Last week London Olympia was the Center of the Universe for Learning Technologies. At the 2-day conference and exhibition “Learning Technologies 2007” 200 conference attendees and more than 3,000 visitors experienced the state of art in what we used to call e-learning. The event was presented as an International Conference, but although the exhibition had some vendors of International allure, the conference was mainly British from both its content and its visitors. The conference was split into three thematic streams that made sense (technology in learning, effective learning and performance improvement). Some of the Conference highlights:

Technology doesn’t matter. We have to forget about technology as being a solution. MIT research has shown that there is no relationship between investment in IT and business success. It is about how you implement it and about having the right processes, organisation design and people. It therefore makes sense to drop the ‘e’ from ‘e-learning’ and focus on the balancing act. Alignment is the source of competitive advantage, also in the field of learning. See also the work “Does IT matter”of Nicholas Carr.

Learning is everywhere. Learning doesn’t equal training or education. It is a part of life and it is everywhere. Chris Yapp ephasized that it is a personal experience, although most training and education is about curricula and standard courses & tests. Technology has the potential of making personalised learning available everywhere and at scale. Why aren’t we there yet? The technology is available, but it is about the right business models. Strategic leadership in learning is therefore required, as well as innovation in learning models and funding. Also the practices of knowledge management (informal) and e-learning (formal) have to be integrated within organisations. And then, it will still take up to 10-15 years to get there

Not ROI again please! In developing Human Capital discussions on financial quantification of the returns on investment have always been extensive. The HR cost-side is easy, but the value is hard to calculate. Therefore forget about the finance and look for different measures. People don’t fit the concept of assets anyway (although Mayo gave an example of Tottenham Hotspur depreciating its players)! So, focus on productivity, engagement and business results and do relative measurements to make the value of learning transparant. Easy said, but without the right technology this is hard to do (of course!)

Unleash the passion for learning. In the track on performance there was also some attention for competency assessments as a means for better learning. Since people don’t know what they don’t know they need some assistance and competency frameworks can help. If you want to know what competency management sounds like go to a Saturday Football match and listen to the crowd is Andy Wooler’s suggestion in his session. But, serious, it is about (re-)modelling your organisation, and the fundament for talent management, succession planning and performance management. Although you should keep your competency models simple, you will still need an LMS to manage it efficient and realtime. Steve Poole positions competency frameworks as an organisation development approach and giving people guidance in their careers. It brings the passion for learning and new energy into your organisation. But, when you give people a chance to find out their deficiencies, you also have to have solutions in place to build competence.

Be where the eyeballs are! New technologies is a theme that of course deserved the spotlights on the event. With the blurring of work and life and of media like phone, Internet and TV new solutions come to life. It was like a warm shower having Ron Edwards throwing all the new technologies at us. Mobile learning is one of them with mobile devices being location sensitive multimedia deviced nowadays. With Web 2.0 it is not only about reading anymore, but the user will produce as well (see MobileCrunch, Flickr, YouTube). And, you can have your information feeds of course. RSS enables us to subscribe to content, like news feeds or PodCasts. And, there is more like LearningWiki’s, Virtual Worlds (e.g. Second Life, World of Warcraft and Forterra).  The question as always with these technologies: What problems does it solve?

Serious gaming. Games are addictive, why isn’t learning? Games have rules, interactivity, outcomes & feedback, adaptation, win-states, conflict & competition, problem solving, clear goals, story and pace. High score tables for compliance training scores might help, but there is more. It is the world of what we call serious games. The examples presented were: Pulse (ER simultation), America’s Army, Whyville, and the Insider. All wonderfull examples if you ask me, but why isn’t this common practice in learning then. Is it the unique skills needed to develop serious/learning games, is it the budget, or the fact that the learning outcomes are hard to predict?

Workflow Learning, is the new term for performance support. It is about learning at the point of need and fits with the new learning paradigm of connectivism. Our knowledge is in our unique network of people and content according to Clive Shepherd. So knowledge workers don’t need knowledge in their head, but in their network. The learning then happens in different forms: accidental, reactive, proactive and formalised. In order to facilitate this you will need a Learning Ecology in your organisation. This is a holistic view of the learning facilitation and in order to implement this you need more than just an  LMS, since it is only about controlling learning.

In summary it was an interesting event, although I missed the International stance and above all the Internet access ;-( .

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