Clive on Learning

I’ve just signed up to run my first ever masterclass. It’s on the subject of e-learning design and it’s on June 3rd in London. To be honest I have mixed feelings about the prospect. The learning strategy for a masterclass is typically simple exposition (lectures if you like), with some Q&A and perhaps a little discussion.

This is absolutely not what I’m used to doing and certainly not for a whole day, but strangely I feel quite attracted to the idea of delivering a lot of content in a condensed format. No instruction, no discovery, no exploration, just simple exposition.

However, for independent, experienced specialists this format can be entirely acceptable. Yes there’s still a danger of overload, but if they’re capable learners they’ll soft out what’s useful for them and take lots of notes.

True, this may well be better delivered online as webinars, perhaps even as podcasts or videos, but I suppose that for most participants a day out of the office is protected time and has the added advantage of providing plenty of networking opportunities.

I think I’ve sold it to myself. My conscience is now clear.

The March Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog asks why it is that open content initiatives such as the OER Commons and the Open Courseware Consortium haven't had a bigger impact. I have some suggestions:

• There is no history or culture of content sharing in workplace learning and development. Most l&d departments operate in glorious isolation and would probably never consider engaging with their peers to share learning content. There are, of course, exceptions and associations can play a valuable role in identifying common needs across a vertical or horizontal market sector and helping to centralise efforts to create new content. A good example is Learning Pool, which creates e-learning content for sharing across local government in the UK and helps to ensure that content developed in the field is distributed more widely. This is not a free service, but it does reduce the costs to any one local authority significantly.
• L&d people may simply never get to hear about the free resources available because these are not advertised in magazines or shown at exhibitions.
• Social media will not fill the dissemination gap, because most l&d people don't use them, at least not for professional purposes.
• And we should never forget the power of the 'not invented here' syndrome.

I nearly forgot to mention another exception to the rule that's so close to home I couldn't focus on it - the 60-minute masters. This resource for occasional instructional designers was created collaboratively under a Creative Commons license. The resulting short course has been taken by many thousands of designers around the world. The content can be freely adapted and distributed in any form, as long as it is not sold on commercially. Perhaps we could have more projects like this.

The February Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog (I know, it’s March already and I’m late on this one) queries what the place is for instruction and deep reflection in a culture in which people increasingly just dip into things and move on.

Well, I have no doubt whatsoever that formal training inputs have been reduced in length significantly (one hour classes, 30 minute e-learning modules etc.). I’m sure that the primary cause of this is that no-one’s got the time to spare anymore, but the real reason should be that longer knowledge-dumping sessions just don’t work that well, because of the cognitive overload they cause. Genuinely participative sessions, involving discussion and practical activities can, of course, be usefully spread over many hours or days, but there’s still too much tell and test going on out there.

When it comes to blog posts and web articles generally, the tendency has always been to go for brevity. That’s not just because readers are overwhelmed with information and have to be very selective, it’s also because work-related information consumption is very much goal-oriented and lean-forward, not reflective (and certainly not ‘surfing’).

Am I concerned that we are all becoming information brokers, passing on links to each other without taking the time to read and reflect on what we are recommending? Perhaps a little, but we should remember that the 90:9:1 rule suggests that only 9% of users are ever going to replay to a posting. And some of the most thoughtful people I know very rarely put their thoughts in writing. Apart from anything else, they’re too busy.

A month back I had the fortune of being asked to present to CEdMA, an association of senior training managers in large IT companies who have the responsibility for training up their organisations’ customers in their various products. It was clear from their discussion that the market was changing:

• Customers are demanding shorter courses.
• Customers are demanding more online delivery.
• Customers are becoming more savvy about the fact that large-scale knowledge dumps in the classroom don't work.
• Customers are turning to lower-cost, third-party providers.

It seems unlikely that IT companies will be able to rely in the future on the classroom as their main delivery medium. Ironic as it may seem, IT companies could do with a dose of their own medicine and start to embrace 21st century culture. The IT customer training of the future could look very different:

• Learning and support materials could be (and already are in some cases) provided online free of charge to customers as a gesture of goodwill. It's becoming ever harder to sell content anyway.
• Online communities for customers can work alongside the free content to encourage dialogue and help build customer loyalty.
• Specialist topics can be covered by webinars. These will dramatically reduce the indirect costs for customers of live training and could be revenue earners.
• Top dollar can be charged for short, face-to-face workshops which fill in the gaps and meet customer-specific needs.
• And some additional revenue can be generated by bespoke, value-added services (skills audits, evaluation and other consultancy).

