“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” says the White Queen to Alice.

In the previous two articles I addressed some of the challenges learning professionals face in the changing world of work and how they are responding. I also looked at some of the approaches an increasing number of organisations are using to exploit the fact that most learning happens in the workplace rather than in the classroom or through structured eLearning courses – especially the adoption of the 70:20:10 Framework. Read more →

The Training Department (aka the L&D dept) has traditionally focused on designing, developing, delivering and managing instruction – in the form of courses, workshops, e-learning and other training events.  In  fact “a course” in some form or other has now become  the de facto solution to any performance problem in an organisation – despite the fact that many of my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (and others) have spoken about its inadequacies in today’s world, and that courses have little impact on performance. Read more →

This article was written for the E-Learning Council, and first appeared on 10 October 2011

Although we learn every day, in everything we do, whether it is in what we read,  watch or listen to, or in the conversations and discussions we have with other people, at some time or other people started believing that the only important learning happens in a formal setting, e.g. in a school classroom or a university lecture hall. Read more →

Jay Cross is a champion of informal learning, working smarter, and systems thinking. His calling is to help business people improve their performance on the job and satisfaction in life. Known as the first person to use the term eLearning on the web, Cross is the former head of the eLearning Forum and currently chairs the Internet Time Alliance, a brain trust of six thought leaders in the fields of social and informal learning, who help companies boost their collective intelligence and profitability through networks. Read more →

Yesterday, in my first posting on this topic, I showed how “social learning” is not just about a new training trend or about adding social media into the “blend” or acquiring the latest Social Learning Management System, but a fundamental change in how we need to view workplace learning.  And that in order stay in tune with new ways of working and learning, the L&D function needs to move from a “Command and Control” approach to one that I called “Encourage and Engage”. Read more →

This post was prompted by a webinar I gave on behalf of Citrix/GoToWebinar on 6^th July 2011 and originally posted as a guest post on the Learning Pool blog. I’ve made a few changes to it here. Read more →

Slides from a webinar for the eLearning Network of Australasia – July 2010 Read more →

I was recently involved in a discussion about 21st Century learning skills in one of the LinkedIn Groups. It got me thinking about a piece I’d written for TrainingZone a few months ago titled ‘What does your ideal L&D team look like in 2010?’ I’ve posted that article here, with some changes and updates. Read more →

On April 27, 2011, Clark Quinn and I kicked off a meeting of the Chief Learning Officer Executive Network at Symantec in Mountain View. The Executive Networks people took notes; here are the main points from my presentation. Read more →

The opportunity we now have is to use technology to move from an event-based learning model that we know to be ineffective, to a more distributed and contextualized environment that elegantly spans the continuum from formal learning to performance support. And this is not science fiction – we have the tools we need now. Even if we didn’t, we should be preparing our thinking for this capability. Read more →