As I was clicking through the news feeds on our community, I spotted this article.  In the posting, Jane Knight is attributed with this idea:

"...she lamented that people still don’t see beyond the idea of e-learning as a formal course. 'E-learning is so much more than that, it’s about collaboration, communication between learners and the sharing of knowledge and experiences…people think of e-learning as formal courses and all this other stuff as something else'. She noted that it may be a definition problem: 'E-learning is just not the right word anymore…it’s got more to do with e-working and performance support'."

I'm intrigued by the new tool called wiki.  They sound like a great way to employ the knowledge and energy of many people to contribute to the group's understanding.  A simple way to let everyone play a part in defining the key terms we use in our work world.  A community glossary, so to speak.

I haven't explored too far into the use of Wiki technology for corporate e-Learning (yet).  But Will Thalheimer's article about the problems that arise from inaccuracies - or blatent fraud - shows a dark side of wiki's.  Maybe they aren't a reliable way to capture corporate knowledge.

I'm literally addicted to Outlook.  I don't think I could make it through a work week and keep myself organized without it.  I'm driven by my calendar and inbox and task list.

Is e-Learning any different?  Not Outlook, but whatever tools you use shape your work.  You get addicted to your favorite e-Learning tools.

G Siemens makes this comment in his e-Learning blog, "In a sense, an element of our cognitive process is wrapped up in the affordances of a new tool. Changing tools can result in a different learning process."

Konrad Glogowski writes about an interesting case of technology letting him down.  He has an online community for his students - mainly blogging.  Here is the actual posting that describes his experience.  http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2005/12/07/tools-interiorized/

What I found more interesting was how his students were so dependent on the community. He states, "It quickly became clear from what they were saying to me that blogging was synonymous with English class, that their class consisted primarily of a community and that its absence had an impact on learning.

Wikis are becoming popular.  They are a form of informal community learning that puts content creation in the hands of the masses.  So, I'm wondering if Wikis will catch on in corporate learning.  And should they be considered e-Learning?

According to the most used Wiki in the world, the definition of a wiki is:

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative authoring.

The term wiki also sometimes refers to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website.

Asking questions is something we all learn to do as children.  Why is the sky blue Daddy?  How does this work?  If you have children, you are familiar with the routine.

But as we grow older, we tend to ask less frequently.  There are probably many very profound reasons this is the case, and I'm not smart enough to understand them, however I'm certain that we don't ask questions as much as we used to.

In learning, questions are critical.  As a trainer, I ask questions of my students to keep them awake.  I include questions in my e-Learning to check that students are paying attention to the material.  Instructional design colleagues tell me that asking questions between each topic in an online course reinforces the concepts to be learned.  Makes sense to me.

A press release for a company called Intuita last week announces that they are letting corporate employees buy online learning in their system at corporate rates.  They tie this to a tuition reimbursement program.  What I don't understand is how would this qualify for reimbursement.  Isn't tuition reimbursement normally for universities and colleges to get an advanced degree? 

Second question:  Would we as corporate e-Learning practitioners see this as a good opportunity to start selling our courses to the public?  Or would we see this as just a lame marketing gimmick that got posted on the CLO website?

Here is something that surprised me....you can get college credit for training at McDonalds.

At the age of fifteen, McDonalds was the only place I could get a job so I could stop delivering newspapers at 6:00 am.  I enjoyed working with other teenagers, and it was great experience.  I learned many concepts of production management from working in the burger assembly line.  It may seem like a menial job, but I truly learned some valuable lessons in that job.  It was my first exposure to job politics - and to the difference between good and bad bosses.  Manufacturing efficiency at McDonalds was simply a given.  I was appalled years later when I worked at General Motors Technical Center and observed the enormous inefficiencies and bureaucracy - which made me frequently revisit my McDonalds' experience.

I have personally witnessed an ever increasing number of customers interested in using LearnCentrix as a tool for certification.  Basically, companies are wanting to provide a certain amount of online training for their proprietary products and services.  And the key piece of the certification program is to have students pass exams of 50-100 questions.  Thus, if students can pass the test, they are certified.

That seems pretty prudent.  It also seems to be a perfect fit for online training tools like LearnCentrix.  Of course the tool can provide randomization of the questions, different subsets of questions selected for each student, tracking of how each student responded, scores, averages, etc.  But one objection has been raised lately....cheating. 

The article at the below address discusses how universities have been overlooked as resources for corporate training.

Here's a quote, "...the rapid growth of corporate learning organizations over the past 10 to 15 years has made universities an underutilized resource by corporations and governments."

I'm not so sure I agree.  In fact, I would probably prefer to not draw upon the training resources of universities.  My reasoning is purely from my limited perspective and experience.  While I thoroughly enjoyed my educational experience in college, and I consider it one of the best investments of my life, and I respect and admire my professors, the lessons I learned were not very relevant to the business world.  The academic environment that taught me how to learn and reason for myself were much more valuable than the actual skills that I was taught.  Perhaps other fields of study were more "practical" than the computer science that I studied.