Tony Karrer at eLearning Technology has an interesting post on LMSs which he's considering from the corporate sector. In the post he looks at why one particular vendor gets low satisfaction marks in the eLearning Guilds report on learning management systems whereas in some other reports, eg Josh Bersin of Bersin and Associates LMS reports they consistently score highly. Karrer points to the different methodologies that are used in the two reports. The eLearning Guild surveys users more generally, Bersin basically asks the companies for a list of customers and then surveys and interviews those. You're obviously going to get a very different response from someone referred to you by the company than you are from a broader swathe of users.
Tony Karrer is right to point us to look closely at methodology as there is a lot of really suspect research out there, suspect because of the the poor methods used. We need to be more critical users and consumers of research.
However, something else in his post caught my eye and is I believe worthy of greater discussion. Karrer takes a quote from Bersin's website where they describe their methods. It goes like this:
Our patent-pending methodology relies on primary research directly to corporate users, vendors, consultants and industry leaders. We regularly interview training and HR managers, conduct large surveys, meet with managers and executives, and seek-out new sources of information. We develop detailed case studies every month. We have the industry's largest database of statistics, financials, trends, and best practices in corporate training (more than 1/2 million data elements).
(The bold is mine, the italics not) the quote is from this page
Excuse me? When did doing primary research, interviewing users, doing surveys and collecting other data become patentable. That sounds pretty much to me like what every social scientist learned to do in graduate school.
I went to check the patent office and couldn't find anything. It is entirely possible that my USPTO research skills aren't up to snuff but there are three possibilities, two of which make Bersin and Associates look rather bad.
a. They're trying to patent research into technology use and satisfaction. Not very good.
b. They're dissembling about their patent-pending application. Not very good.
c. They have some whizz-bang technology which sounds like all research ever done but that's going to revolutionize research forever. They just can't be specific about it and its buried in the very swanky bowels of the USPTO. This would be better, but I find it unlikely.
As it happens I live just a few blocks from the USPTO. Perhaps I should swing by one of these days to patent my methodology of posting snarky bits of derivative commentary to amuse and enlighten colleagues in academic technology. So what if others have been doing it longer and better!
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