Tools for On-Demand Information - An LMS?

I was pointed to the article in CLO Magazine: Tools for On-Demand Information by Donald Clark.

This happens to be a topic that I really believe in and we are finding more and more that we are building less "courseware" and much more reference material, job aids, etc. Often our solutions are tightly integrated where you can seamless move between reference material and the associated courseware (that may have details and practice opportunity).

But, I was dismayed to read:

Many learning organizations have already implemented an LMS, so there is an opportunity to enhance this infrastructure, making it part of a deliberate strategy to take advantage of the more ubiquitous workplace technologies.

Does anyone really believe that an LMS is a good way to support "on-demand information?"

The practical reality is that we most often make an early choice about what will be "under the LMS" and what will be "outside the LMS." Under the LMS implies that you want it to be tracked and are willing to make the user go through a bit of additional hurdle to get there. Outside the LMS implies that you want the end user to go directly to the resource via links on the intranet or through search and don't want the LMS to get in the way of this quick access at the loss of being able to track who is doing what with the content.

Some LMS products have tried to provide deep linking and automatic registration, but it is rare that this still turns out to be as easy as just building content using Wikis, CMS, Portal or whatever the relevant toolset is that you have for building information resources.

So, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are thinking about On-Demand Information (and you should be), you probably are not going to want to start with the concept of "leveraging your LMS."

In fairness to the author (and to IBM where the author comes from), they actually do a great job of providing seamless access to all kinds of information resources including learning resources. But IBM is the best of the best in terms of how they use technology for these kinds of problems and 99% of other organizations are going to need to take a very different approach to get there.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Point Solutions vs. Suites and Composition

One of the more interesting back-stories in Blended Learning / eLearning 2.0 is the classic question of point-solutions vs. suites.

As background for the question, take a look at LAMS and particularly the demonstrations.

The description of LAMS in their FAQ is interesting:

LAMS is focussed on a very specific aspect of e-learning – sequences of learning activities, particularly collaborative activities. LAMS provides rich functionality for designing a “flow” of learning activities, especially where these activities rely on collaboration between students to drive the learning process. LAMS is a comprehensive system for the design and implementation of learning activity sequences – it includes an authoring environment, a “run-time” environment for implementation of sequences with groups of learners, and a monitoring environment so teachers can see student progress in real-time (and view past activities). It also includes a user administration system for system administrators. LAMS can include content delivery (and quizzes) as single-learner activities within a sequence, and you can point to content held elsewhere from within a LAMS sequence via a URL. However, LAMS does not attempt to replicate the course administration functionality of a typical LMS/VLE/CMS.

As an example, here's a screen shot of a workflow defined:



LAMS allows the specification of a blended learning sequence via a workflow diagram. Very interesting concept.

It's also worth looking at what Michael Feldstein and Patrick Masson are doing around an LMOS.

In the corporate space, probably the closest thing comes from Bill Bruck at q2Learning.

All of these aim at the need of being able to compose together a variety of intervention types into a Blended Learning solution. The LAMS approach is good to look at, because it looks like the workflow problem that this really is.

I think its pretty safe to assume that the big corporate LMS vendors will jump on this bandwagon soon enough by adding a workflow tool into their systems to finally be able to support richer specifications of blended learning programs.

In fact, my contention is that Workflow itself is going to be a central part of what we are doing even beyond composing together blended learning. See my post: eLearning Technology: Blurry Vision of Future of Work (Workflow, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Decision Systems)

However, what's happening here is almost the opposite of what is the direction being suggested in the Web 2.0 world. Web 2.0 says "create lots of easily composable, point solutions that can be mashed together."

The providers I've listed seem to say, we'll provide you all the tools that you can compose into your blend. While, I want and need the composition, I don't necessarily like the tools being offerred by these vendors. Their particular implementation of voting, forum, questions, chat, surveys, wiki, etc. are not the best out there. But, instead of allowing me to compose together point-solutions using their workflow solution, I'm locked into their solutions.
I can understand this to a degree today given the lack of standards around things like identity, but it seems pretty clear that the path is towards suites. As a person who likes to develop interesting parts and be able to choose best-of-breed, the trend troubles me.

