Jay Cross sees the need for a fluid, dynamic approach to corporate training. The present day knowledge worker is having to learn more, and learn faster than ever before - a situation that will intensify over time. According to Cross, the old, static, one-size-fits-all, training programs are proving hoplessly inadequate in the face of this challenge.

Courses are dead. Who’s got the time? Courses are almost always separate from work, and that goes against the trend of integrating training and work.

The static training course, with its ‘just in case you might need this’ rationale, takes the trainee out of his workspace and offers him generalized solutions to hypopthetical needs. Small wonder that training is usually targeted at entry level people - the mid-career movers and shakers know better than to waste time on generic, irrelevant ‘training’ (even though, loigically, training should have the greatest business impact there). Much corporate training tends to have a low ROI and this is one reason why.

What is needed, says Cross, is something more dynamic, more organic. He posits a ‘learnscape’, a kind of learning ecosystem, that becomes part of the working day. A web-based learnscape enables constant updates (the dynamic database) and 24/7 access. The learning becomes relevant, immediate, and self-directed. (Dare I say that it sounds like ‘learning on your terms‘.) Cross uses the’self-service’ analogy: an ATM machine is both relevant to the neeeds of the user as well as cost-effective for the provider.

I think the parallels between Cross’s learnscape and our own approach are obvious. The user-led lesson-development on ChinesePod, for example, creates timely, relevant, ever-gowing, content that users access when and how they wish. It is dynamic (not static) organic, and always informed by what we learn (about you, about the language, about the tools, etc). There is no end-point because neither the language nor the needs of the learner are fixed. We will continue to produce lessons as long as there are people who want us to so and I believe the quality of the conten t will get better as we continue to learn.

These days business strategists talk about emergent strategies and practices. Perhaps we’re creating an emergent learning solution that unfolds with the changing needs of the learners, indefinitely.

Ken Carroll