Riding the new wave

• Article 1 of 1
• Learning Magazine, September 2011

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Everyone in learning and development wants to find the best way of training people in their organisations. The advent of the PC and the Internet has meant that training has changed over the last few decades and there are now many new tools trainers can use. The latest of these are mobile devices, such as smartphones and iPads, which enable learning on the move, as well as social media, which allows people to learn from and communicate with others in the same organisation or around the world. With pressure on budgets combining with the high cost of transport and the difficulties of logistics, these tools also present a way of saving money on classroom learning while providing potentially more opportunities for learning overall.

But new doesn’t necessarily mean better. So are these new tools a bandwagon that L&D is jumping on to its detriment, or do these new technologies genuinely offer different and possibly better ways of learning than before?

“The problem with any new technological breakthrough is that it’s unproven,” says Robin Hoyle, head of learning at Infinity Learning, a learning design company. “It’s cool, it’s happening, it’s zeitgeisty and there’s a rush to use it. And what’s likely to happen is that it’s going to massively over-promise but under-deliver.”

It’s a viewpoint Clive Shepherd, director of Onlignment and chairman of the eLearning Network, agrees with. “Social media, for example, is tricky. It’s sexy and fashionable in L&D, so there’s a danger of its adoption becoming a religious move: something that no one’s allowed to question because it’s so obviously right.“

Nevertheless, according to Dr Peter Scott, director of the Knowledge Media Institute, “The potential is spectacular. Business studies students, for example, are getting together on LinkedIn and sharing a world of expertise – and no one should underestimate the value of sharing to learning. Reflection and talking to others is a very big part of the experience.” With many organisations too small to get a “critical mass” of learners on some courses, social media allows them to find someone else in the world to talk with.

Equally, some organisations are finding it useful for their own in-house L&D. BT’s Dare2Share programme encouraged BT workers to post podcasts and videos of tips about improving their jobs onto its own YouTube-like website. As well as fostering online communities, it also allowed people quick and easy access to knowledge without having to go through lengthy training, as well as saving money. In addition, says Clive Shepherd, “It was able to flag up issue months before they’d have come out otherwise.”

So well thought out use of social media can potentially be of use to organisations. Mobile devices also present L&D opportunities, according to Martin Addison, CEO of Video Arts. “The next extension to learning is going to be bite-sized knowledge and information support. E-learning on a mobile is an anathema. But if you’re travelling and need to learn something, you can quickly launch a browser and start a video.” He says there’s more scope for learning with tablets like the iPad and the Blackberry Playbook. “People are already very used to the idea of watching video on a tablet since the two go together very well.” While he’s not convinced that a full course on a tablet rather than at a PC is viable, it does provide different kinds of learning experience. “You can use video in a less linear way, potentially choose pathways through stories, entering simulations and so on.”

At the moment though, he and others say, few organisations are actually implementing either social media or mobile learning. “There’s a rush to talk about it, not a rush to adopt it. You get little bits of it here and there, like senior execs blogging in the night, but large scale is the exception. It’s like the 60s – everyone’s talking about sex, drugs and rock and roll but for most people it’s passing them by.”

In part, that’s because no one is quite sure how to implement this kind of learning correctly. Implementation needs to be thought through. If no one’s given the time to write wikis or blog or participate in online conversations, they won’t, so managers need to factor that into their staff’s scheduling. Will employees want to friend their boss and co-workers on Facebook just so they can take part in company learning? Will they even want to contribute to discussions at all?

In social media, where two-way interaction is required, research shows there’s a typical 90%-8%-2% split among users in terms of participation. “90% are passive users,” says Robin Hoyle. “They use little if any of the Web 2.0 functionality. 8% are active recipients who might put in star ratings, for example. The other 2% are the active participants who blog and discuss threads and who actively get involved. The challenge for many organisations is which group are the 2%.” If an organisation doesn’t actively recruit the right people and make participating one of their core performance metrics, the self-selecting social media participants will be “primarily male techies and conversation becomes increasingly limited to erudite discussions about how many angels can fit on a pin’s head”.

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