Think about your current training programs, and imagine them including a solution that allows learners to add their own links—in real time—to information that becomes part of the course archive or a solution that allows learners to write a blog about their experiences related to the topic at hand while in the midst of a discussion.
While many of these features are missing from current web-based training solutions, they are becoming readily available. In fact, many organizations are implementing these solutions today through a new web technology.
What technology is this? Web 2.0, of course.
Web 2.0 is the second generation of web development, which allows people to collaborate, interact, and share information online. It's a dynamic, user-centered environment that encourages two-way communication. Web 2.0 allows people to communicate in ways never thought possible.
Web 2.0 is transforming workplace learning in many ways. This Infoline is designed to introduce you to the many Web 2.0 technologies available and give you ideas about how to implement them in your organization. This Infoline will help you
• identify various social networking options and how they fit into a blended learning solution
• classify Web 2.0 technologies and how they differ from social networks
• measure the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies.
WEB 2.0 AND BLENDED LEARNING
All of this technology offers today's learners a whole new way to gather and repurpose information. Participants can use Web 2.0 applications to research, create, share, and communicate information with experts all over the world about the topics at hand. They can be engaged and informed learners.
You can bring the technology into the learning path and use it within the classroom by making it part of the instructional design activity process. To keep “surfing” to a minimum, remember what you are there for: to provide information and instruction. Make Web 2.0 part of that experience and let learners know you will be utilizing it in the classroom and within the activities for the session.
Whether you are looking to move toward a more blended learning solution or are already there, Web 2.0 technology and applications are plentiful and are something to be considered in your strategic plan.
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE
One thing to keep in mind, however, is the difference between social networking and Web 2.0. You may have heard the terms used interchangeably, but they are very different indeed.
Social networks (or networking) are facilitated by Web 2.0 technology and are the virtual spaces in which people congregate around common themes, such as values, visions, ideas, interests, hobbies, and so on. Social networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Ning, are facilitated—or delivered—using Web 2.0 technologies. Thus, social networking is only one component of Web 2.0 technology.
Think of it this way: Social networking is the way in which you choose to “speak,” while Web 2.0 is the tool you use to “talk” to the world.
To learn some of the Twitter jargon that makes the “speaking” part more effective, see the sidebar Twitter Speak.
USING TRADITIONAL APPROACHES
Think for a moment about how you gather information on a daily basis. If you want to see what a friend is doing, you might check her Facebook page rather than pick up the phone. Or, if you can't decide between two books, you might check out their reviews on Amazon to help make the decision. Web 2.0 is shaping our lives by helping us interact and communicate less formally, making it easier to share our experiences and information.
This method of transferring information makes learning more natural. With remote and on-the-go workplaces, we have to think about how people get their information—in short, digestible chunks and in ways that reflect the way they live their lives.
Formal learning is best suited for
• novices who need a body of knowledge to bring them up to speed
• learners who prefer a more structured learning environment.
Informal learning is best suited for
• learners who want to add information to an existing body of knowledge
• people who prefer to participate in an unstructured learning environment; kinesthetic learners may fall into this category.
MAKING IT STICK
Making learning stick is hard enough with traditional methods. Throwing in social networking and Web 2.0 technology may leave you wondering how to continue, or even begin, to make learning stick in that space too. Below are some tips to consider when using Web 2.0 to support your blended solution:
• Use social networking as a support mechanism to provide on-the-job learning.
• Use social networking and Web 2.0 tools to engage participants before and after they attend a session.
• Create an online community for participants to refer to, share information, and post best practices to continue learning beyond the classroom.
• Develop a blog to keep participants engaged in the topic at hand. For example, if the course was about a regulation, provide information about that regulation in your blog.
To see how one professor incorporated Web 2.0 into her curriculum, see the sidebar Case Study: Web 2.0 in the Classroom.
WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY
As mentioned previously, Web 2.0 is the application that allows various technologies to function.
