Pragmatism.
Attitude of "whatever it takes." Incorporate marketing
and change management into eLearning. Use handhelds for performance
support. Embrace wireless. Don't forget the importance of social interaction
to learning. Customer-focused eLearning is rising in prominence. Sell
your programs outside the organization to raise funds.
Drop the e?
One group wanted to drop the "e" of eLearning entirely, thinking
that it caused more problems than it solves. Another advocated using
the "e" less. Another questioned the value of the "e."
I suggested that perhaps the Board should consider rechristening us
the Learning Forum. Another director chimed in "I'll second that."
IP
Intellectual property rights issues are becoming very complicated. How
do you deal with the IP of objects?
Content
What's the best way to capture content? How can technology help us create
it? How is reusability going to work? Let's ask the vendors to explain
how they see this working.
Standards
Standards are vital to delivering content objects. Do we
need a "map" of knowledge to bring things together? Might
we lose instructional design in an object world? Currently, a lack of
crisp definition, vision, and positioning retards marketing of eLearning
intiatives. This year ADL is pulling back from issuing white papers
to look at what works at ground level. Jay suspects that eLearning standards
may be subsumed into net services.
Industry consolidation, enterprise integration
Vendors are consolidating. Consolidation works against standards. At
the same time, eLearning is becoming another enterprise application.
More focus to come on interoperability, business drivers enabled by
apps, extending the infrastructure. Will eLearning become part of ERP?
SAP, Siebel, and Peoplesoft eLearning are on the way. There's also integration
of tools & systems, learning & other performance systems. What
do the vendors need to do to foster this integration? How practical
will it be to combine content from different vendors?
Lower expectations
eLearning may hit the wall, as corporations discover that technology
can't solve all learning problems. eLearning doesn't do much in informal
learning, and that's how most corporate learning takes place. KM and
eLearning are converging but the path is not at all clear. There is
a backlash against learning at home on the employee's personal time.
Jay is more sanguine: lots of eLearning flat-out does not work.
Metrics
ROI is becoming more visible at the C level. Must tie eLearning to business
goals. How do we connect eLearning to the bottom line? Need a process
for understanding strategic initiatives. How can technology support
these strategies and/or us as we work to uncover them? Need to standardize
performance consulting. Is a balanced scorecard a remedy for lack of
metrics?
Competencies
Competencies clearly tied to performance improvements. Competencies
must reflect best practices. Curriculum should be based on attaining
competency. But who owns competency? Where do they live in the corporation?
Should they be part and parcel of complex centralized processes or more
decentralized, Internet-based tools?
We formed
into four discussion groups, three groups of twenty in Menlo Park and
the one remote group of 32. Our new board members, Peg Maddocks, Kevin
Wheeler, Alex Gault, and Rob Harris, each facilitated a half-hour discussion
of what's going to happen in eLearning in 2002 and what we want the eLearning
Forum to address. I sought common themes as they reported back to the
group, and here's what I heard.