The Characteristics of the Knowledge Economy, Part 4

In concluding this part of the E-Learning Curve Blog's series on Knowledge Work, I will describe the final characteristics that define a knowledge economy.

Systems of creation, production and distribution

The commonly-held notion that a knowledge economy is a services economy is misleading. As information and knowledge add value to basic products manufacturing and services are becoming increasingly integrated into complex chains of creation, production and distribution. At the core of the economy are goods producing industries, linked into value chains which see inputs coming from knowledge-based business services and goods related construction and energy industries, and outputs going to goods related distribution service industries[1].

Convergence or divergence

One feature of the emerging knowledge economy is increasing evidence that the nations of the world are polarizing, rather than converging, in economic terms. Standard growth theories suggest that economies subject to market forces should converge in terms of per capita GDP levels, either absolutely or relatively. But the reality is quite different.

Countries appear to be moving towards two peaks or nodes, one at high incomes and one at relatively low incomes. This polarisation of countries into different strata of economic activity and of living standards is becoming both pronounced and persistent – what is often referred to as “twin-peaks dynamics[2].” What the future will show as the knowledge economy unfolds remains to be seen, but there is little in the recent historical record to assure policy makers that market forces will deliver a continuing process of convergence to US levels. In such a world the consequences of policy failure or inaction can be dramatic.

Divergence and concentration

These same dynamics may cause changes in the industrial structure of knowledge economics. Many contend that increasing inequality can be observed at the international, national, regional, household and personal levels – that the rich are getting rich, while the poor are getting poorer. Some economists suggest that increasing returns from network economies and learning economies characteristic of knowledge economies will lead to industrial concentration – a world of winner takes all[3]. Others contend that the expansion of the knowledge driven economy will create a proliferation of material, firms and activities at all points and at all levels, suggesting that no one can expect to enjoy continued control of markets.

There may be temporary monopolies but they cannot last. And it is misconceived to think that the key lies in being at the point of delivery of the product: the low cost and ease of access to the delivery mechanism mean that the rents are driven down at the delivery level and instead migrate back up the value chain to those with genuinely scarce factors and competitive advantages[4].

Whichever proves true, the knowledge economy will see the development of new business models.

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Footnotes:

[1] Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

[2] Sheehan, P. and Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy, Victoria University Press, p100. See also Quah, D. (1996) ‘Convergence Empirics Across Economies with (Some) Capital Mobility,’ Journal of Economic Growth, 1(1) pp. 95-125 [Internet] Available form: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2235377 [Accessed 20 August 2008]

[3] Arthur, W.B. (1996) ‘Increasing Returns and the New World of Business’, Harvard Business Review, July-August 1996, pp. 100-109

[4] Kay, J. In: DTI (1999) Economics of the Knowledge Driven Economy, Conference Proceedings, Department of Trade and Industry, London.

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The Characteristics of the Knowledge Economy, Part 3

In yesterday's post, I began to describe in some detail the characteristics of the knowledge economy in the 21st century; in today's post I will continue to investigate some of the defining factors that identify the emergence of this economic paradigm.

Learning organizations and innovation systems

In a knowledge economy, organizations search for linkages to promote inter-organizational learning, and for outside partners and networks to provide complementary assets. These relationships help organizations

1. spread the costs and risks associated with innovation
2. gain access to new research results, acquire key technological components
3. share assets in manufacturing, marketing and distribution.

As they develop new products and processes, organizations determine which activities they will undertake individually, in collaboration with other organizations, in collaboration with universities or research institutions, and with the support of government[1]. We can say that, as such, innovation is the result of numerous interactions between actors and institutions, which together form an "innovation system."

These innovation systems consist of the information flows and relationships which exist among industry, government and academic and other institutions in the development of science and technology. The interactions within these systems influences the innovative performance of organizations - and ultimately of the economy. The ‘knowledge distribution power’ of the system, or its capability to ensure timely access by innovators to relevant stocks of knowledge, is can be seen as a major determinant of economic growth.

Strategy and location

One of the consequences of globalization combined with advances in communications technologies has been a strengthening of world competition, and the emergence of a new form of ‘global competition’. Most organizations in a dominant market position are, by necessity, multinational or transnational organizations. To compete successfully with their rivals, organizations must compete head-to-head in all markets (including their home market), and they must rapidly attain a global scale in production and/or rapidly roll out products and services into multiple markets in order to do so. In this environment, competitiveness depends increasingly on the coordination of, and alignment of a broad range of specialized industrial, financial, technological, commercial, administrative and cultural skills which can be located in many locations around the world[2].

Production is being rationalized globally, with organizations combining the factors, features and skills of various locations in the process of competing in global markets. There are three major dimensions of change involved:

• increasing national (locational) specialization
• increased international ‘fracturing’ of value chains or chains of production – witnessed in increased intra-industry and intra-firm trade
• greater line-item by line-item trade imbalances

An increasingly apparent consequence of this development in industrial ertia is substantial structural dislocation in local, regional and even national economies, and a consequent need for substantial structural adjustment.

Clustering in the Knowledge Economy

Networks and geographical clusters of firms are a particularly important feature of the knowledge economy. Organizations find it increasingly necessary to work with other firms and institutions in technology-based alliances, because of the rising cost, increasing complexity and widening scope of technology. Many organizations are becoming multi-technology corporations locating around centers of excellence in different countries. Despite improved capability for global communication, firms increasingly co-locate because it is the only effective way to share understanding[3]. Consequently, skills and life-style are becoming increasingly important locational factors.

