Jay Cross helps people work and live smarter. Jay is the Johnny Appleseed of informal learning. He wrote the book on it. He was the first person to use the term eLearning on the web. He has challenged conventional wisdom about how adults learn since designing the first business degree program offered by the University of Phoenix.
The next morning, we took the bus to the Mens Higher College of Technology. When his Excellency and his entourage strode into the auditorium, everyone rose. Miss World reappeared, as did the Bollywood movie star. Twelve cameramen captured every move with Nikons and videocams. Fresh flowers abounded. (Forgive my changing verb tense here; I wrote most of this as it happened, as I would for a live blog.)
His Excellency gave the opening keynote to several hundred of us in the auditorium of the Mens Higher College of Technology. A good online education must be a good education. Some believe that the greatest contribution of eLearning is the improvements that carry over to F2F instruction. The sheikh is reciting the best practices of eLearning interactivity, great faculty, combining F2F and distance ed, support services.
Next came a ceremonial contract signing on the main stage with ICL and Tata. The photographers swarmed. His Excellency departed immediately thereafter to go falcon hunting with the leader of Pakistan.
The shape of accreditation today
Dr. Mary Peace Lynn, The Center for Quality Assurance in International Education, on quality and assessment. Growth is the catalyst for external quality assurance agencies. Accreditation is her focus. I appreciate that accreditation is important, but its not a thrilling story. After all, higher education is borderless. Professions are globalizing. Countries need to keep pace. Dr Lynn was clearly upset that His Excellency put a higher priority on his hunting trip than on staying for her message.
IBMs Richard Straub is up next. He is director Learning Solutions, IBM EMEA, and Chairman of the eLearning Industry Group. The definition of eLearning is expanding. Now we are doing new things rather than automating the old ones. Informal learning is becoming more important. Simultaneously, the technology is evolving. There are many moving targets. Tech is the smarter challenge; the real challenge is change management and breaking free of our old habits.
A Digital Literacy Standard is required today, says David Carpenter, inventor of the Internet Driving License. Digital literacy is todays 3 Rs. ECDL has proposed a digital literacy standard. The skills include word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, database essentially the Microsoft Office Suite.
The official conference sugar cubes
On the way back from the Gala Dinner last night, John Hedburg and I had grabbed the front row on the bus. On the 90-minute ride from Dubai back to Abu Dhabi, John told me about his work with fifth- and seventh-grade math teachers. So many math examples have no relationships to students lives. If 12 boys make up 32% of the class and 4 more join, making them 40% of the class, how many students are in the class? No one ever encounters a question like that in the real world. Better to teach from an example of figuring out which cell phone plan to choose.
Johns message is about mixing marketing and learning. Keep the audience in mind. I wish the next speaker had factored this into his presentation which was all me-me-me how-cool-we-are, with little empathy for the listeners.
Bernie Luskin says the Internet, population demographics, bandwidth, etc everything changes everything. Convergence happening everywhere. The issue is What needs to change? And What needs to remain the same? Most things last. 70% – 90% of what we deal with is the old stuff. Given his topic of learning psychology, it was ironic to have Bernie fell into the me-me-me trap, listing the names of what topics we need to know but dont have time to talk about today.
Curt Bonk takes the stage in a Dr. Evil costume. Then Mini-Me appears. Dr Evil explodes ten myths:
The Emirati seated next to me pointed out that the speakers all point to great content, great faculty, and great tech as the golden path. However, he thinks these are non-issues: money can fix them. The problem is the people. They are not motivated, in large measure because the online institutions of higher learning are not accredited. Its ironic to discover that at a conference on eLearning, degrees issued by online institutions here are not seen as legitimate credentials when it comes to qualifying for jobs.
Bonk appears as Merlin. His surveys of corp and higher ed finds both sectors in favor of eLearning. Sometimes its supplemental. Certificate programs are going up. Short degrees are popular.
to be continued
Early the following evening, the speakers boarded a bus for the 90-minute trip to Dubai for the Gala Dinner hosted by Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chancellor, Higher Colleges of Technology.
A student film awards ceremony including Diana Hayden (former Miss World) and Mahima Chowdhury (Indian movie star) was part of the evenings entertainment. This all took place at the Madinat Jumeirah Hotel, an awe-inspiring, mammoth hotel complex that includes a towering building in the shape of a dhows sail. Several hundred representatives of academic institutions and tech corporations shuffled into the lobby, some lamenting that the immense bar served no alcohol, this being a State-funded affair.
The evening included a stunning, over-the-top laser show, a fellow who artfully scaled linen streamers to the ceiling, and the film awards. We all rose as the Sheikh and his entourage departed after the entertainment, and soon heaping platters of food appeared on our tables. Sad to say, no camel or goat.
Arriving home after midnight, we agreed that this had been a unique opener for the next days sessions.
The eMerging eLearning blog has moved here.
