The ability to insert learning into everyday work life reaches new levels
by Bob Mosher
June 27, 2010
In my travels of late, I have heard buzz about embedded or process-based learning. It’s interesting to see the many ways the learning industry is exploring the exciting and ever-changing domain of informal learning.
While the premise is sound, I’m concerned about the label “informal learning.” For many, it’s just too hard to get their arms around. Performance support is a far better area to explore. It’s a well-established discipline and has years of research and design to support it. Embedded learning is a concept that has been bounced around for years, but do we truly do it justice with our current efforts and implementations?
As is often the case in our industry, many practitioners take a strictly tools-based approach to this type of learning solution. Clearly, allowing a learner to access a context-sensitive embedded performance support tool within an IT application can be powerful. When these environments are architected such that they know who a learner is and understand where that learner may be within a system, they offer a highly efficient and effective level of support.
Although this is one of the more powerful aspects of embedded learning, if we stop here we miss out on its greater potential and may even end up hurting these initial efforts. There are two other dimensions of embedded learning that should be explored to fully optimize these efforts: business processes and learning modalities.
If we asked the learners we support to describe all that’s involved in embedding learning within their typical workday, they would not stop at the system or application level. Learning and support are not just system-based issues. Most of these applications live within the context of an overarching workflow.
For example, let’s say an organization has purchased customer relationship management (CRM) software for its sales representatives. Driving this initiative is the overarching desire to better service customers throughout the sales process and beyond. CRM is only one aspect of this new process. There are other non-system-related changes, roles, resources and dependencies that need to be learned and supported as well.
To simply embed task- and step-level support within the CRM application totally ignores these other critical stages in the new sales process. It is possible for a sales rep to complete the correct steps within the application but still not implement the overall sales program as it was intended. Embedded learning needs to expand its view and implementation to include these overarching business processes and live within both the IT systems and the business process it is supporting.
A second issue to consider when offering embedded learning is the vast array of learning modalities available throughout the workflow and work context. With the advent of technologies such as mobile phones, laptops and newer emerging forms such as the iPad, our ability to embed learning and support into every aspect of a learner’s work environment has increased.
These tools are so prolific that they have become the pad and pencil of old. Their availability is no longer limited to the IT department or senior management, and they have become an extension of our everyday lives in and outside the workplace. Embedding learning in these types of tools as well as continuing to support more traditional approaches such as job aids and e-learning widens our reach as learning organizations. These tools allow us to support an entirely different type of learning.
Our ability to embed learning into every aspect of our learners’ work lives is reaching a level we have never experienced before. With a more technically literate workforce and learners who Google movie times on their mobile phones, their ability and desire to have learning follow suit is not only something we need to champion, but it’s what they deserve.
Embedded learning takes on a much broader and significant meaning when we consider the ever-changing and dynamic world we work in today. It’s up to us to change our view of it to embrace a broader reach and a more demanding learner.