Below is a breakdown of different Web 2.0 technologies and components and how you—as a learning professional—can leverage them for learning.
BLOGS
Blogs, short for “web logs,” are web pages that are frequently updated, usually with personal insights and web links. Each blog entry is typically short and concise, sometimes with a link to a longer, extended entry. Examples of blog applications include Blogger and WordPress.
A variation on traditional blogs are microblogs, which allow users to send brief text updates or micromedia—such as photos or audio clips—either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio, or the web. Examples of microblogging are Twitter, which also happens to be a form of social networking, and Yammer, which focuses on businesses and allows only individuals with the same email domain to join a given network.
How to Leverage
As a learning professional, you can leverage blogs both internally and externally.
Internally, you can create a supportive learning environment by highlighting events and comments from recent courses on your learning web space. This is particularly useful when a session runs more than once. It gives the next group of participants a glimpse into the program they are about to take.
You can use blogs to keep your learning team abreast of new topics in the learning and development industry, highlight recent readings and hot topics, and provide brainteaser quizzes to keep their skills sharp. A blog also can be used as a performance management tool for your team members who might want to be active in this space. In monitoring blogs they create, you will stay abreast of the progress they're making and be able to address any questions or concerns they may have.
Externally, you can create a blog to help prepare outside instructors. You can provide them with the highlights of the program they are to support, provide a week-at-a-glance preview, or conduct a train-the-trainer evaluation. Of course, any external online activity should have some security around it to ensure only those invited to the conversation can view it.
TWITTER SPEAK
Here is a glossary of some common Twitter terminology:
Tweet: short updates that users can post. Tweets are posted on their profile or blog, sent to the people who follow their posts, and available via search. Tweets can be no longer than 140 characters.
Tweetdeck: a free Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace desktop application that allows users to update their status; view other users' profiles; complete and save mass searches; and group friends and twitter feeds into categories based on customized criteria. Users also can upload photos and video, accessing all three applications in one view.
Tweetbites: a tool that allows a user to tweet a bullet point, a single sentence, or a quote in one click. An author can tag a headline or a sentence, and users can tweet the thought from the link inside the article.
Tweetvite: a facilitator for coordinating tweetups, or twitter meetings. Users can search for events in their area or organize and send out customized invitations to their own tweetups.
Hashtag (#): a way for users to tag certain words, making it easier to group tweets or extra data. By including the “#” symbol before a word, the word is tagged, and anyone searching for that hashtag may be able to access your tweet.
Twitterstream: a live stream of Twitter updates; a site that allows users to see their friend's updates in real time.
Retweet (RT): a reposting of someone else's tweet on your Twitter page; indicated by prefacing your post with the characters “RT @” and the user name of whomever you are quoting.
CASE STUDY: WEB 2.0 IN THE CLASSROOM
Monica Rankin, history professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, uses Twitter in the classroom to engage students in classroom discussion. She included the Web 2.0 application into her academic plan in the spring of 2009.
Professor Rankin regularly posts comments to her Twitter account using hashtags and references the comments throughout the classroom session. She uses the presentation capabilities to show the students various topics of discussion and incorporates the discussion into homework and next-session activities.
She chose Twitter for its functionality and accessibility in the classroom. Students could participate by either computer or cell phone, which allowed them to interactively participate in all discussions whether in the classroom or not.
The course format was to lecture to the 90-plus students on Monday and Wednesday and reserve Friday for in-class discussion—the “Twitter Experiment.”
MONICA RANKIN'S STEPS
1. Set up a Twitter account called “ushistoryII” to start having “discussions.”
2. Introduce the idea to the students in the class. (Many of them had never heard of Twitter, but nearly all of them used Facebook, MySpace, or another similar service and were familiar with the concept of social networking.)
