Last week, I had the good fortune to speak with George Siemens for an upcoming Xyleme Voices podcast. The opportunity to speak one-on-one with so many industry luminaries is easily the best part of my job given the lively debates that often flow from these discussions. My conversation with George was no exception as we spoke at length about Connectivism, social learning networks, and the future of current learning technologies (LMS, LCMS, etc.) in light of social media. It was this last point where our discussion got quite animated.

While there are countless articles about the future of the LMS, it was arguably George’s blog post titled Future of learning: LMS or SNS? which kicked this discussion into high gear. So, I was not going to let the opportunity to debate this topic pass me by.

George believes that the future of both the LMS and the LCMS is quite strong, the obvious point being that there will always be a need for structured content and reporting to meet regulatory and legal obligations. However, those vendors who rely solely on this argument are very likely to find themselves quickly marginalized. To stay relevant, George believes training vendors should do two things:

1. Stop talking “learning” and start talking “capacity” and “execution” like the rest of the C-suite.
2. Augment their systems with components that provide opportunities for people to interact in social systems for informal learning.

By doing this, George argues that vendors (LMS in particular), and the organizations they sell to, will begin to see their product no longer as simply an event-based tool for learning, but rather as a process-based tool for capacity planning and workplace effectiveness. When this happens, the LMS will move past somewhat of a marginalized view to something that is more systemic and more broadly leveraged across the organization.

The problem lies not in this goal, but how learning vendors are choosing to get there. Dan Pontefract, in his most excellent post The Standalone LMS is Dead makes the following argument:

“Set up your ‘Facebook for the organization’ by embedding an LMS (or LMS like features) into your enterprise-wide collaboration platform. Coaches, mentors, online buddies need to coexist within the wiki’s, blogs, discussion forums, webcam meetings, online presence, etc. which needs to coexist within the list of formal classroom and eLearning offerings which needs to coexist with your documents, knowledge management, videos, podcasts, which needs to coexist with the profiles, skills, and recent activity-feed happenings of all employees. Blow up your LMS. Find a way to integrate it into your collaboration platform.”

This argument, while spot-on, has fallen on deaf ears. Instead of partnering with social media vendors who are already firmly entrenched in the enterprise and integrating their own best-of-breed LMS features into these platforms, we are instead watching LMS and some LCMS vendors develop their own set of social media functionality. Here is why I believe this strategy will not only fail but risk further marginalizing L&D:

1. Companies will choose best-of-breed social business software vendors for enterprise social learning deployments, not niche players

Below is Gartner’s 2009 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, G00171792 [see note at end of post]. This is a list of roughly the top 35 or so social media vendors providing a broad core set of social media capabilities. You’ll see with the exception of Saba, there are no learning vendors on this list. This is due either to a lack of revenues derived from social software licenses or to having a specific industry focus, or both.

In this report Gartner defines the main uses for these vendors’ social software tools, two of them being the following:

“Empowering communities of experts and interested parties (bonding people by specific interests, capturing best practices, disseminating lead-user innovation and providing an informal support network).”

“Accessing relevant knowledge and expertise that can be used to formulate a plan of action when decisions need to be made.”

Wow! These sound a lot like the definition of Social Learning. This poses an interesting question: If best-of-breed broad ecosystem social software vendors can meet the requirements of social learning in addition to other social functionality required within an enterprise, what sense does it make to implement the social learning solutions offered by the LMS/LCMS players?

Indeed, in this same report, Gartner makes the following observation:

“Being smaller with a specialist focus rather than broader ‘ecosystem’ players, they are struggling to demonstrate enterprise credibility and long-term viability through partnerships, alliances, integration options and examples of customer success.”

2. Learning-focused social functionality simply reinforces L&D’s status as a small, siloed organization with minimal enterprise influence.

With social media, the hard reality is that small niche players like LMS and LCMS vendors will always lag behind dedicated social business software players. Referring again the Magic Quadrant report for Social Software in the workplace, Gartner states the following:

“They (niche players) are still held back by breadth of functionality, by product road map urgency or by lack of an innovative growth strategy.”

A quick social media search also turned up a number of comments on the subject. Here is one I found interesting from @jacobboone:

“. . .I was at the CLO symposium in 2009 and eLearning vendors are coming at it from the other angle…providing collaboration platforms wrapped around their content. The problem is that this results in informal learning about formal training content only…and the usability is way behind. . .”

Despite this, Gartner does believe that niche players do have a viable growth strategy available to them by focusing on specific verticals or supporting specific activities. Obviously, this is the sweet spot for LMS/LCMS vendors offering social media functionality. However, we need to face another harsh reality posed by Gartner:

“Products from specialist vendors continued to be preferred for first and follow-on deployments, but many smaller vendors are struggling to close large enterprise-wide deals.”

This poses another interesting dilemma. George Siemens believes that LMS vendors need move past their current marginalized view by providing process-based social media tools that are systematic and leveraged broadly across the organization. But, how can L&D break out of their siloed state and exercise enterprise-wide influence when they utilize point social solutions that lack the ability (both in terms of functionality and vendor influence) to extend beyond training? I’d say they can’t.

