The advice – based on a presentation at the recent Learning Technologies event in London by the eLN’s chairman, Clive Shepherd – is freely available on the organisation’
Shepherd said: “Last year, Jay Cross warned us to ‘be aware that the magnitude of the financial meltdown is almost beyond comprehension. I can foresee training departments being eliminated almost entirely.’
“Today’s evidence is undeniable that training budgets are being cut and that, as a result, jobs are being lost,” he added.
“Anyone who works in learning and development needs to be doing all they can to ensure that they come through this period relatively unscathed - hopefully with their job intact - and still providing a valuable service to their employer or customers. That’s why the eLN is publishing its guidelines for success in these difficult times.”
The eLN recommends that you:
1. Engage with the technology because technology:
• Reduces travel, saving tons of money and the planet as well
• Connects people with ideas and other people
• Increases accessibility and flexibility
• Is what ‘Generation Y’ wants and expects
2. Use the language of business because employers interested in performance, not learning. Your job is to convince the holders of the purse strings that the learning interventions that you offer are likely to generate increased performance – more so, perhaps, than investing the same money elsewhere.
3. Promote your brand inside and outside your organisation. You can:
• Add credibility to your professional status by touting your membership of associations and professional bodies – such as the eLN.
• Upgrade your qualifications. As far as e-learning is concerned, in the UK you can take a masters course, obtain a certificate from providers such as the CIPD or Training Foundation or take one of the short courses now available.
• Start a blog.
4. Be proactive in coming up with solutions that will help your organisation get through the current crisis. If you leave it to senior management, they’ll make daft decisions because they’re not the experts on learning and development:
As Jay Cross warns: ”Survivors must write new agendas while they still have desks to write on.”
5. Learn from others – watching out for good ideas that you can adapt to your own interventions. A good source of case studies is the eLN’s one-day events and webinars.
In addition, you could check out the Towards Maturity website, where there are case studies of successful projects. These will be shared even more widely through the Next Generation Learning at Work initiative, which has been launched this year by Becta.
6. Take advantage of bargains
To keep busy, suppliers will be more willing than usual to cut margins – but you need to ask.
There’s also an increasingly impressive array of free and open source tools. In particular, check out Jane Hart’s Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies website.
7. Become more efficient
Efficiency is about doing more for less. The first step is to get rid of those nice-to-have interventions, which have been running for years but which may not anymore be addressing a current need.
The best way to do this is to budget from the bottom-up. Start with nothing and build up, focusing on the value that each intervention brings to the organisation.
If you develop e-learning content, question whether you have too elaborate and slow a process. Think about more agile, rapid processes, which get a solution out there in days not months.
Make sure you exploit every asset – whether that’s an image, an animation, a video or a 3D model - as fully as possible, by reusing it in multiple online courses, as well as in the classroom and for performance support.
8. Maintain quality
If you put out a poor quality product, then you may put your learners off - permanently.
But remember that quality is about fitness for purpose. As long as an intervention is relevant, timely and does the job, then ‘good enough’ is a reasonable level at which to aim.
9. Harness people power
There have always been informal learning processes in place to meet organisational learning and development needs. Now, however, we have software – such as social networks, wikis and forums - that makes it easier for expertise to be shared within an organisation.
Just give people the tools to help themselves. And remember that, with informal learning, what Harold Jarche calls the ‘ABC’ rule applies – that’s ‘Anything But Courses’.
10. Get networked
George Siemens explains the benefits of networking: “Instead of the individual having to evaluate and process every bit of information, s/he creates a personal network of trusted nodes: people and content, enhanced by technology. The act of knowledge is offloaded onto the network itself.”
The days when you had to try and know everything relating to your area of expertise are long past. Besides, there’s too much to know and it’s changing too quickly.
Networking gets you in touch with trusted sources of information that you can call upon when you need it - whether those sources are human or digital.
“The eLN exists purely to enable those working in e-learning, whether users or suppliers, to interact with each other and to enrich their personal networks,” said Shepherd. “It’s not-for-profit and run by volunteers working part-time.
“If you’re interested in e-learning, we’d love to have you in our network.”
For further details of the eLN visit www.elearningnetwork.org
End
Notes for Editors:
About the eLearning Network
The eLearning Network (eLN) is a non-profit organisation run by the e-learning community for the e-learning community. The eLN is the number one source for guidance on best practice and future trends in technology-based learning and development at work, with more than 1,500 members in the UK and beyond.
For more information about the eLN and eLN events, call +44 (0)1273 561714 or visit www.elearningnetwork.org
Further information from:
Clive Shepherd, The eLearning Network, +44 (0)1273 561714
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0) 1727 860405
