Month: June 2010

Trends

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Here’s an infographic from Ross Dawson on Trend Blends to watch as we consider our common futures:

I’ve noticed these trends pop up in my readings and observations, for example:

Power Shifts Eastward: Clay Burell’s advice for teachers scorned:

Teachers have “asked what they can do for their country,” and they do it. Daily. But they should have the good sense to also ask what their country is doing for them, patriotic martyrdom propaganda aside. If their country has reached a “tottering, chaotic” point at which it “loathes” them, then teachers do have choices.

One of those choices is Asia. America used to be a magnet for other countries’ brain-drain. Asia seems the better magnet now.

It is for me, anyhow.  I’m thankful that I teach in Asia — because Asia is thankful for it, too.

Localism: Seeking Farmland is four people cycling across the land and connecting with local farmers. “We are two couples in our mid- to late twenties who, each having spent two to four years apprenticing on and managing various organic farms, are now seeking a long-term farming opportunity together.”
3 for the road

Volatility: A black eye for democracy, by Steve Paiken:

In Toronto the Good, we saw a law passed and enforced that was more anti-democratic than the War Measures Act. And we saw twice as many people arrested over a single 24-hour period in Toronto — more than 900 at last count — than what took place during the October Crisis in Quebec 40 years ago. And that event is in our history books as the most notorious abuse of civil rights in modern Canadian history.

Digitalisation: Goodbye to the office by Seth Godin:
  1. If you have a laptop, you probably have the machine already, in your house.
  2. If you do work with a keyboard and a mouse, the items you need to work on are on your laptop, not in the office.
  3. The boss can easily keep tabs on productivity digitally.
  4. How many meetings are important? If you didn’t go, what would happen?
  5. You can get energy from people other than those in the same company.
  6. Of the 100 people in your office, how many do you collaborate with daily?
  7. So go someplace. But it doesn’t have to be to your office.
Globalisation: The World is Watching – the World Cup online, from any device, anywhere. Or, as @umairh writes, “when Chinese wages rise, kiss your made-in-china lifestyle goodbye. time for betterness.”

Urbanisation: Urban Revival by Richard Florida, “Long-established trends in the growth and decline of  America’s cities appear to be shifting …” – Cities

Anxiety: We need to learn more about healthy workplaces:
What’s the future? A recent Canadian study showed that depression and anxiety affect up to 15% of pre-schoolers. Mental health is an important issue that will not go away and informed discussions are necessary at all levels. I’m glad I learned about this over the Summer.

Environmental Change: Climate change and environmental degradation should be obvious to all but many are still flogging the scientists.

DIY is here

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Over three years ago I wrote that the future of learning is DIY:

With Google you can find most information that you need. YouTube is a quick and easy way to get “learning objects” to the world. Apple gives the essential tools for knowledge workers, and in a nice package. Wikipedia has shown that the wisdom of crowds is just as good as the wisdom of elites. Starbucks gives free-agents and road warriors a place to meet and work. These top brands provide the equivalent of the interstate highway system for the creative age.

Enabling DIY (do-it-yourself) on the Web appears to be a good business model. Even on the fringes, such as wi-fi from a café. This is the power of informal learning, if organisations decide to enable it. It has to be DIY, user-driven and uncontrolled. People will figure out what’s best for them, as they have for millennia.

Has anything changed?

There seem to be more DIY platforms today and they are being used, though the business models are not yet clear. Facebook has enabled DIY ridiculously easy group forming, but it comes with a price on privacy. Ning was wildly popular as a DIY online community builder, but that business model did not seem to work. Open source Elgg may replace Ning with a non locked-in platform, but its success remains to be seen.

For mass DIY, ease of use is the trump card. Just look at Google Docs, the best and easiest DIY online collaboration suite, in my opinion. I remember using Writely (sold to create Google Docs) and it had a better user interface in my opinion, but was only used by digital savvy folks. Google dumbed-down the interface and functions and that ease of use, plus growing demand, made Google Docs a market leader. Timing is everything.

Now that many people have used DIY tools for their online work and play, I can’t see the trend being reversed any time soon. Enabling DIY should be a prime directive in the development of technologies for collaborative work and networked learning as well. Please pass this on to those folks in e-learning ;)

Instruments of Restraint

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Almost any technology can be a learning technology, I wrote a while back. It’s how it’s used, not what is used.