As we enter the age of human capital, where organizations merely lease knowledge-assets, organizations’ location decisions are increasingly based upon quality-of-life factors that are important to attracting and retaining this economic asset. In high-tech services, strict business-cost measures are becoming less important to growing and sustaining technology clusters … Locations that are attractive to knowledge assets will play a vital role in determining the economic success of regions[4].

Economics of knowledge

In the knowledge economy there are new ground rules. Knowledge has fundamentally different characteristics from ordinary commodities and these differences have crucial implications for the way a knowledge economy must be organised[5]. The whole nature of economic activity, and our understanding of it, is changing.

Unlike physical goods information is non-rival – not destroyed in consumption. Its value in consumption can be enjoyed again and again. Hence, social return on investment in its generation can be multiplied through its diffusion. Ideas and information exhibit very different characteristics from the goods and services of the industrial economy. For example, much more than is the case with a frozen dinner or a haircut, the social value of ideas and information increases to the degree they can be shared with and used by others. More important, the costs associated with their production are distributed very differently over time. While up front costs associated with the production of traditional goods such as a car or house may not necessarily be high, each item is still costly to produce. The more of these one produces, the more likely one will eventually encounter scarcities that drive up production costs and reduce the size of social returns. In the case of innovation, ideas and information, however, the opposite would seem largely to be the case. While up front development costs can be very high, the reproduction and transmission costs are low. The more such items are (re)produced, the greater the social return on investment[6].

Traditional economics is founded on a system which seeks to optimise the efficient allocation of scarce resources, but because of the unique characteristics of information and knowledge the very meaning of scarcity is changing. Indeed, the scarcity defying expansiveness of knowledge is the root of one of its most important defining features. Once knowledge is discovered and made public, there is essentially zero marginal cost to adding more users[7].

More...

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References:

Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

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Footnotes:

[1] OECD. (1996) The Knowledge-Based Economy, OECD Paris, p. 16. [Internet] Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/8/1913021.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2008]

[2] Hatzichronoglou, T.(1996) Globalisation and Competitiveness: Relevant Indicators, STI

Working Paper 1996/5, OECD, Paris, p. 7.

[3] Cantwell, J. In: DTI (1999) Economics of the Knowledge Driven Economy, Conference Proceedings, Department of Trade and Industry, London.

[4] DeVol, R.C. (1999) America’s High-Tech Economy: Growth, Development and Risks for Metropolitan Areas, Milken Institute, Santa Monica

[5] DTI (1999) Economics of the Knowledge Driven Economy, Conference Proceedings, Department of Trade and Industry, London, p.5

[6] Industry Canada (1997) Towards a Society Built on Knowledge [Internet} Available from: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ih01644e.html [Accessed 20p August 2008]

[7] DTI (1999) Economics of the Knowledge Driven Economy, Conference Proceedings, Department of Trade and Industry, London, p. 6.

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Characteristics of the Knowledge Economy, continued

In the 21st century, comparative advantage will become much less a function of natural resource endowments and capital-labour ratios and much more a function of technology and skills. Mother nature and history will play a much smaller role, while human ingenuity will play a much bigger role.

(New Tools, New Rules: Playing to win in the new economic game. p.101)

As I discussed in much finer detail (and in the context of e-learning rather than the economy) in this post, in my view we as a society are on the cusp of a knowledge revolution akin to the explosion of information made possible after the general availability of printed texts following the invention of movable type and the printing press in 1440.

As this century unfolds, the skills used by people will increasingly be those that are complementary with information and communication technology; not those that are substitutes.

Now read on...

What makes the emergence of the knowledge economy important is that it is, in some significant respects, different from the industrial economy we have known for most of the last two hundred years. Some of the key differentiators include:

Information revolution

The IT revolution has intensified the move towards knowledge convergence, and increased the share the knowledge stock of advanced economies. All knowledge that can be distilled as information can be transmitted globally at relatively little cost. Knowledge per se has attained more of the properties of a commodity. [1]

Flexible organization

Flexible organizations reduce waste and increase the productivity of both labor and capital by integrating worker cognition and action at all levels of their operations.In doing so they eliminate many layers of middle management, which are dysfunctional in terms of information flow[2]. Flexible organizations also avoid excessive specialization and compartmentalization by defining multi-task job responsibilities (which calls for multi-skilled workers) and by using teamwork and job rotation.

Flexible organizations merge agility and high product quality with the speed and low unit costs of mass production. They do this by more fully utilising the human capabilities of their workers.

Knowledge, skills and learning

Information and communication technologies have reduced the cost and enhanced the capacity of organizations to converge knowledge, and process and communicate information. In doing so they have substantially altered the ‘balance’ between explicit and tacit knowledge in the overall quantum of knowledge. As access to information becomes easier and less expensive, the skills and competencies relating to the selection and efficient use of information become more crucial, and tacit knowledge in the form of the skills needed to handle explicit knowledge has become more important than ever.

Information and communication technology investments are complementary with investment in human resources and skills[3]. Whereas machines replaced labor in the industrial era, information technology will be the locus of explicit knowledge in the knowledge economy, and work in the knowledge economy will increasingly demand uniquely human (and tacit) skills – such as conceptual and inter-personal management and communication skills.

Innovation and knowledge networks

The knowledge economy increasingly relies on the creation, distribution and use of knowledge assets. The success of enterprises will become more reliant upon their effectiveness in creation, harvesting, absorption and utilization of knowledge.

