Memes, Vemes and two cautionary tales for elearning

Ideas, it seems, have a life of their own. In recent years the notion of ‘memes’, in an oddly self-referential way, has become popular and we have begun to think of thoughts in evolutionary terms. Thanks to Richard Dawkins we now understand that ideas have a life of their own, they reproduce and spread using people as hosts and may be either adaptive or maladaptive for us – assisting or hampering us in our quest for success.

The Internet has prompted the explosion of the spread of memes by providing a highly effective transmission mechanism – far better than word of mouth, newsprint or even television (although the SuBo meme was seeded on TV it spread mainly via YouTube). If you are still in the dark as to the kinds of things I am talking about, you can get a better idea here: http://knowyourmeme.com/

So it with some trepidation that I would like to lay claim to introducing the first deliberately engineered meme virus – a ‘veme’ if you like. This veme is infectious and works by altering the host’s processing of information in order to thrive and reproduce. It does not radically disrupt thinking and even has some beneficial effects. Before I proceed, though, I should caution you that if you want to avoid the risk of infection by downloading this veme you should not read below the dotted lines below. You have been warned.

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The Veme is an ‘acoustic-substitution’ type and consists of over-writing the word ‘elephants’ in sentences where the word ‘elements’ is used.

Having been infected with this veme, I now immediately substitute the word ‘elephants’ whenever I hear someone say ‘elements’. So, for example:

They say: “I need Photoshop elements on my machine”
I hear: “I need Photoshop elephants on my machine”

(There then ensues a brief, ‘Scrubs-like’ moment, where I picture elephants expert in the use of photoshop squashed into an office chair, thumping at a keyboard with their feet.)

Other examples include:
‘This project has a number of discrete elements’ – I like the idea of elephant discretion generally, or:

‘What are the key elements for success?’ – and where are they hiding? Damn those sneaky elephants.

The benefit to the host of infection by this particular veme is that it does lighten up the occasional meeting or lecture; although on the downside I have occasionally crashed mid-sentence having inadvertently used the word ‘elements’.



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In the world of training there are some familiar memes/vemes: ‘blended learning’, Kirkpatrick, virtual environments.

Two memes that are swilling around at the moment are ‘rapid development’, and ‘social networks for learning’ – and since we have pioneering development in both areas – and have shared this work quite publicly – I feel some sense of responsibility for the associated, and infectious, discussion.

What worries me is this: the cautions are being missed in the hype. In both cases (rapid dev and social networks) if you simply introduce these solutions technically into your organisation they will fail. They will fail badly and they will fail very visibly.

I have tried to explain why – for example at the #CIPD09 speech – but perhaps unsurprisingly the possibility that the bandwagon may be missing a wheel has been largely overlooked. I’d like to briefly recap the problems, based on our experience:

Rapid development: hardly anybody will produce any content and those who do will produce rubbish.

In the early days of our deployment we trained literally hundreds of enthusiastic SMEs in the use of rapid development tools for content production. Very few of these ever produced anything of a decent standard. The model now works very effectively only because we have produced standard support and coaching plans which pair enthusiastic SMEs with learning consultants who can
a) structure the project and keep it moving along,
b) help them to overcome technical obstacles,
c) ensure that the output is good visually and pedagogically.

Social Networks: you will set it up and nobody will use it (except those people you force to use it).

Just because people are using social networks, it doesn’t mean they want to use yours – in fact, the opposite is true: if they are posting stuff to Facebook or Twitter why on earth would they want to waste time contributing to your paltry Web 2.0 experiment? In brief,
1) only a small percentage of people actually post worthwhile content to the web,
2) social networks need significant critical mass to get going,
3) organisations have yet to recognise and reward activity on social networks so it is effectively tacitly discouraged.

It is possible to make social networks work, but in the near future this will involve artificially driving contribution (for example by requiring trainers to find and share best practice using them) or by incorporating existing activity into your solution (so, for example you could act as a ‘curator’, identifying the most interesting twitter feeds from respected professionals and incorporating these as a section on your intranet page – you can imagine how this might work for HR professionals, for example).

For example I was recently asked to outline how social media could be used for an ‘opportunities portal’ and suggested the following five potential applications:
1) PUSH: using, for example a twitter account to replace the ‘click here to receive email updates’ option and additional raise the profile of the sitte’s activity.
2) PULL: drawing feeds from selected social networks (such as those used by recruiters) to create a fuller and more immediate environment
3) SEX APPEAL: incorporating short video stories (by force) into the site itself to give a (false) YouTube feel – possibly allowing comments – but with the intention of making the site feel less intimidating and more easy to identify with,
4) RANKING – using a site blog to improve the ranking, (as well as the ‘homeliness’ of the site)
5) COMPANION SITE – using an existing mechanism (such as Facebook groups) to establish a companion network where interested audiences can connect in a free-for-all fashion, at arms length.

In other words – rather like the heyday of e-learning – whilst rapid development and social networks offer huge benefits, without an effective implementation strategy both approaches will almost certainly fail to progress beyond the pilot stage. And I hope the elements I have outlined above will help.

Two Worlds

There’s a remarkable disparity within the world of elearning – probably common to other areas of work, but no less noteworthy as a consequence: namely, the divide between what gets talked about and what is being done. A divide between the world of the commentators and the players, if you like.

It’s easy to miss: if you spend any time reading industry publications or attending conferences you can easily get a distorted perception of what is actually happening in the world of online learning. This is mainly because the sorts of people who regularly speak at conferences are the same ones who regularly contribute to industry publications – and the vast majority of this group are not directly involved in managing elearning within organisations.

In practice this means that elearning events and magazines are something like a parallel universe – full of conversations about sexy but largely out of reach stuff: web 2.0, emotional intelligence, building learning organisation, blogs and wikis, virtual worlds, gaming, strategic alignment etc. If, on the other hand you take the time to talk to people whose job is to implement elearning their ambitions are decidedly more modest: rolling out a online induction course, improving completion rates, using simple authoring tools, introducing a basic level of ‘blending’, getting agreement to use a single LMS, finding a cheap but reliable supplier.

I confess to being in a fortunate position and therefore something of a hypocrite: I do have the luxury of being able to experiment at the frontiers of the technology, and I do regularly talk and sometimes write about these things - but I am conscious that the majority of my peers work within more severe constraints. In summary, I still think the day-to-day needs of the elearning practitioner are largely overlooked by our own chattering class, of which I am a part. Must try harder.


I saw some extraordinary films over the holidays – notably Avatar – a film which itself concerns two worlds and the conflict that arises between them. As you probably know the film concerns the identity crisis faced by a wheelchair-user living what becomes an increasingly desirable second life via the magic of technology. Aside from the fantastic setting it’s something of an allegory for the lives of the audience: just as our everyday lives are governed by attempts at a systematic reduction of risk and the unexpected, so our lust for adventure grows. I have heard it said that films are simply life with the boring bits left out – but you would be hard pressed these days to find a single episode in most people’s lives even half as exciting as those routinely strung together in a Hollywood storyline. Precisely those things which appeal to us in film are those things denied us in life.

I suppose I find it ironic that the more we control and regulate our everyday lives the further we find ourselves from the excitement and adventure that we crave. The film ‘Surrogate’ illustrates this quite nicely: in a future not far from now, an obese population lies permanently in the embrace of machines which allow them to live out their dream lives via a robot proxy – a self that, if not indestructible, is replaceable and upgradeable.

It is indeed becoming possible to separate out our thrilling virtual lives from our safe physical ones - but a problem remains: just as the classroom is now becoming a painfully boring environment for GenY, so is the modern workplace.