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From $7 billion to nearly $14 billion. That’s how much the spend on leadership training by American corporations grew over the preceding 15 years, according to Kaiser and Curphy in their 2013 paper Leadership development: The failure of an industry and the opportunity for consulting psychologists. Over that same period we witnessed the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the implosion of Enron, and of course the Global Financial Crisis. MORE
There are two sides of the innovation coin in corporate learning & development: technology and pedagogy. The former is rather obvious and is often conflated with the term innovation. Futuristic hardware and magical software that educates everyone at the press of a button are tempting “solutions” Some folks call this mindset Shiny New Toy Syndrome, and by golly, it’s a pandemic. MORE
How well do you chop your cucumber? It’s a ridiculous question, I know, but in the short film Sight the protagonist plays an augmented reality game that awards him points for the consistency in the thickness of his slices. The scene irked me. The last thing I would want while preparing dinner is a computer judging me. Really, who cares how wide I cut the slices, and who judged that distance to be the perfect width anyway? It’s certainly not my idea of fun. MORE
I’ve blogged in favour of digital badges in the past, not because they’re colourful motivators – which arguably they are, at least for some people – but because they represent an achievement. MORE
Last week I was invited by David Swaddle to be a panellist at the Sydney eLearning and Instructional Design meetup. The topic of the evening was Where is L&D Heading? and some questions were posted through by the attendees ahead of time, while others emerged through the discourse. Here is an overview of my answers, plus elaborations and suggestions for further reading, for each of the questions that was (and was not) asked. MORE
I’m always surprised when someone makes a sweeping declaration such as “No one’s using virtual reality in the workplace” I heard this very statement recently at an e-learning conference. Yep, an e-learning conference. Sure, VR is an emerging technology, but as 20 real-world examples of Virtual Reality can attest, early adopters are indeed putting it to use in the workplace. MORE
Game-based learning doesn’t have to break the bank. That was the key point of my presentation at The Learning Assembly in Melbourne last week. Sure, you can spend an obscene amount of money on gaming technology if you want to, but you don’t have to. Take Diner Dash for instance. In this free online game, you play the role of a waitress in a busy restaurant. MORE
…or should that be “to which every e-learning professional should listen”? Never mind, I can end a sentence with a preposition if I want to. Arcane grammar jokes aside, I’m a late bloomer to podcasts. While everyone else was apparently obsessed with them, they never really appealed to me until I starting taking long trips on the bus. Now I’m hooked. As many of my peers will attest, there’s no shortage of podcasts directed to the L&D practitioner. MORE
In conversation at EduTECH earlier this month, Harold Jarche evoked George E. Box’s quote that “all models are wrong, but some are useful” Of course, the purpose of a model is to simplify a complex system so that something purposeful can be done within it. By definition, then, the model can only ever be an approximation of reality; by human error, furthermore, it won’t be as approximate as it could be. MORE
In Roses are red , I proposed definitions for oft-used yet ambiguous terms such as “competency” and “capability” Not only did I suggest a competency be considered a task, but also that its measurement be binary: competent or not yet competent. MORE
There’s no point landing the perfect plane at the wrong airport. That’s an analogy someone shared with me several years ago to explain Design Thinking, and it has resonated with me ever since for two reasons. Firstly, it exposes the solution-first approach that pervades the corporate sector; and secondly, it challenges our obsession with perfection. MORE
It seems like overnight the L&D profession has started to struggle with the definition of terms such as “capability”, “competency” and “skill” Some of our peers consider them synonyms – and hence interchangeable – but I do not. MORE
The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new normal for L&D professionals as millions of people were sent home to work remotely. While many of us had been offering online courses and other alternatives to in-person training for years, suddenly nothing could be run in a traditional classroom setting; and so as a collective we’ve been forced to shift learning and development online. Despite my tongue-in-cheek tweet however, digital self-directed learning hasn’t become the norm. MORE
I don’t read as many journal articles as I’d like. Given the challenges and pressures of professional life, combined with everything else that’s been going on privately, I’ve fallen out of the habit of scanning the latest abstracts and deep diving into particular studies. And that’s a problem because as a practitioner, I consider it important to inform my work with the latest science. MORE
Busted any ghosts lately? About this time last year I published one of my most popular blog posts, 20 real-world examples of Augmented Reality , in which I shared examples of what people in the real world are currently doing with this emerging technology – in contrast to the promise of what we could be doing. I’d like to share with you half a dozen other examples that I’ve stumbled upon since then. They aren’t necessarily new to the world, but they were new to me. MORE
Few things in the L&D profession attract as much disdain as the Level 1 evaluation survey. Known colloquially as the “happy sheet”, the humble questionnaire is typically considered too onerous, too long, too shallow, and it gives whiners a platform to complain about the sandwiches or the air conditioning. And yet a long time ago, someone told me something that has stuck with me ever since: you don’t want to not do it. Well first of all, it’s easy. MORE
