Internet Time Blog The eLearning Museum

8/14/2019 Internet Time Blog The eLearning Museum

1/14

nternet Time Blog: The eLearning Museum http://www.internettime.com/blog/archives/001086

of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Internet Time Blog

About Us Contact Us

Archives | Home

THE ELEARNING MUSEUM

Goldfield, Nevada, is the site of the largest gold

strike in the 20th century. Founded in 1902,

Goldfield boasted a population of 30,000 during

its boom year of 1906. The bar at Tex Rickard's

Northern Saloon was so long it required 80 tenders

to serve its customers. My great grandfather

invested heavily in Goldfield shares; they now

trade for pennies and mighty Goldfield is a ghost

town.

When I began writing about eLearning in 1998, some of us felt the training industry had struck

gold! We were going to change the world and pick up some dot-com riches while we did it.

Irrational exuberance? We didn't think so at the time. eLearning was going to make email looklike a rounding error. It reminded me of the spirit of Woodstock. People in the business

exchanged knowing smiles. "We must be in heaven, man!"

In late 1999, Training and Development magazine interviewed me....

Says Cross, "Successful leaders inspire members of their organizations to work smarter.

Collaboration, learning portals, and skill snacks have replaced Industrial-Age training. The

Web is revitalizing personalized learning and meaningful apprenticeship. Learning is merging

with work."

Here's what lies ahead in our not-too-distant training future, according to

Cross:

personal software agents that crawl the Web to screen and feed

information to personal portals

connected gadgets and gizmos that simplify (and complicate) our livesplug-and-play training modularity

learning standards that create interchangeable, Lego-like objects that

slash costs and development time

personal files and programs that run directly from the Internet.

At least I didn't get specific on "not-too-distant," did I? Well, it looks like I did.

According to Jay Cross, information architect of Internet Time Group, "eLearning" is the target

model for corporate training in the next three to five years. It will be a key survival skill for

corporations and free agent learners and is a convergence of:

loosely organized corporate ecologies

a business climate of permanent white water

technological advances, including high-speed broadband networks

a shift of power and responsibility from organizations to individuals

emergent best practices, from performance support to training to knowledgemanagement.

What happened? We fumbled the implementation. We naively expected workers to flock to the

glowing screens. We thought we could take the instructors out of the learning process and let

workers gobble up self-paced (i.e., "don't expect help from us") lessons on their own. We were

wrong. First-generation eLearning was a flop. Companies licensed "libraries" of content no one

paid attention to. PowerPoint became the authoring language of choice. (Personally, I get

more content from a Jackson Pollock drip painting than from someone else's PowerPoint

slides.) Dropout rates were horrendous. After-the-fact finger pointing is not productive. I

don't use the term eLearning much these days.

30 Poppy Lane

Berkeley, California 94708

1.510.528.3105 (office & cell)

Subscribe to this Blog

Enter your email address to subscribe. We vanyone. No Spam.

Subscribe Unsubscribe

Reference Pages

ArticlesBlogs

Building CommunityCSS, Semantic Mark-Up, and codesDesign

First PrinciplesGlossary

How People LearnKnowledge Management

Learning LinksLearning Standards

Making It Work (Implementing)Metrics & ROIPresentations

PsychologySocial Software

String theoryThe eLearning Museum

TimeVisual Learning

Search

Search

Our Infrequent NewsletterSign up for our sporadic newsletter.

Email:

Entries by category...

Blogging

BooksCollaboration

Customer careDesign

Emergent Learninghandbook

JokesJust JayLearning

MetaNetworking

OutboundRecycled from Blogger

Refstore

The IndustryTime

VisualWorkflow-based eLearning

Blogroll

Internet Time Knowledge

Learning Circuits BlogWorkflow Institute


2/14


3/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

use the net to augment tradiitonal means.

This FAQ addresses corporate learning. In this context, effective eLearning dramatically cuts

the time it takes for people to become and remain competent in their jobs. For context,

check out the first eLearning White Paper ever written.

eLearning is the convergence of learning and the Internet.

Howard Block

Bank of America Securities

eLearning uses the power of networks, primarily those that rely on Internet technologies butalso satellite netowrks, and digital content to enable learning.

