I agree, but how did this situation come to exist? Based on my own experience as an elearning manager within a corporate, and more recently as a consultant, I have some thoughts about why the relationship often works this way.

In his post, Clive touches on the first one:

When employers purchase an e-learning product or engage with a developer, they choose on the basis of production values rather than learning design, because they have neither the time nor the inclination to test out materials with real learners.

I’ve seen many examples of this, but it’s a problem that existed long before elearning. The same can happen when commissioning external providers of face to face training. The focus is on the delivery and collateral rather than the learning and business outcomes. Trainers are often selected, quite literally, on the basis of style over substance.

This is closely related to the second problem. When I was getting started with elearning, I was given all sorts of advice, but one of the more frequent suggestions was to produce “high profile content”; that is, content that people would talk about because it had the “wow factor”. The trouble is, that ends up being “wow those graphics were amazing”, or “wow I think 3D models are cool” when it should be “wow I’ve learned so much by doing that!”.

Who are we trying to impress with this high profile, “wow” content? It’s usually stakeholders and senior managers, because we want their buy in as way to ensure that we can do more of this.

The trouble is, once we’ve opened this box, it’s almost impossible to put thing back in again. We establish a situation where elearning is perceived as something that must have high production values, and anything else is considered to be sub-standard.

This also relates to the problem of procurement models and IT involvement. In the past, it was not unusual to see the commissioning of a piece of elearning treated as a software purchase, and for some organisations that’s still true today.

There are two problems with this;

First of all, a software purchase is usually sourced based on factors such as integration with existing systems, and the availability of support. Effective learning outcomes will not be high on the list. IT then end up making decisions about the choice of vendor; something which should be the domain L&D.

The second issue is how these things are paid for. A software purchase is usually treated as capital expenditure, and in many organisations something can only be a capital expense if it is above a certain cost (perhaps £30-£40,000). So what do you do? You make your elearning content more media rich in order to push up the cost, because you couldn’t get the budget if you wanted to spend less. Sounds crazy, but I’ve got plenty of experience of this!

How do we overcome this? Like Clive, I’m not completely sure, but I do know that it involves L&D keeping their focus on being business people rather than show people.

Craig Taylor has written an interesting post about his experiences at a recent eLN event. It seems that many attendees agreed with the suggestion that “people can’t possibly be learning effectively if they are tapping away on mobile devices”. I thought it merited a longer response than Craig’s chosen comment system would allow, so here are my thoughts;

First of all, I think that the “tapping away on mobile devices” part is irrelevant. There are plenty of times where I’ve very effectively failed to learn anything at all, without the assistance of any technology!

In answer to Craig’s questions:

Is it reasonable to expect us and our learners to use technology to aid our/their productivity in areas and in situations that have traditionally used pen and paper? – That depends on what you mean by ‘expect’. We certainly shouldn’t be surprised that people are using tablets and smartphones for things such as note taking. On the other hand I wouldn’t want to impose those tools on people if they don’t want to use them. I’m usually well ahead of the curve in my personal adoption of technology, but there are still things that I choose to do on paper; and let’s not forget, pen and paper is technology, it’s just more established than some of the alternatives.

Should we maintain traditional practices for meetings but attempt to push forward with new practices when the output has an overt ‘learning’ tag attached to it? – No. Learning is most effective when it builds on what people already do elsewhere, so trying to introduce new practices at the same time as something that is ‘overt learning’ (or training, as it should be called) just makes both activities more difficult. If you want to introduce new practices (e.g. making notes on a tablet) then introduce that as something that people perceive as being part of, not separate to, their work.

Of course, the act of note taking on a tablet has little or no value in itself; what people need to understand first is the benefit they get from doing this (easy to store, search, reference, find and reuse those notes) and then the benefits to others (ability to share, collaborate) and finally the benefits to the organisation (knowledge management, dissemination of information).

Do you use technology to aid your personal productivity or not? – I use technology for pretty much everything, but at the same time I’m not naive enough to think that technology = productivity. For example; when I first started using Twitter I attempted to ‘live tweet’ every event I attended, but quickly found that I was getting a worse experience because I couldn’t focus on the event and the tweeting.

