In addition to the modules on various business topics published on this site, a regular update on corporate e-learning issues will be posted monthly; review Purpose. Readers should be aware of and read the associated Health Warning before acting on this update. Your commentator is Bob Little, click for Biographical Details.
Not gone; merely sleeping
Learning Light, the non-profit organisation which focuses on integrating systems and aligning learning and people development programmes to meet strategic business goals, is going into a form of ‘corporate hibernation’ from the beginning of April, following the end of its initial period of funding from Yorkshire Forward. Although the organisation is continuing with more limited scope, it hopes to be given further funding later in the year. As such, it has attracted comparison with Sleeping Beauty, Rip Van Winkle and even Arthurian Legend.
Comment: No doubt Learning Light is hoping that a handsome prince, in the shape of Yorkshire Forward, will awaken it once more with, if not a kiss, then at least some ‘smackers’. Learning Light’s detractors will cast it in the Rip Van Winkle role of an organisation that didn’t seem to do all that much, while its supporters will point to the millions of pounds of income that it brought into the UK – especially to South Yorkshire – and the many jobs it helped to create in the digital industries there. They will see it as an ‘Arthur’ figure, sleeping until the e-learning industry has need of it again.
A wish begins to come true
Virtual business school Pentacle has surveyed 200 UK businesspeople and found that some 66 per cent believe that a ‘recession or heavy downturn is unavoidable’ - and 70 per cent claim to have ‘little or no experience’ in handling a downturn. And that was before the collapse of Bear Stearns in mid-March.
Comment: A recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters. Inflation may be at 2.5 per cent and annoy those on fixed incomes, but will house prices collapse as first time buyers fail to afford deposits and discount mortgages come up for renewal? Is the cost of living just going to keep rising regardless of anything else that happens? How high will food and fuel prices go? In reality, although the economy is experiencing a slowdown, are we experiencing recession? Or are we returning to the ‘70s for some stagflation? The old adage of ‘wishing will make it so’ would probably apply here. When it does, businesses will be challenged to reduce costs and outsource as much as possible. They will need to invest more in sales and marketing (remember that Kellogg’s rise to prominence through the American Depression of the 1930s was a result of the company’s huge increase in spending on advertising, marketing and PR) - but they will probably feel that they don’t have the money to do so.
All change at the LSC
Personnel Today has broken the news that The Learning and Skills Council (LSC), with an annual budget exceeding £11bn to improve UK skills, is to be closed down by 2010. The Government has announced its intentions in a whitepaper which underlines details of the transfer of £7bn to local authorities to help colleges and sixth forms deliver the reforms needed to raise the education and training leaving age to 18. A new Skills Funding Agency for adults will get £4bn to oversee the distribution of funds to the sector and manage the performance of further education colleges. It will also house the new National Apprenticeship Service (NAS). Mark Haysom, chief executive at the LSC, said two new bodies will replace the Skills Council. For young people, there will be a new national Non Departmental Public Body, with some regional capacity, which will support local authorities in their new role in commissioning and funding 14-19 provision. "The world does not stand still. In 2010 the LSC will enter its tenth year and this represents considerable longevity in an era of constant change," said Haysom. "Although there is still a great deal of work to be done to flesh out the detail of the proposals, what we now know is that in 2010 some of our staff will transfer to local authorities and some will move across to the two new organisations. Even before that, some staff will move over within the LSC to work for the NAS which is aiming to be up and running by April 2009 at the latest.”
Comment: This appears to be a case of reorganising either to disguise any inefficiencies in the spending of £11bn a year of public money in the name of improving skills or purely to give the impression of progress. Neither reason is appealing to taxpayers – or to those who need to use, and therefore understand, a changing system in order to acquire skills.
Gleaner spots a glitch
The Jamaica Gleaner’s enterprise reporter, Tyrone Reid, has revealed that ‘major glitches in the (Jamaican) Government's e-learning programme have delayed the implementation of a multibillion-dollar initiative by almost a year - affecting thousands of students’. The pilot phase of the US$50m programme was due to start in September 2006 and end in June 2007. That did not happen. So July and August 2007 were supposed to be used to study the programme’s problems. That, too, did not happen. Avril Crawford, CEO of e-Learning Jamaica Company Limited (e-ljam), told The Gleaner that the most difficult challenge has been getting the schools' buildings ready to accommodate the high-tech equipment. She said that the glitches did not result in a ‘total system failure’, but the programme has been set back by almost a year.
Comment: Thankfully, that sort of expensive thoughtlessness and inefficiency can’t happen here - can it?
What or who’s a ‘tool’?
For some time, the e-learning world has been told that the ‘future’ belongs to rapid development tools.
Comment: Yet a tool – be it a hammer or a piece of software – is just a tool. How ‘rapid’ (and, indeed, how accurate) it is depends on the person using it. So shouldn’t we really be talking about rapid skills development? In other words, what is important is developing instructional designers’ skills so that they can use the tools they have more efficiently to build effective e-learning materials as swiftly as possible.