(published by Jonathon Levy in CLO magazine)
There’s a big problem in the online learning world: there’s content out there of marginal quality at best, and corporate budgetmeisters are looking askance at the prospect of more spending in similar directions with uncertain payoff. In more cases than we’d like to admit, mediocre content sits unused on the corporate LMS.
While higher quality is possible, it comes at a price. Outside content from commercial vendors can be custom-produced, but the cost of obtaining a very high quality product may be out of reach. As a result, compromises are often made, offshore vendors are used, and “good enough” can become the standard.
There is another way. In the conventional view, the corporation wants compelling, high-quality content at a reasonable price and the provider wants to make a reasonable return on their effort. Since the parties’ requirements seem 180-degrees apart, the quality of the content is often sacrificed to find middle ground. We are saddled with the paradoxical reality that in many cases the higher the quality of design and content, the more useful it will be. But the more expensive it is, the less likely it is that we will risk limited budget to achieve that level. So we spend less, get less, and online learning fails to achieve sustainability.
But turning the problem sideways allows us to find a win-win scenario. By effectively syndicating the developmental burden among several organizations, including some “virtual” clients not identified at the time, the cost can be reduced while maintaining high quality. ”Virtual syndication” allows a provider and a client to engage in a partnership with the understanding that the provider will offset much of the cost by selling the same product to any number of additional clients down the road, with or without customization. The client puts skin in the game by sharing the development cost and by making their professional staff and potential users available during the development process. The vendor and the buyer thus become partners in the same endeavor, with a common desire for excellence but different reasons for achieving it.
Last year Cisco’s Marketing and HR organizations and Monitor Group, a global strategy consulting company, launched a collaborative process to design a next-generation online learning solution. The partnership revealed what is possible when both parties sit on the same side of the table.
“Partnering with Monitor started with our very first conversation… based on mutual respect and shared understanding we were able discuss our value transaction not only in dollars and cents, but adding the critical aspects of expertise and experience,” said Matt Tabor, Sr Learning and Design Manager, for Cisco Systems, Inc.
The experiment produced extraordinary results:
- an exchange of multiple value points providing design expertise from both organizations, content from Monitor, and iterative usability testing during production at Cisco;
- a program that is being used internally by Cisco to launch a global marketing change process that has received raves from the marketers who have used the product;
This win-win solution combined the best of both organizations to create a new standard in online learning: recursive simulations in place of linear branching cases; a product equally valuable in stand-alone, blended, and collaborative mode; and the flexibility of personalized approaches to learning, from competency development to performance support.
The design integrates learning and brain theories using reflective, intuitive, passive and interactive pathways to the same content. The program’s major pillars are two separate cases, one to learn the content, the other to apply it, supported by tools, insights and tips, and “at a glance” graphical metaphors: Flash movies that summarize main points in 60-seconds.
”I think we wound up with a unique and compelling product because the whole team had the shared interest of creating a great learning experience, even though our reasons for doing so were quite different,” said Queenne Mavor, the Cisco learning designer who collaborated with Monitor Group on the project.
While the business model created by Monitor and Cisco requires a realignment of traditional thinking, it is also an innovative and successful solution to an intractable problem. The concept of “virtual syndication” may be the catalyst to generate the requisite economic leverage to resolve the endemic conundrum of cost vs. quality. Perhaps an important component of the long-awaited tipping point to sustainability is at hand: a new way of thinking about achieving a level of quality, compelling product, and measurable economic benefit that will move this field forward.
Jonathon Levy
Chief Strategy Officer
