BOB LITTLE – CRYSTAL BALLING WITH LEARNNOVATORS

ABOUT BOB LITTLE (Senior Partner, Bob Little Press & PR)

Bob Little is a writer, commentator and publicist who works globally, specializing in the corporate online learning industry. His interests include singing and sport – notably cricket. He is also a Liveryman in theWorshipful Company of Carmen and a Freeman of the City of London.

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW SERIES:

‘Crystal Balling with Learnnovators’ is a thought-provoking interview series that attempts to gaze into the future of e-learning. It comprises stimulating discussions with industry experts and product evangelists on emerging trends in the learning landscape.

Join us on this exciting journey as we engage with thought leaders and learning innovators to see what the future of our industry looks like

THE INTERVIEW:

1. Learnnovators: Hi Bob. As the Senior Partner of Bob Little Press & PR, you have been providing business-to-business public relations (PR) services to many organizations in the ‘learning’ and ‘learning technologies’ industry for years. How has the journey been so far? How successful do you think you have been in transforming your clients’ brands around the world?

Bob: It’s not really for me to say how successful we’ve been in ‘transforming our clients’ brands’. That’s for our clients to say. One test of how well they think we do for them is how long they stay as clients – bearing in mind that the ‘industry norm’ is about three years. On average – over the last 25 years – our clients tend to stay with us for about seven years.

That measure, however, masks clients’ intentions. Some run their businesses as lifestyle businesses, while others aim to grow the business to the point where it can be acquired by others. In this latter case, we’ve helped generate publicity that attracts a buyer – but, in the process, ends our association with that client. Examples include helping the US-based LMS provider, Pathlore, to be acquired by SumTotal Systems and helping the UK-based learning content producer, Skillchange Systems, to be acquired by Vega (which, itself, was later acquired by an Italian company).

When it comes to promoting brands in the corporate online learning technologies industry, the key thing to remember is that you’re promoting a business-to-business brand. This means that traditional, high-profile business-to-consumer media outlets, such as national newspapers and television, are rarely interested in using your stories and, even if they run these stories, the result is an ego boost for the client; not an increase in sales enquiries.

2. Learnnovators: In this age where PR has greatly transformed with the power of social media networking, how significant is it still for organizations to rely on external professional PR services such as yours vis-à-vis building in-house PR capability to build brand and customer relationships?

Bob: You’re right that social media has transformed the way that PR works – and it’s increased its effectiveness immeasurably, at least in the business-to-business sector. However, the availability of – and having access to – technology tends to make organisations think that they don’t need any particular, specially developed communications skills in order to ‘do PR’ in-house. Moreover, their access to today’s technology means that they think they don’t need an external PR consultant to help them. This is an especially attractive option when economic times are hard.

Of course, they can do their PR in-house. They can manipulate their accounts to show that in-house PR costs very little when compared with employing an external PR consultant. There are only two major downsides to this strategy. First, if you spend time doing your own PR, it means that you’re not spending time doing what your business is supposed to be doing – so you’re less efficient (and profitable) than you could be. Second, it will take you time and effort to learn what works in PR – even assuming you know the basics in the first place. Consequently, you’re going to learn by (expensive and time-consuming) trial and error. After 25 years in the business, I’m still learning things about PR. There’s lots to be learned! So, in the end, it might be more effective and efficient to get the help of a professional whom you trust (and that’s a key phrase) rather than do it yourself.

3. Learnnovators: You have been on a mission to help organizations “tell their stories to the people who need to hear them”. As we know, stories are a powerful means of communication, and today, storytelling has become an important factor for organizations not just to flourish, but even to survive. As a communication specialist, what are your thoughts on using storytelling as a tool for effective PR? How do you look at this quality evolving to being one of the core skills of public relations in future, not just for external PR agencies such as yours but also for internal communication departments of organizations?

Bob: Every piece of communication is a story of some kind – otherwise no one is interested in it. Every press release tells a story – preferably, it tells the whole story within the first three paragraphs or 150 words. Anything else in it merely amplifies that. Case studies set out a (business) challenge, how that challenge was overcome and the results that have accrued. Every feature article tells a story. Even opinion articles tell a story in a way because they set out a personal perspective on a particular issue.

So, I agree that storytelling is an effective PR tool. However, you can’t equate a ‘story’ with a ‘fiction’. The stories you tell in PR have to be factual and be able to be substantiated. As Bob Little Press & PR is keen to point out, the art of successful PR is to tell the truth as you would want it told.

