Notes from DevLearn08: eLearning Research Panel

Here are my notes from a very interesting discussion on where eLearning is going based on the perspectives of some researchers in the field. It was a really engaging talk, so my notes are a bit sparse as far as being pretty English, but I think you will get the general idea of the discussions and where they went. I have included links to each researcher's profile on their business sites in case you are interested in finding out more about them.

Panel:
Kevin Oakes - does lots of research for ASTD
Claire Schooley - Forrester, information and knowledge mgmt group, came from academia, most clients are corporate, proprietary research requested by corps
Chris Howard - qualitative/quantitative research on measurable best practices for corps
Kevin Martin - human capital mgmt group, primary research that's end-user driven, talent mgmt, metrics to show value of trng/talent programs

Moderator: Will Thalheimer (with Guild Research)

Types of Research: Product/Service review research; basic research (academic); applied research (academic); research to practice research; industry research

Top Trends:
Learning 2.0 (theme of conference) is also going to have biggest impact on corp training

• collaborative
• learner in charge
• innate with younger generation
• chaotic
  

Talent Management (best practices)

• integrate learning with recruitment
• learning with development/career paths and corp objectives
• more organized and methodical - need to balance 2.0 with talent management (chaos and organization)
• learning can get left behind in talent management as groups focus on performance mgmt
• very few companies have integrated talent management right now, so will be up-and-coming in the future

Learning 2.0

• Trust/culture is biggest barrier to using 2.0 tools
• Can use grassroots to prove concept and build business case but need to get some help from top to get real change made
• GE and Qualcomm are strong 2.0 cultures

Economy - good or bad for industry?

• Data suggest it's bad, budgets are down significantly
• Link yourself to business challenges - best thing you can do
  
• Look into using more video conferencing for training/meetings that people would have traveled to before
• especially hi-def telepresence types
• be sure to show % savings on travel, green practices
• Crisis forced companies to put resources into training, L&D
• criticality of retaining key workers and getting them to be more productive
• brings L&D into focus, makes them more accountable
• learning more important in tight economic times
• L&D usually takes big hit in down times
• show ties to business results to stay viable

Talent Management - where's it going? Learning taking a back seat?

• performance should increase to quarterly informal reviews to integrate with learning (best in class already do this)
  
• where are gaps? use learning to fill quickly
  
• benefits are hard to measure, sometimes anecdotal, but are real
• increases visibility of learning
• have to break down silos of traditional HR groups, make groups work together to see benefits of integration
• chasm between what hiring managers need and what HR thinks they need

Measuring Learning - top priority?

• measure in ways that board understands
• profitability
• revenue
• meeting business needs
  
• not necessarily Kirkpatrick levels
• generally not a top priority, even though they say it is
• The Training Measurement Book, Josh Bersin

Q&A

• Interview top performers to get knowledge that can then be disseminated to rest of staff. This is best way to get informal knowledge out to everyone.
• Understand financial drivers of business to be able to correlate learning to business.
• Ask them what the business "pains" are and then develop training to address those "pains"
• Hybrid between centralized/decentralized learning departments is what best practice companies are finding works best