G-Cube Solutions: Learn, Share, Grow

e-learning is surely changing the way business leaders think of training, to train their executives across diverse verticals. Today more than ever, companies are turning to e-Learning for their ever increasing training requirements.

And when we talk of creating an e-learning course, the first step is that of Instructional Designing (ID). Simply put, it is integral job of ‘thinking up’ the whole course. The expertise needed for this is not only a strong hold on language and communication but an all-around understanding of the learner needs and the design aspects rising out of them. Analytical skills are necessary as is a strong creative bend of mind.

But in spite of evident need, Instructional Designers in India rely and learn the most from experience in the field. While this is true for all professions, it is especially true in this case as special courses in the field are scarce and the degrees which do exist impart more theoretical knowledge than practical experience. In fact, most of the theory of ID can be researched and found on the Internet. But the task of putting that theory into practice is tedious and often, impossible for a fresh ID aspirant. Recruiters too are aware of the need-gaps, but agree to hire professionals with just a background in communications. The whole process ignores much of the entire skill set needed for a good ID professional.

So, with increasing demand for good designers for e-learning courses and no real solutions in sight, G-Cube brings the Mountain to Mohammed. The latest initiative of G-Cube is a special in-house course on Instructional Designing, called ID-Edge. The course is divided in three parts – Beginners, Intermediate, & Advanced with each semester running for around four months and with on the job training between each semester.

ID-Edge will steer the selected recruits towards a profession that gives them an opportunity to explore and hone their talent. While some theoretical knowledge is a part of the course, the main emphasis will be on practical knowledge of how a learning course is built from scratch. Not only the course will provide functional knowledge, but it will also sensitize the learners about the end-to-end development process, customer-facing communication, and cross-functional challenges.

And what will G-Cube gain?

Well, we will gain good people on our team, and hopefully some good karma points for creating a pool of trained Instructional Designers for the industry!

Please contact hr@gc-solutions.net to find out more about the course and enrollment procedure.

Our workspace imitates the world around us, like art imitates life. No wonder then, as the world gets smaller, boundaries in the workspace also decrease. The first such boundary to break is that of distance. While it is imperative to have productive interactions, it is no longer necessary to make extensive plans for bringing busy colleagues at the same location. And this is possible with the advent of real-time collaboration technology. Web Meetings enables audio-video interactions with a range of features like desktop sharing, whiteboards, polls, assessments – to name just a few.

The benefits are manifold. For smaller organizations, it is a boon that can enable them to find a global reach and makes their business international. For bigger enterprises, it increases inter-organizational communication and builds knowledge within its structure. It is also a great learning platform. The greatest tangible benefit is that of savings – travel costs as well as inter-organizational costs from lesser phone calls, meetings and the like.

While the benefits are clear, let’s face it – Business is about numbers. The return on investment (ROI) for any business case is necessary and a clear ROI also spells the support and approval of management! So we tried to analyze the ROI for our own organization, and the results were simply amazing. Here are our ROI computations -

Some points worth noting in the calculation above –

1. We haven’t considered off-shore travel time and cost savings which would exponentially increase the ROI
2. Couple of subjective factors were also not considered while doing the calculations, such as a) not all of the time saved would be used productively, and b) there would be some productivity gain due to intangible benefits like increase in customer satisfaction, effective communication etc. So while one factor would decrease benefits accrued, second would compensate it by increasing productivity benefits.

Leaving the very evident ROI aside, the intangible returns or the soft benefits for us are that of increased collaboration and faster access to our customers. It is now easier for knowledge within the organization to be shared. Expert views and interactions can also be easily made available across geographical boundaries. This leads to enhanced productivity for all the stakeholders. Training and support can be provided quickly and much more effectively leading to increased customer satisfaction.

The returns are thus are quite substantial, and the ROIs are only expected to increase as web meetings further embed in our organizational processes.

We recommend you look into your needs, future prospects and user profile – and go ahead and choose the best solution for you. You would not have to wait long for the competitive advantages to kick in!

