Informal Learning

Informal learning

From training to learning

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Informal Learning Conversations
Image: Jay Cross

I came across the article From Training to Learning by Brigitte Jordan via two sources yesterday. It was written c. 1997 based on ” … a common discourse, carried on for the last several years at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) and the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL).”

“In a fundamental way, all work is about learning: it is about learning to fit in and to collaborate, about learning to take initiative when appropriate, it is about really understanding customers, about acquiring intimate knowledge of the products and services the company sells and how they can fit into customers’ lives. Acknowledged as such or not, learning has to be an integral part of work. But, somehow, integrated [work+learning] activities have become split into the separate spheres of [work] and [training] which have come to be dominated by quite different interests.”

This article synthesizes my own work practice and is a hot internal topic at the Internet Time Alliance. It covers:

  • Why Conventional Training Doesn’t Work Anymore
  • Shifting the Paradigm from Training to Learning
  • Learning is fundamentally social
  • Informal learning is crucial in the workplace

This makes the argument for change a bit easier, in that informal and social learning in the workplace is not that new of an idea and actually we’re a bit behind the times.

From Training to Learning is a highly recommended read.

Building common ground

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The focus of this blog is on learning and working on the web and how work and learning are becoming one in a digitally interconnected world. I believe there is a critical need for new organizational frameworks, such as wirearchy, and a shift from learning as training & schooling to a more agile approach. Evidence that the old management models are no longer effective abound – see The Future of Management or The Future of Work.

Lilia Efimova is looking into Agile software programming teams, where work is geographically distributed and has observed the challenges of communicating without “common ground:

From what we have seen, the communication in distributed teams often shrinks to purely functional and, compared to face-to-face settings, there is much less unstructured informal interactions – this works for getting the work done (at some level), but seriously limits the opportunities to build awareness of the bigger picture and relationships. Most of the solutions in respect to building the common ground in distributed Agile teams still rely on making sure that there are opportunities to visit each other, while there is a lot of space for a technology-mediated ways to do so next to the f2f.

commonground_lilia_efimova

Building common ground at work takes time and many informal interactions, such as those afforded in a shared physical space. For distributed teams to work well, they need to develop common ground through social grooming. My experience in working with distributed groups is that the more effective teams are those who know each other. I will be more forgiving with someone I know through several years of blogging than some new business acquaintance who has just joined the team. After several thousand tweets I have some understanding of people’s sense of humour, and perhaps they understand mine as well.These casual interactions make the leap to collaborative work much easier, as I am experiencing with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues.

For distributed teams, informal social learning has to take place with digitally mediated communications. Allowing, and indeed promoting, casual social media use may actually be good for work and business. Blocking these channels may inhibit the development of common ground.  This is something to consider as more work becomes distributed – break down those firewalls and let workers be people.

PKM in 2010

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Personal Knowledge Management

Updated 5 Feb 2010: changed “Filter” to “Understand”

[This post is a continuation of Sense-making with PKM (March, 2009)]

Personal = according to one’s abilities, interests and motivation (not directed by external forces)

Knowledge = the capacity for effective action (know how)

Management = how to get things done

What is PKM?

PKM is an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval.

The Web has given us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of our digital society. Engaging others can actually make it easier to learn and not become overwhelmed. Effective learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them.

PKM can be looked at as three types of activities [note: I’ve reduced this from seven activities in my previous articles on PKM as I believe that a simpler process is easier to teach and to begin with].

Aggregate

Filter

Understand

Connect
Observations & Notes

Information

Knowledge

Sources of Info & Knowledge

 Annotate, Tag,

List, File,

Classify, Clarify,

Expand, Question

 People – People


Ideas – Ideas


People – Ideas

Why PKM?

Human knowledge currently doubles about every year and personal knowledge management is one way of addressing the issue of TMI (too much information).

PKM is of little value unless the results are shared by connecting to others and contributing to meaningful conversations. Informal, social learning is the primary way that knowledge is created in the workplace. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts as we build on the knowledge of others. As knowledge workers or citizens, PKM is our part of the social learning contract. Without effective PKM at the individual level, social learning has less value.

A Model

There is more than one PKM process but here is a basic structure that works for me and makes sense to many others I show it to. This post is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Take what you need, as there are no best practices for complex and personal learning processes.

Aggregate Understand Connect

PKM in the context of work:

Individuals have their unique methods of sense-making and by sharing cooperatively or working collaboratively they contribute to the social learning mosaic that creates organizational knowledge.

Aggregate – looking for good sources of information (people) – noting or tagging pieces of information while working collaboratively.

Filter Understand – saving information for later – considering how it may be useful in various contexts – making sense of it – finding the right information, at the right time, in the right format,  from the information repositories of our subject matter networks.

Connect – ongoing conversations while learning and working including connecting ideas and people.

