Those of us of a certain age remember a time when the only feasible option to purchase an artist’s music was to buy an entire CD.
The CD’s were comprised of nine to 15 songs and cost around $15.00, meaning that the only way to want one song off the album was to purchase the whole CD.
Of course, Apple introducing iTunes changed this.
The revolutionary service allowed consumers to purchase individual songs as opposed to entire albums, and the songs could then be assembled into playlists that created a personalized listening experience for the consumer. For example, instead of paying $45 and owning three different albums, the consumer could now spend about $3 and put the songs onto a single playlist.
The proliferation of iTunes and similar services has had a dramatic impact on the music industry – changing the selection process and listening experience of music fans forever. A once dying industry now boasts increased sales, happier consumers and a lower cost of ownership.
With iTunes as a backdrop, consider a learning experience that occurs too often.
You sign up for a course in order learn something new. The first half of the course contains background and overview information that is of no value to you. The next 25% goes over topics that you already know, while the next 15% finally provides you with the information or practice that you were looking for. But, the final 10% of the course simply recaps everything that was already covered. While you do derive some value from the experience, it comes at the expense of time wasted on the 85% of the course that didn’t.
Like the music CDs of old, today’s courseware is typically packaged into self-contained components that are organized and rely on the other components of that course or curriculum.
Imagine how the learning experience would be different if there was an environment that allowed you to preview and extract small or “micro” learning objects from any course or curriculum that existed within that learning ecosystem.
What if like iTunes for music, you could select single learning objects from multiple content providers and then assemble that content into “learning playlists”?
An environment like this would do for the learning world what iTunes has for music. It would allow the (learning) consumer to create a truly personalized learning experience.
Video is perhaps the media that provides the greatest opportunity for training professionals to quickly create such an environment. Short or micro video learning objects could be created and distributed via YouTube, Vimeo, or some other free video hosting services. These platforms allow the user to create favorites, subscribe to, or establish playlists.
In such an environment, a programmer who needed to learn a new coding technique for example, would no longer be required to spend time sifting through all of the content of a single course. Instead, the programmer could assemble the pertinent video learning assets from multiple learning content providers into a single learning playlist that contains the components necessary to solve the problem. Additionally, reviews provided by industry peers about learning objects could also be leveraged to help drive selection criteria.
Applying the playlist metaphor to learning would have an impact on training and development that would be similar to the impact that iTunes had on the music industry: more usage, a happier customer and reduced costs.