As all of us love to have good food.  The pleasure of eating multiplies many folds when someone in the family or a friend is cooking Just For You. The pleasure is not only for those who eat but for those who cook for that someone.

G-Cube introduced a unique initiative ‘Just For You’ for G-Cube family and friends in order to further enrich our homely environment. This monthly initiative that started in January this year brings delicious and mouth watering dishes which are cooked by talented/ experimental/ adventurous cooks from G-Cube family.

The initiative created vivacious and bubbly mood among G-Cubians and arose their gourmet spirit. The inauguration of this initiative was done by Ms Sonia Mahajan from HR Team. Sonia cooked “nutty-kishmish Halwa”. All G-Cubians relished halwa with great delight. This was followed in February by Mr. Ankit Kumar from Content Team who made mouth watering “pakodas” of different kinds.

Hats off to you two -  Sonia and Ankit! All G-Cubians are now anxiously waiting for next adventurous cook who would delight them with its cooking skills.

Having used Agile methodology in various projects, I wanted to share my thoughts on the opportunities and challenges presented by this methodology.

What is Agile?

As per www.dictionary.com, word agile means ‘Quick and well-coordinated in movement’.

Applying this definition to IT development process, it would mean that the process should be -

• Quick to deliver results
• Efficiently coordinated to deliver best results

Let me further investigate ‘quick’ and ‘efficient’. What does ‘Quick’ means for IT development?  It is purely defined by the needs and nature of the business goals and aspirations. It can be 1 year for a research project Or 1 week for a vanilla LMS implementation.

The success of any IT development process is dependent on the seamless coordination among all stakeholders. So, a process being ‘efficient’ goes by default. The challenge is to measure the process success as being ‘efficient’ or ‘inefficient’ and the ability to introduce changes in the ongoing process to keep improving it to the Nth degree.

Agile methodology for software development attempts to achieve the ‘Quick’ and ‘Efficient’ traits by mandating the following key principles:

1. Break the project into number of small deliverables
2. Regular deliveries at predefined short time intervals
3. Regular feedback from key stakeholders on the deliveries
4. Keep adding to the list of deliverables as they are discovered during the development process
5. Re-plan as and when changes arrive or requested for
6. Ensure the availability of all important decision making stakeholders to make a confident ‘real time’ decision
7. Cut the communication time by conducting face to face conversations
8. Less focus on documentation/recording and more focus on ultimate deliverable
9. Always keep making progress despite ‘roadblocks’ by shifting to alternate work for the time when ‘roadblocks’ are dealt by ‘specialists’

To summarize, process should be flexible to adapt changes, iterative with N number of development cycles and minimize the communication related delays.

Benefits of Agile

These key principles immediately throw some excellent benefits over traditional approaches, such as:

• All stakeholders are apprised of project’s status at all times
• Helps visualize the final deliverable in early stages of development
• Gives a quick estimation of ‘How far are we from final product’
• Keeps the team on its toes and hence, competitive
• Reduces the ‘idle’ time to minimum and thus, increases resource utilization

Challenges of Agile Methodology

I do not doubt the realization of any of the ‘Agile’ benefits. However, after having worked in a complex and big development & implementation project using agile methodology, I have some concerns on ‘Where Agile can be best utilized’.

Here are some of the practical challenges which I feel constraints the use of Agile methodology.

1.    Quality, Cost, Time and Scope

As per PMI (Project Management Institute), changes to any of these constraints bring a change in one or more remaining ones.

Agile being flexible allows frequent changes in scope which means that Cost, Quality or Time has to change. In practice, majority of projects have fixed budget and a mandatory deadline (say, LMS deployment with custom data-flow and reporting mechanism for regulatory compliance).

Hence, even though a project follows agile methodology, at ‘certain point’ the scope changes have to cease.

The realization of this ‘certain time’ is the most difficult task. Do it any sooner than required and business looses the benefits of being agile and on the contrary, do it any later than required, and projects runs over budget or time.