A knowledge economy is driven by the acceleration of the rate of change and the rate of learning of the contributors to the economy, where the opportunity and capability to get access to and join knowledge-intensive and learning-intensive relations determines the socio-economic position of individuals and firms[4]. Companies must become learning organizations, continuously adapting management, organization and skills to accommodate new technologies and grasp new opportunities. They will be increasingly joined in networks, where interactive learning involving creators, producers and users in experimentation and exchange of information drives innovation.

More...

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References:

Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

Thurow, L. (1991) New Tools, New Rules: Playing to win in the new economic game. Prism.

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Footnotes:

[1] This post is primarily drawn from Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

[2] Oman C. (1996) The Policy Challenges of Globalisation and Regionalisation, Policy Brief No. 11, OECD Development Centre, OECD, Paris, p. 19. [Internet] Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/8/1913021.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2008]

[3] Soete, L. (1997) Macroeconomic and Structural Policy in the Knowledge-based
Economy. In: Industrial Competitiveness in the Knowledge-based Economy: The New Role
of Governments, OECD, Paris, p. 136.

[4] David, P. Foray, D. (1995) ‘Accessing and Expanding the Science and Technology Knowledge Base,’ STI Review, No 16, OECD, Paris.

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Characteristics of the Knowledge Economy

In their paper Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy, John Houghton and Peter Sheehan discuss the "impacts" (p.8) of globalization and as the foundation for the Knowledge Economy. They assert that

...firms are increasingly required to adopt global strategies to deal with the new realities. Global competition in all major markets between competitors from all major countries, the increasing multinational origin of the inputs to production of both goods and services, the growing intra-industry and indeed intra-product nature of world trade and the interdependent role of the various elements of globalisation are all contributing to a transformation of the global economy.

(1998, p.8)

The emergence of the knowledge economy can be characterized in terms of the "increasing role of knowledge" (p.9) as a factor of production and its impact on skills, learning, organization and innovation. These, then, are the key circumstances and characteristics in the development of Globalized Knowledge Economy:

• There is an enormous increase in the codification of knowledge, which together with networks and the digitalization of information, is leading to its increasing commodification.
• Increasing codification of knowledge is leading to a shift in the balance of the stock of knowledge – leading to a relative shortage of tacit knowledge.
• Codification is promoting a shift in the organization and structure of production.
• Information and communication technologies increasingly favour the diffusion of information over re-invention, reducing the investment required for a given quantum of knowledge.
• The increasing rate of accumulation of knowledge stocks is positive for economic growth (raising the speed limit to growth). Knowledge is not necessarily exhausted in consumption.
• Codification is producing a convergence, bridging different areas of competence, reducing knowledge dispersion, and increasing the speed of turnover of the stock of knowledge.
• The innovation system and its ‘knowledge distribution power’ are critically
  important.
• The increased rate of codification and collection of information are leading to a shift in focus towards tacit (‘handling’) skills.
• Learning is increasingly central for both people and organizations.
• Learning involves both education and learning-by-doing, learning-by-using and learning-by-interacting.
• Learning organizations are increasingly networked organizations.
• Initiative, creativity, problem solving and openness to change are increasingly important skills.
• The transition to a knowledge-based system may make market failure systemic.
• A knowledge-based economy is so fundamentally different from the resource-based system of the last century that conventional economic understanding must be re-examined.

More...

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References:

Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

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On the Increasing Complexity of Information in the Late 20th Century: Knowledge Workers - a Short History, Part 2

[We] are living through a period of profound change and transformation of the shape of society and its underlying economic base ... The nature of production, trade, employment and work in the coming decades will be very different from what it is today. The determinants of economic success will be different to those that were relevant in the past or those required at the present time.

Shaping our Future (p. 3)

In yesterday's post I asserted that the knowledge worker emerged from two defining forces: the rise in complexity of economic activities, and the increasing globalization of economic affairs. At the conclusion of the piece, I suggested that the the knowledge economy has it's roots in the Cold War: to extend the agricultural analogy, a case could be made for saying that this economy was 'seeded' by the growth of the United States' sphere of influence in the period 1947-1964 (the first-generation "hi-tech" economies including Japan and Taiwan, as well as in Federal Republic of Germany following the "Miracle on the Rhine" were all central to the US Government's policy of Containment). The rapid industrialization (or re-industrialization in the case of West Germany) and growth in these regions were the perfect environment for the emergence of the nascent knowledge-working class.  

From the 1980's, through the 1990's and on to the early 21st century, the rise in knowledge complexity is being driven by the combined forces of the information technology revolution and the increasing pace of technological change. Globalization is being driven by national and international deregulation, and by the IT-related communications revolution. As noted by Houghton & Sheehan in A Primer on the Knowledge Economy (2000) in the last twenty years in particular, an exponential growth has occurred in the application of computing and communications technologies in all areas of business and community life. This "explosion" has been driven by substantial falls in the cost of computing and communications per unit of performance, and by the rapid development of applications relevant to the needs of users (p.5).

As is well-established by now, the Internet enabled these technologies come together, "and it is the Internet phenomenon that exemplifies the IT revolution" (p.5). In the first decade after its invention,
the Internet was an academic research network. By 1989 there were 159,000 Internet hosts worldwide. Just ten years later, there were more than 43 million (see Figure 1).

 

According to the Internet Systems Consortium by July 2008, that figure had increased to five hundred million Internet domains (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Internet Domain count, July 2008

We can say that information technology as realized through the Internet has enabled the construction of a stable platform which provides the facility to manipulate, store, and transmit large quantities of data at low cost; and the pervasiveness of Internet technologies has made information technology an important channel for every component of the economy. With the low cost of managing information,  the application of knowledge to all aspects of the economy has grown, and the knowledge complexity of economic activities greatly increased.