3. Ask students to set up a Twitter account and to “follow” the class.
4. Post instructions and a “how-to” video on her class website.
5. Use Tweetdeck as a central hub to track weekly discussions.
6. Run a search for each week's hashtag, and pull up the Tweetdeck column so a running stream of comments will appear.
7. Load Tweetdeck on the classroom computer and project it onto the large screen at the front of the room so students can watch the stream of comments.
Professor Rankin also gave the students special hashtags to use on all of their comments. The hashtags were organized by week so that all of the comments posted in a given week would appear together, which also aids in searching post-sessions using Tweetdeck.
Tweetdeck allowed her to search for that week's hashtag, and it created a special column dedicated to comments using that hashtag. Tweetdeck is designed to refresh automatically at regular intervals (about every 12 seconds).
One note of caution: Twitter's search and archiving are short-lived. Therefore, students may be lucky to retrieve comments they posted at the beginning of the term. However, you can copy/paste the comments into Word document for archiving and retrieval.
You can read more about this experience and review Professor Rankin's comments at www.utdallas.edu/~mar046000/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm.
Used with permission, www.ReadWriteWeb.com.
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social networks provide a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject or who just want to “hang out” together. Members create their own online “profile.” They communicate with one another by voice, chat, instant message, videoconference, and blogs. The service typically provides a way for members to contact friends of other members. The social networking site is the 21st century “virtual community,” a group of people who use the Internet to communicate with one another about anything and everything. Examples of social networks include
• LinkedIn: a social networking site mainly used for professional networking and knowledge sharing.
• Twitter: a social networking and microblogging service that allows you to answer the question “What's happening?” by sending short text messages less than 140 characters in length called “tweets” to your friends or “followers.”
• Facebook: a social networking website in which users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people by chatting, posting comments, or sending messages.
• MySpace: a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos.
How to Leverage
Social networks provide employees and educators with a creative outlet to share information with one another. Social networks can be used both inside and outside of the classroom to share information and gain insight on nearly any topic. Use the power of social networking to break down barriers that exist in geographically dispersed organizations by getting employees from multiple organizations collaborating on a topic or problem.
Follow the advice in the Facebook Tips sidebar to learn how to get the most out of your Facebook experience.
FACEBOOK TIPS
Facebook is a Web 2.0 component that you can use in your learning environment. To best communicate with your audience about what's going on in training and what they need to know to be successful, keep these tips in mind when setting up your company's learning Facebook account:
• Use a profile photo that represents your brand.
• Highlight your company's interests, such as corporate responsibility in communities.
• Invite those who should view the page, including internal professionals who might need access.
• Use privacy settings.
• Manage and update your online profile, because potential employees and college admissions may be checking.
• Add your company blog, Twitter account(s), and any other Web 2.0 technology you use to Facebook and vice versa.
• Create and invite “friends” to “events.”
• Fine-tune your email notification settings.
• Be wary of scammers.
• Set up your “News Feed” preferences.
Adapted from Facebook 101: 25 Tips and Tricks, available at www.switched.com.
FORUMS
Forums are online communities where multiple users comment on topics of interest. They are commonly used as resources for those interested in a particular topic. For example, LinkedIn has many groups, such as the ASTD National Group and various groups dedicated to e-learning. These groups have forums in which members can post questions, insights, discussion topics, polls, web links, and more. Other members can respond, lend advice, and discuss topics of interest.
How to Leverage
Forums are a powerful resource to gain external insight into topics of interest. For example, you may ask your team members to join a learning-and development-related forum to gain insight into how other organizations are finding solutions to challenges or join a technology group that can provide guidance on using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom.
CONTENT COMMUNITIES
Content communities are websites that allow users to post and share content. They can exist around any kind of content, such as movies, videos, music, and learning. Some sites include voting functions that allow visitors to determine the relevance of content. Popular content communities include YouTube, Digg, Google Apps, and Moodle. Moodle, for example, is an open source course management system (CMS), popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating dynamic websites for their students.
How to Leverage
Content communities can help you leverage and organize content in ways you may not have considered, making you more efficient and effective.