Eilif Trondsen,

SRI Learning on Demand

eLearning is the use of network technology to design, deliver, select, administer, and extend

LEARNING.

Elliott Masie,

The Masie Center

eLearning is Internet-enabled learning. Components can include content delivery in multiple

formats, management of the learning experience, and a networked community of learners,

content developers and experts. eLearning provides faster learning at reduced costs,

increased access to learning, and clear accountability for all participants in the learning

process. In today's fast-paced culture, organizations that implement eLearning provide their

work force with the ability to turn change into an advantage.

Cisco Systems

eLearning is dynamic. Today's content, in real time, not old news or "shelfware." On-line

experts, best sources, quick-and-dirty approaches for emergencies.

eLearning operates in real time. You get what you need, when you need it.

eLearning is collaborative. Because people learn from one another, eLearning connects

learners with experts, colleagues, and professional peers, both in and outside your

organization.

eLearning is individual. Every e-learner selects activities from a personal menu of learning

opportunities most relevant to her background, job, and career at that very moment.

eLearning is comprehensive.

eLearning provides learning events from many sources, enabling the e-learner to select a

favored format or learning method or training provider.

Greg Priest,

SmartForce,

The e-Learning Company

eLearning [is] the delivery of content via all electronic media, including the Internet,

intranets, extranets, satellite broadcast, audio/video tape, interactive TV, and CD-ROM.

Connie Weggen

WR Hambrecht & Co

We define eLearning companies as those that leverage various Internet and Web technologies

to create, enable, deliver, and/or facilitate lifelong learning.

Robert Peterson,

Piper Jaffray

eLearning is using the power of the network to enable learning, anytime, anywhere.

Arista

Time Out for the FairInformal get-together in SF this Wednesday

Repetition, reverb, and echoesWho Knows?

Ur-bloggingCognitive MappingPush vs pull

The Big Picture on ROIArt Break

TDF FinaleNew Community of Practice Forming

DropoutsMore TDF04

Training Directors Forum 2004A Rare One-LinerPlaNetwork LIVE 2

PlaNetwork LIVEASTD 2004 Leftovers

GooglismWorker Effectiveness Improvement, not KM

Upcoming EventseLearning Effectiveness?

Jay's Talk at ASTDMintzberg & Cooperider

Lest ye forgetASTD International Conference & ExpositionKnowledge Tips

What is Workflow Learning?ASTD msg 1 of n

Look out, it's OutlookCollaboration at ASTD Next Week

Tell me a storyUser indifference

Interdependence

The shortest presentation on metrics you willBack to Blogger

Windows fixesThe Alchemy of Growth

Grab bagVery loosely coupled

E-Learning from Practice to ProfitRobin Good kicks off Competitive Edge

China BloggersSonoma Dreaming

Upcoming EventsEmergent Learning Forum: Simulations'Lanta

The Best Things in Life Are FreeMetrics and Web Services

OpEd: ROI vs. Metricse-Merging e-Learning

Loosely CoupledSearch me

Exercise?


4/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Best Practices

Accept no substitutes! Anyone with a web site can claim to provide eLearning. How does one

separate the real stuff from the bogus? Legitimate eLearning is more likely to:

Focus on the needs of the learner, not the trainer or institution

Take advantage of the net: real-time, 24/7, anywhere, anytime

Bring people together to collaborate and learn together

Personalize, often by combining "learning objects" on the fly

Offer more than one learning method, e.g. virtual classroom and simulation and

self-paced instruction

Incorporate administrative functions such as registration, payment and charge-backs,

monitoring learner progress, testing, and maintaining records

eLearning? e-Learning?

E-learning? E-Learning?

In the early days, way back in 1998, it was always e-learning, with the hyphen. SmartForce is

the "e-Learning Company", and Cisco's John Chambers evangelizes e-learning.

As eLearning matured, some of us are dropped the hyphen (and started "intercapping" the

"L".) Microsoft uses eLearn, as do SRI and Internet Time Group. The Google search engine

finds:

1221 elearning (no hyphen)

2900 e-learning (hyphenated)

Does it matter?E-business.

