Performance, Learning, Leadership, and Knowledge

For the latest news, go to main news page August 27, 2008: eLearning 2.0 -> Informal Learning -> learning 2.0 -> web 2.0 Brent Schlenker writes, "... that 80% to 90% of learning occurs informally outside of the classroom. This should be shocking enough to force some sort of change in e-Learning design, but it hasn't ... at least not yet in any significant way." Schlenker goes on to tie elearning 2.0 to informal learning to learning 2.0 to web 2.0, which is based on consuming content, creating content, and collaborating with others. This leads to the catchy phase of "rip, mix, and feed" (consume, create, and share). So now we are left with the impression that we are spending all of our resources on the puny 10% to 20% percent of formal learning while we should be spending it on the 80% to 90% of elearning 2.0/informal learning/learning 2.0. Yet as in the case of most hypes and fads, the proponents play fast and loose with the numbers. First, the proponents pick the numbers that best fit the hype. More conservative estimates put the ratio at 30% formal to 70% informal (I have even seen 40% formal to 60% informal). So lets meet in the middle and put formal learning at 25% and informal learning at 75%. So now we have 75% of the learning in organizations being accomplished by learners walking around the building or getting on the internet choosing what they want to learn by ripping, mixing, and sharing. Right? Wrong! Because the proponents also fail to mention that the 75% informal learning ratio also includes a large percentage of what I like to call "nonformal" learning -- they are being directed by their managers, supervisors, and more experienced peers, rather than the training department, as to what they need to learn through the use of such techniques as OJT. Thus we now have the learning being accomplished in organizations as: 25% formal, 35% informal, and 40% nonformal. Of course this will vary greatly among not only organizations but also the individual learners. Indeed, these percentages are also infused with each other because almost no type of learning situation will rely solely on one or the other, but rather various combinations of the three. Now can the use of "learning 2.0" benefit all three forms of learning (formal, informal, and nonformal)? Yes. But as Will Thalheimer warns us, "Because e-Learning 2.0 is already on the fad upswing, we ought to be especially careful about assuming its benefits. In other words, we ought to measure it early and often, at least at first until our implementations prove to be beneficial investments." From McKinsey Global Survey Results: "Companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0's benefits. Only 21 percent of the respondents say they are satisfied overall with Web 2.0 tools, while 22 percent voice clear dissatisfaction. Further, some disappointed companies have stopped using certain technologies altogether" "A higher level of usage is found at companies that encourage it by using tactics such as integrating the tools into existing workflows, launching Web 2.0 in conjunction with other strategic initiatives, and getting senior managers to act as role models for adoption." Web 2.0 is now dropping from Gartner's "Peak of Inflated Expectations" to the "Trough of Disillusionment." However, it is supposed to "reach mainstream status within two years, with an impact rated "transformational." So what does this mean to the training/learning/knowledge profession? First, we cannot mix one hype (informal learning) with another hype (web 2.0/learning 2.0), and expect to achieve a positive impact on the organization. This is particularly true when one of the hypes is built on bad research (mostly bad numbers in this case). If informal learning was really all that dominant, then the adaptation and satisfaction rates of web 2.0 would be much higher as the learners would have been absolutely primed for this type of technology, no matter what flaws were in the implementation. It is quite interesting on why companies cited three reasons as the primary reasons for their satisfaction: Integrating the Tools into Existing Workflows: Rather than seeing this tool as only an informal method where users are the primary content fillers, use it more as a nonformal/formal performance support method. Also see Tony Karrer's response and Clark Quinn's response. Launching in Conjunction with Other Strategic Initiatives: Now this could be seen more as an informal learning method that would compliment other initiatives. Think "crowdsourcing." Getting Senior Managers to Act as Role Models for Adoption: More of a nonformal learning method where managers, supervisors, and experienced performers set the stage for the tool's usage. "Is the institution an enabler or is the institution an obstacle?" August 22, 2008 Leadership Styles Authoritarian I want both of you to. . . Delegative You two take care of the problem while I go. . . Participative Let's work together to solve this. . . Click pictures for Flickr view (Creative Commons - attribution) A Fresh Look at Brain-Based Education - PDK It has been more than 20 years since it was first suggested that there could be connections between brain function and educational practice. In the face of all the evidence that has now accumulated to support this notion, Mr. Jensen advocates that educators take full advantage of the relevant knowledge from a variety of scientific disciplines. Tuning the backchannel - Dave's Whiteboard Barry Dahl analyzed the comments from a discussion and determined that only 31% of the posts were on-topic. In the specific instance, he says "the audience treated [the backchannel] like an experiment because we [presenters] treated it like an experiment." Ken Burns: going inside the photograph - Presentation Zen When you think about it, often the photo really is more powerful than video at telling the story. The photo captures a moment in time allowing the viewer to slow down and think and wonder and reflect. Photos allow for greater emphasis and may have less distracting elements. They can be livened up with technigues such as the "Ken Burns effect," a technique for adding motion to still photography. Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod. - New York Times "We had assumed that the biggest focus of these devices would be consuming the content," said Tracy Futhey, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at Duke. But that is not all that the students did. They began using the iPods to create their own "content," making audio recordings of themselves and presenting them. The students turned what could have been a passive interaction into an active one, Ms. Futhey said. Study: Serious Gaming Boosts Cognitive Skills - FUTURE-MAKING SERIOUS GAMES Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile, PhD, and William Stone, BS, described several studies involving high school and college students and laparoscopic surgeons that looked at their video game usage and its effects. Findings from the student studies confirmed previous research on effects of playing violent games: Those playing violent games were more hostile, less forgiving and believed violence to be normal compared to those who played nonviolent games. Players of "prosocial" games got into fewer fights in school and were more helpful to other students. Other studies involving students showed that those who played more entertainment games did poorer in school and were at greater risk for obesity. A study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors compared to those who did not play video games. August 19, 2008 Click picture for Flickr view. Bottom-up learning - e.learning age Bottom-up learning occurs because employees want to be able to perform effectively in their jobs. The exact motivation may vary, from achieving job security to earning more money, gaining recognition or obtaining personal fulfilment, but the route to all these is performing well on the job, and employees know as well as their employers that this depends - to some extent at least - on their acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skills. Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid? - The Rapid eLearning Blog Instructional designers need to consider web surfing habits. Whether it's right or wrong, people who are online have been developing habits that they bring to the elearning course. Design courses to accommodate these power browsing habits. If you don't, chances are you'll lose a connection with the learner which will make the course ineffectual. The Voice of the Learner: How Employees Learn in 2008 - The MASIE Cente Employees today are learning how to do their jobs very differently! e-Learning, on-line Video, Social Networks and other Informal methods are now options for learning, in addition to more traditional Classes and On-The-Job Training (OJT). A recent survey by The MASIE Center of 6,100 employees in companies around the world provides a profile of how employees currently learn at work and how their learning preferences are changing. Via Workplace Learning Today. Working Memory Training Raises IQ of Adults - Improve Your Learning and Memory A new paper, Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory, describes that while there is a long history of research into cognitive training showing that, although performance on trained tasks can increase dramatically, transfer of this learning to other tasks remains poor. Here, the authors present evidence for transfer from training on a demanding working memory task to measures of Fluid intelligence. Also, see: Help Your Working-memory Capacity and Tests Produce Learning. August 11, 2008 The Thinking Behind Critical Thinking Courses - Washington Post Critical thinking is not a skill like riding a bike or diagramming a sentence that, once learned, can be applied in many situations. Instead, as your most-hated high school teacher often told you, you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject--facts, concepts and trends--before the maxims of