E P I C T H I N K I N G
Issue 17: April 2003
This month:
- White paper: Knowledge management & e-learning
- Epic Think Tank: The learner's experience
- Book Review: Prensky on game-based learning
- Case study: Busting project management
myths
- News: License to skill! DfES launches e-skills
SSC
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W H I T E P A P E R
1. There's no business like *know* business
India, which has more programmers than any other country on the
planet, is rapidly becoming the world's back office. Ireland has
moved from milking cows to milking Microsoft in a generation. These
feats of economic transformation have been accomplished by leveraging
one formidable resource that both countries possess in abundance;
people and their knowledge.
Across the developed and developing world there is growing recognition
of the power of knowledge and learning to fuel future productivity
and economic growth.
And the guru community concurs. Writers from Thomas A Stewart to
Sumatra Ghosal agree: knowledge is not just power nowadays, it's
money in the bank.
Unlike money, however, knowledge is not something you can easily
put in vaults or move between spreadsheets. Knowledge has at best
an attenuated kind of half-life outside the heads of people. As
anyone involved in education or 'the learning community' will tell
you, its transfer from one head to another is by no means a straightforward
business. Until knowledge is released through learning it is, in
fact, quite inert and useless.
Brains set fire to knowledge.
And this fact is the rock on which many tech-driven versions of
knowledge management have foundered. 'Managing' knowledge might
well be the wrong strategy - or at the very least the wrong terminology
- for something so emergent, chaotic and loose by its very nature.
This new white paper by Donald Clark, CEO of Epic Group plc, explores
the nature of knowledge in its relationship to learning, calling
for a new orientation in our view of how technology should be used
in this area.
White Paper: Knowledge management and e-learning
To get your free copy contact
us
Give your views on the subject
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E P I C T H I N K
T A N K
2. The learner's experience: moving from push to pull
The learning community has thrown up some big ideas
over the last decade, but they don't come much bigger than this
one…
'For years, training has organized itself for the
convenience and needs of instructors, institutions, and bureaucracies.
Bad attitude. Think of learners as customers. Compete for their
time and interests. Provide them legendary service. Convert them
into raving fans. Give them choices...' Jay Cross, www.internettime.com
The idea that it is not only possible but necessary
for today's organisations to move from an instructor-centric to
a learner-centric model - and pronto - has if anything gathered
momentum with the advent of blended learning.
But Epic Think Tanks exist to cast a sceptical eye
on all such big talk, and to subject ideas of all sizes to rigorous
and unflinching scrutiny.
For our eighth of these, held in unseasonably sweltering
conditions in Central London, we tested this particular article
of faith against the experience of practitioners from both public
and private arenas, in sectors from media to the military…
Intro:
Moving from 'training push' to 'learning pull'
1. What does
learner-centric look like?
2. Marketing
becomes crucial
3. The challenge
to organisational learning
Read
a FREE full report of this stimulating discussion
Give your views
on the subject
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R E V I E W
3. Digital Game-Based Learning
McGraw-Hill, December 2000
Author: Marc Prensky
Review by Donald Clark
Marc Prensky has set the benchmark for debate on games
and learning. This highly readable 440-page book is far and away
the best text on the market about this subject.
Prensky starts by showing that today's trainers and
trainees are from totally separate worlds. Sure, learners have a
short attention span nowadays - for the old ways of learning! His
point is that the old ways are inappropriate for the new generation
of learners. This powerful argument underpins the rest of the text.
The real power in the book comes from the arguments
he gathers on motivation, and using game techniques to improve learning.
This is much more useful, as games' designers often know a lot more
about motivation than those in education. They have to - or their
games won't sell. There is real mileage in taking game design techniques
and using them in learning, mainly through simulations.
His analysis of what makes games tick is exemplary;
better than many I've read in books like Trigger Happy or Joystick
Nation. This is matched by a similarly strong analysis on learning
in relation to simulations. The difficulty, however, is in bringing
these two worlds together, and Prensky is not entirely convincing
in making these two worlds congruent.
One practical danger in his approach is the implication
that creating games is easy. Games are difficult to design and expensive
to make. Having been involved in the games industry myself, I know
it is easy to underestimate the culture, talent and costs issues.
A game's budget can push through ten million dollars with matching
marketing spend - and they require rare talent to design and code.
Training departments rarely have this scale of budget for individual
training programmes.
As one would expect, and as with any book that takes
a single, strong line - traditional learning bad, games good - the
book is light on arguments against games in learning. He quotes
Neil Postman on page 74, but fails to mention that Postman has been
a vigorous opponent to games in learning. Postman's hugely popular
Amusing Ourselves to Death, first published in 1985, was a damning
attack on the idea that all learning had to be 'fun'. Postman is
still recommending resistance to this idea.
This is a dimension to the 'games in learning' debate
that is often underestimated by the games evangelists. Games often
have no educational value, and, even worse, can distract, disappoint
or even destroy learning.
Distraction - If the learning objectives are not congruent
with the game objectives you run a real danger of distracting learners
from the learning. Learners become obsessed with progress, scores
and other non-learning components in the game, to the detriment
of the content. Even in real computer games, players will go to
enormous lengths to obtain cheats.
Disappointment - This is a danger where the learner
is set up to experience a game which actually turns out to be a
rather weak affair. Children brought up on a diet of blockbuster
realtime games are often bored by poorly designed educational games.
