The other day I learned via e-mail that the bathrooms on the fourth floor were clogged up. Let's see, does that mean I did some e-learning? These days it seems that everything remotely related to learning and knowledge is being called e-learning. Firms are telling us about their e-learning on hand-held devices. Usually we call this a job aid, using your handheld to look up some information or a set of instructions or procedures. Others are talking about e-learning for making new product information available to all the sales force instead of bringing them in for training. That seems like information dissemination via internet technologies, shouldn't it rightly be called e-informing? And still others are turning paper documents into HTML documents and calling it e-learning. If all of this is called e-learning, then it seems that e-learning is just about everything. The term e-learning is being tossed around so loosely, it is hard to know what the user means by it.

In its most comprehensive sense, e-learning is about using electronic technologies, namely networked computers, to aid the learning process. Some learning comes solely from information. You read, see, hear, or watch it, and you have become informed about something, that is, you have learned something. I chose the third floor bathrooms instead of those on the fourth floor because of such information. Other learning comes from instruction. There is a specific instructional goal set up. At the end of the event, which could be a 15 minute computer tutorial module, or a two week blended learning program, you have learned something, but more importantly, you are able to perform some skill you weren't able to before. Remembering how to do something isn't the true goal of instruction, the true goal is the ability to perform something. And yet another way we learn is through personal experiences, reflecting on the good and bad, and vicariously through the experiences of others, such as the situation of the apprentice and the master.

All three of these ways that we learn can be aided through electronic technologies. I would like to link these three learning means to the three means in which workplace performance is increased. They are on-line learning, knowledge management, and performance support. The purpose of these three are markedly different, they are respectively, to instruct, to inform, and to guide. If we talk about e-learning as if it meant all of these at once, we introduce vagueness and misconceptions about how and where each of these technologies can and should be applied.

Information
It is just information alone, it does not have an agenda. It sits there and we as intelligent beings interpret it in relation to other information and experiences that we have had. When I hear people asking how best to convert existing paper manuals for a course into e-learning, I call that mediatization. I think that it would be more correct to call their resulting product on-line documentation or an on-line manual. That is, it is information from which you can learn something.

The creation, storage, access and sharability of on-line documents and information fit into a knowledge management strategy and should be talked about in terms of knowledge management, not training or instruction. We are talking about information. What you do with it is your business. Let's look at the salespeople who must get updated on a new product. "No more wasting weeks to train your salesforce with our e-learning platform" is the typical sales pitch. But I want to know, are they training their sales force, or are they informing their sales force? If I use a videoconferencing product showing them a slide show and talking them through the presentation to get them all updated, am I informing or am I training? Is that e-learning, or is it e-presentation?

Instruction
Let's now look at instruction as a means for learning. As we noted above, learning doesn't necessarily have to come from instruction. But, instruction must imply learning. Unlike information, instruction has a very specific agenda. At the end of the instructional event, you will not only 'know' something more, but you will be able to 'do' something more. This is not a claim of information. The field of instructional design has taught us that there are five components to a learning strategy. They are Preinstructional activities (motivation, informing the learner of objectives and what entry skills are expected), Information presentation (the new content area), student participation (opportunity to practice with corrective feedback), testing (the level to which the learner can really 'do' the new skills learned), and follow through (what you do based on the results of the testing).

Unfortunately, many people confuse information presentation with instruction. Often, one sees so-called e-learning courses that should more aptly be called e-reading courses. That is, information presentation with questions at the end. It takes a few more components to reach instruction. Just because information is presented does not mean that I will know it and perform a task better because of it. There is a chance that that might happen, but presentation alone cannot guarantee learning. You can find e-learning that includes the pre-instructional activities, presentation of materials, a reasonable testing method, and even indicators for post-instructional activities based on the test outcome. However, what is missing from most instruction, is student participation with appropriate corrective feedback.

This is often harder than you might think. And made harder by having to do it the e-way. Student participation means that they practice the new knowledge and are provided with feedback about their attempts. This allows for students to make hypothesis about the world (based on the new information) and test it. They get feedback as to its correctness. A human subject matter expert/practitioner is an incredibly good feedback device. That is why the master and apprentice model is arguably the best … for learning, not necessarily in economic terms. It should be emphasized that it is not easy to come up with ways to have students apply the new knowledge in authentic situations. There needs to be that continuous application (practice) and feedback mechanism in order to be assured that learning happens.