It's true that this bundle of services will earn the IT companies much less from customer training than they might have achieved in the glory days of the classroom. But those days have gone and half-full classes must now be costing more than they earn. Where the new IT customer training will score is in the enormous benefits that can be achieved in terms of customer loyalty. And in the end, these are IT companies after all, not training providers, and their priority is to keep hold of their customers so they can continue to sell to them in the long term.

I met Bert de Coutere at Online Educa in December. He chaired the Battle of the Bloggers in which I participated.

Recently Bert sent me a copy of his intriguingly titled Homo Competens (Beta Book, 2009), an exploration of competence and how humans acquire this. I only got so far as page 31, when I encountered the following analysis by Bert of the stages in the building of competence:

Learning If you are mainly learning, you are an apprentice. You are building knowledge, skills and behaviours. Doing If you are mainly doing, you are a practitioner. You are building experience. Sharing If you are mainly sharing, you are a master. You are building reputation.

 

Bert makes clear that these phases overlap to some extent. After all, we're going to be 'doing some doing' at every point in our careers and also hopefully some learning and sharing. But what Bert's analysis did for me was to clarify to some extent where I find myself at this late stage in my career. I've done my fair share of learning and doing and I'd like to think I've achieved some success at both. But now my principal activities as a consultant seem to be writing, presenting, teaching and advising, which I suppose collectively put me fairly and squarely within the sharing stage. I can't stop learning and I love to do some doing when I get the chance, but my primary role in life is now as a sharer. So if I sometimes wonder why I'm spending quite so much time writing and talking (and often for free) then I'm only doing what comes naturally. I know because Bert told me so.

Viv Cole drew my attention on his From the Coleface blog to an interesting article by Des Woods and Henry Marsden published recently in the UK's Training Journal called How Professionals Learn (sorry, but you'll have to pay for the download). Woods and Marsden focused their article on senior staff working in professional service firms (accountants, lawyers, etc.), but I don't see why it shouldn't also apply to senior managers, academics, doctors or anyone else who has graduated through an extensive training and risen to a senior professional position.

The authors make a number of useful points about the unique problems of training this group. I've selected a few and added my own commentary:

• Professionals will only turn up if their investment in time is going to be rewarded by tangible returns directly related to the problems they face in their work. This should apply to all training, of course, but professionals are acutely aware of the value of their time and are not motivated by the idea of some time away from the day job.
• They will be more attracted to training that is delivered by people as senior and credible as they are. This is a potential difficulty, because senior people have little time to devote to training and can sometimes make poor trainers. On the other hand, trainers with less obvious subject matter expertise will not cut the mustard, however brilliant they are at delivering training. Ideally you need to use top experts who are also top trainers and inevitably they will cost top dollar.
• They like to network with other professionals of similar or greater reputation. They won't want to be thrown in with a random selection of more junior employees from around the organisation.
• The training must be quick and to the point. And, of course, all training should be, assuming it gets the job done. The problem lies not with the provision of knowledge but with skills development, which takes time.
• The training must not challenge their current competence. Any hint of a remedial intervention and noses will be immediately out of joint. These are people who have a high opinion of themselves and want others to feel the same.
• The content must be intellectually stimulating and challenging - in-depth cases go down well. This is an audience with high levels of prior knowledge (which makes it much easier for them to acquire new knowledge in the same domain) and high metacognitive skills (they have a fair idea what they need to know and how to acquire this knowledge). Anything less stimulating than their day-to-day work is going to be a turn off.
• The majority of self-study e-learning is likely to be too slow, too long and too boring - they just want the key points. Self-study e-learning is too structured for this audience, which doesn't need or want the structure. It's quite possible it's also been written by people less senior and less clever than themselves and this will be blindingly obvious. It's not e-learning that's the problem - it's the way it's done. Simulations and scenarios might be more acceptable as long as they are relevant, challenging and fiendishly clever.
• They are not game for follow-up activities designed to embed the learning. A blended solution may be the most effective option, but the professionals are not going to play the game (unless there's a high-status qualification at stake). With knowledge training, the follow-up probably isn't necessary for this audience, but when you really need to develop new skills in this audience (interpersonal skills come to mind) then you've got a problem. The early days of learning a new skill can be anxiety-ridden and embarrassing, and the last thing any professional wants is to humiliated in front of their peers. Probably the best option you've got is individual coaching, an expensive but potentially powerful option.

