quote:

Some of us are trying to encourage change,

John,

WHY are people encouraging this change?

Because if learners can get an equally good or better total learning experience at a lower total cost, that is viewed by some, including me, as a good thing.

I'm all for lower cost too. But the real question that nobody seems to discuss much is, how do you know learners are getting an "equally good or better total learning experience"? (Whatever "total learning experience" means...........) Are you actually conducting studies to show this - or is it just jibberish?

Well, that's the rub, of course. I not seen any formal studies, myself. That's why I am still searching for the best ways to do this.

I have read in print magazines and sopken to friends and found significant anecdotal evidence that people are doing, e.g. m-learning and finding it very affordable and less expensive than, say ILT. In one case the solution was delivering training and basic assessment on mobile devices. Because the learning was totally asynchronous, the company estimated no time was spent away from the job: learners did work in fairly small swatches.

Some things are easier to measure accurately than others. In some cases we have to try something and adjust it to see if it will work. If we wait until we think we have figured out the best solution, we will have wasted a lot of time and potentially a lot of human resource.

Now, regarding "total learning experience", maybe you have a better term. We often discuss evaluating learning in various ways including Kirkpatrick. Those methods, though, have a hard time accurately measuring convenience, time-to-market (delay in rolling out classes), lost work time, and so forth. We may also get great traditional level X results using a particular method, but if we cannot get the content to all the necessary people by a proper deadline, that may not count as much.

I am not one to say "use such-and-such a method all the time" very often. We need to match the tools to the environment and situation at hand. It does seem to me that the e-learning 2.0 ideas are saving money and working well in at least some situations and thus can be a good toolset to have.

I like this quote "The bottom line is that eLearning 2.0 is not about a bunch of applications, it's about adopting practices that leverage these applications to support work and learning in new, powerful ways." It's from Tony Karrer's e-learning 2.0 blog. Check out the blog for more about e-learning 2.0.

I think the continued issue will be the on-going erroneous assumption that any Joe Shmo can design, develop and implement appropriate learning opportunities given up-to-date technology and tools. When someone's classroom learning leaves much to be desired, and someone's previous attempts at "e-learning" were nothing more than slides with text and some pictures, I have very little faith in someone's abilities to adopt practices that will leverage newer technologies...yada yada.