Why Start a Blog?

I’ve been avoiding blogging.

Why? Mostly because I thought blogs were evil—just another contributor to "bad information gone wide." Despite my worries about an expanding universe of vacuous claptrap, I’ve decided to take my own advice and view blogging as just another tool—with strengths and weaknesses.

Why am I starting to blog now?

  1. Kathleen Gilroy, pixie mensch and esteemed leader of the Otter Group, talked me into it when she explained the Web 2.0 idea to me.
  2. I needed a way to convey information quickly and informally.
  3. I needed a way to get the Work-Learning Research newsletter up online permanently.
  4. I wanted to learn firsthand about the potential of this new technology for learning.
  5. I wanted a way to connect with clients, thought-leaders, colleagues, friends.
  6. I wanted a way to learn from others.
  7. I wanted to get started on idea projects that were on the back burner, pushing them toward completion, getting something out there in the event of my early demise.
  8. I wanted to get younger, hipper, and better looking.

I’d like to offer a special thanks to Kathleen and also to someone she introduced me to—Bill Ives, author of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. Bill’s wisdom has helped me think through my blogging strategy as he has eased me up the learning curve.

This blog, Will at Work Learning, will throw out lots of ideas about research-based learning design and the learning-and-performance industry.

The Work-Learning Journal will offer longer pieces on more in-depth topics. It will also include thought-provoking pieces from other researchers and thinkers in our field.

Please Note the name of this blog, Will at Work Learning. Not only is this convenient because it parallels the Work-Learning Research company name, but it is also my dearest hope—that this blog will engender my own learning. Please contribute with your comments.

Learning Audits Discounted

Among the many changes on the horizon at Work-Learning Research, one of the most exciting for me is our new emphasis on learning audits. As the field moves more toward "evidence-based practices" and "evaluation-tested learning" more and more decision-makers are incorporating outside evaluations into their instructional-design repertoires.

Before we unveil our learning-audit offerings in their new finery, we’d like to offer viewers of this journal a 25% discount for all audits that are started and completed within this calendar year. This offer only lasts while we have capacity to perform the audits—as of today, we can schedule about 10 more audits through the end of the year.

Whether for your organization, or your clients’ organizations, a learning audit might be just the thing to energize your instructional-design efforts, your e-learning efforts, your strategic organizational-learning initiatives.

Learning Audits aren’t cheap, but the information they produce can be priceless.

If you want to look more closely at our old verbiage on audits, check out this link. Better yet, contact me directly to get started or just ask questions.

Rewards for Learning? Be Careful!!

Jonathon Levy, currently Senior Learning Strategist at the Monitor Group, tells the story from his days as Vice President at Harvard Business School Publishing. The story is funny and sad at the same time, but it’s very instructive on several fronts.

Levy’s client decided that he would award end-of-year Christmas bonuses based on how successful his employees were in completing the Harvard online courses. Levy advised against it, but the client did it anyway.

The results were predictable, but they might never have been noticed if Jonathon’s Harvard team had not integrated into all their courses a tracking system to provide themselves with feedback about how learners used the courses. The tracking system showed that learners didn’t read a thing; they just scanned the course and clicked where they were required to click. They just wanted to get credit so they could maximize their bonuses.


Although very little learning took place, everyone was happy.

  • Learners were happy because they got their bonuses.
  • The client (training manager) was happy because he could show a remarkable completion rate.
  • Line managers were happy, because the learners wasted very little time in training.
  • Senior management was happy because they could demonstrate a higher rate of utilization of online learning.


What can we learn from this?

  1. Be careful what you reward, because you might get the specific behavior you reinforced (course-completion in this case).
  2. Completion rates are a poor measure of training effectiveness. Same as butts in seats.
  3. We need authentic measures of training effectiveness to prevent such silliness.
  4. Instructional-design activities benefit when good tracking and feedback mechanisms are built into our designs.