Thanks to Woods and Marsden for bringing this difficult audience into focus. They have helped me to realise that you just have to have a plan B when it comes to senior professionals. I'd like to think I am one myself, so it really wasn't too difficult to get inside their heads.

Sometimes you feel you're being drawn into a battle and you're not sure why. A good example can be found in the animosity that the celtic fringe (Wales, Scotland, Ireland) feel towards the English. Their feelings are perfectly understandable, of course, given the dominating behaviour over many centuries of the Anglo-Saxons, but are not mirrored by the English, whose attention is more focused on those who they, in turn, wish not to be dominated by (the Americans perhaps). It's a one-sided battle, because only one side is angry and up for a fight. I, for one, have no strong feelings one way or other about the Welsh, Irish or Scottish. I wish them well, except, of course, when they play England in any sporting contest.

I encounter a similar situation when I come across Mac users and Apple aficionados generally. When they find out I'm a PC user, they seem up for a fight. I don't have any problem with the fact that they wish to spend a lot more on their computers. I understand that Apple is a more stylish brand and that some people feel it is worth paying more for the prestige that this reflects upon them. Good for them, but their religious zeal is lost on PC users, who have no problems with Windows and the Office suite, which do more than enough for them and are much more reliable than Apple users think (particularly now we have Windows 7).

It's not as if it's an ethical issue. After all, both Microsoft and Apple aspire to a monopolistic status in their markets, as do all capitalist ventures. Both have achieved this (one with operating systems and office applications, one with MP3 players and perhaps eventually with smart phones). It's the job of regulators to make this position difficult to accomplish or to maintain.

And Microsoft and Apple are not even direct competitors. One is predominantly a software company and one is mainly hardware. A much more important battle is the one they both face against free and open source software.

To show just how one-sided these wars have become, most PC users are perfectly happy to buy iPods and the English are happy to holiday in Wales, whereas you won't often see a Mac user buying a phone running Windows Mobile or a Scotsman cheering on England playing Germany at football. But all this negative energy is wasted. There are battles out there that really are worth fighting.

I must have delivered many hundreds of presentations over the years, including some fairly high profile events, so I wasn’t optimistic that I’d find a lot to interest me in Confessions of a Public Speaker (O’Reilly, 2010) by Scott Berkun. I was wrong. I have never seen Scott speak, but I can tell you that he’s a great writer who kept me thoroughly engaged and entertained. This is not your run-of-the-mill effective presentations book – it’s packed with tips that you can use straight away.

He tells some home truths, designed to make you feel a little less anxious:

“Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That’s all they want. They’re not judging you as much as you think, because they don’t care as much as you think.” Steady on Scott!

“If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection.”

“They (the audience) want to be entertained. They want to learn. And most of all, they want you to do well. Many mistakes you can make while performing do not prevent those things from happening.”

It’s perfectly natural to be scared, because, as Scott reminds us:

“Our brains, for all their wonders, identify the following four things as being very bad for survival: standing alone, in open territory with no place to hide, without a weapon, in front of a large crowd of creatures staring at you.”

If you need one good reason to buy this book, it should be the section on what to do when things go wrong (you’re being heckled, everyone is staring at their laptops, one guy won’t stop asking questions, everyone hates you, and much more). Scott’s advice is both practical and hilarious.

You might wonder why Scott, who makes his living presenting, should want you to be as knowledgeable on the subject as he is. Well, he’s not stupid:

“No matter how much you hate or love this book, you’re unlikely to be a good public speaker … Most people are lazy … There will always be a shortage of good public speakers in the world, no matter how many great books there are on the subject. It’s a performance skill, and performance means practice.”

