Informal Learning – Page 14

A way to deal with ever-increasing digital information.
Requires an open attitude to learning and finding new things (I Seek).
Develops processes of filing, classifying and annotating for later retrieval.
Uses open systems that enable sharing.
Aids in observing, thinking and using information & knowledge (I Sense).
Helps to share ideas with others (We Share).
“You know you’re in a community of practice when your practice changes” (We Use).
PKM prepares the mind to be open to new ideas (enhanced serendipity).

PKM is related to Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks. They are different ways of addressing similar issues:

How do I keep track of all of this information?

How do I make sense of changing conditions and new knowledge?

How can I develop and improve critical thinking skills?

How can we cooperate?

How can I collaborate better?

How can I engage in problem-solving activities at the edge of my expertise?

Update: More recent posts: My Personal Learning Journey & Network Learning: Working Smarter (2010)

personal knowledge management & wisdom

2016-12-292010-03-18 by Harold Jarche

PKM consists of practical methods for making sense of the increasing digital information flows around us. There is no procedural method to go from data to wisdom. On this Stephen Downes and I agree, though he thinks I adhere to the DIKW model.

That said, while this is a much better model than this, I think it stays true to the original ‘filtering’ vision, where you go from data to wisdom through successive filtering processes. And while there are different ways to think of knowledge — processed, procedural, propositional — this model I think adheres to a more basic view.

Here are some images from a presentation on PKM I will be giving at our local university tomorrow and including in a workshop next week. Data does not create information, information does not create knowledge, and knowledge does not create wisdom. People use their knowledge to make sense of data and information. People create information that represents their knowledge, which can then be more widely shared.

DIKW

Data + Knowledge = Information

Seek, Sense, Share: Find

PKM is an approach for dealing with information by making our thoughts more explicit through filing, classifying, commenting, writing, presenting, conversing, mashing, etc. PKM itself will not make us any wiser, just as accumulating knowledge does not equate to wisdom.

The ways of adding value to information I described in my last post (Filtering; Validation; Synthesis; Presentation; Customization) are not a series of steps, only some of the ways we can make sense of information, for ourselves and for others.

Sense-making

2010-03-17 by Harold Jarche

The term personal knowledge management (PKM) isn’t about management in a business sense but rather how we can manage to make sense of information and experience in our electronic surround.

Personal – according to one’s abilities, interests & motivation (not directed by external forces).

Knowledge – connecting information to experience (know what, know who, know how).

Management – getting things done.

PKM is an individually created process. Tim Kastelle has discussed how important it is to Filter, in the process of Aggregate-Filter-Connect. I have recently used Seek-Sense-Share to describe PKM.

The critical part of PKM is in personalizing information and experience, or to use a business term, adding value. Ross Dawson shows five ways to add value to information (my examples/descriptions follow):

Filtering (separating signal from noise, based on some criteria)

Validation (ensuring that information is reliable, current or supported by research)

Synthesis (describing patterns, trends or flows in large amounts of information)

Presentation (making information understandable through visualization or logical presentation)

Customization (describing information in context)

Terms such as Filter or Sense don’t adequately describe the sense-making process in PKM. Looking at it from an outside perspective though, as Ross Dawson has done, gives another way to describe some of what is happening in our minds. We are adding value (and context) to information so that we can later retrieve it and perhaps use it. Whatever we make transparent is value-added information for others, especially if we do it consciously and well.

The image below shows an expanded description of sense-making in the context of PKM.

A basic tool I’ve described for PKM is social bookmarking to file information. It’s simple but doesn’t add a lot of value, just a few text comments. A tweet is also simple and cannot add much value with a 140 character limit. A blog post can be much more informative especially if one takes time to research, link and compose. A collaborative document that aggregates information and shows it from a different perspective could also be valuable. Developing a slide presentation with carefully selected graphics could be seen as higher value information. More difficult to produce and perhaps adding more value to basic information, could be a narration with the slideshow. I have noticed that the process of developing higher-value information helps to sharpen one’s own thinking.

Once again, I want to point out that people with better PKM skills, an ability to create higher value information, and a willingness to share it, will become more valued members (nodes) in their professional networks.

Social media workshops

2010-03-16 by Harold Jarche

I will be presenting two 1/2 day workshops on Thursday, 25 March in Miramichi, NB. The event is sponsored by Silicon East and attendance is (almost) free. There is a $10 fee to cover refreshments.

Please pass this on to people in the area who might need an introduction to social media, without any hype or sales pitch. I will be heading up on Wednesday late afternoon and can pick up a few people in the Moncton area who want to go up early. I will be staying at The Rodd, where the workshops will be held, and returning on Thursday late afternoon.

