Jay’s contribution to the field of organisational learning was huge. He made us think hard about the edges of our profession. When many were fretting about perfecting the irrelevant with better classroom courses Jay was pulling us into the emerging world of eLearning. When most were still focused on integrating eLearning into courses and curricula Jay was shouting that the real power wasn’t in structured learning at all but in workplace and in informal and social learning approaches.
The analysis he carried out for his 2006 Informal Learning book says it all. He called the focus on formal learning ‘absurd’. He was like that, never backward in saying it exactly as he saw it.