E-Learning: The Human Factor-Part II

In Part I of this article, it was suggested that the Covid19 pandemic has forced a new paradigm shift on business organizations that many were not prepared for but yet need to prepare for in order to survive. The shift from in house labour at all levels to online labour at all levels of the organization meant that how we do business had to be re-imagined in the context of a totally new environment. For those who had been proactive in preparing to move into this new operational context, the impact of the Covid19 pandemic was not as traumatic as it was for those whose past actions in dealing with change was always reactive. For those unfortunate reactive business organizations, it was like trying to run inside a hamster wheel and never quite moving forward. Stopping meant bankruptcy. This has been shown evidentially globally by the number of business organizations who have in fact cease to exist. The interesting aspect is that the businesses that ceased to exist were not just a list of unknowns but included some very big power players in "global business".

What is at the heart of this dilemma is how business organizations deal with change and how they adapt the upskilling of employees to fit the new reality of how they do business. Again this comes down to whether the changes come about as result of panic or whether they come about as the result of a careful forensic look at business dynamics and the new requirements brought on by this paradigm shift. Every CEO and CLO should be asking themselves the following questions:

• Are we ready to make this shift?
• What will upskilling of our employees from top to bottom look like in a totally online environment?
• Should this needed upskilling be organizationally directed or should we leave it to be self-directed by our employees?
• Is there a template of a successful business in this environment that we can follow?

Cutting Edge Technology or Cutting Edge Instructional Design?

One result that we see as a result of the Covid19 pandemic is that the reliance upon technology has accelerated which has in turn has accelerated the already fast pace of technology development. When dealing with human beings under stress who now must work from home and must upgrade their skills in order to continue to perform and in fact improve their job performance, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play. In an Forbes article written by Kimberly Lewis titled: "Maslow's Hierarchy Tested in Real Time"(June 4, 2020), Kimberly points out some of the pitfalls of this change in paradigm to working in an online environment at home. One of the things that can fall by the wayside is the very thing that we need from employees and that is the drive to develop their skills to meet the challenge of doing business in a different environment and in a different way.

As was noted in Part I, advancing technology such as Zoom, Facetime, Google Hangout..etc. bring with them stresses that are not conducive to effective learning and therefore hinder the desire to improve performance at the job that employees specialize in. So, coming back to the question:

"Should cutting edge technology be the driver for effective learning in this new environment or should cutting edge instructional design be the driver for effective learning and in turn harness technology that meets the needs of upskilling for the employee?"

In thinking about this, consider some of the advancing technologies that are being embraced by global business organizations:

1. Mobile Learning: Mobile learning became possible because of advances in Smart phone technology but also in the operating systems that enabled users to access the web from any mobile device that was capable of using WIFI. The question here is whether or not instructional design has responded by modifying its standard template to meet the new challenges of upskilling employees that now must be self-directed? This means that the standard of presenting content to be absorbed by the employee will not lead to sustained, engagement and learning that translates to better performance in the workplace. Cutting edge instructional design must take the whole of idea of sustained engagement seriously because the former reinforcements provided by the trainer may not be available in an online environment. Two key considerations are that feedback from actions taken by an employee must be immediate and must show that the feedback directs and builds upon what the employee is learning.
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Given the growing complexity of work and the increasing degree of stress in a Covid 19 work environment, the use of AI now goes from the drawing board into the prime time of people's lives. Obviously, Covid 19 has resulted in AI technology being harnessed to help deal with future dealings with the pandemic. The predictions for application to the business environment are fascinating as shown in this YouTube presentation.

This is especially important if the work and upskilling that they must do, must be done almost totally online. In the 21st century we have seen the growth of what has been termed "smart devices". New homes now have the option of being made into what is termed "smart homes" where many traditional tasks in the home are made easier due to the interface of Artificial Intelligence. Even our automobiles have now been enhanced with smart technology. We have seen the development of such technologies as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Smart Assistant and Microsoft's Corona whose main goal for people that use them is to reduce the need for people to do time consuming repetitive tasks. An example of a simple application is a robotic personal assistant named "Alfred" .You can readily see that even something as simple as this, in turn, frees them up for more creative uses of their time. The caveat here is to make sure it is clear who is the master and who is the servant in the relationship and most importantly, to protect individual privacy against people on the web seeking to obtain personal information. Here we also see the potential for a new type of ongoing intelligent assistant who in fact not only functions as a go to resource at the point of work but also becomes an ongoing "intelligent mentor" who aids in the upskilling of the employee. This intelligent assistant can be called up at times that fit the individual's daily schedule. One company in the forefront of developing human like AI intelligent assistants and mentors is Lucid AI. Looking at the business success stories using their technology should give inspiration to very human instructional designers.

Implications for e-Learning Instructional Design

In order to think about how to create cutting edge instructional design that harnesses technology to meet the demands of a Covid 19 and Post-Covid19 environment, it is important to identify, in practical terms, what problems instructional design should be able to address. Devlin Peck gives some very practical insights in a recent presentation shown below:

Once you identify which problems need focus and set your objectives, the next question is how do you build, collaborative, interactive learning experiences that capitalize on the fact that employees will need to be able to group, network effectively with others and then form task focused teams totally online. Learning experiences that make them the drivers of their own upskilling runs contrary to previous frameworks that emphasized the "sage on the stage approach" where the dissemination of content was the main goal. In this new framework, the "mentor on the side" leads to the employees taking charge of their learning. An example of a learning experience that supports this type of framework is what is called the "interactive, immersive video". One example of this type of approach is by a company called Conducttr. In their approach, employees individually or as team take on roles in a simulation where their decisions affect the outcome for the problem or task that they are assigned. In this approach, there are two main advantages:

• The situation gives them immediate feedback from the decisions they make without employees feeling that there will be negative consequences for their decisions that affect their job or the task. In other words, it is non-threatening.
• It is truly a learning situation where employees can re-think decisions and try different approaches.

Conducttr's demos give instructional designers a taste in how they can re-shape their training designs that not only reflect the changed environment brought on by the Covid 19 pandemic and capitalize on new technologies that are becoming part of the training and learning environment since it can inspire ID's to design very specific organization focused interactive immersive videos.

One final and very personal implication is the need to build in smart security for employees who will be accessing their personal learning tasks at home or on the road. Here we are not just talking about virus and malware protection. We are talking about identity and product development security for employees working off site. A recent article titled: "The dark web in 2021: Should enterprises be worried?"(Feb.2021) is an important eye-opener, especially for business organizations that believe that it could never happen to them.

In this difficult and stressful world due to the Covid 19 pandemic, our employees are our greatest assets and we want them to be real stakeholders in the future health and success of our business organizations. It is not revising our branding or the technology alone that will make the important differences but the bottom line is the human element and how we inspire them to be dedicated to their own learning and its advancement. Real innovation can not be achieved without the human element engaged with a purpose and zeal to improve their performance.