Scope of Learning Responsibility

Monday, March 03, 2008 - by ASTD Staff

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Karl Kapp helped me with the March 2008 Big Question which is:

What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?

This question comes from several recent experiences. One was a Chief Learning Officer panel discussion where it seemed that supporting informal learning or communities of practice was not something they were considering. There was also discussion on my blog around the fact that in corporations there is a limit to what we can do as a training organization (see Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis and Long Tail Learning - Size and Shape). All of this makes me wonder:

Do educational institutions and corporate learning & development departments have responsibility for supporting Long Tail Learning? Do they have responsibility for learning beyond what can be delivered through instruction? If so, what is their responsibility? Where is the edge of responsibility?
Similarly, does the instructor have a responsibility to help students make sense of or deal with content he or she did not teach the students? In other words, if a student finds information on the Internet or some other place, how much time and attention should the instructor allow for the discussion of such content? Should it be discussed at all if it is non-conventional or generally thought of as not credible or contradicts the instructor? Who determines credible research? Is all non-referred research questionable?

Karl and I feel this is an important question for all of us to think about and as a community to begin to address.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - Safety Training Design

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - Safety Training Design : eLearning Technology

Posts So Far:

Karyn Romeis (Karyn's erratic learning journey) - The Big Question for March: Scope of Learning Responsibility
Clive Shepherd - The big question: What is the scope of our respons...
Note: Both Karyn and Clive have helped crystallize aspects of the key questions and issues, but my guess is that there is going to be some disagreement with nuances of what they are putting forward. For example, I somewhat take issue with Clive's bottom line:

The learning professional can never be 'responsible' for anyone's learning, but they help to create an environment in which learning takes place in every context.