Internet Time Blog: Emergent Learning Forum
Absolutely! Fascinating and gratifying to see the e-learning forum develop into the wider definition of education. I think this is actually just a formalisation of what everyone, particularly our gracious leader, Mr Cross, has been thinking/doing over the last few years.
The trouble with e-learning is it often gets slotted into a spave of it’s own, and e-learning projects become seperate entities – and fail completely because of it. A client re-named the e for ‘effective’. I’ve taken to using education/learning instead of ‘e’.
Of course, the key theme/pitch is education as a *key* business process. End of story. Game over, it’s a fact of life, completely integral to the success of your business.
As products become more complex, customers become more cynical about ‘marketing’, hopefully one of the emergent themes that gets valued in organisations is that:
Marketing = Education = Marketing.
Over the last year or so, I’ve begun to understand that there’s no real difference between learning for staff and marketing to staff and customers. The same content can be re-used if well designed. Customer’s are increasingly sophisticated and sceptical. Look at how Orange in the UK used the ‘phone trainer’ as a marketing tool/competetive differentiator. Orange retail stores now a destination for the brand – somewhere you go to buy more than just a phone.
Witness this quote from one of the Orange management team:
“Moore also attributed Orange’s strong sales growth to the Phone Trainer campaign, launched last year, which has encouraged phone users to come into stores and quiz staff for help.
The Bullring store has a ‘learn through play’ theme and includes games consoles. “As phones get more complicated we need to find ways of explaining them to customers,” said Moore.”
Quote from this site.
I think people don’t want to be sold to anymore; they want to learn and be communicated with.