Favorite 2009 posts on Informal Learning Blog

Here are the most popular posts on the Informal Learning Blog in 2009.

Business Impact of Social and Informal Learning

To implement social/informal learning infrastructure projects, learning and development professionals need to shift their focus from learning to earning. The place to begin is by identifying a business objective that is vital to a corporate sponsor. MORE

New roles for former trainers

Get Out of the Training Business, my most recent column for Chief Learning Officer, called for the abolition of corporate training departments. Help me write the next installment.

Some instructors and instructional designers now see me as a job threat. They needn’t worry. Enlightened eLearning requires more people, not fewer. MORE

Agile instructional design

Instructional design was invented around the time of World War II. Starting virtually from scratch, America had to train millions of men to be soldiers and millions of civilians to make ships and armaments. The training film was born, soon to be followed with the ADDIE model. ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement & evaluate) made it possible to manage the process of creating useful training programs systematically. MORE

Internet culture

The Internet is so pervasive that Internet values are blowing back into real life.

For example, I have no qualms about walking out of a boring presentation, even if I’ve been sitting in the front row. The Web trained me to click past unrewarding pages and spend my time where it will do me the most good.

I expect attitudes like Internet values to underpin exemplary corporate learning in the future. MORE

First, kill all the instructors

Just fooling. I wish we had more instructors. In these explosive times, I’d like to see more of all forms of learning. If we don’t pump more resources into learning, we’re going to be flying blind.

This morning I received an email asking…”How are people using social software to support learning?” MORE

Too much technology

On web2logo, you click a logo and find out about a Web 2.0 company. (Thanks, Steve Rubel, for the pointer.) The number of companies is simply bewildering.

I have been struggling to put together a matrix of with Web 2.0 technologies along on axis and learning experiences along the other. Looking at this map showed me where I’d gone astray. There are too many subdivisions of the Web 2.0 world (with more arriving every day) to even consider describing them in any detail. MORE

Climbing the collaboration curve

Jon Husband sent me the link to short post by John Seely Brown, John Hagel, and Lang Davison on The Collaboration Curve.

Everybody knows about network effects: the value of a network increases exponentially with the addition of each new node. (Metcalfe’s Law.)

Imagine what can happen if those nodes are people. Each new node gives them more opportunities to learn and to perform better. When people are actively pulling in learning resources rather than taking what’s pushed at them, the value of the network goes turbo, an effect the authors call the collaboration curve. MORE

Power of informal learning in developing managers

I discovered this article while Googling for material on learning transfer. If you’re still relying on formal training to develop managers, you might want to give this one a read. Informal Learning and the Transfer of Learning: How Managers Develop Proficiency MORE

What do brains have to do with it?

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonas Lehrer is a wonderful romp about how we perceive reality, told in a series of stories about artists who perceived how brains work fifty to a hundred years ahead of the scientists themselves. I read this in Sicily, a great backdrop for thinking deeply about memory, perception, language, art, and taste. The findings made my head spin. MORE

The ROI of Enterprise 2.0 Learning

Many a corporation misses massive opportunities by demanding to know “Where’s the ROI?” in cases where ROI is an inappropriate and misleading indicator. Permit me to explain why.

Return on Investment means different things to different people To some, ROI is a hurdle a project must achieve to warrant investment. To others, ROI is a way to coax people to make the business case for a proposal. Some treat ROI as a formula, others as a philosophy. MORE

Rethinking conferences

When I signed up for Spaces for Interaction: An Online Conversation about Improving the Traditional Conference, I didn’t appreciate how timely the topic would become.

Conferences have traditionally provided foundation knowledge for instructional designers, trainers, CLOs, and others in the field. I’ve learned a whale of a lot from these events over the last twenty years. Through their presentations at conferences, Allison Rossett, Elliott Masie, Gloria Gery, and scores of other awesome teachers have shaped the thinking of the greater learning and development community of practice. Conference attendance have played a vital role in our professional development.

Nonetheless, the patience of those of us who have paid our dues in Orlando, Las Vegas, Anaheim, Chicago, and L.A. over the years is wearing thin. MORE