Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2010 - (Page 11)

LeArNING teChNoLoGIeS | ricK J. crowleY the oPPortunity to oPtimize is staring us in the faCe ComPonents of a learning infrastruCture s a learning technologist, I have had the opportunity to own the responsibility for two learning infrastructures and am venturing into my third. This is an opportunity to state what has always been a foundational belief of mine in creating infrastructures. Keep in mind while reading this article that a wise man once said “Content is King and Infrastructure is God.” The basic components of a learning infrastructure are: • Process: The most important component is the process. Both governance and technology are dependent on great process to realize their full potential. Many companies that are process-based will only have to invest a minimal amount of time re-engineering the process with a learning technologist who is well-versed on the opportunity to leverage great technology. Those companies that do not have good processes will have to invest time in defining, aligning and optimizing the process to create and consume content. • Governance: Technology has created a scenario that was once dreamed of as a “nice problem to have.” There was a day when creating and posting content for public consumption required a Web developer and governance as they were limited resources and companies were pressed to optimize the output with the Web developers. With the introduction of blogs, wikis and learning development tools that publish directly to production, content creators have pushed massive amount of content at consumers. The opportunity to optimize is staring us in the face. Governance of what content gets published is as, if not A more, important than the technologies that support it. • Technologies: Once the processes have been tuned and the governance is in place, it’s time to deploy the technologies that support them. Rolling out the technologies is more than just turning them on. Best practices and standards need to be leveraged in order to optimize them. If left to themselves, success will be suboptimal. For historical examples, look at the amount of content your company creates and how it is managed with e-mail, Word, PowerPoint, wikis and blogs. Collaboration is the next opportunity to really put best practice and standards into. The most important message to convey is making people aware that the learning infrastructure requires optimal processes, governance around how content gets created and exposed and then technology. They all should be scalable, rationally innovative, repeatable, standardized and then automated. To deploy technology as the answer to the learning infrastructure is as short-sighted as our use of e-mail, wikis and blogs without process and governance. The counterproductivity of these technologies offsets much of the productivity and leaves them all as suboptimal. Rick J. Crowley is an active consultant on learning technology and architecture. Prior to that Rick was senior director, learning systems, for NetApp University, a driving force behind Cisco’s e-learning adoption and implementation and held the position of director of technology training for Oracle. E-mail Rick at editor@trainingindustry.com. 11 Training Industry Quarterly, Spring 2010 / 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 - Spring 2010

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2010
From Where I Sit
Contents
Ad Index
At the Editor’s Desk
Winning Organizations Through People
Learning Technologies
Performance & Productivity
The Business Case for Measuring Learning
Marketing the Benefits of Training
Making Sense of the New Blend
The Do’s and Don’ts of Pitching New Technology to Executive Management
Golden Corral: Training’s on the Menu
Delivering Great Training
Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2010