Destruction - In some cases, games can even destroy
learning. This is the argument put forward by Postman. If game-playing
induces an expectation that learning must always be an amusing experience,
then setting such an expectation risks producing the opposite effect
in contexts where amusement is absent. In this way, a games-based
approach might undermine other more traditional forms of education
and training.
Clearly, the luddite position of either banning games
or ignoring them altogether is not possible. A measured approach
to their use is advised. The debate about games in learning often
ends up as talk between older non-game-playing educators, and old
idealists, (I'm both) neither of whom are truly immersed in the
culture they are examining. Therefore, I'll end on a telling comment
on the book from a twitch-generation game player:
'I don't find my generation totally unable to learn
without computer games as injected fun. For my part, I'm able to
contemplate, read and write. Yes, some of us do like computer games.
But this is a matter of culture and aesthetics - not of learning.
And yes, like many other people we need to learn: that is why we
go to schools to get an education.' (Lars Konzack)
Give your views
on the subject
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C A S E S T U D Y
4. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a learning
object.
You have a proprietary project management process
and more than a thousand project managers around the globe who need
training in it. One division has developed a different and highly
successful versions of the process, so you have not one target audience
but two. In some cases, myths have crept in about what the process
allows you to do and not do.
How do you train cost-effectively on this global scale,
scotch the myths that need scotching, and at the same time bring
this slightly dry subject vividly to life?
Enter Myth-buster Man!
Read how Epic helped Cable & Wireless Global faced
the challenge of training a globally dispersed workforce in its
project management and product development process.
Case study: Cable & Wireless, Stages and Gates
Read
more...
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E P I C N E W S
5. News: Licence to skill!
Charles Clarke, the Minister for Education and Skills,
launched the e-skills Sector Skills Council this month in The Dali
Universe, a permanent exhibition in London's County Hall Gallery
dedicated to surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Surreal it was not.
At a guess, few if any of the 200 sober-suited audience members
had ever taken a lobster for a walk on the end of a dog lead,for
instance.
At a guess, few if any of the 200 sober-suited audience
members had ever taken a lobster for a walk on the end of a dog
lead,for instance.
Tony Buzan of mindmaps fame came close to being surreal.
He described the brain as having no limit to its capabilities (I
don't know about you but I have difficulty in remembering what I
had for breakfast yesterday, which seems to me to hint at certain
limitations).
Charles Clarke, whose mother was a neorologist, was
a bit more focused. He's a bruiser but also a leader capable of
facing up to awkward truths. Like the appalling skills gap in the
UK, with far too many 16 year olds leaving school too early. Like
the failure of Education to adapt to a changing world - and the
isolation of schools and other educational insitutions from the
community and business. The Minister was particularly critical of
the teaching of ICT in schools, appealing for a new model in which
business would play a more active role in education.
He then turned his attention to the Computer Club
for Girls, a project which Epic is helping to design and build.
It aims to transform attitudes to IT in schools by creating computer
clubs for girls, which are already getting 50% attendance rates
in some schools. Only 23% of employees in IT are girls and the sector
suffers from a nerdy, geeky image; despite the fact that IT has
crept into marketing, entertainment and many other areas of commerce.
Karen Price, CEO of e-skills, surprisingly the only
woman on the panel (the audience was also 90%+ men) gave an excellent
and impassioned speech. She's clearly a driver, proud of her people
and focused on delivery. She painted a picture of a turbo-charged
organisation that wants to deliver fast. She has certainly gathered
credible support from industry. The MDs of Dell, Microsoft and BT
were all there. These guys are contributing time and money.
Famously, Salvador Dali himself once gave a lecture
at a London gallery not far from this venue in a deep-sea diving
suit, from which he had to be extracted, suffocating, half way through
(it is not recorded whether the lecture was otherwise a success).
On the evidence of this event, e-skills have a better
practical grasp of what it takes to give a good presentation than
the old surrealist. As everyone knows, however, the trick with these
initiatives is sustaining success.
E-skills seems to be well led, have good, dedicated
staff, and are attempting to do things at speed. It would have been
interesting to have attended the other sector skills council launch,
happening on the same day, SEMPTA, the science, engineering and
manufacturing council. I don't know for sure, but I'd hazard a guess
that it was less spirited, took place in a duller venue.. and probably
had a less glamorous CEO.
Further Epic news stories this month…
Epic comes clean about 'What We Do'! Check out the
new section of our website, giving for the first time a full summary
of the Epic offering and our extensive experience across both public
and private sectors
Techinvest:
Epic results 'best we've seen in 6 months'
Category
management blend for Kimberly-Clark
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F O R E T H O U G H T
In next month's edition of Epic Thinking:
- New white paper on learning design
- Show reports
- Reviews
- News
If you have any questions that you would like to see
our delegates address at future Epic Think Tanks, or suggestions
for further sessions, mail them now to:
thinktank@epic.co.uk
Catch up on past think tanks…
Leading
Change and e-learning
Blended - or Blanded?
Leadership and e-learning
Health and e-learning
Collaboration
and e-learning
Corporate universities
and e-learning
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R E T U R N O F P O S T
If you have:
- a question to put to the Epic Thinking user base
- a response to any of the points raised here
- a suggestion for a topic you'd like to see covered mail
us right now
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