My first post started a train of thinking about how I got here, and made me think of Jeff. Anyone who attended TACT (The Association for Computer Based Training) in the 80s and 90s knew Jeff as the Big Man, often abrasive in his criticism, always knowledgeable and authoritative. He was a bit of a mentor for me, from the first training session he ran in TenCore (still going) for the building society who employed me around 87. From that time on we often worked together on projects and met at seminars. He was unfailingly supportive and encouraging, even when I would come out with things which, if some academic presenter had voiced them at TACT, would have earned a concise but telling put-down or, worse, caused him to remove his large frame summarily from the auditorium - a very powerful and conspicuous piece of feedback. Jeff died suddenly in, I think, 1996, from complications after a minor piece of surgery. I miss him today.
The aspect of learning technology that Jeff represented to me was the idea that one person could do it all - needs analysis, script, coding, delivery, implementation. In the days of 4-colour CGA displays and floppy disks that was possible. Then came multimedia and you had to either pick your role among the many - script, instructional design, storyboard, media, assets, editing - or project manage the lot. When Jeff introduced me to this new thing called the internet - I fondly remember following his directions to the Cyberia internet cafe near Tottenham Court Road - the palette was again restricted and some form of small, mobile, intelligent unit (to use Robert Fripp's term) was again possible.
A final memory of Jeff which brings us bang up to date with the current elearning paradigms was when someone at TACT was promoting hyperlinked browsing CBT (pre-web, so probably using HyperCard or the like) which also had alternatives for different learning styles. The user wouldn't go along a linear path, they'd explore, discover, uncover and be surprised. Jeff piped up that what managers wanted was for the learner to get in, get what they needed and get out again in the shortest possible time, not to go around the houses discovering things!
Looking up Jeff's name today I found (only) this, from his response to a lecture in 1996:
Finally, Plenty-of-Time versus Just-in-Time learning. Just-in-Time training and its illegitimate sibling EPSS are fine when (1) learners don't need much practice to be proficient and (2) only small numbers of learning points have to be acquired to complete the task. Airline pilots and surgeons are not high on my priority list for these types of learning. I have a pragmatic approach here. With most types of teaching we do not expect students to learn everything that is in the lessons (or all post-tests would require 100% to pass). In particular, most job-related training offers an opportunity to learn, but we must expect trainees to return to the job incompletely trained. Usually a colleague or supervisor fills in the gaps. That's what really happens, and it has many advantages. Just-in-Time learning bypasses the settling-in and learning-completion phases which are arguably essential. Plenty-of-Time Incomplete Learning is a more accurate description, with people-based performance support the norm.
(review of Steve Alessi's Dean Lecture Feb 1996)