ADDIE Not Relevant?

Brent Schlenker wrote Waterfall model - ADDIE - "is risky and invites failure":

The 37signals blog Signal vs. Noise pointed me to the Wikipedia entry for the waterfall model of software development. Sure sounds a lot like the ADDIE model to me. I wonder if there is any connection. Well...no matter...they are not relevant any more.

Having spent a lot of time working on a Ph.D. where I studied software development processes and now having built a services company based on building quality software and eLearning Solutions, there's still a lot that is relevant in both the Waterfall model and in ADDIE. We don't really use either model directly, instead we have a modified version and a process that's highly flexible to meet the needs of the particular project.

37signals tells you that all your clients (internal or external) care about is the end result. Get there as quick as you can. Get rid of intervening documents that just get in the way of getting to the end result.

I understand where they are coming from, but I would point out one really important thing - and in fact, when you are in a service business it's the most important thing ... The client's expectation of the end result.

A service business is ultimately all about mutually setting expectations and meeting those expectations with your client. I would claim that the real value in the Waterfall Model and the ADDIE model is successively more granular definitions of expectation.

I agree that these models are bloated. That we need streamlined versions of the models to be able to handle the speed in which projects need to occur. But, if you are iterating from the start through successive definitions of expectations and attacking risks early, you are destined to fail to meet expectations on some projects.

You can get a white paper on this topic that I wrote from my company web site: Innovative Projects and Software Development.

Thinking Outside the Training Box

Great post by Dave Lee - The Learning Circuits Blog: We're #3! We're #3! - that really should have been titled something along the lines of - looking at Customer Service and IT Help Desk for inspiration in training. When you look at Dave's list of things that these two organizations do, you begin to see solutions that don't look like training and instead look like help (with maybe a little training embedded when appropriate). This is the kind of solution we've been using in Reference Hybrids. And it also points us to solution elements as part of our blend that have included:

• Collect Questions - During any use of Online Reference or eLearning, make it easy to collect questions that can be submitted in a batch (learning mode) or immediately.
  
• Office hours - After the launch of the training, hold regularly scheduled virtual meetings to discuss questions or issues that have come up. Also, ask for input on any tips that people have for each other. This will fizzle out after a while, but as new things roll-out, it becomes important again.
  
• Web Site - Use Wiki software or similarly easy to use tool to keep an up-to-date site where you minimally have pointers to your reference materials and training materials, FAQs, list of expert practitioners, and dates/times of office hours.
  
• Update your FAQs - After each office hour, quickly make modifications to the Wiki. Ideally, you solicit expert practitioners to make updates to the web site including the FAQ.

Dave also points to metrics that are available in both of these contexts. We also have seen metrics get used in some domains that are quite effective, e.g., customer satisfaction surveys. But, it is certainly the exception that we have these kinds of metrics available to us.

Moving from One to Many - LMS Products are Two Generations Behind

I ran across an article by Bob Mosher in CLO entitled: Moving from One to Many that discusses the disconnect of what LMS products are focusing on "competency mapping and effective resource management" vs. what Bob sees as the overall industry trend - "industry shifting its overall training focus away from skills acquisition to an overall strategy of project-based and outcome-driven learning."

Bob is pretty wired into both the LMS world and hears what people are talking about at conferences and I've heard the same things, so I don't disagree that he's hearing this stuff, and I quite agree with his statement:

Many of the latest LMS and e-learning efforts have driven learners into learning silos, isolating them from their peers. We need to build the collaborative aspect of learning back into these experiences if we’re going to achieve the collective outcomes we want.

But I found myself disagreeing with where he took the conversation...

Learning teams and projects need to be assigned based on job roles. Teams need
to learn to support and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Collaborative learning environments and strategies such as virtual classrooms,
discussion forums, mentoring and coaching need to be enabled and mandated as
part of the learning experience.

While I welcome LMS products providing these kinds of capabilities, I am worried that we are about to see another whole cascade of LMS features that will make it even hard to get a reasonable implementation done. Further, the fact that he's suggesting that they need to get on-board with collaboration suggests that LMS products are two cycles behind. Focusing on job roles, teams, collaboration sounds like a heavy, groupware type approach that is going to take too much work and be too inflexible if you ever get it done. This is the same problem that Andrew McAfee discusses ERP vs. Enterprise 2.0.

Instead, emergence suggests that we should provide lighter-weight solutions that enable the individual to improve their personal learning and provides value to the individual first, but enables them to reach out and collaborate via the same toolset where it helps them. The value of del.icio.us / Yahoo MyWeb is that it first helps the individual and by helping the individual it helps the collective.

Making LMS products bigger, more complex is likely the exactly wrong way to go. In fact, there may be some big opportunity for more nimble players on the low end based on simple publishing (think Wiki) and simple tracking and bundles of other simple kinds of solutions to make significant in-roads. The stuff being discussed in LAMS and Drupal/Moodle make me wonder what the landscape will look like in five years. Especially if large LMS vendors take Bob's advice and become even bigger and more bloated and are really, really hard to implement (which is his very first complaint).

Improving Personal Learning - A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals

From Wikipedia's description of Knowledge Economy, quoting Peter Drucker (1966):

A manual worker works with his hands and produces "stuff". A knowledge
worker works with his head and produces ideas, knowledge, and information.

What's the most important skill of a knowledge worker? I would claim...

The most important skills of a knowledge worker are learning skills.

I would also suggest that learning skills are dramatically shifting over the past few years and learning professionals are not staying ahead of these shifts. If you read what is coming out in discussions of Informal Learning, Personal Learning Environments, eLearning 2.0, all of them point that personal learning (or self-directed learning or learning how to learn) is where we should focus our attention to get the greatest effect.

I would ask you to assess yourself right now...

How much time/effort are you spending on understanding how you (as an
individual) can be a better learner? How much time are you spending understanding how to help others as individuals become better learners?

I would assume that anyone reading this blog post is likely in the top few percent in terms of personal learning, but I would question whether you've thought about how this could help others improve - or how are your personal learning processes similar or different from other readers. This is what I don't think the broader community has addressed well at all.

If you take a look at what is being discussed in learning circles, I would claim that We Are Approaching Learning from the Wrong Direction. One phrase has stuck with me that captures it well...

The individual is the new group.

We need to focus on helping individuals be empowered and competent in their own learning. A recent article in CLO Magazine, Implementing Learning-How-to-Learn Strategies talks about this need, but focuses primarily on getting more from instruction as opposed to learning on your own. It also lacks specific, pragmatic advice to build learning skills.

I would suggest that before we can help others, we need to help ourselves. We need to better understand how we can improve our own personal learning. By this, I mean specific suggestions, specific skills, pragmatic advice. I'm looking for Lifehacker for personal learning.

I'm going to try to post specific advice and suggestions on this blog and have in the past (see: Tools and Strategies for Personal Learning and Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective).

I would ask that as you run across things you find interesting in this domain you blog about it and drop me a note so I can link to you, or let me know so I can blog about it.

Or if you disagree that this is one of the most (if not the most) important discussion topics for learning professionals today, I would love to hear your counter argument.

Keywords: eLearning Trends, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Personal Learning

Sir Ken Robison Talk - Learning to Learn

Found via Weblogg-ed and Corporate eLearning Development talking about: Learning to Learn and a quite fun and informative talk by Sir Ken Robinson at the TED conference.