Friday Links

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A few things that I’ve noticed recently that don’t really fit into one category or post, but worth passing on:

  1. SocialText is offering a free chapter of the book Wikinomics, so you can try before you buy.
  2.  If you don’t use a feed aggregator, but want to keep up with the training & edtech world, Trainingblogs has put together dozens of feeds, in several categories – mine is on the elearning/technology tab :-)
  3. If you’re coaching or helping with soccer (aka football) this summer, you can use YourTeamOnline as your team’s free private community to share information about games, practices, drills and car pooling.

The medium is my message

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Great conversation with Hugh McLeod looking at the difference between enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and social media (SM). According to Hamish, with SM, “All interpretation of the message is done by the human receiver”, whereas “In ERP by contrast we have a whole load more stuff to do, as all interpretation is done by the software, or more accurately by rules written in software by a designer who is not in situ to intervene in any ambiguous situations. ”

Learning management systems (LMS) are the ERP’s of the education and training world. They try to take into account all of the factors necessary to control the experience, whether it be the “right” content or the most “appropriate” evaluation. Automating teaching and learning in order to be like ERP’s is the holy grail in some edtech business circles.

Learning is not a business process. Learning is the interpretation of messages by a human receiver, whether these messages be information or experiences. That means that a dumb network, like SM, with human interpreters at the ends, makes for better learning than a smart network, with its limited (by design) number of constraints.

The best LMS is the Web, because it allows any message to be received by anyone, without adding a pre-defined learning wrapper. In a world of ever expanding information and knowledge, the key to “managing” learning is helping individuals to develop their own message interpretation processes and skills.

Gaming, animation & simulation in Moncton

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I attended a gathering of the nascent New Brunswick Gaming, Animation & Simulation (GAS) industry yesterday. Companies included FatKat Animation, the largest animation company in the region; GoGii Games, a start-up with experienced leadership; Pitch Mobile, games for wireless; and Vinland Studios, games with historical significance.

Many of those present then headed to the seaside resort town of Shediac for the local knowledge industry ‘s final cybersocial of the season with an evening cruise on the bay.

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One group of visitors was a small company from BC that is opening an office in Moncton. Terra Cognita has a couple of products, focused on land knowledge systems, and also creates custom software applications for small and medium sized companies.

Newer members of the industry were also there, like designer Christine Lund. All in all, a pleasant way to spend a day.

Update: The GAS industry now has its own blog.

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Hard-wired for Collaboration

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According to this article on The World Cafe we humans may be more inclined to collaborate rather than compete:

Swedish scientists have done extensive research on this and they found we first lived in small groups of 20 to 100 people who in any given week averaged 2.5 days for gathering and hunting and 4.5 days on talking. The conclusion they came to from this data was that the brain, the neurological system, and our hormonal systems have had 90,000 years of programming us for talk and collaboration, and only 10,000 years for competition and fighting.

Dave Pollard sees collaboration and facilitation as a skill that he has developed as he has matured:

The role of facilitator, as I try to practice it now, entails the following:

  • Pay attention, listen, and understand why things are the way they are now.
  • Probe to discover what the obstacles are to co-workers’ work effectiveness, and work to remove those obstacles.
  • Imagine ideas, suggest frameworks, co-develop visions, and create tools, that might make things easier. Offer them, demonstrate them, as experiments, and then let the group do what they will with them — evolve them, adapt them, or fail them. Let what works work, and let what doesn’t work go.
  • Appreciate — thank your co-workers and show you appreciate their work and their ideas.
  • Collaborate when you are invited to do so. Invite others to collaborate to solve important workplace problems.

A few years ago I talked about collaborating to compete and it still seems more natural to me than trying to compete head to head with a winner-take-all attitude. The challenge is that our models from the past few thousand years don’t help us much. School is still competitive and so are sports and much of our business. Collaborative inter-networked technologies seem to be helpful in fostering collaboration but we really need to work on the social, cultural and economic models to reassert the importance of collaboration.

Places like the Commons could provide alternative economic models, but even that is proving to be a hard sell.

Revolutionary Wealth – Review

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The Toffler’s continue their series of books on the rise of the Third Wave, or knowledge economy, with Revolutionary Wealth. As with several of their other books, this one looks at the larger and deeper patterns affecting our economies and societies as certain parts of the world make the transition from the second wave (industrial) economic structure. The three deep fundamentals that most economists do not examine are said to be – time, space and knowledge. Changes in each of these are having profound effects on us. Even more so, we are seeing conflicts between first wave (agrarian) societies with second and third wave ones. In many countries, all three co-exist and tensions occur as each has fundamentally different values, priorities and institutional needs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book which is bound to expand anyone’s perspectives on the state of the world. It is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. The discussions on energy use are a refreshing change from much of the hyperbole in the media and the few references to education are clear and succinct. “The coming clash will set defenders of our existing educational factories against a growing movement committed to replacing them – a movement comprising four key elements … Teachers …  Parents … Students …  Business.”

