming year with guarded optimism. Most of them acknowledge the threats posed by economic problems, but also see opportunities for improvement.”

But what is particularly interesting are the changes in industry priorities for the coming year. Three areas have increased their standings in the Top 10 Priorities: informal learning, knowledge management, and sales training.

• “Informal learning is up four spots, while measurement (fourth place in 2008) is no longer in the top 10. (It landed at 11 this year.)”
• “Knowledge management also continues a steady upward trend, up three this year, and up six spots over the past two years.”
• “Sales training made an appearance in the top 10 for 2009, although it did not in 2008. Sales training has increased in importance in light of the economy. As one executive put it, “In the tight economy, the performance of our sales team is the company’s top priority. We are refocusing much of our efforts to drive productivity in the sales teams.”

And, when asked which topics should be given more attention by the training industry, “…the top two choices were knowledge management and informal learning. Given the high impact that these two activities have on training programs, this comes as no surprise. However, social networking was the third-place choice.” Although undefined, or defined variously, “Social networking also is seen as another avenue for high-impact informal learning and one that should be managed proactively rather than haphazardly.”

These findings are indeed gratifying to see, since they have served as guiding principles behind the development of the Altus Collaborative Knowledge Sharing solution for the last several years.

• Underlying the Altus informal learning solution is the principle of creating the shortest path from experts to learners—hence, our recording of expert presentations with no instructional designers as intermediaries.
• When these presentations are aggregated into a full-text searchable repository, they collectively serve as a knowledge management system that enables people to quickly find whatever knowledge they need whenever they need it—and at the exact point of interest.
• The effective adaptation of social networking technology and behavior has been achieved by adding a number of features that enable people to interact with the content, form communities of interest, and collaboratively share what they know.
• And when the power of this solution is applied to enabling direct and indirect sales, significant and demonstrable ROI has been achieved in client companies including Cisco Systems, IBM, and NetApp.

The eLearning Guild is sponsoring a three-day conference on development techinques for developing eLearning content more rapidly. I will be giving a talk on Wednesday, February 22 @ 12:00 PST entitled, Disintermediate or Die, in which I will be making the case for putting subject matter experts in charge of content and having the rest of us help them share their knowledge much more directly. I will be building the case for disintermediating not only the development of learning content but also learner access to the knowledge/content by making it searchable and available outside the learning management system framework.

I attended a very interesting session by Marc Rosenberg at the recent ASTD TechKnowledge conference in Denver last week, entitled “Beyond E-Learning: New Approaches to Managing and Delivering Organizational Knowledge.” Marc’s major point was that E-Learning (in terms of E-Training) is but a small piece of the overall organizational learning process and we should move rapidly toward a more encompassing “learning and performance architecture.” No disagreement there—he’s absolutely right, and his contribution to defining such an architecture was very worthwhile. And Marc has a new book in which he wouold be happy to tell you more.

But the more interesting experience for me happened at my table. Marc took most of the first hour in a group therapy session in which he laboriously facilitated a discussion about just how bad trainers feel about the state of E-Learning today and how desperately they would like it to become more interesting, relevant, and meaningful. Amidst the around-the-room self-flagellation process, Marc came to my table and Jennifer Higgins (from a company named Lithia–A merica’s Car & Truck Store) had the audacity to say: “Actually, everyone in our company really likes E-Learning.” She uttered the statement with a voice of pride tinged with confusion about why everyone was trashing E-Learning when it seemed to work so well for her.

After a pregnant pause in the large room, the microphone was quickly circulated to the next table where the despoiling of E-Learning could continue. Surprisingly, everyone wanted to bad-mouth E-Learning, but no one bothered to stop and ask Jennifer to tell us more about why it was working so well for her. Except me, and here’s what I found out during the break. E-Learning is driven by the management at Lithia and the managers and executives at Lithia are all ex-automotive sales people. They take performance very seriously and believe that good management and professionalism on the floor are key factors in differentiating themselves from the rest of the industry.

They take training very seriously and wash out any new-to-Lithia salespeople who don’t make the grade. And, since they are all successful ex-salespeople themselves, they actually know what training people need and how to do it most effectively. Therefore, when it comes to E-Learning, “…they only do what works.” And, that’s why “everyone likes E-Learning” at Lithia and why it is successful. How simple and how profound.

Funny thing was, that while Marc wanted to excite us about the future potential of emerging E-Learning technologies, I was brought abruptly back to the simple truth of any effective management methodology: be sure management drives the process and only do what works! The problems for everyone else in Marc’s therapy session, unfortunately, were: their management doesn’t grock the relationship of learning to performance; they actually don’t know what the people who work for them need to know (since they never did their jobs themselves), and trainers try to do the best they can while stranded in some remote department like human resources. Another very interesting insight from Jennifer: apparently they don’t like the phrase “human resources” at Lithia, and much prefer the title Human Development Department.

And I suspect if we ask Jennifer for an E-Learning update in a year or two, we’ll probably find that she has put the parts of Marc’s model that actually work in place at Lithia–and no one in the company will have ever heard the phrase “learning and performance architecture.”

I will be speaking at the ASTD TechKnowledge conference in Denver on Wednesday, February 4, 2006. The subject will be the same as my recent presentation at the Online Educa Berlin conference, but with 75 minutes to talk (instead of 15!), we’ll be able to get into greater depth and actual demonstrations of live customer solutions. I am making my slides available to conference participants for download because the presentation has changed significantly since I submitted the original set a few months ago–so the one in the book will be out of date.

I am sure many of you are already familiar with Stephen Downes’ vision for the future of eLearning, or eLearning 2.0. But whether you have read it before and need a refresher, or you are reading it for the first time, it’s a great piece to put perspective on where things are likely going. The following excerpt gives a little of the flavor and direction:

” What happens when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is “delivered,” and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read— and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.”

I think Stephen is absolutely on target (if not prophetic) and heartily recommend it for your consideration and reflection. Also of interest is a related commentary by David Jennings. In this blog entry Jennings refers to a new blog titled Learning 2.0 Tip of the Week–not sure how this is going to evolve, since it is so new, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.