  1. What’s the difference between a conference room and a classroom?
  2. What is the difference between a CMS and an LCMS?

A learning technology is mostly about branding  and I’m more interested in non-educational tools (social networking, wikis, blogs, social bookmarks) in that they are not limited by some pre-conceived notions about learning or a constrained pedagogical framework. I can use general tools for instruction, guided study or discovery learning; just as the same physical classroom can be alternately an exciting learning environment or a temporary prison cell.

I believe that special *learning technologies* actually restrain us.

Restraint may be defined as:

1. The act of restraining or the condition of being restrained.
2. Loss or abridgment of freedom.
3. An influence that inhibits or restrains; a limitation.
4. An instrument or a means of restraining.
5. Control or repression of feelings; constraint.

First, the notion of learning technologies as separate from working technologies continues to keep learning separate from work. This makes little sense in a networked workplace. Second, learning technologies become a special class of tools that only learning experts understand or care to learn about. Third, they create a class of vendors focused on the training & development department and not the overall organization. My experience is that the only organizations that benefit from learning technologies are those whose core business is learning with a focus on formal, structured delivery – schools.

Learning technologies, by their limiting nature, are instruments of restraint for the networked organization.

Institutions and vendors

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Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

You can’t measure discovery learning with an LMS but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant; by @jaycross

I fear the training community is on the wrong side of these questions. The world is open-ended; it’s not assembled from black and white answers. Real life is painted in shades of gray.

You can’t measure discovery learning with an LMS but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. This does it mean you shouldn’t use an LMS to monitor compliance and formal learning either. In a healthy learning ecosystem, “Pull learning” and “Push learning” are symbiotic; you need a bit of both.

Clay Shirky: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution” via @jayrosen_nyu

@gminks “What I learned this week at the #e2conf in Boston”

No matter what anyone tells you, no one really has a clue how to “do” social in the enterprise.

Here’s why I say that:
There is way too much posturing and selling from vendors

There seem to be two vendor camps (which are pretty traditional tech camps I think):

1. Buy one application to rule them all. Let it sit on top on top of all your current business apps, and create social using this one application.
2. Pay a consultant to create apps for a custom social layer between social apps and business apps
My take-away is that there seems to be a gold rush going between vendors and consultancy firms to gain mind share about the best way to create and manage this social layer.

@c4lpt “A MUST-READ blog post from Charles Jennings “Real learning let’s not confuse it with completing templated exercises”

Most of us have been persuaded that the majority of real learning occurs in the workplace through experience and practice and over the water cooler through conversations and reflection. It may be an interesting intellectual pursuit to argue whether the % of learning that occurs outside classrooms and other formal module, course, programme, curriculum structures is 70%, 80%, 90% or some other figure and whether the evidence supports one assumption over another, but arguments like that add little value to the fact that there is an increasing body of empirical evidence that says we learn as we work.

Social Media and Learning: Implications

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I’m continuing on my theme of capturing what we learned during our Work Literacy online workshop in 2008, before Ning pulls the plug on us. Previous posts have discussed several aspects of what we learned and I’d like to review some of the summative commentary.

What questions still linger? Jason Willensky – “Will we be forced to chase hot tools and social platforms to stay competitive… is this an ever-expanding universe of tech goodies? How can these tools help quiet participants be more interactive during a training class?”

Thinking about learning. Catherine Lombardozzi – “One of my favorite quotes is from Kent Seibert: ‘Reject the myth that we learn from experience and accept the reality that we learn by reflecting on experience.’ My experiences in this experiment underscored for me how important it is to reflect “out loud” – if not by engaging online, by taking some of what you’re thinking about and talking about it with others. These kinds of tools make it possible to compose and share your thoughts on what you are learning, to ask questions, to get feedback from others (many of whom you have never met). Tools also make it possible to learn from others… following their bookmarks, for example, or using the tools to make contacts, simplify your own research, and more. They expand our learning support system is fabulous ways.”

Workshop Design:

Virginia Yonkers – “The design of the course itself and even the question of how to measure the learning has posed a number of questions that I did not have coming in to the course (questions are good).

Specifically, what are some design options for courses that might be “open ended” that the social networking tools allow? How should we be reconfiguring course designs to support student learning, learning assessment, student support needs in their learning, and administrative planning requirements? How can we make learning both flexible, yet in line with administrator’s (organizations, schools, universities, etc…) goals and needs for accountability?”

