Learning On Demand

Reuben Tozman

Description

Learning on Demand presents new ideas around the topic of web-enabled instruction, challenging long-held beliefs about proper ‘design’ and the methods for engaging students. Drawing on technology trends, this book shows that accessibility of information on demand overshadows ‘interactive design’ for creating effective web-based instruction. In addition, the trends that are evident outside of the training and development industry are ones that could empower and bring training and development professionals into vital roles within an organization.

Learning on Demand showcases fascinating examples of web and mobile technologies that are based on an increasingly open web platform. Right now, technology innovations are moving faster than innovations in learning. The showcase of technologies presented in this book can create a baseline of innovation to use for comparison in the future. We must continue to look at new, developing technologies, and assess whether training and development trends are taking advantage of these technologies. If they are not, we need to examine how we can do so moving forward. This book will discuss new ways of measuring the effectiveness of web-enabled instructional solutions based on the success of business intelligence and web analytic technologies.

Sujets

• Efficacité professionnelle
• Efficacité
• Business
• Economics
• Training
• Employabilité, métiers et formations

Informations

• Publié par: Association for Talent Development
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781607286592
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2012 the American Society for Training & Development
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please go to www.copyright.com , or contact Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 (telephone: [phone], fax: [phone]).
ASTD Press is an internationally renowned source of insightful and practical information on workplace learning and performance topics, including training basics, evaluation and return-on-investment, instructional systems development, e-learning, leadership, and career development.
Ordering information (for the print edition): Books published by ASTD Press can be purchased by visiting ASTD’s website at store.astd.org or by calling 800.628.2783 or 703.683.8100.
Library of Congress Control Number (print edition only): 2012940625
PDF eBook version eISBN: 978-1-60728-659-2
Print edition ISBN: 978-1-56286-846-8
ASTD Press Editorial Staff:
Director: Glenn Saltzman
Community of Practice Manager, Learning Technologies: Justin Brusino
Manager, ASTD Press: Ashley McDonald
Cover, Design, and Production: Lon Levy
Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: How Is Web-Enabled Learning Like a Hockey Team?
Chapter 1: Training With the Evolving Semantic Web
Chapter 2: Toward a New Design Imperative for Web-Based Learning
Chapter 3: New Technologies for Learning on Demand
Chapter 4: Structuring a Learning-on-Demand System
Chapter 5: Key Skills for Instructional Designers
Appendix: Case Studies of Learning on Demand in Action
References
About the Author
Index
Foreword

