OK, I promised to share some of my learnings from the AITD conference with you. It’s been a little while coming, but here’s the first cab off the rank…
The new generation
Cheryle Walker from the National Australia Bank delivered an informative presentation called Learning Virtually at NAB: Utilising Emerging Technologies. This was a refreshingly honest session in which Cheryle discussed how NAB views the changing L&D landscape.
In a nutshell, NAB sees the new generation of recruits into the workforce as being technology savvy, and having learning preferences that steer away from traditional, instructor-led teaching in favour of a more open, collaborative, peer-to-peer culture.
The organisation recognises that information is becoming more accessible than ever before and, in turn, the learning process is becoming increasingly learner-centric.
So what are they doing about it?
NAB is responding to the changing L&D landscape by broadening its delivery model:
- Last year NAB delivered face-to-face training to over 24,000 staff – now they are developing virtual classrooms and virtual learning spaces (similar to Second Life) to broaden their reach and make learning more readily available.
- NAB already delivers online courses – now they are developing blogs and wikis to foster collaboration and capture knowledge from all parts of the organisation.
- NAB already use DVDs and satellite TV – now they are developing podcasts and digital, on-demand TV.
- NAB already has a corporate LMS and paper-based development plans – now they are developing “personal learning portals”.
- NAB already has an intranet – now they are developing a social network.
- NAB already uses email and intranet-based newsletters – now they are developing RSS feeds and delving into social bookmarking.
By the looks of it, NAB is a role model for the corporate sector in the e‑learning space.
E-Learning Provocateur 
Hi Ryan,
Cheryl also presented at the Innovative e-Learning technologies conference this week on the same topic. it’s great to see a company investing in web 2.0 from the top – from experience this is crucial, and i think it may be one of the things that pushes NAB’s initiative that one bit further. We’re using web 2.o tools at ING but we took the grass roots, rouge approach – it’s a hard and long road. But we have our social networking up and running and our RSS page and our widget portal and blogs etc..we’re still trying to figure out where all this is going – it;s 100 times harder when there isn’t an over arching strategy that ties it in all together – i think this is where NAB may get their edge and ultimately their success from!
The grass roots approach is indeed long and slow, but I think it is the way to build a strong foundation. In the early days, many of our colleagues won’t be all that interesting in all these new toys – afterall, they have a job to do – until they learn something brilliant via the technology and the penny drops.
I read your blog post Informal learning @ ING and I’m impressed with what you guys are doing (please refer to my comment on your blog).
You’re dead right when you say there needs to be an over-arching strategy that ties it all together. I gather that yours is informal learning. I suggest looking at it through a slightly different lens: peer-to-peer learning.
Does that help at all?