Posted 9:08 PM by George Siemens
Knowledge Management Just-in-Time

Quotes: "Doctors need to stay current on 10,000 diseases, 3,000 medications, 1,100 lab tests and 400,000 articles added to the biomedical literature each year. Sounds like a job for the field of knowledge management...Embedding knowledge into everyday work processes is time-consuming and expensive. It's not an undertaking that anyone in his right mind would tackle without a very good reason."

Comment: In a society of information overload, whatever organizes the information carries the greatest value. Knowledge management and just-in-time training will be huge. Worth reviewing in light of the article posted earlier today on "Getting the Answer"...what if just-in-time learning doesn't leave room for context...

Posted 1:29 PM by George Siemens
Interesting combination of links over the last several days – reminds me that elearning is an aggregation field. We are impacted by what happens in a number of disciplines - leadership, knowledge management, technology, business, education. In one of my comments recently, I stated "We're sort of in a limbo stage - knowing what we don't want to be...but not yet knowing what we will be." …we need to transition to truly effective elearning (no idea what that is...:)). This won't happen without communication and collaboration across disciplines...which leads to the concept of community.

Community is important to online learning professionals. In elearning, no one knows everything that needs to be known. One of the benefits of a community is the contact made with people you would never talk to on your own effort - simply because you can't see a link between what they are doing and what you are doing. In a community, these people connect and find similarities that lead to innovations.

We need to learn of developments in fields outside of our own. With that said, check out Kairosnews. A good example of what could be an effective community for elearning professionals. Registration is free.

Posted 9:09 AM by George Siemens
Getting an Answer Is One Thing, Learning Is Another
Quote: "The problem, I'm starting to suspect, is that people may have learned to resist the idea of absorbing a foundation of information before they start accumulating details. We've thrown so much complexity at people, during the past 20 years or so, that users have had to develop a defense mechanism: "Just tell me what I need to know!" But when we do this, we wind up with people who are merely following recipes that might as well be magic spells."

Comment: This article makes an excellent point - our "just-in-time", "just-for-me" approach to learning is in danger of creating a surface level, shallow thinking learner. When a learner is so overwhelmed that he/she fails to question underlying assumptions...building upon foundations of others' (potentially erroneous) thoughts, we are at risk of killing the heart of learning - validation and questioning. Learning, after all, doesn't happen by reading or even interaction...learning happens when a learner pauses, reflects and evaluates content. Obviously, there is a need for "just answer the question" learning, but current trends seem to indicate that most learning is heading in this direction. That's not good. We also need foundation building.

Posted 6:58 AM by George Siemens
Webchats from Michigan Virtual University
Looks good - I've attended these before - usually very informative. I'm looking forward to the session with Jane Knight from eCLIPSE - currently elearnspace's site feature.