A Note from the CEO
"KUDOS to Elliott Masie! I just had an opportunity to review
the proceedings from TechLearn 2002. What a great approach to a
'learning event' - move the content online, create a user forum, and
develop an extension to the conference that could potentially have a
life of it's own. This gives those that could not attend a sense of
topics important to the day. It also reinforces that content is not
the only reason to attend - collaboration among the attendees is
equally important to the conference value proposition. If you have
not had a chance to review this, you should go to
www.techlearn.net
and join in the fray!
What do we do? rapidLD provides consulting services focused in
the learning industry. Our consulting offerings evolve around four
Customer questions:
1) Where do I start? (Strategy
and Business Plan Development),
2) Who do I
partner with? (Vendor Analysis and Selection),
3)
How do I maximize my investment? (Deployment) and
4) Am I getting the most out of my current tools?
(Optimization).
If you think that we might collaborate
on one of these topics and want more information, edit your
Interests (at the bottom of the page) and we will send you more
information.
We have seen many customers realize fabulous benefits from
learning technologies. We hope that you have that same success!
Visit our Home on the
Web!
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Dear Guest,
Welcome to rapidLD's November issue of The eLearning
evolution (e2). In this issue you'll learn from
eLearning leaders like AT&T, and get insight into
Corporate Universities. We hope you enjoy reading this
issue and we hope you refer a friend!
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Build It...But Will They
Come? |
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 Lessons learned from Knowledge Management
implementations at AT&T
By Dr. Albert
Siu
former Chief Learning Officer, AT&T
Eight years back when AT&T began developing its
knowledge management and e-learning capabilities, they were
anticipating that once the capabilities were established,
employees would freely tap into or contribute their expertise
to this knowledge reservoir. What they didn't take into
account were the Human, Social, Political and Economic
dynamics of knowledge management and e-learning. The problem?
Their utopian thinking did not account for the dynamics that
govern how information is shared.
Human and Social
Dynamics
Knowledge sharing is more than simply
channeling the right information to the right people at the
right time. People learn when they are engaged. Mere
presentation of information did not result in learning.
Learners have to be actively involved for behaviors to change,
for insights to occur, and for problems to be solved. Today,
many learning programs at AT&T have case- based activities
and action-based learning components. Learners engage in
making choices. They interact physically or virtually with
others in discussions and critiques. They also obtain content
information that are increasingly "personalized" for their
interest at a given moment.
Economic and Political
Dynamics
Knowledge is an intangible object for
exchange. Like tangible goods markets, the knowledge market
has "buyers" and "sellers", and "brokers" who bring them
together. It has its own "currency," which is predicated on
the expectation that when knowledge is shared (i.e. "sold"),
something will be given back. Sellers care passionately about
what knowledge is shared. A reputable seller will see
increased demands from buyers who want to acquire more. Some
people share knowledge because they have expectations of what
one can gain or lose. Others share because they enjoy the
recognition through giving. Therefore, if the political
dynamics of an organization enable "hoarders" of knowledge to
thrive, then the potential knowledge seller has little
incentive to share their experience, because there is less
possibility of gains or recognition.
Set aside the
technology. Building and sharing knowledge is a human and
social endeavor, based on genuine relationship and the
anticipation of mutual benefit. Regardless of the
sophistication of your eLearning or Knowledge Management
environment, if you ignore the human, social, political and
economic dynamics, your investment may have less a positive
return.
For a little
more information about Dr. Siu, click here>>
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Corporate Universities |
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 Elevate Human Capital Management to Create a
Learning Culture
There are roughly 2000
Corporate Universities in the US and this number is rapidly
rising. Why are organizations moving toward this centralized
approach to human capital management and what success factors
are paving the way?
Unlike traditional employee
training activities spawned by the efforts of Human Resource
departments and individual training units, successful
Corporate Universities are founded on employee education as a
means of achieving clearly defined strategic business goals
and performance improvements. Corporate Universities are the
tool for driving cultural and business change.
The
Corporate University is a tactic, not necessarily a place,
where all levels of employees, and sometimes customers,
partners and suppliers, participate in learning experiences to
impact strategic objectives of the business. The rise of
networked environments and internet communications has spawned
the "virtual corporate university" to capture, utilize and
preserve knowledge assets both internal and external to the
organization.
Critical to the success of the Corporate
University is CEO level support, a strong governing board, and
a clearly stated mission. The governing board must clearly
articulate a business strategy and long-term vision that
champions the on-going development of a corporate learning
culture. Creating a Corporate University can take in excess of
18 months and those that have gone down that path can relay
that there are no short-cuts to success.
Corporate
Universities embody knowledge management as part of the
corporate culture and are created for the good of the company,
not just the individual.
For more on developing your own Corporate University, click
below to contact the Corporate University Xchange.
More
Info >>
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Let's Get Personal |
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Did you know you can receive personalized supplements
to the eLearning evolution?
Click on edit
your interests at the bottom of this email and select
Consulting Tools within your 'Areas of Interest'. Each
month you'll automatically receive a link to a consulting tool
that can add value to your training projects. Included are
directions on how to use the tool in your business.
But Note - you only get the link if you select 'Consulting
Tools' when you 'edit your interests'. So click on edit
your interests now to 'get Personal' with rapidLD!
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What's COOL...What's
HOT... |
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 Lectora Professional Publishing Suite by Trivantis
Powerful publishing and portability options
rapidLD works with a large number of clients that have a
need for media-rich, interactive content for use by their
employees, customers, and partners. There are many powerful
tools on the market today that allow a trained content
development specialist to develop engaging content. The
barrier that most of our customers face is that they do not
have the resources or skill sets required to quickly develop
and publish professional-quality content that is compatible
with their learning management system (LMS). Additionally,
mobile devices are becoming more and more prevalent, and there
needs to be a method for making content available on
PDAs.
Trivantis has addressed these needs with their
flagship product, Lectora Professional Publishing Suite, and
their new offering, Lectora Publisher for Palm/PocketPC. For
several years now, the Lectora product has been establishing
its name as a product that anyone with basic computer skills
can use to create and publish appealing, interactive
content.
Lectora allows you to publish content in
accordance with AICC and SCORM standards with one click. This
allows any compliant LMS to seamlessly launch and track the
use of the content.
To complement this tool, Trivantis
recently released a mobile computing version of the Lectora
Publisher that allows content to be published for use on PDA
(Palm and PocketPC) devices. You can even optionally work with
Trivantis to convert your existing content to PDA- ready
format.
In addition to the above publishing and
portability options, with Lectora Publisher's ease-of-use
feature, a subject matter expert can quickly develop a course
using Lectora without having any programming skills or
specialized development tool experience.
Features that
contribute to ease-of-use and speed to delivery
include:
* User-friendly interface
* Built-in
templates
* Built-in assessment/survey engine
*
Built-in action automation tools to create dynamic learning
events
* Built-in wizards for titles, buttons,
backgrounds
* Built-in editors for audio, images, and
video
* One-click publishing to Executable, HTML,
CD-ROM, AICC, SCORM
* Ability to reuse previous
content via templates and event importing
Lectora truly
is an affordable, powerful and productive tool for creating
media-rich, dynamic, interactive eLearning content. If you're
familiar with using basic computer programs, you'll be
creating professional eLearning content with Lectora in no
time at all.
Visit the Trivantis web site
(Even their web site was created using Lectora) >>
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rapidLD eLearning evolution (e2)
Overview |
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If you haven't been to our web site recently, check out
the latest updates, including the new eLearning evolution
(e2) overview.
More
info>>
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