Jeff Cobb – “I think one question a “course” like this raises is “Does it end?” It may taper off, but it seems to me the seeds are here for a continuing discussion, ongoing contribution of case studies, exploration of tools not examined here, etc. That kind of thing can, of course, simply continue out in the blogosphere, but it is helpful to have a more focused community.”

—

Immediately after the workshop, I wrote, So what did I learn or what was reinforced?

  • A loose-knit online learning community can scale to many participants and remain effective.
  • Only a small percentage ~10% of members will be active.
  • Wikis need to be extremely focused on real tasks/projects in order to be adopted.
  • If facilitators can seed good questions and provide feedback, then conversations can flourish.
  • Use a very gentle hand in controlling the learners and some will become highly participative.
  • Design for after the course, using tools like social bookmarks, so that artifacts can be used for reference or performance support.
  • Create the role of “synthesizer”. I found it quite helpful when Tony and Michele summarized the previous week’s activities.
  • Keep the structure loose enough so that it can grow or change according to the needs of the community.

Having worked with many other online communities in the past two years, I would say that the role of “synthesizer” remains important, and it is a critical part of being a good online community manager.

Seeing motivation with new eyes

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Several years ago, I wrote in Training: A solution looking for a problem, that some barriers to performance which are often overlooked when prescribing training, include:

  1. Unclear expectations (such as policies & guidelines);
  2. Inadequate resources;
  3. Unclear performance measures;
  4. Rewards and consequences not directly linked to the desired performance.

In some cases, these barriers could be addressed and there would be no further requirement for training. Where there is a genuine lack of skills and knowledge, training may be required, but it should only be in cases where the other barriers to performance have been addressed. A trained worker, without the right resources and with unclear expectations, will still not perform up to the desired standard.

I’d like to revisit point #4, Rewards & Consequences, because it is often overlooked by Human Performance Technology (HPT) practitioners and is usually passed over to those folks in Human Resources who handle pay & benefits. There’s a compensation “system” and we’ve just accepted it for many decades. We should have paid more attention to the data.

Recently, Dan Pink has looked at the area of rewards, consequences and motivation at work and has shown that much of what we have taken for granted is just not supported by the research. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, as shown in this video.

In my career, I have drifted away from instructional design methods like ADDIE because they only address the How and not the Why of work performance. I became deeply involved in HPT for several years because it provided good tools for work analysis, but then found that HPT did not help in understanding the social side of work and learning. I have since looked at the Organizational Development and Knowledge Management fields for different perspectives. Once again, I see that most of us in these various disciplines are nothing more than blind monks trying to understand an elephant. We have to look outside our cloistered fields in order to see with new eyes.

Introduction to Social Networking

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Looking for deeper insight on social networks as they relate to work and learning? Here are four guidebooks for the network era: the perpetual beta series – social networking and much more!

Introduction to Social Networking

This was originally posted in 2008, after Michele Martin and I ran what today would be called a MOOC (massively open online course) with over 700 participants. It was called Work Literacy and was hosted on the Ning software platform. As the platform changed its fee structure, I exported a number of the pages and resources to my blog. What follows below the image, is what we suggested in 2008 [updated October 2016].

network-learning-model

Online social networks facilitate connections between people based on shared interests, values, membership in particular groups (i.e., friends, professional colleagues), etc. They make it easier for people to find and communicate with individuals who are in their networks using the Web as the interface.

By some definitions, just about all Web 2.0 tools are a form of social networking, but each platform highlights certain aspects. Ian McCarthy’s honeycomb model is one way to see the differences between consumer social media platforms, as it highlights 7 functions with 7 implications. For example LinkedIn is strong in Identity and also supports Relationships and Reputation. On the other hand, Facebook is strong in Relationships, and also supports Presence, Identity, Conversations, and Reputation. Ning is strong in Groups, and also supports Sharing and Conversations.

honeycomb-social-media

 

There are several different online social networks, but for our purposes, we focused on the three that tend to be used the most by learning professionals in 2008 – Facebook, LinkedIn and Ning. Each of these networks has its own unique style, functionality and patterns of usage. You will also find that different people are active in these different networks.

