EDITOR’S NOTE
Greetings at the onset of June! As the monsoons duly arrive, bringing in a fresh outpouring of ideas and thoughts and new beginnings, this time, we explore the topic, “Project Learning Vs Library Learning”, with often debated concepts like mandated learning vs learner choice, content quantity and variety vs content quantity.
Furthermore, we look at the journey of one of our most valued clients, Samunnati in the social sector. Throughout their journey, we see the potential of how visual learning could extend well beyond the social sector and transform the lives of hundreds ot thousands.
The product of the month is “PROJECT SYNERGY”, a course on Collaboration Skills which does a deep dive on various aspects of collaboration skills, necessary to navigate today’s complex corporate environment.
In our “Upgrade Hub” , this time look at our new look Course Builder.
Happy Reading..!!
Project Learning Vs Library Learning
In this article we look at the world of online content, a world peopled by MOOCs and other corporate learning providers. An interesting battleground is emerging in the world of corporate training – democracy vs dictatorship….the Library vs the Project. Is the future of corporate training increasingly being aligned to one or the other or both.
We need to understand these terms better in the Corporate training landscape.
Library Learning
The Concept
What does the term Library learning really mean? Its not commonly used, but it has served as a useful point of reference in our thinking at Knowlens. It comes with certain common characteristics:
- There is a vast variety of content available on a wide variety of topics
- Given the vast variety, learners need to exercise choice and judgment in terms of what they need to learn
- Courses are created by a wide variety of course creators
Some common examples are Linked In Learning, Skillsoft, Coursera etc. These have thousands and thousand of courses by hundreds of creators
Let’s now look at some of the pros and cons of this approach through a deeper dive.
Learner Choice:
Pros
- Democratic choice whether to do and what to do is now available to the learner with the infinite variety
- Self directed Learning: This program is perfect for those with hectic schedules since it allows learners to select the material they wish to study and move at their own speed.
Cons
- Is this choice really that effective? Do audiences know what they need to learn. Is it better for an expert curator like a L & D professional to curate and recommend. There are no right answers but this could vary across levels, the sophistication of the learner etc.
- For an audience which does not know the topic, how do they choose from lets say 10 courses on excel or communication skills, what is the right course for their level of proficiency without actually going through the course and spending too much time.
It may be interesting to look at the ratio of actual course consumption, no of courses actually done by users before arriving at the effectiveness of the clear benefits of larger libraries. Does choice enhance learning?
Learner Type
All the pros and cons of learner choice ultimately manifest as a pro or a con when one sees the learner. For instance, is the CEO of a car manufacturer the same as say a showroom salesperson in terms of ability to judge and exercise choice. Are 500 people across showrooms in a country likely to show similar propensity towards learning? How many are self motivated?
For organizations with strong learning cultures and environments, library approaches may work very well or at least at certain levels or even in certain functions.
Our observation in general is about 20 % of individuals especially at the grassroot level are proactive learners. For the remaining 80 %, there is a greater involvement of L & D involvement and a certain pish required. A greater focus towards learner engagement through better course quality, innovative formats can help in this context to have more pull driven learning than push based learning.
Course Quality and Homogeneity
This brings us to our next subject – Course Quality. By definition, libraries have volumes of content, and hence large numbers of people creating this content. How does one ensure homogeneity, contextualization. By and large the following trends have been observed with most large libraries:
- They function like marketplaces of content where they form an aggregation platform for multiple content creators to aggregate
- They define certain structures, templates and standards, which content creators must adhere to, to ensure homogeneity
- They offer certain statistics to help learners judge the popularity and effectiveness of programs
But this has certain limitations:
- Finally the content creators are independent and come from a wide variety of backgrounds….there is no easy way at scale to ensure quality of content
- For historical reasons, traditionally most content creators have been addressing topics at a very generic level and contextualization is very low. E.g. Most content one finds is US or UK centric content and not really useful for consumption by Indian audiences.
- Since these are built for global scale, there is very low regional context and therefore while these work for abstract subjects, they may not work for more contextual subjects.
Learning Paths
- Library based approaches have challenges while reconciling role based learning paths for specific roles. Ideally learning paths can be by choice but in practice, perhaps at the broader organization level, one will find there is a benefit of defining a learning path. How does one build in the library concept into the learning path. This remains a challenge.
Project Learning
Overview
Project Learning is in many ways a counterpoint to Library Learning. It is dictatorial and mandated by the organization. It has been used across e learning as well as the classroom.
Lets look at some key characteristics of project learning
- Mandated Courses: Projects or specific courses are mandated by the organization e.g. very common such courses are regulatory courses on POSH or KYC or AML. Compliance is a must for the organization and therefore these are driven dictatorially in terms of definition as mandatory etc.
- Role – Competency based Courses: Based on the outcome of Training Needs analysis, L & D departments have identified very specific learning needs for specific roles. E.g. in a bank, for relationship officers, a specific learning roadmap may have been identified. For this cohort then, a specific pre evaluated program is identified.
- Curated Courses: These courses are usually highly curated by expert trainers or content creators. Consequently the volumes of such courses may be small, though they may address large volumes of employees, as the organization may have already identified the target cohort for the course. Our own Knowlens typically tend to fall in this category.
- Contextual Courses: these courses are often contextual and built to organizational or industry or regional needs. Quite often the programs are created in conjunction with internal teams and external partners.
