The Learned Man!

What Do Informal Learning & Brushing Your Teeth Have In Common?

Mark Harrison, partner at UK consulting firm Kineo, feels that by 2012 we may not be using the terms 'e-learning' or even 'informal learning'. Jay Cross (credited with coining these terms, and author of a soon to be released book on informal learning) might cringle a little at that thought.

I agree with Mark about not using terms for routine and commonplace activities (learning, like brushing your teeth is something you hopefully do everyday, in some form or the other). But then again, sometimes using a term is required to focus attention and resources on a sphere of activity.

To view and hear Mark make his case, check out his presentation by clicking here. 

Interview with Sanjaya Sharma, CEO, Tata Interactive Systems

Sanjaya Sharma, CEO of Tata Interactive Systems, recently spoke to CIOL. Some excerpts from that interview:

On merging with TCS:
[Sanjaya] There is no immediate talk of such a move, and I will be very surprised if it happens in 2006.

On facing pricing pressure from other e-learning players in India?
[Sanjaya] It has been so for quite many years. Many small e-learning companies often undercut each other to gain projects. But, TIS has been largely away from all this. The clients that choose us do so for the quality work that we do, in the last few years our average price has appreciated and not gone down. Clients recognize that we stand for quality, we have recently been awarded four international prizes for our work. Clients appreciate the kind of investment we have made in the facility and the overheads. Customers that are anyways looking for lower prices will always find vendors that offer them.

On attrition:
[Sanjaya] As far as people joining competition is concerned, there is also a lot of reverse flow happening. E-learning industry in India is still very fluid, so this kind of to-and-fro movement is pretty commonplace.

On implementing SAP:
[Sanjaya] With the use of SAP, we have aligned all our global offices on a single system. We have over 300 people who are working abroad. We have offices in different continents of America, Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific. There are at any given moment close to 200 projects that the company is working on. Keeping in mind all these complexities, the implementation of SAP ERP has helped us no end. Now, all the orders can be logged, tracked at a click of a button.

On its European acquisitions:
[Sanjaya] We acquired Tertia Edusoft AG in Switzerland and Tertia Edusoft GmbH in Germany. These are small companies that focus on specific areas; Like the German company, which was renowned in the country for it Simulation products; Or the Swiss company has a very unique anti money laundering product that has very good potential across the world. We chose these companies for the specific skill sets that they provided. These were profitable firms working in a niche market, now they are part of a global company. It has also helped us increase our footprints in European markets.

On the future:
[Sanjaya] We are quite buoyant about the future prospects. TIS is a 16-year-old company, and has created a brand name that is known globally. We will be opening an office in South Africa shortly. We are aiming for over 30 per cent growth this year. It is quite an exciting time to be in business.

Link to full interview.

What You Looking At?

Jakob Nielsen, "Web Page Usability Guru", provides details about a study where 232 people were asked to look at thousands of web pages and their reading behaviour was looked at and it was found that the dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F. Basically:

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
• Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.

The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:

• Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

For those of you working in sales, inside sales or brand management, communication etc this kind of information would be invaluable in helping you design your messages.

Aptech Ranked #1 In Chinese IT Training Market

From an EFY Times report, Aptech has once again grabbed the numero uno position in IT training in China -- for the fourth consecutive year -- according to the CCID report.

Aptech's market share increased to approximately 19 per cent in the year 2005. In the year 2004 too, Aptech, with 14.8 per cent market share, achieved the ranking ahead of other players including Science Institute of Software (with 10.3 per cent market share) and NIIT (7.9 per cent market share).

The top five players of the Chinese IT education and training service market made up for 43.5 per cent of the market share. Aptech (at 18.8 per cent market share) achieved the ranking much ahead of other players including Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) (with 9.6 per cent market share) and NIIT (7.9 per cent market share), China Digital (with 3.8 per cent market share) and East Software - Dongruan (with 3.4 per cent market share).