Change is rampant. It's the Knowledge Era, New Economy, Internet Age, Information

Revolution, yadda, yadda, yadda. Brains have replaced brawn.

Networked organizations demand rapid-fire, front-line decisions, and people must be in the

know to make them. Everything's converging or already networked, cycle times are speeding

up, and competition is coming from all directions. Are you ready?

Staffing for eBusiness is a make/buy decision.

Buying is pricey and shortsighted. (Techies with tongue-studs and purple hair command

six-figure salaries, and there are too few of them to go around. We're short half a million

high-tech workers, and business gets more techie every day.) Buying talent is not like buying

tools. The shelf-life of knowledge has dwindled to the point that a four-year engineering

degree is obsolete in, well, about four years.

People once agonized over career decisions for fear of looking like "job hoppers." These days

they hear about a new opportunity over lunch and go to work for a competitor that afternoon.

Money doesn't necessarily talk to a young person who drives a Porsche. What keeps people on

board these days is the opportunity to develop, to build valued skills, to achieve certifications,

and to add to their store of intellectual capital.

Learning has become a vital business function, but old-style training can't keep pace with

Internet time. Traditional workshops cost a fortune in airplane tickets and time away from the

job. In the eyes of many senior managers, off-site workshops have always been somewhere

between a total waste of time and a boondoggle, the "great training robbery." Training has

grown too important to be delegated to training departments.

eLearning is attractive to corporations because it promises better use of time, accelerated

learning, global reach, fast pace, and accountability. It's manageable. It cuts paperwork andadministrative overhead. Sometimes it can be outsourced, providing more time for leveraging

the organization's core competence. eLearners like it, too.

Drivers

As human capital becomes the chief source of economic value, education

and training become lifelong endeavors for the vast majority of workers.

Peter J. Stokes,

Eduventures


5/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

We need to bring learning to people instead of bringing people to learning.

Elliott Masie,

The Masie Center

Technology has revolutionized business; now it must revolutionize learning.

WR Hambrecht + Co

Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear competitive weapons of our time.

Knowledge is more valuable and more powerful than natural resources, big factories, or fatbankrolls.

Tom Stewart,

Intellectual Capital

American education needs a fundamental breakthrough, a new dynamic that will light the way

to a transformed educational system.

Chris Whittle

The Edison Project

Organizations today realize that they cannot use traditional training methods if they want to

stay competitive. Because product cycles, competitive intelligence, industry information and

corporate strategies are moving and changing so much faster than they need to, companies

understand that the only way to get knowledge to their employees is thorough an eLearninginitiative that relies on the Internet.

Kevin Oakes

click2Learn.com

Education is the next industrial era institution to go through a complete overhaul, starting in

earnest in 2000. The driving force here is not so much concern with enlightening young minds

as economics. In an information age, the age of the knowledge worker, nothing matters as

much as the worker's brain.

Peter Schwartz

The Long Boom

Technological changes increase complexity and velocity of the work environment. Today's

workforce has to process more information in a shorter amount of time. New products and

services are emerging with accelerating speed.

WR Hambrecht + Co

eLearning solutions provide the missing link that allows organizations to effectively measure

ROI and the learning to business results.

Dave Ellett

Docent

....the number one reason employees leave existing positions for new jobs is not pay but that

their employer was not investing in their development.

Thomas Weisel Partners LLC

Learning is what more adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray

Imagination is the most powerful human resource on the planet. Harnessing it and its

resultant electronic tools in the service of education is the great hope of the world.

Glenn R. Jones

Jones International


6/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Human skills are subject to obsolescence at a rate perhaps unprecedented in American

History.

Alan Greenspan

It is estimated that we will need 1.3 million new computer scientists, systems analysts and

computer programmers by 20006 in the United States. Yet, currently one out of every ten IT

positions, or approximately 350,000 jobs, are open today.

Merrill Lynch

With the aging of the U.S. workforce (median age of US worker expected to increase from

35.3 to 40.6 in 2006) and technology automating a large percentage of unskilled jobs,

training is necessary to remain relevant in today's knowledge-based economy.