Moodle offers great features and benefits without the tremendous cost of buying a full-fledged content or learning management system. Its features allow for large-scale deployments to hundreds of students or participants. You can conduct online courses or face-to-face courses with it.
YouTube allows users to create their own “channel.” As a learning professional, you can record and post short, educational videos on your channel and link to other useful learning content.
There are so many features to these types of products, you have to check them out to know what's best for your organization.
VIRTUAL WORLDS
Virtual worlds are interactive 3D environments that allow users to engage with others. Users create an “avatar,” or character, to represent them and operate within the virtual world. Almost anything you can do in the real world, you can do within the realm of a virtual world.
While many virtual worlds are created for personal use, they provide an excellent option for learning. You could create a virtual learning environment that your participants can access without having to be physically present.
Second Life is the most popular virtual world, allowing its users, or “residents,” to create worlds that closely mirror reality. Universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, already use Second Life to hold classes virtually.
How to Leverage
Consider the cost savings you can generate by hosting courses in a virtual environment in which participants can engage from anywhere in the world. Virtual worlds offer the flexibility to engage in online, real-time learning experiences with others without the cost of travel.
You also can build remediation programs into the application. Learners can train offline, and stakeholders can follow progress through built-in testing. Records can be electronically maintained in a learning management system. Keep in mind the goal of simulated learning is to have learners apply knowledge gained to real-life situations. It gives learners a chance to practice and hone necessary skills in the classroom rather than in an on-the-job situation.
WIKIS
Wikis are community-generated documents and databases. Approved users create content and augment that of others. Wikipedia is the most well-known wiki.
How to Leverage
Wikis are a great tool to help teach critical thinking. They give instructors an opportunity to modify content from class to class or session to session based upon updates in research or facts uncovered, resulting in the most up-to-date content. Participants also can use wikis for in-class activities or as part of a case study in preparation for an instructor-led session.
Wikis (and blogs) are small libraries of documentation that leave a “virtual paper trail” of learning, or cumulative knowledge. This feature allows you to “look back” and see how much the discussion or topic has developed, which allows you to more easily decide the direction you would like to go next in the class.
IMPLEMENTING WEB 2.0
Web 2.0 applications can house repositories of the skills and institutional knowledge of an organization. They allow social networks to do what they do best: provide a space where the learners can get the information they need quickly to move on with the task at hand. The information gathered also can be used to fuel learning and development needs within an organization, track learners' progress, identify trends, obtain feedback on courses or topics, and much more.
Before beginning any kind of social networking space or implementing various Web 2.0
applications within your organization, consider the following questions:
• What do you want employees and learners to learn about one another? This question helps you to narrow the specific needs you have for learning and helps you identify the best Web 2.0 solution.
• What do you want to learn about participants when crafting the profile information? This question helps guide your metrics and measurement strategy and define the outline of topics you may consider in something like a blog.
• What would participants want to know about one another in a professional context? This is a great way to determine if you should use a forum, and if so, what type. It also helps you define what technology you should use. For example, user biographies in Twitter are typically short and more general. However, other social networking sites like Facebook can have detailed biographical information.
• Would it be appropriate to incorporate your social networking space into active participations? Social networking tools, such as Twitter, can help keep participants engaged in the discussion. Tips for incorporating Twitter into your next presentation are available in the sidebar Twitter in Participation.
TWITTER IN PARTICIPATION
Twitter is a great way to enhance training or a presentation. It encourages the audience to continually engage with and react to the content being presented. Follow these steps to use Twitter as a participation tool:
1. Design your presentation for Twitter. Break up presentations into small chunks. Have “tweetbites” scattered throughout the presentation.
2. Encourage your audience to tweet. Tell them exactly how to tweet. Set up a separate hashtag for the conversation.
3. Remember the non-tweeters.
4. Use multiple ways to monitor the “twitterstream” by taking Twitter breaks, appointing an associate or audience member to be the Twitter monitor, and displaying the twitterstream so others can see it.