Enhanced Serendipity – PKM increases the chances of serendipitous learning. and as Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favours the prepared mind”. According to Ross Dawson: “You cannot control serendipity. However you can certainly enhance it, act to increase the likelihood of happy and unexpected discoveries and connections. That’s is what many of us do day by day, contributing to others like us by sharing what we find interesting.”

Getting to work

One of the difficult aspects of PKM is triage, or sorting. It’s the ability to separate the important from the useless. Unfortunately, what we view as useless today could be quite important tomorrow. Developing good triage techniques takes time and practice. It depends on the depth and breath of our sources (aggregation), as well as the effectiveness of our filters.

When we find something of interest or value, we need to do something with it. Either file it, save it, add to it, send it on or discard it. Discarding or missing something is becoming less of a problem online because we have powerful search tools and if we participate in cooperative networks, more than one person will notice items of significance. This process also gives us time to make sense of things, to understand.

All of this aggregation and filtering isn’t of much use if we can’t find things later. Putting our knowledge online, in databases that enable tagging, filtering and searching makes it much easier to retrieve it when we need it. For example, I use this blog as a knowledge repository. It is searchable and I’ve added tags and categories. With over 1,500 posts and +4,000 comments, I have a an excellent tool for managing what I’ve learned. Add to this almost 2,000 online social bookmarks and weekly summaries of what I learn on Twitter and I’ve created an outboard brain.

The most important aspect of PKM is making our knowledge not only explicit but public. This is part of connecting. Going public means looking both inward and outward. However, let me add one caveat. Sometimes, just publishing online for our own learning and perhaps later retrieval, is enough. It doesn’t matter if nobody links to it. If we get too focused on what others think, we won’t become good critical thinkers.

PKM: aggregate, filter, connect

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Knowledge Squared equals Power Squared, says Craig Thomler:

However the knowledge hoarding model begins to fail when it becomes cheap and easy to share and when the knowledge required to complete a task exceeds an individual’s capability to learn in the time available.

This has been reflected in a longitudinal study of knowledge workers that Robert Kelley of Carnegie-Mellon University conducted over more than twenty years. He asked professionals “What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?”

In 1986 the answer was typically about 75%. By 1997 workers estimated that they had only about 15% to 20% of the knowledge needed in their own mind. Kelley estimated that by 2006 the answer was only 8% to 10%.

Given that professionals now need to draw 90% or more of the knowledge they need to do their jobs from others, in my view ‘Knowledge equals Power’ is no longer true.

I believe it is now more accurate to state Knowledge Shared equals Power Squared.

I see the basis for sharing knowledge in the connected workplace is personal knowledge management or what I’ve called our part of the social learning contract. You need to have something to share in the first place and that happens when you make your work transparent. This means showing your sources (aggregation) and then what you find important (filtering) and sharing that with others (connecting).

In my case I use Google Reader as a feed aggregator, with shared items public. I also share articles with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues using Posterous. I filter more with this blog by writing about and commenting on much of what I have read and learned. I also filter information with Twitter and my weekly Friday’s Finds. I connect through this blog and the comments left by others, by leaving comments, via Twitter and in the increasing number of web conferences and discussions becoming available. Essential in all of this are the tracks I’ve left for others and for myself to retrieve as necessary, as I do during my frequent searches of this blog, Twitter favourites and my social bookmarks.

None of this is new, but I think that the three-step process of Aggregate/Filter/Connect is much simpler than my previous model of four internal actions and three external ones.

pkm-flow

A simpler model, inspired by Ross Dawson’s post on enhanced serendipity, may be easier to communicate (and remember).

You cannot control serendipity. However you can certainly enhance it, act to increase the likelihood of happy and unexpected discoveries and connections. That’s what many of us do day by day, contributing to others like us by sharing what we find interesting.

I’ve found that this diagram works better in explaining my PKM process and how it relates to other people, all engaged in similar, but not identical, sense-making endeavours [Updated here: PKM in 2010].

PKM-AFC

Connect, aggregate, filter; then train

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The primary role of the “training” department [or whatever it becomes] for any knowledge-based business is to Connect & Communicate. As workers co-develop emergent processes they need to be supported through updated information, tools and processes to do their work. This model looks at knowledge flows inside the organization:

invert pyramid

Looking at knowledge flows outside the organization, Tim Kastelle says that successful businesses in digital environments need to Aggregate, Filter & Connect:

Connecting is critically important both in journalism and in education. So that makes three value adding activities in the digital economy: aggregating, filtering, and connecting. The lesson to take from the current states of both the music industry and journalism is that you have to have a clear understanding of how you’re creating value so that you build and protect the correct parts of your business model. Perhaps universities can learn this lesson before educational business models are disrupted as well.

