Jay Cross on management, instructional design and “learnscape architects”:
People inevitably shortchange the future by investing all of their energy in the present. Take the practice of management; it’s whirling around in a squirrel cage, running hard and going nowhere. Management values (e.g., control, precision, stability, discipline, and reliability) have not changed in a century. Business has streamlined strategy, production, services, and operations. We’ve cut the inefficiencies from every business process but the most important: management itself…
Changes in management mandate changes for learning professionals. At the dawn of the network age, managers enjoyed the luxury of annual planning. With objectives fully in mind, managers communicated the firm’s goals to the training department, which in turn translated those goals into workshops, learning management systems, and so forth… Instructional design works best when performance gaps are apparent; ISD lacks the framework to invent non-learning solutions. Meta-learning and flexible infrastructure are becoming more important than individual topics.
Some instructional designers will become learnscape architects; others will champion networks and foster professional communities. Learning-to-be will supplant learning-to-know.
Will Thalheimer has an excellent post on Will at Work Learning about the challenges with traditional instructional design as equating learning with courses:
LMS’s can’t be fixed with Elliott’s suggestions. The biggest problem is that the whole LMS face sends a powerful hidden message that “learning” is about taking courses or accessing other learning events. This “Learning Means Sitting” LMS mentality infiltrates whole organizations.
I’ve seen this recently with one of my clients, a huge retailer, where their LMS has encouraged store managers and other store leaders to focus learning time on taking courses, in lieu of coaching, learning from each other, trying things out and getting feedback, encouraging store employees to take responsibility for particular areas, etc. It’s not that they completely ignore these other learning opportunities; it’s that the LMS focuses everyones’ time and attention on courses, creating a lot of wasted effort.
To get the most from an LMS, you ought to throw away your LMS and start over. People can learn something—develop competencies/skills—from courses or from other means. A competency-management system that offers multiple means to develop oneself is ideal, where courses/events are just one option.