Vanguard Magazine

T TeCHnology WATch www.vanguardcanada.com JUNe/JULY 2016 41 teCHnology-enabled learning nicole Verkindt is the founder and president of OMX. She is a Board Member of the canadian commercial corporation and was recently appointed to the Board of the Peter Munk School of Global Affairs. b e honest…did you actually read your company's training manual on the first day? Did you pay attention to the three hour long boring video? Or did you just pick up a lot along the way, asking questions, engaging, trying, fail- ing, trying again? Now think of someone 20+ years younger than you. The attention span of younger people is often very short. You know the type – you may recognize them by their forehead, which you are often looking at while they play on their phones. They have grown up multitasking and expecting instantaneous results from their devices. Their focus is kept as long as things are moving ahead. They do not want to be slowed down by the details. Their learning environment should ideally be self paced, and as interesting as possible to hold their attention. This shift is the challenge for the future of our institutions and organizations, and it is the opportu- nity for Technology Enabled Learning. We have now progressed from a print- based industrial society to a technology- based internet society. Physical teachers must complement the learning experience. They must keep the learner interested, in- spired and develop the student's love of learning. This coming year, more people will enrol in Harvard's online courses than have attended the university in its 380 year history. Technology is changing processes rapidly, relying more on systemization and stan- dardization. Machines use brute processing power and access to enormous quantities of data. They do not need to think, or even exercise judgement, as they can process this data so much faster than us. Pilots used to have to memorize many processes and recall them instantly in an emergency, and many crashes resulted from the improper recall or execution of the procedure. Machines now coach the pilot through the procedure with embedded rules so that serious mistakes are not made. I am not an expert on learning, but it seems to me that training must change with how the student has changed over time. In addition, it must prepare the student for continuous learning during their career, as machines continue to assume more and more of the workers practical expertise, constantly improving productivity. My 88-year old grandmother is always asking for help on her computer and smartphone. However, when you explain something to her, she writes it down on a piece of paper for future reference. Mean- while, my four-year old sister has been an active phone and tablet user since 16 months old. She never writes anything down, and will likely not know what writ- ten instructions even are. I am on the cusp of being a millennial and somewhere in the middle. Educated conventionally, but comfortable with technology and use my moleskine notepad to jog my memory. My grandmother's generation was prin- cipally taught to work with their hands. They had to store within their own brains the instructions to perform their tasks, whether it was carpentry, farming, house- work, etc. The next generation will usu- ally work with machines, and the machines have enormous digital memory capabili- ties of their own. The details can be stored in the machines, so that the worker can focus on execution through an intuitive interface with the machine. I would think then, that experience with these man/machine interfaces will be im- portant for the future worker to be com- fortable and efficient operating the process- es. I was told to not touch the buttons, as I may damage the device; however, today, devices are smarter and more foolproof, and my little sister has been pushing but- tons since shortly after birth, hoping to make something happen. There is no lon- ger the same fear of technology, and young people are comfortable diving in and try- ing. They have grown up with these inter- faces and can often quickly learn a new de-

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