Thinking openly

Image: osmar01, via freeimages.com

It's finally time to sit back and reflect on the Learning & Skills Group Conference, and I can't think of a better place to start than with David Price's keynote session. This session is particularly important for me since I am involved in both workplace learning and the education system, both of which are experiencing a massive change in the face of technology and the accompanying shift in peoples' attitudes and behaviours. David's book ties in well with a growing number of themes that I have been exploring lately.

For the workplace, we are experiencing a shift in the normal hierarchies, with smarter companies realising that learning has to flow up as well as down. Employees simply have to be trusted to think and adapt in a rapidly changing landscape, one where job security and trust are becoming scarce commodities. Even our relentless drive to get everyone a degree cannot guarantee success, as this actually seems to drive the cost of skilled labour down through the Dutch auction effect. The only skills that seem to have real value are those which are self-taught, and the value of knowledge has changed from economic to social.

The six imperatives of social learning:

1. Do it yourself - we can share information amongst ourselves faster than our institutions can
2. Do it now - immediacy
3. Do it with friends - to share and reinforce learning
4. Do it for fun - playfulness can be used to surprising effect
5. Do unto others - generosity
6. Do it for the world to see - high visibility

There's a lot in common here with the theme of personal learning networks, coupled with a growing understanding of how these diffuse interactions can slowly but permanently change society. In the emerging future, education has to move from pedagogy towards heutagogy, with an emphasis on learning how to learn - content may indeed remain king, but it will be created increasingly by the learners themselves.

With a greater sense-making network around them, people feel more able to take on the 'fail fast and iterate' approach of Google. Companies that operate this way have more in common with the 'machine shop' culture, where learning is social and horizontal, and learners are free to roam and combine their ideas with a 'freedom to fail'.

'Thinking that the role of leadership is to act and make short-term decisions misses out on how well fully functioning human networks can deal with most problems without intervention from above. When managers and executives get involved, they often make things worse for those doing the day-to-day work. This is even more pronounced when those doing the work are connected to their peers in social networks and communities of practice that have established and trusted knowledge-sharing practices.'

Harold Jarche, Good leaders connect

So far, so good, so what?

I've been an Online Learning Consultant for just over a year now. It's taken me a while to get here, and I'm the first one to hold the role in my organisation. Come to think of it, I was the first one to hold the previous role (e-Learning Technician) I had before that on my way up from being a generic Administrator. I thought it would be good to stop and reflect, to get my bearings as I start to ask 'What's next?', but first of all perhaps I should ask 'How did I get here anyway?'.

How did I get here? Kind of by accident really, I just happened to be working in the right department where someone needed to master the technical tools to produce software demonstrations, and I showed a flair for it. After a few years of mastering first WebEx recorder, then Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate and Articulate, plus all the different software packages I was demonstrating, and converting briefing presentations to online materials, I finally got offered a development opportunity in doing a Masters degree, and attending the Learning Technologies Conference. Getting back to the world of academia seemed very strange, but after some initial struggles I got the hang of things. Going to the conference was another experience entirely, because here I found the meaning of the elusive 'community of practice'. I've learned the hard way that academic degrees are no sure way to success; you need to create your own identity and find relevant employment.

I've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to do all these things together, allowing me to get the most out of my course. The problem with traditional academic courses is that there's no access to real problems that you need to solve - the course just doesn't have enough doing for you to actually learn anything that will serve you well in the outside world.  Fortunately the part-time course I was taking had enough flexibility to mould around work projects, and I also took to heart the idea of the story-centred curriculum, always seeking ways to push my limits whilst working through the course and make things relevant. The course material became subservient to the narrative of me actually understanding challenges, seeking out alternative approaches, creating solutions and implementing them. Not everything worked so well, but in taking on the challenges I internalised a great deal more than I would have done without context, or without broadening my world-view by by seeking out the feedback of others, particularly through social media.

I've gradually progressed from an under-performing, depressed and frustrated individual to having an irrepressible drive to perform and innovate, and being recognised for having some real leadership qualities. My leadership is not in the traditional management sense, instead it's drawn from personal responsibility for my work, speaking my mind regardless of hierarchy and choosing my own approach. I get a lot more satisfaction from work, and my personal life has improved, with my better self esteem keeping depression in check. My Masters degree is coming near to the end, it's been a long journey with lots of ups and downs, but very worthwhile for getting to grips with the complex, even chaotic, field that we call learning. I still remember speaking to Clive Shepherd at a conference, and saying that I felt I was never sure if I really understood it, or if I was just going mad. Clive simply simply smiled and said 'Welcome to learning.'

