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Embedded learning cited number one challenge at seminars

Embedding learning - integrating learning and support at the desktop and in the working environment - was the key theme running across presentations at the Moving Learning 2006 seminars, which ran in the UK and in The Netherlands on 14 and 15 June.

Alfred Remmits, CEO of LearningGuide, the organisers of Moving Learning 2006, said: "People are increasingly learning in informal ways using the Internet, blogs, instant messaging, indeed all of the new ways of communicating that have emerged in recent years.

"The learning provider community must now embrace informal learning by embedding its learning content into these places also in informal ways so that workers find learning an entirely natural experience and simply part of their jobs and the tasks that they do."

"Learning providers must guard against formalising informal learning," added Remmits. "There is a danger that learning providers will reproduce the formal learning techniques that they are most familiar with. This would be a big mistake as learners will always seek informal routes to their answers.

"Embedding learning, deep into working processes, so that it’s always there, right at the moment of need, must now become the focus of the learning industry."

Charles Jennings, global head of learning, Reuters, talked about the reduction in the percentage of knowledge that professionals need to keep in their heads in order to do their jobs, shifting from around 75% in 1986 to around 20% in 1997 and estimated at around 10% today, and forecast to reduce even further in the years ahead:

"Increasing the performance of professionals now depends upon their ability to quickly find the knowledge needed to complete tasks and not on the knowledge learnt during education and training. Reuters is introducing performance support systems to help us with this."

Jennings along with Alison Hollas of ntl Telewest and Kent Barnett of Knowledge Advisors also cited the importance of learning and development’s responsibility moving into the business and away from the customer-supplier culture previously created by learning departments.

Alison Hollas, head of L&D shared services at ntl Telewest, said: "Measuring the impact of learning in terms understood by our business managers, for example increasing employee longevity and reductions in time-to-job impact and in recruitment costs has helped managers to identify where learning can help them and to focus their efforts in the most important areas of employee development.

"When managers see the direct influence of learning they take greater interest and involvement in it."

Keynote presentations at the events included Charles Jennings, global head of learning at Reuters; Bob Mosher, director of strategy and evangelism at Microsoft Learning; and Allison Rossett, Professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University and, additionally in Amsterdam, Joseph Kessels of Kessels & Smit and Mathieu Weggeman of TU Eindhoven.

Case study presentations, about the key changes in learning taking place across large employer-organisations and leading learning-provider businesses included Alison Hollas of ntl Telewest with Kent Barnett of Knowledge Advisors, Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance, René Zekveld of Royal Boskalis Westminster, Gordon Bull of Learning Forte with Richard Hordern of QA, Jan Henk Leeuwenburg of Fokker Services and Henk Arts of LearningGuide.

The organisers report that the Moving Learning 2006 seminars were attended by around 300 learning professionals and managers of organisational learning.

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