Last year I was lucky enough to see Malcolm Gladwell live in Brighton (see my review). Thanks to a train journey to and from London yesterday, I’ve finally followed this up by reading Gladwell’s Outliers (Allen Lane, 2008). Many of you will have read this by now, but just in case you haven’t, the gist of Gladwell’s ideas is as follows:

1. Becoming a world-class success in what you do, is only partially related to what you are as a person, i.e. what you were born with. You have to be tall enough to be a basketball player (but not necessarily the tallest) and clever enough to be a mathematician (but not necessarily the cleverest).
2. To fulfil your potential takes a serious amount of practice (10 years or 10,000 hours as a guide). The more practice you do the better you will be.
3. To be able to commit this amount of time to practice, you’ll need a supportive environment around you (aspirational middle-class parents with cash will help) and ideally be born into a culture that encourages hard work.
4. Once you have the required skills, you then need a dose of good fortune to be around at the right time and in the right place for there to be a ready market for your skills.

Gladwell is a fabulous writer and backs up his ideas with some captivating accounts of real-life events and an intriguing exploration of the numbers. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you could do a lot worse than to accompany him for at least a few hours on his journey.

According to a Neilsen report, as quoted in A World of Connections, a special report in The Economist on social networking, in October 2009 the countries in which users spent the most hours using social media were Australia, the UK and Italy. For each of this top three, the average user spent over six hours in the month.

Why these three? I haven't got a clue, but if I were to base my views on outrageous stereotypes then I'd say that:

• Australia is first because, if you live in a desert, thousands of miles from anywhere, then you need all the help you can get in keeping in touch with your mates.
• The UK is second because there are too many timid introverts for whom any human contact is better than none.
• And Italy is third because there are too many mad extroverts for whom there's no such thing as too much communication.

But of course I wouldn't dream of resorting to such dangerous generalisations, so what are the real reasons? I'd love to know your views.

I have been asked by Karl M. Kapp and Tony O’Driscoll to participate in the Blog Book Tour for their new book Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration. I’m actually stop #19 on the tour and the show is not expected in town until next Thursday. However, I won’t be anywhere to be found on that day because I’ll be walking in the Canary Islands enjoying a real immersive experience. Sorry, Karl, and you had such a well-planned schedule as well.

Now I’m not going to pretend that the use of 3D worlds for learning is a specialisation of mine. I’m not even much a gamer (I vowed some years ago to keep as far away as possible from games and programming, because both were so enjoyable and addictive that they threatened any chance I might have for a life that involved interaction with other human beings). However, I’ve had enough experience with 3D worlds to see how they might successfully integrate with other learning and development activities and where they stand out as the best fit for the job.

What I am determined not to do is to regard 3D as intrinsically superior to 2D just because it has 50% more dimensions, any more than I feel a Flash web site is any better than one created in HTML. I know it’s a cliché but it really is ‘horses for courses’. Just as plain old HTML does the job better than Flash in 90% for 90% of websites (with elearning a big exception, where Flash really does win out), 2D is likely to be the right choice for 90% of learning and collaborative environments. I may have exaggerated the percentages, but I doubt it.

None of this is to play down the importance of 3D environments, nor to underestimate the opportunities that we are faced with now 3D is less rocket science and more of a viable option. Just how great those opportunities may be will depend on the type of 3D experience you are looking to create and the appropriateness of this experience to your learning goals. Back in 2007, in 3D e-learning is as diverse as 2D, I set out how I felt the applications of 3D worlds could be mapped as synchronous and asynchronous or individual and collaborative, just like 2D e-learning:

So what about Karl’s and Tony’s book? These guys know much more about this subject than I do and this shows from page 1 to 416. I might feel they are over-playing the significance of 3D, but this may just be because they have explored the possibilities in a lot more depth than I have and are justifiably more excited as a result.

However much you feel 3D worlds will impact on learning and development, there is no question of their relevance and potential importance. If you want to make a really informed judgement – and you should – then this is the book for you.

