Author(s): Joaquin Azcue Castillon, Harold Torrez Meruvia, Mariona Vila Bonilla
The exponential growth of open on-line learning resources has dramatically changed the way adults learn. The scholarly literature has been studying this phenomenon mainly through the concept of Personal Learning Environments (PLE), which refers to the set of self-managed on-line tools and resources that learners use more and more frequently to meet their goals. On the other hand, in an increasingly competitive world, learning in the workplace has also evolved as new learning capabilities have been required to innovate and adapt in a world that is changing at a faster rate all the time. Already before the Internet became a massively used tool, social scientists had coined the concepts of Self Directed Learning Readiness (SDLR) and the Learning Organization (LO) to explain the evolution of adult learning. The development of a culture of learning organization and self-directed learning in a company was proven to correlate with higher levels of financial performance and capacity to innovate and, for this reason, most companies that operate in contexts where innovation is crucial for survival, have been trying to evolve their cultures in that direction.Now, as the massive use of Internet becomes part of everyday life, we ask ourselves if there is any relationship between the use of on-line personal learning environments and the cultural evolution required to become self-directed learning ready and a learning organization. To asses this association, we carried out an empirical assessment by deploying an on-line questionnaire to more than 9.400 Telefonica employees worldwide, with the positive results that are discussed in this article.