I just finished a great online seminar hosted by CLO Media called the The Future of Corporate Education: Embedding Learning into Business Processes. It really rang true with many of the projects and ideas that I am working on right now.
Claire from Forrester referred to it as “Contextual Learning” which she said is learning integrated into the work environment, is more informal, puts the learner in charge, targets a real-time need, and is very collaborative.
I have been referring to this as a collaborative learning environment. The key is that you don’t want a worker to have to leave their work to learn what they need to do. Also, the learning needs to be much shorter and focused on their current issue, with the learning modules being between 4 and 10 minutes in length. The emphasis is much less on retention and more on immediate performance.
Ole Lunddahl went a step further and talked about using current portal and search technology to automatically embed links to learning options and performance tools within a portal that automatically change based on the information on the screen that the worker is interacting with, including the actual data that is pulled up. Think of it as AdWords for learning. I had been thinking it was possible, but it’s always nice to see an example of it.
I think the key in all of this is to look at what can help drive performance on the job, and to stop thinking of learning as an “event” that pulls you out of your work, and just design the learning into the process.
