The Race to Develop the Future of E-Learning Communities--Part IV

In the previous post, the suggestion was made that the 70-20-10 framework for learning that many learning cultures in business organizations adhere to, may not be giving enough notice to the growing impact of informal learning. With the growth in the availability of WiFi zones in many sectors of our society from the coffee shop to the place where you have your automobile serviced, more and more opportunities are open outside the walls of the place of employment to personalize learning. The arrival of mobile learning technology combined with learning modules in many subject areas now allow learning to take place anytime and anywhere. The opportunities to make learning adapt to personal daily schedules are increasing weekly. As attractive as this sounds, it also causes us to ask some sobering questions such as:

" Are learners ready to delve into such an environment without the needed tools to adapt?"

" Will this type of learning make learners superficially knowledgeable in many subject areas but be masters of none in any sustained depth?"

Credit: www.themindquotes.com

 Gibbon's quote emphasizes the dilemma that we face in regards to informal learning. If the "winds" and the "waves" represent disruptive change in education, then only those who are best equipped to navigate into these unknown waters will be able to not only enrich their own learning but more importantly contribute solutions to the powerful real world problems that we presently face that are in fact destabilizing our civilizations. We do not need learners who have been shaped and now defined to be masters of superficial knowledge or trivia. We do need learners who are thoughtfully engaged to understand in depth. Learning needs to be deep, collaborative and sustained or pervasive. In other words we need to create a sense of community in the online world.

It is in the best interests of a business organization to develop a learning community for its employees from the CEO down to the lowest level employee level for the following reasons:

• Innovation development within the learning culture of  a business can only develop if the employees are provided with an environment that it encourages creative and innovative thinking. We know from the ways and reasons adults seek learning opportunities that it is really only meaningful to them if it helps them advance in the role they have within the organization.

 

• Creating such an environment that is available to employees when they are not working helps combat the mindset of superficial sampling of  areas of knowledge without learning anything in depth. When employees are provided with a defined task, they can be directed to the community to help arrive at a solution.

 

• Creating such an environment will promote collaboration among employees and in doing so, create unity and support of the company brand

 

• Creating such a community will provide a forum for employees to present and defend innovative ideas before decision makers. This is a "win-win" scenario because communication is more open between employees and decision makers and decision makers are able to map out the potential talents within their work force that they were not aware of before. In an age of learning and the growth of technology, the greatest assets that an organization has lies in the intellectual capital found in the work force.

 

• Creating such a community also can include a "technology sandbox" where employees can go at any time to try out new technologies or web tools that might help them perform their roles in a smarter fashion.

The Path of Pervasive Learning

If we are to promote the important skillsets in employees that will help the business organization grow in a globally connected workplace, the mindset of thoughtful engagement or deeper pervasive learning in an online environment needs to be a defining characteristic in advising learners how to use their informal learning time.

"Make the company learning community be the one place where employees want to spend their time of informal learning."

 This will require the identification and coordination of the most important elements in informal learning. There is also the question of what part formal learning will play in this scheme. We might see a radical change in the 70-20-10 framework especially if we really want to encourage and nurture innovative thinking within the organization. This framework will have to become more fluid. I believe that Charles Jennings would agree with this given the seismic changes occurring in the growth of knowledge and technology.

Credit: www.bdld.blogspot.com

Credit: Jessie Chuang

Right now, with regards to the life-cycle of online communities we are not doing as well as we could if we weren't shackled to an outdated purpose and model for education.

For a learning culture of a business organization, there is a need to create an online community that is devoted to the needs of developing the learning profiles of all members of the organization. It needs to be a series of networks that make up a learning community that can be reached by learners within the business organization through a global learning portal. Remember, that in  the previous posts this was divided into 6 global portal zones.

Next post ....I will provide and describe the networks relevant to business that would make up the global learning community

The Race to Develop the Future of E-Learning Communities--Part III

In the race to create global E-Learning communities, there are two main societal institutions that are affected by these changes which makes them majority stakeholders in how these global learning communities are designed. As pointed out in the last post, because of the new age of learning and information we are living in, it is reasonable that both these societal institutions share a symbiotic relationship because a change that impacts one also has ramifications for the other. These two institutions are:

• Global business organizations
• Formal education organizations

Credit: www.ahmannmartin.com

The Shape of Learning Cultures in Business Organizations

How a business organization handles change determines the future health of the organization. When you listen to the concerns of businesses, the following are some of the most often repeated:

• We want to be an innovative company but we are afraid that it will be too disruptive to our client base, our product and service lines and to our employees.
• We want to fully engage our employees so that there is visible growth and improved performance for our company but it seems that the external motivators that we use such promotions, pay raises...etc does not seem to take us where we want to go in terms of being globally competitive within our specific sector.
• Our budgets are stretched to the max and each department guards its allotment jealously. By the time the smoke clears, there is very little capital left for L & D.
• Too often when we have to decide between compliance training and innovation initiatives, compliance training wins hand down

"What is wrong with this picture? What is really going on here?"

The mindset that seems to be at the core of these concerns is that of maintaining the model that we have had for decades and "add on" these new ideas that seem to be the trend. This is a mindset that says:" lets keep doing things the way we have always done things and just tweak it with these new ideas!" When questioned about how to meet the new challenge for companies to become more innovative, companies with the present mindset will claim that they are innovating "incrementally".

The mindset that should be adopted by business organizations should be one of empowering transformation to meet the needs of societies that are transforming because of the exponential changes in technology and information. Business has to ask itself the question:

"In light of the greater emphasis on knowledge building and life long learning for all people, including everyone from the CEO down to manual labourers within a business organization, what framework do we need that will fit these goals?"

The 70-20-10 Learning Culture Framework

Charles Jennings is one of the world's most leading thinkers and practitioners in innovative learning and capability development. He is also a leading supporter of the 70-20-10 learning framework for business organizations.

 

Credit:www.ryan2point0.wordpress.com

Essentially, the learning framework which has been around since the 1990's suggests that learning within a business organization happens in three interconnected paths:

• 70 % of the learning that employees are engaged in is experiential (learning by doing)
• 20% of  the learning that employees are engaged in is informal (learning through social means)
• 10% of the learning that employees are engaged in is through formal means (learning through formal classroom training)

In the 21st century, an age that emphasizes life long learning, exponential growth of knowledge and societal needs for effective change agents, innovation and global collaboration, this framework leads to some very thought provoking questions such as:

1. Given the rise of the Internet, does this framework still fit?
2. Does this framework really take into account the increasing growth of informal learning, the rise of social media and mobile learning?
3. Should the interconnecting percentages be agile and fluid rather than set as they have been from the beginning? 
4. Given the fact that this learning framework is not based on well established empirical evidence, does this framework itself need to be transformed to fit the new realities in the use of technology, current research on learning from cognitive science and the growing emphasis on creating global business networks?

[ Sorry for the odd font changes in the article. Sometimes the technology is more temperamental than me!]

Next----Forms of informal learning, Pervasive learning and creating links between Global Learning Portals and Specialized learning and innovation networks

The Race to Develop the Future of E-Learning Communities--Part II

This post is a continuation of Part I which dealt with the need for a renewed vision for E-Learning which was posted to www.elearningspread.com recently. If the drivers to develop global E-Learning communities are no longer the ones that were tied to the Industrial economy mindset, then we are faced with the question:

"What should the new drivers be for such a new vision, and does this mean that education, and business no longer have a viable stake in this enterprise?"