critical thinking taught in these feverishly-marketed courses will do you much good. The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge). Here's Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning - The Rapid eLearning Blog No one likes wasting time and in the process being treated like a child. However, the organization commits a lot of its resources to the training and they want to make sure that people take the time to learn the information. They definitely don't want the employees skipping through information that might be critical to the organization's success. Design for Emotion and Flow - Boxes and Arrows Note: While this article is direced towards web design, most of the concepts can also be used for learning design. Information architects and designers play a critical role in ensuring the products they design provide users' with a return on their investment of attention. Also see Completing the Zen in Performance Management. Consumers typically need not worry much about the programming plumbing beneath their online applications. But suppose you're the person on the hook for your company's online expense reporting tool or a start-up planning to build an online music mixer for anyone on the Internet. You'll have to place a bet on which technology is best and which programmers to hire or train. "Even if I were starting from scratch today, I still think I'd bet on JavaScript and Ajax...It's going to be hard to stop the massive momentum we have," Henrikson said. "Flash is seeing a pretty aggressive growth cycle now, (but) I still think JavaScript is going to be (used in) 10 times the number of Flash apps that launch." August 5, 2008 How magicians control your mind - Boston Globe A new model has arisen over the past decade, in which visual cognition is understood not as a camera but something more like a flashlight beam sweeping a twilit landscape. At any particular instant, we can only see detail and color in the small patch we are concentrating on. The rest we fill in through a combination of memory, prediction and a crude peripheral sight. We don't take in our surroundings so much as actively and constantly construct them. Seeing is Hearing: New Type of Synesthesia Discovered - Scientific American On the visual trials, nonsynesthetes judgments fell to nearly chance levels, a result that corroborates other research showing that most people are better at judging auditory patterns than assessing visual patterns. The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn - Scientific American As researchers continue to investigate storytelling's power and pervasiveness, they are also looking for ways to harness that power. Some such as Green are studying how stories can have applications in promoting positive health messages. "A lot of problems are behaviorally based," Green says, pointing to research documenting the influence of Hollywood films on smoking habits among teens. And Mar and Oatley want to further examine how stories can enhance social skills by acting as simulators for the brain, which may turn the idea of the socially crippled bookworm on its head. What Stinks About Webinars? An elegant, focused PowerPoint deck is good, but hardly sufficient, webinars would benefit from some instructional design principles. Webinar disasters can be prevented by applying basic instructional design: selecting content by taking into account the purpose of the presentation, attending to time/space constraints and audience, matching content with delivery strategies, applying document design, storytelling, characterization, worked examples and so on and so forth. It boils down to "telling a story and not lecturing or reading." Why Organizational Strategy Matters - LeaderValues Top performing companies successfully leverage their organization more effectively than rivals and derive over 64% more profit per employee than next-tier performers. Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon - Washington Post For the purposes of their experiment, two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had sent one another a text message. The researchers looked at the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect 180 billion different pairs of users in the database. They found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less. Some pairs, however, were separated by as many as 29 hops. August 1, 2008 Cognitive restructuring and the fist bump terrorists - Mind Hacks Thoughts on implicit association test (IAT), reductio ad absurdum argument, and cognitive restructuring using the recent satirical New Yorker cover depicting Obama and his wife as fist-bumping Islamic terrorists The Right Way to Disagree with Direct Reports - Harvard Business Try not to prove that your direct reports are wrong. Chances are that your direct reports are generally bright and interested in what they are doing - especially the ones that take the initiative to make suggestions. The fact that your ideas differ from their ideas does not always mean that they are wrong. As difficult as it may be to believe, sometimes you are wrong. Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? - New York Times As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading - diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write. The Myth of the Math Gender Gap - Time According to new data, the researchers say, that gender gap has become a myth - a finding they hope will help shift the very real gender gap in math, science and technology professions, which are currently dominated by men. WikiGate: A Wakeup Call For Wikipedia - The Kent Lewis Experience How are companies that are listed on Wikipedia supposed to clarify or correct inaccuracies, or add new content? Not only is writing about ones self a violation of the rules, but paying someone to do so is as well. July 22, 2008 Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain - Scientific American These findings have important real world implications. If making choices depletes executive resources, then "downstream" decisions might be affected adversely when we are forced to choose with a fatigued brain. Indeed, University of Maryland psychologist Anastasiya Pocheptsova and colleagues found exactly this effect: individuals who had to regulate their attention - which requires executive control - made significantly different choices than people who did not. Everything is fragmented - Building CoPs for knowledge flow - Dave Snowden The name brings to mind Etienne Wenger's pioneering work in observing naturally occurring use of virtual environments by engineers. The problem was that when people went from a researcher's description of what had grown naturally in the past to a prescriptive recipe, things went wrong. Students Who Use 'Clickers' Score Better On Physics Tests - Science Daily Ohio State University students who used the devices to answer multiple-choice questions during physics lectures earned final examination scores that were around 10 percent higher - the equivalent of a full-letter grade -- than students who didn't. Crisis, what crisis? The future of elearning - Training Zone 95% of respondents believe elearning works best as part of a blend. This has always been the belief of those of us with a more enlightened view of the uses and limitations of 'e' as a learning medium. The Competitive Imperative of Learning - Stephen's Web There is not a lot of critical or analytical writing on learning in the business press, so this article by Amy Ednondson is an important one. She makes the distinction between Execution-as-Efficiency and Execution-as-Learning. Bar graphs vs. Pie charts - Seth Godin I stepped on the toes of many data presentation purists yesterday, so let me reiterate my point to make it crystal clear: In a presentation to non-scientists (or to bored scientists), the purpose of a chart or graph is to make one point, vividly. July 10, 2008 A Customer-Driven Approach to Molding Tomorrow's Leaders - CLO According to conventional wisdom, 70 percent of employee development happens on the job, 20 percent through formal and informal relationships with bosses and mentors and 10 percent in the classroom. However, we are seeing a new dynamic emerge, one that suggests that 50 percent of employee development takes place through challenging job assignments, 30 percent in the classroom and 20 percent through community involvement. This theory suggests that powerful learning experiences are available everywhere and that experiential classroom instruction can be tied more closely to the job than ever before. As Baby Boomers Retire, Companies Fail to Transfer Knowledge - i4cp If experience is the best teacher, most companies are apparently cutting class when it comes to knowledge transfer (KT). According to a recent study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), just 29% of responding organizations report that they incorporate retirement forecasts into their knowledge transfer practices, and only a third add "skills gap analysis" into those forecasts. Most companies also admit they do not formally measure the effectiveness of their knowledge transfer practices. The three laws of great graphs - Seth Godin The problem with bar charts is that they should either be line/area charts (when graphing a change over time, like unemployment rates) or they should be a simple pie chart (when comparing two or three items at the same scale). New Design for My Smile Sheet - Will at Work Learning Instead of asking learners to respond globally (which they are not very good at), it asks learners to respond to specific learning points covered in the learning intervention. This not only enables the learners to better calibrate their responses, it also gives the learners a spaced repetition (improving later memory retrieval on key learning points). Older workforce requires variety of recruitment strategies - PennState Live "Today's employers will need to be innovative in hiring and motivating their workforce employees who can vary widely in age from Generation X and Y to Baby Boomers," said researchers Diane