Adventures in Corporate Education

• Main Page - WikiEducator
• E-Learning Curve Blog: Learning Professionals’ Skills 2.0 – Learning Circuits Big Question July 2009
  not sure why he doesn't think any of this is "sexy"
  (tags: learning2.0 skills)
• Clive on Learning: Big Question: What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?
  (tags: learning2.0 skills)
• Engaging young people in STEM is a community job - Mass High Tech Business News

July’s big question is very timely for me! Here is the question:

In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

This week my Web 2.0 Learning and Performance started. I’m keeping a blog for the course, as are most other people. Someone is already asking about what are the most important things to know as educators about Web 2.0.

The Technology

I think there are some basic technology tools that need to be mastered. These include:

• Simple HTML: for example creating hyperlinks
• Screencasting software: You should be able to create a screencast (using something like Camtasia) and post it to the web
• Feed aggregation: You should be able to harness information into one feed. Lots of very simple tools exist for this now. I use newsgator as an RSS aggregator, but even tools like FriendFeed can help pull different feeds into one stream

Learning to Surf

You have to be able to surf the web. By this I mean, you need to be able to ride the waves of information that may be connected to a learning topic without getting swamped and pulled under by the sheer volume of information.

You also have to be able to show learners how to surf as well. Teaching someone to surf is not easy at all. OK, let me be truthful I’ve only taught people to body surf, but that is still hard. You can’t get inside their body to make them understand how to hold themselves so that they jump at the right time to catch the wave. All you can do is model your technique for surfing, they have to adopt their own style.

Its the same when you teach someone to web surf. You can show someone how you do it. You can show them the end goal, but they have position themselves so that they are comfortable with the wave of information.

Don’t forget about ID

I think ID is very important in the case of Learning 2.0. There is so much information to be consumed that there has to be some design involved to ensure that learners don’t become so overwhelmed that they aren’t able to master tasks.

All of the rules of doing analysis of what the end results should be are still very important, as is doing formative and summative evaluations during learning events to be sure that learners are at least moving towards catching a wave.

• PerformanceXpress
  (tags: hpt web2.0)
• New skills for learning professionals — Informal Learning Blog
  (tags: web2.0 learning professional)
• Customizing your edublog with widgets and themes
  (tags: edublogs slideshare)

I’m taking a class called Web 2.0 Learning and Performance. There are over 30 people in the class, and I’m having flashbacks to CCK08.

I may blog less here for the next few weeks as I have to keep a seperate journal for class. That journal is here.

We’ll see if I survive July — if you don’t hear from me send help!

I’m finishing off our presentation for the eLearning Guild’s Instructional Design Symposium. One thing I’m doing is explaining what EMC does, since I’m presenting to ID folks and not technical folks. Thankfully Polly Pearson (fellow EMC blogger) got some slides to me that are turning out to be very helpful!

As I’m adding the slides in, I can’t help but think about the Analysis part of ID. We write training for a very wide range of audiences. My team usually seperates this into three big audiences:

• Internal
• Partners
• Customers

We usually break those big audiences down by role: support folks, implementers, pre-sales, etc. But when I think about *how* the products we’re producing training for are used, we really have a diverse audience. Our products are used by pharma companies, banks, financial services companies, hospitals and other healthcare, and government agencies just to name a few. How in the world can we do analysis for customers if our products are all about storing, optimizing, managing, and securing information? Its pretty daunting.

How can we make our training relevant to each of these audiences? Right now I think we depend heavily on our instructors for that. They are CTT+ certified, and they know how to poll the class to see what everyone is looking to get from the training. I’m still wondering if that’s enough.

I starting thinking about this because I came across an interesting pharma blog. I used to work for a pharma company, its where I learned all about change control and compliance (nothing like having to fill out 6 change control documents to replace an ailing server…). The blog is called The Pharma Marketing Blog. The author, John Mack, gives an insider view of how tricky social media is for the pharma industry. He talks about FDA influence into what can and cannot be tweeted, and how Adverse Events are keeping the pharma industry from embracing social media.

Lots of stuff you may not have considered if you’re a “social media expert”.

It really is all about your audience….