Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
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research:userWYVÄSL ation at the end of a course. The second- most popular method is via Testing and Assessments, used by 61 percent of the corporate organizations reporting, and 67 percent of the public-sector groups. In the corporate sector, 57 percent report that they use Completion Rates to mea- sure impact, and 49 percent of the public sector agrees. Also tied at the 57 percent mark in the corporate space, was Man- ager Feedback, although in the public sector, that was only used by 27 percent. A growing conversation revolves around how to measure impact of new social learning initiatives. Te answers vary from ranking peer's advice and giving Results seem to indicate that mobile technology has become a viable and effective means of learning delivery. CHART 2. MEASURING IMPACT Corporate Sector Employee feedback Testing & assessment Performance of Employees Completion rates Manager feedback Participation rates Kirkpatrick Levels of Evaluation Return on investment Other "thumbs up" to great information Websites, to participation and usage rates. Harder evidence is beginning to appear around how informal learning (an inherent part of social learning networks) impacts the time a knowledge worker has to spend to find answers. More information is starting to gather around employee performance when social learning networks are de- ployed. Forward-thinking companies are betting that they can take a bite out of the standard metric that knowledge workers are spending 25 percent of their day searching for job-related information. Dropping that search time by only 1 to 2 percent can have a dra- matic impact on payroll and other costs, as well as the speed at which an 18 July / August 2012 Elearning! 78% 61% 51% 57% 57% 50% 33% 19% 4% Public Sector 71% 67% 36% 49% 27% 49% 24% 11% 2% organization can deploy new initiatives. Statistics seem to point that the tide is changing when it comes to supporting "informal learning" — oſten estimated to be about 80 percent of the learning that transpires in a normal enterprise. Te time could come when asking the learning and development group to justify a social learning network — the newest technology platform for supporting enterprise-wide "informal training" — would be about as unusual as asking them to justify tele- phones and email for workers. TAKEAWAYS FOR 2012 Te biggest surprise is the level of spend- ing increase in the corporate sector for e-learning initiatives. Tat's one of the larger year-over-year gains reported in the past decade — and a very telling number when it comes to what's leſt for classroom deployments. In the public sector, there are still larger expenditures than two years ago, but with a change in focus away from the extended enterprise. Te very strong gains for Mobile Learn- ing in both sectors seems to indicate an industry-wide endorsement of mobile technology as a viable and effective means of learning delivery. It also appears that with this increased awareness of techno- logical solutions, learning executives and practitioners are now considering other technologies. Tere is a lot of consensus around social networks and e-learning de- velopment tools, but as demonstrated in the public sector, there's also a significant investment in 3-D and gaming solutions. Whether the increased spending trend for e-learning becomes a predictor of new learning delivery strategies remains to be seen. However, one thing is for sure. E- learning and mobile learning are definitely leading the way for both the corporate and public sectors, when it comes to learning solutions in use and planned over the next 12 months. And finally, social learning networks, the newest purveyor of informal training, may be in its genesis. —Download the complete 2012 E-learning User Studies for Public & Private sectors at: http://www.2elearning.com/www/resources/ research-white-papers.html Beginning Au- gust 1, 2012.