FOURTEENTH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ROUNDTABLE
CONVENED ON OCTOBER 15, 2002 AT
GMU ARLINGTON CAMPUS, NEW LAW SCHOOL BUILDING IN ROOMS 120 AND 121

Resources:

• Meeting Summary
• Agenda
• Oranization List
  
• Brook Manville's Powerpoint Presentation
• Brook Manville' Bio
• Break Out Groups

Brief:

George Mason University's School of Public Policy hosted the fourteenth event in the Washington DC region's Knowledge Management Roundtable (KM RT) series at its Arlington Campus on October 15, 2002.

Held in conjunction with the School of Public Policy's International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology (ICASIT) and Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), the KM RT seeks to broaden the application and advance the effectiveness of KM practice in organizations in the region. CIT seeks to increase the Commonwealth's economic competitiveness and quality of life by advancing the development of Virginia as a technology state and by creating and retaining technology-based jobs and businesses.

As part of its efforts to achieve these results, CIT provided a grant to ICASIT to help initiate a shared KM culture among organizations in Virginia by identifying organizations interested in KM and convening the first KM Roundtable that was held in March 1999 (KM Roundtable, March 1999). Subsequently, a KM RT has been convened nearly every quarter: KM Roundtable, June 1999, KM Roundtable, September 1999, KM Roundtable, February 2000, KM Roundtable, May 2000, KM Roundtable, August 2000, KM Roundtable, November 2000, KM Roundtable, February 2001, KM Roundtable, May 2001, KM Roundtable, August 2001, KM Roundtable, November 2001, KM Roundtable, February 2002, and KM Roundtable, May 2002.

MEETING SUMMARY

The Knowledge Management Roundtable (KMRT) held its October 15 session at the George Mason Law School, in Arlington, VA. The main speaker for session was Brook Manville, Chief Knowledge Officer and Customer Evangelist for Saba Software. Manville spoke on "Next Generation E-Learning: Successes, Pitfalls, and Lessons Learned From the Brief History of 'A New Way of Working'."

The KMRT session was designed to provide a leading edge presentation that would also spark for small group breakout sessions on topics related to the talk. This was an effort to use KMRT sessions for network building and practitioner problems solving as well as for bringing new knowledge and fresh perspectives to participants.

The presentation and the follow-up breakout sessions proved very productive and valuable to attendees.

Included in this report are Manville's Presentation Slides, (Please contact to ICASIT for slide Presentations)

Summary of the Brook Manville Presentation

In his talk, Brook Manville reflected on the first few years of e-learning experiments and investments by companies, and synthesized some lessons about what's worked and not worked, mapping out the pitfalls to avoid. He also makes some judgments about the future of e-learning -- where it's headed and what the "next generation" might look like, and discusses its implications for KM. Manville's presentation brought together the history, present situation, and future of the field of e-learning in a comprehensive and comprehensible manner. Whereas e-learning, like many other major thrusts of the knowledge era, is often touted as a panacea, Manville candidly discussed the limitations and well as opportunities for e-learning, and provided an especially valuable view of the necessary context and relationships necessary for e-learning to make a positive, strategic difference for an organization.

What is E-Learning and Where Did it Come From

The broadest and simplest definition of E-learning could be the "creation, delivery, and management of learning using internet tools and technology."

In its current incarnation e-learning combines many different media and approaches in an integrated environment serving learner (the knowledge workers) on the job, and enabling line managers to manage the learning environment and track the development of necessary skill capabilities and experience base of the workforce. E-learning also is instrumental in generating a "human capital value chain" or "extended enterprise" for the organization. This broad effort is necessary in the Knowledge Era when the workforce is increasingly spread out, more mobile, and needing an ever increasing amount of new knowledge and learning to stay ahead and adopt to an fast changing world.

E-learning can go beyond a more traditional, static "training" model if e-learning is seen as part of a fluid strategy to keep the workforce and the organization capable of operating and competing in the face of fresh challenges and opportunities.

Many of the first attempts at E-learning tried to use traditional training modules and content in an internet environment. In essence, the Internet was the vessel for much of the same content of "just-in-case" information, not material that is configured for "just-in-time" learning for instant application and high retention by an often diverse and geographically dispersed workforce.

These attempts often emphasized the technology as opposed to the business needs of the organization. As a result, large amounts of resources were invested with little positive return on the sizable investment.

One lesson that was learned was that e-learning is not a "silver bullet". Instead of being a stand alone solution It works best when it is blended with a whole host of other learning approaches: lecture, discussion, self-study, informal dialogue and conversation. As Manville put it: "Simply automating the delivery of information on an internet screen can't possibly substitute for the full cycle of well-designed learning experience."

Another lesson learned was that the people organizing the e-learning did not really know what people needed to learn to operate to achieve the strategic goals of the enterprise. There are a whole host of skills and experiences that need to be generated and they need to match up with the structure of the organization so they can be prioritized, provided for, tracked, and updated. This means that not only are approach and content are important, but there is also a need to provide an appropriate infrastructure so that learning is scalable throughout the organization, as well as being effective for the individuals involved. Learning is now becoming strategically linked to all the systems of the organization.

