LEARNING AT WORK WITH LIGHTBITES – THE KNOWELEDGE@WORK PROJECT

Organisations are becoming aware of the importance of knowledge management and of the different methodologies of transferring knowledge to their employees. There is a demand for concrete, direct, hands-on learning material providing information about the work processes. Securing knowledge, and transferring it to the workplace is important, especially when managers are given the opportunity to contribute to that process, by creating knowledge themselves. It is therefore of utmost importance to increase the opportunities to learn in the workplace by the provision of tangible, concise, user-friendly e-learning material, created by the first line managers and promoted by those managers.
In many organizations employees do not receive appropriate training. From time to time, they may face an issue that could be solved with a small training intervention. Shifting learning towards the workplace, by using small e-learning material, will give employees the opportunity to learn skills needed for their job at the exact moment they most need it. As the available e-learning material immediately solves their existing problem, they will start to enjoy learning and to see the benefits of it. These benefits include: staying up to date; carrying out their tasks accurately; being able to carry out new challenges in their function, and remaining in the labour market as a strong employee.
It is also important to distinguish between various different workplaces where training can take place. These are: the office; the factory, and in remote locations where one may, or may not, be able to access PCs. We thus need to answer the question as to how workers in those different workplaces can benefit from the created e-assets. An e-learning delivery system and its technical architecture need to bear in mind those differences, and create solutions for each specific workplace. For example, introducing mobile learning in the workplace will increase the possibilities for learners with special needs.
Although extensive work has been carried out in the area of e-learning in formal education, very little work has been carried out in the area of e-learning in informal education and especially in the area that we target (learning at work using small user-friendly e-learning material). This paper presents an innovative approach and a web-based e-learning tool that can be used in informal learning in the workplace. The approach and the tool are the results of a European Leonardo Da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project, namely knowledgebox@work, (2010-1-BE3-LEO05-02395). The main aim of this project is to demonstrate to first line managers how technology can be used to improve the skills and knowledge of their direct employees. The “lightbite” authoring tool enables managers to generate and apply instructional material directly relevant to the day to day problems faced by their workers. Through the use of this friendly authoring tool, managers can create web-based short and concise e-learning material (lightbites) which can be accessed by the workers.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we provide information about the knowledge@work project and its aims together with the concept of a “lightbite”, and explain how the project and authoring tool support the needs of users. In Section 3 we exemplify the authoring tool and illustrate its functionality via screenshots. Finally the paper ends with our conclusions which also cover the on-going work in the project.