* IBM launches flexible learning systems
IBM is looking for companies to help pilot its latest learning system that allows employees to create customized, Web-based learning courses for their personal use, in real-time.
The company recently unveiled two learning software tools that are fresh out of IBM Research: Dynamic Learning Experience and MAGIC [Metadata Automated Generation for Information Content].
For some years now, IBM has been promoting the idea that employees should be able to learn on the fly and take courses or delve into reading materials from their desks. Learning materials should be presented in bite-sized chunks so that employees can ingest the information while they wait for their next meeting, for example. I talked about some of this in a newsletter last year.
IBM’s latest tools help employees create a list of learning courses or reading material from content that could be from internal or external sources, such as technical notes from internal subject matter experts to information found on the Web, that employers have identified as useful training material. The content could be hosted by servers at IBM facilities or at the user company.
Yael Ravin, a program director with IBM Research, described DLE as a search engine that scours training content and delivers the results according to the user’s subject matter interest, time available and desired study length. (Ravin says suitable training materials could take between five minutes and four hours to complete, but 20 minutes is optimal.) The system also arranges the search results in logical sequence, presenting users with materials that offer overviews first followed by those that go into the subject matter in depth.
MAGIC helps companies prepare content for DLE by automating the process of creating metadata – a title, description and keywords – and associates, or tags, them with the available learning material from any number of databases. This establishes a standardized library of “learning objects” that users can then assemble into custom courses using DLE, says IBM.
MAGIC can create metadata for content that has text, including Word documents, PDFs or HTML files. MAGIC can’t create metadata for graphics without text, but it can support some video by using closed captions, or by using speech recognition technology if the audio quality is adequate, says Ravin.
One pilot of the system was the Department of Defense Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, which ran for some three months. The audience was the Defense Acquisition University and the government agency said the pilot was a good alternative to using Web search engines, manually browsing through course catalogs and ‘asking their neighbors’, according to IBM.
Ravin says the system can be applicable to large and small organizations that need to train a large audience or a small number of workers. While the total cost to implement DLE/MAGIC could run to $22,000, including consulting support and hardware/software costs, such a system that enables you and your colleagues to learn on the fly and search for content from a wide range of sources could be worthwhile for your company to invest in as a pilot site.