However, as noted Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy

...it is important to note that the term ‘Knowledge Economy’ refers to the overall economic structure that is emerging, not to any one, or combination of these phenomena.

More...

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References:

Forfás (the policy advisory and coordination board for industrial development, science
and technology in Ireland) (1996) Shaping our Future. [Internet] Available from: http://www.forfas.ie/publications/archive/sof/chap1.htm  [Accessed 16 August 2008]

Houghton, J. Sheehan, P. (Eds.) (2000) A Primer on the Knowledge Economy. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies. Victoria University

McDowell, A. (2006) Globalisation and the Knowledge Economy – the Case of Ireland. Forfás  [Internet] Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/5/37563948.pdf [Accessed 16 August 2008]

Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.

Emergence of Knowledge Workers: a Short History

In yesterday's post I began this series by outlining the social, economic and technological circumstances that led to the emergence and characterization of the Knowledge Economy in the last third of the 20th century. In this section, I am going to outline the history of the knowledge workers themselves.

In his 1998 text Rise of the Knowledge Worker, James Cortada describes three approaches to understanding the emergence of knowledge workers:

1. Information and knowledge have their own history with patterns of behavior and use that are of practical concern to business, government, and private use
2. The (short) history of knowledge workers - those primarily concerned with gathering and using information or knowledge, typically as an economic activity
3. Knowledge workers in the context of knowledge management, also a relatively new topic of investigation

The author asserts that

these three sets of historical experiences teach us much about the nature of knowledge

(p.4)

and, I would suggest, about knowledge workers themselves.

It can be said that knowledge workers as a class or economic influencer emerged when

a body of related information ... to be collected, applied an built on for subsequent action [emerged]

(p.14)

As the volume of information about a subject or economic activity expands, the potential for a "specialized workforce" (p.14) to work with, interpret, and manipulate that information will likely be realized. Similarly, knowledge work is often created by the introduction of some new "knowledge-handling" (p.15) technology; characteristics of this kind of work include

• An "intimate" understanding of the mechanics of the technology (how to send a fax, program a computer etc)
• An understanding of how to apply that technology to create new information or knowledge
• Expansion of the socio-cultural milieu and enhanced insight into the body of knowledge being utilized
• An understanding of how to enhance and improve the information or knowledge corpus

This process typically leads to increased complexity of of both the information and knowledge, as well as the types of work that it is applied to, which inevitably generates an increase the number of knowledge workers where complexity of economic activities expands at the same times as the type of work or the organization undertaking knowledge work expands.

I would suggest that a strong case could be made for asserting that the modern era of the knowledge worker grew directly from the development of the industrial-military complex that was created in the United States to enable the Allies successfully prosecute World War Two.

Global spheres of influence of the US and USSR at the height of the Cold War (courtesy Wikipedia)
[Click to enlarge]

Beginning with the Marshall Plan, the political and economic conditions of the succeeding Cold War provided the impetus to enable a global implementation of telecommunications and digital technology, as well as the exponential growth of transnational corporations. This created the conditions whereby huge territories in Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region underwent technological development at an accelerated pace, as one of the strategies deployed to promote Capitalism and defeat International Communism.

More...

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References:

Cortada, J. (1998) Rise of the Knowledge Worker (Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy). Butterworth-Heinemann

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The Half-Life of the Knowledge Worker

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

Gen. Eric Shinseki

The US and EuroZone economies are in recession, China is ascendant, Russia is asserting it's regional dominance, all the knowledge jobs are going to India, and it hasn't stopped raining for two weeks.

As you know if you're a regular reader of The E-Learning Curve Blog, I occasionally reflect on e-learning, the economy, and the effect that the one has on the other.

This time I have decided to discuss the emergence and current role of knowledge workers, how this role is changing, and will come to propose a definition for a new type of worker that seems to emerging, particularly in the traditional home of knowledge work, North America and Europe.

Now read on...

In 1959 Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” to describe

one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. It is performed by subject-matter specialists in all areas of an organisation;

(1973, p.839)

their tools are the knowledge assets they use in an organisation. Knowledge workers are characterised by a number of traits, among them the ability to extract and synthesize key information to enhance innovation and productivity.

It is “generally accepted” (Drucker, 2006, p.165) that the knowledge workers’ expertise in their role is the starting point for enhancing productivity, quality and performance. If knowledge workers are to continue contributing to an organisation and the economy at large, their knowledge must remain up-to-date. Ongoing training and continuous learning must accompany gains in performance; “the greatest benefit of training comes not from learning something new but from doing better what we already do well” (2006, p.165).

Three years later, Fritz Machlup published The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. In concert with Drucker's work, we can say that the early 1960's marked the beginning of the study of the post-industrial information society. Machlup coined the phrase "knowledge economy" to include everything from stationery and typewriters, advertising, and presidential addresses - in fact, anything that involved the activity of telling anyone anything - to evaluate the use of knowledge technologies to produce economic benefits.

The transformation to a knowledge economy continued throughout the rest of the 20th century, especially following the invention and growth of the Internet.

Especially in the wake of the invention and growth of the Internet, we can say that today's global economy is characterized as being in transition to a knowledge economy, and an extension of what we can call an information society. This transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need to be rewritten in an interconnected, globalized economy where knowledge resources such as know-how, expertise, and intellectual property are more critical than other economic resources such as land, natural resources, and even manpower. According to analysts of the knowledge economy, these rules need to be re-factored at the levels of companies, organizations, and industries in the context of managing knowledge and (possibly more imperatively) at the level of government- or public policy.