5. Ask the audience to “retweet” the tweets they want to address.
6. Let go of the illusion that you might know more than the audience.
7. Tweet the questions you want the audience to respond to.
8. Don't feel obligated to respond to all of the questions during the presentation.
Used with permission, Olivia Mitchell, www.speakingaboutpresenting.com.
• Do you want to list personal aspects that could entice people to become more social? Creating a group based on outside interests can help you link people together, which encourages the natural mentoring process. Again, this type of questioning comes in handy when trying to determine the method you should choose. If you wish to create groups/forums, you need to know what to base those groups/forums on— whether common, personal, or professional goals or interests.
• What is the tone of the networking space: business, casual, friendly, formal, personal, or professional? This is an important question that leads to the “rules” for what is appropriate for the site when it comes to postings, responses, sharing information, and so on.
• What types of questions do you want to ask learners and network visitors? For example, open-ended questions allow visitors to take a deeper dive into how they answer. Closed-ended questions allow for short, concise responses. An example might be, “Describe a recent project that you are proud of.” This type of question elicits potentially three different kinds of responses: personal, timely, and significant. Depending on the length of the answers you wish to receive, you must first determine the kinds of questions you want to ask. For example, blog responses tend to be very short (140 to 160 characters), while forum answers can be quite lengthy.
• How will learners and participants link to other groups or areas within the network to post or retrieve information? This helps you determine, yet again, the technical functionality and type of Web 2.0 applications you should use.
• How can you create an environment that people trust and in which they feel comfortable sharing information? Creating a collaborative, friendly environment promotes participation and knowledge sharing. Encouraging users to post profile photos can help them feel more comfortable working with one another.
• How will this network connect to other networks within your organization? This is a very important question to ask yourself and your information technology (IT) department. The answer to this question can aid you in determining method, budget, platform, and capabilities with Web 2.0 technology.
• How will you combat “profile fatigue”? Profile fatigue is an instance in which users exhaust themselves repopulating profile pages on various Web 2.0 applications. Providing a pre-populated profile to alleviate learners' profile fatigue is a wonderful feature to consider. Being able to populate a profile once and have other Web 2.0 applications leverage that profile is very helpful to end users. It will alleviate the need for participants to enter data more than once. Again, work with your IT department to leverage existing single sign-on features.
• How can you ensure a sounder and smoother acceptance of these technologies? Avoid a fire-hose approach when implementing Web 2.0 technologies. Begin small and build the plan to meet the full-scale needs of your learning organization. Too much at one time can overwhelm novice users, and it could prevent them from participating in the long term.
When implementing any new technologies, it's important to keep in mind not only how you plan on accomplishing your goal, but also why. What purpose does implementing this new technology serve? Consider the Social Networking Lessons sidebar when deciding which technology to implement and the Adding Social Networks sidebar when deciding how to go about doing so.
SOCIAL NETWORKING LESSONS
With the intense competition for talent, increasing globalization, and younger, highly skilled talent entering the workforce, learning and development leaders should consider and embrace social networking and Web 2.0 technologies within their strategic plan. This consideration can help drive revenue growth, win the global war on talent, and direct you toward a highly optimized organization.
Below are five lessons leaders can learn when incorporating social networking and Web 2.0 technologies into their strategic learning plan:
1. The value of a decentralized organization. By extending the organization's reach beyond the traditional four walls, you exponentially extend and expand the organization's learning and growth elasticity, often through informal learning.
2. Corporate relationship deficit disorder. By design, traditional organizational charts tend to create geographic, functional, and project-based silos that are not conducive to collaboration, communication, and shared best practices. Knowledge management is not a system, but a process.
3. Adapting innovation. An organization's most valuable talent simply cannot be creative in isolation. The ability to leverage highly communal experiences, such as Second Life, particularly with geographically dispersed teams, nurtures the necessary DNA for a team or organization to adapt its business model to a constantly evolving market.
