FROM “E-TRAINING” TO “E-PERFORMANCE”: USING ONLINE LEARNING TO WORK

By: Mariano Bernárdez

Mariano Bernardez is Director of MBC Consulting Company. He is a leading e-Learning consultant who works extensively with clients in Latin America and Europe. Mr. Bernardez is also the founder and President of the Performance Improvement Global Network (PIGN), a chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) (e-mail: mbernardez@@email.msn.com).

Although most of the literature agrees that e- Learning represents a paradigm shift in the way instruction is developed, most of the instructional design and development is done in the same way it has always been.

Recent studies of actual users of corporate e-Learning show that this “training/instruction-centered” approach, however successful in lowering training delivery costs, creates products and processes that are difficult to integrate into the real workplace environment and do not meet the requirements of effective performance, thus generating disappointing rates of actual usage and “drop outs”. (ASTD, 2001,Parks, 2001)1

The e-Learning industry, after the initial hype and forecasts of booming growth (Blair, 1999) 2, is facing a deep crisis characterized by a surplus of “e-contents” and a declining acceptance by the corporate market due to end users’ lack of interest (Rossett, 2000, Parks, 2001, Carnevale, 2001) 3

While e- Learning is still struggling to find its way and place into the organization, online performance is a common requirement for employees, managers and teams in the contemporary workplace. Usage and even mastery of online tools such as email, web search, intranets, groupware, and databases are requisites to performing an increasing number of tasks in the average workplace.

No company can afford to lag behind its competitors in efficiently using the online technology available to improve processes, products and services in a business context as defined by global competition, e-commerce and 24/7 business demands.

Slowly but steadily, online performance has become a critical factor for overall performance. Even more, online performance requires one not only to embrace and use technology, but also to rethink and redefine the very nature of jobs, roles, teams and organizational practice, following a process that Peter Drucker described in these terms:

“Concepts and tools, history teaches again and again, are mutually interdependent and interactive. One changes the other. That is now happening to the concept we call a business and to the tools we call information. The new tools enable us –indeed, they force us- to see our business differently.” (Drucker, 1995) 4

Dominated by traditional training and educational paradigms, most online learning efforts have remained paradoxically isolated from mainstream powerful business changes.

In analyzing the experiences of several companies in trying to implement online learning, we will discuss three different operative and business paradigms that we will call “e-Training”, “e-Learning” and “e-Performance”:

e-Training

Most companies start to think of online learning primarily as a more efficient way to distribute training inside the organization, making it available “any time”, “anywhere”, reducing direct costs (instructors, printed materials, training facilities), and indirect costs (travel time, lodging and travel expenses, workforce downtimes).

Attracted by these significant and measurable advantages, companies start to look for ways to make the most of their existing core training available online, and to manage and measure the utilization of the new capabilities.

Under this approach, both clients and “e-Training” vendors focus on maximizing the amount of “content” that can be transformed into some kind of online training equivalent, basically using a “self-study”, programmed instruction methodology based on the interaction between the participant and the self-paced training materials.

The typical CBT/WBT “e-Training” material replaces the “face to face” interaction with the instructor with programmed interaction between the user and the computer, which operates as a tutor and a “corrective mirror” for the participant. This apparently “instructorless” kind of course is indeed heavily “instructor-centered”, the only difference being that the “instructor” is a “robot” program that guides, evaluates, reinforces and stimulates the participant following various pre-programmed subroutines.

The obvious advantages of the “e-Training” approach in terms of distribution and cost come at the expense of effective learning outcomes. CBT and WBT are efficient vehicles to “install” training into the systems, but they do not work well within the time span and conditions of the average work environment.

The design of e-Training courses is based on creating engaging interaction along programmed paths, and that competes with the demands of multi-tasking and fast turnaround that prevail in the workplace. Sound and multimedia created to motivate students are just too noisy, slow or interfering for a typical team in an open cubicle environment.

Some training departments try to encourage the isolation that this kind of courseware demands by asking employees to put up “In Training ” signs to prevent interruptions during the multimedia or broadcasting sessions, but this is the very action that reveals the critical gap between e-Training and on-the-job performance.