Due to the increasingly technological nature of industrial growth and the emergence of globalization as a influencing factor on the world economy of the last 60 years, there is an ongoing and increasing requirement for an academically capable workforce. As a result, knowledge workers are now estimated to outnumber all other workers in North America by at least four-to-one (Haag et al, 2006, pg. 4).

...and at this point I will conclude for today, as this is a blog post, not an essay and I'm sure, dear reader, that you have other things to be getting on with. In tomorrow's post, I will continue to develop the concept of the half-life of the knowledge worker and begin to look at how the Asian Tigers have superceded the advanced industrial nations of the 20th century.

In the meantime, as I started today's piece with a quote, I think that for the sake of symmetry I should conclude this article with another excerpt:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

___________

References:

Drucker, P. F. (1973) Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. New York, Harper & Row

Drucker, P. F. (2006) Classic Drucker. Boston, MA. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

Haag, S. Cummings, M. McCubbrey, D. Pinsonneault, A. & Donovan, R. (2006) Management Information Systems For the Information Age (3rd Ed.). London, McGraw-Hill Education

Machlup, F. (1962) The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Princeton University Press

Yeats, W. B. (1920) The Second Coming. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th Edition. W. W. Norton & Co.

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Another look at e-learning presentation tools

I was contacted last week by a software development house to take a look at and review Cooliris, their Web photo viewer and (potential) business/learning presentation tool. As long as there's a valid e-learning or learning and development application or usage I'm happy to oblige.

Now read on...

Cooliris is a browser-based three-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI) featuring a full-screen interactive '3D Wall' that uses an Apple Cover Flow-style approach to viewing visual media assets such as images from the web, and to enable users to interact with PowerPoint-style presentations. The real-world kinetic motion of Cooliris simplifies the process of searching for and navigating through slide decks and image libraries. Table 1 shows the range of features that the application supports:

Table 1 Cooliris features

Feature	Location	Function
3D Wall	The rows of images on the black background	Allows an immersive view of thousands of images and videos in seconds.
Discover	The icon is on the top left	Press the Discover icon and 11 channels that feature the latest news feeds from across the web. These channels range from news to fashion. We're currently featuring an Olympics channel that has all the visual highlights from Beijing.
Sharing Login	Top left "Login" icon	Click and a drop down box will appear asking for username and password. New? Register!
Share	Top right envelope and pencil in the metadata box	Click to send an email to a friend that encloses any images or videos you've found interesting in the PicLens interface. To add more than one image or video, drag the images and videos you want next to the image or video you already have in the message.
Slideshow Full Screen Mode	Bottom left box with four arrows in the corners	Takes viewer into full screen slideshow mode. This mode is also accessible by double clicking any image. Double click image to escape or press the Cooliris grid icon in bottom left.
Shopping	Search bar in the top right	Click the search bar and select Amazon from the drop down box to start the next generation online shopping experience.
Cooliris Developer	http://developer.piclens.com	Not within the PicLens interface, but by following the instructions detailed on the site, webmasters can easily enable their own websites with PicLens. All their visitors with PicLens can then view images and videos from the website within PicLens.
YouTube	Search bar in the top right	Click the search bar and select YouTube from the drop down box. Viewers can search and view YouTube videos within PicLens.

Once you have installed the Cooliris plug-in images are displayed on a virtual "wall" as you can see from Figure 1. If you are practised in the art of "skimming" text in articles or blogs, you will be familiar with the technique used to search for image resources in this type of environment; my initial impression after using the tool is that very quickly you can scan a range of images and let the one you're looking for "emerge" from the wall.

Figure 1 Cooliris UI

Once you click on an image you're interested in, it centers on the screen and scales up so that you can view it in more detail. From a learning professional's perspective, this has certain advantages. if like me, you have amassed a large library of resources that you regularly use when developing courseware this enables you to search quickly through a range of visual media assets to find appropriate images, charts, diagrams and video to insert into presentations and / or e-learning content.

At this point though, the fact that this is an early version of an application becomes apparent: there is no easy way to save an image to a location as it does not support contextual menus (i.e. via right-clicking on a PC mouse or CTRL-clicking on the Mac) and therefore no "Save image as.." function. You can e-mail the image to yourself, but if you're used to undertaking this activity in two or three gestures, in my view this will impede your workflow. I'm sure this limitation will be addressed in future releases but for the moment it reduces the effectiveness of the tool as a pre-production application.

Figure 2 Cooliris Plug-in for PowerPoint

However, the developers have positioned this application as a presentation tool, and to facilitate this functionality they have provided a PowerPoint add-in which enables you to generate a Cooliris version of a PowerPoint presentation for delivery online or in the classroom. Clicking on the Create Piclens Gallery button (see Figure 2) generates an HTML-based viewer for your presentation. You can click here to view a full-screen version of a sample presentation, or enjoy the YouTube version below.




In summary, I like Cooliris and in assessment would award it a 'C+' - more potential to be realized.

I think that it's a utility that has a future as a presentation tool, makes very good use of technology and seems to coexist very comfortably in the dynamic presentation domain. As a learning tool, it would certainly inspire learners to maintain interest in content being displayed using the technology.

So far, so good.

On the negative side, there are a number of functionality deficiencies to be resolved (I have already mentioned the lack of an easy 'Save as'...' feature) such as PowerPoint animations are lost in the Cooliris conversion process, which would require partial re-authoring of content to enable the same progress through a presentation. Other points to be mentioned include that while it supports Firefox (Windows XP/Vista and Mac), Internet Explorer, and Safari 3.0 (Mac), it doesn't support Opera or Safari 3.1. Similarly there is currently no Linux version of the plug-in, though the developers say that this is on the way.