History has taught us that market economies are typically characterized by extended periods of stability occasionally punctuated by short unstable periods that stretch the economic envelope into a new topography.
Technologies such as the printing press and the steam engine were catalysts for previous economic discontinuities. Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a particularly prolonged—some argue permanent—period of instability as worldwide adoption of disruptive innovations such as the web browser, social media, and the smartphone have rapidly converged to create a global digital nervous system.
Over the past 20 years the web has evolved from being a read-only tool that people used to access information into a rip-remix-reload platform for collaborative co-creation. Evolving upon this web substrate, social media platforms have experienced unprecedented adoption rates on a global scale; and the reach of both the World Wide Web and the social-media platforms that ride upon it has been significantly amplified via the application of mobile technologies. In short, the very rapid convergence of these three technology vectors has permeated what we do socially, professionally, and educationally to such an extent that we have become oblivious to the profound changes it has brought to how we connect, communicate, coordinate, collaborate, and take collective action.
What we are witnessing during this tumultuous and transformational period in history is the accelerating co-evolution of society and technology. In today’s digitally interconnected world, information is the currency, individuals are the transport mechanism, interaction is the transfer mechanism, and insight is the value added outcome. Today, as the world becomes more interconnected, instrumented, and intelligent, computers have migrated from being crunchers of information to optimize productivity to connectors of people to create value. Given this backdrop, we can begin to conceive this converged digital nervous system as a pervasive and expanding ecosystem whose central purpose is to facilitate collaborative learning, enable collective action, and encourage growth on both an economic and individual level. In short, the convergence of these three technology vectors has created a digital learning layer that blankets the planet.
An undergirding argument of Learning on Demand is that learning professionals must understand how to tune in to the evolving nature of this digital learning layer in the design, development, and distribution of content that drives organization performance. As learning professionals, we need to consider the opportunities and challenges we will face as the organizations we serve look to break the bounds of the traditional classroom by leveraging this near ubiquitous learning layer to engage a worldwide audience at a scale and price point that was inconceivable a decade ago.
In researching the behavior of organizations in adopting new technologies, Peter Drucker popularized the notion of the routinization trap: a pattern where organizations typically apply radically new technologies to automate existing business routines. In this book, Reuben makes the compelling case that the field of training and development has tended to use technology to service an old model of education: one that looks to digitize and automate the classroom delivery paradigm. He also argues—very accurately to my way of thinking—that we need a fundamental rethinking of how to leverage the digital learning layer to change the game in learning. To quote one of Gloria Gery’s always piercing insights, “We don’t need new technology we just need new thinking.”
In order to maintain relevance in a world where “business as usual” is rapidly evolving into “business unusual,” Reuben suggests we must leverage this digital learning layer to support the fluidity with which people are learning while performing. Furthermore, he recommends that to continue to add value to the organizations that we serve, it is imperative that learning content no longer be segregated from the systems and technologies used by the rest of the business. As a result, learning professionals must immediately begin to explore how the learning layer can be leveraged to enhance people’s productivity at work, rather than simply asking how it can be exploited to accelerate our ability to deliver instructional content outside the work context.
In this book Reuben has made a solid and substantive contribution in describing his vision of a world where learning truly does become “on demand.” Beyond this compelling vision, he outlines a new design paradigm that emphasizes the need to focus not only on how content is designed but also how it is deployed and consumed. Furthermore, he describes in great detail the technologies that can be employed to realize this new design paradigm. In short, the work you hold in your hands not only makes the case for change to an “on demand” learning paradigm but also provides a clear road map for doing so.
In having read this work, your charge will be to apply what you have learned within your own organization to make Reuben’s Learning on Demand vision the reality it deserves to become. In that charge I wish you all every success.
Tony O’Driscoll
Executive Director, Duke Corporate Education
2012
Preface

As a child, I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming an instructional designer. I didn’t even have an interest in working within the technology space. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted to do until after I started doing it and found that I was able to not only follow best practices but also to create my own best practices that worked. During the last decade or so, I have been working at a company that I began. It is based on a set of beliefs and practices that I used while working for others, which helped me rise to the top of every organization I worked for previously. The path I traveled to become an instructional designer did pass through a formal master’s degree, which was the second master’s degree I worked on. Most of my education before instructional design was focused in the arts, having done a degree in creative arts, then philosophy.
As a budding philosopher, I spent a lot of time looking at how people interact with the environment around them. I looked at how different people drew different meaning from the same object. I wrote about how people “experience” events and how the body processes memories. The shift from philosophy to instructional design was very natural for me because I had already spent a considerable amount of time looking at research around learning and the processes for learning.
I’m a big believer in the foundations of a specific art or science. In other words, if you want to become a really good dancer, you should probably study and master ballet, jazz ballet, ballroom, and so on, before you either invent a new dance or call yourself a dancer without affiliating yourself with any style. I believe in the foundations of an art and I am deeply committed to the foundations of instructional design. In large part, my inspiration for writing this book comes from a strong desire to raise the bar on the value instructional designers bring to the business table for their organizations. I desperately want to see instructional designers who are rooted in the value initially conceived for the job, working in a world connected through technology that has changed everything around us, and who are valued by others sitting at the table as well.
I was involved with the computer-based training industry early enough to watch the evolution from CD/DVD-based courses to Internet-based courses, mostly set up as websites and then finally to learning management systems taking over. I remember listening to industry thought leaders talk about “blended learning” once the virtual classroom technolo