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The other posts which were a part of Snake Oil Revisited:
Snake Oil Revisited
Summary of Original Post
Summary of Original Comments
And a post from Australia that also summarizes the original post and comments Special Report: Is Training Snake Oil?
The LC Blog is a community feature of Learning Circuits. It is dedicated to sharing ideas and opinions about the state of learning and technology.
Initially, the thought of summarizing the 60 comments that came in reaction to Sam Adkins’ Snake Oil post was daunting. But the reality turned out to be a joy. As I worked my way through the 39 pages of comment for the 3rd time over the weekend, I felt some how privileged to be taking the time to listen to such passionate, well reasoned arguments. A comment by Peter Isackson seems, at least at first, to be delighted with the diverse dialogue:
Sherlock says you are what you sell. Godfrey says you are what you design. And Dave says you are what you get lost in. I think Godfrey would agree with the even more existential proposition that you are what you learn and that, as a training professional, it’s also possible to sell what you learn (once you have learned it).
Peter also happened to hit upon four of the major themes ran throughout the comments.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH SNAKE OIL?
First Sherlock (one of those masked bloggers who give the Blogosphere some of it’s character) chimed in with a post in what I’m calling “What’s wrong with snake oil” theme. He takes a pragmatic, but somewhat cynical position by saying, “I've long since stopped thinking in terms of learning - these days I see myself as a solution provider. I sell things that appeal to training managers, regardless of whether or not they ACTUALLY work!!!” I almost like his, ‘hey I’m just a guy trying to get by” tone. Almost.
Frank Hughes too has a cynical read on the situation but takes it much more negative tone that was more inline with Sam’s thinking. Frank said,” Most trainers/teachers want to be a star, standing in front of a class, no matter how effective it is. Most managers want to "track" their employees learning, and the only way to do that is with formal classroom and elearning courses. Most employees like classroom classes not because they learn, but because they are social occasions that get them away from their desk.” Ouch!
Then there were a few folks that fell in line with Beth Friedman who said that of course we’re selling snake oil. It’s early in the game for elearning. It’s still new to us.
Graeme Dobson summed up yet another group who said:
My experience shows the old 80:20 rule applies - that is only 20% of performance problems are fixable or should be addressed by a training solution. So you see it doesn't really matter how good (or bad) a training method is - if you apply it to those 80% of performance problems where training is the wrong solution IT WON"T WORK!
DON’T BLAME THE TECHNOLOGY, IT’S THE DESIGNERS!
Godfrey Parkin chimed in with, “My point is that “training” is not at fault, but the design and implementation of it is clearly (on aggregate) inadequate.” Lisa Galarneau agrees, “Sure a lot of what professes to be training is terrible, but he end result is simply reflective of the approach.”
Jack Pierce rallies to the defense of the designers by pointing out a program he’s involved with that had trained almost 40,000 learners in two years with 95% reporting greater sales, better product understanding. “What’s the secret?” he asks. I’d say an understanding of the user, combined with an understanding of the technology, and hard work.”
Vicky Fisher (processes) and Jennifer Turner (salaries) blame cuts to design budgets as to blame.
Howard Davis says that he holds hope for eLearning and Blended Learning, but not the way they are being used. “The irony of course is that even with our latest tech tools we’re still stuck in using ineffective teaching and training models.” Marcuss Oslander agrees, “A delivery mechanism is only as good as the material it intends to deliver. We need to lighten up—to stretch the technology—to make learning fun!”
Although, I think my Blogmeister’s Choice award for best metaphor goes to Keith with this one, “Would you use a Ferrari to go to the store?? Maybe, but would you use the Ferrari to take all the neigbourhood kids to soccer. I guess not. It remains a question of the right tool for the job.”
WHAT SHOULD WE BE SELLING, THEN?
Godfrey Parkin points out that first generation products seldom live up to the expectations set for them. He continues by saying, “The internetworked world gives us an opportunity to rewire the corporate mind, and to change from within the way an organization thinks and behaves. To me, that is the real promise of e-learning. And I think we will all survive the snake-oil phase of our evolution.”