After filling their “learning platforms” with e-Training WBT and CBT courses, many companies discover low rates of usage and preference over traditional training options. Only 14 % of the users prefer this kind of approach, according to ASTD’s 2001 Benchmarking report (ASTD, 2001) 5

What the e-Training approach creates is a vast repository of training courses, lessons or materials in electronic, programmed format, sometimes even organized as a virtual campus, but a campus nevertheless, with all its demands and requirements to the “students” that the training model involves.

Moving from this training-centered approach to a real e-Learning one requires a deep and challenging change in focus: from the known and familiar realm of training products, processes and roles, to the new and unexplored realities of the online learning processes and the e-learner.

e-Learning

Although some “old timers” of CBT and WBT consider e-Learning just a “new name” for their old wine, this concept actually involves a very different approach from both ends: the producers and the users.

In a real “e-Learning” program, the focus is on optimizing the learning processes of individuals within the organization, rather than in just “distributing” existing training.

Actual e-Learning programs build the contents as granular and reusable learning objects (Clark, 1998,Thomas, 2001) 6 that the user can combine by actively organizing and customizing its learning process and preferences rather than just following a “pre-programmed” training -like prescribed path. True e-Learning programs and products have a self-directed, self-serve, “pull” approach rather than a prescriptive “push” one that the instructor-led or e-Training program provides.

Learning outcomes, measured in terms of previously defined skills or competencies, are the key measurement units, rather than speed of delivery or cost reduction as in the e-Training approach.

Learning Management Systems allow the participant to customize and personalize his own preferences (“i-Learning”) organizing learning objects according to his priorities and requirements, while also receiving guidance regarding competencies and job requisites.

However, in spite of all this enormously promising potential, e-Learning results have been surprisingly disappointing. Most of the current data available about real usage in the workplace show “drop out” rates of 60 % or higher (ASTD, 2001) 7.

Recent studies have shown that one of the key reasons for that drop out rate is that e-Learning has a particularly steep adoption curve because of the particular demands that learning online creates for the learner, such as:

· High Self Directed Learning (SDL) skills and attitudes

· Computer literacy and “fluency”

· Ability to organize existing knowledge, search and explore new knowledge

· Ability to develop different learning strategies

Enthusiastic early adopters of technologies and vendors eager to market the new products have largely ignored or underestimated these challenges, assuming in their business cases an ‘ideal” scenario with experienced and sophisticated end users learning and working smoothly in an organization with a mature e-Learning culture.

Actual experience shows that in order to be able to effectively use e- Learning, the learner and the organization have to overcome three main barriers in successive stages:

1.Technological barriers:

These are the most immediately apparent at the beginning of any online learning project for the organization (hard and soft infrastructure) and for the user-learner (usability, accessibility, tools setup and tuning).

One of the critical problems at this stage is to consider technology, not just from the producer’s perspective, but from the end user’s position, prioritizing field and pilot testing, access and communication issues over technical features.

In our experience, we discovered huge “gaps” between what was “charted” by management and central MIS and what the end user really has and uses.

Many critical “technical” barriers for an e-Learning environment can only be detected by advance field-testing with the active participation of the end user and the supervisors on issues such as the way their communication, access, browsers and workstations features (such as speakers, sound, Internet access or Instant Messaging) are configured and the existing policies and restrictions to use them.

These are not the “regular” requirements that technology and content providers are prepared to deal with, since they are more oriented to “install” the technology and products than to enable and encourage the end user to use them.

2. Learning to Learn online:

Once the technology “works” in the real world of the workplace, the user not only has to master a set of new skills (such as using a wide variety of new online tools, develop his own learning strategies and plans, effectively communicate and handle conflicts related to virtual environments, etc) but also must develop new competencies and attitudes, especially those involved with his self-directed learning abilities.