Workshop #1: Social media for training & education (9:00 AM to noon)

Focus: understanding web social media and how they can be used for training, education and personal learning
Topics:
What is Web 2.0?
Personal knowledge management – a sense-making process
Tools, techniques and resources for social learning on the web: e.g. social bookmarks, blogs, twitter

Workshop #2 Social media for small business (1:30 PM to 4:30 PM)

Focus: understanding web social media to connect with customers
Topics:
What is Web 2.0?
Examples of social media use for business: e.g. blogs, twitter, slidecasts, videos
Web tools, techniques and resources for small businesses

Pre-registration is not necessary but please let me know in the comments if you plan on attending and if you could provide transportation or need it.

Social media & workplace performance matrix

2010-03-15 by Harold Jarche

Jane Hart has an excellent resource on Case Studies for Social Media & Learning in the Workplace that she keeps up to date. I’ve looked at it many times and thought that it might be easier to see the big picture as a matrix, which I’ve created as a Google Document.

Feel free to use and improve this spreadsheet. If you do re-post it, please let me know so I can add the link here. Much of the information comes from third-party reports so I cannot attest to its accuracy. Let me know of any errors or omissions and I will address them.

If you would like to edit the Google Doc, or get it as a spreadsheet, please contact me.

PKM: a node in the learning network

2010-03-07 by Harold Jarche

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, or, in other words, digital networks enable multiple connections, so organizational communications are no longer just vertical. Somebody else, outside the hierarchy, is only one click away, and perhaps easier to deal with and a better source of information and knowledge. This is becoming obvious in the business world and frameworks such as Social CRM (customer relationship management) are one attempt to address it.

Too often we think of learning as school, training as something that is delivered, and complex problems as solvable with enough effort and resources. We are wrong on all three counts.

Social learning is about getting things done in networks. It is a constant flow of listening, observing, doing, and sharing. Effective working in networks requires cooperation, meaning there is no plan, structure or direct feedback. This can scare managers and organizational leaders because no one is in change of social learning and there is no end-state or final learning objective. But social learning in networks can help us deal with complexity by providing a platform to test out ideas and learn from and with each other.

Jane Hart has described five types of learning using social media, the lubricant of learning in digital networks. Then she looked at how they relate to formal/informal learning as well as the spectrum of dependent/independent/interdependent learning.

I have circled those activities at the bottom of this grid to show what personal knowledge management (PKM) enables. I have described PKM as our part of the social learning contract and the more I look at implementing social learning, social CRM or social business models, the more convinced I am that PKM is a foundational skill-set.

Keeping knowledge in our heads is not of much use in getting things done, though that is what most of our training and development efforts have focused on for the past century. Individual training, stemming from the military systems approach to training, addressed skills and knowledge acquisition, as directed by those in change. The organization wanted to drive stuff into our heads.

In networks, though, one of our main jobs now is getting stuff out of our heads and sharing with others.

PKM is focused on accidental, serendipitous, personal-directed, informal, independent learning.

PKM enables group-directed, intra-organizational, interdependent learning.

PKM enriches formal, structured learning and helps learners be less dependent.

PKM is taking control of our learning, as well as making much of it transparent. It makes us a valuable node in our various networks. We share our learning riches without diminishing them. If more people start seeking, sensing & sharing then we’re on the social learning path. Notice how I did not mention that you need some special “social learning” technology platform to do this?

Diffusion of social learning

2010-03-04 by Harold Jarche

Paul makes an excellent comment to my article on social learning in the enterprise that Jon Husband kindly posted for me on the FASTForward Blog:

I see the critical aspect to social learning to be ‘diffusion’. Knowledge ‘flows’ at specific speeds, and complex, technical details have high viscosity. Some nodes are efficient at in-flow (fast learners), some at out (teachers). Excessive turnover removes nodes before their knowledge has spread to the rest of the group. Isolated groups fail to transmit their knowledge. Again, if I were debugging a company I’d want to measure this. How long before a new product feature is well understood by sales? by management? Does R&D know about current marketing efforts? How much does a idea change as it’s communicated through the company? Are there particular points where ideas get stuck, or particularly garbled?

There is a lot to unpack from this paragraph and it highlights many of issues around learning in the enterprise. It’s not just about having access to knowledge or people but getting ideas flowing throughout the organization. Redundancy comes to mind as a principal for supporting social learning diffusion. There has to be more than one way to communicate or find something.

Just because something was blogged, tweeted or posted does not mean it will be understood and eventually internalized as actionable knowledge. The more complex or novel the idea, the more time it will take to be understood. Often I have revisited articles and only understood them when I have read related views or had a chance to find examples of some new concept. Understanding networks, for instance, is easier when you live and work with them and can see examples of network effects.