This is also coming out in the authoring world. Can you compose your course out of smaller components composed together, or does your authoring tool provide all the components you need?

Undoubtedly, we are going to see overlap between the suites, points solutions and authoring tools in terms of capabilities as they reach into areas such as comments, peer-review, etc. Today the overlap is most evident in testing. You can use your LMS' test solution, your Authoring tools test solution, or Questionmark Perception. This is an easy problem because the interface between a test and an LMS is standard. Just don't try to have the course authored in one authoring tool try to link directly into the test authored in another tool without first going back to the LMS - even thought it would be MUCH NICER to be able to link directly to the test from the content.

Still, my chief complaint is that I want to be able to have my best of breed solutions, but I want to also have easy integration. Buying everything from a single LMOS or LAMS vendor makes me worried that I'm not going to get my best of breed and that the promise of Web 2.0 to have composable elements is not going to come together. For more on this see my posts on Composition:

Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic

Typepad Widgets - A Sign of Things to Come in eLearning Authoring / Developement

Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups

Keywords: eLearning Trends, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0

Intermediate Factors in Learning

I apologize on this post, but you are going to have to bear with me as I take you through my statement that:

The most important work we do in corporate learning is to understand Intermediate Factors and how to positively impact them.

I've recently read several comments and posts that talk about "only measuring the outcomes in learning." To point to one, take a look at: From Product Focus to Audience Focus.

In the corporate world we should only really care if the learning is transferred to the job…period! Is the output increased, or of higher quality because of our learning intervention. This has always been a problem for training departments because we look at everything we do as a product, and we “evaluate” if the product had impact. The approach is totally wrong.

While I completely agree that corporate learning is all about driving human performance that leads to business results, I have a real problem with the implication that you should only measure the outputs.

I've worked on several learing solutions that were tied closely to employee and customer surveys and so I've had a nice opportunity to work with some really geeky, analytic wonks who use things like regression analysis and command serious dollars to figure out what Intermediate Factors ultimately drive results.

For example, we might be working with a bank who knows that loyalty, share of wallet, and customer profitability are the ultimate business measures. But, the real question is "What drives these factors?"

A survey research person will create a Causal Model that attempts to explain Intermediate Factors that ultimately drive these numbers. For example, Satisfaction with the Advice the bank provides, Knowledge of Staff around products, etc., may be Intermediate Factors in their models. Each of these are then tied back to Survey Questions. Then, through analysis of survey responses in comparison to actual numbers, we can determine the correlation between these intermediate factors and the business drivers. This is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT information!

Why is this so important? In most cases, I can't change the ultimate output directly. However, I often can aim my solutions at the Intermediate Factors. I can improve advice, increase knowledge. These are the performance drivers I go after.

Ah, well, the people who talk about "only measuring output" will say that all we've done here is understand the "outputs" and there's definite truth to that argument. I would certainly agree that these are important "outputs" to also measure. In fact, I would say that these can be used to define and measure the performance that we are going for.

However, even if I now recognize that Providing Quality advice is the performance measure (as measured in survey responses), I still have more work to do in order to determine the drivers of this. As learning professionals, we then spend our time understanding what practices drive this performance. We identify a series of additional intermediate factors (product knowledge, solution selling, etc.) that we need to attack.

The bottom line is that for us to be able to have a systematic method for improving the "output" we need to be able to define all of these intermediate factors AND we need to measure the impact we are having on intermediate factors. Again,

The most important work we do in corporate learning is to understand Intermediate Factors and how to positively impact them.

Yes, I care about the end result, but unless you can tell me the intermediate factors, how you will impact them, and ideally measure your impact on them, then why should I believe that your learning solution is going to work.

Brent said in his post:

The process is continuous and if our “training solution” is organic, dynamic, and flexible, it is very difficult to measure using the current method of measuring learning products. My point is “who cares”. If we have set up environments that help people collaborate, and support their informal learning, we should see output improvements.