Are you encouraging/discouraging of others to do so? – I’m keen to share the opportunities that technology can bring, in all areas, including productivity. However, on a personal level I’m not an evangelist. Just because something works for me, or someone I know, doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. It won’t be a surprise that I do encourage people to adopt technology at an organisational level – e.g. virtual meetings instead of face to face.

Whether face to face or online, I think the type of event makes a difference to the expected behaviour.

For example, when I’ve presented at eLN events I’ve been happy if two thirds of the people are paying attention and the remaining third aren’t distracting them. After all, there are a number of speakers at each event and it’s unlikely that every attendee will be interested in every speaker? I feel the same way about webinars (by which I mean ‘presentation style’ online events); the barriers to attendance are so low that some of the attendees are bound to only have a passing interest. As a presenter I should be focussing on those people who do want to take part.

If I was facilitating a workshop, presumably for a much smaller group of people, then I might expect different behaviour. If we assume that I’m doing my bit by running a good session, then it’s reasonable to expect the participants to do their bit by taking part. Most importantly, I would expect their focus to be on working with the others in the room (physical or virtual), and whether or not they use technology to do that is irrelevant. In this situation I would direct people to avoid distracting activities, whether that’s switching their phone to silent or closing email (which is not the same as saying – switch off the technology).

It’s not my reading of any of these conversations that they want to see the current conferences replaced (although I may be wrong), but rather that they want another option (something ‘alternative’ rather than ‘an alternative to’).

Of course it’s easy to be critical of the status quo, and much harder to change it. This quotation from Terry Pratchett says it very nicely.

“So many people tut and say “Someone should do something”, but so few step forward and say “…and that someone is me”

With that very much in my mind, it happened that a couple of weeks ago I was talking with Jane Hart when the topic moved on to conferences and the usual ‘someone needs to do something’ conversation followed. What was different was that we decided we would be the ‘someone’ who did something; and so Learning Camp was born.

We’ve started the ball rolling over at http://learningcamp.org and if you have any desire to take part in or attend the first event, or help shape what it could become in the future, please complete the survey and follow the Twitter account for updates – more information on both can be found on the Learning Camp website. There’s not much on the site at the moment, but I can promise you that more will be happening in the next few weeks.

And finally, if you’re one of those people who has ever suggested that ‘something should be done’ you can expect to hear from us soon. Together we have an opportunity to do something, so now’s the time for all of us to either put up or shut up.

Back in the summer I wrote an article for Saffron Interactive titled ‘The Advance of Social Media’. Its key message is that social media is now a mainstream activity and that organisations that attempt to ignore it, do so at their own risk.

If you’d like to read the full article, it is available to download here in PDF format, along with a number of other great articles in Saffron’s Advance series.

Despite the title, the article seems to be more about the shortcomings of companies, and why that makes them unsuitable as users of microblogging. To quote the article “Nevertheless, I think there are several fundamental reasons why companies are unsuited to microblogging,…”.

The article goes on to list 5 reasons why companies are not suitable;

1. Companies are incapable of dealing with things in real time
2. Companies are incapable of brevity
3. Companies are not open
4. Companies are neither altruistic or reciprocal
5. Companies do not have distinct voices or personalities

I don’t think I’m alone in being relieved I don’t work in a company that behaves as described in the article. One which is probably not fit to deal with its customers, is certainly not fit to manage and develop its employees and is unlikely to have a very bright (or long) future.

The biggest problem with the article, is of course that all five of the statements are wrong. Many companies are very good at dealing with things in real time, and can be both brief and open. Altruism and reciprocity are not unknown qualities in the world of business. Virgin, Disney and Nike are just a few examples of companies with a distinct voice and personality.

If you actually read the story, you’ll find the tone is clearly tongue in cheek, but that won’t stop some people attempting to use this as evidence that Twitter has no place in business.

As part of the event, Matt Brewer of Chubb Insurance and I ran a collaborative session to identify what eLN members wanted to see in an LMS that was fit for use in 21st Century organisations. I’m really pleased to say that we have taken the output of that session and produced a report that can be freely downloaded from the eLearning Network website.

Download: 21st Century LMS

It’s released under a Creative Commons licence, so please do share and remix it.

That’s exactly what Thomson have done, and on a flight with them last week, I would estimate that 90% of the people on the plane paid attention to the whole thing.

Want to know why? Watch the video.

1. DigitalColor Meter

This hand little app is installed on all Macs, and can be found in the Utilities folder.