4. Learnnovators: As we understand, for over 20 years, you have been writing about corporate e-learning and technology-related subjects, and have been keeping a tab on the global e-learning market trends (corporate sector). What are the industry trends? How encouraging (or discouraging) is the scenario? What does future learning (organizational learning in general and e-learning in specific) look like?

Bob: Apparently, Global Industry Analysts, Inc has predicted that the global e-learning market is going to reach US$109.65bn this year. If that’s what you want to believe, then please believe it. However, my feeling is that these sorts of reports emanating from the USA don’t appreciate the difference between the USA and the rest of the world and, so, are over-optimistic about levels of demand outside the USA. Besides which, I’m not sure what definition of e-learning Global Industry Analysts are using. So I’d be cautious about their predictions and would revise the size of the world’s e-learning market downwards from that figure.

Last year, Docebo – the Italy-based Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Enterprise learning management system provider – published the results of its researches into the worldwide e-learning market. Entitled ‘E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014 – 2016’, the report reveals, among other things, that:

• The worldwide market for self-paced e-learning, said to be US$35.6bn in 2011, is estimated to be growing, overall, at some 7.6% a year – making it some US$48bn about now. That’s some way off from being US$109bn.

• The Asian market is showing the highest annual growth rate – of 17.3%; followed by Eastern Europe (16.9%), Africa (15.2%), and Latin America (14.6%).

• The market for learning management systems has exceeded growth predictions in recent years, currently being worth some US$2.55bn worldwide.

Also last year, Learning Light published a major report, called ‘A Review of the e-learning markets of the UK, EU and China 2014’. Based in the UK, Learning Light is one of the few organisations in Europe that publishes regular research on the e-learning market. Its research is used by Governments to inform economic policy; by universities and education establishments; by journalists; by investors evaluating new opportunities and by other research organisations.

I was one of four authors who worked on The Learning Light report, which revealed that, in 2012/13 – the most recent year for which figures are available – the combined annual value of the e-learning market in the 20 largest European states was just over £2.5bn (nearly US$4bn). This shows substantial growth when compared with a comparable figure of some £2bn (US$3bn) for these top 20 nations in 2009/10.

In terms of individual national market size, the UK, France and Germany lead the way but the largest percentage growth in national markets between 2009/10 and 2012/13 occurred in Slovakia, Poland and Italy (admittedly from modest base figures). Each country has its own story to tell but, with the exceptions of Ireland and Greece – which have their own economic issues – the e-learning market grew, over the period, in each of the markets studied. The Learning Light Report doesn’t include the EU’s most recent members: Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, and Croatia, which joined in 2013.

Among the trends identified in the Learning Light Report are that countries on the edge of Europe, which have joined the EU relatively recently tend to attract a great deal of interest from Brussels and, consequently, tend to receive substantial EU funds to help develop their economies – and this includes the area of learning and development, especially online learning initiatives. Allied to this is the increasing availability and take-up of technology in these countries – making more learning materials available via the internet, delivered to mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers. Other trends noted in the Report – as they relate to the larger national markets for online learning technologies – include:

• In the four years since 2008/09, corporate training expenditure fell. For example, there was a decline in overall training expenditure in the UK from a high point, in 2008, of £5.157bn (US$ 7.7bn) to £5.076bn (US$7.6bn) in 2009, with a slow recovery to £5.100bn (US$7.65bn) in 2012.

• Online learning has grown by displacing more traditional training programmes.

• Learning Light’s qualitative research indicates a change in the nature of how the learning and development or training budget is managed. Budgets are moving from learning and development (L&D) departments to operational departments. In addition, budgets are becoming dynamic and responsive to business needs. They tend to be allocated, often from board level, based on operational performance.

• Learning Light has noted a revival in the learning management system (LMS) market since 2010 – largely due to a fall in the perceived cost of LMS ownership as well as technological advances in today’s LMSs. It believes that Cloud-hosted solutions will continue to make LMSs more attractive to the small-and-medium enterprise market. It argues that, coupled with the increasing sophistication of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing models, LMS usage levels will continue to grow.

• Both ‘apps’ and videos have become more common terms in the e-learning world over the past three or four years. Apps, in particular, is a term used widely as shorthand for delivering e-learning to tablet devices and smartphones. Apps have been the drivers for Mobile Learning (m-learning).

