Performance Support and Our New Content Habits

One of the clear winners from the accelerating rate oftechnological change is performance support (PS). Not so much because of thetechnology itself, but because of what this rate of technological change isdoing to content. Our new state of mobility has created demand for shortercontent lengths and personalized learning experiences, and this is leading tothe creation of content that fills gaps in the learning content continuum, gapsthat form in learning initiatives between instructor-led training, module-basedeLearning, and performance support.

When we look at content across a landscape of changingtechnologies and the new behaviors they produce, we see trends in general areshifting toward the long-held tenets of performance support: content is beingcontextualized for the learner’s environment, device, and moment of need; it’s becomingshorter in length; and it’s being made more easily accessible.

Our content habits

Media providers successfully compete for our attentionacross increasing numbers of devices and media channels by offering smallerpieces of content that deliver quicker payoffs to the viewer. With the level ofsearch technologies and digital curation tools available today, content that ischunked into shorter lengths and made more interactive loses unnecessary bulk andbecomes easier and quicker to find. Today, we walk around with yesterday’smainframes in our pockets, connecting instantly to a world of answers. And we’vedeveloped new habits for finding information we need when we need it. Thesehabits have followed us into the workplace, potentially resulting in a performancesupport renaissance, of sorts, where practically any worker can now be a know-it-all.

But while accessing much of the world’s information from theworkplace can have an impact on business, it’s not always an impact for thebetter. Learning departments face challenges in creating and structuring performancesupport solutions that offer the best possible, most up-to-date content on asubject that is available at the moment someone needs it. And these solutions needto remain integrated with broader training initiatives while supporting learners’device and environment preferences.

In next-generation performance support solutions, includingadaptive and personalized learning technologies, we’re beginning to see withgreater frequency the effects social media are having in enabling learners toevolve from passive media consumers to active contributors; we’re seeing contentcreated through collaboration among learners as well as content curated inpartnership between performance support audiences and their learningdepartments. As adaptive and personalized learning technologies allow us to tagspecific pieces of content with an increasing taxonomy of meta data, thosepieces of content become discoverable within performance support systems thatinstill in their users an engaging sense of serendipity.

Our content habits are trending in the direction ofperformance support, and at the same time, our device and environmentpreferences are pushing performance support solutions to slip timelyinformation more seamlessly into our workflows.

PS content and mobility

There is little disagreement that HTML5 and the browser havebecome the mainstream enterprise application development environment, asGartner documented in their top-10 strategic technology trends last year (seethe references at the end of this article).

As such, the interoperability between learning environments andwork environments continues to improve, blurring the lines between the two andfulfilling the notion posited over 15 years ago by Tony O’Driscoll, currently regionalmanaging director at Duke Corporate Education. “Training, as a distinctfunction,” he said in an ISPI publication, “will no longer be the primarylearning vehicle for many types of jobs” as workers instead use on-the-jobinformation systems.

Moreover, training initiatives are now designed with theassumption of mobile audiences. Because of the hyper-portability of tablets andsmartphones, mobile devices are used more often and in more places than PCs,according to Forrester Research. In 2014, mobile usage of the Internet exceededPC usage for the first time, as documented by Search Engine Watch. Untilrecently, mobile devices were treated as end points for learning, where today theyare key access points to a growing array of learning interactions. This opensup the playing field for performance support, allowing workers on the job toaccess multiple sources of useful just-in-time information.

The “single solution” eLearning module is a good example ofhow HTML5 and mobile devices have helped close gaps on the learning contentcontinuum while also giving workers the on-the-job content they need right whenthey need it. A single learning solution can be created as a 30- to 45-minuteformal learning module housed on the LMS and taken in one or more sittings,either on a computer or a tablet. The same learning module can be furthercontextualized to become a performance support tool when viewed on a smartphone.It’s the same module that appears on the computer and tablet, but it appearsdifferently. HTML5 media queries identify the size and orientation of thesmartphone screen and deliver only performance support content, eliminating assessmentscreens and gating, resizing images, replacing the navigation system, andreformatting text to create a sub-set of job-aid-only content. Now, when aworker on the job pulls out her smartphone to access the module, what isdelivered to her is a performance support app and not the entire formaltraining module.

Shorter how?

Shorter content doesn’t mean less content. In this new ageof learning—the big bang, if you will, a time of expanding learning ecosystems—learninghas seeded itself in practically every environment encountered by today’sworker. It has propagated beyond the LMS, beyond the classroom, and beyondperformance support tools. Successful content strategies must take into accountnot only traditional formal modalities and SME-generated content, but also ourincreased mobility; online collaboration and the content that is created there;and online community and content that is curated there. These shorter, particularpieces of information are each a small picture that when pieced together createthe mosaic of learning we idealize for the learner.

Assembling that mosaic is the key, and so we must look atperformance support both in terms of the many ways it can now be embedded intothe work process and how its content can now be curated and piped in frommultiple sources. Because performance support can be served up in increasingly newways, PS content strategy has gained a new priority in eLearning.

Successful managers of change

Learning managers will face significant challengesthroughout the remainder of the year as they endeavor to re-engineerperformance support content strategies across a landscape of rapidtechnological change. As organizations begin to apply mobile-first andcloud-first strategies to learning, the successful organization will remainfocused on a content-first approach in crafting performance support content forvarious media. This will require taking advantage of new media as they emergewithout allowing learning content to be eclipsed by them. And these contentstrategies will further scale to include not only traditional approaches, wherecontent is created to solve known problems, but also new approaches thatconnect learners to existing content through careful curation and that makethat content readily available on their various devices and in their chosenenvironments.

References

Gartner. “Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic TechnologyTrends for 2014.” 8 October 2013. https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603623

Tony O’Driscoll. AchievingDesired Business Performance: A Framework for Developing Human PerformanceTechnology in Organizations. International Society for PerformanceImprovement, 1999.

Gownder, J. P. “Tablets Hold Their Own—and Then Some—nWork-Related Application Usage.” Forrester Research. 28 March 2013. https://blogs.forrester.com/jp_gownder/13-03-28-tablets_hold_their_own_and_then_some_in_work_related_application_usage

Murtagh, Rebecca. “Mobile Now Exceeds PC: The Biggest ShiftSince the Internet Began.” Search Engine Watch. 8 July 2014. https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2353616/mobile-now-exceeds-pc-the-biggest-shift-since-the-internet-began#

Editor’s note

The Performance Support Symposiumoffers you an opportunity to explore the strategies, practices, andtechnologies being used to deliver 21^st-centuryperformance support. As the speed of business continues to accelerate, theability to deliver information to workers quickly, when and where they need it,is becoming critical. This business need, combined with the increasing numberof technologies that enable support to be embedded directly into the flow ofwork, has fueled a renewed interest in performance support in the workplace.

Join the conversation June 10 – 12 inAustin, Texas, and discover how you can enhance your training efforts byputting information in the workflow!