Chief Learning Officers Endorse Distance Learning and Technology

Posted on February 26, 2008 by Jennifer Brady

CEO, CMO, CIO, CTO, CFO… CLO?

According to this recent interview, CLO, or Chief Learning Officer, is a relatively new corporate title credited to General Electric’s former CEO Jack Welch. The interview, courtesy of Knowledge@Wharton talks at length with several experts about the function of CLOs, and more importantly, about the linkage they see between ongoing education and training and career success in today’s modern corporation. If you are an adult learner at UMassOnline, or thinking about becoming one, and your chief aim is to advance your career, you’ll want to hear what these CLOs are saying.

In addition to many key statements that advocate for lifelong learning, the panelists are also asked about whether or not new technologies for education delivery improve or distract from the learning experience. In this excerpt below, the answers are provided by Ann Schulte, vice president of global learning at MasterCard International; Mike Barger, vice president and CLO at JetBlue University; and Ed Betof, former vice president of talent management and CLO at Becton, Dickinson and Company:

Knowledge@Wharton: Economist.com has had an ongoing debate about whether new technologies, such as online portals and distance learning, enhance education or impede it. What’s your take on this?

Schulte: I feel pretty strongly that they enhance learning. Technology is an enabler; it’s not the learning in and of itself…. We have a global population that we try to reach, and it allows us access to people that we couldn’t reach face-to-face in a much quicker fashion. It also allows us to do things such as simulations — a lot of things that we can practice, which we would not be able to do in the operational environment, are enabled by technology.

Barger: I think the key is not using technology for technology’s sake. One of the significant changes in learning over the last couple of decades is that we now deliver learning more in the context of the environment that these people are going to be working in when they’re doing their day-to-day jobs. Pilots, for example, are going to train in simulators that represent the real thing about as well as you can.

We’re going to use other technologies in the classroom and out in the workplace that are going to simulate the work environment. There’s not a particularly clear line between the training environment and the work environment. So, when they move from learning and into the execution of their day-to-day jobs, it’s a very comfortable transition. I think that in that context, technology plays a huge role in helping folks get comfortable with the kinds of tools that they are going to have available to them when they’re operating day to day.

Betof: We can say with some reasonable level of confidence that experienced chief learning officers and senior learning leaders can select the right methods of delivery. There are certain things that will never substitute for face-to-face work. And, I can say with that same level of confidence that, for the technology support that is [now] available for learning, there are probably certain things that can’t substitute for that. And, it’s a combination of selecting them carefully and sometimes blending them carefully — what we call “blended learning solutions” — that is, I think, more the answer than not.

You can read, listen or watch this interview by visiting this site.

Comments

3 Responses to “Chief Learning Officers Endorse Distance Learning and Technology”

Gearfire.com » Blog Archive » Chief Learning Officers Endorse Distance Learning and Technology on February 26th, 2008 10:26 am

[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptCEO, CMO, CIO, CTO, CFO… CLO? According to this recent interview, CLO, or Chief Learning Officer, is a relatively new corporate title credited to General Electric’s former CEO Jack Welch. The interview, courtesy of Knowledge@Wharton … […]
Mark Gillard on February 26th, 2008 1:29 pm

CLO…I love it! I fortunately work for a company that values education, and offers higher education tuition reimbursement. I think anyone in the market for a job should consider the value that the company puts on education before taking the job.
distance learning » Blog Archive » Chief Learning Officers Endorse Distance Learning and Technology on February 27th, 2008 12:12 am

[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]