To answer these questions, we need to think in terms of a new paradigm that says that the main driver should be the quest for a new level and form of education that is dedicated to the enrichment of the quality of life for all societies regardless of their socioeconomic status. Given the state of the world, we can not afford to be protectionist in our viewpoint and look out for number one. History is filled with the descriptions of assaults on fortresses and more importantly, what drove these assaults. Global needs must be the new drivers for change. Right now, global societies need:

• Citizens who have been educated with the goal of them becoming effective agents of change within their own region of the world.
• Citizens who are effective problem solvers when confronted with the complex, real world problems that impact every facet of human life on the planet.
• Citizens who know how to collaborate with others in the world on a global scale when tasked with a problem.
• Citizens who are creative, entrepreneurial innovators who can create new knowledge and skillsets to the benefit of all people.
• Citizens who have the mindset of putting "WE" before "ME" in their dedication to enriching the quality of life for those who they relate to and work with.

  

If business organizations were to look at the above list would they not concur that the values they see would also be important core values for them to adopt for their own learning cultures within their businesses? The new paradigm changes the relationship of business to education from the previous decades old viewpoint that business defines and dictates what outcomes should be the end results of education to a new viewpoint that is more symbiotic in nature. Businesses need to see that the ROI is far greater in a forged symbiotic relationship with education because this age, an age of knowledge and learning really sees healthy progress in the promotion of systemic life-long learning for all citizens and especially those citizens who will lead and work in the new global businesses of the 21st century. Far from businesses being left out, their role needs transformation to reflect a new relationship that is more in sync with this age. 

" What we are faced with is the perfect storm when it comes to the advancement of learning! "

The arrival of technological advancements such as A.I., global e-learning, and the exponential increase of information across multiple disciplines suggests that we need to truly develop global e-learning communities!"

Building Global E-Learning Communities

Since we are talking about global E-Learning communities, we need to make sure that we lay a solid foundation for implementation. If these communities are completely online, this means that we would have to define what we could use to host these communities. Our choices range between using the Cloud or creating VPN's (Virtual Private Networks). Here is one area where business finds its opportunities because regardless of whether you use the "cloud" or a "VPN", subscription to the service would be required. My choice would be going with a business that can host the creation of VPN's because of what I would suggest is better security. When working in an online environment, security should be a number one priority.

Establishment of Global E--Learning Portals: When we understand that it is the global communities we want to reach then we know that we need to establish global E-Learning portals set to serve 6 defined regions in the world.

What I am about to suggest comes with a number of disclaimers:

• This is conceptual and its purpose is to get you to become involved in useful conversations as you consider the possibilities. It is not my intent to suggest that these are THE configurations and the only ones to consider. These concepts are the product of my thoughtful engagement with E-Learning.
• The titling of these portals again are open to revision but I think you will also discern my thinking behind their choice.
• The composition of the families of countries are again not something that I intend to dictate but I would welcome the thoughts of others as to other pertinent criteria to be considered in the choice of participants in each global E-Learning portal.

Portal #1: The Northern Hemisphere Pacific Portal
Portal #2: The Southern Hemisphere Pacific Portal
Portal #3: The Northern Hemisphere Atlantic Portal
Portal #4: The Southern Hemisphere Atlantic Portal
Portal #5: The Mediterranean & Central EU Portal
Portal #6: The Indian Ocean & Middle East Portal

With respect to the first four portals, the equator is a determining factor. Also, I am not so naïve as to not recognize that the selection of which countries belong to what E-Learning portal will require cultural, political, historical, and economical relationships among them to be considered. This requires the great desire to really try to understand the world from each others point of view and be comfortable enough to discuss it to develop strong ties in developing a unified vision for E-Learning.

A typical portal would be akin to a lobby with a number of doors similar in concept to the drawing below.

 To avoid the new malady of "cognitive overload" which I have mixed emotions about, more on the new global E-Learning portals and the importance of a new symbiotic relationship between business and education in the next post....

E-Learning Educator As An Agent of Change

For individuals who are educators, trainers, instructional designers and CLO's, the greatest challenge that they face is to unlearn a good part of their training. The reason for doing this is because all of our training in our individual areas of expertise was based upon the premise that the vision and goals of education would not change at an unmanageable rate because that had been our past experience. However, with the rise of the world wide web and rapid changes in technology, the whole face of education, training and instructional design was disrupted and new skillsets were required in order to function effectively in the new environment of the online world. Whether you are part of a business organization or formal education, standing at the front of a classroom or training room, lecturing and reading bullet points off a slide is no longer conducive for preparing learners for the world that they will live and work in.

