Epic show report
Learning Technologies 2006
Report by Steve Barden, Head of Consulting, Epic
Steve Barden and Katherine Laux spoke at last week’s Learning
Technologies show. In the seminar stream for ’Aligning Learning
to the Business’ their talk was titled Aligning Business to
Learning - Becoming a more powerful Learning Organisation’.
They contended that the value and rationale for becoming a LO was
not the end itself but is the means to the end of becoming a more
effective organisation in our fast changing world.
They outlined the five steps towards becoming a LO:
- Awareness that open, flexible and informal learning is necessary
before they can develop into a Learning Organisation.
- Environment where a more open, flexible and organic (or flatter)
structure will enable easier transfer of information.
- Leadership that fosters the Systems Thinking concept and encourage
learning to help individuals, teams and the organisation in learning.
- Empowerment where staff become more responsible for their actions
but the managers do not lose their involvement. They are still
needed to set up an open, flexible atmosphere in their organisations
in order to encourage, enthuse and co-ordinate their co-workers.
- Learning Organisations result from the above especially when
they learn together and learn from their mistakes.
They then illustrated how these distil down into just three main
objectives for empowering people to support a powerful learning
culture:
- Give people input into the design of learning solutions at all
stages of the design and development;
- Give people a choice of media that suits their workflow, their
lifestyle and their personality;
- Give people tools to share learning & knowledge. Tools
like wikis, blogs, email, instant messenger, virtual classrooms
as well as normal performance support tools for individuals and
teams.
Their illustration was just one piece of work in progress which
encompasses not only all the above objectives but is typical of
the working practices for Epic.
See our show report for further thoughts on the conference and
the exhibition.
Epic were pleased with the reaction to the launch of their two
all-new events at Learning Technologies last week.
- Executive Briefings aimed at senior managers
who have either the need to develop or to align their learning
strategy with their business. These events will bring senior leaders
together at a central London base for the ½ day briefing
and include an additional complimentary ½ day personal
consultancy in your workplace. The events are geared to exploring
the practical business issues of developing and delivering new
learning initiatives in modern organisations. The first of these
Executive Briefings is scheduled for Wednesday 22nd March
and there are currently some places still available. Future workshop
dates will be announced soon.
- Design
Workshops Programme has updated and extended our popular blended
design workshop to provide a sequence of three linked
events that are supported by virtual coaching and shadowing
from project experiences in Epic. They are aimed at Training
Managers and Project Managers who need to become more
informed champions and managers of blended and e-learning projects;
and at Designers and Developers who need practical
hands-on skills in specific aspects of blended learning design
and development. The programme is only running twice in 2006 with
the first workshop scheduled for Wednesday 26th April
with the remainder of the first programme taking place in May
and June. Places are limited so contact us today consulting@epic.co.uk
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