—

Diffusion – Viscosity – Flows – Redundancy

Interdependent Learning

2010-03-03 by Harold Jarche

The value of social networks for learning is that they help create trust paths to share ideas, advice and feelings between people who care. Jane Hart has developed five categories for social learning:

IOL – Intra-Organizational Learning – keeping the organization up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives and activities

GDL – Group Directed Learning – groups of individuals working in teams, projects, study groups, etc Even two people working together in a coaching and mentoring capacity

PDL – Personal Directed Learning – individuals organizing and managing their own personal or professional learning

ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning – individuals learning without consciously realizing it (aka incidental or random learning)

FSL – Formal Structured Learning – formal education and training like classes, courses, workshops, etc (both synchronous and asynchronous)

I previously looked at these categories as being either Undirected, Self-Directed or Directed (from the outside):

My colleagues at ITA have been discussing the use of words like informal; formal; social; directed; and autonomous and how much they add to enabling better learning in organizations. My moment in the shower this morning sparked this idea as a way to describe and categorize activities related to learning for work:

Dependent Learning (FSL) – direction is required in terms of objectives, curriculum, expertise and facilitation. The learner is dependent on others.

Independent Learning (ASL & PDL) – self-motivated people can get what they need in the manner they want

Interdependent Learning (GDL & IOL) – learning that requires connecting to others and cannot be done alone.

For workplace learning, especially in complex environments, I would want to support interdependent learning as much as possible, as this would create a more resilient learning community, not dependent on any individual nor any formal training program. I would also encourage independent learners to share what they know so that the best learners could set an example. I would minimize dependent learning because it is obviously a cost centre and too much dependent learning may adversely influence mastery of independent and interdependent learning.

Now we can ask the CEO – do you want us to focus our energies on encouraging dependent, independent or interdependent workers?

Training alone is not enough

2010-02-23 by Harold Jarche

In our second eCollab blog carnival, I asked if we could formalize the informal:

Are there ways of “formalizing” some or all of this without losing out on the personal relationships we have with our friends and colleagues, those who we turn to help us solve a problem. Can we formalize the informal?

Jay Cross, in my subsequent interview on the subject, said:

… it’s the wrong question. It would be like asking if we should “informalize” formal training. A key understanding that Jay wants to get across to everyone in the workplace learning arena is that it’s not an either/or proposition, but rather how much informal and how much formal learning should we support and who is determining what’s to be done. All learning is a bit of both. His promotion of informal learning is not to replace formal training but to open up the possibilities of supporting the other 80% of learning that has been ignored for far too long.

My own perspective is that supporting informal learning is mission critical for knowledge-intensive organizations:

A key difference between formal training and informal learning is that the former is designed (push) while the latter is enabled (pull). As far as formal training goes, we have several models and many examples of good practices. But training alone is not enough. The best training programs can only address a maximum of 20% of the work performance issues in an organization. Training can only help to develop skills and knowledge if we know in advance what these are. In many cases, we don’t know what our future performance needs will be.

Dennis Callahan provided several examples of “creating conditions to help informal learning thrive”:

Providing tools (e.g., wiki, blog, microblog) for people to share knowledge

Provide learning for how to use these tools for sharing

Creating an OJT [on job training] guide that describes events that someone must experience as part of their learning (e.g., going on a sales call with a sales representative)

Developing a mentoring program

Facilitating a working session on helping customers solve a real business problem

Tom Haskins submitted a very thoughtful response and showed that “…formal learning poses the opposite requirements from those of formalized informal learning”:

Instead of encouraging useful mistakes, formal learning penalizes mistakes …

Instead of scattering what needs to be learned, formal learning delivers required content in centralized locations like classrooms and books …

Instead of assisting students in unlearning their misconceptions, formal learning assumes errors will get obliterated by providing more content …

Dave Ferguson looked at the importance of aligning goals and balancing organizational and individual learning goals:

Those phrases got me thinking about how, if you work within a large organization, you need to find ways to align your personal goals with the organization’s in a way that’s authentic for you and helpful to the organization. In part, it’s the old concept of the king’s shilling: if you’re accepting the paycheck, you’re granting the organization’s right to set and pursue its goals and to ask you to help achieve them.

When you can’t ethically do that, it’s time to get out.

Donald Clark (USA) takes a slightly contrarian view :

I think this 80/20 informal/formal thingy is kind of going in the wrong way. We should be spending the majority of our time on 20% of the learning taking place within our organization — remember the Pareto principle? Thus you should be asking:

What processes are critical for delivering our product/service and do we need to ensure that our workers learn them correctly?
What tasks are so vital to a processes that we have to ensure we educate someone to be a backup?
How can we best develop our workers so that we continue to grow as a company? What we think of as the “informal” will most often fall into this category.

Thanks to all the contributors to this blog carnival. Please feel free to weigh in, as there’s no time limit here (it’s the web & it’s informal):