Is it just me or is every year a “big year”…? Well 2018 marked a decade of blogging by yours truly, and that alone is something that I’m proud of. Throughout the highs and lows that life gifted me this year, I was able to share another 8 thought bubbles in addition to my annual list of conferences. I call them my Crazy Eight and I recall them here for your enjoyment and critique… Battle scars – We can’t fight an “ism” with yet more ism. MORE
Micro-learning is so hot right now. But I’m not going to deliberate over its definition. If you’re into that, check out Shannon Tipton’s Microlearning: The Misunderstood Buzzword and 7 Deadly Myths of Microlearning. Nor am I going to try to convince you to jump on board, or abandon ship. Instead, I’m going to consider firstly how micro-learning might be used in a corporate training context; and secondly, pivot towards something slightly different. MORE
You can narrow down someone’s age by whether they include spaces in their file names. If they do, they’re under 40. That is a sweeping declaration, and quite possibly true. Here’s another one… Gamers are a sub-culture dominated by young men. This declaration, however, is stone-cold wrong. In fact, 63% of American households are home to someone who plays video games regularly (hardly a sub-culture). MORE
Well that’s my excuse, anyway. 2019 has been a tumultuous year for me, so I haven’t been able to write as much as I have in previous years. Nonetheless, I hope the few articles I was able to publish proved useful and worthwhile. Here they are again in case you missed them or fancy a refresh… 20 real-world examples of Augmented Reality. As with VR, there’s plenty of talk out there about how wonderful AR is and the incredible potential it offers us. MORE
I can honestly say I’ve never suffered from imposter syndrome. I’ve always been the type of person who likes to work out how to do something hands-on, so I can talk about it with confidence. I suppose I’ve been lucky in the sense that, throughout my career, I’ve been able to align my curiosity and sense of direction with the needs of the business. Having said that, I also suppose I’ve created some of my own luck by keeping a few steps ahead of the business. MORE
All big organisations have a Learning Management System. It’s used to track and record the training that the employees do. In practice, it tends to be used to administer compliance training, though it can be much broader than that. And this is a good thing. Despite the scorn that LMS’s attract, we should be tracking and recording the training that our employees do – especially compliance training. But here’s the rub… Let’s say I work at Bank A. MORE
The 2019 instalment of Virtual Reality Working Out Loud Week kicks off next month. For a couple of previous VR WOL Weeks I’ve collated lists of the examples that the participants unearthed – see 20 real-world examples of Virtual Reality and 25 more real-world examples of Virtual Reality. This time however I’ve decided to do something different. I’ve decided to focus my attention on Augmented Reality. MORE
This one goes out to all the L&D folk who are wary of the “I haven’t been trained” excuse. informal learning motivation attitude autodidacticism autodidactism cartoon excuse Facebook funny humor humour learning pull self-directed learning teaching training MORE
I once had a conversation with a man who scared me. It was over 20 years ago, and I remember him being quite a lovely fellow. He was simply proud of his son earning his PhD. MORE
Years ago, I remember taking a tour of what was then one of those newfangled “innovation labs” A hive of Design Thinking , it was crawling with serious young people in jeans and t-shirts scribbling on walls and rearranging herds of post-it notes. In an otherwise old-fashioned financial services organisation, it was an impressive tilt towards modernisation and true customer centricity (beyond the warm and fuzzy TV commercials). MORE
Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed a slow but steady shift away from formal learning to informal learning. Of course, remnants of the “formal first” philosophy still exist, whereby every conceivable problem is attempted to be fixed by a training solution, typically in the form of a course. Over time, the traditional classroom-based delivery of such courses has increasingly given way to online modules, but that’s merely a change in format – not strategy. MORE
2017 was a whirlwind for me. I started a new job in a new sector, made loads of new friends there, learned heaps, and finished said job 10 months later before starting another one back in financial services. I haven’t had much of a chance to scratch myself! As a consequence, I haven’t blogged as frequently this year as I have done in previous years. However, while my posts may have been fewer, I dove deeper into a couple of topics of interest. MORE
Well it’s taken me over 3 and a half years, but I’ve finally completed another mooc. I use the term completed loosely, because while I consumed all the content, I didn’t submit any of the assignments. In other words, I completed the course as far as my personal learning needs are concerned, while still feeding the naysayers’ MOOCs-are-a-failure-because-their-completion-rate-is-low argument. MORE
It seems like everyone’s spruiking the “new normal” of work. The COVID-19 pandemic is keeping millions of previously office-bound employees at home, forcing L&D professionals to turn on a dime. MORE
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. I’m fascinated by this quote that Henry Ford may or may not have uttered. In The best of both worlds I promoted Design Thinking as a means of using customer insights to inform strategic decision making. However, as the above quote suggests, customers don’t know what they don’t know. Sometimes it takes an expert to show them. MORE
E-Learning Provocateur
NOVEMBER 15, 2020
It seems like overnight the L&D profession has started to struggle with the definition of terms such as “capability”, “competency” and “skill” Some of our peers consider them synonyms – and hence interchangeable – but I do not.
