I just wrote my final (official) blog post for my summer class about Web 2.0. One of the biggest things I learned this semester is that we have to stop this idea that we can apply old themes and metrics and ways of doing things to these new tools.

I am not saying we need to throw out the old stuff. On the contrary, we need to build bridges between the old and the new. We need to bring the good principles from our old way of designing learning to the new. We need to align to the business. We need to design learning objectives that are tied to what people need to learn to do so they actually learn the core of what they need to do their jobs before they start wading through the gazillion terabytes of information that is out there.

Kenny and Susan marching to the capital bldg

But we can’t measure how someone learns the way we’ve been trying to do it for the last hundred years. That’s why I marched against Jeb Bush’s One Florida scheme when I was at FSU as an undergrad. With my child on my back (literally) for most of that march.

Learning is more than just a bottom line number on an accounting sheet. When someone truly learns – not when they learn to a test, or attend a mandatory online class – but truly masters a topic you’ll know by looking at what they can accomplish.

As learning professionals, we need to start thinking about how we can enable this mastery learning to happen. In my class blog post I talk about a Learning GPS. We should be able to point people to the fastest route to mastery, as well as the side roads that may help provide the local color to fully understand the nuances of a topic.

At any rate, we can’t allow the old ways of doing things to become the de facto way of designing instruction and measuring learning in this new Learning 2.0 world. We have to be the ones to come up with the new ways.

What do you think??