Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2008 - (Page 20) global manufacturing organization that wanted to increase engagement and performance related to a required Web-based course. After completion, learning assignments were posted to an online “coach,” who corresponded via e-mail. Learners from a broad range of countries and time zones were encouraged to post their thoughts, ideas and experience to a wiki, where the “wisdom” of the whole group or crowd defined best practices regardless of location. Workforce Transition Over the next 10 years, more than 40 percent of the skilled labor force will retire. At the same time, over 90 million “gamers” will enter the workforce. We simply cannot deploy and deliver enough formal programs fast enough (even if our audience would allow it) to capture expertise from the one group and transfer it to the other. One client asks, “How can I give 20 years of experience to my college graduate new hire?” To address this “brain drain,” Turner Construction in 2006 implemented a series of communities of practice to embed learning into work. Triggered by a need to onboard 1,000 new professionals each year, the communities were part of an integrated knowledge portal, with dedicated experts to moderate and facilitate information exchange in the context of real-work questions, issues and other documentation. Jim Mitnick, former learning leader at Turner Construction and now CEO of Ironwood Learning, noted, “Both structured and unstructured knowledge needs to be shared in real time across any enterprise to enable individuals to access information needed to perform any task. Real collaboration has to happen naturally and without resistance if you want to maintain any competitive advantage in business today.” Virtual worlds offer another option for expertise-sharing. With over 6 million registered users, Second Life from Linden Labs has scores of corporate “islands” that are used for recruiting, on-boarding, peer-topeer engagement or group work. Forterras’ Olive platform and Proton Media’s Protosphere are alternative environments being used by corporations. For example, Proton Media created a virtual world in which new car-insurance adjusters can practice examining damaged vehicles by manipulating 20 damaged virtual cars; they can look inside and underneath and get a close-up of particular damage spots. Skills are honed, mistakes are shared, and risk is mitigated through this type of facilitated learning path. “Virtual worlds provide a perfect environment for mentoring, telepresence and a host of tools for brainstorming,” stated Randy Hinrich, managing partner at 2b3d and a learning professional who specializes in 3D design. He recommends that you focus on acculturation and adoption with user-friendly projects. “Start with recruiting, on-boarding, meetings and human resource activities like diversity training, which lend themselves well to engagement and interaction.” Leverage Your Brain Trust Another obvious quick win for learning leaders is found in leveraging social or collaborative tools or environments for engaging and harvesting the expertise of subject matter experts (SMEs). As the demand for technical and business leaders’ subject knowledge increases, we are finding increased “pushback” relative to the time and availability they have to contribute to learning programs. In the traditional world of course development, knowledge sharing and review had to be scheduled and managed as part of the design process. Social networks provide wonderful opportunities to minimize their time and make their contributions more dynamic, through online databases or a wiki of leading practices that is accessible to and can be modified and shaped by learners. One of our clients tells us that the greatest challenge they face is not only the “tacit“ knowledge walking out the door when retirees leave the company; just as important is the loss of networks and relationships that their “experts” had developed over a 30-year history. Knowing where to go for help, who has experience with a particular project, who has relationships with customers, and who has contacts in the industry are all important “knowledge,” the rapid development of which these virtual social networks can support. What About Instructional Design with 2.0? John Sealy Brown, former director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), was quoted as saying, “Rather than treating pedagogy as the transfer of knowledge from teachers who are experts to students who are receptacles, educators and learning leaders should consider more hands-on and informal types of learning, closer to an apprenticeship model.” Even if we can all agree on the benefits of the collaborative properties of Web 2.0 relative to enterprise learning, it leaves many of us asking, “What happens to instructional design and the integrity of these programs?” The answer is that informal learning, learners design what they need, when they need it Let's face it, no matter how skilled a designer is, they tend to design to meet their learning needs. Informal learning empowers learners to directly meet their own needs. Dr. Bill Bruck from Q2 Learning concurs, saying, “The best social learning systems take into account a fundamental truth: People learn best when they can interact with the content and each other in true-tolife situations, but through carefully considered and facilitated process design with performance-based outcomes.” What this means is that our design palettes have become a little more colorful. Because learning activities and performance support are becoming more closely fused, many businesses are becoming increasingly focused on their educational processes, with outcomes as the focus. Web 2.0 offers us more blended options for learning and reinforcement. We have always asked, “What is the business need, and what is the performance gap?” But now we must also ask, “How soon?” Are there varying degrees of proficiency over a period of time? In a 2.0 world we ask, “What skill or knowledge must be learned in a synchronous environment versus potentially asynchronous (or, in other words, live interaction)? Which part of the content is awareness-level learning, potentially lending the training to podcasts or mobile learning, versus application-level learning that could require a live or virtual simulation environment?” The secret is not to become enamored with the technology, but to focus on how a 2.0 technology might better serve the learning needs of the participant while addressing the business needs of the company. For example, in his first six months, an Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2008 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ
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