Learning = getting the job done

DevLearn marked a significant shift in the field of corporate learning. Content and planning have become secondary to getting the job done. In today’s world, that means trusting workers to learn for themselves. The natives are taking control. Learning is mobile. Curriculum is toast.

Skim through the following ideas from several dozen DevLearn speakers. None of these topics were being presented two years ago. Social/informal learning is crossing the chasm to mainstream acceptance. I’ll expand on that thought in later posts and video.

Without a doubt, Web 2.0 is having a tremendous impact on every aspect of our lives, including how we consume, play, work, learn, communicate, relate, participate, and more. At the same time, organizations are under pressure to remain competitive in today’s economic environment, while being prepared to take advantage of new opportunities when they come and also meeting the needs of a multi-generational workforce. By leveraging the thinking and approaches, as well as the tools and technologies, of the Web 2.0 world for learning, organizations are meeting these challenges.  Lance Dublin

With the advent of “Web 2.0,” we can begin to move beyond the next generation of e-Learning to the next generation of learning itself: Learning 2.0. Learning 2.0 is transformative, and its successful implementation requires support at all levels. Marc Rosenberg

Google has tapped the power of online collaboration to solve business problems and engage learners. It is easier than you might think to leverage scalable and free technologies to address your organization’s needs. Julia Bulkowski & Erika Grouell

Corporate learning organizations are realizing that they just can’t create programs fast enough to meet the learning needs of their audiences. So they turn to social learning environments as the solution. These environments empower people to find any formal or informal learning resource from a single place. Today’s corporate learning environments look more like YouTube than a corporate course catalog. David Mallon

Emerging technologies are changing our expectations of what a high-value e-Learning experience can be. By aligning these emerging tech priorities with the practices and methods that e-Learning professionals value in their work, and with consumer expectations of rich, engaging online experience, e-Learning professionals can better respond with designs that engage learners, while simultaneously anticipating what all their stakeholders expect. Ellen Wagner

Amazon.com blends the data they collect about their visitors and social networking to dynamically generate a customized user experience. Arguably, we have significantly more data about our learners than Amazon.com has about their customers, and yet we do practically nothing to leverage that data to customize the learning experience. Richard Culatta

The buzz surrounding Augmented Reality has grown considerably, now that the technology has become more versatile (available over Web applications) and more affordable (easier to develop). The question is, how can we apply AR for education?  Cahlan Sharp

So, what do Twitter, You Tube, Facebook, WordPress, American Idol, and movie documentaries like Super Size Me have in common with e-Learning 2.0? They all allow us to simultaneously become interactive, stranger-than-fiction reality-based storytellers, audience participants, and online learners. They provide us new ways to tell our very own stories, where we are globally involved and connected as both teachers and students. Laura Kratochvil

Mobile gaming takes on many forms, ranging from mini-games to simulations to alternate reality games. Recent programs embody a Web 2.0 hybrid of these models that embrace technology and promote learning. Come explore the latest examples of mobile gaming, like Google’s Foundations of Leadership Training game, and others. David Metcalfe and Julie Chow

Seventy to ninety percent of what we learn is learned informally. But how do we facilitate informal learning in the workplace? This case-study session will focus on Intel’s experiences in using social media to facilitate informal learning. Participants will learn the methods that have worked, those that have not worked, the tools used, the hurdles they overcame, and those they are still overcoming. David Wade

Twelve national Toyota training entities were trying to offer relevant and timely product information to roughly 17,000 sales professionals and managers. By adopting social knowledge sharing, and encouraging connections between subject matter experts and peers who have the knowledge and experience, there have been significant successes. These include seeing expert roles shift from headquarters associates to regional personnel, blogging by SMEs, shared training documentation, and robust discussions on best-practices. Rodolfo Rosales

In this economy, even a mid-size corporation outside of the tech sector must sustain itself from service disruptions, critical skill gaps, and wasteful exercises caused by duplicative and competitive internal efforts while, at the same time, become a more nimble and aggressive organization geared for growth. Arron Silvers, Stephanie Daul

WordPress, an open-source blogging platform, is quickly evolving into a leading solution for organizations to consider, because of its minimal cost, ease-of-use, and open architecture. WordPress allows nearly anyone to author and share information with minimal effort and minimal technical expertise.  B.J. Schone, John Polaschek

Web 2.0, the participative and social Web, has sparked an explosion in spontaneous, digital content creation and distribution. A recent Guild report on this surge in user-generated content (UGC) explores the implications and opportunities presented for digital content creation, sharing, use, and modality.  Beth Davis & Colleen Carmean

