eLearning Maturity Emerges From Middle Management
Adobe Relaunches Acrobat as Stealth Flash

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This is a draft story for OhmyNews. Same text in both the learn9 and IPEX2002 blogs. May need to split later. When the editors add "in a related story" to one of the paragraphs you know you may have to start again.
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Towards Maturity presented new research last month at Learning Technologies which showed that a surprising proportion of people working on training and development are unaware of how much senior management realise the benefits of introducing e-learning. The model on offer is to demonstrate value rather than complete a project that management understands and supports. One explanation for this could be that the technology introduced is changing faster than is generally known. Adobe concentrated on Flash and video with much less time for corporate documents such as flat PDF files.

The recent survey shows that e-learning results in 11% cost saving, 28% time saving and that the volume of use has gone up by 48%. In the area of business agility, 82% believed they could deliver learning interventions faster and 59% reported improvements in ability to implement changes in products and procedures. However the survey also showed that 38% do not know if line managers agree productivity has increased (36% are unsure) and 28% don't know if new solutions are now focused on business performance (33% are unsure). This is a perception from people working on e-learning and not a direct form of research on management. There is still the implication that about a quarter of line mamgers both know that e-learning has contributed to productivity and communicate this to the people involved. Similarly it appears that about 40% of line managers communicate about business objectives.

However this survey raises questions about models of business where there is supposed to be feedback to policy making or clarity of vision from leadership. Towards Maturity offer a model that starts with learner and work context and defining a need, then moves towards a demonstration of value. This could be a loop that gradually maintains a flow of resources for the projects. But it is not similar to assumptions about management systems in ISO standards where a policy statement has been agreed as strategy. As e-learning contibutes to the capability for changes in products and procedures there is a clear overlap with quality functions.

Perhaps the clarity of feedback has been overestimated in much of the business theory. Areas such as training and quality are assumed to contribute to existing operations but rarely contribute to changes in policy. The recent acceptance of e-learning may have happened through a gradual process that has avoided opposition rather than gaining much support.

Adobe presented mostly about Flash and online conferencing. They appear to have moved away from Postscript related products such as books or paper. Many senior managers would have found the selection of media surprising. PDF files started to be accepted because the design followed the look of a printed page. At Information Technologies there was emphasis on the feature that Connect can be launched from the Acrobat menu. Connect is entirely in Flash. It is rare to see a PDF file even if transformed into Flash paper. There is no way to save the comments or other content as PDF. The feature most promoted was that PDF can now contain Flash for video or sound. So Flash is a native format within PDF. It was mentioned that this could be a way to distribute Flash content even if the Flash player is not allowed within some organisations. The implication is that Flash design is sometimes reaching corporate desktops indirectly, not as the result of any plan.

Edvantage showed a PDF book with video, created in CourseBuilder for a schools in Sweden and Norway. This is still quite rare even though Adobe have promoted the option for a while. The link to schools confirmed my view that a show about adult learning should be held at the same time as BETT, a technology show for schools. They are both in January and BETT now reaches part of Olympia 2. There are different organisers at the moment.

Printweek recently reported that Adobe has closed the Print Service Provider partner programme in the UK due to declining membership. John Cunningham from Adobe UK said "Maybe it looks like Adobe isn't interested in the traditional print side anymore - of course we are, it's still a huge part of our business." However there is no sign yet of an Adobe stand on the floorplan for IPEX, a print show in Birmingham this May. My guess is that the Flash presence at Learning Technologies is a reasonable guide to Adobe marketing energy.

This year there was also a show for Learning and Skills on the floor below. It was not very clear what the difference was. Some stands such as the Virtual College apparently booked too late for the upper floor. Media Training were part of the Technology show last year but they offer day courses so fitted better with Skills. The skills include XML and Flex though they still offer courses on Quark and InDesign. Print design and publishing are still an interest. It struck me that had a sudden flow of mud arrived at Olympia, a future archaeologist might have assumed that there were two levels of mud for different time zones of technology. Media Training represent a balance of media as currently supported ; Adobe on the next level may be seen as normal some time in the future. Enough fiction, I wonder if that will get past the fact checkers.

The Learning and Skills floor also included some training companies that had nothing to do with technology but offered personal development for managers and support for policy development. There was no obvious presence from business schools or universities except for conference facilities. The University for Industry had a large stand as LearnDirect, the trading name they are allowed to use. The word "university" is strongly protected in the UK. From some Twitter remarks I gather there were several people from the Open University at the conference but there was no stand at the show.

