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.”

A couple weeks ago I pointed out how we’re seeing more companies than ever - especially very large ones - rely heavily on Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) as a complement to structured learning.

The idea is that employees want to learn only the information they need to perform a given task — and no more.

And, they want the information at the time the task must be performed — and no sooner.

Shortly after that post, Brent pointed out an article
in which Charles Jennings, global head of learning for Reuters, talks about a much-needed shift in training:

“Too many learning professionals are obsessed with transferring information into employees’ heads, even though they know that the amount of information is growing very quickly and that the nature of that information is changing.

“These changes mean that knowledge workers actually need less knowledge to do their jobs … Formal training is less effective as the amount of information increases and its shelf life becomes shorter.”

The article goes on to discuss the virtues of EPSS systems and how they enable real-time support. Reuters uses SupportPoint as a context-sensitive help system. We’ve been helping companies build content for these kinds of systems for over a decade, but it seems like we do it more every year.

So it’s good to know we’re not alone in advocating heavy use of EPSS systems which, according to Jennings:

Allow us to employ what I call ‘just in case’ learning. That means that the information is there in case you need it. A simple transfer of knowledge is no longer appropriate. We need to know less and learn more.”

Well said. In fact, Jennings’ term Just in Case learning is a bit less cumbersome than my term, At the Time learning - but the intended meaning is the same.

The photo above is from the excellent discussion thread at Tufte.com.

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.