Breaking down the data warehouse with learning..

warehouse | ?w??ha?s | noun a large building where raw materials or manufactured goods may be stored prior to their distribution for sale.

Imagine, for moment, that you have started a new job and you are standing at the door to an enormous warehouse. You see box upon box, file cabinet upon file cabinet, standing stories into the air. 

You need to find some information, and in front of you is the entire content of the organisation, every single piece of paper, photograph and memorandum.

Standing at the entrance long enough, you begin to understand the issue that many employees face when they join an organisation for the first time. Assuming all the information is stored, and catalogued nicely (those of us in IT know, its often not) there is still a huge task to find what you are looking for. 

 Is there a way that we can reduce this complexity, and enable you to get what you need quicker, easier and allow you to start working productively as soon as possible?

 The most obvious thing that we should do here is to design a system. When designing the warehouse, we should only show you the files that are relevant or important to you. By doing this, we remove all the irrelevant information from your view, and show you only the material that you need. This is logical : why would you need to see material that isn't relevant to you?

 Now, you are standing in front of a smaller group of boxes, and this is what you need to know. 

 So you open the first box and you begin reading. In the real world, this is hard work. Usually, the material you are reading lacks context, and order, and so you get frustrated quite quickly. The answer to this is to organise all the files and folders in the correct order so that they make sense. 

 So, in our design, we now place the files and folder in an order that makes sense.

 So now you start reading the files in order, and after a while you start to get tired. You need to "know' all of this, so the assumption is that every file in front of you has the same importance. This is simply not true: There will be items in the boxes that are essential for you to do your job, there will be items that you should know, and items that it would be good to know. And, remember, you already know some "stuff": is all this reading really needed?

 So, how can we understand what is more important? 

 We need to identify strategic gaps in your knowledge and your ability to perform your tasks

We should address the gaps. This means that we should really only read and study the material that closes your knowledge and strategic gaps. While it seems through to re-learn important pieces of information again to "review", would it not be a better idea to rather cover what you already know in a quick recap, and then spend the additional time learning what you don’t know? 

 Additionally, what do I mean by "know"? Is there a clearly articulated understanding of what you will use this information for? How does "knowing" this information help you be better at your work? We would need to understand "why" you would need to "know" this, how you would apply this information. 

To understand this, we must understand what the desired outcome for a user is. 

• Do you need to just recall the information?
• Do you need to explain the idea or concept?
• Do you need to use the information in a new way?
• Do you need to distinguish between different parts?
• Do you need to justify a stand or a position?
• Do you need to create a new product or a point of view?

By asking these questions, we can understand why you need to know the information, and then deliver that information to you in a relevant way. This way, we can make "knowing" relevant, and we can assess if knowing this information helps you do your job better. 

The next question for us is to understand knowledge we need "Just in Time" and knowledge we need "Just in Case". For many people, having an encyclopaedic knowledge of a topic is essential. This is what I mean by Just in Case: You know a lot in case you ever need it. In reality though we must realise that learning is a trade of time/benefit, and in corporate building just in case knowledge is time consuming and expensive. 

Just in time speaks to the ability to learn about something when you need to know it, rather than training for it as a just in case. It builds on your existing experience, and understanding, and integrates new knowledge into your existing knowledge. This speaks to a learning theory called Constructivism: Constructivism is a theory which is based on the idea that every participant will be able to construct their own perspective of the material based on their own individual experiences and internal knowledge. 

 Let's apply this to our warehouse. 

1. We have given you only the files you need to know, and are relevant to you.
2. We have organised all the files in a specific order, so that each box of files helps build on top of the knowledge that the last box delivered. 
3. Next, we organised the boxes strategically so that the information you need to know is delivered when you need to know it, not in one dense delivery. 
4. This information is also presented in such a way as to take your current experience level into account,

 Then we organised the files and folders that were left so that they were specifically identified as files that you need to know to close your knowledge gap, and the strategic gap, so you can do your job better. We have told you which files should be read as a recap and which will be new information. Next, we specifically told you how you will use this information in your daily job. 

We have placed all of these files in front of you, in an order. They are neatly labelled, each file and folder with:

1. A time to complete (so you know how long you will need), 
2. What you need to know before you start reading (so you understand how the information fits into what you know already), 
3. What order the files should be read in

 The content of the warehouse is now a great deal easier to learn. 

You now start to read the first file in the process, and this is where understanding learning technology comes in. Here is the first important fact: Not everyone learns the same, but there are some basic guidelines that we can use when we design content, specifically if we look at peoples ability to recall information. 

 This graph is essential as we need to understand that recall is at it's lowest if someone is just reading files, manuals or textbooks. Therefore, if your system merely publishes data in written form, without taking into account the persons ability to digest that information, your project is doomed to fail. 

 Your system must present the data in a way that maximises its retention, to move the person learning to higher ability of recall. This means that presenting you with boxes of information, even if those boxes are designed into a relevant learning path, is a flawed method. Instead, we need to move you up to a higher ability to recall through the use of technology: 

 Essentially, not only have we built a proper learning path for you, but we are now presenting the material too you in such a way as to maximise your ability to recall and apply that information. 

 When we consider the learning, training and development strategy for our organisation, we should consider the member throughout the process, their role and needs within the business, and what they need to do to ensure they deliver on the needs of the organisation. By utilising this approach, training interventions become strategic actions that deliver improved productivity throughout the business. 

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