Peer-to-Peer Learning: A Parable

I am repeating here a comment I made to Kathleen’ Gilroy's comments on egalitarian and peer-to-peer learning in the Open ACS .LRN Forum so it might reach another audience. I agree completely with her points in this forum and especially like the way she has articulated the concept. I want to share an example that occurred in 1997-1998 using the technology of the day. I apologize that this is longer than most postings and I will drop much of the context for this reason.

A large health insurance organization was changing their IT platform to web-based and, more importantly, moving to a proactive customer service business model away from the traditional transaction model. This effort involved learning new technology and new business processes and attitudes. The traditional authoritarian classroom model for training call center workers took 12 weeks and it was then still 9 months before they became fully efficient. Neither of these time frames was acceptable to transform the entire work force so we integrated knowledge management and learning to both drive down classroom time and decrease the learning curve.

So we decided to turn the traditional learning model on its head. We decided that we were not going to train people at all. Instead, we were going to put all the procedures, information, and knowledge to provide customer service and process claims in a KM system available on the job. We made the workers responsible for their own learning but gave them what they needed to do the job. However, we did not just turn them loose on customers. We put them in a two week simulation where they were given claims to process and access to the KM system to support their efforts. Other off-duty employees called in, simulating real customers. A facilitator, not a teacher, was there to answer questions. In order to graduate you needed to use the system to actually do your new job. Those who got through quickly were then asked to help slow learners, encouraging team work.

We also knew that not all the procedures would be documented in the initial efforts and not all those that were would be right. So we created a simple wizard to have employees write their thoughts on procedures they found undocumented as well as their ideas on how to do those that were covered even better. We gave them examples of how to write good procedures, in a help file, so they could better respond to this task. In the simulation they were required to use this wizard to encourage it use on the job. An organization was set up to evaluate and process their suggestions.

According to participant feedback this proved to be the most popular learning program that most participants had ever experienced. At one point when the new overall work IT system was being introduced sometime prior to release, the employees got much more excited about the KM system that we introduced along with the IT system. It even got a standing ovation after a long day of demos and employees said they wanted it right now, even if the overall IT system was not ready.

What excited business leaders was the significant reduction in classroom time and the reduction in learning curve, reducing costs and bringing forward the benefits of the major transformation of the business. What excited the employees was the egalitarian approach Kathleen discussed, although we did not have the benefit of her excellent peer-to-peer framing of the issue at the time. I have seen this occur, in part, in other places but this was the most dramatic. It would be even better in today’s tools but worked fine with the old ones. If you want more on the integration of learning and KM here is an earlier post and here is another on .LRN as well as a link to their website.

Comments

[john bates]

Just wondered if i could have a few more details around the implementation. What was the KM system you installed? do you have any screenshots? How did the wizard work?. Your parable sounds intriguing and a great template for people to try for speed e-learning

[Bill Ives]

John - Thanks for your comment. The exact details on the implementation are unfortunately confidential to this organziation. However, I can share a bit more. This was 1998 technology and the value of the KM system was more in the content and procedures than the tools. The tools were primarliy robo help and other such simple tools. The wizards worked by having a few required fields that guided the user and on-line help that provided both the types of information required for the suggestion to be useful, the required format, and examples of appropriate entries such as a sample documented procedure. The use of the wizard was also covered and then required to be used in the two week simulation exercises. One key to success was the creation of a new role to review and evaluate all submitted suggestions and a steering committee to further evaluate their benefit to the organization. All those who took the time to submit suggestions were also given feedback on their suggestions and the on-going status of the implementation of these suggestions.