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Free E-Learning Tutorial: Future Trends in Learning Management Systems

March 11, 2012 By Alison Bickford Leave a Comment

I have just released episode 22 of the Connect Thinking E-Learning Academy free video and audio podcast series. This is the third and final video of a podcast series on Learning Management Systems (LMS). This episode explores the limitations of many existing LMS and what features might be included in future personal learning environments (PLEs).

You can doenload our free elearning tutorials from iTunes.

Or read the podcast 22 transcript.

Or watch the entire free e-learning tutorial series on our E-Learning Academy YouTube Channel.

Episode 22 is embedded below.

Filed Under: Announcement, LMS Strategy

How we think about learning influences our e-learning practice

March 8, 2012 By Alison Bickford 1 Comment

My EdD Supervisor is Emeitus Paul Hager, an educational philosopher who keeps it ‘real’ for me when it comes to the inter-relationship between learning and technology. I recently read a number of Paul’s papers about learning in the workplace. Paul and colleagues have described the evolution of learning theories in the context of workplace learning, and I have summarised their points (probably rather clumsily) in the table you see below. I’ve presented this table to a couple of clients during learning strategy discussions. I use it to help clients uncover how learning is thought about, talked about, treated and lived in their organisation. I use it to uncover the organisation’s learning philosophy, vision or guiding principles. In these discussions, as in my doctoral research, I have noticed the following:

Many organisations don’t have a shared learning philosophy, vision or guiding principles from which to make design or resource decisions.
Many organisations don’t use learning principles to underpin how they will achieve corporate goals or people and performance initiatives.
Typical learning technologies (LMS, e-learning courseware) has served to reinforce theoretical aspects associated with psychology (column 1).

Organisational learning theories are evolving as the chaos and complexity associated with culture and climate are being acknowledged. Add social media to the mix, and we can see the dichotomy between the ‘order’ that organisations want and the ‘complexity’ that most of us are working within.

The chaos and complexity associated with today’s business climate is often under-represented in our learning design and systems.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that one learning theory ‘camp’ is right. However, we should acknowledge that the learning theory we each subscribe both influences and drives our learning design and technology choices. My early teaching and learning practice was very prescribed. However, I have learnt no matter how prescribed I am, I cannot really predict learning transfer or learning ROI. Learning is far too messy for that.

How does my postmodern approach learning theory preference inform my practice?

It keeps me humble
It influences my perception of my level of influence on others
It stops me from trying to attain perfection in learning design
It stops me getting all hung up about measurement (I prefer to gauge success by hearing stories from the field)
It helps me to prioritise the ‘social’ and ‘point-of need’ learning design over 20 minute self-directed e-learning
It helps me to prioritise less expensive, web-based ‘disposable‘ system options over enterprise learning management systems
It helps me to prioritise understanding client culture, climate and workflow (context) before I offer solution options
It helps me to think about solution options that are broader than the development and implementation of a piece of content

If I was asked to choose just one thing to strive for in learning design/learning architecture, it would be to support staff through chaos and complexity by having them become comfortable with how to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. Support through the thoughtful design of social media, social networks and/or performance support tools would enable staff to ’unlearn’ and ‘relearn’ emerging information and skills. To create such designs, I would need to deeply understand the micro-climate and workflow of different business units, even individuals.

What is the learning theory you espouse? Please feel free to comment and share.

Filed Under: E-Learning Strategy, Our Changing Practice, Performance Support, Research - Work-Based VLE

Observations from the Unconference: Near Future of Learning in Australia

February 19, 2012 By Alison Bickford 4 Comments

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend the inaugral LearningCafe Unconference last Thursday. I hadn’t been to an unconference before, and was looking forward to some serious debate and critical thinking about some important issues facing our practice. Unfortunately I did miss the final 2 hours of the program, and so I did not hear the synthesis session.

Jeevan Joshi from KnowledgeWorking, and the other organisers did a good job preparing the conference by blogging topics which ultimately form the unconference output. The day was not expensive (another plus) and there were many experienced, deep thinking and credible presenters and participants at the conference.

What was disappointing (and I appreciate this has been acknowledged by the organising committee) was that the collaborative discussions were only 20 minutes long. Each were facilitated, and I only went to 3 of the 20 streams. For my streams, by the time the facilitator introduced the topic and gave us their opinion about it (which I didn’t expect at an unconference), 10 minutes had passed. Each topic was accompanied by about 4-6 deep questions. Twenty minutes was hardily long enough for 1 question. The lack of time seemed to encourage a whole lot of motherhood statements that were not explored to uncover the ‘why’.