- Implementation Roadmap: Such courses are considered core to the organization and hence the tracking and implementation is perhaps monitored more closely. Project and Logistics Management skills become crucial for the L & D team.
- No of Courses: The no and variety of course coverage may be lower in Project based learning but then the moot question emerges ..does the learner actually go through a larger no of courses in Libraries? Organizations would do well to go through their internal data.
Conclusion
Project-based learning and library learning are both useful approaches to organization learning, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
While project learning is best suited for organizations with learners who like regulated, hands-on environments, library learning shines at offering a wide, flexible learning environment for self-motivated individuals. In case of Library based learning, it may be important for the L & D function to curate and bring out down the infinite possibilities inherent in large libraries for greater value.
Organizations may have a combination of cohorts responding differently to Library and Project Learning and may arrive at a hybrid mix based on their learning priorities.
The learner’s preferences, particular learning objectives, and the environment in which the learning occurs all play a major role in selecting one of these approaches. Knowing the subtle differences between each approach can assist both organizations and learners in making well-informed judgments on how best to accomplish their learning objectives.
KNOWBYTE
50 % of internet users in India have used videos for learning purposes in 4th quarter 2023.
INSIDE KNOWLENS
Samunnati: From Corporates to the Social Sector
The origins of Knowlens had always been deeply rooted in the corporate sector but as the universality and power of videos manifested itself, increasingly we have discovered a massive opportunity to create impact in the social sector.
Samunnati, a leading organization in the agricultural sector, partnered with Knowlens to create an extensive learning solution tailored for Indian farmers and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs).
Challenge
There are between 37 to 118 million farmers in India based on different definitions. Samunnati, a pioneer in the agricultural space, aimed to bridge the knowledge gap among Indian farmers and FPOs by providing accessible, high-quality educational content. The challenge was manifold
- To create engaging and informative resources to not-so-literate audiences
- This required a high impact visual medium which would communicate to the largely visual learning style of these audiences
- This content had to be localized in vernacular languages to cater to the diverse linguistic landscape of India.
- All this had to be built around a centralized platform for easy access and dissemination
Solution
The broad contours of this solution was built around the contextualized and localized content and developing a mobile friendly scalable platform for the same.
Content
- Animated Videos: Knowlens produced animated videos covering a wide range of topics such as Technology in Agriculture, FPO Governance, Organic Farming, and Soil Testing.
- Languages: Videos were translated and dubbed into Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Marathi,
- Blogs: Information blogs were created and translated into five languages
Platform:
- Multilingual Portal: Knowlens developed a user-friendly, multilingual mobile friendly portal to host all the content, making it easily accessible for learners and trainers.
Knowlens & The Samunnati Project
This project was perfect showcase of the diverse skillsets within Knowlens.
- Deep Domain Research: Understanding the agriculture education domain leveraging our content strengths
- Creative Flair: Leveraging the heart of Knowlens – a flair for the visual – this was especially crucial for the farmer audience given the limited read-write learning capabilities
- Technology: A platform oriented around the customer with strong integration with the visual and with multimodal delivery on web and mobile and supporting a large scale content creation engine.
Some Key Metrics( show as graphic)
Audience : 37 Mn +
Videos : 4,200 videos
Blogs : 100
Languages : 6 languages
Conclusion
Projects like the Samunnati prove the versatility and diverse use cases for visual learning. Such projects can go well beyond the normal scope of L & D endeavours and contribute to larer societal impact.
PRODUCT OF THE MONTH
This month we introduce the Product- “PROJECT SYNERGY”, a course on fundamentals of collaboration embracing collaborative behaviors and attitudes, advantages of collaboration, challenges in collaboration, and how to make collaboration work.
The module uses a web series based video case study approach. It has an episodic story featuring 2 different organizations – one about to launch a new product leveraging different cross functional teams , while the other is a FMCG firm attempting to develop demand forecasting software. There are protagonists who are driving the initiatives seeking collaboration and there are the collaborators who support or sometimes do not support. We go through the entire journey of these collaborative projects and learn.
Some of the Key Concepts in collaboration – handling people with different psychological mindsets, aligning of goals. giver and getter dynamics, willingness to ask for help, celebrating quick wins, building relationships, role of leadership and many more are covered in the module.
Finally it looks at the benefits of good collaborative behaviour.
UPGRADE HUB
This month we look at the revamped Course Builder within the Knowlens LMS. Given the nature of the web and mobile, and limited attention span, easy design of courses with differentiated building blocks is crucial. The core of the Course Builder is leveraging the easy creation and manipulation of the course episode itself.
The new interface allows the following:
- Smooth sequencing and ordering of episodes – this is crucial from a unit based or microlearning perspective
- Addition of new media types – today different kinds of video, scorm, document formats amongst others are supported
- Better integration of assessments engine with the courses engine
- Better segregation of course metadata and episode content
- Easy to use publishing workflow and dashboard for the content creator
EXPERIENCE CORNER
Sridhar Easwaran
Head – Samunnati Foundation
“Samunnati’s collaboration with Knowlens resulted in an innovative and impactful learning solution for Indian farmers. The success of this project highlights the importance of tailored educational content and accessible technology in transforming the agricultural sector. Through this initiative, Samunnati continues to support and empower farmers, contributing to the growth and sustainability of agriculture in India.”