LinkedIn is primarily a professional network, designed to facilitate linkages between people who are wanting to connect for work-related purposes. It is more “buttoned-down” than Facebook with a more formal culture of relationships and connections. It is also the network of choice for most professionals.

Because LinkedIn is designed for professional networking, there’s a greater emphasis on building a reputation and connecting to employment and business opportunities. LinkedIn Questions and Answers is a way for people to ask questions and receive expert advice. Answers can be rated and people who do this well can improve their LinkedIn reputation. There are also employment listings and an ability to receive recommendations from your connections that then become part of your profile. You can also create and join groups.

Facebook was originally developed for college students to connect, so it has a more informal, social air than you find on LinkedIn. Now open to anyone, you will still find that Facebook is the preferred network for Millennials (2008) who see the encroachment of Boomers and, to a lesser extent, Gen X into the network as cause for some alarm.

Facebook combines the personal and the professional. Members can play games, join groups, share photos, and send each other virtual “gifts.” This is the network where you’re most likely to see both pictures of someone’s weekend activities, as well as a link to their online portfolio or professional website. Many companies are using Facebook as a recruitment tool for Gen Y, while college and university professors are exploring it’s use for their classes.

Ning is what’s referred to as a ‘white label’ network–anyone can use the Ning platform to create their own social network related to a particular topic or area of interest. We operated the MOOC on the Ning platform.

As a learning professional, you can think of Ning in two ways. First, there are a number of Ning networks related to various topics of interest to learning professionals that you could join. In addition, because Ning allows you to create your own network from scratch, you can also use it to facilitate learning events or activities. Therefore Ning offers opportunities for you to be both a joiner/collector and a creator.

One great advantage of Ning for learning is that it allows you set up your own private space that can only be accessed by members. It also offers great functionality, including allowing members to write blogs and engage in forum discussions.

A short note on owning your data

Open source gives you something extra though, and that is the ability to take the whole application, source code and all, and move it or even modify it. For instance, this website is on WordPress, an open source blogging platform. If I am not satisfied with my host, I can take the whole application and set it up somewhere else. I cannot do that with Gmail or Skype or Ning. Therefore, I own my data and the application that makes my data available to my readers. With almost 2,850 posts on this blog, these data are becoming quite important to me as my knowledge base. The decision to use an open source system as well as an OS database gives me a certain amount of flexibility, evidenced by my switch from Drupal to WordPress in 2006. My only costs were labour. I could not have taken my data out of a proprietary system (like Ning) as easily.

More information on owning your data.

Common Features of Social Networks

The ability to create a Profile page–this is your main “home” on the network. Different networks offer varying abilities to personalize your page in terms of look and feel. They may also differ in terms of the types of information you would include, such as name, location, education, etc. Facebook, for example, asks for your relationship status (because it’s more “social”), while on LinkedIn, which is primarily for professional use, does not.

A way to find and link to “friends” or connections–The purpose of a network is connections, so facilitating a members’ ability to find and connect to other people is important. Each network offers different types of search capabilities and once you’ve located a potential friend, you must send an “invitation” to invite them into your personal network.

Privacy Controls–In most networks, your ability to access more detailed information about a person is based on their status as one of your connections; “friends” can see much more information than those who are not your “friends.” You can control who is actually in your personal network by effectively managing who you invite into your network and whose invitations you accept.

The ability to send public and private messages–In Ning and Facebook, you can communicate with your connections either by sending a private message or “writing on their wall.” On LinkedIn, you communicate via person-to-person messages. Ning also provides Forums where members can interact with one another on specific topics (you’re reading this in one of the Ning forums).

Ability to share various digital objects and information–Both Ning and Facebook allow members to share various online items, including photos, videos and RSS feeds. LinkedIn offers some ability to share links, although it’s multimedia capacities are nothing like what you find on Facebook or Ning.

As in real life, the value of an online social network lies in the people. While you can have some fun playing around with some of a network’s online functionality, if you don’t have the right people in your network, it will be a waste. Here are some good resources on building a social network:

To learn more about the basics of social networking, check out Common Craft explanatory videos. You may also want to read this article (2008) on myths and risks.

