rapidly and also to create it in a format that will be compelling
enough and engaging enough to capture their attention. Organiza-
tions are building content templates that have a richness of design
and allow a subject matter expert, such as the merchandising
manager at headquarters, to drag and drop content into a design
framework that is familiar and acceptable to the learner. This
means we are putting a learning-authoring dimension into the
knowledge management model. As key managers determine
what knowledge should be disseminated, they want to rapidly
author it in a way that has instructional integrity, efficiency of use
for the learner, and speed of delivery. Watch for more learning tem-
plates to be deployed between content or knowledge management
systems that will increase the speed to learning.
Imagine the Wal-Mart scenario,just a few years hence:
- The change in how the computer box was opened and dis-
played would be authored as a change in an existing module
on displaying that item. The merchandising manager would
just highlight changes in the existing content. - The store that made the change would have access to a digital
still or video camera to take a quick shot of how it is display-
ing the item. - This content would be made available in a text format that
could be easily translated into multiple languages for the
diverse workforce and would share text of the video content
for the hearing-challenged workforce. - This authoring would be done with a simple drag-and-drop
approach that embodies good instructional design, and the
output would be rapidly disseminated by store associates.
Fast to Connect
The speed of learning is also determined by how rapidly knowledge
can reach the working associates in an enterprise. Although there
8 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING