Conference 2005 >
Plenaries
| Towards a unified e-learning strategy
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Chris Yapp, Head of Public Sector Innovation, Microsoft. |
All learners are not the same, and all e-learning is not the same. In this thought-provoking address, Microsoft's Chris Yapp explores how e-learning can transform our experience of education.
Indeed, Chris suggests that we have no choice but to transform the education system in order to meet the challenges of a highly-skilled workforce competing in the global economy.Drawing on a sound base of theory, Chris will examine how we can personalise e-learning.
This level of personalisation goes beyond providing learning in Kinaesthetic, Auditory and Visual flavours. Rather, it is the basis for the re-engineering of the education system using what we know about learners, and benefiting from what technology can provide.Moving to a new world where technology supports learning not just at school, but throughout life, will require a huge culture change, Chris will argue, and will have social and educational implications.
He will examine the pitfalls in making such a change, and challenge us to consider the consequences of failing to do so. |
| Beyond training delivery
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Dr Rob Yeung, Director, Talentspace Limited.' |
'At least 80% of learning at work takes place outside of the classroom. But even when people do enter the classroom, fundamental principles of learning and development are being broken on a regular basis.
Skills are being taught in isolation whereas skills need richness of context to be properly embedded. Other psychological principles about the effective learning are being shattered on a daily basis too. Most worryingly, training courses rarely take into account learners current levels of competence.
Too often, courses are used as a sheep to give everyone the same learning experience. Learners are rarely asked what their current level of competence is. But even if you ask them, the reality is that most people are wildly inaccurate in estimating their own level of skill. So a key step in designing an effective learning and development programme is to begin by assessing learners capabilities using methods ranging from 360º feedback to assessment centres. But there are trade-offs to be made in deciding on the best form of assessment to use - some cost more than others.
But at the same time, some are more effective than others. So how do you get the balance right? But the biggest mistake is in assuming that training develops any skills at all. At best, it raises people awareness of the skill and gives them some guidelines and ideas for the use of that skill. But the only way to really embed a skill is to give learners real opportunities to practise it, followed by feedback.
So how can tools and techniques such as development centres, guided experience, peer mentoring, self-assessment, and e-learning be used to develop the capabilities of the organisation? And how can all of these be pulled together in a coherent framework?' |
| The learning organisation
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Nigel Paine, Head of Training, BBC' |
There are many ways of defining a learning organisation and it actually sounds easy to deliver when the reality is quite the opposite.
Whatever the definition it would seem to compromise the following four elements, a place where learning is respected an organisation that can learn from within and where knowledge is shared ideas and creativity are at a premium everyone sees themselves as a teacher, a learner and a source of business knowledge.
The prizes for building a learning organisation are extensive. Lew Platt the former CEO of Hewlett Packard once said if HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times as profitable. Most companies would be able to say the same thing about themselves.
This session will try to show some of the elements needed to build a learning organisation and why learning is, often, an unprotected spices in the corporate zoo and why it often feels like permanent hunting season. ' |
| The new learner
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Donald Taylor, Chairman, Learning Technologies Conference |
Sharing this plenary in two parts are Donald Taylor, conference chairman, and Professor Bob Fryer, who is in Thailand, but who will be making a video appearance.
Donald will concentrate on the New Learner as an individual. How have individual learners changed over the past 10 years, and what can we do to ensure that our delivery of training keeps pace with these changes?
Donald will examine how the New Learner has moved from a largely passive role in the classroom to an active one expecting to learn throughout their life, both in work and outside it.
These learners might once have expected helpings of The Truth to be served up to them by charismatic experts in the classroom. Now, however, they are Indexers, rapidly surveying learning opportunities and different types of content, and looking to their trainers for much more than the opportunity to soak up knowledge like sponges.
With these New Learners, what is the best method for training delivery, and how can learning and development professionals move themselves from being trainers to being learning consultants? |