In one of many lively discussions with conference participants at Learning Technologies 2010 today, that most obvious of questions arose once again: why should you have to be at Olympia in London, live and in person, in chilly January, to participate in the event. Surely for every one of the 400-odd conference participants, there must be another ten who fulfil the following criteria:

• they want to attend but can’t justify travelling to London, or
• they are interested in attending just a small selection of the sessions, and
• they are prepared to pay to watch a live webcast or recorded video of those sessions that interest them

I know there are all sorts of commercial considerations. Are people prepared to pay for online sessions when so many webinars are free (my guess is yes)? How will exhibitors react to the idea that online participants who won’t get the chance to visit their booths (not great, but then conference participants are only a small proportion of the total exhibition visitors)? On the other hand, speakers will be delighted with the opportunity to reach a much wider audience. Perhaps it’s time to take the chance.

Here at Learning Technologies 2010 I chaired a fascinating session looking at the learning applications of social media, presented by Jane Hart and British Telecom’s Peter Butler. There was a lot of interest in the BT case study and we ran out of question time, but luckily there are plenty of web resources that will allow you to follow up. So, if you’re interested in a great story about how social media can take off in a major corporation, here are the links you need to follow:

Written case study at Towards Maturity

Podcast of interview on BBC Radio 4

YouTube video produced for the Becta Next Generation Learning @ Work campaign

In the past ten years I have spent a great deal of time looking at the skills and competencies required to create good quality web content, including four years participating in European projects and defining role profiles, competency frameworks and curricula for a mysterious new profession that we called 'web content specialist'. Throughout these projects we never really came to terms with what a web content specialist did and the career path that might possibly lead them to this role. There was all this content out there, and yet the vast majority of people working in web design and development seemed to be concerned with far more technical and creative issues such as information architecture, graphic design, usability and software engineering. Somebody had to be writing this stuff.

The answer, of course, is that come 2010 almost everyone is a web content creator, even if their contribution is no more than status updates on Facebook. Everyone who posts to a forum, writes a blog, tweets or maintains an online profile is making a significant contribution to the body of online content. Those who do this well make a more useful contribution than those who do not. Quality does matter.

Luckily, the rules that underly good quality web content creation are well established. Those who are professional content creators - journalists, marketing copy writers, public relations experts and so on - have, by and large, taken the trouble to come to terms with these rules. But not everyone is a professional and many who rely on their web presence cannot afford - or choose not - to employ one. These people would do well to consult Ginny Redish's excellent Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. It's packed full of easy-to-grasp and well-explained guidelines, backed up with plenty of examples. There was little here that I haven't encountered before, but that in no way reduces the value of this book to its target audience.

If you write content for the web and believe that you could do this more effectively, then you really should read it.

In a special feature on newspapers and technology in The Economist of December 19th, the following caught my eye:

"The internet may kill newspapers; but it is not clear if that matters. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels the better."

What this quote makes clear to me is how easily we get confused between the medium and the message. Yes, some of us may have become fond of a particular medium, in this case newsprint, but if it was to be replaced by another, more efficient, medium, then surely we should be welcoming the change, not mourning it. The people who should be concerned about a shift from one medium to another are not the consumers of the messages, i.e. those who consume news stories, but those who make money from exploiting a particular channel, in this case newspaper owners. And in the end, that's their problem. That's what being in business is all about.

So, is the classroom as a channel for learning analogous to print as a channel for news? In some ways it is. What learners need are reliable sources of expertise, the chance to reflect and discuss, opportunities to practice and to obtain feedback, and so on. For many years a classroom has been a convenient vehicle for these activities and a huge industry has now built up to support the use of the classroom for learning - in particular those who provide classroom facilities and those who have become expert in delivering in a classroom, i.e. teachers and trainers. However, as we all know, some pretty powerful new channels have now been developed which seem to support much of the same functionality as a classroom, except in many cases more flexibly and at a lower cost. Not surprisingly, the classroom training industry is wary of these new channels and has taken only modest steps to engage with the change. They will probably keep their distance until consumers, i.e. learners, themselves engage with new technology and begin to make this their preference. It took ten years for this to happen with online news; we cannot be that far off when it comes to learning.

