Mathemagenic

From August issue of Play for performance (bold is mine):

Why am I against training people in a structured, organized fashion? Here are my reasons:

• This approach treats all pieces of content as equally important. It presents too much information to the user.
• This approach focuses on the structure of the content rather than the needs of the user.
• This approach is boring. The user is presented with lots of information before being able to perform anything meaningful.
• This approach encourages trainers to stick to the sequenced presentation. Most of the time, trainers take the users through their collection of electronic slides.
• This approach punishes users for asking questions based on their needs. They end up getting a lecture about things they are not interested in.
• This approach reflects the expert's mind and ignores the beginner's mind.

If all of this is true, then why do have so much resistance from subject-matter experts, instructional designers, and trainers? Here are some reasons:

• This is the way most people are taught.
• This is the way information about a new product is transmitted from the designer, to the salesperson, to the user.
• Most instructional designers are analytical people. They assume that the whole world is exactly like them.
• From grade schools to instructional-design courses, people are admonished to prepare logical outlines before they begin to write.
• People believe that there are no alternatives to this type of presentation.

We know that there are alternatives. Instead of organizing the content into topics and subtopics, we can organize it in terms of challenges from the field and how experienced practitioners handle them. Instead of mass producing bullet-point slides, we can use the case method, simulations, and roleplays to get people closer to the real world. Instead of making presentations, we can answer questions.

I love this piece. I wonder how Thiagi's approach can take place of all kind of ID books that teach something that you never use in practice...

So, just to remember: there are few nice links to standards and reuse of e-learning articles. Other links from there:

How to Manage the E-Learning Development Team (this is from July Learning Circuits - I have to read my maillists in time :)

Inexorable and Inevitable: The Continuing Story of Technology and Assessment

Distance Learning Styles - I checked it briefly, it says that there are e-learning styles, while Peter Honey did not find them

Weblogs in Education - Edublogs? - he refers to eCLIPSE which is in my e-learning reading list as well

eBusiness in Education: Case Studies on the Effective Use of Electronic Business in the Education Sector - something to do with e-learning future trends as we discussed them

Came via TechLearn TRENDS #239: (bold is mine)

1. Customer Learning Growth:  I just returned from a Customer Learning Seminar in Chicago at a CRM conference.  It is amazing to watch the rate at which e-Learning is being deployed in the Customer Learning arena.  We are seeing three major trends in Customer Learning implementations in the past ten months:

a) Revenue Growth - Upselling Through Learning:  The deployment of Customer Learning as a strategy to enrich the prospects full understanding of the products they are considering purchasing.  Salesforces, both field and office based, are being equipped with targeted e-Learning modules that can be launched at customers to help close the deal or upsell additional products.  A learning customer is a highly engaged customer and a best prospect customer.

b) Expense Reduction:  The use of learning as a tool to reduce the labor intensive dimensions of call center and other forms of pre and post sales support.  If a learner can access high quality, engaging learning modules, as an alternative to long-duration support calls (or waiting on hold for a while), the company wins in both satisfaction and reduction of labor costs.

c) Customer Loyalty:  The use of learning as a tool to increase customer loyalty and to position the corporation as a source of affiliation and knowledge. This is even extending to the building of communities of practice amongst customers, to provide peer to peer persepctives and support.

This is something to think about in our KM project.

Something else - was so pity to miss TechLearn last year (everything had been arranged, but my passport got stolen). Now our budgets are cut and this is not my primary focus any more, so the probability of going is low... And I have their invitation card on my table.