Elearning - February/March 2009 - (Page 31)

4 ing today; for instance the innovative telepresence rooms, where the fidelity is much greater than if you’re just using a Webcam or desktop camera. The problem is that none of these systems work with each other. Standards need to be established for that kind of environment. Consolidation of collaboration technologies. There are currently 1200 collaborative tools available — more than anyone could possibly use — so there will probably be a shake-out in the number of vendors. The IT department really doesn’t want to support lots of different tools, so it tries to consolidate, in some cases doing a tech evaluation and deciding on one tool. But that’s not really the best option. The other strategy is that IT forms a committee of the largest stakeholders and attempts to get an idea of the overall functions needed. They thus get a lot better buy-in from the stakeholders and there’s a better adoption through the enterprise. It ends up costing less, but it often doesn’t look that way because it takes a lot longer to implement. Collaboration has been shown to follow the TIPCA (tradition-innovation-proliferation-consolidation-acceptance) cycle that starts with using traditional technologies. Then somebody innovates and uses an additional collaboration technology. Pretty soon, you get proliferation of tools throughout the organization. Then IT consolidates and standardizes, followed by widespread acceptance. That initiative eventually becomes tradition and you go through the cycle again. Stage 1: traditional collaboration (phone, fax, e-mail, face-to-face, etc.) Stage 2: Proliferation of specific apps Audio/video, data conferencing, EIM (enterprise IM), chat, presence, virtual team spaces Stage 3: multiple a/v conferencing solutions, multiple IMs, and a variety of multiple vir- 5 tual team stations Stage 4: standardization around RSS feeds, IM messaging for more consolidation, and driving adoption within the organization Stage 5: a virtual work environment where everything is very standardized and complete integration — mobile environment, the physical workspace, Web interfaces, etc. (These are starting to emerge, and we’re hoping to see more companies move from Stage 4 to Stage 5 as technologies become more available.) Aggregation: of people, of content, of conversations around content, of tabs or keywords to filter content, and more. Aggregation eventually can affect social networks, portals, communities, and tools that start to aggregate relationships — which is where a lot of companies are start- Elearning! February/March 2009 31

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Elearning - February/March 2009

Elearning - February/March 2009 Contents Editor’s Note News Social Networking Popular Learning Needs Technology On Competency Management IT Employment Drops Trendlines Deals Learning Roles in Talent Management Informal E-Learning and Web 2.0 Cover Story: Learning Your Way to Profits Collaboration Trends, Strategies 12 Wishes for LMSs, LCMSs Tips: Recession-Proofing Your Job Case Study: Military Training Case Study: City of Arlington, Va. New Products Pop Quiz Last Word

Elearning - February/March 2009

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