Probably the best audience for this book would be our politicians and corporate leaders, as it provides a good overview of the “big picture”, which is missed by many in these two groups.

Other books I would recommend.

Need Firefox-Thunderbird Help

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I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.4 and Thunderbird 2.0.0.4, both with default themes on Win XP SP2, and recently the “File-Send Link” function stopped working. I checked the forums and found out that this was a problem with the Beta release but can’t find any info on later problems or issues. I’ve checked both programs for updates.

Any advice out there? No, I don’t need advice to switch to Linux or to Mac, as I plan to leave Windows completely next year. For now, XP suits me fine.

Confusing Means and Ends

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Ends are what you are trying to achieve while means are how you get there. Sometimes these get confused. For example, these are means:

  • Process Improvement
  • Education & Training
  • Compensation
  • Technology
  • Quality

So anyone pushing training (including e-learning) is selling a means to an end. First, you have to know what ends you’re trying to achieve. Ends can be 1) outcomes, 2) outputs or 3) performance. Training can help improve performance, but before you put on your instructional designer hat and get down to creating stuff, you need to align the means with the ends. That’s where performance analysis comes in.

If you subscribe to the ADDIE process, or some variant of it, you still have to get to the point of establishing (or confirming)  the ends that you are trying to achieve. For training development shops, the model should look something like this:

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And so “ends” my series over the past couple of weeks on performance improvement (for now).

Adding performance support to the trainer’s toolbox

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The way that people work in any organisation is influenced by several factors. When I conduct a performance analysis I look at factors such as expectations, capacity, incentives, feedback, tools and skills.

If you put a group of people in a room and ask them to describe a performance problem at work and then to classify these, you will find that about 15% are due to a lack of skills & knowledge. I’ve seen this on several occasions and my own experience with workplace performance analysis bears it out as well.

Training is an effective instrument to address a lack of skills and knowledge, but not any other performance factors. That means that at best, training helps with less than 1/5 of an organisation’s human performance issues. On the other hand, performance support tools can be used to address a lack of information resources. By just adding performance support (non-instructional interventions) to a training designer’s toolbox, you are likely doubling your value to your organisation or your clients.

My own performance toolbox is a start to learn more, and here are some basic reference books I’ve used over the years:

DIF Analysis

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Previously, I had mentioned DIF (difficulty, importance, frequency) Analysis as a tool that I used in the military to determine if job tasks required training. I finally got around to creating the expanded model in a digital format, so here it is.

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In making these tools available online some people ask if I’m giving away some secrets to the trade. I don’t think so, because these are pretty basic tools which I’ve been using for over a decade and many others use as well. Also, the world of work is getting to a point where performance improvement may not be the best approach. In knowledge-intensive workplaces, procedures and tasks can’t be easily quantified. Tools like DIF analysis only work when there are similar jobs done by several people. They won’t help in a creative work environment like a design shop.

My own interest is to develop new tools and methods, beyond human performance technology and instructional design. Methods like online personal knowledge mastery are of current interest.

In Canada, salaried work is a mug’s game

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If you ever needed a reason to work on your own and join the growing ranks of the self-employed, a recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives may give you a clear financial reason. According to the Financial Post (not exactly a socialist paper):

The prolonged period of economic prosperity that Canada has enjoyed resulted in a 72-per-cent increase in economic output between 1975 and 2005, growth that has continued since, it [CCPA] noted.

The benefits of the growth, however, have not been reflected in workers’ paycheques, it added. “Canadians’ average real wages, which are wages adjusted for inflation, have not increased in more than 30 years.”

Corporations have had continuous profits while workers have seen none of it. Trickle down economics doesn’t work. One of the few options for individual workers is to establish a new work contract. However, unions are losing influence and collective bargaining hasn’t done much for workers’ wages.

It’s getting easier for individuals to connect with social applications like Facebook and we are also seeing tools like Linked-In for business. The tools for individual workers to connect and collaborate are now available, though we don’t have the culture or mindset to fully embrace them yet.

Given that corporate profits have been made at the expense of the labour force, free-agentry should be looking  like a better option for a lot of people. Places like work commons can support this shift but other models are necessary. For example, we have a green builders’ cooperative here in town. More flexible taxes could also help new micro-businesses, but first we’ll have to educate the politicians. The data from the CCPA are a start.