“Only when the corporate training world gets back to the basics and understands that each student has a unique learning style and that only a training approach that recognizes that fact will succeed, will we, the instructional designers and trainers, also succeed,” was the challenge C. Michael Hecht set down for us.
Chris Brannigan says there’re a cause waiting for a leader and tries to recruit Sam! “Thus we come back to us - what can we, the 'believers' (in some cases) or 'committed citizens' do to break the complacency? Do we want to? I think that a lot (enough) of practitioners would. Articles like yours may herald the start.
VENDOR FUNCTIONALITY IS THE PROBLEM
Right after the quote from Peter Isackson that I used to open this post he adds,
The irony of our business – and the terrible paradox Sam has highlighted -- is that efficiency rather than performance dictates its inexorable law: it’s better to invest in designing and selling than in learning about what customers really need. Profitability dictates that we should spend our time and money on marketing what we’ve already designed (or decided to design) than to discover what we should be designing…. So before we can “learn” anything that will go towards meeting the “need” for learning, we find ourselves in the position of “teaching” the buyers to believe in our goods, from which we’ve learned nothing (apart from how best to market them).
Vicky Fisher seemed to like that answer, “I wholeheartedly agree with Peter. There are learning products out there that suck, and there are (some) learning products out there that work.”
And David Fisher piles on, “The economics and vested interests of classroom training make it difficult for training suppliers to reengineer their offering to really be blended. Adding in non-integrated e-content cannot compensate for this. In this form, it will inevitably fail.”
The last nail in the coffin comes from Alan Stewart, “Why are we taking the heat for the failure of providers to give our organizations/clients the learning solutions they really need. If you're not sure what the need is then aim for a solution that delivers 'Just-in-Time', 'Just-Enough' and 'Just-for-Me' learning and you won't go far wrong. Like any market, training/e-learning etc. providers are demand-driven so perhaps its time we started to be more demanding.
Now don’t you feel better? Those big bad vendors can’t hurt us any more!
DEFINITIONS: Can We Agee about what We’re Talking About
Finally, the last of the most common theme we’ve chosen to tease out of the original debate is an age old one in argumentation – definitions. Some commenter accuse Sam of having too narrow of a focus when talking about training or elearning. Other terms that were discussed as having been ill defined included: blended learning, training, what should be evaluated, e-content vs. e-learning, mentoring, etc.
These five categories composed a great portion of the discussion two years ago so we thought they’d be great topics to renew a discussion around. Tomorrow we will introduce the Learning Circuits Blog’s Beyond the Blog Discussion Wiki in which Don Clark, David Grebow, Godfrey Parkin, Mark Oehlert, and myself will moderate discussion around each of these topics for however long you which to discuss them.
So check out the new wing of LCB tomorrow!
What follows is a summary of the original post as it appeared two years ago.
Sam began with 4 simple, but powerful statements:
· Training does not work.
· eLearning does not work.
· Blending Learning does not work.
· Knowledge Management does not work.
We are the source of the problem because we are selling snake oil. It doesn’t work but there is still plenty of money in it.
The sole measure of training’s effectiveness in the corporate setting, according to Adkins, “is rated on whether you save or make money (or both) for the company. Your value as ‘intellectual capital’ rests exclusively on that.”
In the remainder of the post he gives is evidence in each of the four areas identified as not working above. Here we present very brief summaries of his arguments. For detail, please see the original post.
Two years ago today, a post to a quite little blog rocked the training and development world. The quiet little blog was Learning Circuits Blog and the post was by Sam Adkins. In his post entitled “We are the Problem: We’re Selling Snake Oil, Sam outlined how much of what eLearning had set out to accomplish and had claimed to have accomplished was all “snake oil.”
