Elliott Masie Selected by Secretary of Defense Cohen for Tour

Dear TechLearn Trends Readers:

I am honored to have been selected by Secretary of Defense William Cohen to take an intensive
one week tour of the United States Department of Defense capabilities next week. I will be part
of a small group of civilian leaders from the worlds of finance, entertainment, education, labor
and business, as we meet with Secretary Cohen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and visit key military
installations across the country.

I will be focusing on the ways in which the Department of Defense is training and preparing the
troops for the Digital Age. Throughout the week you will receive a special version of TechLearn
Trends as our group participates in the following activities. We will file several stories and briefings
from this 14 hour a day program...

Here is the summary of our trip from Secretary of Defense's invitational letter:

Washington, DC, kick-off where the group will join in discussions with me, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Henry H. Shelton, and other senior military and civilian officials
Cheyenne Mountain and Schriever AFB, CO, to visit the North American Aerospace Defense
Command, the Space Warfare Center and 50th Space Wing to view satellite and security
operations
Mountain Home AFB, ID, to see firsthand an Air Expeditionary Force, the Air Force of the future
Fort Bragg, NC, to visit soldiers of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and Special Operations Forces
Camp Lejeune, NC, for a Marine Air-Ground Task Force capabilities exercise
Training Center Yorktown, VA, where you will observe Coast Guard operations involving cutters,
helicopters, and maritime security operations
An aerial refueling while on route between military visits
Norfolk, VA, to visit naval facilities where you will see the capabilities of the Navy's Special Forces
and fly out to an aircraft carrier
I am honored to represent the Training field on this trip. I want to thank the folks at the Advanced Distributed
Training group (www.adlnet.org) for nominating me to participate in this annual Joint Civilian Orientation
Conference. If you have any questions or areas of interest that you would like me to "cover" in the Trends,
please send me a note to a special email address: jcoc@masie.com

Yours in learning,

Elliott Masie

A Special Essay: The Road to "Natural" Digital Collaboration

A Special Essay for TechLearn Readers: April 25, 2000
The Road to "Natural" Digital Collaboration
By Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center

If I told you that we were going to have a conference call, the steps would
be natural. You would want to know the number to call, perhaps with a
password or ID. And, in a few seconds or a couple of minutes, you would be
n a telephone conference, focusing on the content rather than the
technology.

It wasn't always like that. A decade ago, telephone conference calls were
preceded by days or hours of anxiety, testing of phone lines and a learning
curve that scared off many users. I remember leading a conference call in
1985 that required that I have two telephones to my ear, using one to
communicate with the "control center" and the other to talk to fellow
participants on-line.

We walked a road to get to the "Natural" state of telephone conferences as
digital collaboration. Multiple positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a price point that made the decision to
use a conference call model "a no-brainer".

What is the road to the natural use of a wider set of digital collaboration tools?

Video-conference technology is awesome, yet the logistics can be daunting.
Almost every time that I schedule a keynote speech or meeting via
videoconference from my office setup, there is a flurry of testing and
free-floating anxiety. Will it work? Do our systems like each other?
Even though we are both using standards based systems, the process is far
from natural. And, for many folks in vid-con sessions, they are distracted by the
technology. Will it evolve to natural? Sure, but it will take the same elements as
the telephone conference call: loads of positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a friendly price point. Vid-con technology
is one of the great inventions of the 20th century but is often found gathering dust
in the conference room of the CEO.

In the next 36 months, digital collaboration technology will explode on the
scene. Accelerated by the popularity of the Internet, we will have the
opportunity to have 1-to-1 and larger group Experiences of collaboration
and community. Watch for systems and services that will allow individuals
and organizations to use Digital Collaboration for these core functions:

Learning, Knowledge Transfer, Planning, Meetings, Selling, Supporting,
Coaching, Customer Contact, Relationship Development, Family Gatherings,
Family Rituals, Interviewing, Shopping, Litigating, Researching, Managing
and many, many more.

The technology will come to us in both generic packages that allow a broad
category of collaboration as well as function specific services that allow
us to launch an event with a single click.

The challenge is to make these technologies work so well that they
disappear from our radar screens and allow us to focus on just the
relationships and content. We have to work hard to rapidly get to
"natural" collaborations.

Vendors of Digital Collaboration tools must work together to extend their
standards compliance and provide simple checking and setup procedures. I
should not have to call a call center prior to attending a virtual meeting
or classroom. We should be "collaboration ready" and have the ability to
dive into a meeting or on-line relationship without a "techie" moment
first.

