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By Dan Pontefract, 03/22/2010 3:21 PM

Last year, I posted some thoughts on the evolution of the training vendor entitled “An Updated Business Model for Training Vendors“.

This is the bulleted form follow-up to that post.

Formal Learning Thoughts

• Instructor-led classes are not going away … but don’t make it your only value proposition, make it part of the arsenal
• How can you package up your ILT into small bite-sized ’snacks’ (as Martin King suggests)?
• What used to take 5 days to teach … can it be done differently, incorporating formal, informal and social learning means?
• eLearning is an important piece to the puzzle … but I don’t want to go to your fancy LMS to take it
• eLearning also shouldn’t be any longer than one hour these days
• Are you building formal simulations and beginning to utilize gaming? (I know Koreen Olbrish would want you to)
• How are you addressing virtual world or virtual ILT delivery?
• Is all of your formal learning taking too long to develop? If so, and you are spending too much time/money on the design and development costs … maybe you should think about shifting some of your talent to informal or social learning delivery models versus spending so much time, effort and money on the ‘perfect course’ (we don’t care anymore if it’s perfect)

Informal Learning Thoughts

• Your staff should be allowed to provide their expertise via informal learning approaches such as mentoring, coaching, live webcasts, recorded webinars, etc.
• Informal learning thrives when experts can repurpose their knowledge in, well … informal ways. Seek out a model that allows this to happen.
• Do you have an informal content plan? (ie. remember the days when we talked about ‘rapid development’ … well, now we need our content fast and fresh, and delivered in some informal vehicles, so how are you going to provide this?)
• Work together – why are training vendors so afraid to work together with one another. Form some partnerships, strategic alliances, whatever … it’s hard to find one shop that can do everything for a company, yet informal learning lends itelf so well to this model
• Books – for those companies that utilize Books 24×7 or Safari Books as their employee ‘bookshelf’ or ‘library’ … find a way in which to repurpose this informal learning investment into your strategy

Social Learning Thoughts

• Most of you aren’t there yet when it comes to a Social Learning model … but think of it as an extension of Informal Learning. (that should make Lance Dublin happy)
• You need to utilize the systems and tools of an organization that are already established or about to be, and free your people/staff up to extend the formal and informal learning opportunities via social media, social networking and social collaboration inside of the virtual private network of an organization itself
• NOTE: like the LMS … we don’t want/need to go to your social systems – please find a way to utilize ours
• Coach your people that are reticent to ’social learning’ that it’s not going away, it’s here to stay … and that they need to step up their ‘learning game’ (ie. branch out)

And finally, course-by-course bums in seats modelling is not going to cut it.

Think of it as electricity. When I need it, I turn it on … but it’s always there, reliable and able to transmit light, power, sound and experience with whatever I throw at it.

(and yes, I still hate the word training)

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By Dan Pontefract, 10/24/2009 6:44 PM

This past week, I attended the SharePoint 2009conference in Las Vegas. I’ll provide some feedback on that particular release in another blog posting (read Bill Simser for now) but what the conference itself got me thinking about was that, thankfully, the standalone LMS is definitely going to become redundant. Dinosaur. Soviet Union. Saturn Car. Hierarchy. (you get the picture)

Those organizations (and frankly public learning institutions) that are clinging to their standalone learning management systems as a way in which to serve up formal ILT course schedules and eLearning are absolutely missing the big picture. Sadly, there are too many organizations like this out there.

The LMS should no longer be thought of as a destination for the learner. This is the nuclear fault of the LMS itself and of antiquated thinking from our learning leaders; it encourages standalone learning by driving people to register for an event … be it an ILT class or an eLearning module.

Sure, clever instructors, faculty and learning administration management/leadership teams may find unique, albeit independent, ways in which to embed some form of informal and/or social learning before as well as after the event, but this is merely triage as opposed to a lobotomy.

When you hear people say ‘we need Facebook for the organization’ … I don’t think that’s exactly what they mean. Jon Husband does a good job of illustrating this over here.

Facebook for the organization implies three things:

• A development platform that serves up formal, informal and social content & connection for all
• A single ‘window into the org’ versus many separate applications and systems (I wrote about this here)
• Learning happens naturally, by osmosis, and without care for how it happens

The LMS insinuates the notion that you ‘go to training’. This is asinine in today’s world.

If you want to change the culture (as Will Kelly describes here) it’s surely not just about the technology. But … to change the culture, you also need to drive an organization to believe that training does not only happen in an event (ILT and eLearning) and thus, by keeping the standalone LMS alive and kicking, you exacerbate the issue.

Employees need to constantly connect, they need to constantly share, and they need to learn from one another. This cannot happen solely in an ILT class and it surely does not happen in an eLearning module.