• The exponential growth of video-based content on the internet has become one of the greatest changes and challenges to how we live and learn. As a result, the new discipline of curation has emerged.

• The emergence of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has proved challenging, not just for learning and development departments but also for organisations’ entire information and communication technology (ICT) policies. BYOD is growing in importance as learners take greater responsibility for their own learning.

• From BYOD it’s a short step to Your Own Device At Home (YODAH) – a place where many of us now work and learn. In reality this has been part of mainstream working practice for many knowledge workers since the 1990s.

• The parallel concept of Bring Your Own Content (BYOC) has also been suggested and, as mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – have circumvented corporate firewalls, the ability for learners to source, select and consume their own learning materials when and where they choose is becoming a reality. Moreover, by using curation tools such as Twitter, Yammer, Skype and other texting tools, as well as Facebook, social/informal learning is progressing at a pace.

• Open content is a growing feature of the market, as people search for information, knowledge and learning that they need in order to complete a specific task. Here, the YouTube solution, unattributed paper or Wikipedia are often the chosen learning resource. Managing and attributing the appropriate degree of worth to this mass of data is a major challenge facing the learner or information seeker. This is where curation – a skill which has emerged in the last four years – becomes valuable.

• The rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs) – and open content in particular – has been an interesting development in the past four years. MOOCs have been generating huge interest and controversy, particularly in higher education. The key uncertainty is how these MOOC-related entities will ‘monetise’. However, there are some interesting models and eco-systems emerging around MOOCs.

• Subsets of MOOC terminology are already forming – with the advent of small private online courses (SPOCs), synchronous massive online courses (SMOCs) and, perhaps more interestingly, the more defined and certainly different vocational open online course (VOOC). VOOCs are designed and trademarked by Virtual College to offer a career seeker a vocational learning experience to help in choosing a vocational career pathway.

• Social networking and social learning has grown immensely since 2012. From being a term used exclusively in academic circles (around 2010), ‘social learning’ has made steady progress. Social learning has been given a huge boost by such things as Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Google (known by the acronym, ‘FLATMAGS’). These American behemoths are where, increasingly, people live significant portions of their working, learning and leisure lives.

• So, over the past three or four years, we’ve seen the growing commercialisation of education; the blurring of boundaries between ‘education’ and ‘vocational learning’, and a trend towards individuals taking responsibility for their own learning. All these developments have been brought about by readily available advances in technology.

Becoming ‘mainstream’ within learning and development are:

• Gamification – which is not so much to do with playing games in the process of acquiring knowledge and skill as about ‘badges’, ‘points’ and internal league tables
• Multi-device learning: mobile learning, responsive web design and learning apps and HTML5
• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• Virtual classrooms
• Cloud-based learning
• LCMSs
• Social learning and curation

In the near future, watch out for the growth of:

• Adaptive learning platforms
• Learning-as-a-Service (LaaS)
• Increasingly smart assessment
• Reconfigurable learning via reusable and interchangeable ‘gadgets’
• Bring Your Own Content (BYOC)
• MOOCs and VOOCs
• Analytics and learning record stores (LRS), along with the increasing influence of ‘big data’
• Tin Can Experience API (xAPI) – although, as yet, plenty of people are only talking lost about it. There are relatively few organisations actually using Tin Can.
• Other innovations, such as Google glasses and other ‘wearables’, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, IP-TVs and other consumer electronic devices, will increasingly be used for learning in ways that have yet to be fully defined.
• In addition, the case can be made for the likely rise of education technology (edtech) in a new ‘morphing’ space between education, learning, training, skills, competences and employment.
• At present, the market is under-innovated and is likely to change with investment, new technology – including the development of 4G and so on – as well as a belief, among investors and publishers, that what’s happened to the media is a portent of what will happen to education and learning.

Whether this is encouraging or discouraging is not for me to say. It depends on what products and services you’re offering in the market.

5. Learnnovators: Your book “Perspectives on Learning Technologies” carries some valuable insights on the many aspects of learning technologies, and is touted by many as an excellent source of reference for learning and development professionals to address challenges at their workplaces. You say, “The key to the book is that while times change; technologies change, and learning technologies change, people remain human.” How do you think things have changed since publishing of this book in 2012? How relevant would you say your views (in this book) still are in this age of advances in learning technologies?

