30 april 2010

Learning in 3D

The Internet becomes 3D, how will learning organisations adept to the next generation Internet?

Reading and discussing the book “Learning in 3D” from Karl Kapp and Tony Driscoll, in a virtual group of innovative minds (http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2010/04/07/learning-in-3d-please-join-my-reading-group/) and communicating about it using the technology the book describes, is a complete new reading experience. It definitively makes you more alert on the content.

Reading the first chapter gives you an overview on the historic perspective of the Internet and the World Wide Web. This also raises a question, since the authors see the three evolutions of the web. 1st search and find 2nd share and collaborate and for the 3rd phase they describe the immersive web. In my perspective however, the commonly accepted phases are described as 1st publish, 2nd transaction and the 3rd phase is described as the semantic web. The next generation web will give answers to questions, instead of finding documents or persons as is characteristic for the 1st and 2nd phase of the web. That it will become immersive is in my opinion just a matter of growth and acceptance. Becoming semantic is a true change of behaviour, since it will be able to give answers to complex questions and is able to defeat languages barriers.

The second chapter describes how everything has changed by technology, except the learning function. Classrooms and teaching are still the same a they where the last centuries. The summary of the introduction of this chapter is best described in the introduction of the film “We are the people we've been waiting for” from Lord David Puttnam (director if the killing fields)

According to the book, there are 7 problems for the learning industry to address;

  1. The autonomous learner problem. Learners are most motivated to learn by themselves at their own workplace. With the large amount of available information the learners need the classroom less.
  2. The timing problem. It takes too long to develop a traditional learning program.
  3. The packaging problem. Traditional learning is based around topics. The learning need is based around tasks.
  4. The performance problem. Learning needs in an organisation are multi causal. Traditional learning is based around isolated issues.
  5. The routinization problem. Learning is build around the ‘dominant design’. Technology is used to make learning events looking like classrooms or lessons.
  6. The transfer problem. Traditional learning does not change the organisational behaviour.
  7. The values Problem. The learning function is focused on adding value to the individual, while the organisation is investing in learning to add value to the business. By making learning cheaper the learning function is marginalising itself. The learning function should be focussed on bringing stakeholder value instead of being subject to costcutting.

Networked learning is a format in which you stimulate your network to work on your learning experience. This stimulates a new way of learning. The learning for new business solutions. This is called generative learning. This opposed to the learning for optimising those functions we already know, productive learning. Both learning formats can coexist next to each other. But where we have optimised the productive learning formats, we have a lot of evelopment to do on the generative learning format.