His post angered and scared many. But it also intrigued and emboldened many others who saw a need for our profession to change. Emails were sent to colleagues saying ‘you’ve got to go read this article.’ Passions ignited to protect training/learning professionals or to tear them down. Blame was spread around to everyone – it was the vendors/designers/theorists/customers/our/the technology’s fault – depending on who was commenting.
When it was all said and done, there were 60 comments in reaction to Sam’s “Snake Oil” post. To put this in perspective, the other 283 posts to Learning Circuits Blog between May 2002 and the end of October 2005 have averaged 3.19 comments per post. The list of commentors includes many of the thought leaders in our industry – Jay Cross, David Grebow, C. Michael Hecht, Tom Abele, Godfrey Parkin, Fred Nickols, Jerry Ash, Diana Royce Smith, etc.
What did he say? What was the reaction? Has it had any impact in the past two years? How does Sam feel now? These are all questions we will be answering in Learning Circuits Blog’s first Beyond the Blog.
In a comment on November 19, 2005; Andrew Williams wrote, “hopefully we will all look back on this provocation/post in a couple of years and view this as an inflection point in the industry.” All too often, we don’t come back to reflect on key moments. But that’s exactly what we will do in the next couple of weeks with your help.
Here’s what you can expect from Beyond the Blog over the next week:
Each of the discussion wikis will be moderated by a member of the LCB Blog Squad.
From that point on, Beyond the Blog: Snake Oil Revisited will live as long as the discussions continue to develop. We’ll give you opportunities to vote in mini polls, create mini panel sessions, present content – text, graphic or podcasts to enhance the debates – whatever is doable and makes the debate more robust. We’ll be tracking all the activity in the summary box in the sidebar of LCB. And if you see the value in this debate and want your friends and colleagues to know about it, we will even have a Beyond the Blog: Snake Oil Revisited logo that you can cut and paste onto your own website.
It is our hope that you will feel free to jump into what should be a collection of spirited discussions about what we have been, what were today and what we will or won’t be as a profession in the future. It’s our hunch that by the time that glittery ball drops in Times Square in six weeks or so, we all will have learned something about ourselves, our colleagues, and perhaps what the new year holds for us.
One of the unfortunate effects of the traditional Post-Comments format of a blog is that topics tend to be focused upon only as long as they stay in the #1 position on the blog’s front page. This is tough enough for some individually written blogs to manage. But it is a far greater issue with a team blog like Learning Circuits Blog. The result is a very fragmented seemingly haphazard coverage of topics.
Tomorrow we will launch our first effort to break away from the Post-Comments format with a feature entitled “Beyond the Blog.” Beyond the Blog will appears several times a year focusing on different major topics of current interest to the learning community. This feature will break from the Post-Comment format in a effort to create a more sustained set of discussions and activities. Furthermore, each Beyond the Blog event will follow a format appropriate to the content and context of the conversation. We’ll provide different ways for you to interact with the Blog Squad and each other.
We hope you will find the first of our Beyond the Blog features stimulating, edifying, and ultimately motivational to re-think the way you learn and the ways you ask your clients to learn.
If you do, then we will have begun to fulfill our mission to use collaborative environments, like blogs, to help you learn like you’ve never learned before.
Dave Grebow sees a danger in meddling with the processes of informal learning, and I have to agree. But I contend that it’s also possible to be pro-active without meddling. The aim in all cases is to respect informality but because the efficacy of the means employed doesn’t depend on elaborate control systems, those means should be theoretically less difficult to implement. The real and very formal challenge is to “teach” decision-makers what to do because everything revolves around a gradual but radical transformation of corporate culture.
If we're going to "teach" (whether through training or publishing), we need some ideas. I have a few of my own and have borrowed others from various places. To kick off the brainstorming, here are a some suggestions (remembering that no one idea will get us very far; to succeed you need to commit to the full monty):
Finally, don’t go looking for vendors of the latest ILMS (Informal Learning Management Systems)! You can bet they'll be lining up for sales appointments as soon as they see decision-makers committed to the concept. They'll be far worse than the "formal learning developers" Dave has warned us about.