Will at Work Learning

Neon Elephant Award 2006 to Cal Wick

I'd like to announce the inaugural edition of the Neon Elephant Award, awarded for 2006 to Cal Wick of the Fort Hill Company for leading the development of the first commercially-viable training-follow-through e-learning software and his work as co-author of the book, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results.

The Neon Elephant Award

The Neon Elephant Award is awarded to a person, team, or organization exemplifying enlightenment, integrity, and innovation in the field of workplace learning and performance. Announced on the day of the winter solstice—the day of the year when the world turns away from darkness toward the light and hope of warmer days to come—the Neon Elephant Award honors those who have truly changed the way we think about the practice of learning and performance improvement. Award winners are selected for demonstrated success in pushing the field forward in significant paradigm-altering ways while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and professionalism.

Click here to see the full announcement...

Masie Highlights Fort Hill Company

Elliott Masie, proving he's not just our field's preeminent hype-master, invited the thoughtful and wise Cal Wick as the closing keynote to Learning2006.

Cal and his team at Fort Hill Company have developed a great tool to help training transfer, called Friday5s.

You can read my review of Cal and his team's book to see my thoughts on how important the book and this software is to our field.

Google for Educators

Google announced yesterday a special set of tools for educators (teachers).

Click here to check it out.

Sexual Harassment Training Required in California

California has implemented a law that requires all managers to have sexual harassment training at least once every two years, with new managers getting the training within six months of employment. An upcoming webinar on this issue is offered that includes the author of the amendment.

While the law's requirements will create mediocre learning design (because people need more frequent reminders to maximize spontaneous remembering), the law is newsworthy as a potential omen for what may come in the training-and-development industry (and not just for sexual harassment training).

The law as written may have benefits because it is certainly better than nothing, but unfortunately the law repeats several mistakes endemic in our field:

1. It utilizes a "butts in seats" standard.
2. It assumes training will be sufficient.
3. It doesn't provide for any testing (except seat butts).
4. It doesn't assess performance follow-through at all.

The law does say:

The training and education required by this section is
intended to establish a minimum threshold and should not discourage
or relieve any employer from providing for longer, more frequent, or
more elaborate training and education regarding workplace harassment
or other forms of unlawful discrimination in order to meet its
obligations to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent and
correct harassment and discrimination.

Employers who really care about minimizing sexual harassment will provide for "longer, more frequent, [and] more elaborate training."

US Graduation Rates. A Problem for Learning Professionals?

Education Week has just come out with a new report (dated 2006), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, showing that only 69.6% of U. S. children graduate from high school.

Yes, you should read that again. It is stunning that in the richest, most powerful country in the world, that we are failing so many of our citizens. I can only think that if the trend continues, the United States is doomed to second-tier status.

Here is a graph from the PowerPoint's used to communicate the report:

Looking at the rate by state is interesting as well. And, for you political junkies, you may get a real tingle by noticing the colors used on the map.

Chief Learning Officers providing advice on company location and recruitment strategies might want to take this into account. On the other hand, pretty pictures only tell part of the story. See below:

Comparisons to Other Countries

As Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times columnist, pointed out in a recent column, other countries, notably China, are rapidly improving their educational systems, and their children are significantly outperforming U. S. children in K-12 education.

You can access Kristof's article here, but you have to be subscribed to the New York Times to read it (which isn't a bad idea), so I offer the following excerpt from his column:

Last month, the Asia Society published an excellent report, "Math and Science Education in a Global Age: What the U.S. Can Learn from China." It notes that China educates 20 percent of the world's students with 2 percent of the world's education resources. And the report finds many potential lessons in China's rigorous math and science programs.

Yet, there isn't any magic to it. One reason Chinese students learn more math and science than Americans is that they work harder at it. They spend twice as many hours studying, in school and out, as Americans.

Chinese students, for example, must do several hours of homework each day during their summer vacation, which lasts just two months. In contrast, American students have to spend each September relearning what they forgot over the summer.

China's government has developed a solid national curriculum, so that nearly all high school students study advanced biology and calculus. In contrast, only 13 percent of American high school pupils study calculus, and fewer than 18 percent take advanced biology.

What You Can Do as a U. S. Training and Development Professional

1. You've probably already heard about the massive talent gap (based largely on baby-boomer retirements) that is coming. Combine that with the aforementioned information about graduation rates, and you should start panicking.
2. Figure out how to do remedial education.
3. Figure out how to hire non-Americans as well as Americans.
4. Start advocating within your company for an organizational commitment to your local K-12 educational institutions.
5. Start with your own kids. Throw away their TV's and get them reading more and thinking more. Don't assume web-surfing is learning.
6. Take a vacation day and volunteer in your kid's classroom.
7. Become a big brother or big sister.
8. Volunteer in your local schools. Take your experience as an instructional professional, and share what you know. Don't be heavy handed, be heavy on love and empathy.
9. Stop fighting local property taxes. School funding does matter.
10. Advocate for smaller class sizes.
11. Insist on excellent teaching.
12. Run for school board. Take inspiration from Marc Rosenberg, e-learning guru, who ran for his local school board because he knows the value of good learning.

