Reflections on Gerd Leonhard's session (LSG13)

How is learning changing in the digital age?

Digital is now becoming the default for everything, with the divide between digital and physical learning spaces continually eroding.  Our assumptions about linear change have to be thrown away, because technology is changing at an exponential rate, and we won't keep up and remain relevant unless we change our attitudes.

How is work changing in the digital age?

Businesses still sit on the fence, uncertain of when the real shifts in economics - such as digital advertising, the internet of things and cloud culture - will really start to take effect.  Mobile internet access is expected to be particularly disruptive, with mobile money transfers already commonplace in Africa.  Many standardised jobs based around transactions are becoming automated, so how do we adapt to this future?  The key is not to try to beat the machines, but consider how best to use new technology to our advantage.

The future is 'humarithms' - not algorithms

Companies that base their value on logic alone will eventually find themselves obsolete, because everyone is converging on the same set of logic, and it is only our intuition that can lead us to discover new ways of doing things.  As standardised work and protected spaces come to an end, businesses need to move towards a decentralised model, and e-learning can become a key part of organisational strategy.  But this has to move away from the standard perception of e-learning as distributing content - it has to be disruptive in nature, focused on breaking down the traditional silos.

Where are the future job roles?

Physical output is reaching its peak - we simply cannot continue with our model of outsourcing labour to cut costs.  As more value gets placed on the intangible products of a company, real human work will become focused on such areas as interface design, visualisation of data and software programming.  So as we move towards the complete automation of work, we have to ask ourselves if this will set human beings free, or doom us to become unemployable?  A tough question, but several members of the audience were quick to give their solutions:

• Developing your identity in a world of automation will be increasingly important.  Know your value’ (via Ben Betts)
• ‘The future of work? Become indispensable’ (via Steve Wheeler)
• ‘Maybe we need some Big Wisdom – Wisdom trumps knowledge and information which will also trump data’ (via David Wilson)

See also: Learning & Skills Conference 2013 curated backchannel resources.

Reflections on Phil Green's session (LSG13)

Although it's been almost a month since the Learning & Skills Group Conference, I'm still keen to get some of my thoughts about the sessions down to make sense of it all.  Going back over Phil Green's session on ensuring real interaction in online learning in the light of some recent experiences has been very helpful for me.

I was keen to attend Phil's session because I've been a lead user of web conferencing in my organisation for several years now, and I've used it to help colleagues learn from me on a number of occasions.  This has included teaching people to use the web conferencing tool itself and run their own sessions, preferably in a free-wheeling and humorous way, and also to get people started with their own e-learning projects.  I've always considered everything I've done to be firmly in the category of informal learning, so taking a serious look at how to use the medium as a classroom had a strong appeal.

What guiding principles do we need to stick to for a virtual classroom to work?  Phil gave us an opening quote of 'None of us is as smart as all of us', emphasising the need to draw on the knowledge of everyone present.  Really an effective virtual classroom shouldn't be too different from an effective physical classroom.  The problem is that most of us don't know how to really use a classroom in the first place, so we end up bringing all our bad habits with us, and being seduced by the tools, to the detriment of learning.

Key goals for learners in a classroom:

• Taking in new content and...
• Engaging in meaningful practice around it...
• Discussing it with their peers...
• Collaborating with their peers...
• Making sense of it...

How can the virtual classroom enhance (or interfere with) this?

• Using internet connections opens up limitless content to explore (but we need to provide the right guidance)
• Access interactive resources to aid meaningful practice
• Engage in more informal interaction with their peers
• Reflect on their participation using recording of the session

Whenever I have been teaching people within a web conference setting, the best learning occurs when I keep the prescribed content to a minimum, and act to give real tacit advice as people are exploring things for themselves.  Letting everyone see what is going on and take part really helps them to gain from observation and discussion - while I've recorded a huge number of training recordings in the past, nothing quite beats live learning for getting over the tips that boost a learner's confidence.
 

What should the tutor be doing in a classroom?

• Reacting and responding to the needs of learners - not just working from prescribed content
• Providing meaningful challenges and activities for learners

Best tips for moving to the online environment

• Don't assume that being a good face-to-face trainer will make you a good online facilitator
• Don't assume that all the learning has to take place on-screen - allow learners a pause for reflection (sometimes less is more)
• Activities that work well face-to-face may not translate well to the online environment
• Remember that our expectations for online interaction are constantly changing
• Don't get seduced by the technology

Whenever I've been training people to use web conferencing tools, the real value comes in helping people prepare for the situations that they will actually be facing - effectively working in collaboration to fill in the gaps around more standard guidance.  I've found it best to get the prescribed content out of the way before the live session anyway, by having guidance notes and videos permanently available on the LMS.  Phil's call for reflection is particularly insightful, as this is something that I haven't directly considered when running a session so far.

See also: Learning & Skills Conference 2013 curated backchannel resources.

Reflections on Nigel Paine's session (LSG13)

Big Data.  It's here and it's only going to get bigger.  Some people will doubtless be trying to hide from it, because they are convinced they don't know how to deal with it, and that it should be left to people with Maths and Statistics degrees.  The truth is that you can make a difference with a minimum of knowledge - if you're willing to change your approach.  Some good ideas can be found in the health field (see the Longer Lives website), and in Harvard Business Review.  As L&D professionals, we should strive to bring some of the benefits to organisational learning.