4. Risk of flight. Stifle the creativity of your 20–30 year olds, and your talent will leave in the next 12 months. As reciprocal loyalty continues to decline, leaders must find ways to align the personal objectives of key individuals with those of the organization to get things done.
5. Social networks as accelerants of your brand equity. Beyond the measurement analysis of your hard assets, the next evolution is one of leveraging the corporation's soft assets. Social networks, by definition, encompass the three most critical examples of such soft assets: people, relationships, and brand.
Used with permission, David Nour, “What Is Your Social Networking Leadership Strategy in 2009?” www.fentonreport.com.
ADDING SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social networks aren't always easy to implement, but here are some best practices to make your efforts as fruitful as possible.
• Consider the long-term state—a workplace or learning community that includes a learning management system (LMS) and social media component.
• Establish “rules of the road” outlining what is allowed and what is not.
• Conduct social media tasks with as much importance as other business tasks. This should not be a side task that gets accomplished whenever it can.
• Identify clear business cases to deliver tangible business value.
• Avoid getting caught up in the buzzwords and technologies and then implementing all of them; rather, focus on two high-value applications.
• Start small and demonstrate clear value and return on investment (ROI) before expansion.
• Define clear success criteria, like adoption rate to LMS, retention rate to LMS, and increased percentage of use in self-initiated learning.
• Remember the fun factor, which is essential to adoption and retention.
MEASURING RESULTS
How do you measure the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies? Because social networks and Web 2.0 technologies are rather new to the classroom environment, there has been little research as to their impact on the bottom line. Still, that doesn't mean you should neglect measurement.
In order to gauge the effectiveness of your Web 2.0 learning and development campaign, you must take action, creating a plan and monitoring its success.
Consider how this technology aligns with your overall strategic plan or blended learning solution; what you hope to gain by using it; and how you plan to measure its success.
You may begin by implementing a standard Level 1 evaluation. In addition to the traditional items on your evaluation form, you should
• begin thinking about targeted questions regarding the use of social networking in the learning experience
• ask how the tools helped learners to better prepare for the instructor-led portion of the program
• make certain you continue to gather feedback on how participants use the tools to engage in on-the-job learning in your post-course programs, and then track, track, track that data
• compare the data against the overall program success prior to the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in the blended solution.
In addition to traditional learning and development metrics, such as return on investment (ROI), you must also consider Web 2.0 measurement metrics. Success is measured by level of participation, as “quality” of participation is difficult to measure. Here are some ways to objectively measure success:
• the percentage of class learners that created a profile on a Web 2.0 site
• the percentage of people who commented, rated, or contributed in another way between one and five times
• the percentage of people who commented, rated, or contributed in another way between five and 10 times.
Below are some metrics you might use to gauge your initial Web 2.0 activity within the learning space. This includes traffic (who is using your technology and how); content (what your web space offers visitors); and continued activity (how visitors continuously engage in your web space).
This aligns with the metrics your organization may also be using for its external campaign. Consider meeting with the department personnel in charge of external Web 2.0 activities to better understand how they are measuring success.
DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC PLAN
David Wilkins, senior director of social learning products at Mzinga, said, “Including social media and Web 2.0 technologies into your learning and development infrastructure can help make employees more productive and efficient, reduce support costs, improve sales, increase retention, and provide better mechanisms for talent identification.”
| TRAFFIC | CONTENT | CONTINUED ACTIVITY |
| • Unique visitors | • New groups | • Cross-referenced information |
| • Page views | • Discussions | • Post-course discussion and activity |
| • Length of time on the site | • Content relevance | |
| • Referrals (where people are entering from) | • Content amount | • Interest in additional Web 2.0 activity |
| • Frequency | • Member connections | |
| • Contributions | • Survey responses |
CASE STUDY: WEB 2.0 IN THE LEARNING SPACE
Faculty members at JetBlue University (JBU), the training center of airline JetBlue Airways, have implemented social networking and media tools to bring them closer as a team and to share best practices in what could be considered a seamless process.
