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2010 is going to be a dramatic year for Learning and Development (L&D) professionals. On one hand there is the challenge: tighter budgets, the demand to do more with less, and an increasing risk that L&D is seen as irrelevant by employees, especially the younger workforce, who are adept at using existing electronic media to find the information that they need when they need it. How can we do more with fewer resources in this increasingly demanding world?
When it already has a good learning programme in place, why would a multinational company's learning and development team want to change it? In particular, why do something that could be seen as potentially very risky, like moving several hundred learners to learning on smart mobile devices? At Black and Decker the answer was simple, according to Rob Sharpe, director of sales training and recruiting: "We wanted to keep up with our learners and with the needs of the job."
Today, an enterprise's people have never been more important to its success, something that executives and managers increasingly understand. They are looking to their Learning and Development (L&D) departments for help, asking them to take a lead in ensuring relevant competence and knowledge throughout the enterprise and beyond.
Organisational learning is at an inflexion point. Things are going to change very dramatically from the way they have been for years, and the reason is simple. New ways of working, supported by new technologies, demand new ways of learning.
Mobile learning is a valuable new addition to organizational learning strategy. Implemented correctly, it provides an excellent way of spreading knowledge rapidly across an enterprise, ensuring for example that new corporate initiatives are understood or that new product knowledge is quickly available to mobile field engineers and sales people. The power of modern smart phones, however, also means that as well as learners receiving content pushed out to them, they can use web 2.0 technologies to find the help that they need at a particular moment - for example by accessing a wiki, a blog or a social network.
The term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly to contrast the 'push' mechanism then used by most internet applications with the collaborative way that the web seemed to be evolving and continues to evolve today.
While there is no agreed definition of Web 2.0, the term is used to describe something very real- a shift in the use of the internet. Unlike Web 1.0, Web 2.0 is participative. The two classic contrasts made are between Britannica Online (produced centrally by experts-Web 1.0) and Wikipedia ('crowd sourced' from interested individuals globally, and so Web 2.0).
A division of one of the world’s largest car manufacturers, Toyota Motor Europe (TME) sold more than 1.1 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in 2006, marking its 10th consecutive year of record sales in Europe. TME and its distribution network together employs approximately 80,000 persons in Europe. This case study presents the complex challenges Toyota has successfully addressed through process improvement and implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) for the company’s expansive dealer network.
Texas Industries, Inc. (TXI) is a leading supplier of building materials, including cement, concrete and aggregate. The company’s foundation is its employees. With empowerment, everyone at TXI is entrusted to find the best solution to a problem or develop a fresh idea. At the foundation of TXI’s tradition and culture is to always exceed industry standards through innovations made possible by its employees. This commitment permeates all areas of TXI’s operations, including safety and training.
With more than 750 drivers, TXI must provide training to ensure all drivers maintain the safest environment for themselves, coworkers and the general public. This is why TXI sought an innovative method to bring safety training to employees.
A major competitor has launched a new product on the market today that has significant features and functionality that yours lacks. Within 24 hours you need to educate 30,000 people in your sales and distribution chain about how to overcome that apparent advantage. You then need to evaluate how effective the initiative has been.
Only a handful of organizations are currently able to rise to this challenge. Those that cannot face a serious disadvantage, because in all areas of business, whether products or services, consumer demands are changing rapidly. As a result product lives are getting shorter and products and services
The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between Tim O'Reilly and MediaLive International. The session started with defining Web 2.0 by example.
Looking at these examples, a simple conclusion can be made that Web 1.0 concentrated on web sites, their content and “passive” browsing to discover and read desired knowledge or information. In a way it was a “one way street” for information flowing from the authors to the knowledge seekers. Web 2.0 opens “knowledge traffic” in all directions. In this environment, everyone is a knowledge contributor and knowledge consumer. Wikipedia emerged as equal, if not more frequently used, than Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Skeptics doubted its accuracy since virtually everyone contributes to Wikipedia’s content. However, its accuracy was soon validated as equal to Britannica’s.
