Just-in-time education

The Knowledge Worker, brave warrior of the new world, equipped not with physical weapons but with knowledge. A simple enough idea, but there is so much of it and it changes so fast.

It will require creativity and radical innovation to make education relevant again.

This is the dilemma of every corporation and every individual - how to keep up with the continuous flow of information, knowledge, technologies, theories, business models, corporate information and processes, industry knowledge and all the stuff that just keeps on coming at us.

For the organisation it is a challenge to keep its people knowledgeable, not just on the specifics of the job itself but about the bigger corporation and the world in context. So what makes sense? Some of the current thinking on the idea of continuous and just-in-time learning provides some pointers.

If we examine the traditional teaching and training methods, they are all centred on the idea of imparting huge amounts of knowledge on a topic during a traditional in-class training session which could last for days.

In some ways this approach is problematic. For example: Is the student learning too much or too little? Is the student learning at the right pace considering individual levels of competence, background and experience? Can either the student or the company afford to have the individual tied up for days (usually three to five days) to deal with one topic and can we do this frequently enough to be in line with the demands and changes of the individual`s job? How does one create a learning (teaching) environment to match the speed of change in the business?

In thinking about some of the issues implied in the above discussion, we find some of the ideas that might go into crafting new approaches to this. For example, the ideas of creating self-paced education, creating smaller increments of training that can be used as and when required, and having training accessible when required. Technology makes so much possible from a delivery perspective.

Once we move our mental models out of the traditional educational mould, we find some great new ideas:

• Education over the Internet, delivered on demand and progressing not just at the pace of the individual but also at the time required to perform a specific job.
• Education delivered on computer disks and incorporating the appeal of multimedia.
• Education structured in very small modules that can be configured to address what people need to know now and spending the least possible time on it.
• Education designed to be revisited as required.
• Also, from a corporate perspective, education integrated into the job flow, easily accessible during the course of executing a particular task, or preparing for a particular activity.

This new thinking about education and learning need not be limited to what new technologies make possible. There is the need to think about corporate education and learning in a contextual sense. We need to make it appropriate and effective given the organisation, its environment, business and requirements. This brings us back to mass customisation or markets of one.

Why should it be so difficult to imagine on-demand education? Education that acknowledges the individual, their company and particular requirements, which can then be configured, delivered and timed to that requirement and very specific to the purpose of each session. So a session could be an hour of online self-study or a day of groupwork - whatever makes sense for a particular situation.

The topic of learning and education is central to each individual, our companies and our country. It will require creativity and radical innovation to make education relevant again. Most companies spend much money and effort on education programmes, mostly not very effectively.

In the latest copy of Fast Company, there is an interesting short article about Dell and how it is radically changing the nature of business education within its organisation. Its goal: "Just-in-time, just-enough."

There are three attributes of Dell's teaching style which provide food for thought:

• Learning should be synchronous with work, the right people and with the right training at the right time.
• Less is more; people should learn just enough to complete the task.
• The best learning happens fast; for example Dell`s "Know the Net" course is aimed at having employees online at their desks in 20 minutes or less.

Just-in-time and just-enough!