Finally, I've found that it's a bit of a trial to enable Cooliris on a website. If you want your site to be interpreted via Cooliris, there's a process to be undertaken to activate the functionality:

• Enter in the name of a website that has images. The website should have a gallery of pictures that all have consistent name paths (ex. thumbs/image.jpg-->fulls/image.jpg, image1_thumb.jpg-->image2_full.jpg, etc.)
• Next, select the thumbnail of a picture you want to show up in Cooliris. After you click it, select the full size image of the thumbnail.
• Select a different thumbnail, and then the corresponding full size image, just as you did in the last step. We use the couple examples you give us to infer the other images you'll want in Cooliris.
• You should see a green rectangle with a "test site" button. Click it. If you don't see the green rectangle, try adding examples until it pops up.
• Click the test page to see a preview of your page. If you don't see all the pictures you wanted on the wall, give us more examples and we'll try to get it right.
• After you've tested your site, click the download button. This will start a download of cooliris-quick.xml. We use this file to understand your site.

Figure 3 Activating Cooliris on a website

• Upload the file to any directory on your site. Click here for more information on uploading.
• After you've up uploaded, give us the absolute address of cooliris-quick.xml on your webspace.
  
• Then (!) copy and paste the link into the head tag of each web page you've Cooliris enabled.

I'm afraid at the moment that the costs outweigh the benefits of undertaking this task if you have a site containing more that about ten pages of content, especially considering that the application is not yet well-embedded in the average web user's web-surfing toolkit. This really must be simplified if the application is to be used by the kind of web-behavior influencers (including social networking sites) that would motivate average users to go to the trouble of installing this utility.

In conclusion, my view is that this tool is exciting, exhibits great potential, but needs a little work to get it past the finish line. Having said that, I can easily see it being a common part of the web experience in time to come, particularly if the developers can sustain the "fun factor" supplied by navigating through content in this environment.

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Links:

Cooliris (formerly PicLens) website: http://www.cooliris.com/

Cooliris Overview Demo: http://www.cooliris.com/demo/

Sample Cooliris PowerPoint Presentation (Duration: About 1 minute 43 seconds): http://michaelhanley.ie/demos/cisample/ci_sample.html

Hi-res Cooliris Features Demo (Duration: About 1 minute 43 seconds):
http://michaelhanley.ie/demos/cooliris_demo/cooliris.html

Approaches to evaluating learning

In yesterday's post I put forward some thoughts on terminal second-level examinations and the effect that faring poorly in these could have for young adults' future lives.

I received a comment on the topic from a correspondent who asserted:

...does success in exams equal education? Exams are an outmoded assessment tool - success in them means nothing more than a certificate and maybe entry into higher education - where you sit more exams until you finally move into the real world...where you realise your so called education did you a grave disservice.
Can you think? Can you create? Can you problem solve? Does an exam system fit into 21st century learning?

Now read on...

Do we have practical solutions (as opposed to high aspirations) about the best way to serve students in the 21st century?

Hard to say.

I would suggest that the best way to prepare people for the workplace is to evaluate learners as if they were in the workplace. So let's look briefly at the role of certification in this context.

Certification is the ability to prove through testing if an individual has achieved a mastery of skills, knowledge and attitude. Certification can also prove the ability of an individual to apply those skills and knowledge in specified areas and job functions.

(Certification: Corporate America’s Secret Weapon. Hilbink, P. 2004 p.2).

In 1959, Donald L. Kirkpatrick first published his four-level training evaluation model (see Table 1) in a series of articles for the US Training and Development Journal. “The reason for evaluating is to determine the effectiveness of a training program” (Evaluating Training Programs, 2006, p3). The reason for the four-level model then “was to clarify the elusive term evaluation” (2006, xv). In articulating evaluation through each of the four levels – reaction, learning, behaviour and results – the model aspires to

inspire us to look beyond our traditional classroom content delivery model and opens windows to the many way we can improve the performance of our organisations.

(2006, p.xi)

Table 1 Kirkpatrick’s Four-level Model

In the context of Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Model, second-level certification is typically interpreted at Levels Two. We can say that the most effective approach to understanding how well learners have acquired new knowledge, skills, and expertise is to ask them to demonstrate what they have learned: they sit a test. In the context of second-level education, certification assesses the learner at Level 2: Transfer of Learning. It is important to measure learning transfer because no change in behaviour can be expected unless one or more of these learning objectives have been accomplished. Measuring learning means determining one or more of the following metrics:

• What knowledge was learned?
• What skills were developed or improved?
• What attitudes were changed?
  

The benefits to conducting Level Two tests are that the learner must demonstrate that the learning transfer has occurred, and that the assessment provides verifiable and conclusive evidence that an improvement has occurred in knowledge, skills, or attitudes.

Assessment tests are a powerful tool for organisations, institutions and society-at-large, as they combine a hierarchical observation and a normalising judgement. Testing makes individuals visible (who has attained the qualification? who has not attained certification?) and enables them to be categorised (how well did they do?). Exams also normalize people by assessing them according to the same metric, and subsequently measures them in relation to one common standard.

Having established the value of Level Two assessments to understand how well knowledge has been transferred, what next? Does the education system as it currently exists meet the needs of students as they prepare for life in the Information Age, or is there a lag between national educational policies & strategies, and how students' skill need to be shaped?

