Is your organisation doing this in 2008?

As we approach the mid-way point of 2008 - it set me thinking. January of every year always sees a glut of writing around trends and "must dos". Here are three trends that I thought would make an impact in 2008.

Paperless Colleges and Universities: Today’s college students — part of the “net generation” that was born between 1980 and 1994 — have grown up with technology. They were born around the time the first PC was introduced, and approximately 20 percent were using computers by the time they were 6 years old. Today, as they enter the university classroom, they are experiencing a brave new world of learning without textbooks. Case in point: Assistant Professor Jerry Kane at Boston College teaches a class titled “Computers in Management,” which uses no textbooks. Instead, Kane has replaced books with wikis as the primary learning tool. This allows for improved collaboration among students, as well as a way to integrate RSS news feeds directly into class, making learning more relevant. As a corporate learning professional, you should take note and think about how learning can be similarly redesigned for the net generation.

Web 2.0 Tools for Corporate Learning: According to a recent ComScore Media Metrix report, teen usage of Web-based e-mail dropped 8 percent in 2007, and IM usage is expected to reach 46 billion messages by 2009. Members of the net generation are almost exclusively using an arsenal of Web 2.0 tools, such as instant messaging, blogs, wikis, Facebook posts, and podcasts, to network, learn and communicate.
One company using Web 2.0 tools for learning in an innovative way is Intel Corp. They have created an in-house wiki called Intelpedia. This is a way for Intel employees to share knowledge, collaborate with employees and post need-to-know company information in a safe, behind-the-firewall space. Within the first six months, more than 10,000 page lookups were tracked and Intelpedia has quickly become the go-to place for new recruits who need to know what an Intel acronym means or want the latest update on a project.
In the UK, BT have made full use of tools such as wikis, blogs, social media and tagging behind their firewall to enhance collaboration and networking amongst their employees.

Free Offerings in Corporate Learning Portals: There is a plethora of free learning your organization can link to on the Web. One of the most comprehensive of these is MIT Open Courseware Consortium. (You can find this at http://ocw.mit.edu.) MIT Open Courseware has thrived by sharing free lecture notes, exams and other resources for its more than 1,800 courses in areas such as engineering, computer software, economics and health sciences, to name just a few. There also are more than 100 universities around the globe that have added their content in local languages to form the MIT Open Courseware Consortium. While MIT originally designed this for faculty usage, it turns out more than 50 percent of users are corporate “self learners.”
Another free resource is the Free Management Library, http://www.managementhelp.org/. This is a free online resource of 650 topics, spanning 5,000 links. Topics include areas such as leadership development, change management, marketing, finance, training and development, performance management and crisis management. In addition, each topic has recommended books and related library links contributed by community members.

Groundswell - the power of Social Networking

Groundswell is a fascinating book from Harvard Business Press and written by two Forrester researchers - Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li.

It is essentially a treatise about the power of social networking technologies when successfully applied in a business setting. For me - the cornerstone the book is Li and Bernoff's research and application of what they term Social Technographics. It identifies people as ranging from Inactives (in terms of social technologies) to Creators.

Their research spans several countries and demographic ranges and provides some great case studies and anecdotes showcasing organisations who have exploited this trend. For example - BMW in the USA studied the Social Technographic profile of their Mini owners and found they were well above the norm in terms of their participation as Creators and Critics. They used this to create and harness an online community buzz and organise car rallies. Over 2,100 images were placed on Flickr and several Mini videos appeared on YouTube. Online monitoring organisations were able to show that when online community activity increased - so did sales the following month.

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Me and my colleagues at Atos Consulting are actively looking at the issues of workforce demographics; the ageing workforce and Generation Y recruitment. The research in this book caused several light bubs to come on all at once. According to Forrester - 59% of Gen Y join networking sites; 38% create content and 41% are critics. There's your marketing and engagement strategy in a nutshell. Organisations must create platforms and vehicles for connecting with Gen Y where they hang out online. But that's not enough. You must let them create and content, swap stories, offer critique.

How about the issue of all that tacit knowledge that will walk out the door of your organisation as many baby boomers retire? Easy say my KM experts at Atos; "We just need to provide them with the systems to capture, codify and share their knowledge". Trouble is - only 8% of that group are creators and only 8% are joiners of communities of any sort. So the problem shifts to "how am I going to engage and encourage these guys to participate in activities that are new and strange to them?"

As you may have guessed - I love this book!

http://www.groundswell.forrester.com/

Student's Facebook Study Group Falls Foul With Academics

Here's an interesting dilema reported by the Totonto Financial Post:

"Students at Ryerson University in Toronto were outraged when first-year student Chris Avenir was accused of cheating for running an online chemistry study group on Facebook.

