Elearning can have a transformational impact on small business, not-for-profit and other fragmented groups sharing common interests, challenges or opportunities.

Leaders who champion these approaches, and buy-in from participants, is key – but once people are on-board a widespread and consistent improvement in  performance can occur in a rapid and substantial fashion.

Social networking and related services have taken elearning beyond self-contained training that offered little more than traditional distance learning. It now offers an important level of interaction that brings real people together.

The opportunity for interaction between participants promotes collaboration.  This can lead to superior, and often creative, solutions which can benefit every member. Small business, for example, will only get so far working with local competitors, but can interact freely with similar businesses in other parts of the country. Innovative product or service ideas, marketing approaches, and sources of suppliers can all be freely discussed when businesses are not in direct competition.

The benefits are not solely commercial. I am constantly amazed at how much ‘cash-strapped’ government agenices and not-for-profit groups will spend to get members to centralised training, or to bring training opportunities to geographically spread groups. The travel, accommodation and venue costs alone are often substantial, and the reach limited as a result.

Take a typical sporting organisation for example. They might have national, regional, club and school based administration nationwide from the largest centres to the smallest rural communities. They probably share common issues – perhaps they all seek greater levels of grant funding.

One well designed elearning programme in which the participants learn how to submit winning funding applications would address this need. It would involve many members and be delivered simultaneously nationwide, with valuable collaboration between participants sharing experiences and looking for solutions. This would immediately lift performance across the board, and impact nationwide through many members. An initiative like this could generate thousands of dollars of additional revenue and great benefits as a result.

Complement that with programmes in strategic planning, financial practise, volunteer management, and recruitment and suddenly you have strengthened and advanced the capability of your organisation in a very practical way – further and faster than you ever thought possible.

Put simply, this is about flexibility of time and place. This phrase is often used from the learner’s perspective, but it also applies to the delivery of training. Being able to provide training to a disjointed group spread over thousands of kilometres on a flexible schedule enables you to capture more people, more quickly, and more effectively.

What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better? Tell us and we will show you how elearning can make it happen!

Related posts:

1. E-learning for organisation and people development
2. Why not-for-profits should embrace elearning
3. Organisation culture and E-learning

The relationship between organisation culture and learning is a critical one. The same considerations extend to elearning specifically. In the New Zealand context elearning is still a relatively new phenomenon.

Many organisations, and their people, will not have had widespread exposure to elearning provision. This places even greater importance on understanding how organisation culture and elearning depend upon, strengthen and influence each other.

As a starting point for identifying these issues we suggest Nichani’s article “Understanding Organisational Culture for Knowledge Sharing”.

This article is of particular interest when thinking about the collaborative aspects of  ’elearning 2.0′ which combine aspects of formal process and design principles with interaction reflecting  social networking experiences.

Related posts:

1. Linking organisation culture and e-learning
2. Transform with elearning: What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better?
3. E-learning for organisation and people development

Learning is critical to organisation and people development in any sector. Elearning provides improved and innovative ways to contribute to this vital function. This is a broad and complicated subject, but let’s consider it in simple terms and link elearning with organisation development in plain english.

Thorn and Mackey proposed the following checklist for developing people and organisations: 

1. Examine very critically the current roles and skill sets within your team.
2. Identify the overall direction of your organisation. What are its mission or  vision, values and  business objectives? 
3. Have standards of performance been set?  How are these standards being measured? 
4. Hw are people being encouraged to develop these standards? 
5. What learning processes are in place?
6. What are the blockages? What is stopping the organisation from developing? 
7. Who are the competitors? What role does their HR/OD/L&D/Training function perform? 
8. Network with other training professionals. Find out how different organisations are approaching their current business issues. 
9. Meet with other functions in your organisation. Identify what they want from HR/OD/L&D/Training. Put yourself in their shoes. How well are you meeting their needs? 
10. Identify the important measures, for example: speed of response, quality of advice, trainer knowledge, creativity and innovation, will work in partnership, value for money when  benchmarked. 
11. Critically evaluate the performance of your HR/OD/L&D/Training. 
12. Set standards and establish an ongoing method of measuring the achievement of standards. 
13. Constantly update within the function, encourage visits, secondmentsm and the exchange of information. 
14. Work towards training excellence, to be the organisation that acts as a benchmark for others. 
15. Ask yourself and your team, ‘How effective are we as a business partner?’