Information-based businesses, like education, media, research or consulting organizations, are in the business of working with both information Stocks & Flows. Where revenue is made depends on several changing factors, as many industries are discovering. Understanding the overall flow of sense-making and intangible value creation is important and one framework for success in a digital universe is to create learning networks using social media.

Social media are also the means by which we can share our tacit knowledge through conversations to co-develop emergent work practices. Connecting, aggregating and filtering can be used to describe the cycle of workplace informal learning. This business process does not require formal training other than as a supplementary input. Training is only beneficial when it addresses a clear lack of skills or knowledge, not as a replacement for better work practices.

Informal, social learning is the primary way that knowledge is created in the workplace. The graphic below is a start to “put the horse before the cart” and situate training in the supportive role where it should be.

Connect – ongoing conversations while working collaboratively.

Aggregate – tracking, noting or tagging pieces of information while working collaboratively.

Filter – finding the right information, at the right time, in the right format,  from the information repositories of our subject matter networks.

Training – when there is an identified gap in knowledge and skills, then training can augment collaborative work practices and this can inform the conversations of workers.

A-F-C

Social learning and social networking are growing in importance for many businesses, often as customer support, branding or marketing initiatives. However, HR or T&D are not driving social media use in most organizations. Learning through social networks is becoming an integral part of business and many learning professionals are missing out on it.

There is an opportunity for those who can combine an understanding of business, communication technologies and human learning to develop better social business models. We are in a period when learning professionals are needed more than ever but many lack technology and business skills and cannot help their organizations. The challenge is to get out of the traditional training mindset and open up to the 92% of the business that is currently being ignored.

Work is learning, learning work

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My Twitter bio reads, “Work is learning, learning work – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know [apologies to Keats]. That’s pretty much what I believe will be a necessity for the post-industrial and post-information era that we are beginning to enter. Some call it the knowledge economy or perhaps even the learning age. Whatever it will be called, our networks of networks are making life and work more complex. We need to adapt to better ways of working with abundant information and expanding connections, as I said in sharing tacit knowledge:

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

Emergent practices are developed collaboratively while solving problems for which there are no definitive answers. For instance, what’s the “best” Internet business model? Where once we could document knowledge and develop guidelines and practices followed by most workers, we now need to let workers develop their own practices, according to their particular context, which is constantly in flux. This is a very different approach from the way we designed jobs and training in the past.

Social media are the tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. The organizing framework for using social media for business is the learning network. Learning networks are not just for what we used to call training & development, but can also help us engage (not target) our markets. Chris Koch, marketing and sales strategist, shows no doubt with: There is only one objective in social media: create learning networks

The purpose of social media is to create learning networks that buyers want to join. The enticements are ideas and education. That means social media are extensions of our content development and dissemination processes. By creating content that offers relevant, timely, and useful ideas and education for buyers at all stages of the buying process, we create the incentives for buyers to engage with us in conversation and community. Whether it’s blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, or private communities that we build ourselves, the common thread is that by focusing on learning we build and retain buyers’ interest.

Social media are the vehicles by which we can share our tacit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices.

emergent practices

2009: year of the tweet

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Twitter has significantly changed how I communicate online. Though I registered in 2007, after having tried out Jaiku, I didn’t really adopt micro-blogging until mid 2008. This past year I made around 5,000 Tweets or about 13 a day.

Twitter’s constraint of 140 characters is its greatest asset. You can only get one thought or comment out at a time. Once you get used to the medium, it’s much easier than trying to write a blog post, which of course is easier than writing a feature article, let alone a book. In some ways, it’s communication for the masses, due to the low barrier to entry. As a blogger, it’s even easier to jump onto Twitter because you are used to publishing in public and you’re probably connected to a lot of people online. Charlene Croft explains how Twitter is especially good for:

Connectors are individuals who know lots of people and who use those connections to their advantage.  Connectors are people who have invested in social, cultural and identity capital and who can convert those intangible resources into pretty much whatever they decide to.

Mavens are the senders and receivers of information.  They are the people who always have the pulse on the good deals and breaking stories of the day.  Mavens are the trendsetters and the people who you turn to to find out about this thing or that.  Citizen Journalists are types of Mavens, often scooping the mainstream media in reporting “from the ground”

Salesmen are the persuaders of society.  They are the people who dedicate a great deal of their lives to selling people on their ideas.

lawfew

It seems that everyone is a Maven today, as @amandachapel recently tweeted that “self-proclaimed Social Media Gurus on Twitter are multiplying like rabbits”. About 16,000 people on Twitter say they are social media specialists, indicating that being a Maven in this space has some perceived value.

