Kiosk Learning,

Caroline Avey - 2/9/11

The way people, technology and learning meet is continually changing, moving
toward increases in fidelity, convenience, collaboration, specificity and
confluence.

This is a year of opportunity for chief learning officers to assess their
learning strategy in the context of a constantly evolving and changing business
environment. The challenges for today’s CLOs are more complex than ever: They
are required not only to demonstrate clear value and business relevance for
their learning strategy on a global stage, but also their ability to link
learning and performance programs directly to the goals of their organization,
despite constraints in time, budget and talent. Extraordinary times call for
extraordinary skills on the part of our CLOs as they creatively balance the
demand for knowledge and information against the realities of changing content
and instructional design, disappearing content expertise, disruptive
technologies, demand for on-the-job proficiency and an increasingly dispersed
workforce with less tolerance for off-the-job formal learning.

Last year saw the introduction of new technologies that could increase access
to information but blurred the lines between learning content, learners and
expertise. Organizations embraced experimentation with mobile or tablet devices
for learning, immersive 3-D or collaborative environments, and the incorporation
of wikis, micro-blogging or podcasts as learning tools. So what is on the
horizon for 2011? Let’s take a look.

Increased Fidelity of Experience

As access to learners becomes increasingly precious, managers are demanding
that learning be as relevant to the job as possible. This means an increased
demand for highly relevant experience, immediate transfer of content to
on-the-job proficiency, and the ability to provide a holistic learning
experience that models job requirements, such as the ability to demonstrate
multiple skills and decision-making in a robust learning exercise. The ability
for learning to apply to real life is termed “fidelity” by the industry. We’ve
seen an increase in complex gaming, immersive simulations and the use of
technology as a business modeling engine. Examples of complex gaming include a
group of engineers who compete in an online game to design the best solution or
a group of sales executives who participate in a sales conference game to test
and challenge their ability to gather information about a prospective client in
order to present a proposal. While most organizations have courseware to support
competencies for particular roles, some are looking at learning activities that
challenge cross-functional groups of learners to work together for an improved
business result. Fidelity can be a highly desirable design element where online
learning looks exactly like the Web page of the firm or dynamically renders
images of a tool for technology training.

Business modeling is another tool that can be used to create a high fidelity
experience for the learner. Unlike branched solutions — where a learner selects
from a given set of options and then continues on that path, choosing from a
fixed set of options — business modeling allows the learner to make multiple
discreet decisions. The modeling engine provides each learner with unique
feedback and allows the learner to see both the relationship and the magnitude
of decisions. An example is financial training for managers of a business unit.
The learner is challenged to respond to the loss of a major customer, in which
he or she looks at aspects of the business and decides whether to increase,
decrease or not change new sales efforts. Similar decisions are made for
managing inventory, employee morale, etc. The model then shows the impact of the
multiple decisions.

Kiosk Learning

Retail and customer service counter industries are moving into using devices,
such as the iPod Touch — and, more recently, the iPad — as tools to access
learning. Many organizations have groups of employees who are remote from
computers, or their computers may be point-of-sale devices or call center
workstations that have limited capacity to run engaging learning that includes
multimedia. An iPad allows multiple users to learn on a single device, so iPads
posted at remote locations become digital learning kiosks. Additionally, iPads
allow for multiple user log-ons, so that learning can be tracked by user through
distance-learning applications.

Such learning kiosks enhance on-the-job accessibility to learning: The
learner avoids travel to a learning location and can make use of any downtime. A
key advantage of the learning kiosk concept is putting the learning at the point
of need – not only for traditional courseware, but also on-the-job support.
Examples of the use of kiosk learning in retail range from skills enhancement
training for customer serving counter agents at an international airline to new
product training for retail store counter clerks that can be updated as customer
sales and data evolve.

Crowdsourcing for Learning Assignments

Web 2.0 tools and platforms continue to provide a collaborative environment
for knowledge workers and learners. Although the most popular tools in use are
still simple solutions, such as e-mail, instant messaging, Web conferencing and
file sharing, users are becoming more sophisticated in combining various tools
to meet their particular need. Skype is making inroads in the corporate world
for connecting learners to tutors or subject matter experts. There’s also a
trend toward embedding wikis and blogs into learning programs or instant
messaging into other collaboration events in an effort to improve e-learning
effectiveness.

Organizations are investing in external tools, such as NewsGator or Q2
Learning to provide robust collaboration environments, whereas lighter tools
such as Ning and Moodle are still popular for blogging and discussions. Google
is focusing on collaboration tools, and Google Apps are being used in education
and are crossing over to the corporate sector for document creation with
real-time editing, sharing controls and seamless compatibility for learners.

Examples of crowdsourcing as a learning strategy range from the capture of
best practices during planning process training for a military group to
capturing cadres of learners’ assignments posted for technical training on
SharePoint for an energy company.

Data Mining

Micro-learning and user-generated content in blogs, wikis and YouTube-like
video servers can become information overload to learners. While access to
thousands of knowledge objects may initially be appealing to learners, they can
quickly become discouraged and disinterested if their search results are not
relevant. The key for learners is to access knowledge sites and get exactly what
they need and only what they need. First and foremost, knowledge systems must
have robust search and tagging systems to accommodate data inquiry.
Additionally, users must either be trained to use the system or, more
preferably, the system should be a highly intuitive one that guides the user and
recognizes his or her preferences. Intelligent systems search for relevant
words, such as the Google search engine does; these systems look at the affinity
of a learner’s search pattern and then make intelligent recommendations. While
CLOs may or may not manage knowledge management systems, it will be important to
contribute input into how these systems will support access for learners.

The LMS Adds Informal Learning

Learning encompasses both performance readiness through formal learning and
performance proficiency as well as support through informal learning and social
networking. The traditional LMS hosting a catalog of courseware may not be
robust enough to support a learner’s need to search for specific formal learning
support objects and provide ready access to knowledge objects and collaboration
sites. Many of the LMS providers are responding by adding their version of wikis,
blogs and communities of interest.

There is strong interest in overlaying the traditional LMS interface with a
“front door” portal that not only provides links to traditional courseware on
the LMS, but also provides access to informal learning, such as wikis and blogs.
This type of portal is more demand-ready so that the user can easily browse for
topics or take an assessment to identify a gap in knowledge, with the gap report
providing links to both formal courseware and informal learning content that
addresses the identified need.

So What Does The Future Hold?

Technology will continue to push our comfort zone, with avatar experiences in
3-D on mobile devices; use of cloud computing to enable access to software;
holographic imaging to increase the fidelity of a learning environment; personal
LMS sites for users to track firm, academic and other professional experiences;
and increased capability for augmented reality solutions with cheaper broadband
access through a wide range of devices.

What about traditional instructor-led courseware? It won’t go away, but firms
will continue to be more selective on when to use traditional face-to-face group
learning. The experiences will be richer, simulating on-the-job experiences for
immediate job transfer. Firms will look to tools and templates for rapid
authoring of instructor-led courseware.

Caroline Avey is a learning strategist and director of
innovative learning solutions at ACS Learning Services, a Xerox company and
learning and development service provider. She can be reached at
editor@clomedia.com.

*********

Looking Forward. . .

Joyce L. Gioia

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