Providing learners with the ability to practice in a virtual environment ensures a better experience for our guests, and reduces product waste and trainer labor hence positively impacting P & L. Dave Ragan

Tens of thousands of university students have earned undergraduate and graduate degrees without routinely setting foot in bricks-and-mortar classrooms. Today, a population is emerging that is not only comfortable with the virtual classroom experience, but expects to be educated in this manner – using collaboration tools, content generation tools, and online interactivity to augment the traditional hierarchical education model where information flows top-down from an expert or instructor. But many corporate training and learning services organizations do not have a way to address these market segments (particulary generation Y). Chris Gosk

Session participants will learn about ways to integrate content displayed in the iPhone browser with Web-based applications and knowledge bases on a desktop or laptop computer. You’ll learn if animated screen shots work better than live video, and how much text to use within the minimal available screen real estate. You’ll also be exposed to the iPhone user interface elements, and the development environment. Joe Welinske

What if you had to develop and deliver personalized training to 900,000 employees, located in 34,000 different locations globally, with a complex set of variables that changes the training on a location-by-location basis? The key is single-source learning. Bryan Chapman

This session will demonstrate how one organization has overcome this challenge while improving their bottom-line, productivity, and customer satisfaction ratings. Participants in this session will learn how this organization reduced their overall training time by 60%, and improved individual sales volumes by 26%, simply by integrating learning into the workplace. Kim Zipric

MIT’s Learning Library is an aggregator of media from the Web, such as a video, image, or audio file, but also a publishable tool that allows participants, whether students or educators, to integrate personal-life experiences with a learning concept. Like sites such as Flickr or YouTube, the Library encourages students and educators to produce and circulate their own materials, creating an open-content, open-knowledge network, which appraises and critiques the materials as part of the learning process. Erin Reilly

In this session, we’ll take a simple mobile learning application, and show you how you can build it yourself. You’ll learn what features can be used on what platforms, cover the testing issues that arise when developing on multiple platforms, and strategies for efficient testing. You’ll take home pointers to resources, and a copy of the finished application (with source code) to jump-start your own development efforts. Clark Quinn and Richard Clark

It’s not news that our learning models are dated. Designed for industrial efficiency, not learning effectiveness, they’re unengaging and ineffective – yet they persist. On the other hand, technology has advanced to the stage that Arthur C. Clarke’s line that, “any truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” is now true of our ability to deliver e-Learning. We have magic, what should we do? We know that learning works better spaced over time, not massed in an event; that our minds don’t work in a vacuum, but we’re a product of our environment and our experience; and that where and when we are can be as important as what we know. Does this give us any leverage? Clark Quinn

Every so often technology dramatically changes the way we do things. In today’s world of constant need for just-in-time knowledge, it is urgent to equip learners with creative delivery methods to the information they need, when they need it. Leslie Kirshaw

In this session, you will get a cutting-edge overview of several of the most important development processes in software user assistance, and learn their application to e-Learning. User assistance is much more than “Help.” It employs a number of devices, including, but not limited to, Help, wizards, tutorials, printed manuals (and their PDF equivalents), and user interface text. In many cases, training departments are asked to employ these user assistance devices in the e-Learning world. Joe Welinske, Alan Houser, Davi Knopf, Kevin Siegel

Participants in this session will learn the 5-Step Micro-Learning Design Process to break down complex, huge, and bulky content into micro-content items that allow learners to instantly do micro-learning and micro-applications while on the job. You will learn to be more effective in designing rapid e-Learning, writing blogs and wikis, using PDAs and mobile tools to train and collaborate with others, and using e-Learning tools and LMS/LCMSs to deliver micro-learning and performance. You will also learn how to save time, cut the costs, and increase the speed of learning. Ray Jimenez

Session participants will go through a case study of how the organization leveraged its online community, the Cisco Learning Network, and its underlying wiki-based platform to create a collaborative and secure authoring environment for external SMEs. You’ll gain insights and strategies to help you decide if developing a program to enable user-generated content is right for your organization. Merilee Ford

”Over one billion people in emerging markets will never access the Internet using a PC,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in September 2008. With advances in Web technology, mobile devices, and wireless networks, mobile connection is not just a trend anymore and instead has become a standard ubiquitous platform. People demand anytime, anywhere access to communication, information, learning, and performance support. Mark Chrisman and Jeff Tillett