What Went Right: Learning from successes

Below is a checklist of lessons learned by organizations that have been successful at e-learning:

• A clear focus on business value - Winners pursued strategies that used learning enabled by web technology for clear and measurable business objectives.
  
• Sound but sufficient upfront analysis, coupled with "do it, try it, fix it" - Overall analysis is sufficient due diligence but never allowed to become a huge, complex project in its own right. Trials and experimentation led the way.
  
• The Blended Approach - Thoughtful integration of e-learning with face-to-face learning including mentoring, dialogue, communities of practice, etc.
  
• Respect and manage the market - Companies are more like markets than we realize - This means taking into account the user experience, since they are the "buyers" of the learning that the organization is "selling".
  
• Adopt a whole system approach - A holistic approach to people, processes, and culture. This means designing jobs and developing the curricula and competencies, in conjunction with the processes involved so that people become capable of operating and of solving problems.
  
• Pursue learning as part of the overall human capital strategy - put learning in the context of a broader strategic context of managing and developing human capital for overall enterprise performance. This will lead to including suppliers, partners, and customers in such a strategy.
  
• Embrace an enterprise-wide open architecture infrastructure - develop a foundational IT capability and a robust learning management platform. The greatest proportion of value is captured from the scale of economies of reaching the entire extended enterprise. This infrastructure needs to be able to incorporate new content, technology, new providers, and changing populations.

Looking Ahead to the Future: The Third Generation of e-Learning Innovation

• More sophisticated and innovative approaches to blended learning and personalization - More differentiated and capable of measuring achievement of aligning business objectives, learner goals, learner styles and needs, and content experiences.
  
• Learning and e-learning become more invisible - Seamlessly part of everyday work - more just-in-time and on the job learning with a convergence of all types of knowledge and learning in the course of daily work.
  
• Learning will become both worker-centric and manager-centric - Workers will be at the center of an "amazing array of learning opportunities" as well as in the center of knowledge and processes to guide their own learning. Managers will also be able to guide the learning process so that it is strategic in nature, geared to overall organizational readiness, aligned with achieving organizational goals.
  
• Infrastructure will evolve to become broader, deeper, more powerful, and cross-enterprise - It will allow for scalability, ease of use, functionality, able to be tested for effectiveness, and be an interconnection between organizations to support continuing development of the human resource value chain
  

What do organizations need to do now to move ahead with e-learning

• Be clear about the business goals and objectives before considering any learning program
• Consider e-learning only within the broader learning strategy in light of business goals
  
• Use e-learning to help shift learning to faster, more flexible and personalized learning for greater business impact
  
• Ground e-learning in a broad-based strategy - that takes into account overall human capital management, and integrates it with knowledge management, collaboration, etc.
  
• Approach e-learning as part of the discipline of overall organizational transformation
  
• Pursue an open architecture, and a robust, standards-based infrastructure
  
• Work with experienced vendors and partners.

This exploration of the past, present and future of e-learning provided attendees with a framework to reflect on their own experience with e-learning and gave a set of reference points for reviewing their how their organizations are stretching themselves to bring learning, and specifically and strategically e-learning into the day-to-day experience of all elements of the extended enterprise. This would be in ways that optimally serve the workforce and managers in the context of supporting the achievement of organizational goals.

Q& A

In the question and answer period following the presentation, attendees raised a number of questions, related to:

• The application of body of knowledge to e-Learning
  
• Sorting out technologies and how those technologies are related
  
• How e-Learning operates at SABA
  
• Where and how is e-Learning moving toward JIT Learning

Break Out Groups

Attendees split into two break out groups to explore the two top issues that were nominated by participants. Below are the topics attendees chose and the items they discussed:

I. Operationalizing e-Learning

• Creation of a business case
  
• Connection between knowledge gained, performance
  
• Conditions for learning impacting performance
  
• Bring learners on board
  
• Establish link between e-Learning and KM
  
• Best delivery of WBT
  
• Human Capital management - KM & e-learning
  
• Research how to best implement
  
• Learn about concerns and needs - convergence issues
  
• Capabilities of gained - knowing that it is there
  
• Cost of effective utilization and implementation
  

II. Strategic Issues in Framing an E-Learning Initiative

• KM professional - devise system test and use as a diagnostic
  
• Prioritize LMS/infrastructure
  
• Issues
  o Software standards
  o Vendor issues
  o LMS best practices
  o Advice
  o Knowledge Sharing
  o Delivery Issues
  o Content - Experts - Personnel system -> insight into others enabling vertical verification

The break out sessions gave attendees an opportunity to raise the concerns that they need to address and to seek the opinions, experiences, and perspectives of their colleagues. Through this type of action, the KMRT looks to building and enhancing its networking value to the KM community.