2.    ‘Ready to use’ product

One of major benefits for agile is that ‘ready to use’ product with limited features is always available throughout the development cycle. Hence, if the project has to cut short due to any external constraints, business have a fall back product.

Again, from my personal experience, I do not believe that this benefit can be realized in practise for most of the development projects.

Majority of projects need performance testing and tuning. Basic principle of performance testing warrants a stable functional application to be tested on. An application under agile development process is always evolving and may have functional defects. Hence, performance testing can only be performed after substantial number of deliveries.

Hence, the deliverable is never in ‘ready to use’ form during the development stage unless it is performance tested. Like performance testing, there are many other work items which may continue well after development stage, such as:

• Data Migration
• Setting users in live system
• Security/Anti Hacking testing

And basically, anything to ‘implement’ the deliverables in Live Environment.

3.    Inability to ‘design’ for future requirements

Irrespective of best design models and most experienced design personnel on a project team, it is very hard to design a system on the basis of unseen requirements. This often leads to ‘rework’ at various stages in development and testing.

There was a major mandatory design change due to elaborated requirements during one of the development cycles of the project I worked with. The impact of this change was so big that 2 development cycles had to be used to fix the system as per new design.

4.    External and Internal Dependencies

Majority of projects have external dependencies which are out of control of core project team. External teams will not always follow the agile methodology and hence, will deliver at a certain point in time. Any dependant work can only be undertaken once external deliveries are made.

The problem arises when these dependencies are only discovered during the development process.

There can also be internal dependencies between the different agile teams working on same agile project. In one project we had 3 agile development teams. The selection of work items in an iteration was heavily dependent on the deliverables from other teams. This made planning each iteration very tough, and it needed huge coordination effort.

5.    Need of experts in agile team

Since, each iteration is for a small duration; it is must that each member of team must be an expert in their respective field. This is rarely a case in practise. Hence, often there is a danger to overrun the estimated time for work items.

Conclusion

• Though, agile offers several benefits to Business but at the same time it remains a very challenging task to be able to deliver an agile project successfully.
• The nature of project must be considered before the selection of methodology. In my experience it works well for small to medium projects, or implementations that require less product customizations.
• Some of the challenges I have mentioned can be addressed by better planning and experience.

Oh! You love Microsoft! - this is what a client’s IT Manager commented after looking at technology requirements sheet of Wizdom Web in a presentation last week (It’s built on .Net, and uses Windows Server, IIS, & MS SQL/Oracle as back-end platform). The presentation than briefly turned into a debate between open-source and proprietary systems.

Now, this was not the first time when someone asked me to compare open source vs. proprietary systems, and I am sure it won’t be the last. So I thought I will try to be as objective as possible (even though we sell proprietary LMS) and present how I see open source vs. proprietary LMS debate. So here goes ..

I neither love nor hate proprietary or open source systems. Our decisions to adopt a particular technology or platform either for development or internal use is governed by what works best for our customers and for us. For example, we use Microsoft platform for Wizdom Web, but use Linux based servers for our network management. We use Wizible (a proprietary tool) for project management, but use Bugzilla (open source) to manage internal QA process and WordPress (open source) for blogging.

So did we choose these open source technologies because they provided source code and theoretically we could modify these tools? Or did we choose them because they were free?

No, we chose them because they were the best fit for our requirements (and we have never felt the need to modify source code inspite of having in-house development team). Similarly, we chose proprietary technologies that we use because they were the best fit (read proven, robust, scalable, and with clear road-map that mapped to our growth needs) for us or for our customers

How about open source vs. proprietary LMS’s?

Questions one should evaluate –

1. Is my organization practically ever going to setup an IT team to manage or customize the system?
2. Does the future road-map of open source system map with my industry/domain growth needs?
3. Can I manage without active support?
4. If I am getting the open source system customized, will it still be able to support enhancements that will be made to the system in future (remember with open source systems the development community would not know how you have customized your system, and hence won’t make future enhancements that may fit the customized LMS)?