Ibid

Knowledge workers require greater flexibility in the workplace. Globalization, competition,

and labor shortages cause employees to work longer, harder, and travel more than previous

generations. A the same time, these workers require more independence and responsibility in

their jobs and dislike close supervision. Today's knowledge workers have a nontraditional

orientation to time and space, believing that as long as the job gets done on time, it is not

important where or when it gets done. B the same token, they want the opportunity to

allocate time for learning as needed. Modern training methods need to reflect these changes

in lifestyle.

WR Hambrecht + Co

Discreet training events held off-site in a hotel room that fulfills the "20 hours per year, "check

the box" regimen will not suffice.

Thomas Weisel Partners LLC

Drivers of Cisco's Learning and Training Needs

The Objectives

Fast, effective

deployment of

mission-criticalknowledge

Well-trained and

up-to-date

workforce

Lower-cost

learning

The Challenges

Geographically

dispersed learners

Phenomenalgrowth

Difficult/Expensive

training logistics

Need for

Knowledge on

Demand

The Pressures

Relentless

Competition

Constantly

changing

technologyShorter product

cycles

Shorter time to

market

Source: Cisco Systems


7/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

How does it work?Different perspectives

eLearning is like a cubist painting. To make sense of it, you need to look at it from different

perspectives.

From the philosophical viewpoint, eLearning is framed by the principles and practices of the

eLearning community -- a mix of social concern, instructional design, software savvy,

entrepreneurial zeal, and extreme dissatisfaction with the status quo. Another view looks to

the components of eLearning -- collaboration, simulation, databases, and so forth. The

eBusiness perspective relates eLearning to ERP, supply chain optimization, and

disintermediation.

eLearning is revolutionary. As Nicholas Negroponte says, incrementalism is innovation's worst

enemy. The Internet changes everything; education and training are about to be changed.

Radically. It's time for a fresh approach.

eLearning focuses on the individual learner. For years, training has organized itself for the

convenience and needs of instructors, institutions, and bureaucracies. Bad attitude. Think of

learners as customers. Compete for their time and interests. Provide them legendary service.

Convert them into raving fans. Give them choices. Don't make them reinvent the wheel.

From instructor-centric:

to learner-centric:


8/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

eLearning is forever. Continuous education. The forty-year degree. Daily learning. Work

becomes learning, learning becomes work, and nobody ever graduates.

Performance is the goal. The objective is to become competent in the least time and with the

least amount of training. If people could take a smart pill instead of logging in to class, bravo!

How long is this going to take? No more credit for seat-time.

Most learning is social. The coffee room is a more effective place to learn than the classroom.

Studies reveal that the majority of corporate learning is informal, i.e. outside of class.

eLearning seeks to foster collaboration and peer interaction.

A classic study at Standard found that Hewlett Packard engineers who watched videotaped

lectures followed by informal discussion performed better than Stanford engineering students

who attended the same lectures on campus. Instead of an on-campus lecturer pouring content

into students' heads, the HP engineers were challenged to construct their own interpretation

of the subject matter.

Smart pill. Would you prefer this or the workshop?


9/14


of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Most eLearning is personalized. The best eLearning system learns about its users and tailors

its offerings to their learning style, job requirements, career goals, current knowledge, and

personal preferences. Small chunks of learning (granules, objects) are

labeled (metatagged within IMS standards) so systems can automatically mix and match them

to assemble and deliver individualized learning experiences. At least that's the dream.

Nobody's fully there quite yet.

Hierarchy of Learning Objects

eLearning is delivered in the right-sized pieces. Why take a one-hour class for the five

minutes' worth of content you're looking for?

eLearners are responsible for their own learning. eLearning empowers them to manage and

implement their own learning and development plans.

Education in the Knowledge Economy

Old Economy

Four-year Degree

Training as Cost Center

Learner Mobility

Distance Education

Correspondence & Video

One Size Fits All

Geographic Instituting

Just-in-Case

Isolated

New Economy

Forty-Year Degree

Training as Competitive Advantage

Content Mobility

Distributed Learning

High-Tech Multimedia Centers

Tailored Programs

Brand Name Universities & Celebrity Professors

Just-in-Time


10/14


0 of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Virtual Learning Communities

Source: The Book of Knowledge, Merrill Lynch, p. 8

Components

Overview of an eLearning Setup

eLearning is inevitably a mix of activities -- people learn better that way.

