I just read Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. Substitute “LMS/Central Training Department” for instances of “Newspaper/publishers” and it is a real wake-up call.
Read it. Think about it. Who are the real-world, radical change-observing “pragmatists” and who are the in denial status-quo with incremental-change “revolutionaries” in your organization?
Are the people who say that the now and the future is in informal learning, collaboration, mobile and social networking the revolutionaries,or the pragmatists? Are the experts those wizened experienced people who say learning & training have been and always will be structured, pre-defined and centralized, (and they often add or else it is wasteful and inefficient).
Look outside your windows (or preferably Mac) there is a whole world (-wide web 2.0 ) happening. What the heck, check it out on your phone or Xbox or …
See past the matrix illusion of the Central Committee’s integrated-firewalled-siloed starts-and-stops-at-your-enterprise LCMS-LMS-authoring-tool including Centralized Succession Planning, now with connect-to-your-actual-cubemate-Social-Networking™.
Got it? Good. Now go read two Jay Cross posts, New Roles for Former Trainers and then Agile Instructional Design. For bonus points tonight or tomorrow, twitter (+2), text (+1) or email (+.05) a few colleagues and collaborate on how you can apply scrum techniques on your next training or elearning effort.
Feedback? Like this kind of post? Let me know, I’ve got a few more cans of elearning willy pete in the armory.
On my Facebook status there's been a little back & forth on this issue with well-respected colleagues from the LMS world, including a recent post from Aaron Silvers-
We're switching, eventually, to another LMS. I've had no say in it. A year ago, I was livid. Now, I don't care. We've moved on. Asynchronous, page-turning definition of E-Learning has a place, but it's not going to be the primary vehicle for our training going forward. The economic crisis has really stimulated (that's for you, Tom) a move to more meaningful, lasting long-term experiences beyond the training "event." We're going with a Blended Learning model that's going to save a lot of time, money and in the process develop collaboration skills and teams.
Will it suck to use this new LMS for the compliance courses and the occasional asynchronous one-way training? Yes it will. But it will be a very small part of the ongoing development activity — I think we'll all be okay.
I concur, Dr. King. Shake-up; Wake-up; Not an immediate Break-up.