 |
 |
 |
 On February 2-3, I attended the ASTD TechKnowledge 2005 conference in Las Vegas. What follows are some summaries of programs and observations from my time in the Exhibition Hall. Opening General Session Following a welcome by Katherine Horton, conference committee chair, Tony Bingham brought some rapid fire content to the Opening General Session with a presentation entitled Relevance 2 . Much of the information he brought forward validated the role of training in organizations. For instance, he cited the 2004 IBM Global CEO Study which said that CEOs are • now focusing on growth, not cost containment And CEOs see the three most pressing issues as being • establishing link between learning and organizational performance Bingham talked quickly and flashed a number of slides on the screen. For instance, one that I thought was interesting was a Brookings Institutions analysis that depicted the change between tangible and intangible asset over the two decades from 1982 to 2002. In 1982 Tangible Assets accounted for 62% of the Knowledge Economy. By 2002 it had shifted to as much as 85% of the Knowledge Economy being based in intangible assets such as human capital and intellectual capital not tied to individuals. Pretty impressive change. He showed some of the key elements of a 2003 ASTD Public Policy Council report on “Human Capital Challenge.” For anyone not aware of it, ASTD produces a number of highly useful reports and studies related to the field. The key data identified in this report included stats showing that the federal workforce was 2.7M strong in March 2002, that 50% of federal workers are eligible to retire in 2005, 70% of the Fortune 1000 cite lack of trained employees as the biggest barrier to sustaining growth, and that although the unemployment rate in December 2004 was 5.4%, the Employment Policy Foundation found that 2.3 million jobs were going unfilled and predicted that in 2008 there will be 4.6 million unfilled, presumably due to a shortfall of skilled employees. Why is this? Bingham stated that big reasons for the current gap between jobs and skills is that 26% of the workforce have current skills that do not match job requirement and over 40% due to changes in organizations that require new skills. Solutions include personalized learning which brings together enabling technologies, appropriate methodologies and standards. Computers are affording increased opportunities for on-demand learning because they have moved from being information crunchers to information connectors. He concluded with recommendations on how to address the skills gaps in our own organizations. 1) Identify and address the skills gaps within our organizations, 2) develop business acumen and focus on delivering results, not activity (learning results), 3) benchmark our organization against best practices – and share the results. Following Bingham was David Allen, who has his own company bearing his name. His talk was billed as one to show attendees who to process our work more efficiently. Presumably, this is the skill that companies hire him to bring to their organizations. His introduction by Kit Horton referred to Forbes naming his as one of the top five executive coaches in the US . It was the kind of talk that you put aside your pen and paper and just sat back and listen to. Programs Here is a look at the programs I attended that might be of interest. Soren Kaplan, cofounder of iCohere. “Online Communities for Collaborative Learning, Knowledge Sharing & Organizational Change” Having been involved with the community building via the Internet/Web for ten years now, I found this presentation and its product quite interesting. In addition, the speaker provided two useful handouts -- Community Design Guide and Community Design Worksheet , both sub-titled A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Collaborative Communities and Community Design . Kaplan first framed what it means to have an online community. You need people who share a common purpose, are using technology to build relations and learn together. A product of this dynamic is that these people are creating new knowledge and/or work on projects to achieve individual, group or organizational goals. In addition, there are key trends fostering online communities. Work is becoming more and more distributed, the comfort level people have with online tools is increasing, budgets reductions/constraints for travel are prompting more of us to seek new manners of meeting and collaborating, and “social computing” is increasingly seen as essential to learning and knowledge strategies. One important thing to emphasize is that community is NOT about technology. Communities are important, he explained, because the connect people together, provide a shared context, enable dialogue, introduce collaborative processes, stimulate learning, capture and diffuse new knowledge and help people organize. Largely, however, one can not build a community. Rather, communities must be cultivated. How? By recognizing the lifecycle phases in communities, which include: identifying the audience, purpose, goals, and vision for the community; defining the activities, technologies, group processes; piloting the community; rolling out the community to a broader audience; engaging members in collaborative learning and knowledge sharing activities; and cultivating and assessing the knowledge and products created by the community. Kaplan continued by distinguishing between four types communities: Affinity Communities (relationship focused), Learning Communities (learning focused), Communities of Practice (knowledge focused), and Project Communities (task focused). Kaplan reviewed his experience using iCohere with an international program for World Vision, a non-profit organizations operating throughout the world to provide various forms of relief – it feeds 4M people a day. World Vision wanted to embark on new strategic plan that brought all its members around the globe the opportunity to participate. Using iCohere, 4,000 people were linked together from 52 countries. The 152 members who were soon meeting in Bangkok viewed an online, streaming presentation before the meeting, introduced themselves using iCohere and shared their hopes for the project. They also shared stories of what worked best for them and were used to design the process for the Bangkok meeting. Each the daily deliverables from the Bangkok meeting were placed online and streamed to virtual participants. These virtual participants provided feedback and ideas as well as contributing their own experiences which were summarized overnight and delivered to the Bangkok participants. This process enabled them to be more than just distant observers without a voice. The consensus among participants and World Vision leaders was that the process enabled them to make faster decisions, develop higher quality goals and strengths, realize