An eLearning environment generally includes:

self-paced training delivered over the web (although it could be via

book or CD or video or what have you)

1:many virtual events (which could take place in virtual classroom, virtual lecture

hall, or expert-led discussion)

1:1 mentoring (which might entail coaching, help desk, office hours, periodic

check-in, email exchanges)

simulation, because we learn by doing. Learners from all over the globe experiment

on millions of dollars worth of routers and bridges at Mentor Labs. Consultants

learn about eBusiness from a game developed by SMGnet.

collaboration, either joint problem-solving or discussion among study groups via

discussion groups and chat rooms

live workshops (yes, the old way), for some topics are best taught in the real world

by a flesh-and-blood instructor or expert

assessment, both for initial placement and for opting out of topics the learner has

already mastered

competency roadmap, a custom learning plan based on job, career, and personal

goals

authoring tools, to develop and update content

e-store, to pay for learning or post costs against budgets

learning management system which registers, tracks, and delivers content to

learners; reports on learner progress, assessment results, and skill gaps for

instructors; enrolls learners, provides security, and manages user access for

administrators.

Important facets of eLearning

The continuous evolution of the learning industry is hell-bent toward an experience totally

personalized to the individual learner. Today, the vertical communities accessed by an

individual learner provide a comfortable envinroment to learn skills required in the learner's

industry. Tomorrow, access will be through a corporate-sponsored community completely

tailored to the individual's needs, with content delivered on demand and technology that will

continually monitor the learner's abilities as the learning takes place, adjusting content and

pace seamlessly.

Wade Baker

Payback Training Systems

Improved collaboration and interactivity among learners. In times when small instructor-led

classes tend to be the exception, electronic learning solutions can offer more collaboration

and interaction with experts and peers as well as a higher success rate than the live

alternative. ...a study found that online students had more peer contact with others in theclass, enjoyed it more, spent more time on class work, understood the material better, and

performed, on average, 20% better than students who were taught in the traditional

classroom.

WR Hambrecht + Co

The magic is in the mix!

eLearning blends the best of:


11/14


1 of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Traditional and new classroom

On-the-job

Coaching and informal mentoring

Reading

Standalone technology

Online technology

Digital collaboration

Elliott Masie

The Masie Center

How well does it work?

The cards aren't in yet. eLearning is too new to have produced hard evidence of learning gains.

eLearning's top-line upside is speculative; its bottom-line savings are on more solid ground.

Undeniably, eLearning cuts the costs of travel, facilities, administrative overhead, duplication

of effort, and more importantly, the opportunity cost of people away from the job in times of

great need.

There's no doubt that eLearning can be rolled out fast. The time required to roll out a new

product globally can shrink from months to hours.

Better

Sharing and managing knowledge throughout our company...was one of the keys to reducing

our operating costs by more than $2 billion per year....

Kenneth T. Derr

Chevron Corporation

Faster

...learners ...can better understand the material, leading to a 60% faster learning curve,

compared to instructor-led training. ... Whereas the average content retention rate for an

instructor-led class is only 58%, the more intensive e-learning experience enhances the

retention rate by 25-60%. Higher retention of the material puts a higher value on every dollar

spent on training.

WR Hambrecht + Co

Cheaper

Motorola calculates that every $1 it spends on training translates to $30 in productivity gains

within three years.

A recent study found that corporations that employed a workforce with a 10%

higher-than-average educational attainment level enjoyed 8/6% higher-than-average

productivity.

Computer-based training and online training can reduce training costs over instructor-led

training. A congressionally mandated review of 47 comparisons of multimedia instruction with

more conventional approaches to instruction found time savings of 30% improved achievement

and cost savings of 30-40%.

Merrill Lynch,

The Book of Knowledge

What are the pitfalls?Motivation

Whenever the topic of bandwidth comes up, the phone company yowls about ?the last mile,?

the flimsy wire bottleneck between their switching station and your house.

e-Learning providers also have a bottleneck, the last yard from the monitor into the learner?s

brain. Without motivation, this final connection will never be made.


