Long Live Learning !

I was very lucky a few weeks ago I spoke at the ARK eLearning Conference in Melbourne with my colleague Helen Mitchell and our topic was around “Changing Your Organisational Learning Culture to ensure eLearning Adoption”, to engage the audience we opened the discussion with the proposal that eLearning was dead !

To our very positive surprise almost all of the audience agreed, in that eLearning is just now seen as one of many ways to learn and now should be treated in the same vain as face to face sessions or other forms of learning. As one of the most interesting and engaging speakers at the conference, Rob Wilkins from AMP said “You need to be responsible for your own learn, you need to now how to learn and what is the best way to learn, you need to know your own Personal Learning Environment !”

It was good to see that the concept of learning itself is still well and truly alive and that the format in which you deliver this is important but it is now recognised that there are many ways in achieving the same goal.

The theme of the value of learning also continued when I met with the office of Senator Chris Evans, the Minister for Immigration recently, on the issue of English language skills for professional level migrants. For the accounting profession it is seen that an IELTS level of 7 is critical for successful employment, but how this achieved can be done in many ways, for example classroom sessions and also on line. Organisations such as Global English have achieved great success in teaching English language skills in an on line format, with self paced learning and on line education with people from around the world attending in their virtual classrooms.

It is not so much the way you learn but the value you get from the learning that makes difference – LONG LIVE LEARNING !

PS : I am off to CPA Australia’s Business Outlook 2010 this week, which includes a presentation from the ex Treasurer Peter Costello …should be very interesting.