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Online Learning

Gloria Gery

Gery's session concentrated on reinforcing earlier messages made in her keynote speech. Her style is to 'tell it like it is' rather than dance around the inherent obstacles we all face when designing and implementing learning solutions.

Staff motivation
People are increasingly in jobs they didn't apply for due to external changes and restructuring. How do you engage with people who are perhaps inherently disinterested in their role within the organisation?

'Deaf ears'
Too often there is an implicit conspiracy between senior management and their executives to avoid confronting core problems, leading to the design of ineffectual solutions. How do you raise awareness of the real 'mess' so that management supports the need for the more fundamental change needed to achieve performance improvement?

Digital versions of existing artefacts
Too often, e-learning and other technology are used to capture existing processes and procedures that are inappropriate and which therefore subsequently hinder performance. How do you widen the design remit to include business processes and workflow so that learning solutions are better integrated into the work environment?

Employees come second (or third)
Interestingly, where organisations have pushed work onto their customer base through web services, much more investment has been made in the usability and intuitive nature of the interface, often to avoid expensive telephone support. How can this ethic be extended to internal staff working with much more complex systems and processes?

Some tips were given to work around these obstacles:

• Focus on opportunities where simple solutions have highest business impact
• Show management and the target audience existing examples of what they could have - often there is no perception of how things could be done better until they see concrete evidence (often from outside the organisation)
• Design around user perceptions (not just reality as you see it) and map these into the workflow so that you build a smooth learning curve into the job role
• Avoid using Subject Matter Experts to test your solutions as they have preconceptions that will be perpetuated - look for 'virgin' users who will really show you how intuitive your application is
• Go for quality not quantity - just enough is better than too much too late

Gery ended by calling on the training community to reach beyond the traditional 'support' and course design role and work more closely with business units in redesigning the workplace environment. Not only would this get to the heart of business issues, she said; it would also likely lead to far greater productivity improvements, gaining credibility for the HR function.

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