Spokus, a recent Ph.D. recipient in workforce education, and William Rothwell, professor of workforce education and training and development. "Few institutions have retention efforts under way to retain their mature workforce. But managers will need a smorgasbord approach to fully use the untapped assets of an aging workforce." July 8, 2008 The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social - Scientific American Mirror Neurons collapse the distinction between seeing and doing. Virtual training at Fort Benning While much of a recruit's introduction to the Army is the same as it has always been--firing ranges, long marches, obstacle courses, and the like--the Army is increasingly utilizing new technologies to help soldiers learn their jobs. The crowd within - Economist This suggests that the brain is constantly creating hypotheses about the world and checking them against reality. Those that pass muster are adopted. Guessing the answers to questions you do not know the correct answer to, but have some idea of what the right answer ought to look like, could tap into such a system. A hive mind buzzing with ideas, as it were, but inside a single skull. $37 billion - US and UK businesses count the cost of employee misunderstanding - Cognisco UK and US employees are costing businesses $37 billion (£18.7 billion) 2 every year because they do not fully understand their jobs, according to a new IDC white paper commissioned by Cognisco, the world's leading intelligent employee assessment specialist. Approximately two thirds of the total cost of misunderstanding reported by organisations was attributed to loss of business due to unplanned downtime (32 percent), poor procurement practice (17 percent) and settlements for industrial tribunals (16 percent). Other costs incurred include regulatory penalties and tax or revenue penalties. Long-tail economics favors the blockbuster, Harvard study finds - c/net Remember the long tail? It was the omnipresent theory that suggested there were oodles of cash to be made by monetizing a market's disparate tastes via the Web. Why sell a million copies of Led Zeppelin's Coda, when you can make a thriving business of selling two to three copies of your neighbor's garage band to Rick, two copies of a Nigerian band's tunes to Susan, and so on? As new research highlighted in Harvard Business Review suggests, the answer may well be that the real money is in the blockbuster, not the long tail, after all. Your Mashup Is Probably Legal - Slashdot "We've been conditioned to think that if you pull something off the web and use it, you're committing some sort of copyright infringement. But increasingly, the law is moving in the opposite direction. Provided you are making a truly new use of the content, you are free to make money off those copyrighted images and video and sound. June 20, 2008 Study: Social networks may subvert 'digital divide' - c/net "What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher from the school's College of Education and Human Development, said in a release Friday. Water woes, trouble, and training - Dave's Whiteboard A one-page guide to performance problem analysis, just in case the cause of the problem is not restricted to a lack of skill or knowledge. The Myth of Multitasking - The New Atlantis When people do their work only in the "interstices of their mind-wandering," with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom. Information Overload Research Group news wrapup - emaildashboard Wow. We publicly launched the Information Overload Research Group yesterday, June 17, 2008 KnowledgeAdvisors and Bassi Investments' Human Capital Measurement Portfolio Outperforms S&P 500 by 15 Percent - The Earth Times Organizations that invest heavily in Human Capital were more likely to outperform the market. The Human Capital Measurement portfolio created by Bassi Investments Inc., comprised of a subset of KnowledgeAdvisors clients, clearly shows that when an organization focuses on measuring and improving human capital impact it is more likely to generate above average returns to shareholders. Also see Investing in People who Invest in People (PDF) and The Impact of U.S. Firms Investments in Human Capital on Stock Prices (PDF). Closing the "ADDIE" Loop - The LeanLearning Blog Contrary to the belief that the interests of instructional design and learning analytics work at cross purposes, I present the case for analysis-analytics collaboration for the benefit of the learner. Hear me out, ye learned jury of courseware sponsors and learners, before you passeth judgment ... Circling the wagons against Nick Carr - c/net What is it about Nick Carr, a very bright guy, that inspires the not-so-bright guys to bring out the knives? Criticism of his recent Atlantic piece has ranged from the predictably ungenerous to the downright bitchy. So it goes. The chattering class always gets irritated when convention gets challenged. After Carr published his thoughtful Harvard Business Review article in 2003, "Why IT Doesn't Matter," many technology leaders and trade press opinion makers reacted harshly. They so caricatured Carr's nuanced thesis that they entirely missed his bigger point about IT's declining importance as a competitive asset. In the end, of course, it turned out Carr was quite right. Alaskan Airlines saves millions by rethinking check-in flow During my two hours of observation in Seattle, an Alaska agent processed 46 passengers, while her counterpart at United managed just 22. For English Studies, Koreans Say Goodbye to Dad - New York Times South Koreans now make up the largest group of foreign students in the United States (more than 103,000) and the second largest in New Zealand (6,579). South Korean parents say that the schools are failing to teach not only English but also other skills crucial in an era of globalization, like creative thinking. That resonates among South Koreans, whose economy has slowed after decades of high growth and who believe they are increasingly being squeezed between the larger economies of Japan and China. June 9, 2008 Learning, Training & Development - Defend Thyselves! - Elliott Masie in HR Management We have an obligation to create an environment where they can learn the skills they need to succeed and we have a critical need to create (and measure) the readiness of this tribe to take on tomorrow's challenges. The context of error - Cognitive Edge Innovation happens when people use things in unexpected ways, or come up against intractable problems. We learn from tolerated failure, without the world is sterile and dies. Systems that eliminate failure, eliminate innovation. The Learning Landscape Model - Will at Work Learning It's helpful to have an overall understanding of what we're trying to do in the learning-and-performance profession. The E-learning Ecosystem in organizations - The E-learning Curve at Edublogs By adapting the well-known learning curve, I developed a conceptual model that maps Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives to learner requirements as they progress along the curve. Behavioral Interview Techniques - testreadypro.com STAR is an example that is most often used for behavioral interview responses. It follows the following formula, S: Situation, describe briefly when and where the incident occurred and who was involved. You are setting the scene. T: Task, what were you trying to achieve, what was the problem or issue to be dealt with. A: Action, what action did you take independently or to assist others to get to a positive outcome. R: Result, what was the outcome of your actions, state your success and any positive feedback received or what you learned if the outcome was different to what was anticipated. Inside Outsourcing - Forbes As the risks of outsourcing loom ever larger, the rewards are growing, too. For visionaries who take advantage of its potential, there is real profit at stake. U.S. Schools: Not That Bad - Business Week "But things aren't as dire for U.S. students as they might appear in the documentary. As an academic, I have been researching engineering education and have taught many graduates of Indian, Chinese, and American universities. It can take longer for Indians and Chinese to develop crucial real-world skills that come more easily for some Americans. Yes, U.S. teens work part-time, socialize, and party. But the independence and social skills they develop give them a big advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks." May 28, 2008 Management in formation - People Management Inside one of the buildings, you might have found the eminent leadership academic John Alban-Metcalfe. He's giving a lecture to an assemble "some of the worst examples of leadership can come at the top of organisations", and citing such sources as Charles Handy while proceeding to debunk the myth of the charismatic leader. Breaking Down mLearning - mLearning Hub At the highest level we can separate mLearning into learning applied to mobile devices inside the classroom and those outside the classroom. Please note I realize the simple fact that something that is mobile means it could easily move in or out of the "classroom", however there is an important distinction between the two. Also see, iPods for Learning. Teaching in the digital world, part I: technology is not always your friend - Science Blogs Teaching an on-line course turned out to be as much a learning experience for me as it was for my students. Now, it's time to step back and reflect on what was learned. Six Dangerous Myths About Pay - Conde Nast Portfolio Off-price clothing retailer Men's Wearhouse pays higher-than-average wages and invests extensively in training. These unusual moves let it reduce turnover and compete on customer service, superior product knowledge, and sales skills - advantages that rivals can't easily copy. Beyond Blogs - Business Week Workers can fritter away hours on YouTube. They can use social networks to pillory a colleague or leak secrets. That's the downside, and companies that don't adapt are sure to get lots of it. But