Yesterday the URL abu_dhabi began generating an error message that says the _ character is no longer allowed in URLs. It turns out this is a problem at the Rotana Beach Hotel server level but for all I know, it’s a wider protocol within the UAE.
The blog we created in yesterday’s workshop is here. The template is now functioning properly. Feel free to add a comment. Email me if you would like author privileges.
This morning I wandereded through the Abi Dhabi Mall, mostly closed since this is Friday, and Friday is the Muslim Sunday. The Rotana Beach Hotel is luxuriously appointed but the beach is a tiny strip of sand, overlooking an island that appears to be made of salt. The lobby (left in the photo) is domed.
This bulls-eye is an immense work under the dome, about 50′ over the center of the lobby.
Everything here is new. In fact, twenty-year old buildings are sometimes torn down to make way for new buildings. The present Abu Dhabi and the UAE were formed in 1971.
It is hot here. HOT. Travel books warn you not to come here in this season. Many Emiratis flee the city for homes in the hills during the hot, high-humidity months. On the flight in, I read in the International Herald-Trib that the temperature in Abu Dhabi was 115°, the hottest city listed. The rare times I go outside, I walk very slowly. My pal Curt Bonk is out running for an hour at this moment; I would die first.
42° = 108° 31° = 88°
Every Friday, his Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan invites a group to lunch at his place. Around noon today, a dozen of us presenters for the upcoming conference piled into a bus to the palace, where we joined several dozen others in the majlis, the ceremonial meeting space. The Sheikh arrived and shook hands with everyone in turn. I gave him a copy of Implementing eLearning and my forthcoming Informal History of eLearning. Shortly thereafter we filed into a banquet hall where tables were set with dozens of giant platters and a hundred smaller dishes containing tabouleh, fresh dates, hummos, sweet cakes, and more. The tradition is to set the table with more food than one can imaginably eat and give the leftovers to the poor.
My young friend here helpled me undertand what I was putting into my mouth. That’s camel with rice in front of us. Following the example of the gentlemen across the table, I tore off some meat with my right hand, keeping my left under the table.
The sheikh provided silverware, but most of us preferred to follow local custom. You grab a piece of meat and some rice, smoosh it together with your fingers, and pop it into your mouth. This complicates taking photographs, for you don’t wash off your hand until the conclusion of the meal.
Unlike the Moroccans, who wear a variety of styles and colors, the Emiratis stick to one sort of outfit.
Men wear an elegant, ankle-length white shirt called a dishdasha. (I want one of these!) Women wear a black, long-sleeved gown called a kandura; all cover their heads, most cover part of their faces, and a goodly number cover everything but their eyes.
This is a platter of goat. It was tender and falling off the bone. I had several helpings. Goat is a little gamier tasting than camel.
Waiters took our plates and returned with a portion of camel hump from the dish in front of His Excellency. The hump is the choicest part of the camel; it is tender and without fat.
This is another photo of the platter of goat, this time from directly overhead. Look about 3/4 of the way down, just right of center. Those are teeth. The white item below is the goat’s jaw. If you’re good at anatomy, you can probably pick out the outline of the entire head.
You may wonder why there are no women in these photos. It’s because none were invited. Lunch with the sheikh, like most social activities here, is a guy thing. At the Women’s College, I understand that distance-ed technology is often used by male instructors to teach a group of women in the next room.
I can’t say that I understand the sexual segregation here (not that I understand American Christianity either). Abu Dhabi is not a primitive place. Television, magazines, advertisements, and movies are jam-packed with scantily-clad, beautiful females. The women tourists are more discrete than in Southern France, but provocative none the less. How can this not overturn the fiction that socializing with the opposite sex is too tempting to handle?
After supper and a pleasant rendezvous with friends at the Meridien, just down the street, four of us trundled over to the Abu Dhabi Men’s College for Curt Bonk’s class with his grad students in Bloomington, Indiana. Since Indiana’s about eleven hours ahead of Abu Dhabi on the clock, our session went from 11:00 pm to 2:15 am our time. Paul Mace, Tayeb Kamali (director of the Men’s College), Vance Stevens, Stan Knight, Curt, and I conversed with the students over an ISDN line and PictureTel set-up. I’ll be back with photos and anecdotes but now I’m off to a late breakfast.
Capt. Bonk and sailor during The Perfect Storm
Bloomington on the left, Abh Dhabi on the right
Jay and Vance Stevens
I arrived in Abu Dhabi this evening. I left Berkeley at 8:00 am Wednesday, fly from SFO to Philly at 10:00 am, flew from Philly to London-Gatwick, and from London to Dubai. A private car took me and another speaker at e-Merging e-Learning on a 90-minute freeway ride past an incredible number of mosques and skycrapers. Thursday just became Friday here; back in Berkeley it’s still early Thursday afternoon.