With training facilities in Orlando, Salt Lake City, and New York and nearly 90 percent of all training administered by JBU, the faculty needs to be able to communicate quickly and efficiently.
HOW IS JBU DOING IT?
Through various technologies and platforms (Microsoft's SharePoint and Awareness, Incorporated's technologies), JBU has been successful at implementing wikis, blogs, communities of practice, and tagging to share company knowledge and information among its faculty.
“We keep running up against the failure of email to meet our needs and be an ‘all-serving' tool,” said Murry Christensen, director of learning technologies at JetBlue. JBU uses PowerPoint presentations, video, virtual classrooms, surveys, collaborative workspaces, and instant messaging-type applications to keep the process moving.
Because the JBU leadership is willing to experiment with new technologies in the workspace, the information technology (IT) department helps them try new applications before rolling them out to the rest of the organization. “Having a good relationship with your IT team is crucial,” Christensen indicated.
ROI VS. ROE
When it comes down to measuring the success of technologies in the learning space, Christensen said that for JBU, it's not about the return on investment (ROI) as much as it is about the return on expectations (ROE). “We are very interested in the qualitative as much as the quantitative, but it's more about the how these media fit into people's lives,” he stated. “We don't use a charge-back model. Our interests are about serving the needs of our operational customers, and making sure what we do reinforces the JetBlue culture and what it means to people.”
JBU took the following steps to implement its learning model:
1. Understand and identify the scale of the expenditure.
2. Determine if you can use an in-house technology solution, or if another is required.
3. Work with the finance department to create the business case.
4. Provide measures to prove net present value, or the standard method for using the time value of money to appraise long-term projects.
5. Run the numbers.
6. Include IT throughout the process.
7. Determine your method for tracking success.
MAKING PROGRESS
Overall, JBU has seen a tremendous response to using Web 2.0 applications in their learning space. In one instance, over the past year it has seen nearly a 50 percent posting and commenting rate for Christensen's weekly blog posts alone. The goal is to engage the faculty in timely topics that can positively affect its day-to-day operations.
So, if you're looking to implement Web 2.0 technologies in your learning space, consider a phased approach. Before branching out to your internal customers, be sure your learning and development staff understands and knows how to use the technologies themselves. After all, they are your sounding board, champions, and best researchers to gauge how the technology can and could be used in the classroom. Once they are on board, pilot it with programs that you can easily measure and evaluate.
When you are in the early stages of developing your learning and development strategic plan, remember to
• consider how Web 2.0 technology can help you meet your department and organization's goals
• consult your IT department early in the process to let them be a partner in the journey with you
• include participants in the process, asking them what types of tools they are comfortable using in their everyday lives
• plan for the longevity and flexibility of the new technologies in your environment
• measure the effectiveness of Web 2.0 within your blended solution.
See the sidebar Case Study: Web 2.0 in the Learning Space to learn about the ways that JetBlue Airways has not only developed a strategic plan for learning using Web 2.0 technologies, but also implemented the technologies in its JetBlue University.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Web 2.0 technologies are affecting the workplace and learning in ways we still don't fully understand. Adoption of these technologies will only increase over time. In fact, a new age of web technology is right around the corner.
Web 3.0 is the “web of the future” and is created to make everyday searches easier, faster, and more analytical. For example, you want to see a movie and get a bite to eat. Your normal routine may be to search for movie theaters and then search again for restaurants. Well, in Web 3.0, you enter a sentence or two into the browser, and it analyzes your request, searches the Internet, and organizes the results for you. Some experts even believe Web 3.0 will serve as a personal assistant for people. As your browser becomes more accustomed to what you search for, it becomes better able to refine your searches.
Web technologies have come a long way in the past few decades, and they will continue to take the world by storm. Now is the time to jump aboard the web technology bandwagon and take advantage of the realm of learning and training opportunities that Web 2.0 is providing.