3. In most organizations, social learning initiatives will be driven outside L&D

Back in April, I had the opportunity to chat with Ben Kiker, the Chief Marketing Officer at Jive Software at the time. Although we never hear about it in the training blogs, Jive is actually driving some of the biggest and most successful social learning projects today in terms of scope, size, adoption and engagement.

When I asked Ben who was the driving force behind these projects, his answer was not L&D, but rather the COO or General Manager of a substantial business unit. He then provided me some pretty stunning examples of social learning in action and across the enterprise. You can listen to the podcast here, but check out the stats of these two examples:

Swiss Re (global reinsurer operating in >20 countries): Internal Collaboration – The goal here was the efficient exchange of subject matter expertise across worldwide business units, locations, and time zones. Within seven weeks of implementing their social network:

• The adoption rate surpassed 60%
• 2,200 people created profiles and/or joined groups
• >1,000 people engaged in discussions
• >600 users were creating content

CSC (92K employees in >90 countries): Expertise Location – The goal was to quickly located experts and relevant assets for rapid turnaround and effective communication with key accounts. Within 20 weeks of implementing their social network:

• Adoption surpassed 25K users
• Over 2,100 groups were formed across practices, communities of interest, competencies, etc.
• Activity was robust with over 1million page views and >150 actions per month

So, social learning is happening and it’s happening in a major way with vendors who provide a broad range of capabilities, not the niche LMS/LCMS social media players. Social learning doesn’t work unless it permeates the enterprise and this cannot happen on the departmental level. So perhaps it’s time for learning vendors to rethink their social learning strategies. L&D shouldn’t be thought of as an island in a social world. It needs to be part of an overall enterprise content development and delivery strategy.

Note:

The Gartner Report(s) described herein, (the “Gartner Report(s)”) represent(s) data, research opinion or viewpoints published, as part of a syndicated subscription service, by Gartner, Inc. (”Gartner”), and are not representations of fact. Each Gartner Report speaks as of its original publication date (and not as of the date of this Prospectus) and the opinions expressed in the Gartner Report(s) are subject to change without notice.

For those of you who read my blog, have seen any of my blog comments, or follow me on twitter, you’ll know that I’m a fairly big critic of training departments that still tend to disconnect themselves from the rest of the enterprise, be it stand-alone learning content development processes, and now much to my chagrin, siloed social learning initiatives. Today, I’m going to talk about learning content management (ECM) and enterprise content management (LCM).

The enterprise content management software market currently exceeds $4B, so it’s quite clear that the vast majority of organizations place strong emphasis on their ECM strategy – a strategy that the training organization unfortunately typically takes no part in. In his paper At the Intersection of Learning and Enterprise Content Management (available for download at the resource library section of our web site), Chapman Alliance analyst and Brandon Hall associate Bryan Chapman makes clear the repercussions of such a strategy:

1. The training department cannot leverage content used in other parts of the organization,
2. There is limited or no collaboration between training and other enterprise functions,
3. Training have limited influence on the enterprise content strategy.

If there is any question as to why the training department has become increasingly marginalized and the CLO role quickly diminishing, this should provide some good insight.

But this blog post isn’t about why learning needs to engage with the enterprise. I’ve already written about this extensively in my Plugging Learning into ECM white paper (also available for download at the resource library section of our web site). What his blog post is about is what happens when the training function actually engages with the rest of the organization to take a leading role in the enterprise content management strategy and radically grows its sphere of influence to elevate learning from riding the bench to a star player within the enterprise.

In mid-May, along with Xyleme CEO, Mark Hellinger, I attended EMC World where one of our enterprise customers, Informa, had the opportunity to showcase their integrated Xyleme LCMS / EMC Documentum solution to the ECM community. For those of you unfamiliar with scope of this event, EMC World 2010 boasted about 8,000 attendees, filled up the entire Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for four days, and closed down Faneuil Marketplace, one of Boston’s biggest tourist destinations, for a private party for event attendees. It was very different from the typical training conferences that we regularly attend.

In front of an audience consisting of the people responsible for developing and executing on their company’s ECM strategy, Bob Hecht, Senior Vice President of Publishing Technologies at Informa, presented on how Informa’s performance improvement businesses, the groups responsible for the development of the company’s training content, transformed the company’s content-driven business through an enterprise project they dubbed “Olympus”. So how did they do it and what were the results? Read on!

Informa leveraged their existing ECM strategy and systems

In Bob Hecht’s view of the world, while there was a critical need for training-specific content management functionality such as interactivity, multi-channel publishing, and customization, as well as the need to support key learning standards such as SCORM – with the company-wide goal of implementing an enterprise content management strategy and system (EMC Documentum) already firmly in place – it made little business sense to implement a separate learning content management infrastructure that duplicated much of Documentum’s core functionality.

In ECM systems, functionality such as digital asset management, document management, and business process management are simply services of the ECM platform and not separate infrastructures. Much to his credit, Mr. Hecht recognized that learning content management needed to be just such a service that provided the functionality his team required, but within Informa’s over ECM system.