Connectors bring ideas and people together. One of my favourites is @valdiskrebs who is not only an expert in social network analysis (a real Maven) but makes an effort to introduce people and sends out ideas like confetti. I like to follow Connectors because they share a lot. I no longer read BoingBoing or SlashDot or several other media sources because I know that if something interesting is published, someone in my network will post it. Choosing the right mix of Mavens & Connectors to follow can increase serendipitous learning opportunities, without being overwhelmed by noise.

The truly effective Salespeople on Twitter are not selling things but building relationships. For instance, following @kanter keeps me in touch with many social and non-profit causes. Given the number of followers that Beth Kanter has (+250,000), it’s obvious she’s a Maven, Connector and a Salesperson.

Twitter has connected me to more people and ideas than several years of blogging could possibly do. My blog still has immense value as part of my personal knowledge mastery process, but Twitter has a greater reach to more, and more varied, communities. For example:

I met @fdomon through Twitter and we have subsequently launched Entreprise Collaborative.

Through Twitter I can follow Canadian writer @MargaretAtwood; cycling professional @LanceArmstrong or Tehran-based @ThinkIran.

I can talk in public about things that would not go on my blog, either because they are off-topic or I don’t have time for a full blog post.

I learn an enormous amount from Twitter and for the past several months have summarized this with my weekly Friday’s Finds posts [due for a format change in 2010].

Twitter may not be for you and it’s probably not going to save the world, but I am certain the format of micro-blogging will be around for at least as long as blogging.

Getting Social Learning

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chat_icon_01.png

We were discussing social learning yesterday and I think it boils down to this:

We are all inter-connected because

technology has enabled communication networks on a worldwide scale,

so that systemic changes are sensed almost immediately,

which means that reaction times and feedback loops have to be better, therefore

we need to know who to ask for advice right now,

which requires a level of trust, but

that takes time to nurture.

Therefore we turn to our friends and trusted colleagues,

who are those with whom we’ve shared experiences,

which means that we need to share experiences in order to trust each other [get it?].

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It’s called social learning.

The University Myth

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Forty-seven percent of Canadians have a post-secondary degree of some kind and, according to the CCL:

Even by 1950, less than 6% of Canadian 25- to 44-year-olds had university degrees. Today, secondary schooling is universally available, and the proportion of 25- to 44-year-olds with university degrees is near 20%.

Even going back to the 1970’s, when I started university, it was almost a ticket to a good job. Stay in school, get a degree, get a job, etc. However much there may have been a correlation between having a university degree and getting a good job, this is not a causal relationship. It was a social and cultural norm, based on the fact that for most of the twentieth century, having a degree put you in an elite, minority situation. This was coupled by the fact that HR departments had found an easy criterion to reduce the number of applicants; just require that certain positions require a degree. Many workers (e.g. junior managers) also had the comfort of taking time to learn on the job, so day one job ready skills were not a requirement.

Universities had it easy too. They could say that getting a degree helped you get a good job, because salaries were correlated with education. Enrolment increased, universities expanded and the academic system flourished. If it were so easy today.

The problem is that universities do little to prepare for work. The skills learned are seldom workplace oriented. But then, that is not the nature of the university. We as a society bought into the myth that university education equated to good jobs. From 1950 to 2003, the ratio of current university undergrads to the general population increased five-fold in Canada. As long as there were few university graduates, we had obvious correlation to good jobs, even though universities had not changed their basic operating models, established centuries earlier. Perhaps more science and logic would have prepared parents and students for our current situation.

I’m not advocating for the closure of universities, but we need to expand our horizons on other options for work preparation. We have put a lot of money into universities, less into community colleges and even less into apprenticeship programs. For those not believing the university myth, there are limited choices. Learning professionals need to get out of their boxes and help create some better choices. There is some correlation between learning professionals and learning, isn’t there?

eCollab Blog Carnival

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The first eCollab Blog Carnival (follow link for details) is set for 12 December 2009 (that’s a Saturday).

If you wish to contribute:

Before:
–    On your blog, via email, twitter or through other means, announce the new carnival ( you create a short post with links, visual, hashtags and short descriptions of Ecollab),
–    feel free to invite others as well.
–    Let us know by registering via the contact form or by sending a tweet to @hjarche with the hashtag #ECOLLAB

The topic to launch our carnival is the future of the training department, and submissions can be made in English or French, in keeping with the bi-cultural focus of Entreprise Collaborative.

ecollab carnival

During LearnTrends 2009 I noticed several back-channel discussions about the usefulness of the ADDIE model for instructional systems design, with some completely opposed and others thinking it just needs tweaking. With training so closely linked to ADDIE, do we need to reconsider training’s role in the workplace?

  • Has ADDIE outlived its usefulness?
  • Can training address complex work?
  • Has training become a solution looking for a problem?
  • Does the training department have a future?

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In addition, if you’re at Online Educa this week, be sure to take in The Great Training Robbery, presented by the Internet Time Alliance.