rapid alignment of stakeholders around the world, enhance organizational effectiveness and develop an enhanced organizational readiness for implementation. The other program that I thought was well worth my time was Harvey Singh, founder of instancy.com. He presented “Mobilizing Learning and Performance: How Mobile and Wireless Technologies Are Transforming Learning.” This was an excellent presentation on several fronts. For one thing, Dr. Singh is a brilliant scientist who was able to tailor his talk to a varied audience. There were extremely technical people, novices in understanding wireless devices and their uses, and people like who are somewhere in between. Another plus what that Dr. Singh framed his talk around how we can use these devices to transfer knowledge. It was definitely not a “here's some cool stuff” talk. Dr. Singh began was telling the audience that workplace learning is no longer done at a desk, that is, “at work.” As the saying goes, work is something you do, not someplace you go. Mobile technology enables the workforce to acquire and use information during “down times” such as at airports or the dentist's office. In addition, consider that reports show how 50% of jobs are mobile, meaning “outside the physical room.” Current estimates suggest that there will be 1B wireless internet subscribers worldwide by the end of this year. Devices themselves are evolving into multi-purpose handhelds, such as PDA and telephone combinations. Further, projections indicate that these devices will outsell laptop/desktop computers in 2005. Such advances in mobility mean that we will be able to bring elearning closer to performance. (Factor this statement into what Tony Bingham was saying in the opening session) PDAs are becoming more hybrid with each new model. There are cell phone PDAs, PDAs with cameras (as well as cell phones with cameras as we see constantly on TV ads), and PDAs with real-world work applications such as barcode readers. What is key here is that devices are here to support learning, decision support and data gathering. There are Wrist Watch PDAs that are in the $150 range, use FM radio frequencies to access data, and push messages, alerts, and short bursts of content. This reminds me of two things, if I can digress. One is that infamous speech that Reggie White games to the Wisconsin legislature a few years ago when among the number of odd things he said was how the Japanese can put an entire television on a wrist watch. The second is a joke that Ron Bleed used in a talk he gave at the Harvill conference back in January 2001. He weaved it into his presentation as if it was a true story. He said he was at the airport and saw a man pushing two huge, heavy suitcases a few feet, stopping and check his watch. After five minutes of this, he went to man and asked why he kept checking his watch. The man said that he had just been in Switzerland and bought this incredible watch. It could show the time in 24 time zones, get instant messages, work as a cell phone, pick up the Web so that he could do internet shopping, and work as an MP3 player. Ron said that he is into technology and how could get one of these watches. The man said, he was going back to Switzerland in a couple weeks and would be willing to sell Ron the watch for $500, what he paid for it because he could get a new one. Ron gave him the money, the man handed him the watch and Ron began to walk away. The man called to Ron, and pointed the suitcases saying, “Don't you want the batteries?” Other mobile devices that Dr. Singh spoke about included SmartPhones, mobile DVD players, and MP3 players. These are devices I think many of us are already familiar with. In assessing what device is right for you, Dr. Singh said to consider these factors: * Battery life * Processing power David Shoemaker and Ulises Mejias, Learning Solutions, eCornell. “Approaches to Online Learning Design: Metaphor, Processes, and Metrics.” The two presenters are instructional designers at eCornell. eCornell “partners with Cornell University to provide exceptional online learning experiences tailored for professional and executive development.” Their presentation reviewed the use of a metaphor to create shared design vocabulary, develop taxonomies for classifying multimedia elements, and identifying and applying a set of metrics to quantify production effort and learner time. What they described is how they go about working with instructors to design an online “learning experience.” They embrace a team concept and recommend four elements of effective learning design: 1) Developing a shared language that allows the team to communicate effectively The primary metaphor they described was called the Learning Molecule. The Learning Molecule lets them implement a problem-based pedagogy in all their designs: Scenario, Resources, Utilities, Collaboration, and Evaluation. The learning designer translates the case study into the scenario; the articles and presentation become resources; the template becomes a utility; a simulation becomes the evaluations component; the discussion serves as the collaboration element. I went to a couple other programs but to be honest they aren't worth writing about. Exhibition Hall There were about 60 exhibitors and in terms of the products, they were heavily into course management systems. A lot of systems and a lot of vendors to out-source your training to. I looked at some of the CMS tools being demo'ed to compare what I could to our D2L implementation. I'm not one who says we do academic and they emphasize industry so it's apples and oranges. There are, of course, areas of common ground. And I think there is more and more that academic online instruction can borrow this field because with a growing non-traditional student (AKA adult learner) and with more delivery happening online rather than the sage on the stage, principles of adult learning theory should be incorporated into our instructional design. Two tools that stood out in my mind from touring the exhibition hall were Firefly and TeleWriter. Firefly is a simulation tool and TeleWriter is a client-based real-time conferencing tool. I don't see them being needed here in the LTC because we have other tools to do these things, such as Macromedia Breeze, but they look like terrific tools for others in training without the array of resources we have at our disposal in the LTC. Links Some links for anyone interested in more about the conference follow. ASTD http://www.astd.org and the TechKnowledge 2005 Intro To Simulation-based Learning Featuring Firefly http://www.kimpact.com/inside/news.asp?pagen=2 This is a link to Knowledge Impacts' Webinar offerings. They report that webinar presentations are given each week on the product. TeleWriter http://www.telewriterags.com ASTD Greater Tucson Chapter – check out the Events page to see our upcoming programs http://www.astd-tucson.org .
|
