Harold Jarche

Open source: The sensible learning platform

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In my mind there is little doubt that open source software really makes the most sense for learning. Learning is messy and one size does not fit everyone. Whether you approach it from a socio-constructivist perspective, as a behaviourist or only focus on the anticipated return on investment, there is no one correct way to support learning.

This means that whatever path you take, it will not be the best for everyone at all times. I suggest that you hedge your bets and invest in people instead of technology. Open source software lets you do this. Whether the case be for training or education, your major investment should NOT be in your technology. You would be better served if you cobbled together some free, open source learning applications and then invested in people to deal with the core performance issues. This "how to" support would be worth more than any fancy graphical user interface within a corporate learning portal.

For instance, I recently came across some figures for the cost of portals. Costs for proprietary systems ranged from $10,000 per processor to $125,000 per server. Using free, open source software, you could easily hire two full-time workers people for the cost of the more expensive system. Perhaps one person to handle the technical issues and the other to focus on the learning processes. In this way you would have money to spare as well as a more flexible operating model. There may be cases where you will need to purchase software but this only should be in order to meet a particular requirement that is critical for your organisation. It could be a specific online conferencing utility or perhaps a scheduling system suited to your industry. Just remember to check out the open source options first.

In the learning business, if an application meets 80% of your "wish list" requirements, then it will probably do the job in the long run. In most cases there is a suitable open source application that can address your needs. Therefore, don’t waste the bulk of your budget on your technology platform but invest it in good tools, instructors, processes, peer support groups or anything else that will benefit the learners every day. There is too much shelfware [applications that sit on the shelf and gather dust] out there to really believe that any technology will address all of your learning needs. It’s about the people …

The Cluetrain Translation Engine

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From the Cluetrain Manifesto, we had thesis #3 stating that “Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.” So what do we get from the recent Adobe/Macromedia merger?

“Adobe’s mission remains the same “to help people and businesses communicate better. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe strengthens its mission through the combination of leading-edge development, authoring and collaboration tools ?” and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash.”

Since this doesn’t really make any sense, Daring Fireball puts a human translation of the press release on the web:

Where by “complementary” we mean “the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.” Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ – in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.

Which brings us to Cluetrain thesis #20, “Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.”

Blogging for dollars

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Joe Dysart has written an article for Sales Promotion Magazine on blogging for the average business. He interviewed me a while back and has compiled an easy-to-read, non-technical overview of blogging for business. An example:

So how do you get a blog up and running? For starters, you may want to check out Blogger.com, a free hosting site where you can set up a pilot blog for your organization in a matter of minutes. The primary advantage of using a system like this is that all the technical details are handled by the site – although you’ll need to put up with Blogger.com’s self-promotional ads if you want the service for free.

After piloting a blog, and if you’ve gotten positive feedback from your experimental site, you may want to buy your own blog publishing software, and bring your blog in-house. Moveable Type is cited by many in-house bloggers as their package of choice, but there are others available on the market. Before you buy, you’ll probably want to check out Blog Software Breakdown, which offers an exhaustive feature-by-feature review of virtually every major blog publishing software package currently on the market.

Even after you think you’ve worked the kinks out of your pilot blog, experienced bloggers advise you to open your doors to the world-at-large without a lot of fanfare. Better to make your mistakes before a few helpfully sympathetic friends, say experts, than fall on your face before the cruel, cruel world.

Three blogs are covered in the article – mine, a real estate blog and one for an executive coach. This is a good reference piece for the uninitiated, and there are lots of those, in spite of Technorati’s tracking of +8 million blogs.

Change comes slowly

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Yesterday we finished a strategic planning exercise at Mancomm and we had to decide what to do next. As the only New Brunswicker with this Montreal-based company, I’m usually far from the head office. I mentioned that we should put the strategic plan on our intranet as a wiki, so that we could continue to refine it. This seemed very natural to our group and the consensus was to publish the plan as a wiki..

On the other hand, I’m involved in a number of other initiatives where I receive dozens of emails per day, most of them prefaced by "Re:Fwd:Re:Fwd" etc. We all complain about email overload, but most of us still revert to the old patterns of ten years ago – just send an email.

I know that we don’t like to change and that many of us like our familiar patterns, but with technology changing like crazy we should all be trying at least one new business productivity technology every year. If not, we’ll look like those dinosaurs in the MS commercials that are popping up all over the place. So if you haven’t tried blogs, wikis, feedreaders, iPods, or whatever else, then get off your comfortable bottoms and try something new. You have nothing to lose but your antediluvian chains.

Open Source Content in Health

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Last week I was discussing the challenges of using open source methods for the development of courses at the community college level. Here is an example of open content made available through Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

A Wealth of Knowledge Free to the World: JHSPH OpenCourseWare
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) project, provides access to the School’s most popular courses.
The Bloomberg School’s OCW:

  • does not require that participants register;
  • does not grant degrees or certificates;
  • does not provide access to JHSPH faculty

This can be the end result of open source content, but I’m still wondering if anyone out there has used open source development methods inside an organisation?