Substantial resources (time, well-paid teacher, continuous training for educators etc) are required to undertake these types of evaluations, and the ministries and agencies with responsibility for managing these tasks don't seem to have the influencing powers to ensure these assets are in place.

A cynic might say that it's because such an initiative requires long-term planning. The results of such an approach mightn't be seen for five to ten years, and a politician who advocated such a spend on education might not be in a position, a decade or so later, to reap the rewards of such an innovation in national education policy.

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References:

Hilbink, P. (2004) Certification: Corporate America’s Secret Weapon [Internet] Available from: <http://www.digital-latitudes.com/docs/Cert_White_Paper.pdf> [Accessed 7 July, 2008]

Kirkpatrick, D. & Kirkpatrick, J. (2006) Evaluating Training Programs. 3rd ed. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

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It's not the end of the world, you know

Today's blog post is not so much about e-learning or learning and development but rather more about education in general. Whether it's the Leaving Certificate (the final course in the Irish secondary school system), SATs in the US, O- and A-Levels in the UK, or le bac in France, I'm sure you are familiar with the day of reckoning just-finished secondary-level students are facing about now as their results are published in advance of matriculation for third-level and university places, as well as those former students who intend to go straight into employment, or take a gap year to figure out what they want to do with their lives.

Now read on...

In Ireland, the examination results were published yesterday, and today they're released in the UK; tuning in to Irish and British radio and TV broadcasts over the last twenty-four hours you would be forgiven for thinking that we're on the edge of a natural catastrophe (well, apart from the monsoon-like rain we've been experiencing for the last week, but that's another story).

You may be familiar with the format:

• Images / sounds of students opening their results envelopes and shouting for joy / groaning with disappointment
• Vox-pop of said students as they discuss their plans now that they've achieved / failed to achieve the marks they needed
• Outro from reporter which goes along the lines of "... you might not have got what you wanted, but it's not the end of the world, you know" before an short excerpt of some successful local business person or politician describing how they left school at 15 with no qualifications and worked their way up from tea-boy to head of a transnational organisation (before giving out the number of the helpline worried parents can call for advice).

While I completely understand the need to sympathize with devastated young adults who see their hopes, dreams, and career options evaporating before their eyes, I believe that to glibly state that "it's not the end of everything" simultaneously devalues the emotional and psychological impact of performing poorly in such an important life event, and provides false hope that somehow it will be all right.

Sadly, the reality is that in the 21st Century knowledge economy, a less-than-average result in these examinations seriously affects most young peoples' ability to move forward with their lives - particularly in these increasingly straitened times. As the world transitions to an Information Age where the primary asset an individual possesses is their expertise, a misstep on this lowest rung of the ladder has the potential to damage an otherwise bright, intelligent individual's potential to both contribute to, and make their way in their society.

For every business leader who "did it the hard way" or "learned from the university of life," there are ten frustrated employees working in the wrong career, and maybe ten times that number pumping gas, or just about making enough to hang in there, not really living, just existing. Unless you're in a position where you have the financial resources, the family or social contacts, or just the pure luck to break into your chosen path, you have to pretty much generate your own career based upon your abilities and talents - hopefully enhanced by what you learned in school.

I never cease to be amazed by (for example) politicians who state that through hard work and perseverance they finally got elected and rose to the position they're in now... while omitting that their father held the seat before them and they're based in a traditional constituency where the electorate has voted for the 'name they know' for generations, or the business-person who was a millionaire by thirty, through their ceaseless efforts and dedication ...and the fact that they come from a wealthy family with the resources to set them up.

I heard one such person on the radio yesterday who asserted that "all you need to be successful in your chosen career is to be focused on your goal and to be passionate about what you want to do." Try this experiment - say for example you want to be a project manager - send your résumé to as many organisations as you like, outlining your passion, enthusiasm and lack of formal qualifications in the field. Then, wait for the employment offers to roll in.

But don't hold your breath.

Passion is great, but in many cases it's the last resort of the incompetent (look at all those candidates on The Apprentice who, when about to be fired protest that they're "passionate about what they do"). Enthusiasm is an admirable quality, but certainly no substitute for expertise, ability, and experience: organisations understand this, though professional competence is boring and makes for poor reality TV.

Which one of these would YOU hire?

One of the primary reasons I take such joy in my career (and it's not even a logical reason) is that it puts me in a position to see people reach their potential. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) believed that education was fundamental to the human condition - the fulfilled person was an educated person.

Perhaps this week, more than at any other time of the year his assertion that

the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet

is at it's most evocative and apposite.

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References:

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics

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Images' source:

Radio Telefís Éireann image library

BBC. The Apprentice. [Internet] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/ Accessed 14 August 2008

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iPhone m-learning content authoring

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I recently posted on The Mobile Segment of the Learning Marketspace - new report. In that post, I discussed the outcomes of the Elearning Guild Report on the topic.

Well, since then, I have becomes the happy owner of an Apple 3G iPhone (a screenshot of my wallpaper is displayed below) and so I've been searching for an authoring tool to create some content for delivery via iPhone.

My iPhone wallpaper - Ovation six-string acoustic guitar, and 1985 Fender Precision & 1995 Musicman Stingray basses

Now you may know that the Flash Player is not yet available for the iPhone, which leaves content developers like me in a quandary; how to deploy courseware on the device:

• for immediate implementation
• that can be refactored as SWF / FLV formatted files when Adobe and Apple agree to release a version of the Flash Player for iPhone

After quite a bit of research, I've found two authoring tools that that may enable learning professionals to create e-learning content for distribution on the iPhone, yet won't require content authors to develop the content as an extra product stream on top of their ongoing deliverables.