E-Learning Provocateur
NOVEMBER 30, 2020
In Roses are red , I proposed definitions for oft-used yet ambiguous terms such as “competency” and “capability” Not only did I suggest a competency be considered a task, but also that its measurement be binary: competent or not yet competent.
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E-Learning Provocateur
AUGUST 31, 2020
It seems like everyone’s spruiking the “new normal” of work. The COVID-19 pandemic is keeping millions of previously office-bound employees at home, forcing L&D professionals to turn on a dime.
E-Learning Provocateur
NOVEMBER 2, 2020
I once had a conversation with a man who scared me. It was over 20 years ago, and I remember him being quite a lovely fellow. He was simply proud of his son earning his PhD.
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E-Learning Provocateur
MAY 3, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new normal for L&D professionals as millions of people were sent home to work remotely. While many of us had been offering online courses and other alternatives to in-person training for years, suddenly nothing could be run in a traditional classroom setting; and so as a collective we’ve been forced to shift learning and development online. Despite my tongue-in-cheek tweet however, digital self-directed learning hasn’t become the norm.
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E-Learning Provocateur
JUNE 22, 2020
Years ago, I remember taking a tour of what was then one of those newfangled “innovation labs” A hive of Design Thinking , it was crawling with serious young people in jeans and t-shirts scribbling on walls and rearranging herds of post-it notes. In an otherwise old-fashioned financial services organisation, it was an impressive tilt towards modernisation and true customer centricity (beyond the warm and fuzzy TV commercials).
E-Learning Provocateur
JULY 2, 2019
…or should that be “to which every e-learning professional should listen”? Never mind, I can end a sentence with a preposition if I want to. Arcane grammar jokes aside, I’m a late bloomer to podcasts. While everyone else was apparently obsessed with them, they never really appealed to me until I starting taking long trips on the bus. Now I’m hooked. As many of my peers will attest, there’s no shortage of podcasts directed to the L&D practitioner.
E-Learning Provocateur
MARCH 23, 2020
Busted any ghosts lately? About this time last year I published one of my most popular blog posts, 20 real-world examples of Augmented Reality , in which I shared examples of what people in the real world are currently doing with this emerging technology – in contrast to the promise of what we could be doing. I’d like to share with you half a dozen other examples that I’ve stumbled upon since then. They aren’t necessarily new to the world, but they were new to me.
E-Learning Provocateur
JULY 14, 2020
From $7 billion to nearly $14 billion. That’s how much the spend on leadership training by American corporations grew over the preceding 15 years, according to Kaiser and Curphy in their 2013 paper Leadership development: The failure of an industry and the opportunity for consulting psychologists. Over that same period we witnessed the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the implosion of Enron, and of course the Global Financial Crisis.
Advertiser: Rosetta Stone
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E-Learning Provocateur
APRIL 8, 2019
Micro-learning is so hot right now. But I’m not going to deliberate over its definition. If you’re into that, check out Shannon Tipton’s Microlearning: The Misunderstood Buzzword and 7 Deadly Myths of Microlearning. Nor am I going to try to convince you to jump on board, or abandon ship. Instead, I’m going to consider firstly how micro-learning might be used in a corporate training context; and secondly, pivot towards something slightly different.