"Who cares"? Well I do. And, actually, the business does. If you create an "organic, dynamic, flexible" learning solution but can't explain how it impacts the end numbers, then: (a) you won't get credit, (b) you won't know if you can repeat it successfully, and (c) you won't know if its really working.

Keywords: eLearning Trends, Informal Learning

Why Kids Blog (David Warlick)

I just read a David Warlick's post Why Kids Blog and one comment jumped out at me (among several great comments on the value of blogging by teachers):

In fifteen years of teaching, I have never seen anything come along even CLOSE to motivating students to write - like blogging does.

Mark Ahlness

What's interesting is how the shift to writing (my Kindergarten child is writing everyday in school) along with the power of blogging makes for some interesting possibilities in the future.

Definite food for thought.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Web 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise - It's Personal

I've previously written about adoption of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 tools inside of corporate environments. eLearning Technology: Enterprise 2.0 - What's the PU?

There's been quite a bit of discussion around this topic (or similar topics) recently:

• Enterprise adoption of social bookmarking and tagging
• Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Hinges on Microformats and Knowledge *Integration*
• 7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

and I think that that the "7 Reasons" captures my same feeling on adoption:

people will only use software that benefits them personally at every step

So, to modify my earlier question "What's the PU (Perceived Usefulness)?" The question should really be:

What's the Perceived Immediate Value to Me?

This, of course, flies in the face of the normal discussion around Web 2.0, eLearning 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and all the other 2.0s. The normal description is that Web 2.0 is all about social software.

In corporate environments, it can't be about Social, in needs to first
be Personal.

If you have thoughts on the personal value to you of Blogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarking (without the social), etc., I would love to hear them. I'm going to be posting on this topic, but would love input.

Keywords: eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0

Chambers - "Next Market Transition is Collaboration"

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, who said in 2000 ...

The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education.
Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email
usage look like a rounding error.

Now is saying (Keynote at Interop, May 2, 2006):

Next market transition is collaboration.

While he naturally is always looking to see what is going to be the media rich applications that are going to push stuff over the networks they enable, it is also interesting to hear this as we in the corporate learning world have begun to transition as well.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Informal Learning is Too Important to Leave to Chance

An interesting comment from Jay Cross (Mr. Informal Learning) relative to my earlier eLearning 2.0: Informal Learning, Communities, Bottom-up vs. Top-Down got me to thinking.

Jay says -

Serendipity is cool and I always leave room for it, but the learning I write about is always intentional. Otherwise, it's a tough sell.

So, we agree that most learning professionals are being asked for Intentional Learning (as opposed to Unexpected). Jay and I also agree that performance and business results are what matter at the end of the day, not seat time.

Where I'm not sure if we agree is whether intermediate results such as learning objectives, skill development opportunities, etc. are important in order to ensure that we will reach the performance and business results.

Maybe it's just me, but some folks (especially those coming from a background in Communities of Practice) believe that you foster learning but you don't control it. You provide the environment and people will learn.

Jay commented:

The question "How can I make sure that I'm able to hit my learning objectives if I don't control the content and the learning process?" assumes that you are ever in control. I think the learner should always be in control.

Well, maybe it's just semantics around learner control vs. learning professional control, but I'm not a big fan of leaving the learning to chance. Don't get me wrong. I like to create fairly open learning experiences, e.g., collaborative learning through discussions. I like people to have lots of opportunity to find their answers along the way themselves. But, I'm personally much more confident if I have a set of performance objectives that I can use to derive learning objectives and skill development opportunities around. I want to put structure in place that guides the learner along the way. I want to put them back "inbounds" as needed. All of this gives me a much higher degree of confidence that I will achieve the performance and business results I want at the end of the day.

Again, I would point us to George Siemens in his article Theories for Informal Learning Design:

Informal learning is too important leave to chance. But why don't we have theories that provide guidelines?

What we need is practical guidelines, lots of examples, etc.

I'll be saying more on this shortly based on the results of my Collaborative Learning class that I'm teaching right now.

Keywords: Informal Learning