You will see that this list bundles together a range of topics including business case, return on investment, benchmarking, needs analysis and the like, but  we’ll keep it simple by linking each of those points to e-learning ideas and applications. 

1. Examine very critically the current roles and skill sets within your team.

Use elearning to develop the skills and capability of your management to analyse skill sets. Elearning providers can conduct this examination for you and customise solutions. Collaborative elearning can be used to enable effective self evalaution.

2. Identify the overall direction of your organisation.What are its mission or vision, values and business objectives?

Use elearning to develop the ability to do this and learn how to develop this strategic alignment. Induction through elearning can ensure that all staff understand and apply these critical elements of your business. Elearning can be crafted to be consistent with and therefore contribute directly to vision, mission, values and business objectives.

3. Have standards of performance been set? How are these standards being measured?

Develop people management skills through elearning and better understand performance management techniques. Collaboratively develop effective responses to performance issues by working together on challenging scenarios and team tasks in elearning programmes.

4. How are people being encouraged to develop these standards?

Elearning helps develop skills in collaboration. E-learning programmes can encourage development of real-world appraoches to achieveing results and meeting other perofrmance standards. This can occur through developing both managers and the personnel they lead.

5. What learning processes are in place?

Learning processes need to fully integrate elearning for maximum efficacy. Contracting in elearning expertise can ensure best practise appraoches are fully integrated from strategy through to implementation in practise. E-learning also offers learning processes that differ considerabley from conventional appraoches, and can add considerable benefits while reducing costs. Innovative approaches are able to be explored as a result.

6.What are the blockages? What is stopping the organisation from developing?

Use elearning to develop the ability of your organisation to identify and elininate bloackges to development. Elearning is also an ideal way to embed a culture throughout the organisation which will encourage development. Elearning can also reduce development limitations through lower cost, greater flexibility and more pertinent training provision.

7. Who are the competitors? What role does their HR/OD/L&D/Training function perform?

Pay particular attention to  your competitors use of technology. Look for elearning use both in-house and contracted in expertise, be aware of web 2.0 elements, informal learning and personal learning environments. There can be a lot going on without it being readily apparent if you restrict yourself to analysing conventional functions.

8. Network with other training professionals. Find out how different organisations are approaching their current business issues.

Participate in elearning with personnel from other organisations that are not direct competitors, but perhaps providing the same product or service in geographic locations other than your own. Champion elearning in your industry and create opportunities through collaborative online programmes to learn from others. Elearning scenarios designed around current business issues let’s you share the expertise of others and foster effective solutions.

9. Meet with other functions in your organisation. Identify what they want from HR/OD/L&D/Training. Put yourself in their shoes. How well are you meeting their needs?

Best practise elearning will help to ensure those needs are better met. Sound instructional design prinicples will keep learning opportunities on target. E-learning also enables flexible and rapid responses which provide a service more responsive to the needs of other functions in your organisation.

10. Identify the important measures, for example: speed of response, quality of advice, trainer knowledge, creativity and innovation, will work in partnership, value for money when benchmarked.

Recognise that e-learning which is designed and delivered to a high standard will almost always perform better than conventional training against all these measures and any others which have been identified as important.

11. Critically evaluate the performance of your HR/OD/L&D/Training.

Best practise appraoches to elearning pplace considerable emphasis on evaluation of programme design and delivery and improvement based on that evaluation. Where existing performance is lacking elearning can often provide the solution to your problems.

12. Set standards and establish an ongoing method of measuring the achievement of standards.

Many elearning systems integrate standard setting and ways of measuring achievement of identified standards through technology. Integrating elearning with your organisation development strategy ensures that appropriate standards are set and achieved. E-learning can ehance your ability to meet existing standards.

13. Constantly update within the function, encourage visits, secondmentsm and the exchange of information.

The advantages of elearning align well with this consideration. The integration of collaborative interaction within programme design, the ability to deliver over distance, and the ease with which elearning can be updated all contribute directly to this aspect.

