| Transcript of Kineo Interview with Jane Knight |
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Introduction and Jane’s Tools of 2005 Introduction and Jane’s Tools of 2005 Stephen: Hi, this is Stephen Walsh and welcome to Kineo’s December podcast. Well this month I had the pleasure of catching up, via Skype of course, with Jane Knight of the e-learning centre. If you don’t know it, the e-learning centre was founded by Jane in 1994 and since then has just been a terrific resource for keeping in touch with new trends, new tools, new ideas and new technologies for learning and specifically for e-learning. And I started the conversation by asking Jane, as she looked back over 2005, which tools really stood out for her as key for driving e-learning forward this year. Jane: Stephen: Yeah, for anyone trying to aggregate information, and especially trainers who are struggling to keep up with what’s new tapping into RSS feeds like yours is a great way to do that. Jane: and then things like Wikis again, which a year ago people had never heard of, but now they’re beginning to have an impact for enterprises, for collaborative project work, but also in education as well. And also in terms of tools, the emergence and development of what I’d call user tools really, but e-learner tools, they just make life a whole lot easier for the e-learner. Tools like social bookmarking tools where you can store and share your bookmarks with colleagues and so forth like Spurl. Tools to share other resources like photos, for instance Flickr. So tools like that which probably have been around for a good few years, but really seemed to have sort of taken off in this past year and then tools like Skype which we’re using now, which has really, really helped to support communication and collaboration between individuals right round the world. Trends of 2005, informal, rapid, cheaper Jane: In terms of trends, the two trends that I think have become better understood this year are informal learning and rapid e-learning. We’ll talk about informal learning in a bit, but in terms of rapid e-learning, I think this is something that… really the time has come for organisation to embrace this because they need to be able to create solutions very quickly, very easily and very cost effectively and now the tools are becoming available to support this. It’s not about creating monolithic online courses with big sophisticated software which you have to be a real professional to be able to use. Anybody within the desktop can create smaller learning resources very, very easily and cheaply, which are very re-usable - can be used in many contexts, and also disposable so once they’re out of date, once they’ve done their job they can just easily be removed…it didn’t cost the earth to produce them, so there’s no necessity to keep them sitting there in the catalogue or whatever to try and get your money’s worth out of them Stephen: I guess those trends and tools - for me the year - they’ve almost - there’s been really a shift in the balance of power, or maybe the means of production is a better way of saying it, from the traditional course, professional course developer’s e-learning market to everyone - anyone can create a blog or make a Wiki contribution or use a tool like Skype to record a call like we’re doing right now as a piece of learning and I think that while that’s probably quite scary for people who are used to the traditional course delivery, with more and more people developing and thinking about what e-learning is and what e-learning could be. Jane: I think, you know, in terms of 2005 for people like you and me who are in this business it’s been a wonderful year, but for the poor consumer I feel that things may have become even more confusing - so many things out there now, so many different ways of creating different solutions and so forth that it’s perhaps become rather overwhelming. Also one of the reasons why over the last few years I’ve created my guide to e-learning which is mainly intended for a complete introduction to e-learning. Just to put some of these tools and concepts into some context and provide some sort of pathway into this whole maze of e-learning…when to use the different tools… Stephen: It’s a very valuable service. It’s a great way to get started otherwise you could spend days and weeks just researching all these things on the web, so having it consolidated is really useful for people. Jane’s e-learning bug bears: It’s not a course Stephen: Maybe let’s come on to think about some of the bugbears you face on a daily basis in your area of learning development. Jane: Well in terms of e-learning I’m afraid I’ve got quite a few here. The first one is the whole notion of e-learning being much more than online courses. For me, I meet many people who think this is still a very limited definition of e-learning and I believe, and I’m sure many others of course like you I know do, is that e-learning is actually a term that encompasses much more than just formal online education and training, it’s about providing information, it’s about communication and collaboration between learners and sharing knowledge and experiences. And I think that whilst it’s not fully appreciated within organisations, it’s almost a barrier to success of e-learning within the organisation because it’s not being used to help organisations to move on so they can deliver on their business objectives. And I guess it’s due to the term itself, I mean e-learning is just not the right word to use anymore. I think its got some negative connotations which people pick up on and it’s much more about e-working or performance support than e-learning and I’ve just been struggling for many years to think of a better term, but I’ve never come up with one and it doesn’t look as if anyone else has got one either, so I think we’re probably stuck with e-learning for a little while to go yet, but I just don’t think it describes what it’s all about. It seems to me that people think of e-learning as courses and all this other stuff as something else - it’s not sort of part of the grand vision of what e-learning could be. And the other thing that I have to face quite regularly is that people think that e-learning should be the same in every organisation and I truly believe that it shouldn’t work the same in every organisation; there’s no one way of doing it - the way that e-learning is developed and implemented within an organisation should be very much determined by who the learners are, where they’re working and the particular environment they’re learning in, the technology in place and also the budget. And it scares me when I hear about organisations having to change the culture to make e-learning work in their organisation, because for me it’s completely the other way round ; it’s about creating the right solutions for the organisation, so they’re just intuitive and natural and they work. And then when that happens they’re learning more and more, because it’s just so easy - it’s more natural. When you’re having to force fit something into the organisation then you’re asking for trouble. And finally I get very cross when people tell me that e-learning is not working, because if it wasn’t working, then it wasn’t the right solution or appropriate for the organisation or people, or the learning environment or whatever, in the first place. It’s not just about creating a solution to a problem, quite independent of the context and the learners and then imposing it on the employees; it’s got to fit - it’s got to be the right solution.
