Limbic Learning

Warning: if you're about to tender for some e-learning read this first!

Without a shadow of a doubt the single biggest request from an organisation is for an
e-learning course - either a conversion of something currently done in house in a more traditional way, or a new requirement based on some form of compliance. Whether it's created in a rapid authoring tool or a bespoke 'engine', in-house or by a vendor it would be fascinating to know just what percentage of e-learning solutions in organisations is courseware.

E-learning really kicked off its life as CBT (Computer Based Training) and today the course is still the most common e-learning being implemented in organisations. What's liked about e-learning courses is that they're the standard currency:

• For organisations: a package of material with a start, middle and end that contains all the information you want someone to see, tracked to provide the management and relevant bodies with data

• For vendors: they're good for making money, especially when you're geared up as a courseware production factory. It's also a great 'product' to show off at pitches, presentations, and exhibitions

E-learning courseware was at first limited to larger organisations because of prohibitive costs: a capable technical infrastructure, a highly expensive Learning Management Systems (LMS) and £20k+ per hour of content. But over time the market has adapted and now on-demand hosting, open source and quick to implement LMSs, and rapid e-learning have removed each of these barriers.

Rapid e-learning is an interesting point to pick up on. Originally the rapid e-learning philosophy was content produced by an SME using tools that fell within their comfort zone. The level of fidelity was not a major issue - getting accurate, timely content out there was. So called rapid authoring tools had basic functionality to convert PowerPoint slides to Flash, with the option to overlay audio and to add some questions.

Today, rapid e-learning is courseware's second coming. As with the maturing of all software, rapid authoring tools are getting bigger, more functional, and more customisable - basically they are now professional development tools. They are the backbone of many an e-learning company, and are used by instructional designers around the globe to create courseware. This is also a trend that's happened inside of organisations, as they've built up their own internal teams to take advantage of these tools.

The rapid e-learning market has helped bring down the cost of courseware development significantly, as well as keeping the course model of e-learning at the top of the list in terms of popularity (together with online testing). So rapid e-learning sustains and grows the courseware dominance thanks to its ability to meet the ever more demanding time and cost pressures faced by L&D professionals in organisations.

Solutions tend to be those that are the comfortable option: where classroom courses prevail, classroom courses dominate new solutions; where e-learning has been adopted e-learning courses invariably dominate, and so courseware dominates new solutions. So we tend to end up with another course, whether face to face or e-learning.

And so courseware is as popular as ever, and so too is the course.

A course may be the right solution given the circumstances, but there may be a better solution that offers a lot more value to the business and participants. It's certainly more difficult to do something different, especially if it's more innovative, even more so if burdened with the thought of it going wrong. But ultimately one has to ask:

Where's the value in this solution?

For the organisation

So first, what does the organisation need to achieve?

It's funny how e-learning solutions in organisations introduce a new requirement, namely the need to test. Most face to face courses delivered in commercial organisations have no form of assessment - so why do it in e-learning? (I won't digress). However, this feature has become a godsend in recent years as compliance has become the courseware sweet spot with the need to demonstrate completion and a pass mark.

But are we missing that just maybe technology is the sweet spot for an organisation's people? Do you see your e-learning requirement simply as a tactical move, which requires some 'event' learning and assessment (and subsequent forgetting)? Or is it part of something more strategic, which moves away from the one off event and sees technology taking on a powerful role in people performance.

Let's look at two sets of statements, both based on common outcomes an organisation wants for its target audience.

Looking at our Set 1 statements, what are we looking to achieve? Is this simply a 'one off' event with some information and a need to prove participants have completed and can remember some of it at a given moment? We can't argue that courseware isn't suited for this, it'll tick all the boxes. If this is the need, feel free to go ahead - but whether participants can recall anything later down the line, or do anything different is another matter.

Set 2 statements move us on to learning. This is something different, now they have to do something; they have to look at learning a behaviour; they have to demonstrate that they are better at what they do. This set is all about the day to day job at hand, how they do it, and to what standard. (We'll ignore the attitude outcome in this article - this is something far deeper.)

For the participants

It's difficult to know how the quality of a course experienced by a mixed audience will be judged. We've experience of seeing fairly engaging e-learning courses get the worst sort of comments, and the least engaging information dumps get great comments - so why is this? Courseware must be doing some things right, and yet some things wrong. Quite simply the materials are good if they meet the audience's need.

In a small study carried out by LIMBIC comprising 30 trainees in one organisation we grouped comments about their experiences using e-learning as shown below.

Courseware materials were developed by a number of the well known UK vendors, and instructional design of a fairly high standard.

So well created content and context they liked. But it's hit and miss when it comes to just how long they were expected to spend engaging with things, the relevance and searchability of material, plus there was an overall 'is that it?' feeling.

What's the solution?

