Optimising the insignificant?Category: Education
Article added by: Bob Little
It was a challenging conundrum for e-learning's fictional super sleuth.
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Walter Hart, the great e-learning consultant, stared listlessly out of the window of his office. He'd named it ‘221b' in homage to a man whose perspicacity and powers of deductive reasoning he much admired. In reality, it was a modern office in a block of compact, functional offices rented by today's up-coming virtual businesses. It had none of the late Victorian opulence afforded by Holmes' Baker Street rooms but it did have a sign on the door that said: ‘221b: Walter Hart, e-learning consultancy'.
Hart's mind was in turmoil. Less than half an hour ago he'd read the posting on the Tata Interactive Systems' blog: ‘CLOs who spend their time improving the development and delivery of training might be optimising the insignificant. Consider this:
According to Tom Gilbert and Peter Dean, training only accounts for 10.5 per cent of the total potential change in worker behaviour. Clarity of objectives, working conditions and other factors are more important.
According to the Institute for Research on Learning, at most, formal training only accounts for 20 per cent of how people learn their jobs. Most workers learn their jobs from observing others, asking questions, trial and error, calling the help desk and other unscheduled, largely independent activities.
According to Robert Brinkerhoff and Stephen Gill, people who do attend formal training never apply 80 to 90 per cent of what they learn back on the job. They forget the bulk of what they're exposed to in a matter of days.
So, formal training accounts for 20 per cent x 20 per cent x 10 per cent of the possible improvements you can make to worker performance. That's 0.4 per cent. To account for potential double-counting and other quirks, let's say training might influence one per cent of worker potential.'
The evidence appeared to undermine everything Hart had believed and promoted. Yet it rang a bell of truth as far as both his intuition and experience were concerned.
Steve Rayson, of Kineo, had recently remarked: 'Our research has shown that customised or bespoke e-learning takes too long, and excludes many organisations because of its cost. Generic e-learning misses the mark because it doesn't focus on the organisation's specifics. Building e-learning from scratch is beyond the skills and capacity of most organisations.'
Rayson's alternative - ‘rapid' or informal e-learning - can take a variety of forms, Hart thought. Today, some e-learning, under the guise of an electronic performance support system, is delivered so informally that it merely intervenes briefly into ‘normal' work activities. Informal learning, in all its guises, is the key, he agreed.
Like his hook-nosed hero, Hart was a creature of habit - especially where his informal learning was concerned. He always read key publications. There were informative e-learning-related blogs and newsletters. There were networking sessions and surfing sessions on the internet, which yielded all sorts of valuable information.
So e-learning should stop looking like, and competing with, formal training and address informal learning. But how do you ensure that any type of learning material has the desired effect?
As Optimum Learning points out, there are the ten separate analyses (goal, target audience, stakeholder, problem, organisational, job, ask, content, media and systems) that need to be carried out at the design, implementation and evaluation phases of any project. These should identify any problems with learning transfer - including whether the organisational culture will allow the learning to be applied.
The result may be rapid e-learning but these analyses should be anything but hurried, Hart mused. And, as Carl French of the management consultancy Facture International has said, if you want learning to be effective, you need to design it ‘backwards' - starting with the desired results, rather than developing learning metaphors and materials that then have to be applied to the task in hand.
So, in the end, it was all true. Formal training is only part of the ‘learning mix' and much of what is taught formally - either in the classroom or electronically - is prevented, for one reason or another, from being applied. However, there are ways to minimise these inefficiencies and, besides, at least the research proves that some performance improvement is possible, even with formally delivered learning.
So producing performance improvements through learning was not an impossible strategy. What was it that his Victorian mentor had once said? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left - however improbable - is the solution.
Relieved to have solved the puzzle, Hart - still gazing out of the window - turned his mind to his next e-learning challenge.
By Bob Little
Posted By: Bob Little
Web: http://www.boblittlepr.com
Contact: e-mail
| About the Author: |
| Bob Little has been writing and commentating on technology based training, including e-learning, since 1990. His work has been published across three continents – the USA, Europe and Australia as well
as in UK-based publications including E-Learning Age, making him unique as a commentator on the worldwide e-learning scene. |
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