We at Saffron don’t like to pigeon hole ourselves as simply training providers. Yes, we design and develop e-learning, but we do a whole lot more than that too. We’re all about performance improvement and people productivity, and there are more ways to achieve those things than training alone.

In this day and age, with advances in technology opening up all kinds of new possibilities every week, isn’t it time we all broadened our minds a little and started looking beyond training?

For instance, in the past it might have taken days or weeks to notify an entire sales team of updates to a product or service. Not only is that eating up time and money, it also means that for a certain length of time some people are selling the old version, blissfully unaware of the updates. Why not send update notifications direct to their mobile phone instead? That way, they know about the changes right away and can access the details again as and when they need to, at the touch of a button.

Likewise, if line managers are constantly flooded with emails or phone calls from new starters asking the same old question, why not find a way to let them ask and answer questions amongst themselves? Build a wiki, a forum, a portal or a fully fledged social network to facilitate this. With a bit of encouragement it will soon sustain itself, it can be used to start the settling in process before a new starter’s first day, it will complement any existing formal induction training and - crucially - it will save time and therefore money.

One thing that takes up a lot of time in every organisation is compliance training - if every employee needs to take several one hour courses every year or two, it soon adds up. But is it really necessary? How about offering staff the option to download a diagnostic assessment to a mobile device to determine whether or not they actually need to sit the full training course? If the assessment is designed properly, passing it provides confirmation of compliance in a fraction of the time it would normally take them to re-sit the same course they took the year before.

I could offer more examples, but the point is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat - if you need to improve productivity or performance and save time or money, a formal training course isn’t always the answer. These days, the possibilities are seemingly endless - with a little imagination applied to technological innovations, we can all achieve great things.

A little while ago I was on the phone and the person on the other end of the line suddenly interrupted conversation to say ‘there’s a man dressed as a blackberry walking around the office.’ At least, that’s what I thought he said. What he actually said was ‘there’s a man dressed as a BlackBerry walking around the office.’ I must be one of the few people in London who still thinks of fruit before phones.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the impact of technology on our lives these days and the pros and cons of this. In our line of work we spend a lot of our time thinking and talking about how to make more of technology. How can we use Facebook or Twitter to enhance our learning solutions? How can we move from formal training to a social media based approach? How can we deliver training to BlackBerrys and iPhones? How can we find new and ever more numerous ways to reach our clients’ employees?

Now, I fully support this in terms of offering learners an increased level of choice about how, when and where they learn. With most people spending around an hour commuting to work each day, many of those on public transport, it makes sense to offer them the option of using that time to catch up on their learning and training requirements. And I agree with Clive Shepherd that ‘new thinking and new media are no longer the province of pioneers and geeks’ - these things are clearly here to stay (in some form or another) and we need to keep ourselves at the forefront of new developments. But I can’t pretend I’m not concerned about what we as an industry might be doing in terms of contributing to our growing national reliance on - in fact, I’d go so far as to say addiction to - technology.

I’m not suggesting that I’d like to return to the days before mobile phones (being the kind of person who’s usually very early and having the kind of friends who aren’t big on planning ahead, I’d spend a lot of time waiting around or being stood up if I had to rely solely on landlines). But there is a part of me that misses the days when people talking unnecessarily loudly into their brick sized phones was as intrusive as technology got. These days our lives are dictated by the politics of Facebook friendships, network coverage and battery life. Umbrellas have been replaced as the most perilous hazard on the high street by technophiles who stroll and surf the net rather than looking where they’re walking. And romantic restaurants are no longer the domain of loved up couples, but rather of loved up couples, the flashing lights and ‘discreet’ vibrations of new messages and frequent furtive glances just on the off chance that a message managed to sneak through unnoticed.

I’m not alone in this: in an article about the damaging effect of technology on relationships recently featured in The Times, Emma Cook writes that ‘we’ve long know about the compulsive allure of the “CrackBerry”, as well as its younger upstart the iPhone, but with the advent of Facebook, and particularly Twitter, a new level of distractedness is developing.’ And Cammy Bean, devoted to her iPhone, admits that - along with Twitter, blogs, Facebook and emails - it destroys boundaries between work life and home life (a threat which people who work from home are particularly susceptible to: as Cammy says, ‘my office is my home, my home is my office’).

Of course, it’s not all bad, but not everyone has given in to the allure and demands of social networking, video sharing and the blogosphere - and it’s this that I think we’re in danger of forgetting. Not everybody likes the fact that they are contactable anytime, anywhere. Not everybody feels anxious if their BlackBerry is in the next room rather than their pocket. Not everybody defines friendship in Facebook terms. Not everybody understands the draw of real time status updates throughout the day.