With that decision, Informa’s learning content developers were instantly elevated to the same playing field as other functional roles within the company. Training, marketing, product documentation, etc. could now all use the same tools, they can all access the same pool of content, and they can all follow the same set of standards.

If you don’t think this is a big deal, take this to heart: I was speaking with Bob after his presentation when an audience member came up to ask him a couple of questions about the Informa project. She was the person responsible for the content management strategy of a large European governmental agency. One thing she said that struck me:

“You know, we have a training department but no one really knows what they do. They kind of just sit over in the corner doing their own thing. I had no idea we could bring this into the ECM fold.”

I’m willing to bet you’d here that same sentiment at a lot of companies.

Informa set strategic goals beyond learning

One of the first slides that Mr. Hecht showed there was a list that he entitled Project Olympus scope and goals. Here it is:

Many of these should look familiar to any training department that is looking to purchase a learning content management solution, so I won’t elaborate on them. But then Mr. Hecht did something I’ve never seen a training organization do. He put up a slide that outlined the broader strategic goals:

Because Informa integrated their learning organization with the rest of the enterprise, Mr. Hecht had to look beyond training’s goals and understand how his own department’s business drivers would affect broader corporate goals.

Why is this significant? Well, when the training department makes the move integrate their systems and processes with the rest of the enterprise, they acquire something extraordinary: significant influence on the organizations corporate strategy. It’s this exact lack of influence which is the Achilles heel of CLOs today.

Informa chose to utilize best-of-breed ECM functionality for training

The training organization loves to reinvent the wheel. We as an industry dedicate vast amounts of R&D resources to general functionality such as workflow, collaboration and now social media functionality that will never get adopted past the departmental level. Why not? Well, for the simple reason that this functionality already exists with best-of-breed vendors outside of learning.

Mr. Hecht gets this and as a result, made the choice to utilize Informa’s ECM system for general functionality and utilize LCM functionality for unique, training specific requirements. Take a look:

ECM Platform	LCM Services

Collaboration is a great example here. Instead of the learning organizations collaborating only with each other using systems sourced from training vendors, they now participate in a role-based Documentum Team Room open to all relevant participants across the enterprise. Training content developers, subject-matter experts, product managers, marketing specialists, instructional designers, technical writers, consultants, etc. all create virtual communities of practice from which they can collaboratively work on new projects.

It’s impossible to understate the significance to the training organization when they are no longer disengaged from the rest of the organization. By plugging his learning organization into the enterprise, Mr. Hecht enabled transparency and seamless communication across all functions of the enterprise.

The training organization wins big

What I think is most extraordinary about the Informa story is the recognition of the immense contributions that the training organization can make to corporate goals and objectives. In 2010, the Olympus project won the award for the most effective Business Transformation within Informa. In a company with over $2 billion in revenue, 9,200 employees worldwide, and 150 offices in 34 countries, this is no small feat.

It also underscores the training industry’s acceptance that it needs to move to a point where this type of influence on the organization is a norm for a training department. In May, Xyleme LCMS for EMC Docmentum, the solution that drove the Informa Olympus project, was honored by Brandon Hall for the Best Advance in Learning Content Management.

This is just awesome momentum but the real question is: Can the training organization as a whole finally let go of their silos or are these destined to be one-off accomplishments?

In my next blog post, I’ll have my own answer to this question, but what do you think?

I was on Nigel Paine’s blog on Friday when I saw and commented on his post The Mash-up Begins. There have been countless blog posts about the theoretical potential of the iPad on mainstream media, most notably eBooks, so it was nice to see a real-world example of static content and video done in a way that equals, and even improves upon, the quality and design of the magazine layout.

Obviously, my mind shifted to learning as Nigel’s example got me immediately thinking about how we can apply these same mash-up concepts to traditional instructor-led training materials like study guides, manuals, and presentations. While training departments have been busy spending ridiculous amounts of time and money converting these training materials to e-Learning, Steve Jobs has (surprise!) changed the game by providing us with a new direct channel for ILT materials – the eBook. While eBooks of course aren’t new, the iPad now affords training departments the opportunity to add dynamic and interactive media to textbooks and other traditional learning media. In his insightful Influential Marketing blog post How The iPad Will Transform Mainstream Media (But NOT The Web), Rohit Bhargava provides a great description how the iPad will affect traditional textbooks:

“The one prediction I have heard that I do agree with is how the tablet could change the way that we read books. Everything from integrated links and images to live note-taking, to sharing notes with others in your community are all major shifts in behavior when it comes to reading books. For students, the other major benefit (in time) could be that finally you don’t need to lug tons and tons of books around with you for any class, you can just load them up on a tablet or iPad device. Even more importantly, the ease of sharing notes around a particular book will make reading and studying much more informed and perhaps lead to a next generation version of Cliffs Notes where you can get the context of a certain piece by how others have described it.”

