I count myself lucky that the environment that I work in adopts technologies rapidly, not because they are new technologies, but because they are better ways at communicating and getting things done.

Why is it that on a personal level people use technology to do great things, yet when they turn up to work they are usually stuck working in an old an inefficient way.

It just kind of seems wrong to me, doesn’t it?

Watch the following slide…enough said?

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Lets have a look at some recent news articles from the BBC:

• Skill drive to boost workforce
• Most London firms hiring overseas
• Half of new jobs go to migrants
• London skills shortage worsening
• Many graduates lack soft skills

From the above articles, apparently there is a skills shortage in London, yet it has the highest unemployment rate!  This leads to companies hiring overseas.

The young generation are investing thousands into a higher education, but graduating with incomplete (yet essential) skills.

The government is on a mission to provide 7 million training places to increase literacy and numeracy standards.  It has been argued that this points to failure in the education system.

Crucial questions need to be asked!

• Why aren’t companies investing (more) in local talent?
• Is the education system staying the same whilst the world around moves on?
• Has the education system forgotten to encourage people to learn, rather than pass tests?
• Do degrees fulfill the need of employers?
• Will the under educated really be interested in yet another literacy or numeracy course?  The education system has failed them before, will it happen again?
• Why are there so many under skilled people in the UK?
• What talents are hidden within the unemployed? How can the government, organisations, communities people ignite their passion to learn?
• The role of technology is increasingly important to facilitate learning from an organisational and personal point of view.  How are you or your organisation using technology to optimise talent?
• With talk of the future being multipational, the ability to learn on the go is increasingly important.  How flexible and open should people be when it comes to their day to day job?

We believe it is important to ask questions, without them answers will not be found!

• Annenberg Media – A host of video lectures ranging from the art of the Wild West to abnormal psychology.
• ArsDigita University – ArsDigita was originally a comp sci program from MIT.  While it is now shut down, all the coursework was put online.
• BBC Learning – Online courses from the British Broadcasting Corporation.
• BruinCast – UCLA course lectures.
• Chinese University Lectures – Hundreds of lectures from fourteen well known Chinese universities.
• Envible – Collaborative Learning Community
• Google Books – search for content of books
• iTunes U – Huge repository of course podcasts from well known universities.
• Learning from YouTube – Pitzer College lectures on YouTube.
• MIT OpenCourseWare – Classes on anything from history to urban studies, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• MIT World – Tons of lectures from different speakers at MIT.
• MITE AP Courses – Free Montrey Institute AP courses.
• Open Learning Initiative – Learn engineering, reasoning, chemistry, and much more from Carnegie Mellon University.
• Project Gutenberg – Thousands of free eBooks, including many course textbooks.
• Sofia – Take CC-licensed courses from small colleges.
• SWTC CourseCasts – Lectures on everything from debt to microbiology, from Southwest Wisconsin Technical College.
• The Open University OpenLearn – Great Britain’s first open learning university offers free courses from health care to William Wilberforce.
• UC Berkley Webcasts – Get audio and video netcasts from one of the best known universities in the country.
• UChannel – Princeton-sponsored online lectures.
• Utah State University OpenCourseWare – Learn everything from theatre production to cattle management from Utah State University.
• W3Schools – Tons of free online web developer tutorials.
• Western Kentucky University Distance Learning Podcasts & VODcasts – Read, listen to, and watch lectures from WKU.
• Connexions – Hundreds of user submitted courses on everything from mathematics to humanities.
• Google Video Educational Genre – Wide variety of user created videos uploaded to Google Video.
• Internet Archive Open Educational Resources – A huge multitude of courses with categories ranging from .NET programming to Chinese literature.
• Scholarpedia – Similar to Wikipedia, but with articles written by “experts” chosen by the community.
• Wikibooks – Thousands of textbooks written in over 40 different languages.

Do you know of any that are not listed?

Amazon, for example, are well known for showing what other customers have bought:

The Open University now has a similar feature:

Another recent addition is the ability to purchase Continuing Professional Development courses instantly (well at least the process is performed online).  Whilst I haven’t had the pleasure of registering for a course, I get a sneaky suspicion that it will soon become 1-Click Learning – an idea based on 1-Click ordering from Amazon.

With increasing demand on flexible solutions and the ability to choose when to start and finish studying is likely to become standard with many courses.  After all, why should people or businesses have to wait up to 12 months before they can enroll on a course?  How would this effect business or workforce performance?

The difference, now, as users and organisations, is we now have confidence in the technology.

Changing times

Times are a’ changing. The expectations of users and businesses now consist of the following:

• We want the ability to try before we buy
• We want things easy, no technical headaches please!
• Integration should be simple.
• When a decision is made, we want it now! next month or year is too late.
• We expect quality customer support.
• Don’t underestimate the ability of the user…

This is called Software-as-a-Service or software as a subscription model.