Making use of big data needs some changes in our approach, and one of the key changes is the move towards effective visualisation of data.  Bringing in data from different sources can help to increase the overall validity of your data, and also to view it from different and clearer perspectives.
  One key example of big data in action is Amazon vs the local book store.  Because Amazon can gather so much information passively from your transactions, they can find ways of improving the customer experience.  Here we have a concrete example of Gerd Leonhard's assertion that transactional jobs are being taken over by machines.  What if we could improve our organisational learning in this way?  Using data to start conversations about effectiveness could be used for improving leadership, as it was at Google, simply by making the data available instead of filing it away.  Simply asking the right questions and aligning learning with the business can make a huge improvement.

So how am I planning to use any of this to change things within L&D?  I've recently had a few conversations with colleagues that relate to using our data more creatively.  One of our management programmes could possibly benefit from showing participants trends in the data, in similar fashion to the Google example mentioned in the session.  Another thought I've had relates to stopping face-to-face equality & diversity training before it can even get started in favour of using data creatively to provoke discussion - still working the details but I think I'm on to something here....


See also: Learning & Skills Conference 2013 curated backchannel resources.

Reflections on Harold Jarche's session (LSG13)

Social learning has been an area of real interest for me in the last two years.  I've encountered Harold Jarche's ideas a great deal in that time through his blog and the Social Learning Centre, so it was great to finally see him run a live talk and actually speak to him afterwards.

We normally find that social learning is dismissed as something that is hard to measure and intangible.  Yet increasingly it is the intangibles that make up the real value of our businesses, so let's challenge that assumption, and think about how social learning can fit with organisational goals.  Most of the learning strategies we already use, such as ADDIE and ISD, come from the military, where they also know the value of training people in a social environment - individual members aren't effective unless they are trained to work together, and share their knowledge.

Meanwhile, back in the business, we often find that sharing of knowledge can border on career suicide, because we reward the wrong behaviours.  Whilst this may sound like an unbreakable deadlock, the tide is turning as we move away from standardised work and rely on creativity and innovation.  You can't automate these things, only encourage them through a culture of openness and sharing.  Harold has been a great advocate of these approaches, especially through his 'Seek-Sense-Share' model in the building of online communities, an area that I have been exploring in depth lately.

Some of the problems with organisational learning, and our education system in general, stem from our acceptance of the printed word and the linear thinking that it instils in us.  This tends to reinforce a hierarchical organisation, that we need to combat by encouraging real learning skills within our organisation, such as Personal Knowledge Management.

I'm becoming ever more keen on this approach, although I have encountered some of the problems associated with working across silos, and resistance to different ways of learning.  Seeing Harold's talk has given me some fresh enthusiasm for keeping up the battle!


See also: Learning & Skills Conference 2013 curated backchannel resources.

Backchannel resources from Learning & Skills Group Conference 2013

I've been scouring the Twitter backchannel for interesting resources that were shared before, during and after the Learning & Skills Group Conference, and here is the list that I have after one month:

General reflections and resources

• Blog post and curated tweets from s0ngb1rd
• Blog post from Alistair Cockroft
• Curated images on Pinterest from LearnPatch
• Donald Taylor's Training Ghetto blog post

 

Keynote: Work, learning and living in the future (Gerd Leonhard)

• Conference video on Annotag and YouTube
• My blog post on the session
• Gerd Leonhard's slides, resources and free e-books
• Blog post from Jo Cook
• Curated tweets and video interview from Learn Patch
• Learning Locker link shared by John Curran

 

Track 1

Session 1: Open learning - opportunity or threat? (Steve Wheeler)

• Conference video on Annotag and YouTube
• Blog post and video interview from Learn Patch
• Transformational Learning Model
• How to Change Education

Session 2: The Tin Can API: Connecting the dots with data (Megan Bowe)

• Conference video on Annotag and YouTube

Session 3: Moving to social learning (Harold Jarche)

• Conference video on Annotag and YouTube
• My blog post on the session
• Harold Jarche's Toolbox
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• Jane Bozarth's Social Learning Bookmarks and 'Show Your Work' images
• Curated tweets of Harold Jarche from Learn Patch

Track 2

Session 1: Ensuring true interaction in live online learning (Phil Green)

• My blog post on the session
• Blog post from Jo Cook

Session 2: Using Open Badges for accreditation (Doug Belshaw)

 

*** Still searching ***

Session 3: The learning design challenge (Julie Wedgewood)
 

• Blog post from Jo Cook
• Blog post from Niall Gavin
• Bitstrips mentioned by Matt Brewer

 

Track 3

Session 1: The seven habits of highly aligned L&D teams (Laura Overton)

• Towards Maturity Benchmark Survey
• Towards Maturity article: Aligning Learning to Business

Session 2: Big Data - a guide for those without a love of statistics (Nigel Paine)

• Longer Lives website
• Harvard Business Review - Big Data: Beyond the Hype
• My blog post on the session
• Blog post from Jo Cook
• Video 'Why thinking is the enemy of innovation'
• Video interview from Learn Patch

Session 3: Mobile devices, learning and the mind (Terence Eden)

*** Still searching ***

Track 4

Session 1: Learning resources: how long is long enough? (Stephanie Dedhar)

• Infographics shared by Stephanie Dedhar: Video production strategy; Online video creation; Video marketing statistics

Session 2: Lessons from the virtual playing field (Ben Betts)
 

• Infographic on Games Based Learning

Session 3: The Tin Can API workshop - putting the Experience API to work (Megan Bowe)

*** Still searching ***


Slideshares from Learning Technologies Summer Forum

Stephen Walsh, 'From ADDIE Men to Mad Men'
Charles Gould 'Diary of a Next Generation Learner'