Online courses must die! A touch dramatic, isn’t it? Now that I have your attention, please bear with me. There’s method in my madness… The myth of rapid authoring The proliferation of so-called rapid authoring tools over the last few years has coincided with an explosion in the number of online courses developed in-house. In the bad old days, technically challenged L&D professionals had to pay exorbitant fees to development houses to produce simple modules.
In tandem with this trend, though, has been the increasingly familiar cry of “It’s not interactive!”. But you know what? Yes, I know you can embed real interactivity into courseware via games, branched simulations, virtual worlds etc, but hardly anyone does that. So what’s the alternative? Frankly, there’s nothing most online courses do that a PDF can’t. Anyone (and I mean just about anyone) can create and update a PDF. Write up a Word doc and convert it? Update the Word doc and re-convert it? Now that’s what I call rapid. The best of both worlds Rockin’ role. Corporate Spending on Social Learning. Social learning is certainly a hot topic these days, with organizations rushing to incorporate these tools into their learning environments. But how much are companies willing to spend on informal learning? As of today – not much. Our recent study showed that 30 percent of US companies spent money on informal learning tools or services in 2010.
The figure was highest among large businesses, 42% of which spent money on informal learning during the year. In dollar figures, spending is minimal. The current focus on social and informal learning is somewhat akin to the mad rush to elearning ten years ago. The same holds true for social learning. For more information on what social learning tools companies are purchasing, and examples of how companies are successfully using these tools in their learning environments, read Corporate Learning Factbook 2011 and High-Impact Learning Practices: The Guide to Modernizing Your Corporate Training Strategy through Social and Informal Learning. Social Learning, Complexity and the Enterprise. Social Intranet – The Intersection Diagram « … or not.
Working Smarter Glossary. Kotter's 8-Step Change Model | Global Literacy Foundation. Coder-friendly - When do we reach the expert stage? In a previous post, I discussed about the Dunning-Kruger effect . As a brief summary, it means: “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. When you are aware of this result, you just ask yourself whether it’s normal to be confident in a domain.
So, how do we acquire skills? Perhaps, you know the Dreyfus model : The postulates that when individuals acquire a skill through external instruction, they normally pass through five stages. In the novice stage a person follows rules that are context free and feel no responsibility for anything other than following the rules. This picture gives a good representation of the five stages. Dreyfus Model - Credits: vitorpamplona.com The Dreyfus model and developers It’s a common situation with developers: we have just studied something in a book and some of us think that they are experts in the domain.
Credits: Dilbert.com - 2009/05/19 Come back.