The Happy Curmudgeon

For many it will come as no surprise that the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) continues to come up with some downright stupid things. It’s a long standing issue within the training profession, and there are those that hate ASTD and question its function and actions, and those that appreciate ASTD. Mostly I’m neither. I used to be a member, but I’m not now, but for no particular reason.

Still I was surprised at the August, 2009 article posted by Bingham, current President of ASTD, about social learning. The surprise wasn’t so much with the content. After all, ASTD has jumped pretty heavily into the e-learning/informal learning/social learning marketplace, with several of its $695 a piece downloadable guides. What did surprise me was the intellectual weaknesses, and lack of substance in the Bingham article. We’d expect more from a leader of the leading training organization in the world. We’d expect at least some glimmer of intelligence and a little less rah rah cheerleading.

We’d expect some rigor. Maybe not peer review journal rigor but some. A wee bit. A sign that there is intelligent life in the training field. But no. Worse, I think corporate executives have noted the lack. This article doesn’t help build credibility for the training profession.

What makes this article so bad, and so embarrassing? It’s claims are unfounded. The majority of the content is irrelevant. But let’s go through it.

Tony starts off:

A powerful force—unlike any in history—is altering the learning profession’s landscape

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s social learning. Now here’s a question to ask. Is this a statement of fact, or a marketing slogan? Seriously. When people are trying to sell you something that is rather uninspiring, lacking in merit, or un-original, they often resort to hyperbolic language to cover up the vacuousness of what they are championing. We will see that throughout the entire article, there is NO relevant data to support this contention that there IS a powerful force, or that is is altering the learning profession’s landscape, although we never do find out what that means. Any person capable of critical thought has to be wondering: Give me some hard date on EFFECTIVENESS, not all the hype!

Why are you rallying the troups with empty cheerleading, Mr. Bingham? Is it the money? The advertisers? Why aren’t you providing balance and objectivity?

He goes on:

The learning profession has a history of dancing around the subject of informal learning. You might think, “We’ve been talking about it forever and have even dabbled in it. Our worlds aren’t crumbling. I am really busy and don’t have the time or the energy to get involved in informal learning.” But if we don’t respond or take action now, we risk becoming irrelevant.

I don’t have numbers, unfortunately, but I’d say that the majority of corporate decision-makers think you/trainers are irrelevant, largely because they won’t believe your marking BS and expect proof.

Further, ff Mr. Bingham want to know why the “learning profession” dances around informal learning, there are several reasons. First, there is no “learning profession”, and it’s a bit embarrassing that the term is used here. It’s one of those terms that trainers have made up, and it includes virtually everyone involved in learning, basically exluding nobody. Mind you, that’s ok. But it’s weak minded. The second reason is that “informal learning” and, for that matter “formal learning” are attempts to create ideas that are themselves, not new at all, by creating new terms.

People cannot define and apply the terms with any consistency. These are not terms from learning psychology (although there are a few interesting and well researched analogues (ie. incidental learning). That isn’t surprising because even if there was a learning profession, the members wouldn’t have much background in learning theory, thus, they would not know there exists better terms that have been researched.

Yes, people fuddle around informal learning. That’s because it’s ill defined and nobody knows what it means. And when you get some idea of what it probably means you realize it just means learning as all humans learn.

It’s like saying we have formal and informal breathing. Both learning and breathing are characteristics of the human organism. You cannot not learn. You cannot not breathe. You may pay attention to your learning or your breathing or not. You may learn via instruction. You may learn by walking down the street. It’s all the same. It’s learning. Sticking an adjective in front of it does not create a new “thing” or process, except for fools.

Here’s more…

In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business.

Where’s the data? Why should we listen. Ok. I understand Karrer is an expert, but by virtue of that focus, he’s almost certainly not unbiased. Why should his opinion mean anything at all? Seriously. Why should I, as a CEO, invest my money on his say so without data? Why should anyone?

Here’s the reality. We’ve always had people learning and solving problems on their own. Always. It could be going to the office next door, or reading a manual, or asking at a meeting or any number of social or non-social interactions, hundreds and thousands each day in most workplaces. Every question asked and answered is informal learning.

But that’s NOT what Karrer is talking about. The pretense is that somehow, what they call social learning (BTW, a terrible misnomer coined out of complete ignorance) is new. It’s not new. It’s actually not even “social”. It’s machine mediated social learning. But that doesn’t sell as well. Not catchy. Not warm enough.

The technology isn’t even new. The ability to post and share videos, audio, ppt slideshows, virtually anything that is considered part of social learning has been around before the term was stolen. What, in fact, has changed, is that there are bigger platforms. That Youtube exists in its present form (a huge money-losing enterprise that will not continue as it is) is hardly of interest anyway in terms of learning, for most businesses, or educational orgs.

Bingham continues with a rather long discussion of the Millenial generation, citing ONE source, Tapscott’s book, Grown Up Digital. It’s very persuasive until you ask: How is this relevant to the value of informal learning, or the value of social learning. Bingham offers the following Tapscott quote:

The bottom line is this: if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. You will also understand how our institutions and society need to change today

There’s a long term love affair among the sociologically and psychologically naive that makes this sound like a compelling argument. Even the simple quote is wrong, of course.

If you look at the work of John Foot, Socialogist and author of Boom Bust or Echo, you’ll see a different and less “pop” explanation of generational effects. The short capsule is this. The apparent differences is generations disappear once the “generation” gets older. So, if you compare an 18 yr. old of today to a 35 yr. old, you’ll see differences easy to attribute to glib generational labelling.

However, if you compare that same 18 year old to an 18 yr old from the previous generation, you’ll see little change. If you compare that same 18 year old when he is 35 to today’s 35 yr. old you’ll see the differences often disappear.

You cannot predict the future by looking at the current generation, because by the time they age, they will resemble an older cohort group. It’s life experience that counts, NOT when you were born or what generation you were born into.

Any conclusions about how “this” generation will learn or prefer to learn, based on the assumption that the generation will continue to behave like it does today, are invalid.

Bingham continues with more irrelevant, but rather amusing stuff:

Let’s look at another source of data on the impact of technology. In their book, Groundswell, authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff provide this example: “More than a million viewers have watched a YouTube video posted by law student Brian Finkelstein, who filmed a Comcast technician who fell asleep on his couch in 2006, waiting on hold for help from the Comcast home office to fix an Internet problem…

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how this pertains to training or learning. Maybe he explains?

“What happened to these companies will happen to you,” they state. “Your company’s customers are talking about your brand right now on MySpace, probably in ways you haven’t approved

Oops. No. No explanation. What is really interesting here is that the talk seems to be about something “new”. All of a sudden people are talking about your brand? This is new? Golly, it’s not even new technologically. We’ve had Usenet around for what, easily over 15 years now. Come on guys. You’re supposed to be the experts on this. Didn’t know we have been talking about service, and brands, and products for 15 years? This is NOT new, and in fact it requires NO additional involvement of companies now than it did before in any of the previous 15 years.

You cannot control word of mouth whether it’s on usenet, facebook, youtube or two people talking over the backyard fence. Instead of managing perceptions, how about doing something breath taking. Create better products that offer better value and provide good customer service and build perceptions from there!

At this point you’re probably getting bored. So let’s stop Part I here. In the next part we’ll see what Bingham and the ASTD say about learning. So far, the content has been flawed, wrong, or irrelevant. And NO data has been used to justify any claims whatsoever. Maybe it gets better. We’ll announce the next part shortly via our twitter account, and rss feed or just book mark this page.

Part II is now available here