The Full Story
An Interview with Gloria Gery, Gery Associates
TRENDS: What are the three stages of e-Learning?
GERY: Stage I is the conversion of existing artifacts to electronic form with a focus on distribution. These forms include event-based courses and all forms of online reference including manuals, help systems, and Web pages. These electronic materials are accessed or experienced entirely outside of a day-to-day work context. Their power is a function of on-demand access and the increasingly sophisticated search engines that are available. They lessen the need to convene people in artificially scheduled environments (classrooms or hotel meeting rooms).
Stage II involves integration. This stage is characterized by making learning and reference resources context sensitive. Often, these resources are coupled with software applications and are available in an actual work context. They have higher leverage because they are accessed within a meaningful context, and learners are in control and motivated to read or experience the resources they access. Their value-ad is improved performance.
Stage III completes transformation and fusion. This stage is characterized by inherently different learning and performance spaces. Often, there is a very tight coupling between tools and knowledge resources, and in some cases the knowledge is embodied in the tool in the form of underlying program logic. In these cases, performers don't have to internalize rules and relationships among and between given work conditions or data and the variables related to them (e.g. policy, process, etc). The simplest instance of these transformed environments are the increasingly familiar wizards we see in software which support users through complex tasks. At the higher end, these transformed environments are task-centered software applications. Consumer products and Web applications that support complex tasks like tax preparation or completing investment transactions are examples. Because these tools do not presume prior knowledge of related domains by performers, they incorporate knowledge into the user interfaces themselves. The power of these environments is such that the learning and doing are tightly coupled. In some cases, the need to know is minimized or eliminated. These tools embody best practice and institutionalize performance in the situation rather than attempt to create the knowledge within each individual performer.
TRENDS: Which stage is the industry in now?
GERY: There are organizations at all three stages of e-Learning. Even within an organization, all three stages are likely. If I had to characterize the industry at a single level, I would regrettably still have to say Stage I. When one walks around exhibit halls at industry conferences, the event-based course model still prevails. Most Learning Management Systems focus on related activities such as registering students, counting their participation, classifying courses as "complete," "incomplete," etc. Some trainers and managers lament about "drop outs" from e-Learning courses as if it were a situation similar to the significance of dropping out of an instructor-led program.
TRENDS: How do we get to performance centered e-Learning?
GERY: When we understand the work context, what it is people have to learn, and how to support learning within it. We must then design to accommodate work-place learning instead of continuing to get people to change the way they learn to accommodate the way we have traditionally taught. That means getting outside of our own mental models and historical development methods and collaborating with those designing software that will support work. Our goal is not training, but rather performance. We must identify new models and adjust our goals and methods to exploit the increasingly powerful and ubiquitous technology that is available to us. We must clearly distinguish between what people must know, what is better referenced, and what must be supported. We cannot do this alone, but must build alliances with Information Systems professionals, those involved in Knowledge Management, and our business leaders. It is the imperative of the century.