Remember, the goal of instruction is to bring the person from the state of not being able to do something, to the state of being able to do it. Being able to recall information does not prove you can 'do' the main learning goal. No one cares if you 'know' it, you have to be able to apply it. That is why we value practical experience so much. From practical experience, we have launched our hypotheses about the way the world works (in a specific domain) and received feedback as to the correctness of our hypotheses. We learn by this constant application/feedback circle and thus get to a point where we can 'do' it effectively. This is why any e-learning 'How to' book will tell you to make the student practice materials as close to the real situation as possible.

Enter simulations. Alone, I would not call this instruction. Simulations are instructive indeed. They allow for excellent hypothesis testing (at least as good as the simulation mimics reality) with real-time feedback. Simulation is an excellent way to implement the student participation component of instruction. The difficulty in simulations is making sure that there are no logical holes in it or that it isn't too simplistic. In simulating the functioning of a computer program, you can pretty easily make sure that you are simulating it 100% and that there are no differences between it and reality. As we move away from a highly defined closed environment (a computer application) toward more open and loosely defined environments (such as those involving humans and their reactions) it becomes more difficult to cover those logical holes and move beyond simplistic simulations. If we examine the learning goals closely, we may be able to get a good sense of the complexity of the world (simulation) we must provide the learner and to what extent the application/feedback circuit can be made authentic.

Performance Support
Finally, let's take a look at performance support and learning. The purpose of performance support is to guide you to perform something without you having to fully understand or know the topic in depth. It allows you to quickly get to your main goal without taking a long time on intermediate steps because you don't know them. This is a very valid form of performance improvement. I shouldn't have to memorize all the shut down procedures for 15 different factory machines if a procedure card is attached to the door of the control panel of each machine. After using the procedure card to shut down the machines numerous times, I will eventually learn how to do it without the aid of the card. But what if I only do the shutdown two or three times a month? Is it really worth having me go to 'training' to learn that? Our time and mental dexterity could be better used for other things than pure memorization.

Here's another example. Does one really need to learn all the functions of Microsoft's Excel program from a training program? We typically use the same few functions over and over again and when we have a special situation in which we need Excel to do something special for us, then we tend to learn how to do it at that time. Talk about your just-in-time learning? Or would it be called just-in-time guidance? If the program could guide me through this special procedure, then maybe I'll catch on to 10% of it. The point is, I don't spend my time learning it, I spend my time getting it done. Learning was not the main goal. If, however, I continue to use the guide because I find that I need the feature more and more, then I will begin to 'learn' it to a point that I will not need the guide at all. Plus, and this is a beautiful learning element, I am learning in an environment where the results are very meaningful to me. I have super high motivation to make this function work for me. It is not an example problem in order to learn a concept that I 'might' employ sometime. It is a real situation where I need something done and it is thus extremely relevant. It would be hard to not learn via this expert guide at my side.

Summary
I think one can now clearly see that learning from information, learning from instruction, and learning from watching the expert are quite different and have different purposes. In order to improve workplace performance, we should create targeted strategies in the specific domains of knowledge management, on-line instruction, and performance support.

When it comes to information, let's not confuse the mere access to and presentation of information with e-learning. Let's talk about access to information in terms of knowledge management and how you create, store, access, and share it. Let's talk about presentation of information as presentations. Sure, you learn a lot from presentations, but what you learn is more up to you and there is no mechanism to make sure your learn.

Then there is instruction and learning. E-learning, often thought of as just web training, could be more than the e-reading and sleepware that are hawked in the e-learning market. If you have a learning objective, then including the five components of instruction will get you toward your result of people being able to 'do' something that they couldn't do before. Answering questions at the end of a presentation guarantees only that the student can recall facts. Using simulations is an excellent method to involve the student in the hypothesis testing and feedback circuit that results in real learning.

Finally there is performance support. The point here is that performance is first in importance and learning is second. This division of performance and learning is perhaps the most economical. While it is ultimately, the performance that is sought, learning takes place. And as more of such performances are needed, more learning happens because of the learner going through the steps with the expert guide at his side.

The point to learning is that we want to improve performance in some area. In using electronic technologies to aid in learning, we should be clear about what can be expected from using certain technologies and not use the term e-learning as if it vaguely meant everything. If you want to use the term e-learning to cover the ares of on-line instruction, knowledge management, performance support, and we might as well add computer mediated communications, than I guess you would be technically correct, these can all involve electronic technologies to support learning. However, in employing e-learning to solve a performance deficit, one should be very careful and apply the correct type of technology solution to the problem at hand, be it on-line instruction, knowledge management, performance support or a mix of these. Well, I have some more e-learning to do now, I need to e-learn if those bathrooms upstairs are e-working. -END-