Marc My Words: eLearning vs. eKnowledge

We’ve all experienced bad eLearning (unfortunately, too much of it) andwe all know that just using the latest and greatest eLearning tools doesn’tnecessarily make bad eLearning any better; it just makes it more efficient. Theargument goes, and rightfully so, that it’s the quality of the instructionaldesign that really makes the difference.

But think about this: There’s a lot of content out there that we forcedinto an instructional (eLearning) paradigm when, in fact, it would have beenmore useful as well-designed information. Just because you can turn importantcontent into good instruction doesn’t mean you should.

What’s the problem?

The assumption that all content is best communicated in courses—classroom,online, or otherwise—is problematical. It can raise costs, take too much time,and can certainly limit the amount of content we can deliver to the workforce, leadingus to make possibly detrimental choices (“this content is in; this content isout,” or “these employees can take the course; these employees cannot”).

So I have an idea. Let’s divide eLearning into two distinct types ofdeliverables. We’ll call the first “eLearning,” like we always have, and we’llcall the second “eKnowledge.”

eLearning

Albert Einstein once said that he didn’t want to waste time learningthings he knew he could look up. Before deciding that you need eLearning, askyourself if the learner must remember or practice the content. If not, if it’sjust content that has to be referenced, you’re better off with eKnowledge(we’ll discuss that next).

But if you have a true instructional need—if your target audience must demonstrate that they have learned thecontent or that they can perform a task, eLearning can work for you. The restis pure instructional design savvy—organizing the learning, building meaningfulinteractions and practice, reinforcing the learning, assessing results, andproviding quality feedback. In such situations, a good eLearning tool willenable you to get your program out faster, and, as we all know, speed matters.

Of course, we can deceive ourselves into thinking we have a sound instructionalprogram when what we really have is just a lot of content. Unfortunately, thishappens mostly when we limit ourselves to putting slide presentations online,with or without narration, or when we simply record an instructor’s lecture andarchive it on a server for later viewing. Here, it is critical to ask not just ifthe content is correct, appropriate, complete, etc. (a whole otherconversation), but whether it accomplishes its instructional goals. Good onlinecontent—important content—may be valuable, but it may not require eLearning. Thisleads us to our other choice.

eKnowledge

Too often we take content best used as reference material and try tomake it into eLearning. Let’s acknowledge that a lot of what we publish—presentations,spreadsheets, documents, videos, podcasts, blogs, wikis, etc.—is information,not instruction. If we make this distinction, we accomplish three importantthings:

1. Weeliminate much of what we say is eLearning but is actually eKnowledge. Thisculls our course catalog, enabling a sharper focus on the truly importantinstructional products that are offered.
2. Weapply a different set of tools and strategies to make eKnowledge assetsvaluable. We chunk the content in ways that make it more digestible, especiallyin short spurts, and we devote considerable effort to enabling the right amountof content to be found by the right people at the moment of need. We focus ontagging, keyword searching, and other techniques to make the information easilyand appropriately accessible. We teach how to find, interpret, evaluate, anduse the content, but we do less teaching of the content itself.
3. Mostimportantly, we change metaphors as we move from online courses to online libraries.Once this paradigm shift takes hold, we can treat eKnowledge assets differentlyfrom eLearning assets, focusing on knowledge management systems in addition tolearning management systems, for example.

We do not degrade the importance of training or eLearning (instruction)by embracing eKnowledge; we merely expand our toolkit, our capabilities, andour options.

Should we redefine eLearning?

 Some people define eLearning as all-inclusive. Knowledge management,performance support, social learning, and other approaches represent anexpansion of this single domain. It feels comfortable, but perhaps we should goin a different direction, limiting the definition of eLearning toinstruction-focused solutions and using eKnowledge (or another term if you like)to include the information side of the house. The line between the two willcertainly be a little mushy, and we might debate where a particular solutionmight best fit, but that debate might also be very useful and clarifying. Whatdo you think?

When I was in school, we had to memorize the periodic table of theelements. It was pretty easy way back then (I was in school so long ago, therewere only about a dozen known elements), but I do wish we’d had an eLearningprogram to help me along. Today, with 118 elements, no one learns the periodictable anymore—they reference it. What they do learn is how to use it to solvemore complex problems. What was once a good candidate for eLearning is now abetter candidate for eKnowledge. And we can reinvest the instructional timesaved in more complex—and more critical—learning activities.