Bringing e-learning into the 21st century
In an astonishing speech - as much for who gave it as for what it
contained - Rupert Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper
Editors that "Too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch
with our readers. No wonder the young are ditching their newspapers.
They don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them
what's important." He goes on to say how news providers such as his
own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their
audiences and become places for conversation, where bloggers and
podcasters congregate to engage our reporters and editors in more
extended discussions. Phew. For the news media read the training
industry and you'll see where I'm coming from.
E-learning (and for that matter a great deal of classroom training) is
founded on 20th century assumptions about the roles and
responsibilities of trainers and learners in the process of learning.
It still treats the learner as an empty and largely unquestioning
vessel into which you can pour the required knowledge, skills and
attitudes. If only it was that easy. Unfortunately it probably never
was and certainly isn't now. Learners no longer want to be passive in
any aspect of their lives - they want to be active participants.
Modern technology does not isolate people; it allows them to
communicate like never before. Fifty billion emails are despatched
every day. The average mobile phone user sends 37 texts a month.
Sometimes we do so much communicating, we don't have time to do
anything to communicate about. Technology also empowers people to do
things for themselves that they previously might have left to the
professionals - take pictures and make movies, compose music and, most
importantly of all, publish your views to the world at large, using
simple web pages, blogs, podcasts and forums. As Rupert Murdoch knows
well, we're approaching the stage where everyone is a publisher. And
they quite like it that way. On top of all this, modern media
technology seems to be making us cleverer, not dumbing us down. IQ
scores have been steadily rising by 0.31 points a year since 1943.
According to Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You,
"The culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less."
Consumers are empowered by the wealth of information they can find on
the World Wide Web. Much of this information comes from other
consumers, not from advertisers. In this way, web shoppers can
co-operate to drive down prices and find the best suppliers. Whoever
said that content was king was way off the mark. In the 21st century
there's only one claim to the throne and that is by the customer.
Slowly but surely the expectations of e-learners are rising. Rather
than just receiving information as gospel, they would like to add
their own comments and debate those points with tutors and other
learners. Rather than answering questions in isolation, they'd like to
compare their responses with those made by other learners. And, as
they do with the books on Amazon, they want to provide a rating to
each module they take - and to see the ratings left by other learners.
In time, the content contributed by the community of learners becomes
as important, if not more so, than the formal content. If you doubt
whether this can work, see http://www.wikipedia.org/, where users are
creating their own encyclopaedia.
So, is your e-learning like this; as interactive, as participative, as
empowering? I thought not. You do have a good excuse, in that the
majority of the authoring tools and management systems currently
available don't make it at all easy to build in this functionality.
They're 20th century tools, built by unreformed relics of the CBT era.
It's time to see some new tools, built to give learners what they
really want.
According to Dell, "There's no turning back. The market will become
more fragmented, customers' needs will get more diverse, and
sophistication and empowerment will continue to grow." So, listen up
all you trainers. If we are not responsive to the individual needs of
learners, if we don't allow them to fully participate in the learning
process, if we don't allow them to make their own contributions to the
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