14. Work towards training excellence, to be the organisation that acts as a benchmark for others.

In the current environment signs of excellence include adoption of best practise elearning and innovative design and delivery techniques. If e-learning has become standard in your part of the world then cutting edge approaches and specialised expertise help establish leadership. If e-learning is new in your sector , then widespread use of elearning will establish you as a leader in your field.

15. Ask yourself and your team, ‘How effective are we as a business partner?’

Your effectiveness is likely ot be directly tied to your efective use of e-learning. Development through participation in elearning will also add to the effectiveness of your team.

In conclusion, elearning has a role to play in all aspects of developing your organisation. Embrace the opportunities it provides to build capability. By bringing in a elearning specialist you can start on this immediately – the sooner you start, the sooner you reap the rewards!

Reference: Thorne K, and Mackey, D. Everything you needed to know about training, Kogan Page Ltd, 2007.

Related posts:

1. Transform with elearning: What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better?
2. E-Learning and small business – lessons from the UK and Europe
3. Linking organisation culture and e-learning

 This post from Josh Persin discusses the transition from e-learning to WE-learning, the increasing role of collaboration and informal learning connections within organisations. He suggests that this is part of the evolution of corporate learning and builds upon, rather than replaces, accepted e-learning approaches.

He argues:

“We-learning” embraces the simple and profound concept that any organization has a collection of knowledge and experience which should be shared. It respects the fact that the training department may, at most, have 5-10% of the knowledge needed and used in the company. And organizational learning is taking place on a real-time basis – always changing and becoming more valuable.

Just like “e-learning” took the power away from the stand-up instructor, “we-learning” is going to take some power away from the instructional designer and training developer. We need to think about our roles as the facilitators, organizers, and drivers of collaborative learning – not necessarily the authors or designers.

This adds an exciting new to dimension to the way we think about learning within business and other organisations. It also adds a degree of complexity, particularly for leaders already trying to ‘catch up’  with the business implications of social networking and related technologies.

Even as we begin to consider a way of learning that places less reliance on instructional design and active facilitation, the need for learning expertise that understands the link between collaboration, learning and technology becomes even greater.

Read the full post: http://www.bersin.com/Blog/post/From-E-Learning-to-We-Learning.aspx

http://www.bersin.com/Blog/post/From-E-Learning-to-We-Learning.aspx

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1. E-learning for organisation and people development
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In the delivery of best practise elearning we have a strong preference for faciliatated elearning. Facilitated elearning is  where learner’s are guided, supported and assisted by a programme facilitator (who in other places might be called a tutor, instructor or teacher).

The use of the word facilitator is quite deliberate – though it is a mouthful. We find that it is the most acccurate description for this critical role in the programmes we deliver.

Best practise elearning strives to be genuinely learner centered. To achieve this it is essential that learners are supported, encouraged, guided, and assisted to interact, collaborate and learn.  This requires facilitation of learning, not teaching at learners and not instruction of learners.

The classic quote is that the facilitator’s role is to be “guide on the side, not sage on stage”.

The use of technology is significant in the elearning context. In the early days, the use of technology in learning was too often seen as able to stand independently of facilitators, in some kind of automated and self-directed learning experience.

Fortunately as elearning has evolved it has become clear that technology is a vehicle for learning, an opportunity to enable collaboration over distance, and can enhance the learning experience – but is NOT a substitute for skilled facilitation.

The reality is that the most effective learning can not take a one-size fits all approach. Standardised learning does not reflect the diversity of learners and their individual needs. A facilitator is able to respond to this variety in a way that adds value to the learning experience.

Similarly collaboration is key and not entirely predictable. Good facilitation fosters good team dynamics, constructive group work, keeps discussions on track and addresses unexpected issues which can arise.

In short, even the best instructional design is enhanced by skilled facilitation.

For further details on the complex role of facilitation in elearning try:

Wearing Four Pairs of Shoes: The Roles of E-Learning Facilitators

Learning Light E-Learning Centre: Facilitating E-Learning

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The recommended download this week is really a whole series of downloads. Peer Group and Collaborative Learning in real and virtual worlds was the theme for the eLearning at Edinburgh Conference held in August. The full conference programme with links to abstracts, presentations and videos is available.

