There is a scene in the movie The Matrix, when the bad guy, Agent Smith, is fighting the good guy, Neo (also known as Mr. Anderson). The audience hears an oncoming train on the sound track, and Agent Smith says, “Do you hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”
For those of us in the field of learning, there is also a sound of inevitability. It is the sound of designers and developers and managers figuring out how to incorporate this hodgepodge of wikis, blogs, social networks, and social bookmarking (and many other technologies) into our learning strategies and solutions. This is not a question of “if” but rather of “when.”
Beyond the question of timing, the application of Web 2.0 technologies and methodologies to learning is coming to your organization. By now, talk of wikis, blogs, RSS, and Podcasting may have overwhelmed you. You may struggle with terms like crowdsourcing, social bookmarking, and tagging. You know all about Twitter and Pownce, Flickr and Yelp, and of course you’re a natural at using Delicious. Now, let’s not panic here, but this next topic is enough to make those first items look neat, tidy, and easy to square away.
Maybe all of this talk about wikis, blogs, IM, text messages, and 2.0 in general has got you a little freaked out. That’s OK; I’ve got good news, and some other news, about that. The good news is that typically we are able to pilot and try out all of this 2.0 stuff at a very low risk level, and much of it has a very short learning curve. This means we can take our shots and try to figure out how to use these applications without betting the farm. However, the other news is that e-Learning 2.0 is actually going to be part of a much larger movement – let’s call it Organizational Change 2.0. Here is why I think we really need to pay attention to this larger movement.
A number of years ago, I did a survey on the future of e-Learning. I asked a large number of individuals who were implementing LMSs, LCMSs, and content authoring systems what the main hurdles were to full adoption of those technologies within their organizations. Having worked on technical standards, I fully expected the answers to relate to things like interoperability and technical specifications. As with so many other things, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The single most popular answer, by a long stretch, was organizational and cultural change management.
My next thought was, “This can’t be news!” After all, the consulting team I was working for at the time was the “Learning Team,” and it was part of the larger “Change Management” team. So I went out to the vendors and asked if any of them were actually bundling change management efforts with the other services they were selling. Almost all of the vendors replied, “No.” It struck me as odd that the people selling the product weren’t doing anything to help their clients successfully overcome the biggest hurdle to a successful implementation of that product. When I brought this disconnect up to the other consultants I worked with, the reaction was mainly, “If it weren’t for badly designed software, incomplete and insufficient training, and a lack of change management expertise, we wouldn’t have as many clients to help as we do now!”
What we face now, in the e-Learning 2.0 world, is something similar but different, in terms of both vector and scale. If you thought that implementing an LMS, or something like it, required change management, then e-Learning 2.0 is on some hyperbolic curve over that.
In The e-Learning Guild’s recent survey on e-Learning 2.0, one question asked respondents to select from a list up to four factors, “that were most useful in getting people ... to embrace e-Learning 2.0 approaches.” Looking at the replies from managers in organizations of over 2000 learners, change management came in fourth, well ahead of other choices. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1 Managers in organizations of over 2000 learners tended to think that change management is of rather high importance in gaining acceptance of e-Learning 2.0.
Change management is not a requirement for implementing e-Learning 2.0. E-Learning is happening all on its own. However, you need change management if you want to better understand the linkages of “all the 2.0 stuff” to learning or to ongoing formal programs, and if you want the ability to understand the changes that these technologies are already causing within your organizations.
As you read this article, you might want to keep this thought in mind:
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run, and underestimate the effect in the long run."
— Roy Amara, Past President, Institute for the Future
A little background would be nice
Web 2.0 and Social Media began as memes in the circles of technology’s elite, but they have become mainstream. (A “meme” is an idea or a concept that spreads quickly through a community.) TIME magazine even credited Web 2.0 applications for making its readers “Person of the Year for 2006,”
“It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. ... It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.”
