#tessello

At the learning technologies summer forum 2013 I attended a talk titled "Diary of a next generation learner" presented by Charles Gould, MD of Brightwave.

  Brightwave's new social media inspired LMS

  Gould started his talk by claiming that most people in western economies fall into the category of a 'knowledge worker'. He defines knowledge work as "improvisation and the use of judgement in ambiguous situations".

  Wikipedia defines this more clearly :

  Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Typical examples may include software engineers, architects, engineers, scientists and lawyers, because they "think for a living".

He went on to present some statistics on knowledge work, it was put to us that knowledge workers outnumber other types of works in North America by 4:1. It is estimated that knowledge workers spend 38% of their time seeking information.

  the next gen learner learns all of the time using multiple devices

  Brightwave's argument is that as knowledge workers, we learn all of the time not like we used to at 2 day residential courses or through e-Learning modules. The next generation of learners expect to be able to access information at any time through multiple devices. In fact, according to Cisco mobile data is projected to grow 3 times faster than fixed IP traffic over the next 3 years. In addition to this it is understood that next generation learners have superior technology at home compared to the office, resulting in a learner expectation gap.

  Learner expectation gap is the gap between what employees expect and what employers currently provide

  Outside work we now capture information through a variety of mediums, for example, tablets, mobiles, YouTube, social media. Brightwave argue that technology can help close the learner expectation gap by aligning the way users interact with learning with the way they interact outside work.

Brightwave's solution is a Learning Management System called Tessello, which borrows many ideas from social media.

Tessello interface

  Tessello has the following key features:

Allows expert and peer created learning content

Design works on multiple devices - responsive design

Social media integration e.g. twitter feeds, like buttons, comments

Trending panels, leaderboards, dashboard layout

Integrated social bookmarking, like delicious

Provides detailed analytics of use

Uses Tin Can to track experiences