Ten years on

As of this month, it's now ten years since I left Epic and became a freelance consultant. What a great opportunity to take a moment and reflect on the changes that I have witnessed in the field of corporate learning and development - my main focus over these ten years - from a largely UK perspective.

Some changes in the field of learning and development generally:

1. The term 'learning and development' has replaced 'training'. I'm sure we'd all like to think this change has been more than just cosmetic.
2. Compliance training has become a primary focus for many learning and development departments. Although this type of training is seen by many as just going through the motions - and may indeed be causing a great deal of resentment among the victims (sorry, trainees) - it could be that compliance training is keeping many learning and development departments going.
3. Having said that, learning and development departments are leaner than they were. Many more specialist tasks (including what used to be the basics, i.e. running courses) are now outsourced.
4. In IT training we've seen the rise of 'boot camps' (extended immersion courses, often lasting several weeks) to get IT professionals through their vendor certifications. Boot camps raise many interesting questions about the efficiency/effectiveness/ethics of knowledge cramming, which I have yet to get my head round.
5. Outside this field, the trend seems to be towards shorter and shorter courses. Many organisations now run one-hour classes on topics that may previously have been covered over several days.
6. In the soft skills arena, we've seen a wide acceptance of the concepts of accelerated learning (Colin Rose and others), which has resulted in the introduction of all sorts of multi-sensory classroom gadgets, including baroque music CDs, stress balls, baskets of pot pourri and posters. Having experienced all this, it doesn't seem to have done me any harm - it might even work.
7. Coaching has become an important component in many learning and development strategies. As someone who has benefited greatly from, and hugely enjoyed, my experiences over the past couple of years in receiving tennis coaching, I'd have to say I'm a supporter.

Of course my main work focus has been technology-assisted learning. There have been one or two changes here as well:

1. The creation of the World Wide Web and the subsequent surge in interest in the Internet has introduced the whole world to working with hypertext and multimedia. These used to be the exclusive province of specialist designers who produced CD-ROMs and the such like, using expensive software like Director. Now everyone's an expert. Without the WWW, multimedia specialists would have retained their exclusive status. On the other hand, without the WWW, they would probably by now have been out of a job.
2. With the dotcom boom we acquired a new name for technology-assisted learning - 'e-learning'. E-learning means much, much more than CBT delivered in a web browser, not that many in the e-learning profession have yet recognised this.
3. Tools were developed to allow us to communicate with our peers and our tutors in real-time online. Starting with simple text chat, we've added VOIP, video, whiteboards, polls and many other goodies. True these tools may often have been used to deliver an online form of death by PowerPoint, but that's not the fault of the tools.
4. All sorts of enterprise-wide software systems have been introduced to try and bring order to the world of learning at work - learning management systems, learning content management systems, knowledge management systems and so on. Some of these have no doubt served a useful function; some may have been more effective if they had been introduced properly; some may well have obstructed the process of learning more than they helped; many have distracted attention away from the real issues. In any case, they seem no longer to be in the limelight, which is probably just as well.
5. There's been a greater recognition of the fact that knowledge workers don't actually need to know everything, they just need to know someone (or some thing) that does. Performance support has disappointed in generally, but its time has probably yet to come, possibly under a different name and with a reduced emphasis on systems and technology. Much more promising is the concept of connectivism, which recognises the role of technology in helping individuals to build networks of trusted nodes and information sources.
6. We have begun to see some carrying over of the practices of collaborative online learning from the world of higher education. On the other hand, far too many corporate e-learning efforts rely on self-study, which all but the most independent learners seem to do only under sufference.
7. Thinking of interactive self-study materials for a moment, most are unfortunately still crap. They can be engaging, entertaining, stimulating, challenging, etc., but somehow very few instructional designers seem to have learned how to make this possible.
8. We have seen a renewed interest in games and simulations, due largely to the efforts of enthusiasts such as Mark Prensky, Clark Aldrich and others. This is indeed a promising area, but to my knowledge there's very little evidence yet of successful application.
9. Rich media disappeared when we moved from CD-ROM to dial-up connections, but has since made a come back with broadband. Given the ease with which audio and video can now be produced and deployed, it's hard not to be optimistic about the potential.
10. Informal learning has taken centre stage, acknowledging the obvious - that most learners do it for themselves. They probably always have, but there's little to stop them now, with the widespread utilisation of blogs, wikis, social networking tools and the like.

Phew. That was cathartic. Let's hope there's as much to say in 2017.