The information is intended for elearning professionals and is heavy going if you are new to the field, but even a quick glance through the abstracts will give you a sense of the scope of collaborative elearning in practice.

If you have a thorough understanding of elearning practise there is some excellent knowledge on offer.

To view the downloads click HERE

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2. Download: E-Learning success stories in the not-for-profit sector
3. Download: Meeting the training needs of SME’s: Is e-learning the solution?

Collaboration is key to the most effective models of e-learning. Well designed elearning programmes ensure there is opportunity for collaboration and interaction between learners, because it is in this aspect that elearning brings together the best of face-to-face and distance learning.

Unfortunately learners often bring a negative mindset to opportunities for collaboration. Many people have previously experienced poorly designed group tasks, and clumsy assessment approaches with unfair outcomes which have soured their opinion of group work in any learning context.

This is further accentuated as learners who choose to participate in elearning are often highly independent learners, and sceptical of the need for collaborative activities.

So why, then, is it critical to include collaborative learning?

There are a number of benefits which are widely accepted including:

• a higher success rate;[i]
• more stimulating learning experience;[i]
• encourages more critical reasoning;[i]
• learners are typically drawn into the subject matter of the class more deeply because of the discussions they get involved in;[i]
• more enjoyment;[i]
• learners send more time on class work;[i]
• learners understood the material better;[i]
• learners perform better;[i]
• there is improvement in ‘higher order’ learning skills such as discussing, interpreting and applying learning;[ii]
• in collaborative situations where learners must explain to others, or justify their own position heir ability to recall and apply learning later is increased;[ii]
• creative and critical thinking is developed when multiple perspectives are involved;[ii]
• students in a group are more likely to take learning risks and try new things;[ii]
• students working collaboratively can get more done and cover more ground.[ii]

The explosion of web 2.0 and social media has greatly enhanced the ability to create effective collaboration within an elearning programme. Many available technologies and services are now premised on an interactive approach.

Teaching and communication techniques and tools which create an interactive online environment include case studies, story-telling, demonstrations, role-playing, simulations, streamed videos, online references, personalized coaching and mentoring, discussion groups, project teams, chat rooms, e-mail, forums, wikis, blogs, bulletin boards, tips, tutorials, FAQs, and wizards. There are too many to list here.

With so many options available, the key is to select interactive approaches which integrate smoothly with programme design and enable collaboration. They should make interaction easier – not create a barrier for learners unfamiliar with the software or service.

The deliberate emphasis on collaborative approaches in elearning has helped ensure that group tasks and other shared learning experiences are better integrated with assessment. This ensures that credit for group contribution is fair and encourages learners to embrace these approaches.

Collaborative approaches have also enhanced the relevance of learning, often being based around scenario, or case study elements which give added realism. Similarly, learners can be asked to apply their group effort to real situations of their own choosing.

Further benefits are gained from being able to interact and share expertise with other learners, who bring diverse knowledge and experiences. In industry specific programmes this can itself provide valuable learning opportunities and professional networking benefits.

Many learners become converts and advocates for team based activities once they have experienced the benefits of well designed activities for themselves.

They discover that when it comes to elearning, it really is time to get it together.

[ii] http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/resources/leap/leapinto/CollaborativeLearning.pdf

Related posts:

1. Why skilled facilitators are essential in elearning
2. Collaboration in elearning
3. Transform with elearning: What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better?

This week’s recommended blog post is an informed overview of the advantages of e-learning. This week we are focussing on collaboration in elearning, so I was particularly interested in the comments around this crucial aspect of elearning (and learning generally). Collaboration is key to the most effective elearning models we know.

Distance education can be more stimulating and encourage more critical reasoning than a traditional large instructor-led class because it allows the kind of interaction that takes place most fully in small group settings.

Studies have shown that students who take online courses are typically drawn into the subject matter of the class more deeply than in a traditional course because of the discussions they get involved in.

Read the full post HERE

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2. Why skilled facilitators are essential in elearning
3. Transform with elearning: What do you wish your community, organisation or industry did better?