Online learning is increasingly pushing university learning and
professional training into new directions. This means common ground must be set
on what online learning is, which approaches are considered as best practices
and which factors need to be taken into account to ensure a positive company
wide uptake of the training. Although online learning has been around for
decades, building steadily on previous evidence-based best practices, it is
still quite a challenge to organize online learning across multiple partners,
let alone across cultures (in the wide variety of definitions that culture can
have).
Earlier this month Lionbridge came out with a white paper
entitled “steps for globalizing your eLearning program”. It is a 22 page free eBook, and a way to get your contact data. The report is more
corporate than academically inclined (subtitle is ‘save time, money and get
better results’), and offers an insight look of how companies see global
elearning and which steps to take first. But when reading the report - which
does provide useful points - I do feel that corporate learning needs to accept
that instructional design expertise is necessary (the experts! the people!) and
needs to be attracted by the company, just like top salespeople, marketing, HR …
for it is a real profession and it demands more than the capacity to record a
movie and put it on YouTube!
In their first step they mention: Creating a globalizing
plan
- Creating business criteria
- Decide on content types
- Get cultural input
- Choose adaptation approach
The report sets global ready content as a baseline: this
section mentions content that is culturally neutral. Personally, I do not
belief cultural neutrality is possible, therefor I would suggest using a cultural,
balanced mix, e.g. mixing cultural depictions or languages, even Englishes
(admitting there is more then one type of English and they are all good). But on
the bonus side, the report also stresses the importance of using cultural
native instructional design (yes!), which I think can be learner-driven content
to allow local context to come into the global learning approach. Admittedly,
this might result in more time or more cost (depending on who provides that
local content), but it also brings the subject matter closer to the learner,
which means it brings it closer to the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)
or enables the learner to create personal learning Flow (Csikszentmihalyi) or simply
to allow the learner to think ‘this is something of interest to me, and I can
learn this easily’.
In a following step: Plan ahead for globalisation
- Legal issues: looking at IPR or the actual learning that can be produced.
- Technology and infrastructure: infrastructure differs.
- Assessment and feedback mechanisms: (yes!) Feedback, very important for all involved
- Selecting a globalizing partner
The report is brief, so not too much detail is given on what
is meant with the different sections, but what I did miss here was the addition
of peers for providing feedback, or peer actions to create assessments that are
actually contextualized and open to cultural approaches. No mention of the instructional
design experts in this section either.
In the third section a quick overview is given on what to
take into account while creating global elearning content, again the focus is
on elements and tools: using non-offensive graphics, avoiding culturally heavy
analogies, neutral graphics…, not on the actual instruction, which admittedly
would take up more than 22 pages, but the instructional approach is to me the
source of learning possibilities.
Promoting diverse pedagogy
The final part of the report looks at the team you need, but
…. Still no mention of the instructional design expert (okay, it is a fairly
new title, but still!). And no mention of the diversity in pedagogy that could
support cultural learning (not every culture is in favor of Socratic
approaches, and not every cultural group likes classic lecturing).
Attract instructional designers
While the report makes some brief points of interest, I do feel that it lacks
what most reports on training are lacking, they seem to forget that online
instruction is a real job, a real profession with real skills and which does
take years to become good at, just like any STEM or business oriented job. This
does indicate that corporations are acknowledging an interest in online training
(and possible profit), but … they still think that it can be built easily and
does not require specific expertise.
There is no way around it: if you want quality, you need to
attract and use experts. If you want to build high quality online training that
will be followed and absorbed by the learner, interactions, knowledge
enhancement, neurobiological effects… all of this will matter and needs to be
taken into account (or at least one needs to be aware of it).
Now more than ever, you cannot simply ‘produce a video’ and hope people will come. There are too many videos out there, and a video is a media document, not necessarily a learning element. Learning is about thinking about the outcome you want to have, and then work backwards, breaking the learning process down into meaningful steps. Why do you use a video? Why do you use a MCQ? Does this really result in learning, or simply checking boxes and consuming visual media?
Now more than ever, you cannot simply ‘produce a video’ and hope people will come. There are too many videos out there, and a video is a media document, not necessarily a learning element. Learning is about thinking about the outcome you want to have, and then work backwards, breaking the learning process down into meaningful steps. Why do you use a video? Why do you use a MCQ? Does this really result in learning, or simply checking boxes and consuming visual media?
Building common ground as a first global elearning step
Somehow I feel that the first step should include overall
acceptance of a cooperatively build basis:
What are our quality indicators (media quality, content
quality, reusability, entrepreneurial effect of the learning elements, address
global diversity in depicting actors (visual and audio), …)
Which online learning basics does everyone in the company
(and involved in training) need to know: sharing just-in-time learning (e.g. encountering
a new challenge: take notes of challenge and solution), sharing best practices
on the job (ideal for mobile options), flipped lectures for training moments (e.g.
case study before training hours, role play during workshops…), best practices
for audio recordings … these learning basics can be so many things, depending
on the training that needs to be created, but it needs to be set up
collaboratively. If stakeholders feel they will benefit from training, and they
are involved in setting up some ground rules and best practices, they are
involved. It all comes down to: which type of learning is needed, what does
this mean in terms of pedagogical options available and known, and what do the
learners need and use.