 "WHY? You Ask?"

 All learners, adult and younger, need to be engaged as partners in their own learning. We can no longer treat them as a passive audience hanging on our every word. In order for deeper learning to take place, learners need to be engaged in challenging, inspiring, and intriguing conversations where their own intrinsic motivation drives them to seek to learn more.

E-Learning Educators: The Exponential Growth of Knowledge and Professional Knowledge Silos

With the advance of technology, access to the world wide web became much easier and also very useful for the important skillset of "collaborative knowledge work". Knowledge across the disciplines advanced at an exponential rate to such a point that professional knowledge repositories were needed in order for the various disciplines to collect, authenticate and share knowledge with members of a particular discipline anywhere in the world. In the past, this type of knowledge sharing was very time sensitive because the methods of distribution via letter, telephone and even professional journal were hindered by the technology limitations of the times. The Internet changed all of that for business organizations as well as for formal education. The sharing and transmission of discipline knowledge from anywhere in the world became much, much faster.

Although transmission of knowledge is faster, it is not perfect since we still need to overcome the "synchronous vs. asynchronous" dilemma and the problem of antiquated infrastructure in many parts of the world. 

At this point in time, most scientific disciplines have their own online silo of professional knowledge complete with blogs, journals and discussion areas.

The Evolution of Professional Knowledge Silos to Cross Disciplinary Learning Networks

If we are to move away from the industrial economy mindset with its viewpoints on the purpose and vision of education, we need to look at areas that exist online that are still tied to this anachronistic model of education and training. The creation and use of separate subjects within a brick and mortar schools were designed that way to serve the industrial economy which stated that the purpose of education was to create efficient workers within designated disciplines which had distinct borders and to create generations of perpetual consumers. Therefore, creating and maintaining online versions of these professional silos of knowledge maintains a bondage to this type of mindset.

Credit: www.trudalane.net

 

Two realizations that shone a spotlight on the inadequacies of this mindset were based on the changing needs of a rapidly developing digital society:

1. Many of the real world problems that we face today and some that have defied solution require a cross-disciplinary approach if we are to arrive at viable solutions. This means that in order to solve a complex problem, the skillsets required may involve the professional knowledge of mathematicians, geophysicists, and cultural anthropologists if the problem deals with saving artifacts from ancient excavation sites in the Middle East near active earth fault lines. The options are: (a) talk to each of these specialists separately, or (b) have these specialist collaborate with each other. One of the problems that arises with option (b) is the "protectionist professional mindset" in which the professionals guard their silo of knowledge jealously. In other words, free and open collaboration with people of other disciplines is guarded.
2. In order for innovation to grow in a healthy manner, the purpose of education should reflect the needs of the times we live in. This means that education needs to prepare learners to become effective agents of change who are tasked with the creation of new knowledge and skillsets.

Some disciplines have already began the necessary transformation to become cross-disciplinary learning networks. The professionals who now support the STEM initiative (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) now collaborate and share knowledge in an attempt to solve complex real world problems. Some have taken a step further and support the STEAM initiative which recognizes the great contributions that the Arts can make to STEM. The need for the skillsets that involve creativity is an essential to helping learners innovate in a digital world.
There is a growing movement in the research communities at universities to collaborate with other disciplines that might help shed light on a tasked problem. The process starts by making a comparison between the traditional versus the cross disciplinary approach.

Credit: Lina Markauskaite

In the quest to represent disciplinary knowledge in a cross disciplinary format it is important to make sure that you are not just creating large knowledge silos. What makes the difference in this instance is inter-network collaboration where relationships exist between the various knowledge networks. This is what lays the foundation for global learning communities dedicated to open collaboration and innovative thinking. Perhaps a simple analogy would be to consider the global learning community to be like a large sandbox in which when one learning network is tasked with solving a complex real world problem, it invites other learning networks to join them in solving the problem. These learning networks are not restrained by geography or time.