And Aptara, in their article iPad: What Does it Really Mean for Content Publishers, provides an excellent illustration of what learning on these devices might look like (you may click on the image for a larger view):

So here we are. The industry is rapidly reaching a point where eLearning is no longer the center of the universe. Training departments who don’t recognize the tremendous implications this will have on their learning content development strategy risk facing significant consequences in terms of profitability and competitiveness.

Apple’s announcement underscores the fact that we are seeing a rapid shift towards standards adherence and open content formats. If you followed the iPad announcement, you will have noticed that Apple embraces a free and open eBook standard called ePub. This non-proprietary media format provides a way to have your traditional print materials in digital format. This is key opportunity for educational publishers, many of whom have already adopted the ePub standard, to realize an even greater ROI on their eBook investment.

So, in less than five years, Mr. Jobs has revolutionized two new delivery channels. We have all heard the advocates of blended learning, and with the introduction of mobile delivery and now the imminent ubiquity of eBooks, it’s time to ask yourself: Does it really make sense to have multiple tools and multiple copies of the content for each of these new delivery formats? Of course not! The time has come for the training industry to let go of their silos and proprietary formats and embrace a single-source content development model. Bob Mosher, in his PERFORMER Support: Learning @ the Moment of Need blog, provides his view of why single-source matters:

“Single-source publishing seems to be the tie that binds when it comes to effectively designing and integrating PS into an already vibrant learning strategy. Most organizations already use too many tools with redundant outputs and out-of-date content. Single-Source publishing has finally come of age and can do an amazing job of serving outputs for all 5 moments of need.”

Training organizations have to be agile and ready to immediately adapt to these new formats with learning content that is open and future-proofed. Are you ready, or is it time to rethink your single-source strategy?

A couple of weeks ago, Xyleme presented at Intelligent Content conference hosted by the Rockley Group. Intelligent Content isn’t a training event; rather it’s a small conference showcasing how leading edge companies are exploiting the value of content through XML, open formats, and standards. I think the Rockley Group’s definition hits the nail on the head:

Intelligent content is content which is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. It is content that helps you and your customers get the job done. It’s content that is limited only by our imaginations.

With intelligent content you can:

• Automatically deliver to multiple channels
• Personalize content
• Enable customers to easily find the information they need no matter how complex their requirements
• Let your customers build their own unique information products
• Deepen your customer relationship
• Share content across organizational silos
• Manage content throughout its lifecycle
• Rapidly adapt information to changing needs

We love this conference because it stands for everything that Xyleme is trying, and succeeding to accomplish, in the training industry. That being said, training still lags pretty far behind other industries such as technical publications and product documentation when it comes to intelligent content.

So, Mark Hellinger, President and CEO of Xyleme, took the opportunity during the event’s panel discussion to provide his view on why this was the case, and how to effectively make the move from documentation to Learning & Development. Here are some of the highlights from his talk, ranked by the number of tweets on Mark’s discussion points:

Create new output models but retain ability to use existing materials

Despite the movement to e-learning and now mobile delivery, print-based materials are still critical. So, structure content components to allow for conversion to different formats and let audiences select appropriate delivery modes as their needs evolve.

#ic2010 68% training worldwide today is still not done online or as e-learning. Despite initiatives 10 years ago, progress = slow [Xyleme]

#ic2010 People in e-learning try to move to new online tools, but want to keep all the “old stuff” content. Often a mismatch. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 e-learning: challenge of training on-line, is that legacy content was created around classroom, paper-based model. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 PowerPoint is number one “e-learning” tool in the world. Also, the least structured authoring tool. Start from outside in [Xyleme]

Mark Hellinger, Xyleme: 68% of training world-wide is in person, instructor-led or virtual instructor led (not elearning) per ASTD #IC2010

68% of all training is instructor-led or virtually instructor-led. Mark Hellinger/Xyleme #IC2010

Mark Hellinger, Xyleme: Q: What’s the most commonly used training software in the world? A: PowerPoint. #IC2010

Learn that silos are the norm in L&D

Most global training & development groups are very decentralized, therefore effective collaboration is crucial. So, provide the right tools and processes for subject matter expert (SME) knowledge capture, review, and discussion for these dispersed teams.

#ic2010 “Silos are the norm in L&D” [Xyleme]

#ic2010 Tech Doc is often completely disconnected from training & development people. TD often part of HR; way down on food chain. [Xyleme]

Understand that single-source is a change management project not a technology implementation

A single-source L&D implementation is not a one-off project. It’s a paradigm shift for almost everyone involved. Nothing will bring a project crashing to the ground faster than not clearly setting expectations and properly managing the change management issues faced by each stakeholder.

#ic2010 Real challenge: how to you radically change the way that people are creating content and doing things. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 1: start with hi impact project 2: understand single-source is change mngmt project, not tech implement [Xyleme]

Recognize that content reuse and multi-channel publishing are only part of the success equation

Unlike traditional documentation, successful Learning & Development projects go far beyond content reuse and multi-modal delivery. They also find a way of efficiently integrating interactivity, tracking, and performance support into the content life cycle.

