As a designer of online learning experiences, dealing with the real world can be a real pain. I'm doing a fair bit of academic work at the moment, aimed at pinning down my understanding of the finer points of current learning theory. My reading of current literature takes me in the direction of the situative/pragmatist school, with a good dose of cognitive theory thrown in.
But then I go out into the real world, and the real world doesn't want to know.
Most large corporates have evolved their learning/training functions over many years and, in spite of the lip service paid to "the strategic role of learning", they just can't digest some of the most fundamental principles of current learning theory. They don't have time for reflective, generative learning, they have the wrong structures to support communities of tea-breaks, let alone communities of practice, they focus on the products of learning events rather than the process of continual learning...bla...bla...bla...
This is not surprising. Most organisations were never built to learn, they were built to make or deliver things. So I should stop complaining, and so should those in the learning industries who claim that "organisations are not ready for what we're offering yet". What we're offering will change rapidly, organisations must alter fundamentally and somewhere up the line, they'll meet.
New organsational models are needed that are based around the need for continuous learning (the learning-centred organisation), just as, in the 1980s, organisations realised the need to rebuild themselves around marketing, and later, their customers. And the concepts of the learning organisation disseminated so widely by Peter Senge in the early 90s are an interesting and fruitful place to start, but they're only a small part of the answer.
And we learning designers have a key role to play in these new organisations. We may not be designing "courses", "interventions" or even "experiences", we're more likely to become environment designers and facilitators.
3:16:50 PM 
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