The question that needs to be asked is:

"What steps needed to be taken within formal education and business organizations to help bring about the development of cross disciplinary online learning networks?"

To begin to answer this question requires that we start with changes in formal education because it is here that learners receive the training to enter various professions, including the profession of education:

1. At the university and college level, there needs to be a re-evaluation of the vision and purpose of education within the context of the needs of 21st century societies that more and more live in an online world. This is the world that they use for satisfying the basic needs of life, for seeking information on world events and for building their knowledge and skillsets in areas that are personally of interest to them. They want the flexibility of having more control over their everyday life.
2. The concept of M.O.O.C.S needs to be re-evaluated as to who is best served by this construct in its present form. If it serves the bottom line of the university or college more than the learners, then we have a serious problem. If the pedagogy used within the M.O.O.C. is merely the same pedagogy that has been used for decades in brick and mortar schools except now it is transferred uncritically to the online environment then it is misrepresentation of the worst order.
3.  Faculties of education need to replace the industrial mindset of treating learners as a "tabula rasa" or blank slate to be filled with information and need to systematically teach learners how to learn and collaborate in an online environment. They need to foster the idea of collaboration with professional cross disciplinary networks to create new knowledge and skillsets and to be instigators of effective change. 
4. This cross disciplinary knowledge process must be one that is systemic through the higher education learning community because the learners that seek out higher education need re-assurance that university and college education is in sync with the real world they will work and live in.

Credit: www.citadelproject.org

 

 I would edit the above quote to state:

 "if (collaboration within an organization) could be decided by engineering or scientific or mathematical means alone, it would have been. (In other words) 21st century complex real world problems can not be effectively solved using knowledge silos and professional protectionist mindsets."

Next--the exciting developing world of learning networks, learning communities and learning portals.

Agents of Change--Identifying and Mentoring Learners Who Will Change the World

Following up from the last post, there are some very sobering questions that we need to ask which are:

"How many learners who could become effective and much needed agents of change in our societies are falling between the cracks of our present education systems? How many are becoming discouraged and disconnected with their education because the education system requires that they fit a centuries old norm that does not nurture innovation, creativity, or higher end critical thinking skills?

Our responses to such learners has been any of the following:

• Isolate them and put them together with their own kind in a special class or even a special school.
• Just keep giving them what we are giving the rest of the class but give them alot more of it to keep them busy.
• We really don't have to spend alot of time on them because we know that they will always do well at school. We need to spend more time with those students who are struggling and those who are average. Teaching to the lowest common denominator with respect to achievement will give us something to boast about when we undergo school performance reviews and our superiors see how much our test scores have gone up.
• Send him or her to the principal's office because he or she is always interrupting the class with crazy ideas. He or she have become a real discipline problem because he or she is always bothering other students around him or her and even tries to correct me on what I am teaching. Personally, I think that he or she has "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" and should be on "meds".

Do any of the above responses sound familiar to you? We need to look at education in a new light. We need to recognize that we need to be able to identify those learners who could make a credible difference in solving the many complex real world problems that we face as societies and encourage the development of their skillsets.

So, if it is important that we not lose such learners, what is stopping us from doing something about it?