A speaker raised the issue of needing to develop the skills of critical thinking in our organisations. We cannot expect critical thinking of the topics raised at each stream in 20 minutes. Perhaps next unconference the stream sessions could be 50 minutes for 1 question with 10 minutes to share the synthesis of the discussion with the rest of the audience. (I must say, the main reason why I am pursuing the completion of my EdD is to develop my skill in critical thinking – I appreciate it is an acquired skill).

I listened to a few of the 10 minute ‘soap box’ in the open session, and I thought this was a good initiative. It helped to make real the issues, as speakers were talking from a case study perspective, and illustrated the diversity of organisational milieu.

Organisational learning milieu is diverse

As an observer, I did notice 2 anomalies:

1. There were 16 stream facilitators, and only two were women. I’m not use to seeing this skewed representation of women in learning professional gatherings. I wondered why this was so?

2. The facilitators and audience was strongly represented by the learning fraternity of financial services organisations (i.e. banks). I appreciate fnancial services have been leaders in evolving learning practice for a long time, often out of legislative necessity (e.g. the early adoption of e-learning). However, while such learning ‘mature’ organisations perhaps have the luxury to critically evaluate important topics such as learning effectiveness, embedded learning and accountability, many of my clients are just grappling with operationalising e-learning. Of course, the ‘big questions’ are important to all organisational learning professionals. But many of my clients are still working through achieving staff equality in network speed and LMS access. So, when topics such as learning effectiveness is discussed, there is a world of difference in what needs to be done to make it effective (i.e. embedding learning into the workplace versus just getting e-learning to work on a remote desktop).

The disparity of organisational learning in Australia

I left the unconference more concerned than ever about the disparity in organisational learning strategy and operations. Learning and development budgets are being cut, there is a shortage of tertiary qualified learning practitioners, and the qualifications themselves being offered by RTOs and universities are doing no favours to organisational learning capability development. I see the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ (i.e. those who can afford to evolve capability development with new initiatives, new technologies, new aproaches to evolve culture and climate, versus those who cannot) widening, and this will be a critical issue in Australia’s workforce capability strategy and lifelong learning.

So, thanks to the organisers and stream leaders of the unconference. I am sure scheduling will be different next year. And, perhaps we will get some real understanding of ‘why’ and tangible outputs that will move our learning and development fraternity towards new thinking and new policy.

Filed Under: E-Learning Strategy, Our Changing Practice

7 Tips for developing an E-Learning Strategy

February 15, 2012 By Alison Bickford 2 Comments

Part of my job is to provide e-learning strategy support to clients. I have a number of processes for this kind of engagement, and E-Learning Academy members to have access to an e-learning course on Strategy, and a number of other tools and resources.

Top line tips for developing an e-learning strategy

1. Talk with other organisations about their strategy – their reasons for implementing a strategy, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and the resources required to implement and sustain their strategy.

2. Conduct 1:1 or focus interviews with the e-learning strategy touch-points in your organisation:

Business strategy requirements today and future e.g. responsiveness, competition, changing consumer demands, legislation changes
Human capability requirements today and future e.g. retiring workforce, Gen Y retention, staff ability to ‘unlearn’, ‘relearn’ and manage rapid information, cultural and climate readiness to self-manage learning and participate in a social network
Manager requirements e.g. getting new staff upskilled as quickly as possible, helping managers in their role as coach
End-user expectations e.g. perception of e-learning, social media – what makes learning technologies useful and easy to use, engaging and reusable
IT e.g. pipeline technologies, challenges to standard operating environment
Information management and/or knowledge management e.g. knowledge retention and information maintenance and renewal

3. Learning technologies and informal learning in a strategy has removed the role demarcation between learning and development, knowledge management, information management and information technology. Your strategy should ideally be all encompassing. Consultation with all areas of the business is paramount.

4. Ask yourself the bigger question Do we have everything in place to enable learning to effectively and efficiently occur in our organisation? All six elements in the figure below need to be addressed for a strategy to succeed.

5. Your first priority solution may not necessarily be a LMS for e-learning courses. It my be social media for project team sharing and collaboration, or a video library to manage expert knowledge. Be sure of your strategic priorities.

6. When you have decided upon your strategic e-learning solution, be sure to prioritise quality over cost wherever you can. A poor user experience will railroad your strategy as quickly as you implemented it.

7. Your strategy needs to be translate into a tangible Action Plan. Your action plan will need to encompass a change plan and communication plan. Your earlier focus group outcomes will help you to develop this.