The guide to Learning Technologies had an introduction from Lord Puttnam that made a strong case for e-learning and was a solid launch for the event. However there was one theme that I would like to question. He claimed that while educational organisations have a concern to sustain the "moral" position of learning within society, there are also the commercial ambitions of the Murdochs, the Microsofts or the Googles. As Chancellor of the Open University he has a proper concern with this but I think things could be more complicated. Commercial organisations make different claims for their knowledge offers. James Murdoch somehow connects media for democracy and a free market. Google claims a role in organisaing information and scanning content for public benefit. Both claims are contested but there is some sort of moral position.

Also there could be a downside for educational organisations to behave as if morality always demands a distance from commerce. I am interested in "mode two" knowledge, combining academic disciplines in practical situations. Most e-learning research could be seen as like this. I have heard tell of views on the "dark side" of mode two though I cannot find any detail or references.

Two events are coming up that may shed some light on this.

A Higher Education Leadership Summit will have a technology showcase during lunch. Not the scale of Learning Technologies but the issues may be similar. If universities have a different moral basis to most organisations, how will this show up in the conclusions? In Lancaster there will be a workshop on innovation as part of a conversation about experimentality. The description of a future conference includes the claim that the idea of the experiment has helped to "shape the contemporary world of evidence-based policy, clinical trials and audits".

Driven by pervasive informationalisation, we can observe a number of interlinked trends, including: the acceleration and proliferation of feedback loops between action and reaction; the displacement of fixed structures by networks and dissipative structures; the abandonment of fixed goals for continuous repositioning; and the carrying out of knowledge-work in the context of application.

My concern is that the moral case for universities may be seen as depending on distance from application. There are claims for the value of funding for research. In the case of e-learning contributions come from various sources.

The guide to Learning Technologies had an introduction from Lord Puttnam that made a strong case for e-learning and was a solid launch for the event. However there was one theme that I would like to question. He claimed that while educational organisations have a concern to sustain the "moral" position of learning within society, there are also the commercial ambitions of the Murdochs, the Microsofts or the googles. As Chancellor of the Open University he has a proper concern with this but I think things could be more complicated. Commercial organisations make different claims for their knowledge offers. James Murdoch somehow connects media for democracy and a free market. Google claims a role in organisaing information and scanning content for public benefit. Both claims are contested but there is some sort of moral position.

Also there could be a downside for educational organisations to behave as if morality always demands a distance from commerce. I am interested in "mode two" knowledge, combining academic disciplines in practical situations. Most e-learning research could be seen as like this. I have heard tell of views on the "dark side" of mode two though I cannot find any detail or references. It might just mean that there are journal articles with critique of something like e-learning. This could count as "research2 even though there was little engagement or output that could relate to practice. Not sure about this but i would welcome some clues. It seemed to me that there were a variety of contributions to the Learning Technologies event and as it happens I was surprised how limited was the contribution from universities.

Playlist on YouTube for BETT 2010 now includes my own videos plus

Studywiz from Australian TV. They did not have a stand as it turned out. Maybe they have moved online? Also Ubuntu for Netbooks was not shown at the Open Software Village when i visited because of a password issue. But Youtube can usually find something suitable from another place and time.

Video from BETT

more later

Went to BETT yesterday. Some photos on Flickr , video edit tomorrow, then a story for OhmyNews.

Some questions before writing for OhmyNews

Studywiz not on stand as advertised. But there were a lot of posters. What is going on. Very interesting topic of relating to parents through mobile devices, not just the iPhone. That is my guess but not sure.

Microsoft have dropped Grava for Semblio as a way to combine resources, Works ok and will relate to Silverlight at some future point. Cambridge University Press showed a project using it that will launch later this year. But it seems to me that this is all a bit late given the interest in Grava a couple of years ago and it seems further from Silverlight than it was. So Adobe are still ok with Flash. The BBC not at BETT but the iPlayer is well known.

Ubuntu for netbooks could not be shown at the open source stand when I visited because of a password issue but apparently it works well. Anyone visiting please take photos.

I had been thinking about e-learning research ahead of BETT but today the Guardian has got me with a page one splash from "research" universities. They want to keep their funding and relate this to the knowledge economy. Starting though at the back of the education section with a story based on an interview with Chris Higgins of Durham University arguing that "research" universities should get most of the money. Towards the end there is a brief quote from Pam Tatlow of the Million+ group, mentioning a "sheep and goats mentality" and claiming that

British higher education has moved beyond the world of clubs and has a strong egalitarian tradition. There are good economic and social reasons for this.

