Epic Think Tank
Moving from 'training push' to 'learning pull'

When the mode of the music changes, wrote Plato, the walls of the
city shake. Since the advent of e-learning, and particularly blended
learning, there has been a definite change of tune from the training
and development function (now rebranded 'the learning community').
A chorus of voices - heard in conference and exhibition halls across
the land - urges us to 'put the learner at the centre of the experience'.
We need to move, it is trumpeted, to learner-centric learning.
And indeed, this particular change of mode poses a palpable threat
to certain key bits of masonry within the ambit of organisational
learning. We're not talking solely metaphorically here. More than
one global concern in recent times has closed down its bricks-and-mortar
training centre in favour of an online equivalent.
Are we experiencing a paradigm shift? Or is this no more than mood
music designed to cover the sound of axes being swung? Is the real
driver behind e-learning adoption a cost-cutting agenda - which
seeks merely to pare away expensive face-to-face interventions,
while leaving existing organisational structures untouched?
Epic Think Tanks exist to ask such difficult questions - and to
subject all big ideas to rigorous scrutiny. We gathered together
a group of e-learning practitioners from across both private and
public sectors - in markets from technology to defence, from media
to leisure, and asked them to address the following three key questions:
- What does learner-centric actually look like on the ground:
is it happening?
- What useful lessons have to be learned from marketing in order
to make learning more learner-centric?
- What pressures on organisational leadership are resulting from
having learning organised in this way?
Read a full report of this
discussion
Next>>
What does learner-centric
look like?
What do learners want?
Marketing becomes crucial
The challenge to organisational
leadership
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