He Had a Bad Day

I just saw a post by Mark Oehlert - I'm tired people, so I'm only going to say this about 1,000 more times... - and it appears that Mark has had a bad day...

The point (hard to see though as it is) however, is that with learning - the changes are going on inside our own heads and bodies. We are acted upon by outside forces but ultimately learning is an internal act mediated by our own individual/collective contexts. What learning is NOT is a product. It can NOT be shrink-wrapped. It can NOT be updated to version 1.2. It does NOT rely on a particular OS or even give a crap about what version of the Web we happen to on. Learning scoffs at mergers of companies and at specifications like CORDRA and SCORM. This misunderstanding has led us to countless, pointless discussions about lots of issues but ROI makes a great example (you can't really measure what's going on in someone's head can you? - no but you can measure performance - but people aren't selling Performance management systems (those would be PMSs and marketing would NOT let that happen).

We can do better or worse at creating opportunities for people to learn. We can use methodologies and technologies that seem to have a positive impact on peoples' ability to learn; but we are NOT selling learning. So let's freakin' STOP talking about learning like its a product. Hey LMS CEO - you ever manage "a learning"? Hey authoring tool person - you ever make "a learning"? Can you send me one?

So how about for pete's sake, we all agree to start indulging in some semantic accuracy.

I was going to comment on his blog, but for some reason it required registration, but had not way to register. So, instead, I've pasted my comment here...

Mark, wow. Are things okay? Is it that Oregon State is going to get beat up by Oregon this year in college football?

I hate to tell you, but while you are technically correct that learning is an outcome of something else you can still sell "learning solutions" - solutions designed to achieve learning as an outcome.

And good luck with getting us to stop using the term learning instead of training. I'd personally rather have us talk performance, but the industry has landed on learning, e.g., CLO, LMS, WLP, oh and eLearning.

Of course, when I think about it, we should be talking outcomes. So learning is better than training as a term.

Hopefully Mark gets some help working through this issue. :)
... Maybe I should buy a beer for him in San Jose.