Problems That We Have Inherited

1. Assembly Line Model of Education: This mindset basically treats learners as a "tabula rasa" or blank slates on an assembly line which move from grade to grade with each educator along the assembly line insisting on conformity to the rules and inculcating these learning objects with the required content and skillsets prescribed by a government document, crafted by those in power within a given society. From an economic standpoint there are only two goals that must be met which is the production of efficient, conforming workers and life long consumers. This is for the masses and any learning object that does not conform to the standard comes under the oversight of the quality control department for remediation. It is a good system if all we want to do is create learners who all think alike without a creative or innovative thought among them.
2. The Egalitarian Myth: Egalitarianism is a principle that says that people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. The concept, in itself, is worthwhile but the problem arises when certain education activists within societies try to apply that to the level of achievement that learners merit. Within a society that has self-entitlement as a mindset, the idea that all learners merit being at a high level with those in the upper achievement spectrum and if they are not, then the reason is poor teaching, poor education policies. poor access to education support systems..etc. The reality that is rejected is the possibility that perhaps the learner himself or herself have not personally acquired the skills necessary to merit being at the higher level. This aberration of this principle clearly rejects the idea of personal responsibility for one's own educational achievement. Out of this myth, we have such debates about whether failing marks should even be assigned to learners despite the fact that this is what they merit, debates about changing what is taught by softening the requirements so that more and more can make their way into the upper achievement levels. (Author's note--I detest both of these ideas and see them as compromises in which we will all pay for in the end).
3. The Marks Only Syndrome: In our societies the overemphasis on marks alone really brings into question of what we want learners to value in life. Do we want them to work solely for the purpose of acquiring higher marks to gain entrance into higher education or do we want them to learn how to think and learn to love learning itself?
4. Emotional Reasoning vs. Critical Reasoning: In an age of social media, one of the unfortunate by-products is that we ask the question:" How do you feel about one issue or another?" before we ask the question: "What do you think about one issue or another?", if we ask that question at all. The problem that arises is that we ask young learners in particular to take a stand on an issue such as "bullying" without equipping them with the critical thinking skills needed in order to examine verifiable evidence on both sides of the issue. What you receive then is a stream of emotional language making up opinions without critically examining the root of it. If pushed, many young learners can get beyond phrases such as:"Its not fair". This leaves young learners open to manipulation by others hoping to have them adopt an their point of view uncritically.

How Can We Overcome These Barriers

In order for a transformation to take place a change in mindset is required and a recognition that the present educational mindset is counter-productive to turning out effective agents of change.

Credit: www.lbb5pie.blogspot.com

 Another requirement is that we stop segregating learners who demonstrate the qualities that would make them potential agents of change and instead mentor them in how to learn in an online world within the social context they find themselves in. Although some would say that we should do this for every learner, the fact is that the skillsets are not present in every learner. One of the most difficult barriers to overcome is the attitude of self-entitlement which is absolutely necessary to overcome in order for the future change agents to consider the needs of all people over their own.

Next--Taking these ideas a step further---helping learners make useful connections with networks

Transforming the Mentoring Relationship Paradigm for the 21st Century

In order for E-Learners to be in sync with the exponential increase in knowledge and information across the disciplines that impact our lives, both professionally and personally, we need to revisit the concept of the mentor relationship which has been in place since the Industrial Revolution. From that point forward the needs of industry dictated the nature and purpose for mentoring. The focus was on teaching workers new skills to produce products that could compete in the market place. For the industrial economy, it had many benefits such as:

• The same work force that was mentored to fulfill their job related tasks would also be the consumers for these products which meant that capital that was invested in training could in part be recovered through the spending of workers on the products produced. To encourage this part of the market, employee incentives such as product discounts, profit sharing...etc were put in place to ensure employee loyalty to their company brand.
• With mass production came specialization in which the concept of the division of labour came into play. This was advantageous for the business since mentoring could be even more finely focused and if a particular employee's performance did not meet company standards, then an intern could be quickly mentored to fill the position, limiting disruption to the production line.

The rise of the Internet and the sharing of the growing reservoirs of knowledge and information changed the dynamics of competition in that company competition went from local to global very quickly. Protecting your share of the market that you had recently been able to establish and maintain became more difficult with competitors from across the world able to make inroads into your domain and even establish satellite office and production facilities where there had been none previously.

 

Another phenomena that arrived as a result to this global reach through the Internet was the need to put less emphasis on the acquiring of information alone but also to mentor employees in the skillsets of learning to learn in this new frontier. This included not only how to do effective data searches but also the skill to be able to evaluate information, authenticate information, and draw together or synthesize information best suited to inspire solutions to complex real world problems. The use and evaluation of the growing technology tools also required that mentoring would allow employees to develop competencies in using such tools. Clearly, the original mentoring paradigm was too narrowly focused to meet the needs of a 21st century globally connected economy.