#ic2010 3: recognize that content reuse and multi-channel publishing are only PART of the success equation [Xyleme]

Support training industry standards – they especially matter for blended learning

In the training industry, multiple standards (e.g. SCORM, QTI, Common Cartridge) are designed to support different types of delivery platforms and may have little overlap. Blended learning (combined classroom, web-based, and on-demand) requires extraordinary content reuse across these widely accepted standards.

Support training industry standards – they especially matter for blended learning. Mark Hellinger/Xyleme #IC2010

Examine the best practices of online universities

Online universities (e.g. University of Phoenix) are becoming common ways to earn degrees – even top-tier schools are offering online programs. Recognize that educational content will need to be effectively reused and delivered to this critical channel or lose a valuable source of revenue.

#ic2010 Notice changing trend: online Universities like Phoenix are doing well; traditional institutions are struggling for funds [Xyleme]

Thanks to Ann Rockley for putting on a great event. Till next year.

This past week, I’ve been reading and referring to Jane Hart’s article The State of Social Learning Today and some Thoughts for the Future of L&D in 2010 quite a bit. As always, Jane combines a wealth of information with some remarkable insights on where organizational learning is (or should be) headed.

One thing that has always been of great interest to me is what I’ll refer to as the integration of social and formal learning content. So when I got to the part of Jane’s article that said it’s time to re-think the design and delivery of formal learning initiatives, I felt we were on to something. Jane nails it when she says:

“It is also not just about churning out content (however well instructionally designed) but also about the social aspects of learning. Individuals need to have the opportunity to discuss, collaborate and share their experiences – and thereby add to the body of knowledge around a topic. UGC (user generated content) should therefore be seen as a valuable aspect for formal learning context – as much as expert generated content. ”

The industry accepted statistic that social learning evangelists often refer to is that that formal structured learning (FSL) accounts for only 20% of an individual’s learning. This is true. However, it doesn’t mean that the development of formal expert generated content is going to go away. Rather, it’s the delivery of this formal content that will change – in the form of less courseware and more guided delivery at the point-of-performance, with social media platforms providing a critical publishing channel.

Moreover, it’s crucial that we focus on ways for UGC to make its way into formal content development processes and leverage this rich source of information to create better learning products, drive new instructional design models, and most importantly, increase the richness and instructional value of learning content.

How User Generated Content Can Make its Way into Formal Learning:

1. Integrate UGC into formal learning content management: Feedback from forums and content from blogs and/or wikis are examples of valuable information that can be pulled or linked into learning content repositories to provide a unified view of organizational and social content. This pool of connected assets gives authors and instructional designers a more powerful arsenal of resources for creating compelling learning (formal or not).
2. Create Subject Matter Networks (SMNs): Socialize formal content by creating communities around its subject matter to foster rich dialogue around topics and to leverage connections between content authors and their networks. In this way, formal content is now supported and supplemented by an ecosystem of experts and related information. For example, at Xyleme the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of our user guide comes primarily from our product SMN.
3. Make social media part of formal workflows: Allow social collaboration to be another step in the review process by publishing formal content to internal (or external) communities for peer review prior to its wide release. Capture this valuable user-generated feedback and route it into the formal review workflows.
4. Republish UGC with (as part of) formal learning products: Monitor your social learning networks and capture the relevant UGC identified to be of potential value to the organization’s learning products. Send this UGC through the formal editorial workflow to check for appropriateness and quality standards, and then re-publish this content – in the appropriate context – to formal training publications to supplement and enrich these products. For example, supplement your product training materials with instructional demos created by your users and posted on YouTube.

(Note on this post: “Subject matter network” is a term I picked up from Harold Jarche when I commented on his Social learning in the enterprise post; also, the points I make regarding SMN are based on quotes from leading Social Business Software vendor, Jive Software. )

Time to cast your vote for the 2009 Edublog Awards! Voting closes Tuesday, Dec 15 (tomorrow) at 8pm EST.

Congratulations to all of those nominated. It’s an impressive list of bloggers, Tweeters (is that a word?) and other social media leaders who I plan to now read regularly and follow if I’m not already.

This year, our educational podcast library Xyleme Voices was nominated and shortlisted in the category of Best Educational Use of Audio. I’m very honored and thrilled and if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to give a shout-out to our spectacular team here at Xyleme. While I am the host of this library, there are a number of people in the background who put tremendous time, effort, and pride into researching, recruiting, and producing these terrific podcasts.

And of course, what would our podcast series be without our outstanding participants who take the time not only to be interviewed, but always come incredibly prepared. They all understand the impact of these podcasts, and no one takes them lightly. And admittedly, even after more than a year of doing these interviews, I am still incredibly nervous before each podcast.

So, I’d like to close this post by saying a few words about my experience with each of our participants thus far:

Bryan Chapman: I never get tired of working with Bryan. In addition to being incredibly likable, he has this uncanny ability to take complex topics and present them in an understandable and enjoyable way.

Janet Clarey: Smart, insightful, and a great presenter with razor sharp wit. Janet is a true champion for others in the industry and someone I aspire to be more like.

Ruth Clark: Gracious and wonderful to work with. Never underestimate this legend’s power. Within an hour of posting her podcast, she had hundreds of downloads. Even after a year, it’s still being downloaded.