Organizations implementing Digital Collaboration will need to address the
process issues of people working together with technology. There is a
skill set to using a shared white board. There is a skill to delivering a
speech over a video-conference system. There are wonderful and awful
examples of a distance learning experience. We can't expect our colleagues
to automatically adapt to new models of collaboration. There will be
learning, coaching and modeling processes that must happen before we get to
"natural collaboration".

Just as there is a process of Instructional Design for developing
instructional experiences, we believe that there is a parallel process of
Collaborative Design to create the best uses of digital collaboration
technology. We need to learn how to assess the needs of the groups
involved and select media that is appropriate to the outcome objectives.
And, we envision the development of collaboration templates that will
embody a design for ideal use of tools in a given situation (e.g. A
template that walks the group through a highly interactive video conference
for an employment interview, including application sharing of resume and
job description documents.)

Finally, there are new roles that we must invent and perfect to make
Digital Collaboration really soar. Facilitators, community builders,
virtual coaches and other roles will evolve that will make Digital
Collaboration work effectively and naturally.

This is a great time to start the experimentation process. We should find
teams within our organizations to lead pilots for leveraging existing and
new technologies for effective collaboration. It would be great if the
"owners" of collaboration technology were not techies but rather
process-oriented folks in the HR, Training or Business areas.

The MASIE Center and ASTD will be addressing these key issues at our
upcoming Digital Collaboration Conference to be held at the ASTD National
Conference in Dallas, Texas on May 22 to 24, 2000. Information is
available at http://www.masie.com/digital/

166 - George Washington University Develops e-Learning Tool for Faculty; Growth of Wireless Access to Internet Coming at Hurricane Force Speed

1. George Washington University Develops e-Learning Tool for Faculty --- Now to Market: GWU
developed a tool for their faculty to make the leap into the world of e-learning. The goal was to
create an on-line content authoring, delivery and management system for faculty to use for
both "digital surrounds" of classroom based courses as well as for fully on-line
offerings. Technicians at the university decided to create a courseware system, which
was eventually named "Prometheus," for the Greek god who provided fire to man.
Now, the university as entered the commercial market as it attempts to sell it to other universities.
This is a trend that we should be focused on, as multiple higher education groups take their
internal e-learning tools to Level 2 and potentially to market. The news story about this tool
and effort can be found in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/free/2000/04/2000042001u.htm

2. Growth of Wireless Access to Internet Coming at Hurricane Force Speed:
Over the past 12 months, The MASIE Center has been monitoring the growth of
(and venture development for) wireless access to the internet. Simply,
imagine your cell phone or palm computer device able to make queries of the
internet for instant display. While we might start with queries for stock
prices, access to email and checking the time for the local movie theater,
the commercial and e-learning opportunities are huge. Placing the power of
the internet in a wearable and mobile device changes dramatically people's
perceptions of how it can be used. Already in Finland and Japan there are
major uses of mobile internet access underway. Commercial applications will
include queries to ERP and other corporate databases as well as the use of a
form of Instant Messenger. Watch for coaching and other e-learning
processes to rapidly expand to wireless internet access. A study was just
released by IDC that predicts that wireless "surfers" will outnumber wired
ones by 2003:
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/000412D4A2

3. Learning Quotation: John Wooden
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
---- John Wooden

4. Benchmark Paper on Internet Based Distance Education Released: We
recently received a copy of a paper that was developed by the Institute for
Higher Education Policy (and supported by National Education Association and
Blackboard). The paper focused on Benchmarks for Success in e-learning.
While it is entirely focused on higher education, it is a good read for all
that are looking at the effectiveness issues of e-learning. The PDF file is
viewable at: http://www.ihep.com/quality.pdf

5. Help! 5 Minute Survey on the Role of Trainers in e-Learning: We already
have over 1,300 responses, but we would like more. Could you take a few
minutes to complete our April survey on your wishes for the roles of
trainers in an e-learning offering. Executive summary of the results will
be published in 2 weeks. Just go to: http://www.masie.com/survey/

Upcoming MASIE Center Events: (info at http://www.masie.com )
* Digital Collaboration Conference (with ASTD): May 22 to 24 Dallas, Texas, USA
* e-Learning 2000 - Europe: July 10 and 11 Dublin, IRELAND
* TechLearn 2000 + e-Learning 2000 World Congress: November 12 to 15, Orlando, Florida, USA
* SUBSCRIBE to Learning Decisions Interactive Newsletter: Only $195 Per Year
www.learningdecisions.com

5 Minute Survey: Role of Trainers in e-Learning

TO: Learning and Training Colleagues
FROM: Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center
RE: 5 Minute Survey: Role of Trainers in e-Learning

What will be the role of a trainer or faculty member in an e-learning experience?
Please take a few minutes to complete our survey on this topic. Pretend to
be a learner in an e-learning situation and value the possible roles and
activities of an "on-line trainer"

Just go to: http://www.masie.com/survey/

If you have an internal distribution list and would like to forward
this request to your colleagues it will enrich and expand the data for
this survey.

