Bill Brantley points out recent research in which respondents identify their preferred learning methods. Conspicuously absent among the top 5 most preferred learning methods: E-Learning. Brantley summarizes:

For soft skills, the top five methods were:

1. On-the-job training
2. One-on-one coaching
3. Peer interaction and feedback
4. Discussion groups
5. Live classroom instruction

For hard skills:

1. On-the-job training
2. Workbooks and manuals
3. Books and reading
4. One-on-one coaching
5. Live classroom instruction

The research appeared in Retiring the Generation Gap by Jennifer Deal.

For younger workers, the #2 slot on the ‘hard skills’ list is hard for me to believe: workbooks and manuals? Guess I’ll have to read the book to get the whole story.

The always impressive Cathy Moore provides a great list of eLearning samples over at the Making Change blog.

This page alone would be a great starting point for anyone interested in eLearning. Actually, if you were an eLearning expert and just got back from a 90-day safari, you’d find things you’d never seen before.

Be careful, though; many of these pieces are dangerously engaging. Especially these paper-based videos from Common Craft. I’ve been telling everybody I know about these.

For a good discussion of big-App training see Tony Karrer’s site.
He starts the discussion with a post of a question from B.J. Schone, who is looking at a major PeopleSoft upgrade. Someone suggested to him that users would need 80 (no, it’s not a typo, eighty!) hours of training. B.J. was rightly concerned that something was wrong.
Read Karrer’s post, and some comments, including mine.
Here’s my comment as well:

“80 hours of PeopleSoft training? Could that estimate possibly have come from someone with a vested interest in selling lots of training?… Some further thoughts on BJs question:

1) Complete agreement with the training design starting and ending with roles & tasks: don’t make people sit through “general” stuff…engage them with what they actually have to do in the to-be world of new processes and new (or changed) technology.

2) Get off the Happy Path. Bj talks about how boring applications training can be. He’s right and adding some random Nascar simulation doesn’t make it any more engaging. Apps training that takes people down a single happy path where everything works perfectly is boring because learners understand as soon as they leave the training room and return to the real world, they’ll fall right off that happy path. So, give em real-life scenarios where things get complicated and messed up and engage them in figuring out how to solve the real problems they’ll have.

3)Dr. Tony talks about using hybrid/reference tools. If he’s talking about what we call EPSS — a system that allows users to view the process flowchart, find their swim lane, find their task, see its relationship to other roles and tasks, and finally drill down to a step-by-step work instruction he’s right. The point is that no matter how good training is people don’t retain much.

4) Plan for (as in save time and $$$) post go-live training. Pilots are a good start on getting the training right. But give people the first month of limping along with the new process/tech and then offer them more training. Devise the content for this post go-live training by reviewing help desk call logs, or by getting users to send in questions. Or just hold open labs where users can come in and work through real-life problems shoulder-to-shoulder with an expert. This training actually sticks because it addresses real problems that real users have, NOT a random, boring stroll down the happy path.”

As I’ve been working with several customers over the past couple of weeks, the question keeps coming up: what are some good ways to sustain the impact of training after the initial classroom sessions are done?

I did a little online research and talked with an eLearning expert, Patty Stillwell, who I’m working with on several training projects. Here are some great ways to use technology to keep the initial excitement of in-person training alive while sharing business wins:

1. Give business managers exercises and surveys that they can push to learners using a survey tool. Learners complete and submit the survey, and results are shared with managers. This is a great way to measure classroom retention, ongoing change and provide recognition to those learners who find great business applications.

2. Create a wiki or blog for learners to share thoughts, ideas, new ways to use the training, etc. Encourage learning leaders who have successfully applied the training concepts to initiate the “dialogue” and support participation by others.

3. Implement a private channel for downloadable video or audio of lectures, recorded conference calls, presentations, etc. Utilize format-neutral options that work with a wide range of devices.
Develop short podcasts to share scheduled information updates or high priority notices (trends, competition, etc.)

4. Use your website to offer new tools and training updates with downloadable documents
Conduct Webex meetings and online discussions to foster collaboration between groups that may not otherwise interact.

5. Use Second-Life environments to expand learners’ understanding of changes throughout the company, supply chain and customer base.

While the banking industry appears to adopting gaming as an eLearning tool at a healthy pace, there’s not much else to cheer about in that business.

Two contrasting articles published this week:

1. Gaming as eLearning tool on the rise in banking industry.
2. Banking industry falling apart.

The following from a Business Week article citing research from the eLearning Guild. (Congrats to Brent, by the way, for the nice eLearning Guild visibility in Business Week):

According to a 2007 survey by the eLearning Guild, which polled nearly 1,500 of its members, from large and small companies throughout the U.S., 38% of insurance companies are investigating using games for work. In finance, accounting, and banking, that figure was above 50%.

Meanwhile, The Hub, talks about a looming banking industry crisis that many believe has only just begun:

Big banks are seeing merger and acquisition activity frozen, resulting in a full stoppage of deals that were in progress, which can’t be good for bonuses.

Various bankers and financial types we’ve talked to lately have ranged from quietly worried to nearly hysterical to uncomfortably sarcastic.

“Work sux” says one [hedge fund employee] by text.

“Its bigger than the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998″ says one person at Merrill Lynch. “Some major hedge funds are going to not be here by next year.”

I certainly don’t mean to imply a relationship between gaming-as-eLearning and the growing banking crisis. Nor would it be prudent to make light of the plight of those in the banking business. But, you have to admit, this could provide ample grist for any number of late-night talk show hosts.

The concept of Just in Time training has been around for a long time. It makes sense, the idea of getting trained on a subject just before you need it. The Just in Time moniker was borrowed from Lean Manufacturing, and specifically draws on the Kanban principle for optimizing inventory.

When it comes to learning, though, an idea that’s just as useful - and maybe more - is what I call At the Time training. My favorite example, from a great discussion thread on the Edward Tufte website:

A lot of learning industry experts talk about this all the time, but they don’t really give it a name. For example, Dennis Coxe wrote recently in a post about the importance of timeliness in good instructional design:

It has to be made available when the learner needs it, not when the LMS says he or she can attend … [It should be] chunked appropriately so that it can be digested in little bits and can be easily searched to locate the critical learning bit when it is needed.

It seems to me that At the Time training should be the holy grail of training objectives. Which is why I got awfully excited when I came across the Tufte discussion thread mentioned above (the first post in this thread, by the way, was in March 2004, and has remained active ever since - with a new post as recently as June 29th of this year).

In the corporate world, we see more companies setting up sophisticated Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) every year. For some reason, though, this topic doesn’t seem very buzz-friendly among the eLearning cognoscenti. In fact, a Technorati search on ‘EPSS’ turns up just one blog (The Learned Man) containing the term.

I plan to dig a bit more around who’s using EPSS systems and for what. For a bit more background on EPSS systems, click here. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from anyone who has experience with these systems, good or bad. Because learning At the Time is where it’s at.

Suddenly, synchronous e-learning seems to be everywhere. Not that it ever went away, of course. Its apparent surge is surely just because I’ve started to pay attention. In the past few weeks:

• A potential client turned me on to a blog by Brent Schlenker that frequently extolls the virtues of synchronous learning systems (makes sense, since Brent works for the e-Learning Guild).
• One of our major clients has dramatically increased the number of LiveMeeting events they will use to roll-out several new enterprise-wide software systems.
• Finally, I came across an excellent summary of an SLS presentation put on by the e-Learning Guild. Thanks to Cammy Bean.

If you’re like me, and thought synchronous learning meant sleep-inducing Powerpoint death-marches, think again.  Apparently a lot of others are doing the same.