Jay Cross: Has a great perspective on all subjects learning and is a true champion of the training organization. Today, training is undervalued and Jay’s goal is to ensure CLO’s take their true spot in the C-suite – at the top.

Conrad Gottfredson: A great friend and performance support guru. With the emergence of social media, Conrad’s learning at the moment of need has never had greater significance.

Micheal Hanley: Wonderful advocate for open source technologies. He’s passionate about what he believes in and I had a great time engaging in more than one spirited discussion with him.

Lars Hyland: A great guy and incredibly personable. One of the few vendors who understands the importance of making valuable contributions to the learning community rather than just pushing a corporate message.

Harold Jarche: So intelligent, it’s almost intimidating. Harold is not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and I still repeatedly refer to his ideas and concepts regarding learning networks.

Charles Jennings: What a thrill is was to interview this real-world CLO. His contributions to social learning in the workplace are second to none.

Ann Kwinn: Ann gave some great tips on the virtual classroom that I still use today.

Elliot Masie: A true showman and it comes through in his podcast. Deeply entrenched with learning executives, Elliot gave great insight into how training operates within blue chip companies.

Frank Nyugen: Let me just say this: there are not many people who can describe reusable learning objects with such clarity and make it so interesting.

Clark Quinn: Clark has a real gift for getting to the heart of the matter in a clear and succinct way and I’ve quoted him on numerous occasions. Also, he’s way too modest about the value he brings to training.

Allison Rossett: I think we can all agree that there is no one quite like Allison – smart, funny, and right on the money. I enjoyed our discussion – even when she let her cat join in on the conversation.

Clive Shepherd: One of my favorite podcasts because Clive makes you think hard about the things you take for granted and shows you that there is still massive room for improvement.

Ellen Wagner: Instructional designer extraordinaire! She gets it and taught me a lot about how to create an experience in learning. A great contact that I am grateful to have.

Thank you all and looking forward to another great year of podcasts at Xyleme Voices.

There is no question that the rise of social networks is creating a profound shift in the way training departments are delivering knowledge to their employees, partners, and customers. According to a McKinsey executive survey, a whopping 71% of enterprises are using Web 2.0 tools for training purposes and this figure is rising fast. While I could write an entire blog post on the reasons for this, I think Clark Quinn summarizes it quite nicely:

“As work becomes more complex and the level of information explodes, speed-to-competence will depend on an organizations ability to allow learners to support themselves by tapping into the knowledge of others.”

Social learning is all about providing more flexible and responsive ways for delivering this knowledge through user generated content, engagement, and feedback. The Web 2.0 revolution has brought learning networks front and center with “Connect and Communicate” becoming the new mantra for training organizations.

As with any revolution or uprising though, there is a natural tendency to take on the attitude that everything has changed and “all bets are off.” How many blog posts do we read these days whose title ends with the words “IS DEAD”?

Social learning is disruptive and training organizations need to evolve or die, there is no disputing this. However, let’s take a step and examine more closely some the most common current proclamations.

The 5 Myths of Social Learning:

Myth #1: User-generated content in social media platforms will replace formal content development processes.

Reality: User generated content will supplement the formal content development process and create efficiencies in Subject Matter Expert (SME) contribution, knowledge capture, and content review.

The obvious point here is that due to assessment, certification, and regulatory issues, training content will still require formal development processes. That’s true, but it goes much deeper than that. Social learning is bi-directional and user-generated content and feedback can be a valuable asset for instructional designers to develop more compelling and timely learning, whether that learning is published to a formal course, a non-formal podcast, or an informal blog. We are seeing this today. Leading social media vendors like Jive Software are integrating with the top ECM platforms to provide unified search, workflow, and storage of enterprise and social content, proving a cohesive environment where formal content is supported by an ecosystem of users that contribute expertise and relevant information.

Myth #2: Learning objects are dead.

Reality: Reusable content elements are even more critical for the deployment of content to social learning platforms to support incremental learning.

Charles Jennings of the Internet Time Alliance calls performance support the silver bullet for training, where learners are guided incrementally via relevant nuggets of information delivered at the point-of-performance. And as Charles demonstrated with the Thomson-Reuters Learning Exchange during his session at LearnTrends, social networks are becoming the de-facto performance support platform for SMEs to deliver targeted information. So, while many like to proclaim the death of learning objects, the fact is that social media applications, including mobile, are inherently designed to leverage small reusable content components and are more valuable tools to learners when they do so.

Myth #3: Training and development organizations will make stand-alone social media platform decisions.

Reality: Social media platforms have great organizational significance and will ultimately become part of the enterprise “fabric” just as we have seen with email, instant messaging, and other collaboration tools.

Although it starts as a groundswell, the fact is that if social learning is to be successful, it needs to go across the entire enterprise as a core infrastructure. McKinsey’s data supports this assertion: companies that reported the highest level of satisfaction with their social media deployments, more than half of all employees are using them. For all others, it’s about one in four.