One of the myths that has created frequent failures in e-Learning experiences is the idea that learning online is basically a “plug-and-play” experience. The bottom line is that the self-directed, autonomous and innovative learner assumed by the e-Learning paradigm represents a small minority of real corporate users. (Rossett, 2000, Parks, 2001, Carnevale, 2001)8

Learning online requires different and new individual and team skills such as reading and browsing, self organization, time management, computer literacy, research, interpersonal communications in an online environment and dealing with specific procedures such as passwords, permissions, and online operations, not to mention significant multi-tasking abilities to deal with all that and the demands of the work environment.

Only when these skills and abilities have been acquired and consolidated by practice as a prerequisite does e-Learning start to yield its potential in an incremental, less demanding learning curve.

However challenging this stage seems, the cost of educating end users to learn online is only a fraction of the cost of simply exposing them to more costly “e-Training” products or developing the perfect “plug and play” e-Learning program that anybody can use (another “Holy Grail” of the field)

3. Installing an online culture:

In the long run, what makes the difference between success and failure of e-Learning experiences is how much these new resources and practices are included in, and form part of, the overall organizational culture, to the extent that the user can and does move easily in and out of learning objects in his daily work routine and, even more importantly – can deliberately apply all these resources to his own tasks and projects.

Successful e-Learning implementations are based on the progressive creation of an “e-Learning culture”, and its assimilation as part of the corporate DNA. (Chapnik, 2001) 9

The experience of the leaders in this field shows that the consolidation of an e-Learning culture is highly correlated with its usage and integration in a broader concept and goals of online performance.

e-Performance

In order to be successful, e- Learning has to be thought of and integrated as a process into the larger picture of e-Performance.

We define e-Performance as the capacity of an organization, teams and individuals to generate measurable performance improvement through the integrated usage of online practices and technologies.

From this perspective, e-Training and e-Learning processes are two of the means that can contribute to the achievement of the e-Performance levels and standards required by the organization and its business goals.

The level of internal and external e-Performance of any organization becomes a critical factor for business success and the main reason for the adoption of e-Training or e-Learning initiatives and projects.

e-Performance contribution can be easily measured in business indicators such as productivity, cost reduction, turnover, time to market, new products development, vertical integration, since it has clear and visible impact on all the critical areas.

What is even more meaningful is that clients can easily perceive the e-Performance of an organization and value its improvement, since it clearly contributes to the quality and performance of the products and services they pay for and their overall and long term experience with them

High levels of e-Performance attract and even create clients and are one of the key factors behind successful new companies and business models such as eBay, Amazon and Expedia or in modernizing and renewing the success of mature companies, as GE or Citibank.

Conversely, poor e-Performance contributes significantly to the failure of many business initiatives that can look good from a financial or technological standpoint but do not perform or work well in the real world.

This simplicity creates a clear and healthy linkage between technological innovation and business sense that can anchor in reality the arcane complexities of technology and keep it focused in its clients and end users.

e-Performance can be measured by the integration at the end user level (client or worker) of collaborative work and processes rather than in technology itself, since it is based on the connection and smooth integration of the processes of knowledge acquisition, management, distribution and creation through the use of a strategic combination of collaborative processes that link each knowledge worker’s desktop with knowledge bases, access to experts, e-Learning spaces, project spaces, synchronous and asynchronous interactions , discussion groups and online communities of practice (Hasanali, 2000)10

Figure 1: e-Performance dimensions

Adopting an e-Performance approach allows companies to align and integrate e-Training and e-Learning initiatives as part of a overarching performance system that has to produce meaningful and sustainable performance improvement in the workplace.

e-Training

e-Learning

e-Performance

Instruction- centered

Learning-centered

Work and performance –centered

Improves training delivery

Creates new learning processes

Generates measurable performance in the workplace

Instructional, programmed-instruction paradigm

Web browsing, self-development paradigm

Collaborative, blended paradigm

Measurement criteria: usage / cost reduction

Measurement criteria: learning outcomes

Measurement criteria: individual and team performance and products

Emphasis on Knowledge retention and storage

Emphasis in Knowledge Management and distribution

Emphasis in Knowledge Creation (valued added knowledge intensive products and services)

These are some of the principles required to create an e-Performance system:

Start from the online performance requirements

However sophisticated and innovative e-Training and e- Learning technologies and processes can be, they are still means to eventually achieve learning goals; the e-Performance approach requires one to start by identifying measurable performance improvement ends and goals to which the online learning processes and tools should be oriented and aligned from the very beginning.