Bloglines Problems

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Bloglines has deleted my account, including my public access view. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Update: at 13:15 local time, Bloglines is up and running. This has me thinking that I should get a desktop feed reader – just in case. As with my website, it’s probably best if I own my data. From Bloglines:

This morning, one of our user databases suffered a failure that wasn’t detected by our monitoring systems. This resulted in the inability of people to log into their Bloglines accounts. The database has been reset and no data was lost. We apologize for the issue and we’re looking at ways to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Virtual Work

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Over lunch today, we discussed the trials and tribulations of work and the different challenges faced by salaried employees and independent virtual workers. Being a virtual worker or virtual student can be quite lonely whereas the opposite may be true as a face-to-face, salaried worker. The latter has no choice in who he or she may have to face with day-to-day regularity. Good bosses are wonderful, but their opposite can lead you down a slow path to depression.

All of this talk reminded me of the joys of working for yourself, much of which is as part of a virtual team. I had recently come across these rules for virtual web design work from The Useful Arts which I’ve summarized:

Stick to small groups, and
if you’re the leader, give up control, because
there is no leader, so
have complete trust, and
allow for total transparency, but
provide clear & achievable goals, while also having
an open ended final goal.

These are good rules, because virtual work requires a lot of trust, intuition and initiative. I disagree with the last part, because I think that there should be a final goal, so that at some point the project can be considered over and everyone can get paid. This way, everyone will want to work together again.

Putting your body and soul into your work

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Here’s a slightly changed excerpt from a book that I think many working folks could relate to:

Of course, everyone spoke ill of his profession, but, basically, it was all a question of selling his time, like everyone else. Doing things he didn’t want to do, like everyone else. Putting up with horrible people, like everyone else. Handing over his precious body and his precious soul in the name of a future that never arrived, like everyone else. Saying that he still didn’t have enough, like everyone else. Waiting just a bit longer, like everyone else. Waiting so that he cold earn just a little bit more, postponing the realization of his dreams; he was too busy right now, he had great opportunities ahead of him, loyal clients who were waiting for him. . ."

Before you check out the link, ask yourself this question, "What is the profession of the subject of this story?" Make a note of it, and then go to Anita Sharpe’s post at Worthwhile.

Learning through Blogging

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When you write a blog, your thoughts and comments, right or wrong, stay online for a long time. In reviewing what I have been jabbing about for the past year, I’ve pieced together some of my previous conclusions – warts & all:

Starting with learning in general:

It seems pretty clear; the basic unit of learning is the person. This person is indivisible. All learning activities, products and strategies must be centered around the person. We can then go on to develop environments for many people, but the individual is the building block – not the learning object, the course, the programme, or the institution. All of these are temporary organisations that the individual may use, or be part of.

And moving on to learning at work:

My conclusion for a while has been that knowledge cannot be managed, and neither can knowledge workers. It will take a new social contract between workers and organisations in order to create an optimally functioning enterprise. Adding management and technology won’t help either. This is the crux of everything in the new "right-sized, lean, innovative, creative" economy – getting the right balance between the organisational structure and the knowledge workers.

However:

Training without clear performance objectives, that are relevant to each learner, is useless.

And on the positive side:

What’s exciting about workflow learning is that the technology has caught up to some of the theory, and the globalized economy is making workflow learning (or something resembling it) a necessity.

Not only possible, but cheap:

An organisation’s entire KM effort could start with simple technologies. It could provide a blog to everyone, letting workers blog as they wanted. RSS aggregators could keep an eye on blogs of interest, and maybe even a blog rating system could be included in the performance management system. Yes, the better writers would get better rankings, but so would those who solve problems. A bottom-up approach to KM, at a minimal cost, makes a lot more sense than betting that some centralized system, with a huge training bill, will solve all of our problems.

Because:

What I like best about open source is that the development process is a real meritocracy, much like being an entrepreneur. In small business, if you don’t deliver, you can’t make an honest living.

And finally:

Informal learning, facilitated by the likes of blogs & wikis, works well for general education, and for continued learning outside of the "classroom". Informal learning (education in the broadest sense) is messy by its very nature. Training, such as how to drive a car, can use a more scientific method to
optimize training time, achieve the desired performance and reduce the risk of accidents. Training and education can even use the same tools, like simulations, but not the same approach. Education and training are complementary, but distinct.

Still a work in progress ;-)

Conference on Engaging in Open Source

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The ACM Chapter at Dalhousie University in Halifax is hosting the Conference on Engaging in OS on 12/13 May. Invited speakers include folks from Sun and the Department of National Defence. Exploring the Business of Open Source by Brian Barry looks interesting. The organisers are still calling for papers, but I cannot find any information on how to register or the cost of admission. Anyone else know more about this?

I’d be willing to carpool if any New Brunswickers or PE Islanders want to head down for one or both days. Also would be interested if anyone knows the presenters, or has heard them before. For those outside of the area, you might want to attend this conference in Halifax on the Thursday/Friday and then head to Fredericton for the Monday/Tuesday Learning Innovations Symposium – a double header! Any comments from the Moncton LUG members or other groups?

Update: Registration info is now available, with fees listed as $75 + HST (On or Before April 28, 2005) or $100 + HST after the 28th.