So where do I go from here? When asking myself this question, I remembered reading Harold Jarche's blog post 'So you (still) want to be an elearning consultant?' some time ago and revisited this for ideas, along with with the original blog post and article it was based on, for some ideas about where I need to turn my focus. The helpful Venn diagram pretty much sums up my development needs - although I have plenty of cognitive and technology skills, I need to seek out ways of being more directly involved in the business. Most of my remaining frustrations stem from the feeling that most of the important decisions (and assumptions) have been made before I get involved with projects. I'm now actively seeking ways to get more directly involved in new projects from the outset, although I can be limited in choice because I'm already committed - perhaps I'm doing something right then.

Thoughts on hierarchy and learning

How deeply is written language embedded into our social structure, and our patterns of learning? Can we even separate out our dependency on hierarchy from our written language?

Ronfeldt (1996) on the hierarchical organisation:

'As numerous anthropologists have written, with its rise, hierarchy supplants kinship as an organizing principle.'

Ronfeldt notes that the rise of the hierarchical form was dependent on the information technology revolution of formal writing.

McLuhan & McLuhan (1988, Ch.2): 'It is no accident that the Christian church, dedicated to propaganda and propagation, adopted Graeco-Roman phonetic literacy from the earlist days. The impact of alphabetic literacy is strong enough not only to break the tribal bond, but to create individualized consciousness as well. Phonetic literacy - our alphabet - alone has this power.'

Our dependence on writing, regardless of the shift to digital propagation, has shifted our focus for learning to those faculties that writing promotes: analysis, logic, control, sequencing, and others. But as our world shifts beneath us, we are ill-suited to cope with the change if we rely solely upon this medium, and the associated hierarchical way of thinking.

References:

• McLuhan, M. and McLuhan, E. (1988). Laws of Media: The New Science. University of Toronto Press
• Ronfeldt, D. (1996). Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks – A Framework about Societal Evolution. Available at: <http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7967.html> [Accessed September 2012]

How Social Media has changed the way I think & learn (Part 4)

Wikis

My first contact with wikis was, as for many people I suspect, through Wikipedia. As a child I remember browsing through encyclopedias, soaking up information as I was want to do, so here was an interesting concept, in that it was all online, and that you could actually edit it for yourself. Now I remember all the protests at the time, that because anyone could write and edit articles it would all be rubbish and full of inacuracies, but then I guess that depends on who is writing it, and whether you have the good judgement to question what's there anyway. I liked the idea enough that I would occasionally refer to it and make my own mind up, and also started to use it as a kind of news feed through the current events section and the featured articles for something different to read. Later I started putting in small additions and even new sections when I felt moved to do so, and I actually regard it as being highly educational because I am able to engage more powerfully with the material this way.

I read Clive Shepherd's recent blog post where he questions whether a book is method or medium, and I agree that moving books to electronic format is the same method for a different medium, but the wiki does go a step beyond, because it's a uniquely collaborative venture. Instead of regarding knowledge as fixed and exclusively in the hands of 'better people', it is now in our hands. Is that a good thing? Depends on the judgement we use, or don't use! If our judgement is bad, so our wiki will be bad, and the results should alert us to this fact. So if you like what Wikipedia has done, take ownership, and get on board with the discussions if you disagree with something. Because we can all become 'better people' by increasing our knowledge.

Click here for Part 3

How Social Media has changed the way I think & learn (Part 3)

Forums

Last October I started my Masters degree (MEd) with the University of Hull, done entirely online. Seems fitting, especially as the subject was in fact online learning! I thought I knew quite a lot about the subject from producing on-demand software tutorials and briefing modules for examiners, and I was expecting the course to build on that, which it did. What I wasn't prepared for was the ongoing, subtle change in the way that I interacted with the other people on the course.

