NanoLearning

Bersin & Associates released their “Top 10″ list of predictions for 2007. Here at NanoLearning we’re always interested to see what people are writing about, especially industry analysts who have a wide view of what is going on in the marketplace. Sure enough, NanoLearning fits right in with one of the top predictions according to Bersin:

“First there were online self-study courses; then came virtual instructor-led training. The next stage is self-published training — resources such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts. Innovative training organizations are now working to harness these resources.”

We couldn’t agree more.  Why is self-publishing important in leading organizations?

• Wisdom of Crowds. A mixed collection of experts and neophytes will give you a better result than a group of just experts. Learning published by the subject matter experts themselves, then refined and reviewed by colleagues will have higher quality than learning produced by a training group in conjunction with SME’s.
• Speed. Give the SME’s the tools to create learning themselves and you break down all the expensive coordination required to publish e-learning.
• Accuracy. Many people think that learning produced by the central hierarchy will be more accurate than learning produced by the SME’s. Our opinion is that centralized content creation is as prone to error as decentralized. Maybe more.

Thanks for the predictions!

If any of you are readers of Trace Urdan’s market research in the area of learning, training, and education then your read today’s “2006 Year in Review” issue. It also contains six trends for 2007. What is the #1 trend for 2007?

“The trend toward end-users, consumers, teachers, and students creating content for themselves and their peers delivered in writing, in audio files, or in video clips.”

We couldn’t agree more, of course, and we think people will want to create content that is a little more interesting than just “writing.” That’s why we help to create a more visually rich flash-based learning experience. The current crop of people entering the marketplace are comfortable with new technologies, and information sharing. They’ve also grown up on graphically rich video games, the internet, and MTV. So they expect more than just plain textual content.

This is no surprise really, especially since Time Magazine named “You” the person of the year — a position usually reserved for the likes of Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Bono, or Bill Clinton. Hello peer producers! You are it!

In case you missed it, we rolled out a couple new features toward the end of the year.

Search Enhancements

If you type in a search word like “listening” now you will get richer search results. NanoLearning will search not just the description of your Nano, but also the text of it. The search results show some context of the search term it found, as well as icons showing if that Nano contains visual images or sounds. You can click on the name of the NanoLearning item returned in the search to go right to it and check it out.

New Template – Full Page Image

Have you ever wished that you could have a page that was just one big image? Now you can. Use your Photoshop skills to create whatever you want to display on the page.

Enhanced Template – Flash Movie

The “Flash Movie” template will let you upload a SWF file. We’ve had that for a while. But now if you want to display a YouTube video, you can check the box and enter the URL of the YouTube video. We’ll display it for you.

We’ve been hard at work on some other features that we’re getting ready to roll out, so stay tuned for more! Happy New Year!

Over on Brent Schlenker’s blog on corporate e-learning development, we debated through comments on open content course development (wiki approach). He promised to blog more on it later, and I wanted to put down some thoughts as well. As we talk about more learning via social networks in organizations, this is certainly an issue that will come up. Right now blog tools are growing in organizations, and I think that’s great because blogs are a great place to post your opinions. People can comment, but that doesn’t change the original post.

Open Content (learning wiki)

Anybody can contribute to a learning module on any topic, just like a wiki. Collaboration is hugely important, and a team of people who effectively collaborate on something can achieve incredible results far beyond what an individual could create. The Wisdom of Crowds would say that this group of collaborators should be comprised of both experts and neophytes, and the best results will be acheived. Not only could the information have higher quality, but it could be created faster by dividing up the labor. This is a highly valid approach. Soon in NanoLearning you will be able to invite collaborators to edit a piece of NanoLearning. As we’ve seen with the Wikipedia though, content that is acceptable to everybody is interesting to nobody.

Open Market

To continue with a Wikipedia example, what if rather than modifying the JFK entry with my theory on who shot JFK (and having the moderator roll it back), I could create my own Wikipedia entry on who shot JFK. People who prefer my point of view would link to my entry, and people who prefer someone else’s point of view can link to theirs. In a system where people can rate/review/recommend learning chunks the market would recommend each accordingly. The open market approach really doesn’t work with company policies like vacation time, but a microlearning chunk on “How I handled sexual harrassment in my department” might be hugely useful by the HR organization. It might also be a different approach from how another person handled harrassment.

There’s no right or wrong answer, and smart people will use the appropriate tool for the job. But it’s great to discuss and explore the issues. I just wish there were more collaborative content creation tools out there so that we could create some real examples to share, rather than talking about “what if” and “someday.”

Technorati tags: NanoLearning, L2006, microlearning, nano-learning

Yesterday Skillsoft (NASDAQ: SKIL) announced a deal to acquire the NETg division of Thomson for $285M. I call it the “flipside” because NETg makes their money selling off-the-shelf e-learning courseware which is at the opposite end of the spectrum from NanoLearning, which is the more democratic version where anybody can create e-learning courseware. Just for fun, lets look at the financials of this deal.

To start with Skillsoft has been moving sideways for a while with no revenue growth, but they’re putting maybe 6% to the bottom line. Not bad, but it’s hard to prop up a P/E of 30 when you’re not growing. The market recognizes this and rewards this non-performance with a pretty unremarkable stock price.

Skillsoft revenues are around $220M and they’re going to pay $285M for NETg. That’s gutsy! They’ve got $70M in cash, and they’re going to borrow $180M to buy this company. Plus NETg revenues have been declining solidly over the past several years from a peak of over $400M down to $160M today. If nothing else, the folks at Thomson are shrewd businessmen and are probably happy to shed this business unit at what looks like a premium. Based upon the hit that Skillsoft stock took today, I’d say the market is not too happy with them paying a premium like this for a shrinking business unit.

Obviously it’s a big risk for Skillsoft; perhaps the biggest in their company’s history. We will see if it pays off.

alvin toffler

Originally uploaded by Deidre Woollard.

Last month in the Financial Times, noted futurist Alvin Toffler is quoted:

“Standardised education is among the slowest institutions to adapt. If you were a cop monitoring the speed of cars going by, you would clock the car of business, which changes rapidly under competitive pressures, at 100 mph. But the car of education, which is supposedly preparing the young for the future, is only going at 10 mph. You cannot have a successful economy with that degree of desynchronisation.”

One of the major value propositions we strive for at NanoLearning is enable people to create learning faster. Speed is critical in business today, and sometimes there isn’t time to engage the training or learning organization. Today’s rapid learning tools are just replayers of annotated Powerpoints, screen captures, or video sessions. They are not very interactive. We let end users create flash-based interactive learning activites using a “wizard” approach. This way learners interact and engage, becoming active participants in the process.

You will be amazed to see what you can create in just five minutes.