I generally recommend that if customer’s LMS needs are such that they can be met by out-of-the-box product, and if they have an IT team or access to pool of programmers (such as students) to manage and support the system then it makes absolute sense to go for an open source LMS.

However, if you are an organization who wants LMS to become integral part of talent development plan (read easy integration with ERP’s/HRMS’s, usage in competency management, skill gap analysis, succession planning etc), or if you are getting the system heavily customized, or if you don’t want to setup a dedicated support team for LMS then seriously consider proprietary system that best matches your usage scenario.

I raised the question of domain needs above, because most of the open source LMS’s have been designed with education domain in mind and their growth continues to be influenced by the needs of the same domain. This can be easily ascertained by looking at the terminology used in demo sites, and by going through future road-map of open source LMS’s. So in my honest opinion, they are not the best fit (not in their current form, and not atleast with next couple of releases) for a medium to large size corporate implementation.

Now, the million dollar question – How do Open Source & Proprietary LMS’s compare on Cost Front?

Assuming that open source LMS matches your objectives and organizational structure, then yes, if you have small to medium sized implementation then certainly open source LMS’s (even if moderately customized) are much more cost effective compared to licensed proprietary systems.

However, if you have medium to large scale implementation, then the license price of the LMS itself is not so significant component of the entire implementation (or atleast not so significant component with our and many other good LMS’s license prices).

Given below is a case in example, where we implemented Wizdom Web for 7,500 users for a client that’s spread across the country. I have compared this implementation with a popular open source system (OSS), and I have assumed certain efforts for OSS customizations based on my understanding of that system (Note: Costs are approximate, and currency has been converted to USD for wider audience reach).

Note: Common Customizations- Reports, UI Customizations. Additional Customizations for OSS- Categorization & Assignment of Courses Based on Department/Location, Configurable Work-flow based Enrollment Approvals

Given below is a graphical representation of total cost of ownership (TCO) over the life of LMS license.

As you can see, over a period of time costs converge and can actually be more for OSS depending upon support & enhancement requirements. For bigger implementations of over 30k users, the license cost is even less of a factor, and in such cases the most critical factor is how robust the system is, how well the LMS partner can support you throughout the LMS life cycle, and what is the proposed road-map of the LMS system and whether that aligns with your domain needs or not.

So this how I see open source vs. proprietary LMS debate. I would love to receive your criticism and feedback.

Starting this month, we bring a new Knowledge Sharing Series to our blog, where we will be interacting with industry experts, and e-learning practitioners. Our first guest is Mr. Kartik Swaminathan, AVP-HR Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. Kartik has been instrumental in large scale LMS deployments and brings with him a wealth of experience when talking about e-learning.

The essence of our conversation was Learning Management Systems, but it touched several avenues of e-Learning and provided interesting takes on learning domain as a whole. An excerpt from our discussion, guaranteed to raise some questions of your own!

In your opinion what are the most important things one should keep in mind while selecting a LMS?

There are certain drivers for each learner group and if one knows ‘what one wants’, the selection is simple. LMS usage can broadly be categorized under three main categories – Content Delivery, Assessment/Certification, & Search. Now each organization would use a particular aspect of LMS more than other. For example, generally an IT firm would use assessments/certifications more than other features, whereas a consulting firm would tend to use search more.

One can further break down the feature requirements based on organizations training culture. For example, your content can comprise of web-based tutorials, presentations, or videos. So, if one intends to use more of videos than LMS should have good streaming capabilities.

So the most important thing in my mind is to understand organizational needs, training culture, future training needs and decide on LMS features accordingly.

You have handled various large scale LMS implementations. What have been the main challenges you faced during such implementations?

The greatest challenge of all, is surprisingly not technology, but is the mindset of learning & development teams itself. Managing change thus becomes the most important factor between success & failure of new systems like these.