Given the need for enterprise adoption, Forrester reports two key criteria that organizations need to look for in their community platform vendors:

1. Full solution services: In addition to the technology, they must bring experience branding in this new medium and deploying communities, strategy & education services, and community management services.
2. Integration with other enterprise systems: Organizations should seek vendors that understand how communities ties into other systems such as CRM, customer support, and marketing dashboards.

While many learning vendors have thrown their hat into the Web 2.0 ring, community needs to be a core competency, not simply an extension of an existing learning silo. Contrary to what we’d like to believe, social learning doesn’t always start at the training department and work its way up, quite the opposite. So while implementing social media tools provided by an LCMS or LMS vendor may ensure departmental adoption, experience and today’s market show us that enterprise adoption of these tools is not a likely reality.

Myth #4: Social media platforms can be implemented “organically” without any formal planning or oversight.

Reality: The vast majority of organizations will not deploy an enterprise social media strategy without governance policies for the use and oversight of these tools.

While one of the big benefits of social media platforms is the ability to create content quickly and eliminate rigid taxonomies for classifying content, policies will need to be put in place to ensure the integrity and proper use of this content. Many people feel that this is the antithesis of learning networks. But remember, even Wikipedia has formal processes for making sure user generated content is accurate – the organization has over 100 people worldwide dedicated solely to ensuring content integrity and penalizing those who attempt to use the platform for self promotion.

Myth #5: The LMS is dead.

Reality: No, it’s not.

This has been a topic discussed for ages (there is actually an absolutely excellent recent conversation on George Siemens’ blog with additional commentary by Jane Hart on her own blog as well as on the Learning Conversations blog) and I won’t spend much time on it except to say if you need tracking capabilities, an LMS is your only option. In order for social media platforms to totally eclipse the function an LMS plays, they would be forced to support interoperability standards like SCORM, AICC or Common Cartridge. Does it really make sense to build all of this functionality into social media platforms? The answer is probably no. This is why we are seeing LMS vendors merge social media tools into their platforms. So, the real discussion should be around the viability of an LMS as a social media platform. Will this strategy enhance the role of an LMS within an organization, or will their role continue to diminish as new network tools continue to arise?

I’m going to gloat a little bit. Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with training industry luminaries Jay Cross, Charles Jennings, Harold Jarche, and Clark Quinn of the Internet Time Alliance or ITA (formerly known as TogetherLearn) to record a podcast on collaborative and social learning in the workplace (if you would like to listen to the podcast, here it is in its 5 parts: part I – managing collaboration, part II – CLO’s and the needs of business, part III – collaborative learning in a corporate setting, part IV – social media in corporations, and part V – integrating learning in the enterprise).

A little background: We’ve been working on the Xyleme Voices podcast library for over a year and a half now. We consider it a contribution to the learning community so it’s something we take very seriously and dedicate a lot of resources to. To get not one, but four of the industry’s most notable experts together for a discussion as important as the future of CLO’s and their training organizations told me we were doing something right and I eagerly (and anxiously) awaited our discussion.

I’ll be understated here : these guys are good! During our discussion, Clark Quinn called the Internet Time Alliance a dream team and it quickly became obvious why this is indeed the case. While geographically dispersed across three countries and multiple time zones, they are nonetheless a cohesive unit and they truly build upon and leverage each other’s experience and perspectives. It’s obvious they practice what they preach regarding collaborative learning and social networks.

In addition to the obvious hands-on expertise these seasoned professionals provided throughout the 5 parts of their podcast, training executives can also glean some relevant insights on how to work with and get the best out of a top-notch team. Simply listen closely to how Harold, Clark, Charles and Jay worked so respectfully with each other in order to provide a discussion on social learning whose value is much greater than the sum of the points made by the individual participants.

OK, enough about how great they are, let’s get to the discussion. There were three common themes that ran through the entire panel discussion:

1. The ITA feels it critical to challenge conventional thinking.
2. The ITA is not afraid to call out the short comings of CLO’s and their learning organizations.
3. The ITA is bold enough to believe that CLO’s can become major C-suite players.

These gentlemen had some pretty provocative statements to make. So much so, that I’ll be blogging about the topics discussed for the next several posts, but let me round up some of my favorite points made from each participant for you:

We’re not seeing the end of the training department, but the end of the training dept as we know it in the 20th century. As work becomes more complex, it becomes less about developing content and more about developing networks. Connect and communicating – adapting to the networked business model is what the training department will be all about. -Harold Jarche

I disagree that CLO will have equal footing. I think that the CLO should be more important than the others because human capital is the core competence of corporations, so I see the CLO going up and beyond where other C-levels have presided. Their role will be that of the super CLO. –Jay Cross

We cannot isolate learning in one business unit because that is not how you leverage knowledge for competitive advantage. Collaborative networked learning has to go across the entire organization organically as core infrastructure. Jay calls this learnscape, I call it the performance ecosystem. Regardless of what you call it, it has to be like air and water – it has to be everywhere. -Clark Quinn

There is a real discomfort of doing things differently when adopting social media. It’s a real barrier and an interesting one because at this moment in time there is a real pressure to innovate. You can’t innovate without doing things differently, so there is a real paradox here. When we step out of our comfort zones, we throw up barriers: i.e. we can’t measure it so we can’t act on it. But you can measure it, you just need different approaches. –Charles Jennings

And my personal favorite:

Compliance is the enemy of the networked business model. -???

