eLearning in the Crystal Ball

It was a different kind of meeting: small group presentations, a "town hall" discussion on the future of our field (and of the forum), and a networking reception w/ wine.

Jay's summary:

We met at the Silicon Valley World Internet Center, which is housed in Leland Stanford's former winery. The Center is a warm, inviting space -- perfect for the think tank sessions that are held there and the eLearning Forum's session on where we're headed in the future.

The overarching theme of our first afternoon meeting was June 2005. What do we see up ahead? There are three aspects to this, and hence three parts to our session.

• eLearning. What are the major trends in eLearning? What should be the scope of eLearning? We began wrapping our minds around the state of eLearning 18 months from now. Four members of the Forum led 15-minute, concurrent breakout sessions, which we repeated twice. Then we regrouped to discuss what had popped up on our radar.
• eLearning Forum. What should we be? How much should we grapple with? Alison Armstrong highlighted strategic issues the Board has been discussing. We encouraged members to pass along their thoughts to eLearning Forum's directors to be addressed at the next session.
• Each of us. Where do each of us want to be 18 months out? What are our passions? Network with others to make connections to take us forward.

[See Jay's full notes at Internet Time]

The presenters and their presentations

Images courtesy of jay Cross. Meeting notes by Alison Armstrong.

	Kevin Wheeler of Global Learning Systems, spoke on his vision of the future: a vision rich in simulations and other interactive learning systems. Alison Armstrong, taking notes, wrote: We’re going to see a real shift from the traditional way of training to something resembling a simulation. Not a pure simulation, but something close. More of an EAI type of environment where the teaching is embedded into the tasks. Transferring tacit knowledge from the seasoned workers to the novice and mid-seasoned workers is one of the most important issues companies are facing. Using networks, collaboration tools, telephony/SMS, email//IM, and Internet/WAP are the key technologies that companies need to learn to use effectively to transfer the knowledge from worker to worker. They have to integrate these technologies. Collaboration is one of the most important ways to learn from one another. Work will need to be done differently. A blend of work and learning is one important way to transfer knowledge, some of the other ways are doing it virtually based on the net or the web. A re-emergence of the apprenticeship will more than likely. Why? People are widely distributed and go through a number of careers. Work communities and relationships rule. Learning, living, and working have to be integrated. The supports for this are the blend of working while learning, which will decrease the number of teachers. The younger generation is internet savvy and supports it adaptation to their work environment. The challenges we’ll face are changing from tradition like the academia environment and clumsy interfaces that are changing the nature of work. As each year goes by we create and adopt more new systems. Each system needs to be integrated.	(click to see full size)
	Clark Quinn of Ottersurf Labs presented his "Design for Doing" model that drives learning fdesign from his research on how people seek out information and assistance in daily life. Alison Armstrong, taking notes for this session, wrote: We follow tradition or routine until we have a breakdown. Then we search for a repair. Sometimes it’s easy to find and sometimes it’s difficult. A model I’ve come up with is simple: action breakdown, repair, reflection. Hence, doing for design, this is my conceptual model. See Clark Quinn’s presentation for the model. Organizational Change is one of the hardest problems to solve. A lot of companies are afraid of failure. Companies are more likely to celebrate a lesson learned from a failure than a success. Q. What is going to make people want to learn from elearning? A. If people see success from using elearning then they will come back to it.	(click to see full size)
	Soren Kaplan of iCohere spoke about learning as a social activity and how online communities fall into 4 distinct patterns depending on their participants' needs. (See this at full size then zoom in on the lower right for an interesting matrix of companies and products.)	(click to see full size)
	Michael Carter presented his work on games ans simulations, with a list of recommended readings.	(click to see full size)
	Jay Cross of the Internet Time Group looked att he boundaries of what we're seeing to do -- what are the forces driving eLearning adoption and change?	(click to see full size; caution: large file)

The "Town Hall" meeting

Notes by Alison Armstrong on our joint brainstorming session:

Where is elearning going to be in 18 months?

What types of models will there be that will help incorporate a collective experience?

Tacit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge – the differences in how people get the information they need to do their jobs. Marry and find the intersection that allows the tacit and the explicit meet. Formal training and the learning objects and informal learning are another big factor.

Context and content are inseparable. Informal learning is often denigrated because it doesn’t show up on someone’s budget. This needs to change.

Simulation and learning were the center of one discussion. There are believers and non believers of simulations. One thing that came out is it worth the cost and effort to create simulations or is it easier to give more to informal learning. There was no real conclusion to the debate was not reached. Technology lets you couple and tie people to knowledge. Stop creating databases – the workers are the databases. The numbers of types of simulations are great. They can be used in many different ways. It possible that we’ll see smaller more portable simulations.

Products for children like LeapFrog that give them a learning experience that steps away from the traditional education methods for elementary school ages. They are going to start targeting the corporate market.

Informal learning and supportive networks are not seen as strong tools right now that will help people with learning and doing their jobs more effectively and efficiently.

The Google phenomenon is a way that is catching on but is not necessarily looked at as a way of informal learning. Wireless portable products can help revolutionize the way people work.

Using Google or databases of information doesn’t always help an organic community. It’s possible that the sign of success may show the failures and possibly slow the Google informal learning down.

As more mobile devices increase and storage devices increase we’re going to see more and more behavior on the edge. You’ll see extremely different ways of learning. The more tools people are given under their own supervision will be used to create their own ways of learning for themselves and we’ll learn from the different ways that people are teaching themselves.

It’s a meta problem relative to how we view what we have to learn. We have to look at networks and how they’re structured to see how we’ll need to learn what we need to know. People with vision and initiative are the ones that are will bring these concepts forward.

Info technology has afforded more shared learning. Companies that have huge amounts of content that’s always changing. More people are going to be looking at existing documentation instead of creating the training materials from scratch. They’re taking the documentation and turning that into learning objects. Using the existing documentation as learning objects cuts out a number or labor intensive steps.