Partnership by design

As learning initiatives grapple with ever more complex challenges, the supplier-buyer relationship needs to change.

The role of e-learning is changing. And with this change of role, a number of assumptions about how e-learning is designed and produced, and who produces it, are being swept away.

In the past, the great majority of e-learning and blended learning projects aimed to make relatively small shifts in the behaviour of quite large numbers of employees. Employees had to know a little more, be familiar with a new process or be able to use a piece of software a bit more effectively. These projects created their value by achieving aims of limited ambition that were predictable and comprehensible from the start. Over the years, methodologies and tools have been developed to deliver these projects. At the same time, buyers and suppliers of e-learning content and services established ways of working that reflected the relative simplicity and clarity of their respective roles: the client produces a brief; the supplier provides content and related services.

But an increasing number of projects have higher ambitions. E-learning and blended learning projects are tackling increasingly complex, strategically significant challenges. These more complex challenges often aim to make profound shifts in the behaviour and future competence of a wide range of diverse stakeholders. Their ambitions are often broad, and end results are difficult to predict. The pathways to solutions are unclear. Toughest of all for those involved, familiar methodologies and tools are being stretched to – and beyond – their limits. And with an increasing number of complex challenges, it is often counterproductive to regard suppliers as little more than artisans that must follow clients’ specifications. In doing so, organisations risk discovering that the solutions they end up with lack the subtlety and sophistication required. In short, learning and performance problems don’t get resolved.

Partnership
Complex learning challenges are driving buyers and suppliers to become increasingly inter-dependent, to blur and overlap roles – to become genuine partners. And this goes beyond the widespread practice of approved supplier lists and retainers. It is largely an issue of the quality of relationship, and the degree of agreed mutuality. So instead of a client organisation trying to squeeze every drop of blood from their suppliers at the risk of causing damage, they actively support the growth of external providers to ensure continuity of supply; instead of suppliers trying to pull the wool over the eyes of clients, they become completely open about costs, timescales and the other factors that affect the quality of their services.

But given the history of the industry, all parties in these partnerships may have to adapt to their changing roles. E-learning providers need to cultivate staff with appropriate experience and expertise to get under the skin of an extraordinarily wide range of client problems – without defaulting to the mass-production, pseudo-custom attitudes that have bedevilled so-called ‘e-learning consultants’ in the past. They must ensure that their sales, project and cost management systems encourage staff to take the longer view, instead of maximising short-term return at the expense of long-term trust. Indeed, trust is at the centre of the changing nature of the relationship.

Buyers of e-learning and blended learning services also face some challenges. In establishing long-term, trusting partnerships with vendors, they need to gain a full understanding of what vendors offer and the value they add – not just what they can offer to solve short-term problems. They need to be open and honest about the rationales for budgets and timescales, and map out opportunities for vendors in at least the medium term.

Divergence and convergence
Solving learning problems is a classic design process. Design processes tend to start with what are sometimes called ‘divergent’ phases, where a problem is explored and options are thrown into the ring without a clear idea of where the eventual solution may lie. Experience from many design fields shows that the quality of this divergent phase significantly influences the effectiveness of the final solution. Moving too quickly to a ‘convergent’ phase, where ideas are honed down, refined, laid aside or rejected, can result in too simplistic ideas being adopted, and high quality ones being missed.

It is at this stage that a partnership approach can add significant value. An external agency, who knows the many options and possibilities (as well as most of the constraints), should be able to contribute to examining learning problems with fresh eyes. They are more likely to be able to challenge engrained assumptions – if, indeed, they know what these assumptions are. Having encountered similar problems elsewhere, they should be able to help to state required outcomes clearly and constructively, and in ways that can eventually become measurable.

What’s the Big Idea?
Another characteristic of an effective design process is that it will be driven by a clear vision or central idea. This is particularly important where a complex problem may be able to be addressed in many different ways. In learning design, this central idea is likely to be an outcome of a consideration of a diverse range of inputs, including learning strategy, a creative approach, and learner profiles and preferences.

In simpler times, it was often possible for client organisations to develop a clear vision for their e-learning solution, then pass it on to an external provider in the form of a brief. But with today’s learning challenges, this is a bit like calling in an architect once you have already drafted up the detailed plans. Doing so risks missing out on the architect’s proactive contribution – their ideas – as well as their ability to avoid pitfalls that may not be obvious without an external perspective. Once again, a partnership approach, where external providers are drawn into the mix at the stage when the Big Idea is being developed, is likely to offer considerable benefits to all parties.

Trust and flexibility
A defining characteristic of early learning development methodologies was their structured, linear nature. Very detailed specifications were drawn up at the beginning of the process and were followed, give or take the odd minor detail here and there, to the letter. At least in theory, through a process of sequential refinement, the solution specified at the start was what came out at the other end of the process. This is a perfectly acceptable approach where the learning challenges being tackled are predictable and well-understood, and where they are unlikely to change during the process. But many of the highest value learning challenges being tackled today aren’t like this at all. They can be hard to articulate and define; difficult to get your head round. They may have many different aspects, some of which are understood, some of which are not. Indeed, it may be difficult to articulate and define such problems until you start trying to design a solution. So in this kind of situation, producing a highly detailed specification at the outset is at best pointless, and at worst deceptive.

Designers in other disciplines – like product design and architecture – have long been used to approaches where specifications emerge over time. Writers on design theory, such as Bryan Lawson, have even suggested that true design thinking can hardly be divided into sections, stages or steps at all. But such blurry, overlapping stages demand that all parties involved are mutually supportive and trust each other deeply. Rafts of documentation will kill the creativity and flexibility needed to get to a solution. Once again, the only way to make this work is through partnership and mutual respect for the expertise of all those involved.

Conclusion
There will always be a place for simplistic, highly structured ways of producing e-learning and blended learning – just as there will always be a place for suppliers of low value services who take a brief and simply respond to it. But complex learning challenges demand sophisticated relationships; relationships built on the principles of effective partnership.

by Piers Lea and Patrick Dunn

This article was published in e.learning age Magazine, February 2008 issue