I have been a fan of Ryan Tracey’s popular blog for a long time, and was delighted when he self-published E-Learning Provocateur Volume 1. Imagine my delight getting my hands on E-Learning Provocateur Volume 2 which has just been released.

Volume 2 also takes us on a journey through Tracey’s reflections on his practice as a learning and development (L&D) professional, and on the things he observes around him; from homicide rates to bank customer service. Tracey has a gift for linking seemingly unrelated concepts and experiences back to his observations of new and emerging technologies. He reminds us that our role in L&D must evolve from content writers to facilitators of practice our employees engage in (pp 73).

Tracey’s gift for looking beyond the obvious allows readers an opportunity to question our assumptions. One such BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) for me was the topic Art vs (information) Science (pp31). Ryan argues the value of using a combination of visual tree structure and search box to enable information retrieval (pp31). Another pragmatic topic which I found equally as useful was 14 reasons why your multiple-choice quiz sucks. Yeah, we all know it – but Tracey makes the issues overt.

Tracey says he writes his blog for himself, and if anyone draws value from his musing, well that’s simply a bonus. I think Tracey’s contribution to the e-learning fraternity is more valuable than what this statement suggests. Spending time reflecting upon Tracey’s musings is a gift for most learning professionals.

And, no doubt I will be citing Tracey’s views on informal learning environments in my thesis.

I highly recommend E-Learning Provocateur Volume 2 to anyone who wants to litmus test their approach to organisational learning and technologies.