there's an upside to the loss of control. Ambitious workers use these tools to land new deals and to assemble global teams for collaborative projects. The potential for both better and worse is huge, and it's growing - and since 2005 the technologies involved extend far beyond blogs. So our first fix is to lose "blogs" from our headline. The revised title: "Social Media Will Change Your Business." May 26, 2008 Video games can make us creative if spark is right - e! Science News Video games that energize players and induce a positive mood could also enhance creativity, according to media researchers. However, the study also finds that players who were not highly energized and had a negative mood, registered the highest creativity. "You need defocused attention for being creative," said S. Shyam Sundar, professor of film, video and media studies at Penn State. "When you have low arousal and are negative, you tend to focus on detail and become more analytical." Also see "THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION ON CREATIVITY". Create Mobile Websites with Wirenode - Mobile Learning Wirenode incorporates media and interactivity, which may even be uploaded by the user, and there's even an analytics tool for users who like to see how many visitors/students are checking out their mobile site. Design - Human Centered Design vs Activity Centered Design? - eCube The "listen to your users" produces incoherent designs. The "ignore your users" can produce horror stories, unless the person in charge has a clear vision or Conceptual Model for the product. The person in charge must follow that vision and not be afraid to ignore findings. Yes, listen to customers, but don't always do what they say. Web users 'getting more selfish' - BBC Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%. The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment. Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly. May 22, 2008 Checking out animoto Blogging--It's Good for You - Scientific American Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. We're all Einsteins now - New Zealand Herald The ability to think in abstract terms underpins the scientific, material and, arguably, moral advances of modern society. Visual Architecture: The Rule of Three - Digital Web Don't flame me, bro' - New Scientist People can vastly overestimate their ability to communicate unambiguously by email in that we find it hard to take another person's perspective when communicating electronically. Similarly, a study found that people tend to interpret emails more negatively than other forms of communication, making them even more likely to respond aggressively. Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain - New York Times The aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. May 18, 2008 Unlocking the DNA of the Adaptable Workforce - IBM (executive summary) Click to enlarge Developing the workforce is the prime ingredient for an organization's success. "As any firm that has attempted to transform its workforce to meet changing conditions will attest, the journey is difficult and littered with obstacles. Understanding key workforce performance challenges and identifying the leading practices companies are using to overcome them have become central focus areas." - IBM download the complete paper Back to Basics - Metropolis In our rush to build a knowledge economy we forgot that we need a backbone. "Manufacturing is still more relevant to long-term economic development than glitzy museums or massive sports stadiums." - Joel Kotkin Think about paths instead of hierarchies - Signal vs. Noise While this short post is about web navigation, the same principles apply to all forms of knowledge in the learning and development field. "Instead of thinking in terms of hierarchy or up-front structure, I think it's better to work with paths. A path is a line that goes from a starting point A to an accomplishment B." - Ryan May 17, 2008 Recent Survey shows 36:1 development ratio for ILT - Bryan Chapman Front-End Analysis (Data Collection, Working with SMEs) = 13% (4.8 hours) Instructional Design (Objectives, Outlining, Content Development) = 13% (4.6 hours) Lesson Plan Development = 11% (3.8 hours) Creation of handout material = 8% (3 hours) Student Guide Development = 20% (7.2 hours) PowerPoint Development = 21% (7.6 hours) Test and Exam Creation = 8% (2.8 hours) Other Tasks = 6% (2.3 hours Mobile in 5 Paragraphs - Learnlets Mobile learning is not about courses on a phone. mLearning is where we really bring home the message: 'It's not about learning... it's about doing", because while there are learning implications for mobile devices, it's really about performance support. Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. What Behavior Do You Want to Change? - Business Week When we began Nathaniel's exercise, our military friend chose: "When I become less judgmental. . ." as his behavior to change. I was skeptical about his sincerity and thought his participation in the exercise would be interesting to observe. True to my expectations, the first time around he coughed and grunted a sarcastic comment rather than talk about a real benefit. Research Report on Feedback - Will at Work learning This seminal research reviews how to give learners feedback, written in a way that puts feedback in perspective, that goes deep into the fundamentals to give readers clear mental models for how feedback works. May 3, 2008 The Cognitive Age - New York Times We're moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information's journey is the last few inches - the space between a person's eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called "the Chinese" or "the Indians," are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy - the specific processes that foster learning. Is the grass greener on the other side of the pond? - Training Zone We're fascinated by the American training scene. Is their training - particularly elearning - bigger, brasher, better? Neil Lasher reports that the USA is just as fascinated by what is happening here! So, is the grass greener on the other side of the pond? Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower - New York Times Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement. Instructional Technologies in Human Resource Development: Impact, Models, and Changes - International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning An introduction to instructional technologies that can be used in human resource development (HRD) Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices - New York Times The students who learned the math abstractly did well with figuring out the rules of the game. Those who had learned through examples performed little better than might be expected if they were simply guessing. The problem with the real-world examples, Dr. Kaminski said, was that they obscured the underlying math, and students were not able to transfer their knowledge to new problems. We still believe there is human involvement - Nicholas Carr "Captcha" is the official term for those wavy strings of numbers and letters that you have to decipher before setting up an online email account or gaining access to other types of web sites. The acronym, coined by someone at Yahoo a few years back, stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. April 28, 2008 Decision Making: Is It All 'Me, Me, Me'? - Science Daily People act in their own best interests, according to traditional views of how and why we make the decisions that we do. However, psychologists at the Universities of Leicester and Exeter have recently found evidence that this assumption is not necessarily true. In fact the research shows that most of us will act in the best interest of our team -- often at our own expense. Down with Innovation - I.D. Magazine Design is now so important, it seems, that designers can no longer be trusted with it, and to make it absolutely clear that control has moved into someone else's hands, design needs to be given a fancy new name. Call it design thinking. Call it innovation. Everyone loves design but no one wants to call it design. No Rest for the Wiki - Business Week The online tools for building collective info banks are making deeper inroads in corporations and rewriting the rules of collaboration. Although Intel's wiki ruffled feathers - some employees don't like being edited by colleagues, especially those further down the org chart - Intelpedia caught on. Are You an Enduring Organization? - Bersin & Associates There was the IBM PC Junior, the RT-PC, the 9370 Minicomputer, and many more. These products, often the results of years of R&D, were announced with flourish and fanfare. When they failed, IBM was clearly disappointed. But the leaders of these products were not fired or demoted - rather they were forced to "learn from these mistakes" and go on and make them better. The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies - Business Week The World's Most Innovative Companies, a collaboration with the innovation practice of the Boston Consulting Group, is our most global list ever. It's also determined by a broader set of data than in the past. April 20, 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers - TechCrunch You can get access to the online version for free through a new program called Britannica Webshare - provided that you are a "web publisher."The definition of a web publisher is rather squishy: "This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn't qualify." Elearning: Is it time to party? - training zone Although the general trend in usage in elearning is up, the composition of what makes up the figures is changing - less protracted periods of self-study; elearning is more real time, more rapid and more collaborative. Coherence or Interest: Which is most important in online multimedia learning? - Australasian Journal of Educational Technology Adding approximately 50% extra interesting but irrelevant information to a multimedia treatment did not result in lower achievement on a post-test