Stephen: So what was true about e-learning back in 1994 - it seems a long time ago now when you started the e-learning centre - that you still believe holds true now? Jane: OK well, the one bit for me important thing about e-learning, when, in 1994 the web was born and I realised its potential for education; it held the potential for changing the way you do things. And this, unfortunately, hasn’t really altogether been grasped I think with e-learning, I think it’s very much been about tools not about doing things differently. There’s a fantastic quote by somebody called Thomas Wellerber which is, ‘The biggest obstacle to innovation is thinking it can be done in the old way’. And I think this is true for e-learning, because in many cases, it’s about just using the technology to deliver training, education, whatever in the old way. It’s not about thinking about how you can do things differently. And there are a couple of analogies which I think are very good and the first one is about when banking changed they put the first ATM machine inside the bank. That’s just doing things the old way. It wasn’t until they moved the ATMs outside the bank that banking really changed. It changed everybody’s view of how they could get money and so forth. And the second one was the fact that the early motion pictures were essentially stage plays on film, so they were all set on stage. And It wasn’t again, until directors recognised or realised they could use the new movies in different ways that we saw films really offering a new experience to the viewer. And it’s the same with e-learning; in many cases its being used to automate the old ways of doing things - on line courses and so forth. Really to do things differently requires individuals to think how the technology can be used to achieve things in a better way. So technique definitely does lag behind technology and it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to change until learning designers, learning engineers or whatever you want to call them really understand that, and I think there are obviously many examples of where e-learning has really revolutionised particular organisations or parts of organisations, but in many cases for me, I still see it as something that has been used to automate old ways of doing things. So that’s something I’ve been going on about for 10 years and I think it’s still true today - that e-learning does have the potential to change the way we do things, but I don’t think that’s fully recognised by everybody yet. Informal learning: 80% of the answer Stephen: You’ve written recently about the importance of informal learning. I was interested in the now commonly held view that 80% of what happens in organisations is informal rather than the classroom traditional structured learning. To me that represents a challenge to trainers. What is the trainer’s responsibility in reacting to and attempting to manage or not manage that? Jane: Well, I think organisations do understand the need for informal learning. If you go to conferences you can see people nodding vigorously when they realise that so much learning within organisations is actually informal. But in practice I’m not really seeing it happen in a very practical way. And I think this might be because training departments actually don’t see their role creating informal learning solutions. So, if you go to a training department with a learning problem, they see themselves very much as about providing formal solutions. I guess they don’t see their role as one being to support the informal learning needs of people. Places where I’ve seen it working best, perhaps, are in the business units, like customer support, where in order to make customer support more effective, they’ve created small learning resources that have been really very useful. But, funnily enough, when you ask them about this, they don’t actually realise this is e-learning. They just think it’s, well, it’s a natural thing to do, isn’t it? So, I think we’re back again to that whole confusion of terms. E-learning actually does include informal learning as well as formal learning. But, in terms of informal learning, I think that one of the other problems they have in a more formal training department is the need to justify everything they’re doing; to see some sort of return on investment on what they’re doing. And I think the problem is that people feel they can’t monitor it - they can’t manage it. And there’s obviously a school of thought that says if you can’t manage it, you can’t measure it. In order to justify their existence, they can’t spend too much time creating things that they can’t measure…so they can’t tell who’s done what. For me, the most important thing is now making people have access to content or people to answer their own learning problems. So OK yes, there will be a need for formal training, but for the informal learning it’s probably about giving people responsibility for development and finding out themselves. You can create more resources, you can create informal networks and formal networks for people to come together, but I don’t think you can try to over-manage that. Online communities: when and where? Stephen: If someone was looking to set up a community practice in their organisation what advice would you give them to get started? Jane: Well, I think the first thing to say is that you know creating communities, practice, creating learning communities are another hot topic in the area of learning and just like any other hot topic, they have a place. There are places when they work and places where they don’t work. And I’ve heard some stories of people coming back from conferences where they’ve all been fired up with the idea of creating communities, particularly online communities for their organisation, using new tools like Wikis or social networking tools or whatever, and putting these in place and finding they just didn’t work. And then they got very