An executive summary will be posted in a future edition of TechLearn Trends
and complete data will be available to subscribers of my Learning Decisions
Interactive Newsletter.

Yours in learning,
Elliott Masie
www.learningdecisions.com

165 - The Clash Between the Stock Market and the Learning Marketplace; Digital Surrounds Research

1. The Clash Between the Stock Market and the Learning Marketplace: We are
monitoring a growing disconnect between the conversation in the Stock
Market world re: e-learning and what is actually happening in the Learning
Marketplace, where real buyers are buying real products and services.
Over the past few months, I have been getting very restless as I hear the
size of the predictions coming from Wall Street about the growth of
e-Learning. Clearly, this is an incredible segment where we will see large
scale implementation of learning with technology, but I am not sure that I
fully trust the size of the predictions that are being driven by folks
wanting to secure funding for the space. The ramp up rate in actual
corporations seems to be steady but more realistic then predictions that
50% of all learning will be e-learning in a short timeframe.

Likewise, it is a good time to take a look at the advice that e-business
stock players are giving e-learning companies. They would have us drop all
of our instructional language, package ourselves as B2B projects, decrease
the services component of our businesses and it just doesn't make sense.
Now, more than ever, we need robust authoring tools and systems, we need
the ability of groups to access services and we need large scale content
collections.

The stock market is a great way to raise capital. Yet, the real
marketplace that I am interested in lives in the actual building of
e-learning capabilities within real organizations. We are seeing some
confusion "back-wash" into the learning marketplace from the size of the
hype of the capital markets. e-Learning will be a business for decades to
come, let's measure it in more than 90 day cycles!

2. Digital Surrounds Research - Executive Summary: Several weeks ago, we
conducted a survey on the sue of Digital Surrounds, the addition of
e-learning components to traditional instructor led, classroom based
training experience and enhance the offering by adding technology before,
during and after the in-person meeting. Here is an executive summary:

Components Organizations Are Currently Using in Digital Surrounds:
Email Access to Instructors - Post Class (67%)
Links and Resources to Internet - (57%)
On-Line Pre-Work (39%)
On-Line Assessment and Testing (38%)
On-Line Courseware and Textbooks (38%)
FAQ Listings (28%)
Virtual Classroom or Chat Room Scheduled (18%)
Digital Field Trips in Class (165)
Media Streaming of Classes (11%)

In each of these categories, the 1,360 respondents reported significant
planned growth of Digital Surrounds. Alarmingly, when we asked
respondents about trainer readiness and acceptance of integrating
technology and training, 62% felt some of their trainers were skeptical or
resistant to integrating technology and training.

The in-depth results and analysis of the data is being distributed to all
Learning Decisions Interactive Newsletter subscribers. If you would like to
subscribe, just go to www.learningdecisions.com.

3. Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology from UMUC-Bell
Atlantic: Here is a great site with super resources for Teaching with
Technology. Posted by University of Maryland University College and
Bell-Atlantic. Check it out:

http://www.umuc.edu/virtualteaching/vt_home.html

4. Learning Quotation: Passenger on Delta Airlines Flight

I was sitting next to a engineer from Oklahoma on a flight last week. When
we got to talking about e-learning, this is what he said:

"I want to learn something new everyday! If you can help me access
structured knowledge chunks on a daily basis, that will be a dream come
true. But, they have to be engaging, easy to use, audio and video based
where appropriate, from a source I trust and work without a hitch on my
desktop and home based laptop. If you can deliver that, sign me up!"

5. Digital Collaboration Conference with ASTD Focuses on Corporate
Collaboration: We are getting a great response to our new event, Digital
Collaboration, that will be held in conjunction with the ASTD Conference in
Texas on May 22 to 24th. The conversation at this event will be about more
than just e-learning. We will look at how organizations will leverage
technology and new processes to link and collaborate with employees and
customers. Help invent the next era of digital collaboration. On-line
registration and information at http://www.masie.com/digital/