Can New Learning Technologies Boost Renewal?
Paris (FR), October 2009 - The European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) is bringing the debate on the role of knowledge and learning solutions in ensuring sustainable economic recovery to Online Educa Berlin in the form of a pre-conference workshop entitled "Moving beyond the crisis powered by knowledge and learning solutions - what is the NEXT practice". Management of change and innovation will eventually lead us out of the crisis; knowledge and learning technology have the potential to provide the engine for accelerating and enhancing this process.
At its recent AGM, ELIG members endorsed the view that survival of the knowledge economy does not lie in cost cutting but rather in innovation - and innovation can only result from enabling knowledge workers to realize their full potential. Industry experts and academics attending the AGM concluded that learning and knowledge technologies have now reached the "tipping point" that could enable not only a step change in productivity but also in creativity and innovation.
In order to achieve this change, the breakthroughs in Web 2.0-related technologies and social software need to be re-channeled from private use to systematic institutional use, whether it be in business or non-business organizations. These tools provide a powerful means to embed learning into the job and hence to improve and accelerate experiential learning and collaboration in organizations from which opportunities for innovation and creativity will emerge. Mobile technologies provide further opportunities to enhance the capabilities for interaction and access to knowledge regardless of time and location.
A mindset that recognizes that learning is not a process that ends as we leave formal education but rather that it is continual activity throughout our lives also recognizes the value added for those organisations that accommodate and encourage learning in the workplace. Not only does it enable individuals to continue to grow their personal capability, but it also ensures that the organization itself - and the society within which it operates - is enriched through the continued opportunities for learning made available to employees.
The ELIG Workshop at Online Educa Berlin will explore the challenges that will shape the NEXT PRACTICE of knowledge and learning solutions. It will also scrutinize the need to change our current mindset of fixed-term learning in order to liberate knowledge working capability through organizational endorsement of social-learning tools. What is likely to emerge? What is the new pragmatic vision?
We can already see elements of emerging but not the full picture. What will the new knowledge be, and what will the learning platforms and ecosystems be like that will power improved innovation performance across all of our institutions, enabling us to move beyond the current crisis and towards a very different learning future?
