Will at Work Learning

Excellent Review of Dale's Cone and its Bastardizations

Judith Gustafson just left an excellent comment on an earlier blog post. She let us know about a presentation at the Association of (AECT) Educational Communications and Technology conference in 2002.

Click here for the PPT presentation by Tony Betrus and Al Januszewski of the State University of New York at Potsdam that does a great job of describing what Edgar Dale meant to convey with his cone, AND shows numerous examples of how the cone has been used improperly with the numbers added.

Here is my original post on this.

Learning Measurement eLearning Guild Stuff

I've been busy again thinking about the nexus between LEARNING and LEARNING MEASUREMENT.

You can peruse some of my previous thoughts on learning measurement by clicking here.

Here is a brand new article that I wrote for the eLearning Guild on how to evaluate Learning 2.0 stuff. Note: Learning 2.0 is defined (by the eLearning Guild) as: The idea of learning through digital connections and peer collaboration, enhanced by technologies driving Web 2.0. Users/Learners are empowered
to search, create, and collaborate, in order to fulfill intrinsic needs to learn new information. Evaluating Learning 2.0 differs from evaluating traditional Learning 1.0 training for many reasons, one of which is that Learning 2.0 enables (encourages) learners to create their own content.

Steve Wexler, Director of Research and Emerging Technologies at the eLearning Guild, and I are leading a Webinar on Thursday September 4th on the current state of eLearning Measurement. We've got some new data that we're hot to share.

Finally, Roy Pollock, one of the authors of the classic book, Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, and I are leading a one-day symposium on measuring learning at the eLearning Guild's DevLearn 2008 conference in November. It's a great chance to go to one of the best eLearning conferences around while working with Roy and I in a fairly intimate workshop, wrangling with the newest thinking in how to measure learning. Choose Symposium S-4. Note that it may not show Roy's information there yet--the Guild is still working on the webpage--but let me assure you that Roy and I are equal partners in this one.

A Better Learning to Performance Model and Job Aid

For almost a decade I've been building a model of how learning works to prompt performance. Each iteration gets better (in my unbiased opinion). Here's the latest one--this one has the advantage of pointing out the responsibilities learning professionals have AND the responsibilities that learners' managers and the workplace have in creating on-the-job results.

You can use this model for two purposes:

1. As a visual metaphor for how learning works to drive on-the-job performance and results.
2. As a job aid to assign responsibilities and tasks.

This graphic draws on many sources, many I'm probably unaware of. It draws from the wisdom of authors such as Wick, Pollock, Jefferson, and Flanagan of Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning fame, and Tim Mooney and Rob Brinkerhoff from the new book Courageous Training (which is great by the way, I'll review it within the next month).

It also draws from countless researchers on learning, memory, instruction, and cognition who have helped me understand learning at a deep level, enabling me to add to models that don't fully include wisdom on how learning and cognition really work to drive remembering.

Also, I'd like to thank my many clients who have enabled me a great real-world workshop in which to think deeply about how learning works in a practical reality. I'd particularly like to thank my friends at Walgreens, and especially Anne Laures who commented on an earlier version of this model.

Download Learning-Performance_Diagram_v2.pdf.

As always, this is a work in progress, so let me know what you like and what I might be missing. Note, of course, that human learning and performance is too complicated to include every factor of relevance. My goal is to create a model simple enough to be easily understood and precise enough to be useful and provide practical learning-to-performance improvement.

Oh, if you have to give it a name, you might call it the Learning-to-Performance Landscape Model, but I'll probably come up with a better name.

Article on Engaging eLearning

Here's a nice article, sponsored by Adobe, and written by Allison Rossett and Antonia Chan (2008, June) that provides some very nice descriptions and examples about engaging eLearning design. Check it out.

Have Any Training & Development Departments Asked to be Political?

Have any of you been asked to be political as part of your role as a learning professional? Has your training and development apparatus been charged with manipulating employee voting behavior or political action?

This story from Slate, about Walmart's attempts to marshal votes for Republicans, got me thinking about this.

Let us know if you know anything about training and development departments being utilized to influence elections.

What would you do if asked to develop a training initiative to modify your learners' political thinking and action? Would you do it if the training would support your preferred candidate? Would it be ethical if the training was simply designed to encourage voter turnout (realizing of course that voter turnout/registration is usually targeted to push the election one way or another)? Would it be ethical to use the training and development department if the training was truly non-partisan, not favoring either candidate or party?