A 69.6% high-school graduation rate is simply unacceptable and unsustainable. This is not only bad for our global and corporate competitiveness, it's bad for our democracy as well. Democracies only flourish when their citizens have access to information and know how to think about that information when they have it.

What the hell are we thinking?

Or more realistically, what the hell have we been thinking?

Biased Myers-Briggs (MBTI) Research Wanted

CPP, Inc., known formerly as Consulting Psychologists Press, announces that it is offering research grants for research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

This may seem commendable, but their research-grant program is biased. Here are the facts:

1. CPP makes money by selling MBTI implementations, consulting, and paraphernalia.
2. The MBTI (Myers-Briggs) is widely discredited by researchers. It is considered neither reliable nor valid. For example, see Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57, 210-221.
3. The research grant program is biased toward research findings that support the MBTI. Here are some details:
   • CPP, a biased party, selects the grantees.
   • One of the criteria for selection is "advancement of the MBTI assessment."
   • Money is distributed only for research reports selected by CPP for the "Best Paper Awards."
4. Instead of these regrettable procedures, CPP should form a body of unbiased reviewers, have criteria that don't push toward a confirmatory bias, distribute money for good proposals not "favorable" results, and form an unbiased committee to select the best papers.

This Research Grant Program (as outlined in the publicly available materials produced by CPP) is clearly designed to produce results that support CPP's financial interests and resurrect the flagging image of the MBTI. Statements in the proposal requiring researchers to "conform to the Americal Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists" do little to overcome the biases built into the program. As the materials make clear, the intention is to provide comfort to CPP's clients. How else are we to interpret the following statement in CPP's research-grant announcement?

"Abstracts from the papers will be used by CPP to communicate results with its customers."

This type of biased research program is completely unacceptable. Not only does it have the potential to create biased information and lead to suboptimal or dangerous recommendations, but it also casts a shadow on fair-and-balanced research that might be used to guide learning-and-performance agendas.

If you'd like to share your thoughts with CPP, it appears that the person to write is available through this email address.

Media Companies Doing E-learning?

Has anybody else noticed the rise in media companies entering the e-learning space?

Media companies are those that primarily do video and multimedia presentations, without a lot of instructional interactions---or learning effectiveness I might add.

Is anybody out there tracking this?

Learning on Internet in Jeopardy?

Many people, including me, think the Internet is a great enabler of learning. But is it in jeopardy?

Right now the Internet provides relatively equal access for all people and organizations, from rich to poor, from powerful to oppressed. But might there be forces at work undermining Internet equality? Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (www.democraticmedia.org) thinks that the internet as we know it may soon come to an end.

Writing in The Nation (a left-of-center publication that errors on the side of (and gives voice to) anti-corporate advocates), Chester describes how phone and cable companies are proposing to charge user's fees, capture personal data, and provide privileged services to those who can pay the most.

Check out the online article here. It's title: The End of the Internet.

Jeff Chester is author of a forthcoming book on US media politics, Digital Destiny, which will be published in the fall by The New Press.

Learning 2.0 Bootcamp

Two people I respect greatly as purveyors and thinkers regarding new web technologies, Kathleen Gilroy and Bill Ives, are coming together to provide an intensive learning experience on Learning 2.0.

What is Learning 2.0? It's the idea that the web is changing from one that is driven by user searching and initiative, to one that is more amenable to subscription services for information compilation, etc. Learning 2.0 also recognizes that new web-based technologies are becoming available that provide instructional designers more tools for learning design. Learning 2.0 also provides more opportunities for groups to support each other's learning.

Here's what the organizers say you will learn:

• How new “2.0” technologies and services, including weblogs, podcasts, wikis, and aggregators, can be deployed for learning programs.
• How to build the new desktop: moving from browsing to searching to subscribing.
• How to plan for and build a learning 2.0 program.
• How to produce and distribute podcasts.
• How to motivate and manage networked learners.
• How to make the “wisdom of crowds” the outcome of your learning programs.

Click here to learn more.

HELPFUL HINT: After clicking on the link (just above), make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the small graphic of the document. This will provide detailed information in a PDF document.

Adobe Buys Macromedia

Yesterday, December 5th 2005, Adobe bought Macromedia.

Macromedia is dead. Adobe lives. Long live the king.

Who knows what this will mean (I'm no industry analyst---who has time for such a thing when one is serious about learning), but it's a very big deal because one of the learning-and-performance field's biggest technology-platform companies (Macromedia) just got blasted into the mainstream. Sure, they had Flash and Dreamweaver before, but this is much bigger given Adobe's breadth and depth.

My biggest hope is that Adobe (with Macromedia) puts more R&D muscle into learning design (and understanding human learning) to create really breakthrough learning innovations. PDF files may be the secret hidden killer learning app of today. With a little jiggering, the melding of print, multimedia, and iLMS's might be tomorrow's killer learning app. (I just made those two terms up, so I better explain ("killer learning app" and "iLMS"). An iLMS is an individual Learning Management System. It enables individual people to manage their own learning. More about this concept in later posts. It's bubbling up, but needs a bit more fermentation.

My biggest fear is that Adobe (with Macromedia) ignores human learning and assumes that a low-budget it's-fine-the-way-it-is mentality is all they need to do to maintain their market share. If they take this attitude, they deserve an eternity of purgatorious elearning page-turners.

To read more about the acquisition, click here.