Take Flickr for example, it’s
free to sign up and use (with limitations). The attractive point, apart
from not needing technical knowledge or hardware, is the monthly subscription cost of about $2 is hardly going to break anyones bank. The current user base for Flickr is massive.

OnDemand Learning and Performance Management

With the success of user based subscription models, it was a matter of
time before businesses had similar options. But let’s be clear, we are
not saying that you will get hosted learning and performance management
for $2 a user!

A look at the leading learning and performance management companies shows:

• SumTotal launched ResultsOnDemand
• Plateau offer Hosted and Managed services, where on demand solutions are playing their part.
• Saba are on board OnDemand  and Hosting services

In addition we have Success Factors who provide Talent and Performance management purely as a “software as a service solution” for small, medium and enterprise
companies. This is quite significant as it truly means that Talent,
Performance and Learning management is no longer just for the big guns.

Software as a service – the benefits

Whilst all these services will differ, their aims and benefits are similar:

• Rapid deployment of a learning and performance management solutions
• Ability to adapt more quickly to business demands
• Low cost of entry
• Leaves responsibility to the vendor for all the hardware, software and techincal issues.
• Allows your business to focus on what matters.

Whilst the target market for OnDemand solutions appear to be SME’s, larger corporates are known to have taken up this option whilst experiencing significant change (e.g. mergers, lack of internal resources).

Consolidation and new entries

Recent years have seen the LMS market mature with various consolidations – such as the creation of SumTotal Systems
from Docent and Click2Learn. The main new entry to the EMEA market was
from the leading US LMS and Performance Management vendor, Plateau.

Overall we feel that there has been a positive move forward with regards to Learning and Performance Management Systems. Observations have been made in previous years of the fear of change within the
industry, however, we now believe this has stabilised and brought a maturity to the market.

Talent & Performance Management is hot

Improving individual performance is now much more than delivering and managing their training courses and learning activities. The hot topics are Talent Management, Talent Retention and Performance
Management; aligning organisational goals covering areas such as Goal setting, Succession Planning and Gap Analysis. How many times has your organisation felt the impact of losing a key member of the management
team? And how much has it cost you? Talent & Performance Management addresses these issues and more, taking the strategic proactive approach and delivering culture changing results!

To social or not to social?

The web has had a major shift towards social technologies, creating systems that only work when there is a following. Some of the most obvious examples are MySpace, Bebo and YouTube. Online communities have
risen, blogging and podcasting have exploded – now online videos are becoming increasingly popular.

Strategic choices are increasingly being made by organisations to use social networking for learning communities. It is well known that informal learning makes up a very large percentage of overall learning. Organisations need to seize this moment and use the technology to their advantage. Don’t get left behind whilst others are increasing communication, knowledge transfer and sense of belonging that comes with their social network.

How social is your organisation going to be?

No fear for technology, welcome the digital natives

Most of the current population did not grow up in the world of the web. However, as scary as it may sound, those that have grown up with it will soon be leaving school, college, and university to enter the
workplace. There is much less fear of technology for this generation, it all comes as second nature which will lead to a greater acceptance of technology based learning.

We call these people the digital natives, people born from 1984 onwards. They know technology as a part of their life and don’t possess the same fear that many of ‘us’ do.

With higher expectations, technology is the norm – it’s instinct for them to Google to learn. To read and write blogs. Download and listen to podcasts. Create their own online space. Watch and create their own
videos.

If this is the ‘norm’ for them what will you need to do to retain their talent? If your organisation does not move forward with technology would the digital natives want to be a part of you?

Let’s get social – talk to a friendly expert.

According to Wikipedia, Informal learning is to be understood as unorganized and not formally defined learning at home and at work.

At least 80% of learning that takes place is informal learning (The
Institute for Research on Learning, 2000, Menlo Park). With such a high
percentage should we as a society be encouraging more informal
learning?

As time moves on we find new ways to learn and pick up useful
information. Whilst we may still be reading news and books, the way
society approaches this is increasingly technology orientated.

Here’s a look at some of the current technologies being used to facilitate learning on the go:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

The early days of the internet involved going to websites to hunt down new content. The invention of RSS
has made us all much more efficient, with the use of feed readers (or
aggregators) users now have the luxury of technology updating them on
any new articles or content.

Blogs, wikis, podcast and videos

Content, audio and video – publishing made easy. The power is not
just in organisations, people have equal opportunity to publish their
thoughts, knowledges and experiences.

Online Communities

In the pre-internet days, where did you go to find an answer from an expert?

Focused online communities
provide a social user base with a common interest along with features
such as blogs, forums, mailing lists and news. Successful communities
provide a useful resource to source information, ask questions and
contribute their own knowledge and experience.

What are you doing to promote informal learning within your work place?

Talk to a friendly expert.