Learnagogy

The economy is such a depressing topic these days, but it is not all doom-and-gloom when sales are slow and budgets are cut.  Especially if you are interested or involved in e-Learning.

 Why?

Historically, the e-Learning market has grown astronomically, has saved corporations big money, and has developed an entirely new set of specialty careers that seem to be highly sought after by employers.  While we have reached a certain saturation point, up to 50% of all US organizations are yet to embrace eLearning as a mode for employee or customer training.

In a time where we are all advised to tighten our budgets and live within our means, e-Learning could be an excellent initiative to champion if your department or organization does not already take advantage of the benefits.

1.  Travel expenses related to training can be greatly reduced.

2.  Time away from the job for large group trainings can be staggered, keeping production and efficiency at normal levels while employees get training as it is more convenient to the company and to the learner.

3.  Once built, ROI is easy to measure and document.

4.  When business is slow, marketing often gets more attention. eLearning can serve as a very powerful marketing engine, especially today with so many  cool technologies that help to keep your audience engaged.  Potential clients will take advantage of a webinar or free course in lieu of a face to face demonstration.  

I’m sure you can add several more reasons eLearning saves money and is good for business.  Please add them here!  If you’re looking for answers to economic trials, you may want to consider e-Learning as a possible solution.  I’m always glad to talk about it.  

Yes. Learnagogy is a made up word. I’m not sure if I’m the first to say the word, but I am the most recent owner of the .com domain.

After decades of being a student, teacher, workshop facilitator and instructional designer, I wanted a word that says that learning is fun and it is a process. Of course we have words and phrases that are similar, such as cognition, learning theory, study habits, study skills and learning strategy, but if Malcolm Knowles can popularize the term “andragogy” then why can’t I keep going with a related word that speaks to the responsibility for the learning process to belong to the individual who is seeking the knowledge and retaining the knowledge?

We say that students learn in thousands of ways, and some would even be willing to admit that each individual has a learnagogy, or a process for learning, that is completely unique.

If andragogy (the art of teaching adults) is offered as an alternative of pedagogy (the art of teaching children), then why can’t learnagogy (the art of teaching ones self–>an individual’s art/process of learning) be offered as an alternative as well?

As far as I’m concerned, we don’t have enough words to describe this process. So I hereby on, from this day forward, will refer to the “art and joy of learning” by using the term Learnagogy!

I think this site is great, and it doesn’t surprise me that it comes from UBC!

http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/

There are several tools for instructors to build their own learning objects and games. One key to a tool’s reusuability is its “stickiness” and I was stuck exploring for a while. I then shared it with my team, and they got some great ideas for a couple of our future projects.

I thought this tool was especially well designed and clever!

http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/pronunciation.htm

I encourage you to visit the site. I know I will be going back!

I recently asked our web team to revive our old Learning Object on Learning Objects (originally designed in 2001) and to update our Resource Center. As I was reviewing the cited resources on some of the earlier papers I wrote, I discovered that the majority of them are out-of-date and that most resource links are broken.

Does this mean the sites are not worth the maintenance because learning objects aren’t cool anymore, OR does it mean expecting resource links to remain static and functional over a period of 5-6 years is unrealistic?

As a reusable learning object advocate (hey, everyone has to have a cause, right?), I’d love to hear from anyone who is seeing progress from a design and development standpoint on the number of and quality of learning objects. Are you building them? Are you using them? Are you putting them out there for “reuse” by others? Have you made advancements in this arena in the last 5 years?

If you have never seen our Learning Object on Learning Objects, I encourage you to check it out. It is, in my opinion, still pretty cool!