Friday, December 01, 2006

Great Case Study from Articulate

Read this first from the Word of Mouth Blog
We all know that most of our internal corporate customers want their training asap.  Traditionally we go through cycle after cycle of reviews with "stakeholders" for approvals, etc.  But the next phase of learning distribution is all about speed, multiple users generating LIVE content.  Basically its the same process we've always done with one big fat difference...ITS LIVE!!!
Articulate gets it!  And people will use it.  Its powerful and useful for our users, not the training department.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is more valuable when you need to communicate fast. For training and Education processes I doubt people would like to dedicate their times to develop, convert and test new courseware. There is also some pedagogical and adragogical involved. I don't think the regular worker who's not from the training organization is able to apply decent learning techniques to keep learners motivated. Since courseware development is not their area of expertise the results can be poor and generate comments like: "Oh, another training from ABC department... Gosh, they're so boring... how long is it going to take this time?"

Please don't get me wrong, I like Articulate, I like it on the right hands. It must be supporting the precesses of the training organization, accelerating courseware delivery without penalizing quality, motivation and pedagogical aspects of it.

bschlenker said...

Rodolpho,
Thanks for commenting. I love continuing this discussion. I'm not sure that I get the point you are trying to make. On the one hand I think you are saying that Articulate is good for content that needs to be delivered fast. Yet, you also state that pedagogy needs to applied and therefore "in the right hands."
First of all let me make the comment that corporate training departments aren't always the "right hands". Meaning that what is currently created by many internal corporate training departmennts is already boring, click2death, page-turning drudgery. In which case there is no value add by having the tool ONLY in the "right hands".
The next generation of high value content is going to be created by everyone. Of course Articulate may not be the only tool, but it is one of the better ones currently available. Speed will trump pedagogical quality. Employees will begin to build an internal reputation for "knowing" the answers. It won't matter how they distribute that knowledge and if there is any pedagogy applied. It will be valuable because it is timely, and in the right context, coming from the trusted source. Training depts. are NOT trusted sources of the best, most relevant information.
I very much appreciate the feedback and hope we can continue this conversation. Anyone else have thoughts to add? Am I nuts?

Anonymous said...

Hey Brent! I only saw your reply today... sorry. I'll read it tonight and answer it afterwards...

Anonymous said...

Interesting comments, thank you. I think we lived two very different experiences on the corporate world. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in your case both SMEs and ordinary employees are perfectly capable, knowledgeable and empowered enough to leave their main assignments aside and do ADDIE-like work, learn and use content authoring tools, and ultimately make learners happy. Concerning development/delivery time, I agree with you, the faster the better... but you have to agree with me that in 9 out of 10 learning development or instructional design books the fact is: "want some quality boss? it will take a little longer this time". It is sweet to deliver a brand new course in two days (one day?), and bitter when you need to gather learners for a live training just because your "fast-track" content failed to meet their needs. No, you're not nuts... neither am I. We just have different views from the same thing. Is the glass half full or half empty? :-) I like your blog. Take care

Anonymous said...

I think we're talking about two different paradigm's. One is the traditional ADDIE/ISD approach that most training departments use. The other is the Web 2.0 /Communities of practice / Knowledge management approach. There will be a use for both approaches in most companies. Albeit that I do think that Web2.0 will become more prevalent in corporate settings the more 'screenagers' move into corporate jobs. The coming generation of corporate knowledge workers is already used to MSN, Second Life etc and will expect to use the same tools and resources in their work environment.

I work for a corporate training department and what I am seeing is that we are using tools such as Breeze to record and disseminate knowledge quickly (and dirtily ;-) by SME's. Any content of lasting value is then transformed into e-learning using the traditional ISD approach albeit that we use a rapid prototyping methodology.

Regards,
John J.