More than 140 Generation Yers had joined the group to ask questions about homework assignments and simply could not understand why school administrators had a problem with that. Their only concern was for the group's administrator, who faced expulsion. The 18-year-old denied the academic misconduct allegation and took his fight before the engineering faculty's appeals committee, telling the media "this isn't any different from any library study group or peer tutoring."

But Ryerson's administration thought otherwise. Academic integrity was at stake, they said, and any threat to it -- even in the form of online tools -- is a risk that must be addressed and rightfully preserved.

In the end, the appeals committee ruled against expulsion but gave the student a zero on the assignments that were discussed on Facebook. But the story didn't end there. Instead, it has sparked a debate on the differences between Baby Boomer and Gen-Yers brains and the way they interact in the workplace."

Mmmm. So what are we to make of this? What is the difference between discussing coursework over the table at lunch - or on Facebook?

Challenging Assumptions at The Shopping Centre

Last Saturday at my local shopping centre my wife and I witnessed an incident. There was a commotion and panicked voices near the bottom of an escalator. People were shouting and looking at a scuffle halfway up. Three youths dressed in trackies and hoodies ran up the escalator, shouting as they did so - one of them pressed the stop button.

I'm rather ashamed to say that my initial thought was of some sort of fight or scuffle was taking place. After all, all the ingredients seemed to be there.

The reality was somewhat different. As I drew closer, I could see an elderly man was in difficulty and was close to collapsing or loosing his balance and falling backwards down the entire length of the escalator. His companion had cried out for help - unable to take the weight of the man herself. Hearing this - the three "hoodies" immediately ran up the escalator. Two held the man from the side and the third held him from behind. Without doubt the actions of these young men saved the man from serious injury. After the stop button was pressed they were able to calmly walk him to safety and sat him down before checking he and his companion were able to seek further help. They then slopped off in that familiar "Hip-Hop" strut.

Reflecting on this incident later in the evening, I felt heartened that a group of young people who are increasingly being branded as the root of all evil responded to an emergency almost instinctively. The incident was fleeting and transient. The did not know the elderly man; they did not seek praise - they just helped someone who was in a bit of trouble.

Student numbers are at risk as UK demographics shift

Universities face a shortfall of 70,000 students by the end of the next decade, as a result of a drop in the number of young people in the UK.

On current demographic trends, the full-time undergraduate student population of UK higher education institutions will fall by 4.6 per cent by 2020, or 70,000 full-time under­graduate places, according to an analysis for Universities UK.

One of the authors of the report, The Future Size and Shape of the HE Sector in the UK, says universities will have to “seize new markets” for older, part-time, work-based and overseas students.

The report also predicts stiffer competition for students between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as demographic changes vary between regions. The report forms part of a series of seven reviews, commissioned last month by Universities Secretary John Denham, into the long-term future of higher education in Britain.

It predicts that the 2020 UK dip will have reversed by 2027, by which time total student numbers will be up by 2.1 per cent, with the biggest growth in part-time undergraduates and full-time postgraduates. But this recovery masks long-term prob-lems in Scotland, which may see full-time undergraduate numbers drop 8.4 per cent by 2027, as well as in Wales (down 4.9 per cent) and Northern Ireland (down 13.1 per cent) – compared with a 2.9 per cent rise in England.

Gen Y Workforce Helps eLearning Take-up in USA

Despite some differing numbers, two widely regarded and independent reports on the US training market conclude that 30 percent of employee learning last year occurred online.

After years of investing in content and integrated delivery infrastructure, organisations are beginning to see those investments pay off in a dramatic increase in the use of technology enabled learning. As more and more employees use online tools, organisations are seeing costs rise slightly.

These are the key findings from two pieces of reaseach that guage the state of the US training market. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and Bersin & Associates carried out the reasearch in 2007 and released their reports in January 2008.

Both reports highlight the part played by shifting demographics in corporate America. The younger and more tech-savvy Gen Y-ers are filtering into the workforce and are comfortable and eager to use online tools and platforms to to aid their professional growth and development.

Gen Y Issues will impact UK Defence Sector

At a recent conference - over 200 senior engineers from the UK Defence sector received a presentation from Atos Consulting on how changing demographics and the future generation of employees may shape their plans and strategy over the next 5-10 years. Using electronic voting machines - 73% of delegates felt the issues discussed will have a sigificant impact on their future plans.

Atos Consulting's Marc Humphries commented, "I was impressed by the increasing awareness some of the audience had about the issues they are facing. Some organisations already have research teams looking into this area - and others were already experimenting with Web 2.0 collaboration technologies and serious, immersive games."