If and when learners start to desert the classroom, we should shed no tears, in the same way that we should ignore the protests of the newspaper barons. They've had their day. The classroom is only a medium for learning, as was the job environment before that, and online technology in years to come. On the contrary, we should be delighted if more learning can be accomplished more efficiently. We will still need some expert practitioners to support this learning in the same way that we will still need journalists to gather and interpret news. The change will be uncomfortable but, ultimately, society will be the beneficiary.

There was some consternation on Twitter about the results of the survey that Alison Rossett and James Marshall conducted with 968 ASTD and eLearning Guild members in mid 2009. As the authors point out, if you went by the themes of most l&d conferences, blogs and magazines, then you’d believe the classroom was in terminal decline and that self-paced e-learning tutorials were being fast replaced by games, sims, 3D worlds, and all forms of social and collaborative learning, much of it mobile.

Well, surprise, surprise, that seems like wishful thinking. In reality it’s very much same old, same old. According to the survey, these are the forms of e-learning that are most commonly used in practice:

• e-assessment
• using computers in the classroom
• e-tutorials
• narrated slide shows

And these are the least common:

• using forums to follow-up on classroom events
• e-coaching
• immersive 3D experiences
• use of virtual classrooms
• mobile learning

Actually, it wasn’t a surprise to me. In the various workshops I run, I meet l&d practitioners every week; I know what they do, what they think and what pressures they are under. What is for certain is that the climate has changed; there is much more pressure on time, on cost and, to a lesser extent, on being as green as possible. What there isn’t, is a large groundswell of pressure to change methods or media. That’s shouldn’t be a shock, because customers are not meant to determine the solutions; their job is to specify their needs and then rely on the experts to come up with appropriate solutions. The trouble is that, in many cases, the experts, i.e. l&d professionals, are either ignorant of the opportunities now available for relieving the pressures, unsure of what to do or just plain resistant.

We have to come to terms with the fact that we work in a conservative profession. New media have exploded on to the scene so quickly that a gaping skills gap has emerged; and until that gap is bridged, it is unlikely that we will see real innovations in methods and media. The reality is that l&d has come a long way already to be using computers for assessment, to support the classroom and to deliver self-paced content – and most organisations have not come this far. There is still a long way to go and, despite the unbelievable optimism expressed in most expert predictions, we’ll see very modest progress in the short term, perhaps even the medium term.

When faced with pressures on time and cost, the l&d professional has three choices: do less of the same, do the same less well, or do the same but in smarter ways. This new ASTD survey seems to indicate that not enough are choosing the latter.

I may be living too sheltered a life, but I simply can’t fathom out how the estimates of the e-learning market are as big as they are.

Let’s take Ambient Insight’s impressively titled The US market for self-paced elearning products and services: 2009-2014 forecast and analysis, issued in October 2009. According to this report, the US market for self-paced e-learning products and services (which presumably excludes anything collaborative) reached $16.7 billion in 2009. Yes, that’s right, $16.7 billion. Not much compared with what bankers are paying themselves in bonuses this year, but massively more than I would have estimated. I know the report covers all sectors, including education (and I know little about the economics of e-learning in education), but it does claim that the majority of revenues are concentrated in the corporate sector (and that I know pretty well).

If I was to go to the websites of every listed company serving the e-learning space and total all their revenues, I don’t believe I’d get anywhere near these figures. Still, my methods are flaky in the extreme when you consider that Ambient’s efforts are based on their “Evidence-based Research Methodology (ERM)”. I’m not doubting the robustness of ERM, but I can’t validate it because my share of all these billions is not enough that I can afford to pay $4825 for the full report. Sadly, I had to make do with the executive overview.

By contrast, Learning Light’s estimate of the UK e-learning market at somewhere between £300 and £450 million ($450m - $675m) seems relatively modest, when you consider that the UK is 20% the size of the USA in population terms and not so far behind in its use of e-learning. However, I’d be amazed if anyone was able to justify this figure to me, given that I know the turnover of nearly all the players in the corporate sector and that, although some of my friends have got a few bob, they’re not all bathing in champagne.

What I would say is that, if the £300m figure is correct, less than 1% of this is spent educating and training those working in the profession, and that might explain a few things.