as would bepredicted by the coherence principle (cognitive load). In authentic learning settings, interest may mitigate the effects of the coherence principle. Via Stephen Downes. Research: the differences between media and technology - Rob Wright Technology is more than just the media appliances used to deliver content. Technology also includes the pedagogy guiding that use of the media; it includes the teaching strategies driven by stated objectives; it drives toward desired outcomes, using a healthy mix of experiences, activities, and tasks. It mingles collaboration with reflection. Best Methods for Product-Based Training - Chief Learning Officer Training can be categorized into the following levels: Awareness - need to know that an aspect of a product has changed, such as an e-mail or a letter. Knowledge - speak about the basic features of a product, such as a blend of an e-mail and Web interaction. Understanding - talk about the product and relate it to the needs that they're hearing from a client, such as a classroom. Skill - coaching and mentoring in an actual sales situation, as the classroom is still an artificial, simulated environment. April 14, 2008 Update from ASTD TechKnowledge - Rapid eLearning News "Surprisingly, everyone wanted to bad-mouth E-Learning, but no one bothered to stop and ask Jennifer to tell us more about why it was working so well for her." Effective management methodology: be sure management drives the process and only do what works! Informal Learning 2.0 Fieldbook - Jay Cross Join the Fieldbook project. People do not read un-books; they participate with them. Participants choose how deep they want to explore a topic. Wikipedia breeds 'unwitting trust' says IT professor - Computer World Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired. An expert is held accountable if they make a mistake but no one is held accountable for the information available on Wikipedia. The Wisdom Scorecard, Monika Ardelt Monika Ardelt, a sociology professor at the University of Florida, developed a questionnaire that attempts to assess how wise people are. The questionnaire contins 39 questions in three dimensions - cognitive, reflective, and affective. Once you have completed the questions, you can see your wisdom score. The abuse of language - Cognitive Edge Once upon a time people in Information Management decided that they wanted a cool new name or two. Taxonomy was becoming Taxidermy so they absconded with Ontology and twisted its meaning. In Pictures: How To Unlock Your Company's Creativity - Forbes Innovation lurks within myriad nooks and crannies of any company--from the receptionist to the head of information technology. While running a full-fledged democracy is impractical, employees at every level should have a way to share their ideas. Strategy On The Front Line - Forbes If you have an organization headed by a man or a woman who has a clear ideology, and everyone else can see that he or she is just not prepared to compromise, it is a lot easier for that organization to decentralize decisions because everyone knows certain rules will not be broken. April 13, 2008 Split brain behavioral experiments To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemisphers (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway. Let Computers Compute. It's the Age of the Right Brain. - New York Times Although popularized in the 1980s by the artist Betty Edwards in her book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," the right-brain-left-brain dichotomy originated with the research of the American biologist Roger W. Sperry in the 1960s. HPT Practitioner Podcast contest for ISPI - Guy Wallace Guy Wallace has created 21 Video Podcasts for an "HPT Practitioner Podcast" contest for ISPI. Hopefully many others will also create some and add them to Google or YouTube and then create a post at ISPI's "HPT Connections"(free to anyone - dues paying members or not) and embed the code to add them to this new Social Network site. The "group page" for these Podcasts with info about the contest and how anyone can participate is here. The Podcasts are available on Google Video too. Just search under "HPT Practitioner Podcast." Guy also has a couple of posts about the ISPI speakers: Marc Rosenberg and Don Tosti. Working Memory Has Limited 'Slots' - Science Daily The evidence shows that working memory acts like a high-resolution camera, retaining three or four features in high detail. Those features allow the brain to link successive images together. However, while most digital cameras allow the user to choose a lower resolution and therefore store more images, the resolution of working memory appears to be constant for a given individual. OUT OF PRINT - The New Yorker The rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising -- have created a palpable sense of doom. Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years. Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn't the enemy. In fact, it's the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it. No Web site spends anything remotely like what the best newspapers do on reporting. Even after the latest round of new cutbacks and buyouts are carried out, the Times will retain a core of more than twelve hundred newsroom employees, or approximately fifty times as many as the Huffington Post. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times maintain between eight hundred and nine hundred editorial employees each. The Times' Baghdad bureau alone costs around three million dollars a year to maintain. And while the Huffington Post shares the benefit of these investments, it shoulders none of the costs. Thus, bloggers merely "recycle and chew on the news." And Behind Door No. 1, a Fatal Flaw - New York Times The economist, M. Keith Chen, has challenged research into cognitive dissonance - the ability of people to rationalize their choices. April 6, 2008 The Books - Smells Like Content Taylor, Stoll, the Plasticity of the Brain, and Memes - Donald Clark Writing, typing, and science are acts that allow us to turn information into memes, which is perhaps our true calling. Online libraries are not libraries at all - David Weinberger Online libraries will replace the basic function of libraries, but not the rest of what libraries mean to us. That may simply be lost to us, as was the clip-clop of horses on city streets. Social Media Will Change Your Business - Business Week Venture firms financed only $60 million in blog startups last year, according to industry tracker VentureOne. Chump change compared to the $19.9 billion that poured into dot-coms in 1999. The difference is that while dot-coms promised to make loads of money, blogs flex their power mostly by disrupting the status quo Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate - Scientific American The way you are going to understand the emotion of someone else is by somehow simulating, experiencing the emotion. It makes sense that we found some activation of the brain region which is critical for the experience of an emotion. design science - orgtheory.net While the natural sciences seek description, explanation or prediction of what is, design scientists ask what could be, seeking betterment of the human condition. How to Use Twitter in Higher Education - Silence and Voice I decided that I will list my Twitter name on the syllabus for the class I am teaching that begins tomorrow, Project Management for Training. I decided to do this after reading an article in the Chronicle, Forget E-Mail: New Messaging Service Has Students and Professors Atwitter. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. March 23, 2008 Algebra Education and John Dewey - Science Blogs The brain learns by doing. Abstract concepts, untethered to experience, are never internalized by our neurons. Whatever happened to inductive learning? - Clive on Learning When it comes to writing interactive learning materials, I've always preferred a particular approach and have used this almost without thinking for the past twenty years. Rather than 'tell and test', where you present information and then follow this up with a knowledge test, I prefer an inductive approach, where you build on the learner's prior knowledge and help them to connect with new concepts, principles, rules, etc. Growing Innovation Culture: Honda - schneiderism At Honda not only are employees typically paid less than at the competition, but their opportunities to move up in the organization are pretty limited. That's because Honda is very, very flat as an organization. . . and it is this flatness that empowers people to experiment and to be entrepreneurial. Distinguishing groups, networks and collectives - P2P Foundation The model illustrates three levels of aggregation of learners in either formal or informal learning. Why Apple fans hate tech reporters - Machinist New communications technologies are loosening the culture's grip on what people once called "objective reality." If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it's partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy. March 22, 2008 I'm a Wikipedia Inclusionist - Science Blogs Wikipedia is far beyond the level where it need prove anything to the world. It's there, it's huge, it's extremely useful, and whenever I find it lacking on some point I have endless opportunity to do something about it. Correct Levels Of Stress Hormones Boost Learning, Squirrel Study Suggests - Science News In humans, cortisol production is also related to stress and is known to have an impact on learning, but that impact is not well understood, Mateo said. The research on ground squirrels could point to additional avenues of research. For how this might work, see the Yerkes-Dodson law. Try setting drastic expectations - BQF Innovations This is what GE Capital says about expectations, It is expected that we will grow our earnings by 20% per year or more. When you have objectives that are outlandish it forces you to think differently about your opportunities. Innovation makes CIOs business leaders, experts say - Search CIO (Note: Switch the term "CIO" for any leader within any part of your organization) "That's probably the single biggest thing people have got to get over is this notion that innovation is this very unique, disruptive thing," said Mark McDonald, Gartner group vice president of executive programs. "If I have such a narrow view of innovation, then what happens is that I don't do a lot of it." How Twitter makes it real - BBC As I sit here writing I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online. March 16, 2008 Diversity: The Squint and the Wail - I.D. I showed pictures of the gadgets to my left-leaning New York acquaintances of European descent. One friend gasped. "They couldn't have made this more offensive if they tried!" she said. Others erupted into cringing, nervous laughter. Then I approached my left-leaning, first-generation Chinese-American friends, expecting the same indignation. "I feel like punching them," Kathy said. "Because they're derogatory?" I asked. "No, because they look like those inflatable toys that bounce back up when you hit them." Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk? - Scientific American A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive. After all, since the time of Galileo and Newton, scientists have built up their knowledge about the world by "crowd-sourcing" the contributions of many researchers and then refining that knowledge through open debate. Influencing Competency Management - CLO Recent research from the Aberdeen Group showed that best-in-class performers are up to 86 percent more likely than "laggard" companies to know which skills and traits make top performers. Millennials at the Gate - Workforce "Some of them are the greatest generation," said Marian Salzman, an ad agency executive at J. Walter Thompson who talked to 60 Minutes in November and invoked the term used for the pre-boomers who fought World War II and held down the home front. "They're more hardworking. They have these tools to get things done. They are enormously clever and resourceful. [But] some of the others are absolutely incorrigible. It's their way or the highway." Proof of six degrees of separation - c/net The average path length, or degree of separation, among anonymized users probed was 6.6. March 9, 2008 Revenge of the Experts - Newsweek The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals. Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0 -- the wisdom of the crowds -- and putting an editorial layer on it. Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education - STEVE HARGADON Ten trends that have particular importance for education and learning, and seven steps educators can take to make a difference during this time. People power transforms the web in next online revolution - Guardian We are just at the start of exploring how we can be organised without the hierarchy of top-down organisations. There will be many false turns and failures. But there is also huge potential to create new stores of knowledge to the benefit of all, innovate more effectively, strengthen democracy and give more people the opportunity to make the most of their creativity. March 6, 2008 New Model Army - Metropolismag Fine art has inspired a degree of discernment since cavemen doodled at Lascaux and is routinely dissected in publications as varied as Artforum, Time Out, and the New York Review of Books. Design, on the other hand, has only warranted formal scrutiny in the United States in the last 60 years, coinciding with the post-World War -- surfeit of stuff. Workers know best: Job market weak - CNN Crowd-sourcing beats the experts: If you want to know what's going to happen to the labor market, don't ask an economist - ask your neighbor or co-worker. Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes (Video - 15:39 min) - TED Starting with the deceptively simple story of an ant, Dan Dennett, philosopher and scientist, unleashes a dazzling sequence of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of "memes." March 2, 2008 Team-based E-learning Turns A New Page - Science Daily Most e-learning systems are based on modules, students work through a curriculum. Usually a student has something to learn, and the tutor sets questions or an assignment to test what they have learned. Collaborative learning through teamwork projects need an entire project management system, but with e-learning functionality built The commoditization of knowledge - David Weinberger The person looking up an acronym was looking up a fact, but the person skimming the Wikipedia article on the 1996 Telecommunications Act was ingesting knowledge, not just facts; she very likely wanted to understand what the Act was about, not get a list of dates and bullet points. 5 ways to make linear navigation more interesting - Making Change Methods to build interest so that the learner wants to continue by clicking the Next button. The Post-it Way - CE Buzz I'm not going to convert all my training materials to Post-it notes, but I could do more to apply the "what you need to do" filter to instructional design. Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes - Wired A meme is an idea or thing that is passed from person to person and is either adopted for its usefulness or other purpose -- in some cases becoming a wildly popular idea that can't be stopped -- or abandoned to die a quick and ignoble death. A meme can be a song or snippet of a song, a dance, an urban legend, an expression or behavior, a product brand or even a religion. Venti Learning with Foam: A Video Report from Starbucks - The Masie Center On Feb 26, 2008, Starbucks closed over 7,000 stores for a unique 3 hour company wide training effort. The following day, Elliott Masie visited the local Starbucks in Saratoga Springs, NY and did an in-depth interview with the store manager on the learning outcomes, processes and texture of this experiment. February 26, 2008 The Pepsi challenge - Fortune No sooner had PepsiCo president Indra Nooyi gotten word 18 months ago that she was to become the next CEO than she hopped on a plane to Cape Cod, where Mike White, her main challenger for the job, was vacationing. As Nooyi's plane landed on Cape Cod, there was White waiting for her at the airport with a card he'd written to congratulate her. They took a long walk on the beach. Back at his beach house, he played the piano and she sang. Before she left, they went for ice cream. "Tell me whatever I need to do to keep you, and I will do it," she told her longtime colleague, who was vice chairman at the time. A Personal View On the Blackboard-D2L Patent Case Resolution - Stephen's Web Lanny Arvan expresses his anger at the Blackboard patent case, not from the perspective of technology or prior art or any of that stuff, but collegiality. Digg makes you Dumb and an AAAS Roundup [Video - 3:30 min.] - Scientific American When ideas are shared in highly connected networks, free-thinking goes south and we tend to follow the herd. Integrating Technology with Marzano's Instructional Strategies - Kevin Jarrett This voluminous site, created by created by Sherri Miller, Instructional Technology Resource Teacher for Gloucester County Public Schools, is based on research from: Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, Jane E. Pollock. Also see Marzano's A Theory-Based Meta-Analysis of Research on Instruction. Flock is Maturing... - Forever in the Refining Fire Flock - the browser for people who like to be connected. February 25, 2008 What's the Value of Learning? - Donald Taylor This is not some relativistic world where training is fine as long as the manager says it's good (what David Wilson of Elearnity terms the 'conspiracy of convenience'). No, there are particular types of measure that are of value to stakeholders, and as long as the learning function can show its effect on these, and be seen to be operating effectively, then it is doing its job. Note: Donald Taylor reviewed the CIPD paper that I posted on Feb 23 and left a comment, but since I forgot to turn the "approve comments" field off after a rash of spamming, his post was approved late, so in case you missed his it, be sure to read his review. Long Tail Learning - Size and Shape - eLearning Technology Long tail learning is effectively infinite There is no way for an individual to keep up much less learning and development. Trying to "keep up" and putting ourselves in the producer role is not going to work. Needs analysis round-up (Part-1) - Sims Learning Connections Sigh, 'training professionals' have often set themselves up to become training order-takers versus performance consultants - a situation that is difficult to break out of, once established. The Wisdom of the Chaperones - Slate Digg and Wikipedia would do well to stop pretending they're operated by the many and start thinking of ways to rein in the power of the few. 8+ Ways To Train Yourself To Be Creative - John's Blog Whenever you want to do something but your mind tells you that you can't, write that thought down and then next to it write down 2 or 3 reasons why you can. February 23, 2008 The value of learning: a new model of value and evaluation - CIPD A look at the role of learning and training in creating value in organisations and at how that role can be analysed, measured and evaluated. The paper is located here. THE KNOWLEDGE PARADOX - Bangkok Post Radical contradictions drive the success of Toyota, which regards itself as being in the 'knowledge industry'. Westerners were good at explicit knowledge, while Asians tended to be masters of tacit knowledge that suggests that for new knowledge to be created we need to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, or to convert explicit knowledge to tacit. Jury Supports Blackboard Patent - Stephen's Web Is this a true win for the plaintiff, or a loss because they didn't get a recovery over the cost of bringing the case? A Vision of Ubiquitous Computing - Partial Recall What might a university look like with a fully deployed program of converged devices like the iPhone? Connected is one possible