Training Industry, Good & Evil Organizations, Learning, & Problem Solving

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.

PowerPoint, Learning, Networks, & Reading

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.

Myths, Questioning, Implementation 2.0, Literacy, & Innovation

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.

On Design

The Learning Circuit's big question -- For a given project, how do you determine if, when and how much an instructional designer and instructional design is needed?

The quick answer is "it depends." However, I think it goes a little deeper than that.

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. - Herbert Simon (Nobel Prize Winner & Carnegie Mellon professor)

Simon went on to argue that design brings forth what does not come naturally. While science is concerned more with how things are, design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be. So what gives Instructional Designers their worth? It has often been argued that instruction is both art and science, thus we are perhaps more closely related to the crafts.

At work, the potter sits before a lump of clay on the wheel. Her mind is on the clay, but she is also aware of sitting between her past experiences and her future prospects. She knows exactly what has and has not worked for her in the past. She has an intimate knowledge of her work, her capabilities, and her markets. As a crafts[person], she senses rather than analyzes these things; her knowledge is 'tacit.' All these things are working in her mind as her hands are working the clay. The product that emerges on the wheel is likely to be in the tradition of her past work, but she may break away and embark on a new direction. Even so, the past is no less present, projecting itself into the future. - Henry Mintzberg, "Crafting Strategy", Harvard Business Review, July-August 1987, pp. 66-75.

Like a potter, an experienced Instructional Designer brings forth her past experience to a future conception. This allows her to view a certain aspect of our world so that we may make sense of it, and in turn, create possibilities within others. However, unlike the potter who works with inanimate materials, we deal with a network composed of over ten billion semi-independent neurons that seem to be randomly connected to each other -- the human brain. And the way that we are able to make some sense of this extremely complex network is by chunking it on higher and higher levels. These chunks or patterns provide us with concepts on how people best learn -- they are the science behind our profession. Yet with each step or concept that we create, some precision is lost.

For example, an Instructional Designer might be able to say with confidence that studies show that a 4:1 student to instructor ratio is best when instructing heavy equipment. Yet, it is all about context -- her past experience might also tell her that in particular situation that since the equipment has few safeguards and the learners have little or no experience, a 2:1 ratio would bring about the best possibility for learning. A different situation might tell her that a 8:1 ratio would be not only effective but also more efficient.

Science also tells us that while the brain is a complex network, it is somewhat limited as an information processing system. It can only process about seven chunks of information at a time and it takes about five seconds to transfer one chunk of information from short-term memory to long-term memory. And often, this has to be done repeatedly.

While this can be accomplished with rote memorization, learners can become extremely bored with this method. In addition, it is has little or no context, thus rote memorization can be limited in nature when taken out of the classroom and put to use on the job. Thus, our designs must become more like a composer's fugue in that we base learning on one theme or concept, yet is played (learned) on different voices (interactions), keys (activities), speeds (spacing), directions, and emotional levels.

Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt wrote Canto Ostinato (mp3 music file) for various instruments and flexible duration. Ten Holt uses repetition and minimalist permutations to create an original, evolving work with ever-shifting moments. These parts are woven together into an overlapping and flowing whole.

What happens on-stage is like you're looking at an object from different angles, and the object is changed by the input people put into it. If you look at an object from above or below, it's still the same object, but the colours are different, the shapes are different, and that's what happens on-stage. So the players' input is very important. - Simeon ten Holt

So not only do our learning designs need to be like fugues, but also like Simeon ten Holt's composition in that the learning experience not only allows the players (learners) to reach the objectives set by the composer (designer) by being able to view them from different angles in order to meet their styles and preferences, but also flexible enough to allow them to meet their own objectives.

Science gives us a large part of our declarative or explicit knowledge that allows us to map and plan our course of action for best creating learning, for example:

Yet our experience, knowledge, and skills gives us our procedural or tacit knowledge that is spread widely around our brain. This is our real worth as instructional designers. It tells us when a project is basic enough to pass on to SMEs through the use of templates or when to keep a project in the hands of instructional designers because of the uniqueness of it. The tacit knowledge that we develop within ourselves over the years allows us to view each learning situation as a unique project with many variables to account for so that the best possibility of learning occurs.

Designing eLearning, Reading, Instructional Design, mLearning, Yahoo!, & Google

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.

Multimedia, Attention, Productivity, Visual, & Knowledge

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.

Cursive or Typing, Certification, Analysis, Rapid Development, Virtual, & Generations Gaps

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.

Creative Thinking, Layering, Requirements, Collaboration, & Expectation Economy

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.

eLearning, OJT, Judgement, Millennials, Global Workforce, & Innovation

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.

Telecommuting, eLearning, Training to Rise, & Training to Fall

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.