Check out my next blog post to find out who made this bold declaration.

Harold Jarche is blogging about the future of the training department, briefly looking back at the pre-training age and then at how training has evolved after its invention in the 20th century. He explains how today’s complex environments demand emergent practices and why a new training model and a new form of workplace have to be adopted to ensure the survival of the training department.

Learning technologies are not adopted similarly by all types of people. Karl Kapp is grouping technology adopters in five different types: Technology enthusiasts or Techies, Visionaries, Pragmatists, Conservatives, and Skeptics. In another related posting, Karl goes on to explain how learning technologies should be sold to each one of the groups listed.

According to Jesse Erwin’s review in the Association for Psychological Sciences, “social cognition can be boiled down into judgments of two key elements: warmth and competence.” Will Thalheimer is digging deeper into how this can affect learning and e-learning and what trainers should do to achieve higher learning engagement.

“E-learning in the workplace used to be the preserve of the large corporate or public body”. Clive Shepherd is blogging on how this has changed in 2009. “But this year we have seen a major shift. I personally have been working with a wide range of smaller companies and training providers who want to establish an e-learning delivery capability. Many of my colleagues are doing the same.”

Talk has been heating up lately regarding the use of open source versus proprietary systems for learning. For example, if you check out Michael Hanley’s blog, you’ll see that he’s dedicated most of his recent posts to this subject. Sophia Peters provides another interesting post entitled Deciding Between Open Source and Proprietary Software? In her article, she makes the following assertions:

• Open source software has grown to include […] an adherence to established standards, which is a high priority for open source software development.

• Proprietary software has closed standards that hinder further development.

The debate regarding open source versus proprietary is one that will rage on for a long time and it is not really black or white. However, I think there is one thing that most people can agree upon:

A solution based on standards is the best way to lower costs and protect the return on investment for learning projects in the long run (and, yes, there is an investment whether you use proprietary or open source software).

Having said this, the assertions stated above would lead us to believe that open source is the answer to all of our issues with standards in e-learning. Brent Schlenker, commenting on Michael Hanley’s blog, says: “. . . once people get past their initial fears and the stigma, the Open Source learning development community will grow exponentially.” While I admire the enthusiasm, experience in other application areas has shown us that this is not always the case. (Does your company use an open source ERP system, or perhaps SAP or Oracle? Does your company use an open source Enterprise Content Management Solution, or perhaps Sharepoint or Documentum?)

Let me make what at first blush may seem like a preposterous argument:

Open source has failed to reach critical mass in a number of technology sectors, and may also fail to do so in learning for the foreseeable future. One reason is clearly a lack of robust adherence to standards that negatively impacts functionality and limits a developer’s ability to create sophisticated solutions.

I know, how can I say such a thing? I didn’t believe it myself, so I did the following Google search: “Moodle and standards.” On the first page I ran into the following post entitled On Open Source, Open Standards, and Lock-in. Here’s the salient bit:

Moodle happily ingests those formats, acting to absorb content into what then becomes an inescapable pit of quicksand. It’s a one-way trip. Content can check in, but it can never leave.

If Blackboard did that, there would be villagers marching in the streets with torches in hand. The Blackboard SCORM import/export stuff might not be perfect, but at least they try to let people move content out.

With Moodle, it’s currently a vendor lock-in proposition. The only saving grace is that the vendor just happens to be an open source project. But it’s still lock-in.

So, open source Moodle does not export to SCORM, the most prevalent e-learning standard?

The post is dated March 2008. Its 18 months old, so I did a quick search of the Moodle forums to see what the status of the SCORM export feature is today. It’s marked as major and it seems to still be open. You can read the comments yourself but here is one that caught my attention:

There are people that use the fact that moodle is “scorm compliant” as one of its many virtues. Now I’m realizing that it is NOT scorm compliant – moodle can import courses but not export them in scorm.

This is a big priority for any software that wants to call itself a viable competitor in this field.

Well, according to these posts, at least Moodle can import SCORM – or can it?

Perusing Moodle.org a bit further, I came across the following:

SCORM 2004 is not completely supported in Moodle at this stage. Parts of the API have been implemented, but others such as Navigation and Sequencing have not yet been implemented.

So, open source Moodle sort of imports SCORM 2004, the most prevalent e-learning standard?

I’ll stop here because the point of this post it certainly not to crack on Moodle or say that open source is a bad investment. I don’t believe either. I think open source software can be a great viable solution for many organizations. In fact, we use open source here for our web content management.

The point that I am trying to make is that standards and breadth of functionality are hugely important and to make the assumption that the term ‘open source’ automatically translates into these can lead to uninformed decision-making and projects that don’t reach their expected ROI. Or to put it more simply:

Open source or proprietary? You’re asking the wrong question.