With the advent of the 21st century, another term that came into the spotlight is the concept of "Coaching". For some businesses this was a step forward away from the original paradigm but for others it was just a new term with the same narrow focus as the industrial economy concept of mentoring.

Transforming to a New Mentoring Relationship for Agents of Change

Paradoxically, the guidance that we need to transform mentoring relationships from their present status, we can take from the Middle Ages and their concepts of textile guilds, apprenticeship and the journeyman. One of the costs that we paid with the age of mass production was that although we now had the ability to create large quantities of a single product for the market, we sacrificed the personal attention and pride in the quality of the product that was produced. Although industry would object and state that there were departments of quality control put in place but the criteria stressed less on the quality of workmanship and more on functionality. To compound the problem, the concept of product "planned obsolescence" was introduced to maintain the customer's dependence on the business and ensure brand loyalty. This in itself spoke to the company's confidence in a cynical manner, in the workmanship of its product line.

 

 The 21st century also introduced the idea that in order for a company to effectively compete in a globally connected collaborative economy, innovation either in an incremental form or in a disruptive whole change form needed to become part of a company's modus operandi. In order for this to be accomplished the concept of encouraging employees to become "agents of change" and "innovative thinkers" was necessary but the problem was that the type of training or mentoring relationships that were in existence all were tied to the industrial economy model.

 

Coming back to the Middle Ages model of the mentoring relationship between the master and his or her apprentice, the very human qualities of pride for the quality of what is being produced, attention to detail, concern for developing the skillsets of the apprentice, collaboration with others having complementary skillsets needed for the task at hand and assurance of a line of continuity for high standards in the final example of the journeyman(journey-person in modern sensitivities) are all qualities that a machine can not replicate to the degree a human being can. Presently, such products are available only to a few when the reality should be that this should be the norm for all people.

The Mentoring Relationship in the 21st Century and Beyond

With the advances in robotics and other artificially intelligent machines, we need to re-configure the tasks that we will expect machines to do and the tasks that we will want the new "agents of change" in our societies to do. In this age of vast increases in cross disciplinary knowledge and information, fostering the creativity and higher level thinking skills for the powerful purposes of solving complex real world problems in agents of change are paramount. This should be the priority of the types of mentoring relationships we develop for those who make use of the great potential of E-Learning. The role of technology is that they allow us to extend our thinking but they are still just tools, a means to a human defined end.

 

The obstacles to achieving this first rests with the formal education sector because from this sector comes employees who are prepared for the new roles of the 21st century or they are prepared for a world that no longer exists. Transformation of high education from its dated assembly line industrial mindset must be breached or we will see a continual stream of both students and future teachers stuck in neutral to the detriment of us all. 

The learning culture of business organizations need to escape organizational inertia and truly think about the point that in order to truly engage employees in this new age of learning, that their personal learning within the organization needs to be valued, nurtured and above all, mentored effectively.

This leaves us with this provocative question. It is a question that you need to ask as the decision makers in your business organization or in the halls of academia in the formal higher education sector:

"Does your learning culture reflect 21stcentury realities with the new emphasis on the importance of mentoring and learning or does the following picture portray your present status?"

Next...The identification and mentoring of agents of change

Transforming Learning Cultures Through Dynamic E-Learning--Part III-Transforming Roles

In making a transformation in the learning culture in a business organization, the question that inevitably comes up is:

"What happens to the roles that already exist within the business organization that already have responsibilities for the oversight of employee learning?" 

That question is a reasonable question to ask on many levels. In order to answer such a question, it is important to identify the roles that already exist, the responsibilities attributed to those roles, the changing needs of the organization and the degree of fit that the changing needs have with the greater global economy and its needs.