At the moment, all this technology means that we’ve got much more choice in terms of how we get information - whether that’s news updates, cinema times and gossip between friends or company updates and training sessions. But we need to make sure we strike the right balance, continuing to capitalise on this without overdosing on it (or, more importantly, forcing other people to overdose on it). I’m all for using Twitter and Facebook to offer people a new way to learn if they want to. What I’m not all for is creating learning solutions that are entirely dependent on these things. Just as some people prefer to learn through video and others through reading, some people appreciate training being delivered to their fingertips when they’re on the train or at home with their families and other people don’t.

So I say, let’s make sure we continue to offer choices, catering to the already techno-addicted, the techno-curious and the techno-minimalists. But I suspect I might be venturing into controversial territory here - am I alone on this side of the fence or are there others out there who share this view?

I recently had the pleasure of working with some of our clients in the USA - a trip which I remember well for two journeys that I experienced. On the way to Heathrow, a young man in his twenties picked me up and no sooner had I got in, he started to tell me how the world was soon going to come to an end. How the government had stolen every opportunity and how he had been robbed of his future. He complained that ‘they’ were all corrupt and the working man was footing the bill. When I asked him what he was doing to make the situation better, he said “I’m just a taxi driver, what can I do?” Needless to say the ‘Welcome to Heathrow’ sign couldn’t come quick enough.

As I landed at JFK, I found myself thinking of strategies to avoid a conversation with my taxi driver. Having been subject to a depressing monologue in West London, I really felt I’d be searching for Valium if I had to go through the same thing again all the way to Manhattan.

Unsurprisingly the cabbie at JFK started to talk as soon as I hopped in. To my delight, however, the conversation took a different tone. “Sure things are hard” he said, “but what you gonna do, stay in bed all day?” he asked rhetorically. His entire view on life was that he controlled his destiny and although his fare income had dipped he was making up for it by working weekends and saving money where he could. “There’s nothing to worry about” he said, “as always, we’ll pull through and come out stronger - that’s what we Americans do.”

The point? The point is that as learning and development professionals we can learn from this story. Times are hard and things are difficult. Budgets are being cut and some of our colleagues are having to leave their positions. However, it falls on us to lift our organisations and to find new ways to improve morale and performance within the teams that we support. We have to break away from the traditional approaches and models; even e-learning (and maybe especially e-learning) needs a rethink. Do we need a course on project management or will a carefully crafted set of links do the job? Do we need to bring in a consultant or can we use a wiki to share best practice? Is the three day classroom course necessary or can we create a blend? Is e-learning the only way to run our compliance programmes or can we use our mobile devices? When we build programmes, can we build them with re-use in mind and share the assets across the organisation?

It’s really down to us to drive our businesses forward and to support them in these difficult times and I believe that now, more than ever before, L&D has the chance to shine. So my message is this: push hard and be creative - think three times about the return your programme will bring and the other ways that you could do it - what else you gonna do, stay in bed all day?

I was standing next to a young lady on the tube this morning who was studiously working through a series of questions from a training handbook. She didn’t appear to be experiencing any difficulty with answering the questions; however, I did notice that the first question on the page had remained unanswered. To my surprise she tried to gain my attention by pointing animatedly with her pen. Upon closer observation I saw that she was pointing to the first question on the page and specifically at one word in particular.

Not really understanding the dilemma she was obviously in I asked her if she understood the question. Clearly she did not, but then I realised she didn’t understand me either. It was fairly obvious to me that she could write English judging by the extent of notes she had already written on the page, however we were not making much headway in how we were communicating with each other. She kept pointing to the phrase that was clearly vexing her: ‘on occasion.’ I wasn’t sure what she wanted of me so I responded by providing her with an alternative word that seemed to work with the question she was trying to answer - ‘sometimes’ - and to my great surprise she immediately and without any hesitation whatsoever began writing down her answer to the question.

Turning over the page, she continued to answer the next few questions, again without any difficulty until she reached the next stumbling block and just as before, tried to draw my attention by pointing to a specific word within a question. This time I didn’t hesitate: I read the question, saw the word she was struggling with, which was ‘promptly,’ and now starting to enjoy this early morning challenge responded with the word ‘quickly.’ Just as before, she immediately started to write down her answer to the question.

The tube at this point stopped at Chancery Lane, my designated stop, and with some degree of reluctance I wished the young lady good luck in her training and left her on the tube.

