The brave new world of learning

T+D, June, 2003 by Sam S. Adkins

Workflow trumps courseware in an emergent new world where the terms and tools are changing--and you need to absorb Web services, super-stack environments, zero-latency, and a slew of acronyms. And, by the way, just-in-time is too late.

Enterprise technology is in the midst of an accelerating process of integration and convergence. Learning technologies such as LMSs (learning management systems) and LCMs (learning content management systems) are being assimilated into integrated enterprise application suites. Real-time workflow is the most salient characteristic of these integrated applications.

SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, Siebel, and PeopleSoft have all added new e-learning functionality to their product lines in the past year. They've redefined e-learning as a core business process that must be automated like any other business process. They contend that, like other automated business processes, learning must be integrated into enterprise application suites.

These new integrated enterprise application suites are the catalysts for two watershed developments in the enterprise: 1) migration away from courseware as a corporate performance improvement method and 2) adoption of true performance support embedded in workflow.

Customers are steadily migrating away from courseware-based e-learning products and enthusiastically adopting next-generation, real-time embedded workflow products. They include

* business process management (BPM)

* simulation, workflow automation

* multi-user collaboration workspaces

* instant messaging

* automated expertise mapping products

* workflow optimization products.

Those next-generation workflow products are characterized by task-specific, real-time contextual content and simulation embedded in the workflow, and real-time multi-user collaboration in virtual workspaces. Training professionals need to have a basic understanding of the range of applications that are being integrated with learning and performance technology. They need to understand the performance improvement benefits that are available to them in the goldmine of data assets that reside in these applications. In particular, they need to have a firm grasp on the emergent property that results from the integration of these technologies.

This emergent property is workflow.

The lingua franca

Vendors from previously distinct industries are innovating extraordinary new convergent learning technologies and integrating them into product suites. The applications they're developing are known by a bewildering array of three-letter acronyms. What's needed is a roadmap of these new technologies in a cohesive taxonomy to help learning professionals understand this brave new learning world where workflow trumps courseware. These new product suites are being assembled from a variety of separate technologies and applications via an integration methodology known as enterprise application integration. EAI is the first three-letter acronym that training professionals need to absorb. The dominant EAI technology is what is known as Web services.

There are only two words that training professionals need to master when they deal with Web services: publish and consume. Applications built with Web services publish and consume small chunks of information to and from other applications that are built with Web services. E-learning platforms built on Web services publish and consume information from enterprise application (EA) suites. VCampus and Element K are examples of vendors that are already Web services-ready. The recent integration of Element K's technology with Saba's Java technology at Kinko's used Web services to rapidly tie the two platforms together. So, enterprise application integration (EAI) is important not just for integration with other business applications, but also for the seamless integration between two (or more) learning technologies.

In the brave new learning world order, [pounds]41 is the most dominant characteristic of second-generation learning technology.

Three types of integration

Enterprise application integration in second-generation learning technology is characterized primarily by these types of technical integration:

* wide, automated cross-business application integration

* deep super-stack or server-stack integration

* tailored presentation-layer integration in hybrid applications accessed via highly personalized portals (defined by business rules and personalized to a job role).

Look out below. The deep super-stack (sometimes called the server-stack) integration involves a layered vertical integration. From the bottom up, the layers of the super stack are platforms, application server and databases, enterprise application integration, transactional logic and content management, business process management (business rules), and the presentation layer known as the workflow portal.

Across the board. The cross-business integration involves tight and loose coupling with other automated enterprise business processes defined by a slew of acronyms such as ERP, CRM, SCM, KM, CM, and now LMS and LCMS. Those acronyms are organized in several clearly discernable functional categories in the real-time extended enterprise (REE).