I saw an invitation to tender the other day for a learning initiative in local government. After expressing an interest, I had a look at the specification. It was asking for a half day course rate. The list of topics was ‘core skills’ – assertiveness, customer service, etc – and the expectation was that these employees would attend multiples of half day courses to ‘deliver exceptional services for our residents and visitors’.

There was no thought of doing anything other than a course. No suggestion there might be a demand for something different. Here are a few of some of the things you might want to consider:

• Curation practice
• eBooks
• Blogs
• Shared workspaces
• ESN
• Library services
• Comic strips
• Briefings
• Case studies
• Hosted chat rooms
• Video meeting spaces
• Internal mentoring
• Shadowing
• Charts/graphs
• Workbooks
• Collage boards
• Reports
• Twitter chat sessions
• Practice sessions
• Action Learning Sets
• RSS Feeds
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Q&A and FAQs
• Situational tests
• Quizzes
• Questionnaires
• Gifs
• Zoom meetings
• Reflection spaces
• Presentations
• Guides
• Infographics
• Wikis
• User Generated Content
• Forums
• Peer marked activities
• Personal research
• Peer coaching

If you’re still asking for courses, you’re doing it wrong.