disheartened. When you looked at it you find often that the organisation was quite small and people were probably based in one office, so why on earth did they want to create an on-line community when people could just go and talk to one another at the coffee machine? So I think it has to be very clear whether an online community the right thing to do in the first place? And then they need to have a reason for their existence; a clear purpose - so not just something that’s there available and you can just discuss anything - the weather or whatever. Individuals need to really be motivated to participate on a particular topic and discussing particular issues and so forth. If those particular things are in place, then I think they can really be a very powerful way for people to share knowledge and experience within the organisation as well as supporting one another, and I think just perhaps in many cases, peoples’ experiences are more valuable than maybe reading something in a manual or a reference guide. So for instance, sales people might have had a hard time with a customer, and they could share this experience with another member of their community who might be able to explain how they dealt with a similar situation. And something that they never could have found in any reference manual. But when setting up communities within organisations I always think you need to think very carefully about do you understand whether they’re going to be formal or informal communities and make quite clear to the people to ensure they understand as well because, if you’re going to record… to try to record some of the interactions to try and capture it, it’s very important that employees do understand this and that they know that what they say or what they write is going to be recorded. But informal networks I think have become very popular, particularly outside of the organisation. I think they’re sort of booming all over the place. Places like Friendster. Just general places to meet online and socialise. Obviously people like to do this, people like to come together online and share their interests.
Online communities: which tools and with who? Stephen: We went on to talk about what sort of tools you might consider when setting up a community and also the importance of getting founding members involved from the start. Jane: Well of course now there’s lot of different tools to create informal networks or communities very quickly and very cheaply as well. Probably one of the best is the simple instant messaging tools which I think are a fantastic way for people to communicate with each other internally. Well I think that, but unfortunately some businesses don’t think that, and as you probably know, they have removed them from peoples’ desktop machines. Because they see it as people inanely chatting. But I really think they’re missing an opportunity here, because, that probably will happen in the first instance, but after that, after a certain time people will use it perhaps in a much more businesslike way, to ask questions of individuals and share knowledge and so forth. Stephen: We inanely chat on the telephone and with email as well. Jane: Absolutely and with e-mail as well, exactly. So there are lots of tools to support this kind of thing and within business of course there are much more sophisticated tools like Spoke and Visiblepaths which you know are very much more business-orientated goals . So I think for an organisation looking to tap into knowledge in their communities they need to set up the right type of community using the right type of tools; so back to this appropriateness thing again. And also to make them, to ensure that they do succeed, then in some cases they may need to have a facilitator on board as well, to nurture them and build them and ensure that it’s right, because in some cases, perhaps in an education environment, they can sometimes fade away as people loose interest, so they might need to be seeded with ideas and thoughts. Sometimes these things don’t just happen; they need to be supported. Stephen: Yes. For example setting up a wiki in an organization. You need to have founding members to get it started and who are committed to contributing on a regular basis. They need to reach a tipping point before before they become self-regulated and managed of their own accord. You can’t underestimate the effort involved. Jane: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right because the thing I always say is that content costs a lot to produce up front, but whereas systems like instant messaging can be very cheap to set up, but the cost comes in maintaining them, assuring that they can work and the people in the networks do come together and contribute Podcasting: Old concept, new ideas Stephen: Obviously we’re using Skype for our conversation right now which is great but I’m interested in your view on the potential of audio learning within the context of learning in general. What sort of learning situations is it best associated with and have you seen any interesting uses of it recently? Jane: Well, I guess you’re also referring to podcasting? Well it’s a new name, but it’s really not a very new concept is it? It’s just audio, but it’s a new name in association with these great new i-pods that have really brought it back into fashion again. Goodness. Just like all the tools and techniques which we’ve talked about, I think it does have its place. Just as we’re developing any learning solutions you need to think about who your learners are and what’s the best way to provide them with their learning. And I think one of the areas where podcasting is particularly successful, is when the target audience is very mobile and they can listen to podcasts in their cars and trains and places - whatever. And so one area that I’ve seen it being used very effectively is for delivering new product information to salespeople. In fact they were all given an i-pod shuffle, which they