New England Learning Association

For those of you who were not able to make it to Saul Carliner’s talk, here are some of the highlights of the night.  You can also read his pre-event questions, or join in on some of the post-event discussion.

Using an interesting “pick a number” technique Saul allowed people from the audience to pick the order of the topics we would discuss.

“Is rapid e-Learning really… rabid e-Learning?”

Saul referred to rapid e-Learning as an “Instructional designer by assignment,” or really just a subject matter expert with PowerPoint. He referenced Bryan Chapman’s research that showed typical e-Learning development takes an average of 223 hours of development for each hour of instruction vs. 40 hours/hour for instructor led. The goal of rapid e-Learning is to get the development time down in line with ILT or better. The key focus was a discussion around different types of training needs, and focusing rapid e-Learning on the short-term or small audience training that you would never be able to do otherwise.

“Everyone says that, because the current generation of young people is addicted to video games, workplace learning needs to morph into the Sims and Delta Force.”

Saul’s first example on this topic was a question. If your doctor was going to get trained on a pacemaker installation, would you want it to be discovery learning, or directed learning. Everyone agreed that gaming is a good idea, and realistic simulations can help learning, but in the end Saul came back to a comparison with “the TV generation” where everyone was worried that they would never learn to read a book.

“What’s happened to learning objects? Have they gone underground like 80s music? If so, when can we expect their revival?”

Saul mentioned a talk he heard from the head of the ADL where he talked about learning objects really as an inventory management system. We all agreed that the holy-grail of an automatic mix-and-max approach putting together a different seamless course for each learner is not even close to reality. Many people liked the content management focus of learning objects better.

“Is m-Learning the next big thing in e-learning? If so, what makes it so hot?”

The only examples that the group as a whole could come up with for true “learning” on a mobile device were more SAT prep “drill and kill” on a PDA or PS2 type system. One participant had a good example of BMW dealers learning about the new cars using an audio tour on their iPod that allowed them to look through the car while listening to the description of the features. The general consensus was that m-Learning is going to be much more performance support focused. Saul closed with a prediction that Podcasts will very soon completely take over where the audio tape (what’s that?) and books on CD have been.

“It’s not that e-courses are bad… it’s that no one finishes them”

Saul’s big pitch here is that we (as course developers) need to give people a reason to complete them. Or maybe even a bribe, like a Starbucks card. But he also talked about how he tends to buy a lot of books that he never fully reads, and wondered how this compares to e-Learning.

“In its just-released 2005 Industry Report, TRAINING Magazine declared that the classroom ‘ain’t dead yet.’ So when?”

The good news is that everybody has a more realistic view now and accepts that blended learning is in many cases the best approach. He predicted that the classroom will still be around for many generations, with a future of 60-70% classroom (in corporate training) vs. the current 98%.