Objects pay

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so do learning objects pay off in practice? Well, Cisco is a pioneer of learning objects and they’re certainly reaping the results. In the past it could take up to nine months to develop a course that is now up and running in 12 weeks. In one year more than 20,000 learning objects have been created. Writing in Learning Circuits, Peg Maddocks, a director in Cisco Systems’s Internet Learning Solutions Group, claims that: “because reusable learning objects assist in making prescriptive learning a reality, there has been a collective attitude change among employees, who now embrace e-learning as a critical career development tool. One of our favourite new mantras is ‘just-in-time and just-for-me’. Cisco is now able to offer an assessment that prescribes the objects people need to achieve the desired performance. We don’t evaluate the number of click throughs or hours logged on, but whether learners fare well on post-learning assessments. From a learning perspective, what Cisco cares about is performance.”

So, from the learner’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether the learning they receive is bundled as ‘courses’ or ‘objects’. What matters to them is that they get the training they need to meet the requirements of their job, without a lot of wasted effort and in a way that suits them. Both learners and their employers would be justified in asking whether that is too much to ask for.

The ideal course is C shaped