E-Learning Provocateur
JANUARY 25, 2019
The 2019 instalment of Virtual Reality Working Out Loud Week kicks off next month. For a couple of previous VR WOL Weeks I’ve collated lists of the examples that the participants unearthed – see 20 real-world examples of Virtual Reality and 25 more real-world examples of Virtual Reality. This time however I’ve decided to do something different. I’ve decided to focus my attention on Augmented Reality.
E-Learning Provocateur
APRIL 6, 2020
Few things in the L&D profession attract as much disdain as the Level 1 evaluation survey. Known colloquially as the “happy sheet”, the humble questionnaire is typically considered too onerous, too long, too shallow, and it gives whiners a platform to complain about the sandwiches or the air conditioning. And yet a long time ago, someone told me something that has stuck with me ever since: you don’t want to not do it. Well first of all, it’s easy.
E-Learning Provocateur
JUNE 10, 2018
There’s no point landing the perfect plane at the wrong airport. That’s an analogy someone shared with me several years ago to explain Design Thinking, and it has resonated with me ever since for two reasons. Firstly, it exposes the solution-first approach that pervades the corporate sector; and secondly, it challenges our obsession with perfection.
Speaker: TJ Seabrooks, former CEO at Rustici Software
Have you ended up with a collection of content inputs and data outputs that might be hard to wrangle? If your organization uses multiple LMSs and has content coming from many different places, or you’re heading in this direction, this webinar is for you.
E-Learning Provocateur
JULY 15, 2018
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. I’m fascinated by this quote that Henry Ford may or may not have uttered. In The best of both worlds I promoted Design Thinking as a means of using customer insights to inform strategic decision making. However, as the above quote suggests, customers don’t know what they don’t know. Sometimes it takes an expert to show them.
E-Learning Provocateur
MARCH 3, 2019
Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed a slow but steady shift away from formal learning to informal learning. Of course, remnants of the “formal first” philosophy still exist, whereby every conceivable problem is attempted to be fixed by a training solution, typically in the form of a course. Over time, the traditional classroom-based delivery of such courses has increasingly given way to online modules, but that’s merely a change in format – not strategy.
E-Learning Provocateur
MAY 13, 2018
There are two sides of the innovation coin in corporate learning & development: technology and pedagogy. The former is rather obvious and is often conflated with the term innovation. Futuristic hardware and magical software that educates everyone at the press of a button are tempting “solutions” Some folks call this mindset Shiny New Toy Syndrome, and by golly, it’s a pandemic.
E-Learning Provocateur
NOVEMBER 4, 2018
I can honestly say I’ve never suffered from imposter syndrome. I’ve always been the type of person who likes to work out how to do something hands-on, so I can talk about it with confidence. I suppose I’ve been lucky in the sense that, throughout my career, I’ve been able to align my curiosity and sense of direction with the needs of the business. Having said that, I also suppose I’ve created some of my own luck by keeping a few steps ahead of the business.
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E-Learning Provocateur
DECEMBER 2, 2019
Well that’s my excuse, anyway. 2019 has been a tumultuous year for me, so I haven’t been able to write as much as I have in previous years. Nonetheless, I hope the few articles I was able to publish proved useful and worthwhile. Here they are again in case you missed them or fancy a refresh… 20 real-world examples of Augmented Reality. As with VR, there’s plenty of talk out there about how wonderful AR is and the incredible potential it offers us.
E-Learning Provocateur
APRIL 2, 2017
You can narrow down someone’s age by whether they include spaces in their file names. If they do, they’re under 40. That is a sweeping declaration, and quite possibly true. Here’s another one… Gamers are a sub-culture dominated by young men. This declaration, however, is stone-cold wrong. In fact, 63% of American households are home to someone who plays video games regularly (hardly a sub-culture).
E-Learning Provocateur
OCTOBER 3, 2016
All big organisations have a Learning Management System. It’s used to track and record the training that the employees do. In practice, it tends to be used to administer compliance training, though it can be much broader than that. And this is a good thing. Despite the scorn that LMS’s attract, we should be tracking and recording the training that our employees do – especially compliance training. But here’s the rub… Let’s say I work at Bank A.