The two tools I am going to investigate are Techsmith Camtasia Studio, and SumTotal ToolBook Instructor 9.5 Beta. I will evaluate each product (and their associate production processes) over the next few days. In the meantime, here (courtesy of SumTotal) are a few handy hints to consider when you're at the pre-production phase of developing learning content for mobile devices:

1. Limit Graphical Content
   With the tight mobile device screen being roughly a twelfth (or smaller) of a desktop screen, large-screen graphics not only increase load times, but also take up valuable space that is needed to display text, hyperlinks, and other important information.
2. Text Considerations
   Text should be limited – brevity is the soul of wit. Layout should be structured to avoid the need for scrolling. This involves breaking up text into smaller pieces/sections and linking to those smaller pieces, instead of putting a lot of text on one screen. Smaller fonts are also recommended. For example, Microsoft Windows Mobile standard is Tahoma with a point size of eight, which is an appropriate size for text viewed in the Apple iPhone’s Safari Web Browser.
3. Limit the use of Data Entry
   Since the keyboard is a limited size, input fields should be kept to a minimum to reduce the amount of typing. Where possible, provide possible text or phrases to avoid needing the user having to type. These text items should have a hyper-link associated with them to serve as an easy way for users to select them, rather than their having to type them on the keyboard.
4. Utilize Screen Space
   Avoid excessive horizontal and vertical spacing between screen elements. Unlike designing a print ad or brochure, you don’t need a lot of “white space” on the mobile device’s screen.
5. Place Non-Essential Links at the Bottom of the Screen
   Hypertext links that are not relevant to the information being displayed should be placed at the bottom of the page to preserve space. This places critical information in the user's view upon entry to the screen or page. For example, a navigation menu that would normally be on the left or top of the screen of a desktop computer should be placed at the bottom of the screen for a mobile device.
6. Media Consideration
   Another matter of importance is the types of media – audio and video – delivered. Generally, this is specific to the mobile device. For example, Windows Mobile devices typically support MPEG and MP3 files, whereas the iPhone currently supports QuickTime and MPEG MP4.

In general, developers should consider the goal of delivery of information via a mobile device. Not all types of information, media, and training materials lend themselves to this channel. With careful planning, content developers should be able to craft and deploy a wide variety of content to help those learners who are on the go.

More...

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References:

Wexler, S. Brown, J. Metcalf, D. Rogers, D. and Wagner, E. (2008) MOBILE LEARNING What it is, why it matters, and how to incorporate it into your learning strategy. [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningguild.com (Subscription required) [Accessed 21 July 2008]

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More on Web 2.0 technologies - learning professionals' opportunities and challenges

I received an interesting communication from Virginia Yonkers in response to my July 7th post Web 2.0 technologies and learning professionals' opportunities and challenges. In my post I asserted that in theory learning professionals could start with themselves and help to develop it Web / Learning 2.0 technologies throughout organizations, in my experience, building a strategy around personal motivation and initiatives is fraught with difficulty.

Organizations typically view such innovations as the "throw it over the wall and see where it lands" approach. While learning professionals are typically highly-motivated individuals who expend personal time and effort staying "ahead of the curve" in terms of their own skills and competencies, a "viral approach" to learning in this domain can only have success if the learning professional in question is highly influential within an organization (and probably a C-level executive).

For a "footsoldier" to attempt to modify work practices within a large organization would meet high levels of resistance, particularly from managers who have no desire to change production processes that probably work very well, given the potential disruptions entailed in transitioning to a more collaborative environment.

Virginia has obviously deeply considered this topic and was good enough to respond to my post with her own experience in this area. As she wrote to me:

My current dissertation work is finding that the organizational framework and political climate has a lot to do with what and how workers learn and access knowledge. I am finding that "knowledge" is based on what departments define as knowledge. The "foot soldier" as you term it, can try to advocate all they want, but in the end it only causes tension and frustration from all sides. Changes need to be developed organically throughout the organization, aligning with organizational strategies and worker's tasks. Strictly top down and bottom up approaches don't work unless there is a shift in organizational resources for the change (human, time, financial, and support services).

Virginia further described exactly what it feels like when the level of support she had become accustomed to when her organization "changed the infrastructure without changing the support structures needed to implement the change" and how subsequently the "infrastructure within the organization" let her down: she was left facing the ire of "students, department heads, and ITS."

Similarly, she described being left in a situation where an unanticipated extra workload was left on her shoulders, as it was discovered that with the new infrastructure limited present courseware migration to the new environment, forcing teachers to contemplate re-authoring their content to be compatible with the new platform.

In my view, this example of poor communication, planning and execution of an initiative - which I'm sure we're all familiar with to a greater or lesser degree - demonstrates how a change can have unintended effects across an organization. In this informal case study, it seems that the unintended outcome was that a decision was made to implement a new system with little or no consultation for those who actually have to use the solution regularly, yet it is those "on the ground" who have to re-assemble the pieces of a once functioning solution.

Typically this  is what occurs when you  "throw it over the wall" - it breaks.

So today, I'm asking the question - how can learning professionals in organizations and institutions become involved in plans to implement learning solutions in their organizations?

We all know the short answer: get board-level support for the strategy. Which leads me to the next question: how do we go about attaining this level of support, particularly in strictly hierarchical organizations where individual contributors may not have access to decision makers?

I'll be interested to hear your stories - failures, lessons learned, and triumphs.

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