Because the majority of interaction between me and my fellow students took place through an online forum, the nature of our communication took on a unique property which allowed us to have conversations over time - 'asynchronous' is the proper term. Whilst human beings have been doing this through letters for centuries, having all the messages channelled through a central forum allowed for a strange hybrid form of communication, somewhere between normal written correspondance and a real time conversation. I've often found myself losing my place in a conversation because I'm trying to think of a meaningful, considered response to someone - but by then that 'thread' of the conversation is lost because people have moved on. Not so with a forum.

Communicating in this way has allowed me to get the best of both worlds: interaction with many people, and the chance to consider my responses. No, wait, it's actually more than the sum of its parts, because I get an extra synergy from talking to people this way, and that's the ability to change my attitude. This way I can learn from my mistakes without the usual embarassment that I might feel in a social setting. If anything I've become more willing to dare to express controversial opinions, because the ethos of the medium does seem to encourage experiential learning. No more 'drill and fill' for me thank you very much!

So, in short, I've gone from being a solitary learner to a social one, and because I can take my attitude with me wherever I go, that new behaviour can translate to the face-to-face setting as well.

 

Click here for Part 2          Click here for Part 4

How Social Media has changed the way I think & learn (Part 2)

My last post was about micro-blogging, so now I'll extend that to...

Blogging

Keeping a public blog has been a very positive move for building my self-awareness, and overcoming some of my own limitations in communicating. As an introvert, I normally have an awful lot of deep thoughts running through my head that I'm not able to share coherently with others, especially in crowded social situations. Suddenly I have a tool to put them into print, whilst I'm alone and relaxed, then share them with anyone who cares to listen - and apparently a fair few people have started to listen already. Knowing that I can reach out to people this way gives me a new found sense of confidence in communicating with others. I don't mind saying I've wrestled with depression in the past, I think primarily because of frustrations in this area, and an imposed sense of there being 'something wrong with me' because I didn't fit in with the crowd. Now I've managed to find a place to speak my mind freely in a way I didn't know existed. Because most importantly of all, I've not followed any rules for how my blog should be set up - just some really good advice.

There's also a real professional benefit to blogging. I'm naturally disposed to reflecting on my experiences - good or bad - with a view to continuously improving myself. According to Schön (1983), this is one of the defining characteristics of professional practice. I have been able to enhance and extend this process through completing critical reflection assignments for my Masters course. Keeping a blog to summarise my experiences as I go along has been an essential tool in keeping track of everything I learn, much of which could easily be taken for granted after the event. Further to this I'm also conscious that other people may be reading my blog, and the essay that I draw from it, so I'm motivated to keep it coherent and relevant. So my blog actually becomes a powerful aid to my own learning and long-term memory.

Click here for Part 1          Click here for Part 3

 

References:

• Schön, D. A., 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: how professionals think in action. London: Temple Smith

How Social Media has changed the way I think & learn (part 1)

So, some time ago I had an idea about getting social media used more at my workplace.  It's been on the back-burner for a while to avoid clashing with our busiest period, but that will be drawing to an end soon, and I now have a whole lot more tricks at my disposal thanks to Jane Hart's 30 Ways course. Here's a hint folks: she's running this course again - for free - starting on 29 August. Be there and remember sharing is learning!

Before I get started on my initiatives at work, it's worth taking a look at how my attitudes have changed over the last few months. The chief instigator would have to be Jane Bozarth, after I saw her talk at the Learning Technologies conference in January. Or perhaps I should blame Donald Taylor for organising that conference? I digress...  Here's the first of what will probably be a fair few posts about social media and learning.

Twitter

This was a strange step for me at first. As someone who usually likes to reflect at length ('No, really?' you ask) the idea of getting anything worthwhile out of 140 character posts sounded like anathema to me. But the idea got lodged into my head - proving also that lectures still have some use - and I signed up for my account. Initially I followed the speakers from the conference, occasionally looked at my feed, but didn't do very much. Eventually I decided that you can only really learn by doing, dared a few tweets, and actually got some reactions. I started looking for more people to follow, realised some actually follow you back, read the articles they tweeted about, and suddenly it was like I had my own personal newspaper on learning. Oh wait, I do have one <http://tweetedtimes.com/#!/jimmy_hob>

But what really kicked it up a notch was deciding to get involved in the backchannel at the Learning and Skills Group conference in June. At the last conference, I was utterly bewildered by the flood of tweets showing up on the screens. As I started to get into the swing of using Twitter more, I noticed people using hashtags to talk about conferences, particularly David Kelly's move of sharing what he had picked up from the backchannel. So along I went with a clear goal of getting engaged with the backchannel and picking up on ideas from the talks I couldn't attend. I found myself more engaged with the talks than ever before, frantically scibbling notes as usual, whilst thinking of short, succinct points to share on the backchannel. Plus I noticed how people were using the backchannel to raise digital eyebrows at contentious ideas, without disrupting the flow. Afterwards I collated all the resources I could find and put them on my blog, to share with the world through all the channels I could find. I went from 30 hits to over 300 in practically no time at all, and I started to see blogging in a whole new light - but that's for another post!

