Friday, August 05, 2005
August 2005 CLO column on effectiveness.
"Doesn’t it make more sense to invest in communications infrastructure, putting resources at workers’ fingertips and facilitating collaboration? Helping experienced workers do their jobs better has a higher payback than introductory courses."
"Most people arrive at adulthood having built the foundational skills, mental models and working knowledge they need to get along in the world. Adults learn when they need to solve pressing problems. They don’t have patience for superfluous material or rehashing what they already know. Curriculum is for kids—exploration is for adults."
BETA | jay 8/05/2005 03:52:00 PM| WRITE JAY |
2 Comments:
Hi Jay,
Helping experienced workers do their present jobs might have a higher IMMEDIATE payback than offering introductory courses, yet most adults are just as curious as kids; thus, we not only learn in order to solve immediate problems, we also learn JUST to learn.
While we probably do spend too much on introductory course in comparison to workflow, they should not be abandoned as they allow new ideas to converge, which allows for innovation to take place. The payback is most often not immediate, but it is what allows corporations to grow rather than just maintain themselves.
Cheers,
Don Clark
Thanks, Don.
I don't advocate eliminating intro courses. We're all new at something, no matter how accomplished in other areas.
Training investments today neglect most of the workforce. I'm calling for balancing what's out of kilter. My intention was not just to help experienced workers do their present jobs but also to provide the right interventions to foster their future learning and growth. This is more likely to be informal learning than courses.
I went back to read the article, only to find that my link to CLO was broken. (Hey, readers, tell me when you hit a broken link so I can fix it!) I think I'll return to my former practice of posting the full contents of my published articles so I don't lead people astray. Sometimes more is more.
jay
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