vision. Be sure to watch the video. February 17, 2008 The Training Industry in 2008 - CLO There is a wide range of issues and challenge that will unfold in 2008, but overall training will grow in importance, with even more backing from senior management due to a heightened sense of demand from the war for talent. However, in an economy fraught with housing woes, rising oil prices and sliding currency values, budgets will be tight and training departments will be held more accountable to align with business imperatives and deliver tangible results. The top ten activities expected to have significant impact in 2008 (to view the charts go to the digital version, page 52): Ranking Activity Compared to Last Year 1 Competencies Same 2 Leadership Training Same 3 Instructor-Led Training Same 4 Measurement Same 5 Compliance Training Up One 6 Learning Management Systems Up Three 7 Informal Learning Down Two 8 Self-Paced eLearning Same 9 Succession Planning Same 10 Knowledge Management Up Three Do All Companies Have to be Evil? - Scientific American Humans are by nature tribal and xenophobic, and thus evolution has enabled in all of us the capacity for evil. Fortunately, we are also by nature prosocial and cooperative. By studying how modern companies work, we can gain insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of our morality, including concepts such as reciprocity, altruism and fairness. When we apply these evolutionary findings to economic life, we learn that Enron and the Gordon Gekko "Greed Is Good" ethic are the exception and that Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is the rule. Two conditions must be present to accentuate the latter: first, internal trust reinforced by personal relationships, and, second, external rules supported by social institutions. The contrast between Enron and Google here serves to demonstrate what in corporate environments creates trust or distrust. Learn at All Levels - Marcia Conner If we are committed to learning and growing, we must be equally committed to unlearning and stopping. Without actively letting go and moving along, where will we find room for something more? Secret to problem solving: don't think too hard - Cosmos Insightful problem solving is generally associated with more lateral and creative solutions to problems, so being able to enhance this ability would clearly be of great importance. Also see: What Are We Thinking When We (Try to) Solve Problems? and Brain waves pattern themselves after rhythms of nature. February 16, 2008 How Cognitive Science Can Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations - io9 Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn, who studies how brains process images, wants to improve the world with his cutting-edge research by explaining that the four rules of PowerPoint are: The Goldilocks Rule, The Rudolph Rule, The Rule of Four, and the Birds of a Feather Rule. Juggling eLearning vs Online Training - w/Mindshare eLearning, online training, eperformance, performance support, courses, wikis, social networks, search, YouTube...the colors on a palette tend to run together, don't they? The real question is, "what's the picture like?" Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers - elearnspace When knowledge is seen as existing in networks, and learning as forming and navigating these networks, many existing aspects of academia are subject to change. Dawn of the digital natives - guardian.co.uk If people are reading less, why haven't scores dropped more dramatically? The answer gets to the most significant sleight of hand of the NEA study: its studies are heavily biased towards words on a printed page. February 7, 2008 Fact or Fiction?: People Only Use 10 Percent Of Their Brains - Scientific American Though an alluring idea, the "ten percent myth" is so wrong it is almost laughable, says neurologist Barry Gordon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Questionating - Change This Over the years we've found that the most popular answers to this question are "why," "how," and "why not" in that order. Implementation 2.0 - Learning Circuits Today's collaborative technologies can knit together an enterprise and facilitate knowledge work in ways that were simply not possible previously. They have the potential to usher in a new era by making both the practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Programming: The New Literacy - Edutopia Some have expanded the notion of twenty-first-century literacy beyond spoken and written language to include the panoply of skills often collected under the umbrella term multimedia (being able to both understand and create messages, communications, and works that include, or are constructed with, visual, aural, and haptic -- that is, physical -- elements as well as words). Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work - New York Times Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time. February 2, 2008 Designing E-Learning - University of Leicester Gilly Salmon, Professor of E-Learning & Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester, talks about designing elearning in a short video. To Read or Not to Read? Do people still read books? Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim - eLearning Technology Books are dead (long live books!) part 1 - Presentation Zen Books are dead (long live books!) part 2 - Presentation Zen Instructional Design - If, When and How Much? - The Learning Circuits Blog The Big Question - For a given project, how do you determine if, when and how much an instructional designer and instructional design is needed? At Yahoo, a need to hit refresh - c/net Note: this article came out before the big annoucement, however, it would make an excellent case study. By many accounts, the Semel era transformed the company from a free-wheeling and innovative dot-com to a buttoned-down outfit where new products were subject to review by committee. Departments became responsible and rewarded for their own profits, much like many U.S. companies. At the time, the approach made sense and Yahoo saw dramatic financial improvements. But those "big company" controls had a downside: they caused people to think about how to protect their own turf and put themselves--instead of the company--first, according to people familiar with Yahoo. Wherefore art thou M-learning? - DONALD CLARK PLAN B M-learning may as well mean missing-learning - it's is an elusive beast. The problem is that people don't really seem to understand what they want to do with these devices. The Google Enigma - strategy+business Is its approach to management and innovation a cause of its success or a product of its success? Google is starting to look less like a sower than a harvester, less like an inventor than an exploiter. January 29, 2008 The value of multimedia in learning - Patti Shank Presenting instruction in multiple media can be more effective than doing it through a single medium (such as text), but what is important is combining media effectively, not merely adding media. Profs compete for students' attention - c/net Some teachers relished these new challenges, using new tools like smartboards to create interactive multimedia presentations, while others seemed stunned that their old methods no longer effectively reached their students. The productivity paradox - c/net Productivity growth has slowed since 2004, however, and nobody is sure why. One theory that may explain declining productivity growth has been advanced by McKinsey consultants, who believe that companies have finally cut the non-complex transactional positions that benefit from productivity-stimulating technology. All that's left are complicated and nuanced jobs requiring experience, expertise, judgment, interaction, and collaboration--or tacit knowledge. According to Basex, a research firm focusing on the knowledge economy, interruptions from e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging, and blogs eat up nearly 30 percent of each day; on an annualized basis, this represents a loss of 28 billion hours for the entire U.S. workforce, or a $588 billion cost to the American economy. emaki.net - Neil Cohn Visual language theory Requirements: Knowledge and Understanding Tyner Blain Understanding of any topic comes from combining knowledge with context via associative thinking. We gain knowledge empirically. We gain context through organization of information. January 27, 2008 Touch Typing - Cursive Writing - Why? - eLearning Technology Tony Karrer has stirred quite a discussion on whether schools should teach cursive or typing. Free Book PDF Now Available - Performance-based Employee Qualification/Certification Systems - The Pursuing Performance Blog The methods and approach described in the book is based primarily on 2 large successful consulting engagements planned and led by the authors for projects done by their consulting firm. Analysis - Instructional Design The Business Outcome or Business Linkage is used to spell out how a learning initiative supports the organization's initiatives, strategies, or goals. Creating your own e-learning content: Doing the knowledge - Personnel Today Rapid development is definitely here but people need to learn how and when to use it. They should ask 'does it need to be delivered quickly?' and, if so, 'why?'. 'Is it because we didn't plan things well enough?'. Generation Gaps Do generational differences matter in instructional design? by Thomas Reeves by Thomas Reeves (via E-BCNZer). Growing Up Online by PBS (via Here We Go Again-Part 2). 