Are business requirements bull**** in learning design as well?

Saw this via Sachendra yesterday, a link to an article and discussion which should be required reading for anyone involved in the design of anything, or anyone who has thought about starting their own business.

I don’t wish to spoil the magic of it by going on about it too much here - I find it very difficult to find the right words to describe what I want or need in terms of learning design, but I know when I see something that doesn’t work for me or something that does - but that’s after its been designed and the chances are that its a bit of one thing and a bit of another thing - not a complete package that can be nicely defined with using a device, tool, system, hardware, software, open-source, free etc. Its very difficult as a human being if you say - I need this - then someone asks you to explain what that is exactly - well I find it difficult anyway!

And in 2008 we have a whole bunch of tools which we can use for a bit of this and a bit of that, but does that necessarily mean we learn better, if we weren’t exactly sure what we wanted in the first place and maybe how we wanted to learn - I think human beings are so random and if you ask people the same question on two different occasions you are likely to get two different answers depending on their circumstances / context etc.

Say you wanted to learn Flash i.e. I might want to learn Flash because I saw a really cool Flash animation and decided I wanted to be able to do those. Or I want to learn Flash because its a useful skill to have in learning technology related roles. Both of these are pretty vague though. How is a designer of learning and maybe in 2008 that is designing for myself, going to understand what I want before I start? I know I like messing around with stuff but ask me to define exactly what I mean by that….

Continuing with Flash for second, I might be able to spend some time learning how to make a ball bounce across a stage, work out how the Flash timeline works, understand the different file formats but is that taking me towards my goal in the best possible way and at the best possible speed? I might do this by following tutorials, or joining a Flash group / network, looking at blogs, wikis etc but is there any guarantee that the amount of time I spend doing this is helping me learn in the best way possible, am I asking the right questions of myself, to others, am I finding out what I need to know in order to move me forward? Is it exciting learning about this, am I being entertained with what I am seeing and hearing on the screen - does it look cool, is it making me laugh, can I find any connection with it to any of my previous experiences, anything I am interested in on a personal level and so on?

Think about the article if you just read it - did you feel connected to it, did it relate to you on a personal level, what bits and why….

Or the design of learning management systems, VLEs, learning content management systems, electronic performance support systems that repeatedly try to fit the needs of as many people as possible - how much time is spent with people asking whether they really wanted a system in the first place - rather than the what is it you are trying to do with accessing and organising learning, is a system of any kind a good solution? And if you have decided that its useful for companies to have systems, you go and ask a bunch of people what they want to do with it, what are the chances of you finding out what really works for them before you release the product? Where do you compromise? Why do you compromise?

Does this mean that analysis and design is a waste of time?

As previously mentioned - why not go and ask other people at Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 which is in a few weeks time, Jay/George/Tony are posting updates about this so if you haven’t already registered, why not stroll across to the site and sign up.

This entry was posted on 31/10/2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under design, eLearning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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