could also use as a flash drive for file transfer as well. And at only, £69 quid it’s a very cheap e-learning device. And then if you combine that with the power of RSS to push those new podcasts down to the sales people and new product information to sales people when they’re ready,rather than wait for them to come and find it….it‘s an absolutely fantastic way to ensure they stay up to date with company products. Such a no-brainer really. Stephen: We talked to Clive Shepherd in last week’s interview and we said the great thing about audio learning is the chance to buy an i-pod on expenses… Jane: (Laughs) you might even get one free. I guess if you buy them in bulk they’re not going to cost the organisation £69. Taking a step on from that - mobile devices converge and we’re going to see lots of big growth, I think, in learning resources in these formats….mobile phones even and of course I think the next step will be video learning - after all, the new i-pods can actually now play video sequences can’t they? That’s going to be the next big thing. Stephen: It’s a great way, I think, for people who are experts in their organisation to, you know, put some of those things we spoke about earlier, quickly develop cheap, disposable content - you don’t have to write a course about it. You don’t have to have much, if any, learning design around it. You can record your insights today, or today’s best experience for a customer, or maybe even more useful, mistakes people are making when trying to position a produce and push that out to the right people at exactly the right time. Jane:I think the length is important as well, you know 5, 10, 15 minutes. Maybe something more formal - 20, 30 minutes, you know, but we don’t want hours of this… Stephen: No, I think the 3-minute pop song is a good method for this. Free tools: Ideas and challenges Stephen: I talked to Jane about free and open source tools, the benefits that they provide and some of the challenges to. And during this she mentions our free report, ‘50 ideas for free e-learning’ which you can download for free - appropriately enough - from our website. Jane: First of all the challenges are keeping up to date with what‘s available free I know there‘s a great little resource - 50 ideas for free e-learning - which is fantastic to see. If people haven’t already seen some of those key tools that’s one of the ways we can help promote them. I try to promote free e-learning wherever I can. The consultancy business - it’s not about trying to sell people the most expensive solutions, it’s about helping them to do their job as quickly and cost effectively as they possibly can. And particularly in public education or a small company on a really tight training budget these tools when they know about them are an absolute godsend - they just don’t realise they’re available. So I think the challenges are first people finding out what’s available and sort of getting your head around these things. I think the sort of second challenge is just because they’re free; they shouldn’t be used just for that reason; they’ve got to be used because they’re the most appropriate and cost effective tool for whatever the resource you need to produce. It’s easy to think - I’ve got these free tools, I must create something with these free tools. I think the ‘free’ part shouldn’t come first; it’s what do I want to create? What type of solution is most appropriate or right for my situation and then is there a free tool that can create that for me?
Jane: Well, I had a look at your list of tools, I mean they‘re the ones that I would pick out as well, I mean Skype, PoWowNOw conferencing - which makes that so much easier and much less expensive than some of the other systems; the user tools - things like firl, book marking, weblines, and the user end perhaps rather than the developers end. Wink which you picked up on - all those things are tremendously useful tools. Your list I think I would go along with 100%. It certainly means that e-learning development is really available now in everyone’s budget and I think that’s the fantastic thing about it. Because before people said I just can’t afford to that - I haven’t got the same budget as IBM or Cisco or whatever, but now everyone can do it. Jane’s hopes and tips for 2006 Finally, if you’re willing to look forward into 2006, I’m interested in what kind of trends you see further developing? Jane: What I’d like to see is things like more new tools, like we’ve been seeing coming out very regularly and continued enhancements to some of these tools we’ve talked about. Skype for instance has really sort of moved on tremendously over the last 12 months. File sharing tools, and generally tools to make development of e-learning, particularly podcasting, a lot easier. So just that’s one of the things I’d hope to see. Stephen: I see Skype’s got video on it now… Jane: Yes, I’ve actually downloaded the new version so I actually can see it. Stephen: Well I’m having a bad hair day so…. Jane: In terms of trends, I think informal learning is going to become a big issue for organisations. They’re going to have to think about how they’re going to support it or develop it. As you’ve probably read, Jay Cross is going to be publishing a big work on informal learning in 2006 - I think that’s going to be inspirational and hopefully will really get things moving in terms of how it can really impact on the world of learning in the future. But otherwise I certainly think that e-learning went through a little bit of a lull in the last few years and I think in 2005 it’s perked up gain. I’m hoping that 2006 will be similarly eventful and we’ll see some even perhaps completely new products. If I could think of one, perhaps I could make some money! Stephen: Well, let’s try and think together. Jane: There’s a lot of creative thinkers out there producing fantastic stuff so I just hope that continues.
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