2008 Job Outlook - Inside Training In the wake of the sub-prime mortgage debacle, and with increasing talk of a possible recession, you may wonder what's ahead for your company. Halo 3 Meets Second Life - Baseline The U.S. Army enlists new virtual world video game to teach soldiers interpersonal skills and cultural awareness for combat environments like Iraq and Afganistan. January 22, 2008 Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box - ASTD It is often better to have people think "inside the box" rather "outside the box." This strategy has the group leaders pose concrete questions and direct the process for answering those queries. The research found that many ideas were developed from responses to specific questions. To arrange the brainstorming process, you restrict the range of suitable ideas, then choose and customize questions accordingly, and conduct multiple brainstorming sessions. Note that there is a link in the article that directs you to "Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box" by Harvard Business Review. Includes a nine minute video. Layering - Seth Godin Here's what we used to do: Create -> Edit -> Launch Here's what happens now: Create -> Launch -> Edit -> Launch -> repeat Gathering Requirements -Training Magazine Successful training programs don't just happen. They come from knowing exactly what the training must accomplish for the business, the department, and the individual. Watching Collaboration as it Happens - Green Chameleon Follow the flags around the world map as they track anonymous edits to Wikipedia in almost real-time. What would it be like to track edits and contributions to an intranet or corporate knowledge resource like this? THE EXPECTATION ECONOMY - Trend Watching If you're obsessed with what your direct competition is doing, you will always end up copying new concepts in your industry. Which means that, unless you're comfortable with being a 'smart follower', this is not going to unleash your innovative brilliance. January 20, 2008 How I build my eLearning courses - pipwerks Most eLearning tools do not promote the creation of effective courses, do not promote web standards, and do not promote accessibility; they merely make cookie-cutter course development easier for technically inexperienced course developers. Structured OJT - The Pursuing Performance Blog When the HQ training folks could not produce the content fast enough for the 7 regional field groups (there were 3 people in the department who also had other taskings to attend to), the field (who had the analysis and design from the participation of their Master Performers in those phases of the effort) started developing their own content and HQ morphed into the library/archive of the content and their role evolved into one of gathering, disseminating and capturing all content changes as the field updated "their" content. Absolute and relative judgement - Cognitive Edge A report of an MIT research project which purports to show that ten American students found relative judgements hard, but absolute judgements easy. Ten recently arrived students from Asia had the reverse pattern. People from different cultures don't see the world differently, but they think differently about what they see. Mentoring Millennials - Training Magazine Employers across the country are bracing for the arrival of the Millennials, a generation of new workers born in or around 1982. The Millennials represent the largest, healthiest, and most cared for generation to ever enter the workforce. This also is a generation with very little real work experience. Managing the Global Workforce - Business Week: Davos 2008 Today, global corporations are transforming themselves into "transnationals," moving work to the places with the talent to handle the job and the time to do it at the right cost. The threat of a U.S. recession only makes such efforts at lowering expenses and grabbing the best talent even more urgent. Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century - Economy Advisory Committee Innovation is the design, invention, development and/or implementation of new or altered products, services, processes, systems, organizational structures, or business models for the purpose of creating new value for customers and financial returns for the firm. January 17, 2008 Study: Telecommuting makes work worse for non-telecommuters - ars technica Managing the amount of time coworkers telecommute, having face-to-face interaction, and giving job autonomy can all potentially improve in-office coworkers' job satisfaction and company relationship. E-Learning Is Dead. Long Live E-Learning! - CLO One of the biggest challenges for most of this e-learning has been the lack of educational courseware that was designed on the basis of sound instructional-design principles. Massive numbers of e-learning courses were produced with technology-based "templates" for the Internet. Salary and Compensation Report from The eLearning Guild - Learning Design and Performance Improvement The eLearning Guild has released the 2008 report on salary and compensation for the the industry. On the whole, The eLearning Guild does some excellent research, but my one gripe is that sometimes they drill down so much that the data is not very useful. Supervisory, Leadership, Diversity Training to Rise in 2008 - CLO Both spending and staff time will be boosted in 2008 for supervisory, leadership and diversity training, according to an annual survey of more than 2,500 senior HR executives by Novations Group, a global consulting organization based in Boston. However. . . Learning in a Recession? - The Massie Center Investments in learning systems and infrastructure can already be seen as getting tougher. There are two companies that were ready to sign a contract for a new LMS in January 2008, yet were told to hold off or cancel the contract. It was seen as a difficult time to be spending when the future of the economy is uncertain. Another CLO was told to shrink her staff by 40% in the next three months, in order to be seen as "tightening" the budget. January 9, 2008 Debunking Employee Engagement Myths - McBassi There is a great deal of focus these days on employee engagement (and rightly so). There are two big problems, however, in the way that most organizations are measuring - and therefore managing - employee engagement. The Well-Wired Use Libraries More - The New York Times Library use is far more prevalent among people who have a broadband Internet connection at home or at work, according to a new study. The finding counters a decade-old assumption that libraries serve as a "bridge" for people who want to use the Internet, but have only dial-up connections, or no access at all. Why Six Sigma Is on the Downslope - Tom Davenport So what's the best alternative to Six Sigma for process improvement? Well, there really is no one alternative that's best for all processes and circumstances. Companies really need a combination of tools and approaches. Where did the computer go? - Rough Type Beneath the Web's familiar, page-like surface lay a set of powerful technologies, including sophisticated protocols for describing and transferring data. In the years ahead, more and more of the information-processing tasks that we rely on, at home and at work, will be handled by big data centers located out on the Internet. January 7, 2008 Creative Process -Big Think Big Think makes its appearance today. Read the story behind it. Google's Lunchtime Betting Game _ New York Times Information is shared most easily and effectively among office neighbors, even at an Internet company where instant messaging and e-mail are generally preferred to face-to-face discussion. Why Does Technology-Based Teaching Fail? - Mobile Learning Alan Kay effectively translates his understanding of cognitive psychology and learning theory into new ideas for making computers easy to learn - and learn on. An Interface of One's Own New York Times Oh, Word. For 20 years, you have supported and tyrannized me. You have given me a skimpy Etch A Sketch on which to compose, a cramped spot on the sentence-assembly line. Mapping Globalization - Princeton University and the University of Washington A comprehensive definition of globalization: geographically expanding networks of transactions, where transactions may be of any type, and may have occurred at any time. This naturally supports a strongly historical perspective that includes trade, migration, transportation, communication, empires, and so on. THE LISTENER - Seed "A danger that the art of observation may be lost, and the richness of the human context ignored." January 6, 2008 The Future of the Future: Boundary-less living, working and learning - KM World Competing in a billion-mind economy means totally rethinking how you live, work and learn. That applies to you as an individual as well as to the organizations to which you belong. In the enterprise of the future, living, working and learning environments are converging in an unprecedented way. Your 10 Most Popular Posts of 2007 - The Rapid eLearning Blog What Steve Jobs Can Teach You About Designing E-Learning Warning: Using the Wrong Images Can Confuse Your Learners 5 Ways Web 2.0 Can Make You a Better E-Learning Designer What Everybody Ought to Know About Using PowerPoint for E-Learning Little Known Ways to Create Your Own Graphics Using PowerPoint Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2007 - Create Your Communications Experience This year's List of Top Communicators highlights the best (and worst) from business, politics, entertainment and sports. Long Live Closed-Source Software! - Discovery Magazine "Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven't promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they've been hindrances." For a good response, see The innovation dilemma by 451 CAOS Theory. Top 10 Posts of 2007 - Writers Gateway E-learning Design Challenge Series - Designing a Game Based Course Storyboard Templates in Instructional Designing 8 Easy Steps to Create a Storyboard Top 8 Reasons Why Captivate Rocks Needs Analysis in Instructional Designing Innovation Predictions 2008 - BusinessWeek And the Big Idea for 2008? Stop competing against your competitors. Your traditional rivals aren't your biggest worry. It's a Small World (with Big Training) - Training Magazine These days, we're bombarded by articles that refer to China as the Awakening Dragon or the Next Frontier. The conventional wisdom is that China, with its vast population and resources, will become the mother lode of new customers and new products.