Learning Never Stops

December’s question on Learning Circuit Blog is “What did you learn about learning this year”.

Well the most important thing I learnt this year – World Never Stops Learning.

Here are some of the things that stand out for me from 2009 –

Recession didn’t turn out be that bad a word after all – Due to recession, year 2009 started on a low note for industry in general and elearning/training industry in particular (training sadly still is not on priority list of most of CFO’s).

However, I learnt that inspite of all the doomsday prophecies, any downturn is generally limited to certain verticals & geographies. During this downturn BFSI & real estate got hit badly in US & some parts of Europe, whereas India, China, and many other countries went through this period without any serious problem. So for us even though business from US & Europe dipped a bit, many opportunities came up in emerging markets. My Learning – Continue to build organizational expertise across different verticals, and diversify across different geographies because world won’t stop learning.

Rapid Learning Ruled in West, Flash in East – e-Learning in west has attained a certain maturity level, and that was also reflected in the way elearning courses were developed and delivered in these geographies – course duration got shorter & shorter (we developed a lot of 5-7 minute modules for our customers in 2009), delivery platform diversified (courses were simultaneously, or in some cases exclusively, designed for iPhone & Blackberry etc), and majority of construction got done using rapid tools or highly standardized templates & shells.

In east however, elearning took off over last couple of years and HR teams are trying hard to hook learners to this training medium.  Thus, elearning courses most often don’t only have to fulfil learning objectives, but also have to act as an advertisement for this training medium, which translates into lot of Level 2 or 3 courses being developed using Flash. My Learning – Due to inequality in elearning adoption rate, this trend would continue for some more time before it converges. As a service company, we need to cater to different kind of requests, but seeing the trend, need to further develop organizational strength in designing and delivering short courses over different platforms.

Social Learning Gained Momentum – Before 2009, I was sceptic if collaborative learning would be accepted in work environment. But 2009 made me a believer that collaborative learning is going to be a major component of learning initiatives moving forward. On personal level, I blogged much more and was greatly enriched by the experience, tried my hands at twitter (not successfully though – which I plan to change in 2010), and generally got more active on other social platforms.

>From business perspective, we started integrating collaborative learning components in our courses, and our clients started using collaboration features of installed LMS’s and freely available tools much more in 2009 with encouraging results. My Learning – Continue pushing usage of social learning – both at personal and organizational level – it’s a win-win.

Wishing all the readers of LCB & GCS Blog a very happy 2010!