To elaborate, we in L&D come with preconceived notions about e-learning, such as either we try to use it as something to replace classroom training, or at times keep it in a completely segregated silo having no relations with other training programs. Both the approaches in my opinion are flawed. How I look at it is- like hands and feet do NOT have interchangeable roles, classroom and e-learning have their own set of strengths- and either one cannot be a substitute for another. They have to work in combination with each other for successful training delivery.

Apart from this, technological challenges during system integration are also an area where the robustness and adaptability of a LMS is challenged.

And how about post implementation phase? What is the kind of support an e-learning manager requires from LMS partner once you go live?

Small issues that are overlooked at the LMS assessment and overview stage can prove to be a problem later. Once you go live, you start receiving feedback from user community, and changes are requested in work-flow, user interfaces etc. LMS partner at this stage should be flexible in providing customizations and support.

LMS partner should also have a clear product road-map, and should show the way that learning will take in the future. Finally- snags, technical or others, can also hamper the success of a LMS. LMS partner needs to provide constant assistance in all these areas.

Moving on to next topic, what according to you is the best way to get senior stakeholders/management buy-in for LMS?

The senior stakeholders are all about the bottom-lines and numbers get their attention. The Return on Investment for the LMS should be attractive to them and it is best if an insider – from the Training team or Human Resources Department, is clear about how different business units work. If that is clear, then making and presenting ROI model is easy.

Since we are on the topic of ROI, what are the kind benefits one can expect from e-learning?

The unseen benefit of e-learning is that it allows seamless re-enforcement of training. It also triggers a knowledge culture within the organization, where experts within the organization start to contribute in form of content created using simple tools like PPT, Word etc.

This culture of knowledge sharing also enables experts from outside the company to get on-board and initiate interaction with a group who is already in a state of awareness.

As you know, in India, e-learning is still a relatively a new concept for many domains. In such scenario, how can one get learners on to the LMS?

Start with asking what benefits them. Also, e-learning is not an alien concept and introducing it as a new concept might actually hinder than help. End of the day, e-learning is just Learning, albeit with the support of technology. Encourage Learning and not e-learning.

Another area of importance is that of presentation. While you can get all the information on board, but if it is not structured as per the learner’s ease, it fails to make an impact.

And finally, instead of big courses, breaking down the module into compact learning objects is better.

Ok, so learners have started using the system. Now, how do we keep them engaged?

Lookout for learner feedback. How many are getting certification? How many are putting up presentations of what they have learnt?  How many of them are getting appraised on the basis of e-learning modules completed?

Continuously analyzing the needs of the learners will keep them interested and if the value that a learning module provides becomes clear to them, the job of keeping them engaged is done.

Timing is of essence. Shorter, crisper modules that are delivered on time work better and show better retention. So identify key events in the organization or learners life and make quick modules around that. For example, a short module on how to give effective feedback can be a great hit during performance analysis cycle, or a course on cross-cultural practices can be a big help when one is traveling to a different country.

And finally, in your experience, how has been the effectiveness of e-learning as a learning medium, and what is the future you see for this medium?

As I had mentioned before, e-learning is as effective or non effective as classroom based training. One cannot replace the other.

e-Learning, due to its very nature, has certain advantages, such as the capability of providing instant feedback in knowledge delivery, which classroom based learning cannot. It is undoubtedly the preferred medium for the generation of today, who are ready to accommodate learning on demand. Reading habits are changing and classroom learning is also being broken down to sets.

So, e-learning as a medium of Learning is only going to grow. What remains to be realized is that there needs to be a direct bridge between the knowledge source and the knowledge consumer – and no broker in between!

