Think “Campaign” not “Course”

As we come towards the end of 2010, the first decade of the 21st century, it’s a good time to reflect on how much has changed. The internet has grown in its influence to the extent that the unfettered sharing of information is influencing our politics, our economics and our personal behaviours in hugely profound ways. Yet within the field of education and training, while technology has and continues to undoubtedly influenced how and what we do, we are curiously reluctant to confront some fundamental structures and assumptions, even when we now know they are not the most effective way to support learning.

The concept of the “course” is a case in point. The lecture/workshop/course is predicated on the largely defunct notion that it is more economically efficient to bring “those-who-don’t-know-can’t-do” to the more scarce and hard to access expert who “knows-and-shows”. In a time when recording any event didn’t exist, attending a live lecture was essential to the transfer of knowledge. The arrival of books, a transformational mobile technology when it was introduced, allowed distance learning to be born. Since then, the inexorable march of technology has now made the transmission of multimedia information instantaneous and on-demand whenever and wherever we want it. We can now experience anything anywhere on the planet at any time we want to. This should have a huge impact on the way we train and educate.

Yet in 2010, most people’s learning experiences are still based on attending a formal course which they have not properly prepared for, which is often inconsistent in the quality of design and delivery, and will then receive little or no follow through support post attendance. Any learning of new knowledge and skills quickly dissipates, and any value to the individual and organisation with it.

As we enter 2011, I’d like us to move our design thinking away from the single event “course” model to a multi-event “campaign” structure. Or to put it another way – let’s have less learning, more often. Shorter, sharper, more varied learning experiences deliberately spread over a longer elapsed time period, demonstrably improve learning effectiveness. There are more opportunities for reinforcement of key knowledge, more prompts to practice skills in the field and the ability to adapt to the pace and personal needs of each individual. At long last our efforts can be focused on providing learning support interwoven into life and work, rather than artificially abstracted.

In design terms, we have to be much more aware of how to manage and attract attention. We can learn a lot of communications, advertising and marketing. We can learn even more from the rapidly developing field of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, which already has much research that is blissfully ignored yet would impact positively on our professional practices.

What is clear, this design philosophy has to put technology at its heart, not just on the periphery as has been the case all too often. We’ve really run out of excuses now that the enabling technology is literally in the palm of our hand. The smartphone, already a phenomenon led by the iconic Apple iPhone, will be all pervasive over the next decade, allowing us to radically reinvent the way we support learning. We’ll move more firmly towards an experience that I have termed ubiquitous performance support (UPS). But I am under no illusions that that name will catch on as it won’t be long before we all just call it normal “life”.

So charge your glasses and toast the future of your designs – think Campaigns not Courses.