According to a September 2005 article by Tim O’Reilly, founder and publisher of O’Reilly Media,
“The concept of ‘Web 2.0’ began with a conference brainstorming session (following the dot-com crash in the Fall of 2001) between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, Web pioneer and O'Reilly V.P., noted that far from having ‘crashed,’ the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the Web, such that a call to action such as ‘Web 2.0’ might make sense? We agreed that it did …”
That initial article by O’Reilly laid out seven features of a Web 2.0 world. They remain meaningful to the discussion. I wanted to lay out these features here, even though they can get a bit technical, because I think it’s important for us to try to get to a common understanding not just of feature sets but of the underlying capacities that come with 2.0.
The Web as platform:
The distinction here is between the Web as an application (think about Web sites as software that sits on top of the Internet) and the Web as a platform for developing applications (eBay is an auction application sitting on top of the Web). The main business distinction here is that the stalwarts here (such as Google) are absolutely free to the end user. These are constantly upgraded services, with free improvements. They are not discrete products that users purchase once.
This is a huge shift. Instead of buying Microsoft Word, being able to install it only on a couple of computers, and then having to pay for upgrades every few years, you just use something like Google Docs or Zoho. You have access to nearly all the same functions, but the application is free. It lives out on the Web, so that you can access it from any computer. You never have to worry about upgrades, because the application is updating almost constantly behind the scenes. Think about not having to “install” your next authoring tool, LMS, or LCMS, but just turning it on. They wouldn’t be free, but they would all be accessible through the browser with no need for downloads.
Harnessing collective intelligence
There were search engines before Google. The difference was that Google, and its PageRank system, leveraged the power of all users of its search function to create added value for the next searcher.
Guess what? Another huge shift. Let’s say you have a couple dozen instructional designers for an organization of several thousand learners. Using e-Learning 2.0 tools, you could easily have all of those thousands of people creating, editing, and commenting on content. By doing this, you would leverage their power to create what would essentially be a huge virtual learning department. See, I told you it was big.
Data is the next “Intel Inside”
In the early 1990’s, the "Intel Inside" marketing and branding campaign made Intel a household name. Intel, in addition to producing central processor units (CPUs) for computers, also began manufacturing motherboards. This made it possible for smaller companies to compete with large computer manufacturers by using Intel’s CPUs and motherboards. It was no longer as important what brand was on the outside of the computer case, as it was the brand on the inside of the case. A somewhat similar development is taking place today, only it does not have to do with hardware.
Until Web 2.0 began to dawn, the computer and operating system you were using (for example, Mac or PC, OS X or Windows or Linux) and the speed and power of that computer, were almost critically important. The dominant, foundational technology in the Web 2.0 world, at least for the end user, is the browser and a fast broadband connection to the Internet. Suddenly, the computer and the operating system don’t matter nearly as much as the browser. The functionality and the data all live out on the Web, and the real race now is about who will own and control that data (for example, location, identity, calendars).
One of the big takeaways here in terms of understanding 2.0’s impact on e-Learning is that if we, as the data shows, are using more and more commercial tools inside our enterprise, then it would make sense that as the commercial world works through these issues, we will benefit. So as we watch Google and Facebook and others try to tackle issues of “data portability,” what we are really seeing is those companies working to solve our problems of “student record portability.” This principle extends to things like interoperability and reuse as well.
End of the software release cycle
Software development and release in the past proceeded in very discrete phases. There were development, debugging, alpha, beta, and gold versions before release, and then came version updates or patches. Most of those phases now take place in the open and online. Development may be nothing but a short, closed beta period before product launch. After launch, products may enter a “perpetual beta” phase. O’Reilly notes that this reliance on “Software As A Service” (SaaS) has made the operations capabilities of companies like eBay and Google as important, if not more so, as their actual products.
If you don’t think that the “perpetual Beta” exists, check out the logo for GMail which has been out now for years. That little tag still says “Beta.”
Lightweight programming models
While this is a technical consideration, with many pieces of Web 2.0 technical considerations have organizational implications as well. O’Reilly argues that these lightweight programming models allow for the construction of systems which can be “loosely coupled.” These models have given rise to the “mashups” that I will discuss later, but which essentially allow multiple data streams to be combined to produce new, aggregate applications. The challenge here is that typical traditional corporate IT policy focused heavily on tightly coupled systems.