Apple launched iPad yesterday amidst lot of hype. It was slated to be Kindle killer and a serious threat to Netbooks. We try to analyze where would iPad fit in, and whether it will be for elearning what iPod was for music.

iPad Vs Kindle

First some facts - I have compared iPad - Wi-Fi + 3G model with Kindle DX as they are the comparative models amongst various versions made available from both the providers –

Analysis  –

• If one is an avid book reader & is going to use the device primarily for reading eBooks only, then Kindle would make more sense – its display technology is better, weighs & costs less (Kindle also has a base version which is smaller, weighs 0.29kg & costs $259), and has huge content repository.
• However, if one is looking to do more with the handheld device than just reading books, such as browse web, emailing, view videos, listen to music, and make presentations etc, than in that case iPad beats Kindle hands down.
• iPad also has access to Apple’s application store, which has tens of thousands of apps which can be downloaded on to iPad

Take on iPad Vs Kindle – iPad is not a Kindle killer and both would fight for top two eBook reader spots. iPad would however, certainly hurt new eBook readers that are now coming in the market.

iPad & Its Impact on e-Learning

Apple’s new device was also seen as something that could have given mobile learning a big push. Will it? I have my doubts. My reasons -

No Support for Flash – Like iPhone, even iPad doesn’t support Flash and there is no mention of when it will be supported. Majority of the elearning course-ware however gets published in Flash and no support for flash is a major irritant for rolling out courses on iPad, as few would make the investment to adopt new technology.

It’s Not a Netbook – iPad doesn’t support multi-tasking, is not a phone, has upper limit to disk space (64 GB), doesn’t have an inbuilt camera, and doesn’t support MS Office (does support MS Office’s formats though) among other things.  All this would put iPad in entertainment/lifestyle product category, and would thus not get endorsed by Management/IT departments for corporate use.

iPad would have limited impact on mlearning unless some of the parameters mentioned above change, either as a result of technological advancements over next couple of years or as upgrades from Apple.

Styles and guidelines are essential to all forms of instruction. This fact is not debated, but what is certainly questioned is the effectiveness of existing learning styles and their utility. A paper on the Concept and Evidence of Utility of Learning Styles by Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer and Robert Bjorg, details the evidence validating the success of existing methodologies of teaching and learning. This search leads them to find little or no certainty of a specific method, and to suggest that contrary to popular belief, learning styles cannot be effectively suited in general learning environments.

What stands out in the study for me, in context of the current learning scene, are observations that are simple – but when put to practice means good business for the industry.

Know thy audience: Factors like aptitude, education and cultural influences define each learner in a different way. Defining the learner or the learner group then becomes the first step to fruitful learning.

The origin of this theory can be traced back to the mid-twentieth century, by what was probably the first testimony in the field of human personality by Karl Jung. His thoughts were further concretized into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test. To this day, this test is a popular tool in understanding the aptitude and occupational skills of a person. While objective studies have failed to show how this classification of people into clusters helps, it has nevertheless failed to hamper its popularity. The Myer-Briggs test was probably the first in the long line of such studies and test that are now available and popularly used.

Coming back to the moot point, whatever the ways and means are of defining ones audience, the knowledge helps in presenting information and imparting awareness. Going by one of the more popular adverts of the learning-styles movement – ‘One style does not fit all…’ adopting different styles for different groups is definitely warranted.

Interaction is at the heart of learning: Too much or too little – is that quintessential question, when defining the levels of interaction in learning?

How much of interaction is best suited for the learner group? External factors make a learner group highly aware of its potential and capabilities. This knowledge if well understood can be the backbone of any learning lesson. Groups with heightened awareness of their own capabilities do better with little or moderate intervention. Often they tend on learning alone or in small groups of similar-minded people. On the other side are people who are not sure of their capability in adapting to new skills. Hand holding and frequent intervention can show results in this scenario.

Testing… How does that enhance learning? : Is testing just about asking questions and determining retention? Testing is more than just that. At the testing stage too, interaction plays an important role. It is suggested that prompting might be necessary for learner groups to ascertain the success of a learning module. Not only at the final stages or the end, but at an initial level too a timely prompt can enhance retention and infuse confidence. This intervention is needed for all learners. But again, the degree of it will differ for different groups or individuals.

