Learning - augmented

I’ve previously posted on how we are beginning to move from training as a separate activity from doing, to a model of primarily supporting practice and performance on the job. Ubiquitous Performance Support (UPS) I rather snappily called it. One dramatic example of how this is developing is in the nascent area of Augmented Reality.

This clip amply illustrates where this is heading.

While there appear some practical oversights in this example, I can see this sort of thing working really well. Amongst the rather amusing Youtube comments about expensive services being done by mindless monkeys is one suggestion:

“Yeah like halfords should do these where the overpriced haynes manuals are.”

Too right. And in fact this is something I did attempt with Iveco Trucks way back in 1992 in constructing an interactive servicing tool that take information from an engine management system and provide performance support guidance for a service mechanic in both service manual and video formats.

This is now possible, and even exists already if you count the self instruction videos already available on Youtube and other video sharing platforms.

We’d do well to ensure our definitions of learning are closer to Charles Handy’s – as written in his book, Age of Unreason:

"Learning is not finding out what other people already know, but is solving our own problems for our own purposes, by questioning, thinking and testing until the solution is a new part of our lives."

What’s your definition?