Further Reading

PKM: social media for professional development

Blogs: Social Media’s Home Base

Social Media for Senior Managers

Social Business & Democracy

Social Networks Require Ownership

Social Media for Onboarding

Tweets from Twits

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Some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week:

@snowded – Good, Bad & Ugly on the Wikipedia

Despite the frustrations, experience tells me that in general right wins out in Wikipedia but there are times when it gets downright frustrating. Right finally won out, at least for the moment on British issues when two disruptive editors were proved sock puppets but it took a year! That’s the Good of the title. In comparison two currently unresolved issues show the dangers that are inherent in a system where some editors are better at playing the game that others.

via @KoreenOlbrish Your company culture is a meaningless platitude

The great corporate cultures are a simple mix: a few polarizing decisions or excesses, with a handful of quirks mixed in. Preferably quirks that reinforce the rest of the culture.

Are you illiterate if you don’t know how to program?

In November 2009, nine researchers from MIT’s prestigious Media Lab were among the eleven authors of a paper that espoused the value of programming as an essential skill for all. For those who cannot program in the 21st century, they declared solemnly, “It’s as if they can ‘read’ but not ‘write.’” Is it true: will we be lost without the ability to create code?

via @smitty1966 Roger Ebert’s take on Twitter: should be Twitter’s manifesto for new users.

I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct.

QUOTES

via @minutrition RT @umairh: in the age of strategy, what counted was knowing the terrain. in the age of wisdom, what counts is knowing the soil.

@VMaryAbraham “These guys are some of the smartest in the microsharing room, but I haven’t yet heard the 140-nugget that makes the case.”

@charlesjennings “ROI on social learning? ‘social networks are necessarily loose-edged and impossible to make fully explicit’ (David Weinberger)”

IP Workshop

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I attended an intellectual property workshop in Moncton today. It was at the  DDx Health Strategies boardroom, a good location with lots of LAN ports and wi-fi. Of course, I hadn’t brought any devices as I assumed that the place would be locked-down. Lesson for next time.

The presentation was good, by a lawyer from Miller Thomson. I noted, “good presenter, but too much use of bullets on slides, should buy copy of Presentation Zen“.  A common criticism of many presenters, I’m finding, today (should follow TED Talks examples).

Highlights on IP, Patents and Trademarks:

1st Question to ask yourself: “What would a competitor need to use to compete effectively?”

IP = results of innovation that have market results.

Conversion to IP: Informal Knowledge => Formal Knowledge (codified assets) => Protected Assets (patents, trademarks, copyright)

Note: Several examples showed how patents stifle innovation, especially in software development.

Advice to Market Entrants: Attack incumbent patents early and confirm their validity.

Patents: Cover new technology but not business methods. Make sure you have clarified and know the difference. All applications should include “use cases” and make sure you have checked your industry for “patent trolls”.

An interesting aside: It seems that China is embracing patents because soon it will become a net exporter of technology, so it needs to protect its investment. At the same time, trademarks are not afforded the same protection and will continue to be appropriated.

Bottom Line: If you are developing intellectual property, get legal advice from a firm that understands this stuff.

Where organizational support needs to go

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Patti Anklam is blogging the E2 Conference and discusses how Tony Byrne distinguishes between Networking and Collaboration with this diagram:

Networking could also be called cooperation, as Stephen Downes helped me define it:

collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in market economies. markets are based on quantity and mass.

cooperation means ’sharing’. That’s why you see it in networks. In networks, the nature of the connection is important; it is not simply about quantity and mass …

You and I are in a network – but we do not collaborate (we do not align ourselves to the same goal, subscribe to the same vision statement, etc), we *cooperate*

In the above matrix, I’ve shown how different levels of complexity call for different levels of work practice and group work. This is a key problem with our current systems of human resources (HR) and training systems. The majority of the effort goes into developing individual skills. From recruiting for skills, knowledge and attitude to individual assessments and salary scales, we pay little attention to how groups and organizations work and especially to the greater community from which we all draw support, information and knowledge. Adding “must be a team player” to a job description doesn’t cut it any more.

As our interconnectedness increases in the digital surround, it’s becoming obvious that we are not individuals doing our own thing, who from time-to-time have to deal with others. We are becoming our networks, but most organizational support functions do not  understand networked work and learning. They don’t even speak the language. HR, OD, L&D and training need to develop new literacies to discuss and account for those spheres that are outside the individual, yet are becoming such an important part of each of us.

Those large grey spheres are areas of significant importance and opportunity for the next generation of organizational support. They are also the fields of play for every snake-oil salesman around.