All e-learning content has three dimensions:
• subject matter—the content of content
• focus—an indicator of the breadth of the learner base
• intention—how the learning is intended to affect learners
Subject matter
At first, e-learning subject matter was dominated by technology. In 2000, according to IDC (International Data Corporation), IT subject matter accounted for 72% of content demand worldwide. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. First, there is harmony between form and content—you’re using technology to learn technology. Secondly, you can assume that learners who need to learn about technology will know how to use it well enough to take advantage of e-learning. Thirdly, it’s easier to develop learning content about hard skills than soft—and technology learning is based on hard skills. The dominance of technology-based subject matter won’t last; enterprises have too many other important learning needs. The amount of technology learning will grow but its proportion of all e-learning will fall. IDC predicts that by 2004 non-IT content will account for over 54% of worldwide revenues.
Typical non-IT e-learning subject matter includes:
• business skills
• communication and interpersonal skills
• customer service
• executive development
• financial skills
• management skills
• sales and marketing skills
• team work
There is a bias against using e-learning for soft skills, based on the perceived difficulty of handling soft content and influencing learners’ behaviours. It is more difficult to handle soft content than hard content but providing you can bring creativity, humanity and technological innovation to the design process, it is very possible. As the technology becomes more powerful and interfaces richer, I believe that we will see increasingly more soft skills content in e-learning, for example, in the form of simulations.
Focus
The focus of e-learning content extends from low to high. The lower the focus, the larger the potential learner base; the higher the focus, the smaller the learner bases. Focus can be expressed under four content headings:
• generic—low focus
• sector-specific—medium focus
• legislation-specific—medium focus
• business-specific—high focus
There is a hierarchy of content sources that reflects both the cost of acquisition and the value to an enterprise in terms of performance improvement. The most valuable content is business-specific; next comes industry- or sector-specific content, and then generic content.
Intention
The intention of e-learning content should be determined by an up-front performance gap analysis designed to answer the question, why aren’t employees performing at required levels? The answer will point to one or more intentions.
Information: If the performance gap is the result of a lack of information, the intention is to tell learners what they don’t know. That might be details of a new business strategy emanating from the board room, the features and prices of a new product range, or updates about how a newly acquired business will be integrated with the parent company. Learning information uses the learner’s cognitive skills.
Process: Process builds on information by turning it into action. The reason employees aren’t performing the way they’re expected to is because they don’t know how to do something. It could be something as simple as raising a purchase order, or something as complex as managing a global project. Some processes are strictly cognitive—filling in an expenses claim; others have a psychomotor aspect—giving a patient an injection. E-learning excels at delivering and assessing the cognitive aspect of a process—understanding the correct sequence of events, the functions of different controls, the settings to use under different circumstances, but most people assume that it has little to offer for psychomotor aspects. That’s not true—providing designers are prepared to move beyond the keyboard and mouse as input devices. One of the most interesting applications of technology-based learning I have ever seen was developed in the 1980s for the College of Aeronautics at La Guardia Airport.
As part of its aircraft maintenance courses, the college taught oxyacetylene welding. It’s a complex, hard to master skill; it’s also dangerous and dirty. Traditional training proved expensive and took too long. The solution, developed by David Hon’s Ixion Inc, was based on synthetic reality and tactile interfaces. Briefly, a touch-screen PC monitor was set facing up—the screen acting like the top of a work bench. Two photo-realistic metal plates were displayed on the monitor screen; the learner’s task was to weld them together. The learner worked with a real welding rod and an authentic mechanically-simulated torch. The skills and knowledge of experienced welders were built into the system’s responses, so the appearance and quality of the weld developing on the screen accurately reflected the skill with which the learner manipulated the torch. Because a typical learner was unlikely to be either computer- or text-literate, no computing or reading skills were required to use the system.
The approach also had the advantage of integrating feedback and evaluation with content; you don’t need a text or spoken message to tell you that you’ve moved the torch too slowly, you can see a puddle form on the screen. Video was used to display the weld; today we might use real-time graphics. The point is, it is possible to realize this type of psychomotor simulation using e-learning technology. All it takes is imagination and inventive implementation.
Behavioural/Attitudinal: Here employees are performing below requirements, not because they don’t know something or how to do something but because they are not behaving the way they should. This situation often arises during periods of change. A new process or tool has been introduced; employees have learned how to use it but choose not to. It can arise with corporate culture; employees know from their induction learning that they should back up their data regularly yet they choose not to. In other cases, employees in a call centre might not know the best behaviours to use with customers who complain, or the best behaviours for maximizing cross-selling. Used creatively, e-learning has the power to persuade; it can change behaviours. It can also provide learners with a safe area where they can try out new behaviours.
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