Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

The learning 2007 conference has started yesterday evening and is now at full speed. During the opening session there was an interview with Doug Lynch from Wharton university. He claims ROI is a false number and the learning profession should move towards other forms of evidence to prove its value. Actually he used a quite strong word to describe the significance of an ROI number but I'm not going to repeat it here, both because I didn't get it well and because it's a dirty word that would bring down the level of this blog :-).

I went to his session this morning. Here is my dump:

• We live in a knowledge economy and more people learn in companies than in schools. However there are no peer reviewed studies of ROI in companies. That is worrying.
• It is not that ROI cannot be done, but it is very complex to do and not necessarily meaningful. A quick poll of the audience says 71% say their companies do not have an accurate ROI measurement in place.
  
• Learning is accounted for under GAAP as an expense, even if we talk about it as an investment in people
• Some reasons why ROI is not what we necessarily need: ROI is outcome based but in a learning organization for example it is the process of continuous improvement that matters. For ROI you need to define, measure and monetize all variables that make up the benefits and the costs of learning, while controlling for all variables except for learning. What goes into ROI is also very specific to the company and context.
  
• All things being equal, what is the impact of learning? Well guess what, all other things that affect performance are not equal, performance is affected by lots of things we cannot control for in the calculation.
  
• What we are actually are talking about is the IMPACT of learning, and evidences of that instead of the financial number related to outcome benefits and associated costs ratio.
• So we should all be like researchers and find evidence and validate that in a scientific way. Work with the evidence you can gather or with what is easily quantifiable.
  
• Americans are typically asking a lot of questions and interrupt the flow of the presentation and go into side discussions much more than you will see happening on European conferences. That is not necessarily bad, but at this point I lost it so I don't really know what we could do instead ROI. We did not get to the end or half of the slides, but they will be on the learningwiki.com site later on so maybe I'll get the point of the session later.
  

At a previous conference I remember in a similar session some people and vendors boosting on how they got a number and cracked the holy grail on proving learning value. Then the last speaker came and declared that mankind has been teaching each other stuff since the dawn of time, and we still do not know how to measure its value, although we all feel it does matter. So who started the whole ROI saga in learning anyway? Was it the business that noticed learning and wanted to manage it like any other service or investment? Or was it the learning function that wanted a place at the table and decided it should come up with a ROI number to achieve that?
At the end of the session I'm still as confused about the ROI debate as before. I have more reasons to believe that ROI is not the unifying answer. But I still have no idea as to what other evidences to replace it with. So hopefully I'll get it later and in the mean time stick to Kirkpatrick.

Labels: learning 2007, masie, ROI

Well, it took me a while to get here (two hours delay of my flight, 5 hours waiting for my connection flight) but here I am at the computer room at the Learning 2007 conference in Orlando, Florida. The land of endless opportunity, everything in big size, women with bad haircuts, men with white socks and where the bushes sing Disney film tunes! My cell phone doesn't work in this country so it seems but at least there is free internet in this big room full of different computers. I'm next to a big Apple screen btw, next time I'll try to get me one of those just for the fun of it.
Over the next few days I will share my experiences on the conference. The reason I'm attending this one out of my own pocket is because it promises to be different. So far I got my badge and program bag and guide. That's pretty standard. But I also got an electronic voting device. Every participant gets one for the duration of the conference and I guess it is going to be used for interaction during the general sessions. There is also a special notepad with a template for taking notes in a structured way (visual map, notes, links for follow up...). And we can select from ten different social buttons to pin on our T-shirt. I'm currently wearing pins on e-learning, "I'm new", Friends Wanted and Blogger.
As for content, I'll be particularly interested in anything 2.0-like, learning effectiveness and e-learning in corporations. I'm off to start with a free one day seminar on Mobile Learning before the official opening this evening. To be continued...

Labels: learning 2007, masie

In about 2 weeks time Elliott Masie's Learning 2007 conference starts in Orlando, and I'll be one of the participants. The preparation for the event is going on at full speed, and I must say I'm impressed so far with the building up to the event.

One of my colleagues describes conferences as 'the cult of the wicker man'. He means that on typical conferences, people gather from all around, have a couple of days of intense information sharing, networking and festivities, and then burn it (the wicker man) all down to the ground in a big closing ceremony. Nothing but memories remain and the whole thing starts over the next year.

Learning 2007 does its best to break away from that: there is for example a learning wiki where all sessions have their page, is free for the world at large to view and remains open after the conference. As part of the pre-conference building up there are various mails, YouTube video's, an RSS feed for updates and the social network site I blogged about before. I had a quick look at it again and I found in my circle of 500 closest people not one other Belgian, but a few Dutch people, some people interested in quiz, ... I hope to meet other people that have experimented with 2.0 stuff in learning so I can take some of that into my very own 'social quiz/learning' site about2findout.com when it opens in December.

It remains to be seen how much of this wicker man will remain in November, but the signs look good. As conferences are an annual thing anyway with a lot of the same attendees, why don't they all encourage a more continuous conversation and networking that results in a yearly cumulative point?
Oh, and I enrolled in the Sunday pre session on Mobile Learning for two reasons: it is interesting, and it just became free (thanks!). I guess I'll see Disney backstage another time.

Labels: learning 2007, masie

As a personal treat to myself, I decided to attend Elliott Masie's Learning 2007 conference in October. I'll do the conference first, fly to Atlanta to meet with my American colleagues and take some holiday afterwards together with my friend (we will drive from Orlando through Miami).

I'm fascinated by how this conference is organized. Just to prove it's not one in a row: the learning network has just launched, where all participants can put in their profile, likes, dislikes and interests and view the 500 closest matches to them to get start networking before the event and afterwards.

When I registered I was number 683, but today the counter is at 1709. I'll keep you posted as the conference approaches.

Labels: learning 2007, masie