Digital Age: Knowledge Work: Workforce

Workforce

• Overview:  Improved workforce learning is imperative for individual knowledge workers and for companies that depend on knowledge workers, and for the U.S. economy. Meeting this need requires innovative, restructured education and training organizations; integrated knowledge drawn from currently isolated sources; and widespread replacement of the traditional classroom with appropriate learning delivery technologies.
  
  The education and training industries are too often disconnected from workplace needs---selling generic, fixed-price commodities that do not address industry segment or organizational requirements. Internal training staff are often not well regarded, and they are usually too far removed from emerging knowledge to play a role in that key area. Universities all too often assign themselves as exclusive role in "substantial" learning, and faculty may miss the opportunity to contribute to industry and firm specific knowledge, and new corporate knowledge. 

The sum result is that the islands of knowledge are very difficult to integrate and focus on the learning needs of the corporate knowledge workforce. These isolated islands of knowledge form barriers to the learning required by today's knowledge workers.

While "any time/ any place" remains the fundamental advantage of Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN), the ability to access and integrate learning from many sources is very important for knowledge workforce learning. In many areas of workforce learning, Technology-Based Training (TBT) is used, and ALN makes it possible to mix TBT and human delivered learning more easily, a technique that is practically impossible with traditional learning delivery methods.

A powerful and holistic solution to workforce learning are Learning Systems Integration (LSI). While similar to current U.S. corporate and military training as a process, LSI are significantly different in practice because it targets knowledge workers, integrate knowledge from many sources, and utilize asynchronous technology as an essential component of learning

More...............................  Asynchronous Learning Networks for Knowledge Workforce Learning