Companies that provide “enterprise-class mashups” are some of the fastest growing in this market space. A properly designed mashup will have the ability to take a number of data flows (such as completions, student evaluation metrics, and scores) and turn them into a single feed that you can view in just about any way you could envision.
Software above the level of a single device
Web 2.0, in moving applications onto the Web and off the PC, is also leveraging the power of a multitude of devices to make use of those applications. Much software will no longer be written to interface solely with one device, be it a PC, a mobile phone, or a PDA. Instead, more marriages such as the iPod/iPhone/iTouch and iTunes will appear. In these pairings, multiple devices access a massive Web back-end without the need for different applications to serve each.
Remember when we used to talk about “publish once, use on multiple devices?” Well, we’re just about there. The big answer? The ubiquitous browser. One great example of social media and Web 2.0 is Facebook, which I can interact with from my laptop, from my mobile phone and so on.
Rich user experiences
Simply put, Web 2.0 applications (such as Google Mail, Google Docs, Flickr, Facebook) can now present the user with an interaction experience and functionality/feature set that is as rich as the experience with a desktop application.
One of the most amazing aspects of Web 2.0 is the degree to which Web sites can now match the capabilities found in installed applications. This means that we can now deploy 2.0 applications with much less worry about the individual capabilities of the computers in our organization. Technology refresh rates become less important, and users acquire the ability to access their data and the applications from almost any computer.
The set of technologies and methodologies in Web 2.0 is clearly a powerful collection. It is driving rapid and radical changes across the commercial Web, and pushing those changes into the private and public sectors alike. Some of these tools are already present in many enterprises. We must become knowledgeable and comfortable with these technologies in order to derive the greatest return on investment from existing and future implementations. We must also better plan for future funding. At the same time, we must grow the knowledge base that will support creating the strategies and plans to deploy these technologies in the most effective manner for own organizations.
How that sneaky little 2.0 may already be getting inside your organization …
Remember that whole thing about shutting the barn door after all the animals had run out? Well, your enterprise is the barn, and instead of one, it has about 50 doors. In this case, furthermore, it’s not the animals running out that should concern you, it’s the technology that’s running in. That’s important because it means that even if your learning or training department isn’t making plans to bring 2.0 technology and ideas in, some other department might already be doing it. In fact, the chances are quite good that someone already is. Even if they’re not bringing it in officially, the chances are that employees are using it under the IT radar.
Check with your knowledge management group. According to a recent study reported by Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen, organizations with strong KM departments or efforts are much more open to 2.0 technologies. Speaking from personal experience inside my own organization, I can also tell you that we are upgrading in their next releases at least two of the products we already have deployed to include a number of 2.0 capabilities.
You could do your own informal survey at the water cooler. Ask how many people are using a social bookmarking tool like Delicious. Ask how many are using a Web-based IM (Instant Messaging) client like Meebo because the corporate IM won’t let them hook up with outside contacts. Chances are you’ll find these “rogue” efforts more often than you expect.
Data from The eLearning Guild Research survey on this topic even point to the fact that individuals feel like they are ones driving the eLearning 2.0 train. When asked, “If your organization plans to incorporate e-Learning 2.0 approaches, who or what in your organization is driving this?” Over half (52%) responded that, “I’ve used the tools themselves and see the benefits, and I will help drive this.” This contrasts to the 24% who responded, “Our organization is implementing Web 2.0 and/or social media in other parts of the organization.”
To (almost) quote the famous line in the classic movie Cool Hand Luke, “I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.” I think that a lot of learning professionals see themselves as Lone Rangers. They have seen the 2.0 light, and yet have not received the institutional support that would convince them that they are not alone. I think that it may even be the case that KM and possibly IT (for example, if you happen to be implementing something like MOSS 2007 — that is, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), might not be aware that, as they upgrade existing platforms, they may be acting as the doors through which 2.0 can enter at an enterprise level.
So you have two vectors here. One is the individual who is convinced of the power of 2.0, and is using it with or without organizational awareness or support. The other is the enterprise-wide divisions that may well be bringing 2.0 capabilities in-house without realizing it. In the latter case, the divisions bringing it in may not realize that this would be helpful information for the learning or training department — “After all, you guys just do classes, right?”