Bob: I tried to write a book that looked at the application of online learning technologies from a human – not technology – angle, in the hope that it wouldn’t ‘date’. In general, I’d like to think that this is still true. The book deals with key issues that a buyer/ developer of learning materials needs to take into account when commissioning, compiling and communicating these materials to users. It also deals with tips and techniques relating to, for example, marketing issues, such as how to get both the senior executives and learners to be enthusiastic about what you’re doing. Technologies have changed since 2012 – and they continue to develop – but the human issues that are involved in learning, from motivation to marketing and relevance to results, never change.

6. Learnnovators: In the context of the recent acquisition of lynda.com by LinkedIn and its impact on corporate L&D, you say, “Learning and Development world is about to experience the development of the first viable model to ‘pull’ learning to an established worldwide audience…When this ‘pull’ model of learning is in place – probably by the end of 2015 –we should all see some real disruption in the traditional learning market.” What would be the impact of this “disruption” for corporate L&D, and what re-alignment would you suggest for L&D to remain relevant? Could you share your insights on these points with our readers please?

Bob: Traditionally, the whole training / learning world (not just that part relating to online learning technologies) has operated on the principle that someone thinks up some learning materials and then goes to find a market for those materials. This model where learning is ‘pushed’ to users has resulted in a highly fragmented – if also creative – market around the world.

If, on the other hand, you can sign up a large number – say between 2m and 4m – of learners first and then go to find the learning materials they need (supplying them online on a 24/7 basis, to take account of wherever the learners are in the world), then the advent of this ‘pull’ model of learning is bound to change the market’s dynamics. Moreover, signing up these learners enables you to service their lifelong learning needs – to help them get a job, keep a job and get the next job. That’s a major change in the market – and it’s happening now, through one, well-connected global organisation.

In the short term, this is unlikely to affect corporate L&D on an individual course-by-course basis but it will change how learners will expect to find and access the learning materials they need to help them in their careers.

7. Learnnovators: You are mainly known for publishing the annual lists of the “Top Ten Movers and Shakers” in the corporate e-learning world, covering the World, Europe, the UK and Asia-Pacific. We have been following these lists closely including the most recent one, “The sixth, annual, top ten e-learning movers and shakers”. You say that these ‘movers and shakers’ lists are compiled from a corporate online learning perspective, on the basis of a person’s perceived current ’influence‘ on the online learning industry. As the chairman of the judges for all of these lists, what makes you passionate about what you have been doing all these years? How would you look at the criticism about your approach of using a panel of ‘anonymous’ judges (in contrast to Malaysia’s Zaid Ali Alsagoff’s list which is ‘transparent’)?

Bob: The judges for the ‘movers and shakers’ lists – who’re based around the world – are keen to protect their anonymity because, that way, they can be as objective as possible in deciding on what is, ultimately, a highly subjective issue. As the only person who is identified with these lists, I can understand their view. Depending on how naïve you are, you may be amazed at the censorious messages I receive when these lists are published – overwhelmingly from people who believe that their names ought to be on at least one of the lists. If the judges were subjected to that sort of postbag, I can imagine that they would soon stop wanting to help compile the lists. At least I can say, with some certainty, that my name will never be on one of these lists – and that’s the way it should be!

The ‘movers and shakers’ lists relate to the corporate online learning world. So that drastically reduces the influence that academics can have on the list. On the other hand, the growth of social media over the last few years has seen the number of writers and regular bloggers on the list increase.

I think it’s important to have these lists – and the more the merrier – because they help to raise the profile of this industry on the world stage. It’s an industry that, for all sorts of reasons, tends to take a back seat when governments and ‘big business’ discuss issues such as global competitiveness and yet it plays an increasingly vital part in giving today’s knowledge workers the knowledge and skills they need in order for their businesses (and countries) to be, and remain, competitive in world markets.

8. Learnnovators: We, like many others, believe that, in today’s learning landscape we need ‘learning rebels’ and ‘learning provocateurs’, more than ‘learning conformists’. Because we are going through a time of major learning transformation, a radical thinking that will help us get started on the transformation has become quite critical. What role does ’innovation’ play in determining influencers’ contributions to the e-learning world for your annual list of the ’Top Ten Movers and Shakers’?

Bob: Interestingly, last month, I was speaking at an international conference in Croatia, organised by the food company, Podravka, on the subject of innovation in learning. It’s very much a ‘hot topic’ at present.

