As an organisation develops their e-learning strategy, an important component is to ensure a shared understanding of learning philosophy and quality standards also evolves. What will be the quality standards to which we measure success? What is the quality standards we wish our L&D department to be measured against? What is our shared understanding of good learning design?
These are important discussions to have as an L&D department expands learning design to include technology delivery. There are lots of reasons for this, but one I wish to highlight is the natural uncertainty that practitioners new to technology will travel through. We will listen to vendors who claim to be learning design experts, and perhaps be attracted to ROI arguments. And, in this process, we may temporarily lose sight to what we’ve aways known to be good learning design. This is because it is challenging to superimpose something as organic as learning onto a systems-based framework that is technology.
Social network technologies are certainly offering what appears to be less linear pathways than, say, a discussion board, enabling new opportunities for social learning and collaboration. However, many of the out-of-the box solutions are not the ideal design for a particular learning requirement, say a Leadership program for example.
The more opportunity we have as an in-house L&D team to discuss our learning philosophy and develop a shared understanding on how people learn different capabilities in different milieu, the better practice we become at scoping design and developing the quality technology learning solutions we aspire.
