Since the inception of ChirpLearning, I have been trying to make people aware of all the high quality free content that is out on the Internet. When you combine access to this content with the opportunity to connect with hundreds of millions of others on social media sites, you create an extremely powerful and valuable free resource for learning. My question remains: why are you paying for systems and content when you can utilize an exponentially more powerful and free resource to let your employees learn what interests them, when they have time and where they want to do so?
The primary excuses will be no tracking or you are nervous about a renegade employee. Let me address these two concerns. First, no reporting or tracking. What are your utilization rates now? 3-5%across your target population? And you need to track this? What exactly does tracking tell you? Does it actually tell you the impact that your programs are having or just show how many people are fulfilling a mandate from above? Also, if you utilize a system like ChirpLearning to send out links to people about relevant topics, you can get tracking with some existing, albeit rudimentary tools, like bitly. My guess would be that utilization rates for targeted and timely content would be significantly higher than you have today.
How about the renegade employee who spills company information. How many of you have heard the story of the person that hit reply all instead of reply and sent out a nasty, embarrassing email. What was your recourse? With an open community like LinkedIn and the others, the renegade employee can be neutralized by others as well as offer a learning opportunity.Besides, that employees is probably already using these sites without your knowledge.
There are already sites out there that let users download textbooks for free as well as pay. Take a look at FlatWorld and its business model. This is the future, not a closed LMS with top down learning mandates.
So the next time a vendor comes in to sell you its content or platform, ask them why it isn't free.
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A huge concern with using the Internet as your primary learning tool is the lack of control over quality of content. To me, this is a much bigger concern than either the tracking issue (unless you happen to be in a highly regulated industry, or state) or the possibilty of a renegade employee. When you purchase the content, what you are paying for is the expertise of the seller.
ReplyDeleteContent quality needs to be addressed, but I think we have shown that there is a wealth of high quality content from a number of reputable sources out there. The benefit is you are not tied to one providers view of quality content and content that they believe you should have. It is your organization and you are trying to teach particular things which makes the internet a great source, even if it is just supplemental.
ReplyDeleteI think Barrett is right, a well designed system that uses open source content can use commenting, tagging, and content mapping as forcing mechanisms to get content quality to evolve. These systems are not easy to design and they need a continued investment in gardening (nurturing the best content and conversations, removing the weeds) and facilitation. There can still be a role for paid content, but I think that this investment is generally better shifted to business framework collaboration systems and the data that support them.
ReplyDeleteI agree Steven, thanks for the comment. The hard part is breaking down the barriers to adoption but I think the past few years will renew focus on mission critical systems vs. an open source type network.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, the learning group should embrace a more open network as it makes their role of facilitation even more important.