Why employee development matters

Here's a link to an interesting report on the subject of employee development from Mind Leaders.

Why Employee Development Matters

There are some worthwhile conclusions drawn from the document, which come out broadly in favour of adopting a blended learning approach. There's also a useful list of elements to look for in your company which will help if you are looking to set up an employee devlelopment programme.
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Blog: e-Learning help

E-learning is one of the bigger topics in Training and Development circles at the moment. Some are claiming it is sounding the death knell for traditional classroom training, others are of the opinion that it's a flash in the pan that wont last the course. It can get a bit heated as this TrainingZone article demonstrates.

I"m of the opinion that e-learning is a an exciting new frontier for trainers and instructional designers. I'm only playing on the fringes at the moment (my budget wont stretch to a proper implementation) and I'm about to start some limited application with a Senior Management Development Programme that I'll be rolling out in my organisation shortly. It will increasingly play a more and more important part in blended learning programmes.

I've found the WWW incredibly useful as a starting point for researching and trialling some of the applications that are out there, and two blogs in particular are worth recommending for anyone who is dipping their toes in the e-learning river.

e4innovation is by Grainne Cronel who is Professor of e-learning at the Open University.

Jane's e-learning Tip of the Day comes from Jane Hart, a social media and learning consultant.

Both have been incredibly useful to me as I've tried to get my head around the thousands of e-learning possibilities.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Thomas Edison once said, "Genius is one-percent inspiration, ninety-nince percent perspiration", so what do you do when you're putting all the hard work in but that final 1% is eluding you? The Online College have put links to 100 inspiring videos for you to turn to when you need that final spark to bring something to fruition.

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The videos are divided in to ten categories covering areas such as, "Changing the World", "Inspirational People" and "Staying Strong". The videos include talks, movies clips, short films, performance pieces, conversation and interviews.

Althogh nominally put together for leaders, there's enough here to inspire anyone.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Disclaimer: May not result in actual genius.
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More on informal learning

Here’s a couple of articles from ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) on informal learning

Informal learning in the workplace

Informal mentoring
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Jay Cross on Informal Learning

Former CEO of the eLearning forum Jay Cross is now promoting the concept of “Informal Learning” to a wider audience. The concept itself is interesting in that is recognises that most people access learning in very informal ways, such as through conversations with friends and peers rather than through formally designed training interventions.

There seems to be a broad acknowledgement that “informal learning” does take place on an incredibly wide scale and is an important part of the process of acquiring new skills and knowledge, but what we don’t always acknowledge as learning professionals is just how important it is, perhaps this is because it lies outside our point of direct intervention and is therefore not within our control, or that it’s too difficult to apply a meaningful measure to. I know that when I need to educate myself on a new topic, whether that’s research for a new course, learning a new recipe or working out how to defeat some some alien bad guy in a video game, my first port of call will be Google followed most of the time by informal discussion with my peers. It’s interesting that this happens mostly because I want to learn these things, not because I’ve been told to learn them. When I am motivated to learn I will find a way that suits me and with an urgency that’s appropriate for the situation.

It would appear to me that the vast majority of learning takes place without any intervention from a learning professional at all, and the questions I am pondering are around:

• How do I make that process more effective?
• Would it help if I could facilitate access to these informal networks/ methods for people within my organisation, or does that intervention break it by definition?
• How do I measure the extent and effectiveness of informal learning?
• What does this mean for instructional design if anyone is allowed to create formal “informal learning” spaces?

These aren’t new questions but I do feel the direction I am approaching them from is different.

Some people have suggested that his ideas don’t take in to account the value that training professionals bring to the process of learning, but for me acknowledging the scope and importance of “informal learning” doesn’t ring the death knell for classroom training, elearning or any other form of traditional training intervention. What it does is add an interesting new dynamic to how I think about tapping the learning potential in my organisation.

Also of use are the links he provides to books and documents via the Internet Time Group. Well worth having a dig around.