In short, Twitter has become a great extension of my thinking and learning, in a way that I can share with others, and be recognised for it.

Click here for Part 2

Reflections on LSG11 - Chris Bones' keynote speech

Long overdue I know, but here it is...

Chris Bones has no small task ahead of him with the Learning & Development Research Project.  He has stated in no uncertain terms that the answer lies with people, and getting them engaged with process from the outset. Concentrating on social interaction and problem solving skills will get us half way there straightaway.  The rest lies in thoughtful implementation and the winning of hearts and minds.  This is something I agree wholeheartedly with.  Too often people are expected to follow the example of leaders without question, but as we move into an era where the case study has become irrelevant, the power of crowdsourcing is about to come to the fore - if only we dare to let it!

One point of contention I had was with his perception that online learning is only useful for updating information, and I noticed that a few eyebrows were raised on Twitter at this comment. Some perceptions need to be changed here...

Reflections on LSG11 - Andy Tedd's session

Andy Tedd's session was of particular interest to me, since I started this blog to help me track what I've been learning from social media over the last couple of months...

We all know how to use social media, don't we?

DON'T WE?!

Apparently not, as many campanies are getting far too friendly with the #FAIL hashtag on Twitter.  So what is stopping us from putting these tools to best use? Usually it seems to be coming down to an unsupportive environment for communications - we're worried that we might look foolish, and sometimes we are right in this because there are consequences for getting it wrong, but too much fear will cripple us.  Companies can be criticised on social networking sites for getting things wrong, even they don't have a real presence there, so what's the difference?  And how can we break the cycle?

For a start, we have to leave behind our expectation that all corporate information should appear in a polished, professional format.  It turns out that the less complete the information seems, the more people feel invited to comment and leave their mark, and that should start getting them engaged with the process instead of being passive consumers of information.  The next step is for people in positions of influence to let the debate run freely, as they can often inadvertently stifle the conversation.  If this is happening too much, then it's a sign that your culture has to change.

Oh, and one very important point that has just been brought home via @JaneBozarth on Twitter, Social Media is not the same as Social Learning!  Social learning is not something that has been 'discovered', nor is it something to be 'implemented', and anyone who thinks that way will only succeed in throttling motivation (thanks @hjarche for inspiration too!)

Reflections on LSG11 - Cathy Moore's session

The second session I'm looking back on is Cathy Moore's session on scenarios.  What have I learned?  Two equations:

'Let's add a scenario to make it more engaging' = FAIL!

'Let's base it on a scenario to make it more effective' = GETS IT!

Designing a learning experience that has the potential to change attitudes doesn't have to be hard, which Cathy has been tirelessly working to get into the heads of anybody with the wisdom to listen. For too long the field of e-learning has been dominated by foolish attempts to make a 'death by PowerPoint' course seem a little more palatable, not to mention unavoidable with the advent of 'smart' LMSs that can make sure we've looked at every single slide.  Because that proves people have learned, right?

No more!

Powerful scenarios don't have to be expensive or difficult to produce, just get your hands on the tools and dare to experiment.  Ever since I attended Cathy's session at LT11, I've been looking for an opportunity to put this into practice, and I've now got the freedom to explore this in my latest project.  Using the Action Mapping approach with SMEs meant that relevant scenarios came to light naturally, and I was able to work them up into a prototype that I'm currently developing into a finished learning intervention.  My only niggle is I may have to wait a while to put it into practice - can anyone offer me a course in patience please?!

Reflections on LSG11 - Clive Shepherd's session

It's been a while since the Learning & Skills Group Conference, but it's never too late to reflect. The first session I'm going to look back at is Clive Shepherd's 'The Learning Professional'.

