Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008 - (Page 15)

LEARNING TECHNOLOGY | RICK J. CROWLEY THE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CLO OF THE FUTURE IS TO HELP SHAPE THE WAY A COMPANY CREATES, CAPTURES AND UPDATES THE COMPANY IP. THE EVOLUTION OF LEARNING AND LEARNING TECHNOLOGY T raditionally, the training organization in a company was all about creating and delivering classes around the company’s products; having most learning functions report into HR has only strengthened that paradigm. The learning function should be responsible for influencing a company’s culture and the way it learns. The opportunity for the CLO of the future is to help shape the way a company creates, captures and updates the company intellectual property. One could argue this is knowledge management, but what better place in the organization to take what has happened to the learning function and move it to the future of being an integral part of the company? With this belief, leveraging the learning systems and tools that have become a more important part of the company makes sense. Let’s look at the functionality of the current grouping of systems and tools as they may be implemented in any learning organization and at how the learning function can evolve these to help change the way the company solves its problems. The LMS The LMS has been mostly designed to manage instructorled training, but that limits its potential. The learning map feature is designed to “step” the learner through a curriculum. Many LMS solutions now can generate dynamic learning maps based on their role, their location and other criteria. There are companies that brag about having all of their information on the Web (in millions of Web pages) or on filers (in petabytes of storage). When asked, they can tell you very little about that content. The LMS is truly set up to help the learner in the same way it uses learning maps to help the learner navigate through a curriculum. An opportunity to leverage the dynamic maps is to walk users through solving their problems. Potentially you would no longer have to train employees on the applications they need to use to do their jobs. Content Development Tools There are many authoring environments and many philosophies as to how to use them. Let’s not focus on the learning tools that use instructional design methodologies to build content; let’s look at the opportunity to leverage tools that the learning function is using to help solve the more informal training. Tools to create videos or collaboration are great examples of the learning function defining ‘best practice’ for how these can be used more productively in the work environment. Leveraging a flash animation or a video to help the employee through a process step that requires more knowledge of how to use it effectively is better than creating a five-day course on the entire application and hoping all the employees who may use it have taken the course. The LCMS The LCMS is a great tool for governing content. It helps to identify who the business owner is, the birth date of the content, the expected end-of-life and the workflow content should go through to guarantee quality and to identify the target users. This is the most important leveragability opportunity in support of getting the employees the answers to the questions. Instead of having to worry about finding the answer and hoping it is the correct answer, the LCMS can guarantee that the answer the company believes to be right is the only answer available to the user. Customer Care Tools The learning functions have grown these tools and services in different ways. Leveraging what has been learned (e.g., providing more self-service functionality to the entire enterprise for solving their business problems) and aligning with the other support functions within the organization is how the learning function can provide more business value. Rick Crowley is senior director, learning systems, for NetApp University. Before joining NetApp, Rick was a driving force behind Cisco’s e-learning implementation and was director of technology training for Oracle. Email Rick at RickCrowley@netapp.com. 15 Training Industry Quarterly, Summer 2008 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008
At the Editor’s Desk
Contents
Ezine Email
Winning Organizations Through People
Before You Buy…
Learning Technologies
Games & Simulations: Playing to Learn
Designing Learning Simulations: Strategies for Leveraging Failure
Business Impact 101: The Value of Learning
Strategic Alignment: Transforming the Business of Training
Meet David DeFilippo
Meet Krys Moskal
Meet Vince Eugenio
Dealing with Death: Learning’s Most Sensitive Lessons
Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008