E-Learning Provocateur
JUNE 17, 2015
In conversation at EduTECH earlier this month, Harold Jarche evoked George E. Box’s quote that “all models are wrong, but some are useful” Of course, the purpose of a model is to simplify a complex system so that something purposeful can be done within it. By definition, then, the model can only ever be an approximation of reality; by human error, furthermore, it won’t be as approximate as it could be.
Speaker: Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer & Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group
As we look to tomorrow, it is time to ask ourselves what lessons have we learned and how do we create flexible organizations that can survive what the future holds. Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer for Sapient Insights Group, will share insights, data, and tools that are helping organizations adapt and even thrive in this difficult environment. She’ll discuss the emerging trends in the Learning technology market, and how these exciting new approaches to creating micro, adaptive, and personalized content is changing the face of workforce development while creating strong connections to business outcomes.
E-Learning Provocateur
MARCH 16, 2015
How well do you chop your cucumber? It’s a ridiculous question, I know, but in the short film Sight the protagonist plays an augmented reality game that awards him points for the consistency in the thickness of his slices. The scene irked me. The last thing I would want while preparing dinner is a computer judging me. Really, who cares how wide I cut the slices, and who judged that distance to be the perfect width anyway? It’s certainly not my idea of fun.
E-Learning Provocateur
JULY 1, 2015
I don’t read as many journal articles as I’d like. Given the challenges and pressures of professional life, combined with everything else that’s been going on privately, I’ve fallen out of the habit of scanning the latest abstracts and deep diving into particular studies. And that’s a problem because as a practitioner, I consider it important to inform my work with the latest science.
E-Learning Provocateur
DECEMBER 9, 2018
Is it just me or is every year a “big year”…? Well 2018 marked a decade of blogging by yours truly, and that alone is something that I’m proud of. Throughout the highs and lows that life gifted me this year, I was able to share another 8 thought bubbles in addition to my annual list of conferences. I call them my Crazy Eight and I recall them here for your enjoyment and critique… Battle scars – We can’t fight an “ism” with yet more ism.
E-Learning Provocateur
OCTOBER 6, 2015
Last week I was invited by David Swaddle to be a panellist at the Sydney eLearning and Instructional Design meetup. The topic of the evening was Where is L&D Heading? and some questions were posted through by the attendees ahead of time, while others emerged through the discourse. Here is an overview of my answers, plus elaborations and suggestions for further reading, for each of the questions that was (and was not) asked.
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E-Learning Provocateur
JULY 18, 2016
I’m always surprised when someone makes a sweeping declaration such as “No one’s using virtual reality in the workplace” I heard this very statement recently at an e-learning conference. Yep, an e-learning conference. Sure, VR is an emerging technology, but as 20 real-world examples of Virtual Reality can attest, early adopters are indeed putting it to use in the workplace.
E-Learning Provocateur
DECEMBER 10, 2017
2017 was a whirlwind for me. I started a new job in a new sector, made loads of new friends there, learned heaps, and finished said job 10 months later before starting another one back in financial services. I haven’t had much of a chance to scratch myself! As a consequence, I haven’t blogged as frequently this year as I have done in previous years. However, while my posts may have been fewer, I dove deeper into a couple of topics of interest.
E-Learning Provocateur
FEBRUARY 23, 2015
Game-based learning doesn’t have to break the bank. That was the key point of my presentation at The Learning Assembly in Melbourne last week. Sure, you can spend an obscene amount of money on gaming technology if you want to, but you don’t have to. Take Diner Dash for instance. In this free online game, you play the role of a waitress in a busy restaurant.
E-Learning Provocateur
MAY 27, 2014
This one goes out to all the L&D folk who are wary of the “I haven’t been trained” excuse. informal learning motivation attitude autodidacticism autodidactism cartoon excuse Facebook funny humor humour learning pull self-directed learning teaching training
Speaker: Sandi Lin & Linda Schwaber-Cohen
In this webinar, Skilljar CEO Sandi Lin shared learnings from Skilljar's recent study and her insights on the state of Customer Education. She dug into key findings so you can benchmark against industry trends and understand how your strategy and metrics compare.
E-Learning Provocateur
NOVEMBER 22, 2016
Well it’s taken me over 3 and a half years, but I’ve finally completed another mooc. I use the term completed loosely, because while I consumed all the content, I didn’t submit any of the assignments. In other words, I completed the course as far as my personal learning needs are concerned, while still feeding the naysayers’ MOOCs-are-a-failure-because-their-completion-rate-is-low argument.
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