2. ColourLovers

As this is web based, it’s not strictly Mac only, but then Tom’s choices were web based too. I really like ColourLovers for its community contributed colour schemes. There’s a nice post here about using DigitalColor Meter together with ColourLovers.

3. Paintbrush

If you want a simple bitmap editor for the Mac, you need look no further than the open source Paintbrush.

4. Preview

One of the little known tricks in OSX is that you can use the built in Preview app for resizing individual images or batch resizing multiple images. Just head for the Tools/Adjust Size option.

5. Garageband

All new macs come with iLife installed, which include GarageBand, an incredibly easy to use audio editing app. Of course, you could go with Tom’s choice of Audacity, as that also runs on Macs.

6. iMovie

Another great tool in the iLife suite is iMovie, which gives you simple drag and drop movie making.

7. Prism

Prism is a commercial tool that offers a free version, which will convert between the most common file formats.

8 and 9. SWF and FLV Player

Another great free tool, as its name suggests you can use it with both SWF and FLV. Alternatively, for FLV support you can do a lot worse that VLC, which is a good general purpose replacement for QuickTime player and supports many video formats.

Because there is no licensing cost involved with open source solutions, its easy for organisations to just jump in and set up the first solution that comes along. There is however a cost to installation and support, either financial or time related. Anyone setting up an LMS has a responsibility to research and choose the solution that is right for the learners and the organisation.

As a starting point here are 10 open source alternatives to Moodle. These are deliberately brief descriptions, and I would encourage you to visit these sites and explore each solution in some detail.

Docebo In use in corporate and higher education settings. Offers support for a number of different learning models and is compatible with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. It offers interfaces to external systems such as video conferencing and HR systems.

eFront The base install is quite minimalist, but this is easily extended with modules available from the site. Commercial versions with additional features are also available.

Dokeos A very well featured LMS that also offers content authoring and video conferencing tools. Supports converting Office documents into Learning Paths. Offers user synchronisation with HR management systems such as Oracle and SAP.

Claroline Aimed more at the educational than corporate arena, this system is based around specific pedagogical principles (as is Moodle). Supports SCORM content as well as a built in Wiki and other online content tools.

ATutor Actually an LCMS, ATutor also offers tools for the management of learning. The “A” stands for Accessible and it has excellent support for key accessibility standards as well as support for SCORM, IMS etc.

ILIAS Provides testing and assessment tools as well as collaboration tools such as chat and forums, and distribution technologies like RSS and podcasts.

OLAT A well featured system in its tenth year of development. Recently the winner of the “IMS Learning Impact ‘Leadership Award’ 2009 for best open source learning platform”.

Sakai Aimed at Universities, this project has a clear roadmap and has seem considerable development in the last few years. Backed by the Sakai Foundation which manages relationships with educational and commercial supporters.

.LRN Originally developed at MIT, .LRN claims to be the most widely adopted enterprise class open source LMS solution.

openelms Marketed specifically as a business solution, and claims a diverse customer base that ranges from Merrill Lynch to Queens Park Rangers football club.

Ganesha This LMS developed by Anema, has been around since 2001 and is in use in several large organisations. The site, and the LMS itself, are in French but it can be translated.

Like everything else in this rapidly changing world, conference organisers need to demonstrate value. It will no longer be acceptable to roll out the same old faces, talking about the same old subjects and charging excessive prices for the privilege of attending.

For example, the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering will cost you $1369.00 for 2.5 days of sessions run by speakers that the eLearning Guild thinks you should see.

Compare that to DrupalCon, where I’ve paid $250.00 for 3.5 days of sessions run by awesome speakers that the attendees voted for.

The differences?

• The latter is a gathering of open source (and open minded) people there to share their passion for the open source platform we all use. It’s not a commercial event, designed to turn a profit. (Make no mistake though, DrupalCon isn’t some kind of open source love-in. There are commercial sponsors, and there will be many commercial conversations and deals going on).
• There is a fundamental attitude of sharing what you know, without any expectation of commercial benefit.
• Many of the DrupalCon presentations talk about the future, whereas L&D conference agendas are filled with what’s been done. Have we not got the message yet that information has a ridiculously short shelf life?

Conferences will have to change if they want to survive, and I think we’ll all benefit as a result.