The United Arab Emirates is the size of Austria. It’s on the Persian Gulf, above the straight of Hormuz, between Oman on the south and Qatar on the north. I think we flew over both Iran and Iraq to get here; I may be wrong about that. The indigenous Emiratis number less than a million, about the population of San Francisco. Expatriates from the UK, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and a number of other countries make up the bulk of the population.
I vaguely remember when a group of small Arab states came together to form the U.A.E. about thirty years ago. Since then, this country (that sits atop 9.4% of the world’s proven oil reserves) has built an awe-inspiring collection of highways, highrise buildings, beautiful houses, irrigation systems, and more. The enlightened Sheikh Zayed constructed a gigantic port and oil accounts for less than half of the GNP. You simply have to see this place to believe it.
Wow! Access to our deepest capacity to sense and shape the future. Right up my alley. By inspiring authors, too.
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers
Unfortunately, I’ll probably never find out how Peter and Joe predict the world may change, for they are asking $40 for the book, and that’s outside my price range for unknowns. I may still be smarting from giving up trying to get through The Fifth Discipline despite several attempts. Guess I’ll have to wait for the Presence Fieldbook.
You didn’t need a crystal ball to see this coming. Five years ago, business gurus showed us that profits come to organizations that focus on core and outsource the rest. Don’t do your own payroll; don’t take your own garbage to the landfill; don’t assemble your trucks; stick to the knitting. Outsource! (And I don’t mean “offshore” or “near-shore,” although that could be the choice.)
On Friday I talked with Chris, Sam, and Heather at Intrepid Learning Solutions. They are dropping the L-guide brand that got them started in order to pour all their energy into learning outsourcing. (They manage training for Boeing. See Brad and Heather’s presentation to Emergent Learning Forum last month to grok the dynamics of their business.) They’ve grown from 10 to 80 FTE by concentrating on outsourcing. Forming a long-term relationship takes a while: it requires the sort of trust that only experience can provide. You take baby steps (“out-tasking”) to begin with. As I mentioned to Sam, “You gotta date before you decide to get married.”
Emergent Learning Forum dedicated its July meeting to the topic. SRI Learning on Demand is issuing a report on it. Bersin & Associates’ latest report is titled The Economics of Outsourcing Training Technology and Operations. T+D will be publishing a series on outsourcing. ASTD says it will effect 50% of major training departments.
Accenture, IBM, and even my Workflow Institute talk about outsourcing learning as if it were already here. So far, I see more smoke than fire. The fire’s on the way; IT, call centers, HR, and finance are being outsourced. However, earlier this year, when I asked Accenture for the names of clients who’d outsourced all training to them, I only got one name: Avaya University.
All of which leads me to a release from KnowledgePool. “One of the best-known names in the training and development industry has chosen to focus on its core capability of providing outsourced learning services…. As part of its new focus, the company has launched an ‘outsourcing menu’ – a list of training functions and projects that it can manage on behalf of clients”
“Outsourcing is an attractive, low risk strategy that enables an organisation to increase capacity, reduce administration costs and accommodate fluctuating workloads,” said Rod Edwards, CEO. Low risk? This is the opposite of the message from Intrepid (start small, get to know one another) or Accenture (look for a business partner, not a vendor). One person’s outsourcing is another person’s out-tasking.
Since outsourcing is so hip, Internet Time Group is getting into the game. Need a report? A white paper? Advice? They are all on the menu here. Tell us what you need. We might be better at it that you are. We’ll in-source it for you.
Isn’t RSS wonderful? Actually, I should ask “Aren’t webfeeds wonderful?” because Amy Gahrain’s term describes what we get better than any TLA (three-letter acronym).
This morning, Bloglines led me to a refreshing and informative article by Stephen Downes in College Quarterly. I’m preparing for a conference where my audience will have more educators than business people, so I was scouring the literature when I came upon Stephen’s From Classrooms to Learning Environments: A Midrange Projection of E-Learning Technologies.
When a new technology appears on the scene, it starts out performing an old task in new ways. Hence, we had the “horseless carriage” before it evolved into the automobile.
Horse putting car
Stephen points out how the electronic classroom is evolving into something entirely different, the learning environment. The good aspects of the learning automobile, its radial tires and microprocessor controls for example, are shared, reusable content, syndication, and personalization. Just as the automobile no longer has a way to hook up the horses just in case, the learning environment often exists outside of the classroom.
The transition is not without risks, among them commodification, mistaking a part for the whole, and creating a 24×7 hell for learners. (In my shorthand, this is focusing on workflow while leaving out the flow.)
Stephen’s article is a keeper, so much so that I’m going to experiment with keeping a cache of articles worth revisiting.
Welcome to Jay’s hangout on the web! There’s a lot underneath the hood here. I’ve been blogging more than a dozen years. Go to “coordinates” for a list of what to check out and how to get in touch. Don’t miss the Important Stuff collection.
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