Set up your ‘Facebook for the organization’ by embedding an LMS (or LMS like features) into your enterprise-wide collaboration platform. Coaches, mentors, online buddies need to coexist within the wiki’s, blogs, discussion forums, webcam meetings, online presence, etc. which needs to coexist within the list of formal classroom and eLearning offerings which needs to coexist with your documents, knowledge management, videos, podcasts, which needs to coexist with the profiles, skills, and recent activity-feed happenings of all employees.

Blow up your LMS. Find a way to integrate it into your collaboration platform.

This is where the future is taking us.

Oh, and I don’t think Google Wave is the reason to get rid of your LMS as Michael Feldstein describes. But I like what he does have to say about the LMOS for academic institutions.

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By Dan Pontefract, 07/29/2009 9:29 PM

First of all, I hate the word training.

Each and every time I type those eight letters I cringe, harking back to seemingly endless drills during my soccer (football) ‘training’ sessions as a youth. Repetitive tasks that enhance or augment a skill – that’s training – although Google brings back over 1.4 million hits on “definition of training” so what do I know.

Learning 2.0, for me, is the switch from a ‘training is an event’ culture, to a ‘learning is a collaborative, continuous, connected and community-based’ culture. Think of it as ’sage on the stage’ to ‘guides & strides from all sides’.

I purposely titled this blog as ‘trainingwreck’ because I believe the corporate learning sector is in a state of disrepair and needs both a severe influx of innovation and a large dose of reality.

Which brings me to my point.

There are few training vendors out there, in my estimation, that are making the shift to becoming a Learning 2.0 partner. This is why I will continue to refer to them as training vendors. (there are notable exceptions of course, but they are few and far between)

I attended the ASTD International Conference in June, 2009, and was amazed — perhaps shocked — when I meandered a path through the exhibition floor only to find myself stuck in a time warp. Training vendors, for the most part, refuse to refine their business models due to what seems to be a fear of impacting the cash cow known as formal content. (ie. ILT courseware/delivery options as well as eLearning)

Well guess what folks … we all don’t have to believe in Kirkpatrick anymore or the fact it’s the 50th anniversary of an archaic model. There is more to this Learning 2.0 puzzle than a 4-level evaluation system linked to a formal piece of learning content, be it ILT or eLearning. (but I digress)

Training vendors need a new business model, and if I were running one of those companies, I would ensure my new business model included concepts such as:

• Virtual SME’s & Ambassadors
  • Become a virtual extension of our communities, learning org, etc. and provide your expertise in the form of informal and social coaching, mentoring, counsel, teaching, exchange, etc. to our organization (ie. embed your staff)
  • Do so not with your own collaboration systems, but through our system. (we want our employees to stay in our house – not venture out to yours – we don’t care about your fancy system if it means leaving the collateral and community that we have inside our VPN)
• Content Variation Model (aka Learning Nuggets)
  • Yes, we still need formal ILT and eLearning, but can you please finally sort out how you can break down your rather large formal courses into pertinent bite-sized learning nuggets
  • Short 5-7 minute videos, podcasts, screen-caps, articles, case studies, job aids, knowledge nuggets, etc. — all in the name of ensuring our employees can get a particular morsel of competence in a manageable duration, and not have to fight through a 5-day course or 6-hour eLearning module to do so
• New ILT Continuum
  • A formal course is just not going to cut it anymore – so please stop suggesting it as your only value proposition
  • Think of an ILT Continuum that starts with informal-social prework of some sort, that gets a community and the social collaboration aspect of learning in motion prior to the ILT start date
  • During the course itself, utilize the informal-social learning tools, processes, etc. that help students get the fact that ‘training is an event’ type of thinking is dead – and that learning is continuous and happens before and after a course
  • Ensure that there is post-course work that (again) embodies the informal-social aspects of a Learning 2.0 organizational model (how does the ILT content become reinforced post-course)
• New eLearning Continuum
  • An eLearning course of more than 1 hour is a waste of bloody money and development time
  • eLearning need not be fancy bells and whistles laden with oceans of content, simulations, etc.
  • eLearning needs to morph into a social learning paradigm – small bits of interactive content that can live and breathe within the informal-social learning ecosystem
  • The learner should not be simply clicking ‘next’ and then satisfied with ‘mark complete’ – where is the continuous improvement reinforcement? How will they interact with colleagues to reinforce the concept? (that’s why it needs to become part of the social learning ecosystem somehow – and not just an electronic page turning course full of fancy graphics)
    • We don’t need Playstation or XBox for eLearning – we need Wii

Those training vendors, whether large, medium or small, who display some of the traits above, in my opinion will ultimately prosper as we shift into a complete remake of the corporate learning sector under the Learning 2.0 banner.

TrainingMag, ASTD and CSTD should really think about changing their names. Training is a really awful word.