Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/134584
sixlaws We're not saying everything is going mobile. We're saying everything is going ubiquitous. In the future, important content will be broadcast with redundancies that ensure all favors of ice cream are available when requested. Just as learning styles impact a person's engagement with content, device styles impact his or her access to the content in the frst place. We get the tragic phone call almost once a month. Te company did an exhaustive search for the right platform. It designed a fawless support system for the launch, populated with the best courseware in the business. But it's a ghost town. In most cases, those people didn't think through device management and the modality changes that would be required for efective learning across each user type. You can design the coolest product in the world, but it doesn't amount to much if you can't ship it. DON'T BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. Content that's killer in one environment can be lifeless in another. It all depends on the "context." With the majority of the learning being driven by context (at work, at home, in the feld), technology can be leveraged to allow people to stay in their workfow while providing them with just the right support resources. Tings like performance support, formal learning, social learning, mentoring, networks, communities and tools can be optimized for the context in which they are called up. Tis allows learning to happen faster, more efectively, and more efciently. It also allows for learning to be more userfocused with the characteristic of pulling information and knowledge rather than a federated push model that has been in place traditionally. GIVE ME THE ANSWER, NOT YOUR LIFE STORY. Te need for information today is surpassed only by the need for relevance. Relevance is the diference between calling up data and calling up pertinent data. Just because you're looking for best practices doesn't mean you've got 36 June / July 2013 Elearning! Tings like performance support, formal learning… communities and tools can be optimized for the context in which they are called up. time to read 50,000 of them. Technology can use basic information about a user to flter appropriate content and present it in a very timely manner. Connectivity, activity patterns, historical data, outside infuences, taxonomies and information forensics allow us to customize and automate queries that keep people functioning at the speed of business. KEEP IT REAL. Finally, information must be authentic and accurate. This means a couple of things. First, it must be current — or it must be retired. Outdated content erodes credibility and user confidence. Second, authorship matters. A suggestion posted by a fellow practitioner may be perceived as helpful, whereas the same idea posted by a corporate voice can be seen as manipulative. Technology represents a whole new discipline for learning organizations. And a new advantage for those who master it first. —Jef Gray is the chief innovation ofcer for NovoLogic, and Ben Ortlip is its director of Message Strategy. Follow Gray on Twitter @ NovoJG. Follow Ortlip @benortlip.