The old adage went content is king, and the easiest currency to get that content out a number of years ago was the face to face course. So the easiest thing to do when technology came along was to translate the course into courseware - but then the organisational 'baggage' came along which went something like this:

• To do e-learning we need to track things so we know people do it
• If we do e-learning we need to measure results so we know it works
• To do this in e-learning we appear to need an LMS
• With an LMS we can manage all our courses; send out reminders; create reports. And then there's this great potential to integrate this system with all our HR systems...

So, the textbook strategy (albeit rather simplified) became LMS first, then some courseware, then let's grow it from there. The concept of the LMS creates a 'formal' structure. It also hangs itself around the idea of courses. Not only that but it also creates somewhat of a 'locked away' learning culture. Maybe this is ideal for the compliance courses: login and identify the user, complete course, pass course (forget course?); but surely we're looking for more than that. Surely we're looking for on the job performance improvement and support. To work in real organisations solutions need to be:

• Short and sharp
• Quickly and easily accessed on the job
• Deliver performance improvement
• Deliver a measurable impact to the organisation's bottom line

Is the course the right way to achieve this?

The new adage goes context is king. But why can't both be king? Maybe it's about focusing on putting the content into the most suitable form, and enabling it to be easily retrieved within a given context. This leads us to question straight away whether we need a course and with it any associated courseware.

What we mean here is having a technical infrastructure, with some seeded content, that provides a learning ecosystem where all aspects of e-learning are available through the one system, coupled together, available anytime, anyplace. This can comprise many things; here's a small list to get the picture:

• A wiki
• A YouTube clone
• A blog
• Bookmarking
• Other options from social networking (learning)
• rapid e-learning content
• bespoke courseware

What are the strengths of our species in our ecosystem? Well, that's where the modern instructional designer comes in. You can see from our list that courseware appears, but it's not necessarily the first thing on our minds - and it's certainly not the only thing. If it's simply getting information out there at its fastest, say new product knowledge, then a wiki wins hands down; a key message or an idea with the chance for feedback, then the blog comes top; and there's always the option for the more traditional courseware, or rapid e-learning, if it best suits the need.

This looser/ fresher group of online tools coupled together allows for less of a formal feel. Learners have a seamless experience that delivers performance improvement at the point of need. The infrastructure simply falls under the cloud computing model with learning on-demand. Third party organisations are already springing up offering this service. Large organisations with higher security concerns may prefer the behind-the-firewall internal cloud approach.

This has got to be good for your organisation:

• You can start today with small cost options, specifically a wiki
• You gear up to the higher cost components, rather than starting with them - and maybe regretting it later
• Materials cost less to produce - you choose when appropriate the more costly options
• Speed of content creation increases, and your learning ecosystem grows
• Learning and support materials converge

How will your participants become active learners using this learning ecosystem? The key is in knowing your target audience's needs: what's the most appropriate thing to do? How will they be working on-the-job when the suddenly need to know, or need to do something? The solution should be designed to take into account many things, including current capabilities, personalities, and a focus on real performance improvement (not passing assessments). Take capability for example:

• Will they be novices to the topic? Are they lacking motivation or confidence? Do they prefer to be given set tasks? For this group courseware may be a good idea as participants will need a learning path

• Are they en route to being experts? Are they confident / motivated? Are they self-reliant? Do they like a problem or project to crack on with? This group may need something 'skimpy' in design, but high in information: well structured, organised, and quickly searchable

Each and every solution has its own audience and its own differences that needs to be looked at.

Where's my LMS?

You may have noticed that in the learning ecosystem we don't have an LMS. Together with the human touch essentials of effective coaching and supportive line management, learning on-demand forms the backbone of performance improvement - not tracking, not assessing, and not data management. This makes it really important that you ask yourself:

Do I need an LMS?

The answer's yes if you find that you agree with most of the following statements, and you can justify them as beneficial to your organisation:

• We need a login to check who's done what
• We need to track/ check for pass rates?
• We need to do online assessment?
• We need to run and export usage/ tracking reports?
• We need to do long term management of a LOT of users - and need to import/ export their details

If you need to provide compliance courses then we do recommend an LMS to house those courses. You could develop alternative tracking and assessment solutions, but for simplicity and commonality using an LMS with the above capabilities and SCORM compliance is a sure bet.

But treat materials destined for the LMS as the exception, not the norm. Make the LMS specifically for those courses that must meet the above needs. If not, forget tracking, and definitely forget the LMS. It's far better to ensure that you have as much material as possible out in the open.

Summary

The next time you tender make sure the proposed solution puts a focus on audience interaction: on how they'll actively engage in content in a meaningful context. If you're getting your audience active, then we can call them learners. And yes this can be done with courseware, but also a number of other approaches we've only just begun to touch upon within our ecosystem.

If you want to get to a solution that delivers the biggest value to your organisation This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it today.