What did I learn from this experience? Two key things:

• We can all learn anywhere and at any time. This student was diligently working through some form of training material on her way perhaps to college or work.
• When designing learning or training material it really is fundamentally and critically important that the language we use can be understood by the end users, and this means all end users, whether English is their first language or not.

Why is it that this eastern European did not understand the words ‘occasion’ or ‘promptly’ but did understand ‘sometimes’ and ‘quickly’? I will never find out the answer to this question but it has left me richer from the experience.

Put your hands up if you love learning!

Yes, we all love learning something new, especially when we do it in a just-in-time manner. I’m talking mainly about learning that provides practical instructions for everyday tasks. The ‘show me’ and ‘tell me’ kind of learning. The type of learning you wouldn’t necessarily sign up to a class for, but could very well need at some point in your day to day life or work.

So I ask, how many of you have actually sat through Microsoft PowerPoint’s help wizard function to learn ways of enhancing presentations? Not many, I’m sure. I learnt to use PowerPoint back in high school, with the luxury of spending a whole class session learning how to make various types of animated presentations. But what if time is of the essence? Reassuringly, I now know I have alternatives and discovered ‘smarter’ ways to feed myself with condensed and practical information in a timely manner. Most importantly, these alternatives offer a learning experience I actually enjoy and appreciate. In my case, I have Apple to thank - the iPod has jazzed up my learning.

My iPod Classic (which runs both audio and video files) can virtually teach me, inspire me or at least provide me with tips on anything that my heart desires. How, you ask? Well, through the various podcasts, videocasts and audio books I have downloaded onto my pod. For example, I have been learning how to be a better sales professional by downloading weekly advanced selling techniques casts. I’m sure some of you are silently saying ‘why would you do such a thing - surely it must be mind numbingly boring?’ Simple, I appreciate the value of it to my everyday life!

It’s this immediate and tailored value and the ability to access it wherever and whenever I want to that makes this kind of mobile learning perfect for me, allowing me to absorb the information precisely when I choose to or when I need it. These particular casts are humorous, light hearted and (I stress) to the point, making them ideal to listen to - not only are they informative but I actually enjoy listening to them and look forward to downloading the latest weekly cast. Furthermore, the ‘pain’ of learning is eliminated: I don’t need to read paragraphs of boring sales spiel all I hear are practical day to day examples of certain methods which have worked. It’s more like a friend or a colleague sharing their advice than a formal learning intervention. In my experience, if you appreciate the learning, then the likelihood is you will retain the information relayed and even feel motivated to put it into practice.

Another (more risky) example: if I dared to, I could even learn how to cut my own hair by following professional hair cutting demonstrations shown in a number of video casts. Or, amazingly, I could learn how to create a free website from scratch. Sites like http://www.tinkernut.com /let you download, share and subscribe to all kinds of ‘how to’ videos - the categories range from sharing photo tips all the way through to programming tips; the varieties are endless. http://www.howcast.com/ offers a similar service, where you can also browse through a number of ‘how to’ Wiki guides.

This type of learning works in a more business focused context, too. A financial company recently piloted an audio learning programme, passing out iPods to about 300 employees and creating digital audio training programmes that employees could download and listen to at the gym, at home or during commutes. The pilot feedback was incredible: more than 87% of participating employees said their iPod based training was a worthwhile investment of their time. Now all 32,000 employees download training programmes and podcasts of company related speeches and employee forums.

During last year’s Learning Technologies show, I was exchanging ideas with the Ministry of Defence’s development adviser, and was interested to hear that they were providing simple just-in-time language training to troops out in Iraq. Troops were given iPods loaded with the simple icons to depict certain functional objects or commands along with the Arabic characters and the words written phonetically. Users would scroll through to pick and choose the relevant icons necessary for their communication. Simple and practical! Imagine how this could support foreign aid volunteer workers sent out to various countries on short notice (and that’s just one example of many).

I could go on and on about all the infinite possibilities and ideas for enhancing learning. But for now, there’s a whole host of content out there which can be accessed and downloaded onto your iPods and mp3 players. If you are a business manager and would like to provide refreshing ways of providing learning, training, or simple reference material to your employees, then my advice is this:

•  Keep it to the point (only include what is necessary)
• Think of creative ways of delivering the content (is it going to be funny, chatty, scenario based, conversational style etc.?)
• Ask yourself if the medium of delivery is the most appropriate (how long is it, how much information does it contain, should you be considering an alternative medium?)