There are some undoubted innovators – such as those who are instigating the ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ model of learning that I was talking about earlier. The problem comes in deciding who are today’s innovators who will change the way in which we all do online learning and who are merely the eccentrics, the showmen, con artists and members of the lunatic fringe. Sometimes, that’s a difficult judgement to make – and you only know if you’ve been right sometime in the future.

9. Learnnovators: We understand that it was by accident that you became involved with corporate e-learning. Nevertheless, you say, “from a learning purist’s point of view, there’s still a large amount of e-learning in general circulation which is ‘e-learning 1.0’: boring, page-turning, content-heavy with little engaging interaction for learners.” We too believe that the traditional ’format’ of e-learning is outdated and obsolete. What would be the most appropriate e-learning ’format’ that could satisfy today’s learners? What changes would you suggest in our e-learning practices in order to achieve this?

Bob: The theory about how to engage and motivate learners is well known (if it’s not, please buy and read my book!). However, it is still too easy – given today’s authoring tools – for a subject matter expert to produce a ‘brain dump’ and call it e-learning. Sometimes – given some of the non-interactive, boring e-learning materials that I’ve seen recently – the person producing the learning materials isn’t even a subject matter expert (or literate in some cases). There’s nothing new when it comes to learning how to engage and motivate people to learn – although the technologies that you can use to enable this will expand over time. Maybe everyone producing online learning materials could resolve to learn a little more about the principles and practice of instructional design – and then always put into practice what they know of this.

10. Learnnovators: You say, “Typically, change scenarios require us to do something new, or adjust to a new way of doing something familiar. This involves learning, and even unlearning.” As we know, today’s workforce learns more from workplace (on-the-job) learning experiences and social sharing than from formal training interventions. Gone are the days of knowledge mastery; the new focus of the day is on continuous learning. Formal learning (that includes e-learning) constitutes only a tiny part of the spectrum. In this context, what kind of ’learning’ and ’unlearning’ would you suggest in terms of our beliefs about workplace learning and our approaches about learning and performance support design?

Bob: One of the biggest mistakes L&D professionals make is that, having gone to the trouble of delivering learning materials to those in the organization about a new process or system, they fail to ensure the completely eradication of the old process or system in their organization. Consequently, because the old, familiar way is available to the learners, they will revert to that – and the learning programme will have proved at best ineffective and, at worse, a useless waste of resources.

Another kind of ‘unlearning’ involves social media. In the past, human beings spent much of their time learning things – because knowledge was power. Indeed, the story is told that one prominent monk was radically opposed to the invention of the printing press because, he said, it would mean that people could just read the things they wanted to know about rather than having to learn that knowledge, by heart. Nowadays, with the advent of such things as Google and YouTube, almost all we need to remember is where to go to get the information we need. This suggests that learning is moving from being mostly formal (e-learning) to informal (performance support). This is changing not only the demand for learning materials but also the way in which those learning materials are supplied – and this has major implications for instructional designers, learning administrators and learners.

11. Learnnovators: It is inspiring to see how L&D has started leveraging the power of storytelling, acknowledging the fact that behind any great learning program, there needs to be a compelling story. As a communications specialist, what according to you are the ingredients of a compelling ’story’? Could you share any one inspiring story (on L&D performing the role of a wonderful ’storyteller’)?

Bob: This is a really deep subject. Doctoral theses have been written on less! At the very least, an effective storyteller needs to find a ‘voice’ that appeals to the hearer and needs to use that ‘voice’ to lead the hearer bit-by-bit deeper into the story. As the story progresses, the hearer must be able to engage, step-by-step with the story’s characters, situation and challenges. This involves, among other things, the choice and application of language – figures of speech including simile, metaphor, alliteration, polyptoton and so on (sometimes called the elements of eloquence) – that’s appropriate to the hearer.

If you want to be a good storyteller, you need to analyse the great storytellers of your culture (and, hopefully, of other cultures too) – seeing how they tell their stories, how they involve their audience (perhaps by challenging them or intriguing them), and so on. The medium (technology) you use to transmit your story is almost irrelevant. You need to engage, on a human level, with your audience – and those techniques don’t change because, basically, human beings are still human beings.

Learnnovators: Thank you so much for sharing your valuable insights and experiences, Bob. It was wonderful interacting with you. We wish you the very best!