Clive has taken a bold step in drawing us closer to a practical model for how learning really works. Breaking down the range of learning interventions into different perspectives and contexts helps us to stop and question our pre-conceptions of what constitutes good learning, since our own experiences will doubtless have pre-disposed us to favour those which we have been exposed to in the past. And those experiences that we thought of as learning have almost invariably been labelled as courses.

We do so love to package everything up as courses, don't we? But does it always have to be that way? And is something you can't describe as a course, any less important for learning because of that deficiency in name? New developments in technology are catalysing changes in the way we communicate and work. As the pace of change begins to quicken, courses will quickly become obsolete if they don't focus on teaching people processes, and leave the information to one side. But that doesn't mean the information isn't important, we just have to change our approach to updating ourselves. If we can find the courage to break away from the familiar and try something new, we can devise new and more effective learning strategies.

Getting smarter with social media

It's my sixth day on the Centre for Learning Performance Technologies course, and I've been adding a host of tools to my kit for keeping up to date with the world.  All my bookmarks in one place?  Check!  All my favourite blogs on one reading list?  Check!  Not to mention a whole set of ways for finding information and 'how-to' guides.  More power to search for information and connect with people has to be good.

Next week is the Learning & Skills Group Conference.  I'm looking forward to all the talks, and venturing into the Twitter back channel too, should hopefully bring a new level of engagement with the talks.

Finally some progress!

I'm getting the first real signs of department wide paricipation for my forum as we move on to discussing a topic that lends itself easily to collaboration, since the two halves of the department have a shared interest in its success.  Previously it's taken some colleagues a while to get into the spirit of things, but now one of the people directly involved in the project has taken the initiative in calling for ideas.

We've also had some staff update sessions and I took the opportunity to work social media into the mix.  Our company has been getting into using social media more of late, and I'm amongst a small group of people who are keen to see it used more.  I saw some doubts initially because colleagues are rightly worried about the potential embarassments that could come with it, but then I pointed out that we've taken flak on social networking sites anyway, so what's the difference?  I was pleased to see that people were agreeing, and I've hopefully got some genuine attention.

This week has also been interesting for me because I found myself credited for a comment I put on Twitter - somebody had spotted a tweet that I made and put the article onto their website, with my tag next to it.  Shows that people are listening...

Forum is on the move

I've finally got just about everyone on board for my cross-department forum.  We've already got some people sharing photographs and chatting on the forum, so it should help the team to overcome some of the boundaries between the two departments we're merging.

For the next couple of weeks I'll be getting the socialisation aspect moving properly, using a creative story activity (Bennett, Marsh & Killen, 2007) to let people use their imaginations, explore spontaneity in their postings, and learn to accept a few errors as part of the process.  I'm hoping that this will build people's confidence in preparation for a constructive exchange of ideas in the next phase.  Establishing a successful process and matching the activities to the staff involved will help to ensure that future initiatives involving social media run more smoothly, regardless of the platform that is to be used.

References:
Bennett, S., Marsh, D. and Killen, C., 2007.  Handbook of Online Education.  London: Continuum.

Learner-learner interaction

I'm starting this blog with the aim of building up ideas for best practice of using social media more in the workplace.  Forming my ideas by using a form of social media seems particularly appropriate, since I want to foster a spirit of open communication and feedback - potentially from anywhere!  My starting point for using social media more will be using the forum at work, with the goal of making it break (i.e. become unmanageable) under the sheer volume of posts, using my undestanding of Salmon's (2003) five stage model of scaffolding interactions among learners.

While I doubt that I'll get people to to the illustrious stage five (development) any time soon, I think that significant strides in interaction could be made by simply engaging people enough to motivate them to actually access the forum and post on it (which most don't as of yet), and building them up to the stage of exchanging ideas and information with each other.  Asynchronous learner-learner interaction was found to be the single most important interaction for online learning (Soo & Bonk, 1998), so I think this is a logical first step in promoting social learning in my organisation.

References:

Salmon, G., 2003.  E-Moderating: the key to teaching and learning online.  2nd ed. London: Routledge-Falmer.

Soo, K-s; Bonk, C., 1998.  Interaction: What does it mean in online distance education?  In Conference proceedings Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia & World Conference on Educational Telecommunications. Frieburg Germany.  Available at: <http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED428724.pdf> [Accessed 01 May 2011]