The Big Question for January in the Learning Circuits Blog is, rather predictably, what are your predictions for 2010? I’m happy to participate in the sure knowledge that nearly all so-called expert predictions in practically any field prove to be miles off the mark. You can judge for yourselves whether I’m any good at this game, because I offer up below last year’s predictions for workplace learning and development, with the benefits of hindsight duly appended:

In 2009 I predicted: Of all the forces for change (Gen Y, new thinking about learning, pressures to respond quickly to needs, new tools, new devices, etc.) only one will matter and that is surviving the downturn.

Certainly this is the scenario that will have been played out in many private sector organisations across the world, less so at this point for the public sector. In 2010, the pressure will reduce in many areas of the private sector, as the economy starts to recover and fear ceases to drive decision making.

In 2009 I predicted: Most of the cool stuff (informal learning, social media, games and sims, mobile learning) will have to stay on the back burner, because management will simply not be interested in experimenting. There will be enough exceptions to keep those already active in these fields going, but no big shift in corporate learning practice.

The recent ASTD study certainly bears this out. While conferences, magazines and blogs continue to be dominated by next generation learning technologies, corporate practice is more conservative than ever. This is hardly surprising as things stand. If nothing has changed in a couple of years, then we can start to worry.

In 2009 I predicted: Classroom training will be decimated. Many classroom trainers will lose their jobs, become freelance and find that there is not enough work to go round, causing daily rates to tumble.

Certainly those vendors that supply classroom training to employers have been having a torrid time over the past year and this situation is unlikely to improve – in fact it may never do. On the other hand, classroom training that is run internally is proving fairly resilient as pared-down budgets and staffing levels make it difficult to consider changing.

In 2009 I predicted: Many organisations will look to e-learning to keep the essential formal training going, but mainly out of the desire to save costs. This will keep some internal trainers (those who have embraced technology), external developers and rapid tool suppliers busy, although everyone will be looking for the cheapest and the quickest.

This has been the case. Companies providing bespoke e-learning services have been doing well enough (at least in the UK), although there continues to be a downward pressure on prices and a desire for quicker turnaround.

In 2009 I predicted: We could see a big increase in the use of synchronous e-learning using web conferencing, primarily to save travel costs.

As far as I can tell there has been quite a pick up of interest in the UK, although most trainers remain blissfully ignorant of what can be achieved in the virtual classroom.

In 2009 I predicted: Governments will run up huge deficits to stimulate the economy and so the public sector may not be hit as hard in the short term. However, in a few years' time, as the private sector recovers, the deficits will have to be repaid and there could be heavy cutbacks in public spending. So, those working in the public sector should use this time to adjust to a very different future.

Although governments will be cautious about addressing their deficits too vigorously, because they don’t want to threaten the recovery, the public sector is preparing for the axe to fall and hard. Anyone in e-learning who is relying on the public sector for business should start to shift focus and fast.

In 2009 I predicted: Those learning and development departments that are proactive in helping their organisations respond to the crisis will be rewarded by being allowed to survive. The sitting ducks will be shot.

I was probably being too melodramatic here, although I do stand by my advice. You can regard the current circumstances as a threat or an opportunity. Whichever you pick, your prophesy is likely to be fulfilled.

I was pleased to receive a complimentary copy the other day of the Economist’s Pocket World in Figures for 2010. As someone who revels in statistics, this was an irresistible read. There’s lots of great stuff in there, but I’ve pulled out a few which are of relevance to learning and technology (excuse my UK focus):

• Of the world’s top 10 universities, four are British and the rest American. Canada and Japan are the only other countries to appear in the top 20.
• The highest enrolment in tertiary education as a % of the relevant age group is in Cuba, South Korea, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and the USA. The UK is outside the top 25.
• Education spending as a % of GDP is highest in Cuba, Lesotho, Denmark, Moldova, Botswana, Swaziland and Iceland.
• Countries with the most internet hosts: USA (332m), followed by Japan (43m).
• The Gulf states and Italy have the highest penetration of mobile phones. In all of the top 48 countries there is more than 1 mobile registered per person. In the world as a whole there is one mobile phone for every two people.
• The highest penetration of computers is in Canada (94 for every 100 people). In the USA and UK the figure is 80 and for the world as a whole, 15.
• The highest penetration of broadband is in Northern Europe (around 35% of people subscribe). In the USA and the UK, the figure is around 25%.
• The highest technological readiness (the ability of the economy to adopt new technologies) is in Northern Europe. The USA is 11th.