The Chief Learning Officer (CLO)

In most business organizations, the leader who plans and directs the learning of employees is the CLO. In many ways, the responsibilities of the CLO parallel those of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the business organization To truly understand the extent of the responsibilities, it is worth noting that many of the Fortune 50 companies employ CLO's. Examples of such companies would be Citigroup, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, HP, Goldman Sachs, G.E. and Hess. This is certainly not an all inclusive list and with the growth of the importance of learning in an information and knowledge age, the importance of investing in the learning culture of a business organization is becoming a high priority for companies seeking to grow in a globally connected networked economy.

Credit: www.elearningmind.com

 Some notable CLO's would include such people as:

• Tom Evans (PWC) who was in charge of development for 39,000 employees and was CLO of the year in 2014.
• Amy Hayes (Facebook) who was the Global Head of Learning and Development for 9,500 employees.
• Tamar Elkeles (Qualcomm 2010) who was in charge of learning and development for 23,000 employees.

The responsibilities of the CLO might be described as follows:

Credit: www.elearningmind.com

 So, the question that needs to be asked is:

"How and to what degree would the role of the CLO change given the exponential changes in knowledge, technology and pedagogy?"

Although, upon looking at his or her present responsibilities you might simply say "stay the course", it is not that simple because the needs of society that are being shaped by the exponential changes in knowledge, technology and pedagogy also shape the need for new skillsets. Performing these responsibilities now require a higher level of collaboration with such people as:

• Instructional Designer
• Learning Principles Expert ( a new position)
• Trainer/ Mentor 

Unlike the present status of the CLO, with the enormity of the changes that can impact the learning culture of a business organization, the leadership at this level becomes a shared leadership. Rather than the organizational structure at this level being hierarchical, it is horizontal in its design. This is similar to the organizational structure once practiced by Japanese companies such as Toyota.

The Instructional Designer needs to take direction from the Learning Principles Expert who is a person who keeps up to date with the drive to teach people how to learn in an online environment. This person is the leader in the latest Neuro-Cognitive research that describes how people learn in an online world. With this input, the Instructional Designer, employing design system thinking, creates irresistibly engaging learning experiences for employees.


The Trainer/ Mentor is no longer "the sage on the stage" but is now the "guide on the side". Although, in regards to the use of "blended E-Learning", the trainer acts as the guide on the side, this is a starting point for the transformation of the learning experiences and not the endpoint. In a world that places a high emphasis on the importance of collaboration and networking beyond the walls of the business organization, part of the responsibilities of the trainer/mentor should be to seek useful global networks and create networks that can be used to help employees engage in complex real world problem solving for the benefit of the organization. The mentor relationship with employees is important but needs to be structured and streamlined so that the experience for the employee is not impersonal. More about Mentorship in the next post.

What About the SME?

With respect to the Subject Matter Expert (SME) who is a lifeline to the business organization in keeping employees up to date on content, one realization that comes about as a result of the exponential changes in knowledge, information and pedagogy, is that there is more content out there, both valid and invalid, than can be reliably communicated, especially in an "on-time" framework. Adding into this the drive for personalized education and SME's are faced with an important question:

"Which is more important, communicate content that is constantly changing on an ongoing basis or teach people how to learn in an online environment so that they can analyze, evaluate and authenticate the content found in specific areas of knowledge pertaining to the business function?"

This would also mean connecting employees with mentors in different content areas of interest.

If part of the role of the SME changes to include teaching people how to think in an online environment, then employees take charge of their own learning and are empowered to keep up to date on their own time. This makes the job of the SME easier. They might think of also changing their title for the simple reason that the exponential increase of knowledge in the areas of interest makes it difficult for someone to call themselves an expert. Network connections on a global scale becomes a very useful responsibility for the SME because he or she no longer has to be the ultimate expert with respect to content but instead becomes the expert in connecting the CLO to these networks that will enrich the understanding and growth of learning for employees in the business organization.

Next.. Mentoring relationships as a vital past of the learning culture.