12/14


2 of 14 3/9/08 1:59

Professional training via CD-ROM flopped. Why? Because we took instructors and coaches out of

the picture. The learning process breaks down when "untouched by human hands." A ringing

phone interrupts a standalone learning exercise, and CD-ROM courses morph into shelfware.

Companies that adopt eLearning as a cost-cutting measure and provides no human support will

not be successful. eLearning is not training by robot. Learners will live up (or down) to

expectations.

Which of these two scenarios presents a better environment for learning? Assume your boss

arranged for one of these two learning events for you:

instructor-led, off site e-learning

Before you leave, the boss calls you in,

tells you this is important, and

explains what he expects you to come

home with.

You receive an email from personnel.

You fly away to the beach-side resort

hotel where training will take place.

You study at home after work.

Your peers know you?re away for

learning. (They have to take up the

slack.)

No one even knows you?re taking part

in training.

You return home, and everyone asks

what you thought, what?s new,anything to share?

They still don?t know you?re taking a

course.

You learn with members of your study

group. After you and the guys finish

your lessons, you hop out for a few

brews and a game of pool.

You learn on your own.

You hang your certificate of

completion on the wall. Or put the

paperweight on your desk.

Another email from personnel.

It doesn?t have to be this way. Managers must go the extra mile to pat learners on the back,

give them recognition, and encourage them to learn with their peers. eLearners are

customers; they continually need to be sold.

Finally, eLearning is not for everyone. Some people simply will not learn outside of a

classroom.

Learning to the desktop

This is one of those benefits that's better in theory than in practice. Learning complex


13/14


3 of 14 3/9/08 1:59

subjects requires concentration. Most people's desks are less than optimal for learning (and

often for working, too, but that's another matter).

Buddha was right. "When you do something, do it as if it were all that mattered." Get away

from the phone. Shelter yourself from colleagues. Go to a learning cubicle. Put up a "Do Not

Disturb" sign.

"Ah ha," Dilbert's pointy-haired boss would say. "I've got the solution -- take it all home." As if

there aren't distractions aplenty at home. Feed the baby, watch the game, talk with the

spouse, have a beer on the patio, or log in for learning? Besides, what message does the boss

communicate about the value of learning if he expects people to do it on their own time?

Pitfalls

Hurdles to eLearning!

Quality and intensity of content

Availability of content

Habits, customs, and culture

Technology delivery -- bandwidth, etc.

Pricing models

Lack of digital collaboration models

Research gap: Does it work?

Calibration of expectations

Elliott Masie

eLearning Briefing

January 2000, Seattle

Certain content -- because of its nature, relative value, or importance -- is not suitable for

technology-based delivery. While online training is especially well suited for the acquisition of

IT skills, it has certain limitations in the arena of soft skills training. Other educational

content that does not translate well into a virtual environment is material requiring significant

hands-on application, with a strong emphasis on peer review and collaboration.

WR Hambrecht + Co

Update in mid-2002:

A horrific pitfall has turned out to be cajolling workers to participate. One third to one half of

workers never register to take part. Half to three-quarters of those who start a program drop

out before completing it. I've just completed a book on how to improve employee

participation.

What are the trends?Short term

Corporations increasingly outsource training to Learning Service Providers (think Application

Service Provider + Learning).

Standards-based learning management systems assemble large-grain learning objects on the

fly. (XML meets learning).

Learner relationship management mirrors customer relationship management.

ERP and CRM vendors replace learning management systems as learning is recognized as an

enterprise application.

Longer term

"Intelligent" interfaces learn about the eLearner over time. (Apple's KnowledgeNavigator finally arrives, only twenty years late.)

Learning becomes imbedded in work processes and equipment.

Economies of scale will development of "cool" learning using rich media, popular

entertainers, and game interfaces.

Posted by Jay Cross at February 10, 2003 12:20 AM


14/14


4 of 14 3/9/08 1:59

COMMENTS

Internet Time Blog The eLearning Museum

Documents

Transcript of Internet Time Blog The eLearning Museum