Some of these reasons include the "Creative Economy" and a report from Million+ . They are looking at large numbers of people. Some form of knowledge is created through experience on a scale.

BETT relates to this. Not sure what age group limits it but I think the technology relates to other forms of education. More on this later in the week.

In their Guardian article, Michael Arthur and Wendy Piatt write-

Students leave university equipped with skills that are an essential part of a successful knowledge economy.

We live in a world where ideas, innovation and entrepreneurialism are key to prosperity and wellbeing.

However there is a paragraph in the Education section from an interview with from Chris Higgins of Durham

What Higgins has in mind is a small cohort of globally renowned, research-led universities with graduate schools and the authority to award PhDs. Then there might be a bigger group of universities that focus on what he calls their "economic and social environments", and where the teaching "is informed more by scholarship than research, and is perhaps more focused on vocational and professional HE".

So what sort of involvement would the "research" universities have in vocational stuff like IT and quality assurance? I am getting a bit rude but I find journals such as Management Learning very hard to understand and I am not sure they are intended for managers.

Anyway back to a couple of links found yesterday. I have been following Cloudworks on Twitter and linked to a site for e4innovation from Gráinne Conole. This looks interesting and could relate to any organisation. I have not yet read it in detail but notice there is reference to dialogue and a study of EU rhetoric by Vivien Hodgson. My worry is that "research" could be mostly critique with relevance no longer a concern. Looking for the dark side seems to be normal.

However the Cloudworks and Networked Learning Conference websites both have a take on Web2 design so things can only get better. By the way, I think the design of the Critical Management site is just awful.

Last year at BETT there was a stand for LSIS but I cannot find them on the BETT website. They combine ideas about leadership and quality. Not sure how this works but maybe other stands at BETT will have some clues.

Main theme of BETT seems to be playfulness, with Google guesting in a zone hosted by Stephen Heppell from the jolly old University of Bournemouth.

I think learning is part of normal life, not always too hard to follow.

Couple of links for this. Informal Learning is covered in a recent publication -

Formal vs. Informal Learning
Educators—whether in K12, higher education, or corporate spaces—tend to focus on formal learning that involves such things as content delivery, practice, feedback, assessment, and evaluation. However, learning is a natural human cognitive process that is constantly occurring whether someone is in a formal learning setting or not. A simple example of this is how toddlers learn to speak their native tongue. They may be “coached” by parents and family members but barring physical deficits there are no formal classes necessary to learn to speak. This type of learning has been defined as informal learning.

Make, Share, Find: Web 2.0 and Informal Learning
Phil Antonelli

2009 CU Online, University of Colorado Denver
e-book version, available at http://cuonline.ucdenver.edu/handbook/

also there has been nocomment on my post from awhile ago on the Orkut group about Quality Management-

Learning with quality systems, is this obvious?

I have just found this group so the topic may have come up previously.

Is it obvious that learning is a large part of what happens through people in a quality system?

I have tried to get interest in quality theory from people who study management learning. In the UK the people who know about learning tend to have a critical opinion about quality. Perhaps their experience in UK universities has not been pleasant. See "Making Quality Critical" by Wilkinson and Wilmott for example.

So far there has not been much UK academic interest in relating quality theory to researching learning organisations. Peter Senge recognises the connections, see his mentions for Dr Deming in the update for The Fifth Discipline.

My guess is that for most practitioners the links between learning and quality are obvious. Maybe academics just have to be organised in disciplines. Maybe it is just an issue in the UK.

So I think learning can be considered as part of quality practice. I have been looking at previous writing and a lot of it is on how to pass go where the connection is accepted. Still a lot could follow if the learning organisation and quality were considered together more often.

More later on recording music, jazz as experiment. Examples during Experimentality included Miles Davis My Funny Valentine. Not sure what to make of it but kept thinking of this-

Still thinking about the Experimentality events. Not sure how to relate this to plan-do-etc. There was reference to the "dark side of mode 2" so this is something to work with. Have found this link to a Gryzedale blog. Apparently the forest is quite hard to find so online may work better.

Tipping a wink and a nod to Derrida's book 'Spectres of Marx' (in my hazy left-wing mind his finest work), Mr Gere asserts that Big JR haunts us still, like a spectre of the undead, reminding us that ethics is at the heart of any re-assessment of what art actually is and can do.

