Blog

I just got married on November 11th and we decided to go to New Zealand for our honeymoon.

Through all of my reading in the field of learning and development, I seemed to remember a blog of a similar philosophy that came out of NZ.  After just a couple minutes on the net I found it was Leigh Blackall in Dunedin, NZ.

I sent him a quick email a couple of days before we departed the States and heard back from him shortly after.  I was able to meet up with Leigh for a quick tour of the Univeristy in Dunedin two days ago and am now updating my blog from an Internet cafe in Christchurch, NZ.

It’s amazing the power that technology has given us.  Not only did I find someone on the other side of the world that shares many of my views - I was able to shake his hand and take a walk with him.  Setting this up took me probably a total of 30 minutes (searching, writing emails, etc.)

My new wife and I were discussing the impact of technology on us.  Historians will link us with the Internet, iPods and a technological revolution.  It’s fun to be part of it.

This month’s Big Question on Learning Circuits Blog is: 

Are ISD, ADDIE and HPT relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time to performance, and informal learning?

In a world where products, targets and strategies adjust constantly the application of these models (ISD, ADDIE, HPT) will be greatly diminished.  As the roles of knowledge workers expand and require them to use information that changes quickly it will be more important for the workforce to have easy access to information rather than them be required to retain it as the result of a well-designed course. 

I use the term ‘greatly diminished’ because I don’t feel the models will become obsolete or completely irrelevant.  The in-depth analysis and often time consuming design and development associated with these approaches can still be leveraged for content that is not likely to change.  For an organization to invest the time, money and resources required for formal training it must be for something that will prove relevant for a long period of time.  For topics that meet this criteria, there will still be relevance for the models of traditional training.

For all other learning required by employees (what Jay Cross and many others consider to be 80%) a new approach to learning is required.  The models used by learning professionals will need to expand to include cultivating communities of practice, managing knowledge, facilitating open-ended dialogue, creating performance support tools and embedding their deliverables seamlessly into the workflow of their workforce.

The models listed in this month’s Big Question were designed for a type of training that was relevant for the needs of an environment different from today’s.  As times have changed our approach as learning professionals must as well so that they provide the learners what they need for success.

In the Society of Organizational Learning’s e-newsletter today, they included a snippet of Peter Senge talking about organizational culture and learning.  As the person credited with bringing organizational learning to the mainstream largely through his book, The Fifth Discipline, it’s interesting to hear Senge give his thoughts on the definition of culture and its impact on learning.

Listen to it here.