So, to conclude, learning styles and methodologies are many. Some are proven while some are controversial. While not slavishly following a single one, but adopting the best of all worlds, is a road well-trodden. Debates over the utility of these styles and methodologies continue, but learning does not wait for them to conclude, does it?

In response to this month’s big question on LCB - e-Learning implementation and usage of different upcoming platforms is at different adoption level in different regions, and hence it becomes difficult to generalize how 2010 will pan out for our industry. I have thus categorized my thoughts on geographical basis.

India –

1. Skill Development Programs – Many government bodies at both center and state level initiated skill development programs on mass scale in collaboration with private sector in 2009. I see some of them taking off the ground this year and benefiting hundreds of thousands of youths who so far could not find meaningful jobs.
2. e-Learning Adoption in Government Bodies to Increase – Many PSU’s who are leaders in their own domains started implementing elearning in 2009, e.g. Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Department of Post etc. As they successfully implement the systems over next few months, I see lot of activity from other entities in these respective domains to implement similar systems in their organizations. State education boards are already very actively implementing smart classrooms and I see this only growing hereon.
3. Traditional Sectors to implement Training Management Systems – Tech savvy sectors, such as BFSI, IT/ITeS, Healthcare and Telecom etc have reached ‘Early Majority’ stage in technology adoption cycle and this will continue to grow. Something that I think will be different in 2010 will be that traditional sectors, such as Manufacturing, FMCG, and Energy etc will start adopting elearning more vigorously. They would however start with implementing training management systems to better manage their classroom trainings, and slowly build elearning practice in their organizations. In my opinion this would essentially be because of lack of relevant and ‘Indianised’ content for these domains.
4. Online Examinations – After CAT fiasco this year (or the media attention that it got), other examination bodies, such as IIT JEE, MAT etc will wait for another year I think before they start moving from paper based examinations. However, organizations on individual level would use online assessments much more in 2010 to certify their employees, or to help them evaluate their skill gaps (Almost all of our Wizdom clients, including PSU’s, ask for and use/intend to use Assessments vigorously).
5. Social Learning & M-Learning – Innovators will adopt them in 2010, but these platforms are still sometime away from mass adoption – on both corporate & individual level.

US & Parts of Europe –

1. eBooks – Amazon sold more eBooks than physical books, and Kindle was the top selling gift item ever this Christmas. Many more products are coming in the market & Apple is set to announce its new tablet shortly. All this makes 2010 a very interesting year for eBooks growth, which I believe is set to explode now.
2. m-Learning – As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts also, we are now developing lot of content for iPhones & Blackberries, and the requests are only growing by the day. Apart from this personal experience, there are off-the-shelf m-learning content providers emerging on the scene. All this, combined with technology advancements, such as embedded Pico Projectors can make 2010 a year when m-Learning got its due share.
3. Rapid Content – Scars of recession are fresh and are not going to heal in a hurry. Cost cutting is and will remain name of the game for some time. Standardization and rapid content development, while keeping tight focus on instructional design is going to be the prevalent content development mode in 2010.
4. Search for ‘Magic Learning System’ – 70% of LMS users are unhappy with their systems. They are ugly & confusing. Social Learning is the ‘new’ way to learn & LMS’s don’t know what to do about it. Well, poor LMS has been everyone’s favourite punching bag for couple of years now. But the world currently doesn’t have an alternative for very important question from organization perspective – how to track and control learner’s movements (Yes, I know, this is not how it ideally should be – but please tell that to HR Departments & to learners who take undue advantage of liberties provided to them). Search for ‘Magic Learning System’ is on and will continue in 2010 (and we may actually see some answers too – SCORM/E-Learning cloud is one such emerging thought) which can be integrated with popular social platforms and provide a way to provide controlled access and objectively analyse learner progress in bridging her skill gaps.

So, this is what I think how 2010 is going to be. Would love to hear your thoughts & feedback.

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!