Other interesting stats:

• For the highest GDP per head look to northern Europe, with USA 13th and UK 14th. Northern European countries also provide the most international aid per head.
• China is by far the biggest producer of all types of food.
• Most Nobel prize winners in history come from the USA, then UK.
• Biggest drinkers, Germany; biggest smokers, Greece.
• You’re most likely to be murdered in Belize or run down by a car in Qatar.
• Defence spending of the USA is $552 billion; next biggest is the UK with $63 billion.
• Most environmentally friendly country is Switzerland. UK is 15th, USA 39th.
• Most cinema attendances: China (1.5 billion), followed by USA.
• Daily newspapers per 1000 of population: highest is Iceland with 821; UK is 315, USA 184.
• The French spend more time than anyone sleeping. And, apart from the Turks, they also spend more time eating and drinking (over 2 hours per day, compared to 1.5 hours in the UK).
• The Mexicans watch the most TV.
• The oldest populations are in Japan, Germany and Italy.
• The cities with the highest quality of living are mostly in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
• The highest GDP per head is Luxembourg with $103K. The USA and the UK both stand at $45K.
• France gets the most tourists (81m), followed by Spain (59m) and the USA (55m). The UK gets 30m. The biggest tourist spenders are the Americans and the Germans.
• Highest life expectancy is in Japan (82.7); lowest is in Afghanistan (43.8).
• Highest cost of living is Japan; lowest is Pakistan.
• The highest levels of obesity can be found in the Middle East and the USA.

At this point I must stop and urge you to buy your own copy.

In December of 2008 I started using Twitter on a three-month trial basis. At the end of this period I reviewed my experience and devided to continue (see Three months a-Twittering). Just before Christmas I reached the one year milestone, at the same time posting my 1000th tweet and gaining my 1000th follower. So, what has all this activity achieved?

• I have stopped using my blog to share resources, provide updates or make brief comments - these have all graduated to Twitter. My blog has now taken the form of a more-or-less twice weekly column on learning-related issues, which works well for me.
• Twitter has provided me with a useful channel for notifying the learning community of my new blog postings, particularly for those readers who don’t subscribe through a feed.
• I have enjoyed playing my part in raising awareness of interesting postings and web articles that I have come across. Twitter is definitely accelerating the spread of useful information across the learning community and this has to be a good thing. I like the fact that people who have a generally low profile can still reach a very wide audience when they have something important to share.
• Twitter is one of the best and most rapid ways that I have yet encountered for obtaining answers to questions – what’s the best way to …? have you tried …? who’s available for …?

But I do have some misgivings:

• Having Twitter up-and-running on an ongoing basis seems to me to be highly disruptive if you’re trying to concentrate (see The Case Against Multi-tasking is growing). On my PC I get audible alerts from Twhirl when each new batch of tweets arrives and it takes a very disciplined person not to check what’s come in (and generally speaking I can resist anything except temptation). I know I could turn the alerts off, but instead I tend to leave Twhirl turned off most of the time. When I’m out and about, on the other hand, I’m grateful for the chatter.
• I’m concerned that we’re all becoming very good at passing interesting information on from one to another, but not actually reading and reflecting on any of it. It’s like making a recording of a TV programme – somehow it feels like that’s a job done, even if you don’t ever play it back.
• Twitter seems to have very limited usefulness as a vehicle for discussion. Once a dialogue extends beyond a few tweets, there’s simply too much traffic passing between a very limited subset of the community. I’ve kept the number of people that I follow down as much as I can (although it does stand at over 100) in order to maximise the signal-to-noise ratio, but I’ve still had to un-follow a few colleagues who seem to bombard the network with tweets from morning to night – how do they ever get any work done?

So let’s give it another go for another year and another 1000 tweets. One thing’s for sure, the way we all use Twitter will have moved on again and quite unpredictably.