The Death of Learning Object - 2

Karyn, in response to my earlier post, wrote:

As a learning designer, I'm still trying to decide how I would get by without them.

I left a comment in her blog and asked for an example. I greatly appreciate examples of effective use of learning objects.

She pointed me to one of her earlier post. The training situation is:

Barbara Manager has someone standing in front of her, red-faced and furious, claiming to have been subjected to on-going gender discrimination.

What should Barbara do?

Karyn proposed three possible reactions:

1 If we're honest, she's most probably going to call HR. It's the kneejerk reaction.
2 She could ask a colleague - either over the phone or in person
3 She might Google it (I know, I know - just bear with me, okay?)

and consider designing the learning based on these situations.

I would argue that it is reactive training and it will cost the organisation when situation like this happens. As eLearning professional, we should advocate "preventive" training. Prevention is always better than cure!

I would split that situation into two parts: training to prevent such situation to occur (preventive and pro-active) AND just-in-time information (reactive).

The first part is the role of training. The latter is the role of information distribution. A search engine incorporated into the organisation's policy repository should provide the simple answer to the latter.

What we should be interested and focussed on is the preventive and pro-active training.

For sexual harassment in the work place, there is good role play simulation "Xmas party from Hell" which has been run over 20 times. See Marie Jasinski's description of the 2001 run here. BTW, the URL listed in Marie's article is a bit old, but should work.

Here, I don't need to use any learning object!