One thing is for certain - these possibilities offered by my iPod have made me reconsider my view of ‘traditional’ learning principles.

For those of you who would like to learn how to create your own podcast, you can view a video post on YouTube which provides you with step by step instructions for creating and publishing your very own podcast/casts.

Here at Saffron we’ve been interested in the concept of Mobile Learning, or m-learning, for some time. Ever since mobile devices began to offer more than just Tetris and telephone calls there has been a growing eagerness amongst us, and the rest of the industry, to utilise this new medium as much as possible for the purposes of learning.

Over the past few years we’ve developed several learning applications for mobile devices, such as Blackberry-based training, video podcasts and our i-Cast services. Recently however, an improvement in mobile technology and an increase in public interest in mobile content have come together to make it possible for m-learning to be taken to an even more advanced level.

This progress is best shown by the success of Apple’s iPhone. 17 million of these devices have been sold since it was released in June 2007, and a quick glance around on the tube or bus shows that the iPhone is beginning to reach the level of ubiquity previously only seen with Harry Potter novels and the iPhone’s predecessor - the iPod.

This week Apple announced improvements to the iPhone’s software that seem set to increase its reach further, and which should have an impact on the possibilities for m-learning. Apple has already made tools available to developers to give them the opportunity to create applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, and distribute them via its App Store. Users can quickly and easily download these applications directly to their device and use them straight away. The simplicity and attractiveness of this service is shown by the 800 million downloads from the App Store to date. The improvements to the developer tools and the distribution and payment models announced this week should make the whole process even simpler.

Developers can now access and utilise many more of the iPhone’s features, allowing more advanced video content, audio integration and even location-based services. The potential this offers for learning content is considerable. “Push” services have also been improved on the device, meaning that updates and alerts can automatically be sent to users so they can always be made aware of the latest content. Since the iPhone also has an always-on, high speed Internet connection, it’s possible to deliver content to users, and retrieve data, such as tracking information, feedback or assessment results. In short, mobile users can now have all the features they expect from their computer-based eLearning, but in a more immediate, and accessible form.
Following the success of Apple’s services, Blackberry is on the verge of launching their own application store, and the development of new, more advanced applications for Blackberry devices is gearing up to meet the new market.

The challenge is to find ways of using the features that best serve the learner, and to do so using technology and coding languages that may not be immediately familiar to many e-learning developers. This is a challenge that is worth embracing though, as success will not only allow learning to be delivered directly to the considerable iPhone and Blackberry market, but it will also help progress the scope of m-learning overall.

It’s an interesting and rewarding time for m-learning, and here at Saffron we’re excited about turning the new possibilities into realities.

Let’s talk telephone training. I’d bet money that right now you’re already sceptical, perhaps stifling a yawn, and imagining a robo-voice monotonously explaining the finer points of some policy, procedure or legislation.

Or maybe I’m being overly cynical myself. Perhaps you’ve thought about training your people via their phones; perhaps you already have done. But even if that is the case, I doubt it was your first choice training method. It’s only really the best solution when you’re constrained by time and space – it’d never be your ideal solution, but sometimes needs must, right?

I don’t think so. I think there’s a lot more potential to telephone training that most people would expect. It’s not a lecture down the phone, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Okay, so you might not be able to use interactions like click to reveals and drag and drops, and you don’t have the luxury of graphics to engage the learner or provide extra explanation. But you can develop scenarios using multiple characters and voices, creating an engaging and varied experience. You can include the learner by using quizzes to ask them what they would do in a given situation. You can even take this one step further and offer them the chance to shape the training through the answers they choose.

There are some situations in which telephone training isn’t a great solution, of course. Most people will struggle to engage with and learn from audio based training that lasts beyond thirty minutes, for instance. And there’s a delicate balance between asking the learner to listen too much without actively participating and overloading them with multiple choice questions.

But if you’re dealing with a topic that can easily be broken down into bite sized chunks, or one that would actually benefit from allowing the learners time to digest one chunk before moving on to the next, telephone training could be just the job. Maybe you’ve got a sales force that would benefit from 10 minute segments on individual products or services that they could access before a meeting, for instance. Perhaps you could supplement a classroom or online induction course, covering your broad welcome messages, with 15 minute telephone based units on particular policies or useful bits of information for your new starters to access as and when they need it.

So don’t write telephone training off as purely a ‘just in time’ solution. It does have the benefits of being quick to develop and deploy, and of course for mobile workforces it’s ideal, but given the right treatment it can also be the right tool for the job even when you aren’t constrained by time and cost.