By assuming this approach up-front, e-performance establishes meaningful organizational impact and value-added contribution as the criteria and rationale for the adoption of new technologies, preventing costly failures and disappointing end results.

Some of the e-Performance requirements are explicit and can be easily gathered by communicating with the real end users and their managers; others are tacit and require analysis of the processes and technologies of the actual work.

In all cases, e-Performance designers have to start by exploring the workplace, listening to the actual users and their supervisors, and experiencing how real people work and learn in that environment.

Use e-Performance to create e-Performance

In order to develop effective e- Learning products, designers and developers not only must develop new skills but also must modify their traditional educational and training paradigms by experiencing for themselves online learning on the job.

Repeated studies of current e-learning designers and programmers that have been working in the industry for an average of 5 years reveal that less than 5% have ever taken an online course. (Bernardez, 2001)11

One effective way to implement this cultural change is to use the e-Learning platform not only to install and deliver the products, but also to install an online learning program for designers and developers that allows them to share and experience the new concepts and to “try their own soup.”

This e-Performance approach to e-Learning design and development helps integrate the views of programmers, media and graphic designers and educational designers (internal and external) under a shared perspective of the end user’s perception.

Integrate learning and work processes

The clients’ and suppliers’ participation and collaboration – another critical factor for e-Learning quality – in a shared e-Performance platform also enables improvements in the process and products, providing timely revisions and reductions in rework costs. (Figure 2)

An e-Performance platform includes not only “e-Training” and “e-Learning” pieces and learning objects, but also products in process (scripts and programming pieces) and new concepts and definitions developed along the collaborative process.

The experiences and practices created and captured through this process are an extra value-added of this approach.

Figure 2: an example of an e-Performance system used to integrate clients, producers, management and users on international projects

Creatively and systematic reutilization and connection of the already existent tools and practices

Instead of trying to install a totally integrated “solution” that might contain all the required features and functions, we recommend starting by “mapping” the existing systems and available applications already in use across the organization. Utilizing an e-Performance technology “map” (Wegner, 2001) 12 is a very useful starting point

Mapping the existing technologies improves and maximizes the odds of effective e-Performance by using and combining existing tools already available in the end user’s working environment and “e-Performance” culture.

By operating “outside- in” (starting from the actual work and learning environment of the end users to select and define the development tools and technologies), the e-performance approach reduces conflicts and costs of premature and shortsighted “standardizations” based in the promises and lure of “global” solutions.

Gradual introduction of collaboration among end users

Another key factor in developing online skills and culture is to gradually introduce collaborative tools such as Instant Messaging and online meetings in the daily work routine.

These tools – usually available both as free shareware or as part of most of the corporate intranet’s groupware - help end users to do their jobs more efficiently, are easy to learn, and help to create the virtual teamwork and emotional support that are essential to motivate users toward embracing the new online learning and work practices. (Bernardez, 2002)13

The e-Performance approach to collaboration starts by encouraging the discovery and pursuit of meaningful, value-added and time saving collaborative activities based upon the analysis and understanding of the work processes, objectives and priorities. Tools and technologies come later, and should be flexible, nimble and gradual.

Consider learning as knowledge creation

The nature of our business (creating e-Learning products and services) requires us to move beyond the conventional paradigm of “e-Learning’ as a tool for “knowledge distribution” towards an e-Performance approach that focuses on the process of knowledge creation (Von Krogh, 2000) 14.

From that perspective, an effective e-Performance system uses e-Learning resources not just to distribute and communicate “anytime anywhere” existing knowledge (internal or acquired), but more critically, to develop new concepts and products through the collaboration of internal and external members of a virtual organization.

From an e-Performance standpoint, learning and work must operate as a continuum of threaded processes required to create new products and send them to the market and the end users.

Furthermore, the e- Performance concept serves as a powerful business concept to help the organization’s clients make their own e-Learning projects more valuable and results-oriented.