Internet Time Group celebrates its tenth birthday this month. Artifacts from the early days of eLearning keep appearing as I reflect on the long, strange trip it’s been.
At the turn of the century, investors agreed that for eLearning, the sky was the limit. Or maybe it was more: shoot for the moon. As a reminder to never drink the Kool-Aid without sober reflection, here is the advice investment houses were putting out before the dot-bomb implosion:
Corporate eLearning: Exploring A New Frontier, 3/2000 (WR Hambrecht & Co.) The first report to focus exclusively on corporate eLearning and still one of the best out there. “At the beginning of the new millenium, corporations view learning increasingly as a competitive weapon rather than an annoying cost factor. Corporate executives are beginning to understand that enhancing employee skills is key to creating sustainable competitive advantage.”
The Knowledge Web, 5/2000 (Merrill Lynch) “Technology is the driver of the New Economy, and human capital is its fuel. Finding, attracting, and retaining knowledge workers will be mission-critical.
Companies providing online human capital solutions have the potential to bring together both richness and reach, creating a powerful and revolutionary user experience.” Corporate eLearning: Feeding Hungry Minds.
eLearning, the Engine of the Knowledge Economy, 7/2000 (Morgan Keegan) “The critical and distinguishing strength of countries, organizations, and individuals lies in their intelligence and knowledge in this new economy.” “Virtually no emerging industry has ever experienced dramatic growth without a set of common standards…. eLearning standards will allow eLearning content to be easily accessed and reused in various formats and will enable the inteoperability of learning technologies from difference vendors.”
eLearning: The birth of a vibrant industry, 7/2000 (Goldman Sachs) “Why corporate eLearning? Sustainable competitive advantage: More for less. It’s scalable. Customizable. Consistent. Assessible. Relevant. Convenient. Less costly.”
Riding the Big Waves, A White Paper on the B2B e*Learning Industry, 3/2000 (Thomas Weisel Partners) “Today, corporate learning and the corporate learning organization have ascended to a position of strategic prominence in the context of managing and growing the extended enterprise. Bearing this out, the number of corporate universities has grown four-fold to 1600 in the last ten years. Even more telling is corporate learning’s move to the executive suite. The result — an emerging $11.4 billion opportunity for companies providing B2B e*Learning solutions.”
Helping Investors Ride the eLearning Curve, 11/99. (US Bancorp Piper Jaffray) “We liken the evolution of eLearning to the evolution of ERP software, which is going through a very similar metamorphsis.” Go Web! Go ASP!
The e-Bang Theory, 9/99. (Bank of America Securities.) Howard Block was the first analyst of eLearning to “get it.” This report set the agenda for all that came later. Astute and entertaining.
Trace Urdan is an astute voice of reason among education industry analysts. When something’s bunk, Trace is not afraid to tell you. His freeSignal Hill Education Signals newsletter is the only investment advice in our sector that I trust. Of course, it doesn’t have much company these days.
What is the scope of our responsibility as learning professionals?
Most of us work for someone else, a corporation, school, client, or government. Our first responsibility is to apply our expertise to help our employers accomplish what they are trying to do.
Like doctors, we must take care never to harm the patient (or client).
When a superior asks us to do something unprofessional, we take a stand. You don’t tell your doctor how to take our tonsils. You don’t tell your accountant how to account to off-shore slush funds. (Let me take that back, for that’s what happened at Enron and WorldCom.) Your EVP should not be asking you to buy a thousands of CD titles from this nice guy he met on the golf course, let it be known that from a learning perspective, there are sounder choices.
Scope depends on the scope of the professional. If you’re down in the trenches, your responsibility might extend to preparing the coffee or mentoring someone after a workshop.
A CLO is responsible for developing the talent required for organizational success. This might involve installing better lighting, putting wi-fi in the cafeteria, or reinforcing a change of corporate culture.
I’ve asked a number of people if a CLO is responsible for helping employees with learning disorders. Assuming there’s a decent cost/benefit ratio, I’d say they should take it on. Everyone I interviewed shifted the responsibility to another department. Most frequently, they didn’t want to invade the individual’s privacy. Should we begin treating the infirm and the blind the same way? “It’s not my department” under these circumstances sounds unprofessional to me.
Tom Stewart, Don Tapscott, John Seely Brown, John Hagel, Stan Davis, Baruch Lev, Verna Allee, Ted Levitt, Bob Kaplan & David Norton, Kevin Kelly, Fritjof Kapra, Shoshana Zuboff, Geary Rummler, Ross Dawson, and Tom Malone say that what you can’t see (intangibles) is more valuable than what you can see (tangibles).
Relationships are worth more than buildings. Intellectual capital, social capital, customer capital, whatever you call it: this is what’s important in the age of networks.
I am growing weary of explaing why old-style numeric ROI that does not take intangibles into account is a bean-counting exercise from yesteryear. Here’s nine minutes of my thoughts on the subject.
By the way, You Tube is a fantastic resource. To my amazement, 1,800 people have watched my 10-minute YouTube video on informal learning.
The video above is the first take. Editing was minimal. Start-to-finish, this You Tube video took me about an hour and a half. (Of course, the ideas were already in my head.)
Back to the Mouse Kingdom for another conference. Deja vu. I’d swear I was at a training event at the Coronado Resort in Disney World with a bunch of guys changing the tires of a NASCAR racer in record time less than six months ago. This time, the tire guys were inside. Click. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Click. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Click. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Learning Circuits Blog seeks comments on one big issue each month, “The Big Question.” Dave Lee and Tony Karrer have added a twist which has boosted participation. We who answer are requested to write and link posts from our personal blogs. This answers the perennial question for those of us who blog personally: post here or there? We grappled with this when I set up Learning Circuits Blog, and I wish we’d come up with this great compromise.
This month’s question is:
Are ISD / ADDIE / HPT relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time-to-performance, and informal learning?
Last night I dreamt that I was at checking in at some out-of-the-way international airport. I was at a table covered with a pile of receipts, tickets, credit cards, itineraries, printouts, business cards, and notes. I had lost my shoulder bag, so I stuffed everything into a cardboard box. I checked the box as luggage, got my boarding pass, and realized I’d left my ID was in the box. Thank heavens I woke up before I had to go through Security.
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On another matter, Web 2.2 closed with a drawing. My business card came out of the fishbowl, and I am now the owner of a ViewSonic Pocket PC V37. Now I need to figure out what to do with it.
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And another… I’ve been touting the concept that most traditional training focuses on novices, to the neglect of the high-producing people with experience. That’s an over-simplification because a learner may be expert at a dozen things but a novice in several others.
I’ve asked a number of people if a CLO is responsible for helping employees with learning disorders. Assuming there’s a decent cost/benefit ratio, I’d say they should take it on. Everyone I interviewed shifted the responsibility to another department. Most frequently, they didn’t want to invade the individual’s privacy. Should we begin treating the infirm and the blind the same way? “It’s not my department” under these circumstances sounds unprofessional to me.
Training 2007
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