Learning Journeys

I have enjoyed several years in the IT industry, beginning with desktop support and server administration, but I quickly became involved in corporate training strategies — out of necessity…

Training

IT support staffs often find themselves overwhelmed, understaffed, and inundated with help requests. Survival instinct led me to the realization that the more people knew about the hardware and software that they were tasked with using the less they would call me to solve simple problems. This would allow me to become more efficient with my time and other resources.

Lo and behold, I found that people responded to my training efforts like sponges to water — so much so that my time, which is precious to me, was simply traded from fixing minor problems to training others how to do the same. If only I could clone myself…

Reusable Content

The next evolution in my career began when I migrated from small classroom trainings to reusable content. This was a revolution, which multiplied my efforts and enabled me to become more efficient.

I started with documentation. Sterile documentation is good and necessary for any organization, and, strangely enough, I like documenting and organizing information. Documentation allows others to repeatedly access content that was delivered (or created) once. The net result was a more efficient distribution of knowledge.

However, not everyone will search a knowledgebase for answers. Some prefer human interaction or even a simple demonstration. This naturally led me to eLearning.

eLearning

eLearning allows organizations to reuse content, which is a huge return on investment, and it allows for the creative use of multimedia to engage the learner, which promotes comprehension and retention and effects desired performance changes.

At this point in my life and career, I strive to be “lightweight” as described so well by Lee LeFever at Common Craft. Some things in life may be worthwhile and even appropriate for another person or another company, but, if they distract me from my goals, they simply add stress to my life and threaten to derail my goals, vision, and purpose. Thus, they must be discarded in order to remain lightweight and focused on the goals before me.

Likewise, I am learning to embrace the Getting Real concept espoused by 37Signals, which is all about avoiding bureaucracy and the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality in favor of moving quickly and efficiently to achieve quality successes. This, too, is lightweight.

I have now ventured into eLearning development, which meets the needs of organizations worldwide for quality learning content that engages students and changes performance and, at the same time, fulfills a desire of mine to be efficient and “lightweight”.

–David Fair
eLearning Developer
david@davidfair.me