E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

Bersin and Associates, the learning and development industry’s research and advisory firm have just released their 2008 High-Impact Learning Organization report.

As you’ll know if you follow the E-Learning Curve Blog (click on the link to subscribe, folks!), I have a strong professional and academic interest in workplace learning and worker- and organizational performance. So today I thought I’d look at some of the results of their research.

The research for this study is based upon an investigation of over 750 organizations, and examines trends, best practices, and strategic solutions in “modern training organizations.” It focuses in particular on the specific processes and strategies that drive high levels of efficiency and business impact and provides information on

• organizational structure
• business alignment
• leadership
• governance
• program measurement
• learning architectures
• integration with talent management
• outsourcing
• globalization
• training the multi-generational workforce

In addition, this research provides analysis and case studies on the implementation of collaborative learning, e-learning, content management, content re-use, and learning on-demand.

Of particular use, is their referenceable table of High Impact Learning Dimensions.

Figure 1 High Impact Learning Dimensions
(Bersin & Associates, 2008)

Unusually perhaps for those not familiar with the dynamics of workplace learning, the results in Figure 1 emphasise the importance of a learning culture at the core of successful learning organizations. I have discussed the importance of this element of success learning in my own research:

Within … organisations then, workers evolve a culture – what Bates and Plog (1990) define as “the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted through learning [my italics]” (p.7) – to enable groups to perform tasks within the context of the organisation. Recognition of the social and interactive nature of knowledge working was one of the key drivers for the live component of the [learning intervention under discussion]: at any given time, individual workers in the organisation have more-or-less tacit and explicit knowledge on a given topic than their co-workers, and collectively a very high level of expertise across a range of topics exists.

(Hanley, 2007, p.30)

I extend this by suggesting that

[a]s organisations are at root, cognitive enterprises, and the sum of the knowledge of the organisation is expressed collectively through the behaviour, skills and attitudes of its employees, the organisation is itself a cognitive entity. It continually constructs itself through the learning processes its members engage in.

(Hanley, 2007, p.55)

Similarly, the idea of culture being at the root of organizational learning and worker performance is central to Mary Broad’s work on transfer of learning in Ensuring the transfer of learning to the job (2000), where she discusses organizational factors that affect performance and in particular institutional “barriers to learning” and their impact on workers’ ability to enhance their performance through learning interventions.

I would assert that there is now a definite and perceptible shift in thinking around this subject: we can begin to say that this aspect of training is becoming more central to strategic and operational aspects of organizational development.

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References:

Bersin & Associates (2008) The Top 18 for Learning [Internet] Available from: http://www.bersin.com/Resources/Content.aspx?id=7004 Accessed 20 June 2008

Broad, M (2000) Ensuring the transfer of learning to the job. IN: The ASTD Handbook of Training Design and Delivery. Piskurich, G. M. Beckschi, P. Hall, B. (Eds) pp.473-493). McGraw Hill.

Hanley, M. (2007) Is Non-Formal Learning an Effective Means of Enhancing Knowledge Workers’ Performance in a Small- to Medium-Sized Enterprise? Thesis Paper presented as part of the requirements for completion of the Master’s Degree in Education & Technology. National College of Ireland, Dublin.

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