Posted by John Byrne on 09/11/09 at 06:25

One interesting aspect is the evidence that video interview is possible in apparently normalspace for academics. Not sure if there was special lighting. I did a lot of videoduring the two days somore on this later.

Found through Cloudworks, this Prezi makes a lot of sense. Trying out embed code



Good to find that academics behave as residents nowadays. Frankly I used to think that some of them had a brief to study the web but were not all that engaged with it.

This post could become a story for OhmyNews about the recent LCC Futures conference and the e-book. Last year there were reservations about the e-book but it was seen as inevitable. This year the e-book has definitely arrived. James Fraser spoke about book design, mostly for print, but pointed out that e-books are widely used in publishing for storing the text of several titles at once. Chris Linford claimed it was the illustrations and graphic aspects of books that gives them value and encourages sharing. Ian Lacey suggested that new e-book readers should have a screen for the cover graphic so that people knew what was being read.

There will be more about the conference in the story for Ohmynews. I am working through a video record and hope to put something on YouTube before the story is publshed. Critques of the e-book included that it when web connected it allowed too many chances to link to something else so lacked the structure of a printed book but also that the early devices are like the early web, without the social networking and the associated potential for learning.

Most of this post is about some theory that seems to relate, found through following Cloudworks and Grainne Conole on Twitter. I am beginning to understand why Cloudworks is effective and how it has been designed. Extract slightly edited from

Conole, G., & Culver, J. The design of Cloudworks: Applying social networking practice to foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs. Computers & Education (2009),

Cloudworks has been developed building on two theoretical perspectives: the notion of social objects and the concept of ‘design for sociality’. There is not space in this paper to go into detail, Conole and Culver (in press) provide a more detailed description on the theoretical underpinnings for the Cloudworks site; key aspects of this are summarised here. Engeström (2005, 2007), drawing on the work of Knorr-Cetina (see for example Knorr-Cetina in Schatzki, 2001), argues for the need to adopt an approach to social networking based on ‘object orientated sociality’ and defines the notion of social objects : The term ’social networking’ makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. . .

He contends that the definition of a social network as ‘a map of the relationships between people’ is inadequate.
The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re not; social networks consist of people who are connected
by a shared object.
He argues that this distinction can be used as a basis for understanding why some social networks are successful whilst others fail. Successful social networking sites built around social objects include Flickr (photos), del.icio.us (bookmarks/urls), YouTube (video clips) and Slideshare (presentations). He puts forward object-orientated sociality as a mechanism for helping us to identify new objects that might be used as the basis for developing new social networking services. He argues that in education the primary social object is content and that
the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction that occurs around the content.

Knorr-Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. Schatzki (Ed.), The practice turn in contemporary theory. London: Routledge.

Something similar could happen with books or documents through sites such a Scribd or Mendeley. Books are not as advanced as music or video but this idea of "object orientated sociality" is helpful in thinking about how books can develop online. some of the problems from the LCC conference may seem to have been addressed in a year or so.

I think the Experimentality year is launched about now but nothing yet on Twitter for #experimentality . Maybe there is another tag.

Google blogsearch finds my own querying and a blog from Sweden -
Pernilla Severson's Blog (Just another WordPress.com weblog)

I have tried a rough Google translation of another post

Now we have concerns about moving pictures in digital media
August 21, 2009 by pernillaseverson

Moving image and digital media = true in Malmo and the surrounding area. Media Meeting Malmö has long stimulated the development. Moving Media Southern Sweden is a powerful weapon in the cluster shape and Moving Media City is a future center for media development.

In the middle of all this was created MEDEA

http://www.mah.se/Forskning/varforskning/Program/MEDEA-Collaborative-Media-Initiative/

with a base at Malmo University, targeting new media and co-production - and - user-driven innovation.

I will be over two and a half years grub around in this context by exploring the knowledge of university-industry relations. A highly interesting question to trim about what happens when the manufacture innovation meets user innovation in the Moving Image in Digital Media

see http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

How do the various actors in the user-driven innovation? Crash or synergy? If users can develop a better product than the corporate product developer, where do we do? And what do the academics in the game for? Users can operate without the relationship with one than others? And how do we view the phenomenon as the weekend's Canada Social Web Camp?

http://www.swedensocialwebcamp.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is the interaction that I will not just ask or read about, but also staging and testing. See you.

