The Future of Learning Conference... what did we learn?

The Future of Learning Conference has just finished at Ashridge Business School, in conjunction with the University of Cape Town's Graduate Business School and Mount Eliza Exec. Ed., from the Melbourne Business School.

So, lot's of business school and executive education people talking about the future of learning in the business school and executive education environment - including yours truly presenting on Classroom 2.0 - how Web 2.0 stuff can be (and is) used in learning in the exec. ed world.

The main issue we have with integrating more technology in Executive Education is that the participants are often only with us (the educators) for a week. They may come back for other week-long modules over an 18 month period, but that doesn't always happen.

And so many of the participants on courses are unaware of Web 2.0/Social Media and technology in general. Thems that know, know. Them's that don't, have no idea.

So one could set up brief induction sessions at the beginning of modules, but there is an issue of learning curves getting people using this stuff in such a short space of time that makes it far harder to introduce than in, say, an undergraduate programme where the students are with the institution for 3 years + at a time.

SecondLife is the biggest problem, once again. It's too unintuitive... I'm not sure how and when we'll be able to actually put participants in the space for their learning. Certainly, when we do try it it will be slowly and with very small reduced groups.

But there are other issues of technology that are equally unembraced in current executive education. Social networks - for example - through corporate intranet systems are sorely underused to map competency frameworks to individuals according to their annual appraisals, future development needs, the needs of the organisation and so on.

The sessions in the conference were all insightful and very interesting - some people, such as Ashridge, are already facilitating Virtual Action Learning and even run a course for others to learn how... but no one seems to be using virtual worlds in executive education and I'm still looking for someone who might.

There were two sessions that particularly stood out for me. Well, three...

First of all, a session summarising research that shows that 10% of audio teaching (i.e. hearing) is remembered, compared to 65% if there is some visual stimulation as well. So the idea of downloading podcasts to listen to in the car isn't as effective as, in theory, watching them on the computer.... although there's a big issue as to how the podcast is created. Talking heads won't stimulate anyone, but judicious use of good powerpoint slides (and video and other materials) might make it work. It seems the brain likes to receive the same information via different senses and mix it all together to make sense of it. Good to know... and it explains why I like 'visual' powerpoints (images, photos, big bold (not pastel) colours).

Secondly, a talk last night after dinner by Professor Kevin Warwick on the future of Cybernetics. He famously had a chip implanted in his arm in 2002 (was it?) becoming the first Cyborg and working on the way the human nerve system can interact with electricity. So, on the medical level, we can enable amputees to operate robotic prosthetics from their brain; and it shows how Parkinsons sufferers can already chips implanted in their brains that are able to counter the brain-freeze that seems to cause the shake-attacks of Parkinsons.

Of course the 'fun' part is the suggestion that one day we'll be able to operate everything from our brain with no need to physically handle a control. I'm sure the military have long been interested in this, but it opens the gates to 'telepathy' (or transmitting from brain to brain with no external output such as speech, text or eye contact); faster implementation of thoughts into actions (useful, I'm sure, for the military too, but maybe it will help us otherwise); and the idea of having chips in our brains that will hold all the information we need. No need to learn by rote, try and memorise and regurgitate in exams.

What education would then need to concentrate on (which some places already do) is cognition (understanding and interpreting the information); communication and relationships.

And if we all spent less time on learning information and more time on relationships, in the words of Sam Cooke: "What a wonderful world it will be!"

Finally, the first keynote session this morning by Robert Burke was about Futures Thinking. In short - everything is moving so quickly, how on earth will we know what to teach next? One of the quotes (which I'll probably misquote here) was that 40% of what technical students will learn at university now will be obsolete more or less by the time they finish their course. He also recommended the following video on Youtube which has some lovely stats to make you think: "Really? Oh shit!". I recommend it: Shift Happens

What I will love to see is how much technology is used by exec. ed institutions in the coming months and years. Next year's iteration of the conference should be interesting to see if there have been any major changes in that direction.