Sims Learning Connections

Prompted by Mohamed’s comment on L&D and KM convergence Part-6: user experience, I read Mohamed Amine Chatti, Matthias Jarke, and Dirk Frosch-Wilke’s paper The Future of e-Learning: a shift to knowledge networking and social software, which was recently published in the International Journal of Knowledge and Learning.

This is an easy and useful read that begins with a fairly extensive historical review of learning management (LM) and knowledge management (KM) that concludes with a summary of “deficiencies in current LM and KM approaches.” Following this context setting, the paper proposes “the future of LM and KM” by introducing “seven critical factors that must be addressed to ensure the future LM [Learning Management] and KM models will endure.” A summary:

1. Knowledge networking and community building.
   

   To have a chance of success, LM and KM approaches need to recognise the social aspect of learning and knowledge and as a consequence place a strong emphasis on knowledge networking and community building to leverage, create, sustain and share knowledge in a collaborative way, through participation, dialogue, discussion, observation and imitation.

2. User-centric, not content-centric. “…a move away from one-size-fits-all content-centric models, and move towards a user-centric model that puts the learner/knowledge worker at the centre and gives him/her the control.”
3. Distributed, not centralised. “LM and KM solutions need to operate with a more decentralised and socially open approach, based on small pieces, loosely joined and distributed control.”
4. Bottom-up, not top-down. “LM and KM solutions need to follow an emergent bottom-up approach, driven by the learner/knowledge worker and based on sharing rather than controlling.”
5. Knowledge-pull, not knowledge-push. “…people create an environment where they can pull content that meets their particular needs from a wide array of high-value but less structured resources like information repositories, communities and experts, thus creating much more of a flexible, real time learning and knowledge culture.” (Marc J. Rosenberg in Beyond E-Learning, p.85)
6. Ensure adoption via “perceived usefulness” and “ease of use.” “Effective LM and KM approaches also need to develop mechanisms that ensure that learning and knowledge are embedded into the workflow of the job and in our daily activities in order to avoid any additional work.”
7. Facilitate relationship-building, which leads to a knowledge sharing culture and trust. This circles back to #1 with: “…encouraging people to build their personal social networks and join communities based on their needs helps to ensure trust and motivates them to share.”

I found this to be a useful list with two core themes, in my own words: ‘user-centric design’ and ‘acknowledgment that knowledge transfer and learning are social activities’. It is difficult to argue with either of these, and neither are exactly new news.

Alas, as I think about the e-Learning that I personally have had a hand in, I admit to having largely failed on all seven factors. The closest I’ve come to doing the “right” things are to ensure that the e-Learning points to the relevant existing communities of practice and that, where practical, there was some flexibility in the order and amount of consumption.

Why is that we (a very large we!) ignore the guidance in the factors above?

A list of the usual suspects includes:

• The project sponsors aren’t asking for the above, and the e-Learning team hasn’t offered or sold the benefits
• Functionality limitations for the majority of existing e-Learning platforms and Learning Management Systems (LMS); for example, no meaningful way to integrate collaboration functionality with instructional media
• Additional design and development work; to squeeze into an already tight schedule
• No staff for moderation or facilitation of community or network aspects of a solution
• Company organization separation between “knowledge management” and “learning and development” — whereas the solution described by the factors above calls for expertise jointly applied from these traditionally separate disciplines.
• Potentially, inappropriateness for the content and learning objectives. I am not resolved in how much of the above is appropriate for e-Learning that is (say) for straight-up software product functionality. Perhaps for another post I’ll give some more thought as to applicability. Your thoughts here?

I’m challenging myself, if there is another e-Learning project in my future (and I imagine that there will be), to pick at least two of the factors to really focus on as part of at minimum the ‘stretch goals’ for the project.