If this is so #experimentality should find something else soon.

I have done a Scribd version of the reference list on Mendeley

learn9 references from Mendeley October 2009

Not sure who is using Scribd. The Mendeley audience has more academics I guess. But the Scribd approach has more access to PDF.

Getting more involved in Cloudworks



more on this later. The video explains what a cloud is so I am thinking more about the Deming cycle as something to offer.

The Book is Going , now part of the learn9 blog.

I am losing track of how often I am repeating myself. Could be confusion, may be some integration between the different blogs I write on. Mostly on the blogs for drupa and IPEX I have speculated that Adobe Classic is coming to an end and that Adobe(FLSH) is the best way to think about where they are heading. This week is even more so, so much so that I think I should have concluded something a while ago.

Adobe MAX is just in California, with web links. They have reduced most real space appearances outside the USA. I don't think they were at Print09 in Chicago, not with much of a spend anyway. The announcements so far are about using the same version of Flash on a desktop or mobile device, improved video streaming and adding more Flash to Livecycle as well as PDF. No announcements at all about PDF or EPUB and e-books. So I think the classic Adobe products around Postscript and PDF are no longer considered to be worth promoting. Hard copy books are not that interesting but a Portfolio in Acrobat now uses Flash to add video and animation to PDF.

Meanwhile I have been following the online discussion on the Networked Learning Conference website. This is the first time i have had the sense of real content being exchanged. Previous online discussion has been quite limited. There will be a series of "hot seats", weeks in which someone will undertake to respond to most questions. Last week Caroline Haythornthwaite covered "Learning in Social Networks and Networked Learning" to start things off. Chris Jones raised a question about resources such as books and how they should be shown as part of a network. They do not have the interactive features of individuals in a group. I realised this is a way to explain the changes in publishing methods through use of sites such as Scribd and Mendeley. More on this later. I need to find out more about the theory of networks. Most of the people on this site assume some prior knowledge so I am not crashing in as much as I might. I do try to push the use of graphics and YouTube links. There is now a sandpit to try this out. So far I think the site is designed mostly for text and mostly the academics are quite happy with this.

So plenty of disruption to come if Adobe have any sense at all in where they concentrate promotion. I do not think the book will vanish, just be part of a wider form of communication that is mostly based online. Later in October there will be a Futures Conference at the London College of Communication. More on this later.

By the way, if the PDF scene is not worth promoting it could mean that the margins will start to drop. There has not yet been an Elements take on Acrobat similar to the Photoshop and Premiere. Why not forget about the Flash elements and just do an affordable software for working with PDF. There are various alternatives but an Adobe approach to this could be interesting.

"Organizational Learning" is doing well as a topic on Mendeley. Hope this continues. "Learning Organizations" turned out to be quite rare and hard to evidence.

Click for slightly larger version.

The public listing looks a lot better now. I had got confused between online and desktop. moving between folders seems easier on desktop.

So the URL is

http://www.mendeley.com/collections/39798/learn9/

Future paper to combine my previous ones and other finds.

Testing out Mendeley. I have found that logging on takes me to the recent papers that other people look at.



Reasonable overlap with my interests in learning / quality. Also leads to some content, enough to think about.

Nonaka paper is linked to a file on Drive D wherever that is. Book widely available though I can't get past the section on western knowledge. Eisenhardt no link but presumably connects with paractice. "Organizational learning" from Jstor has a first page online and it seems Exeter College is connected to Jstor so I will check this out. may need to sign on for a course. Exeter UK that is. Knowledge of the Firm has a fair bit of text. Could be economics I think. Theory of the firm as I remember. Deming book is called the New Economics but this is rarely explained.

So far this is working well. From a science base to management science there is plenty of scope to relate to learning. I have added these papers to my own library but am not sure how to put them in the learn9 list.

OhmyNews has my unedited story on Mendeley. Something else may work just as well but the trend is there for references and some content to be shared online in a similar way to what is happening with music.

Assuming Mendeley continues to do well there could be interesting discussion at Online Information in December. I will try for another story in November. Academics will have to think about something that effects them so directly. Previously from journal articles there appears not to be so much disruption.

focus on the absence of demonstrable disruptive effects tends to obscure the fact that more or less unobtrusive changes occurring over time do add up to an effect that eventually may well lead beyond simple augmentation of conventional practices.

However there was atwo year gap between the conference and the publication.