Informal Learning

Informal learning

An ecosystem of knowledge

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Jon Husband dragged up an older post about blogging, that concludes:

Finally, an ecosystem of knowledge can develop that consists of the aggregated sets of links and content the participants in a blogalogue create. And this “body of knowledge” and understanding remains online, available to anyone who cares to become involved.

Advocates of blogging know how valuable our blog knowledge base is for our work and learning. I have over a thousand posts, several thousand comments and connections with hundreds of other blogs on a wide variety of subjects of professional interest ranging from schooling to the semantic web. The value of having a blog, reading other blogs, using a feed aggregator and making my bookmarks social and searchable has very tangible benefits. I’m actually more productive.

In spite of the obvious benefits, it’s still a challenge to get adoption of these tools and techniques with non-blogging professionals. Unfortunately, it takes more than a few blog posts to see how these can become a knowledge base or how they enable you to connect with others. The benefits take a while before they’re “obvious”.

After my first workshops on Personal Knowledge Management (using social bookmarks, aggregators, blogs etc., to make sense of digital information flows) I saw about 1% of participants actually try to adopt some of these tools. Perhaps three or four tools are too much at once, and any move to co-creating knowledge should start with the basics and only proceed to the next tool once there is a level of comfort. Here’s an idea/suggestion:

  1. Move your Bookmarks online using Social Bookmarks and some common tags for your group/team (1 – 3 months).
  2. Set up an aggregator for each worker, with a few pre-selected sites and have people Tag any posts of interest, using the Social Bookmarks that they now use (3 – 6 months).
  3. Create company or team multi-user blog focused on one area of interest or practice. Something like external training activities may be a safe place to start, with comments on how pertinent these were for those who attended (give it a year).

More platforms

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platform-alteration.jpg

Photo: Platform alteration by harryharris

Continuing the platform theme from my last post, I’ve come across two relatively new Web content sharing platforms – Scribd and LearnHub. Both allow for easy uploading and sharing of content that you own. Scribd has unlimited space available while LearnHub is free but will be charging a transaction fee in the future for testing and tutoring. Where LearnHub differs is that it is based on an information presentaion/testing/tutoring model, while Scribd just lets you put stuff online. Both have a rating system built in and Scribd so far is a much larger community, with 350,000 registered users.

Check out The History of Tim Horton’s [had to get some Canadian content, didn’t I?] on Scribd or the Cooperative Learning community on LearnHub.

Is this the future of online learning?

Global Civics 201

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Last year I recommended several documentaries as learning resources, in Global Civics 101. I just watched The War on Democracy and would add it to the list. This film, along with dozens of others on subjects from the environment to human rights are available for free viewing on FreeDocumentaries.org, an excellent resource for teachers, parents and anyone else interested in perspectives not provided by the mainstream media:

At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information. Unfortunately, many important perspectives, opinions, and facts never make it to our televisions or cinemas (you can watch movies in our media category if you want to know why).

PKM – my best tool

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Technology is the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.

I dug up this quote from my personal knowledge management (PKM) system, or outboard brain, or whatever you want to call it. The quote is from Harold Stolovitch, and it’s stored on this blog from a post I made over three years ago. My PKM system is a technology in this sense.

I know people who get hundreds of e-mail each day. I don’t. I also meet people who work in companies and have to make decisions or set direction but who do not have time to read. I can understand how time constraints force you to reduce “discretionary” activities such as reading, but how are you able to learn if you don’t take the time to read, listen, reflect and then make your own understanding explicit for others to understand?

One PKM process, of using web tools to sort [triage] , categorize, make explicit, and retrieve, is shown in this graphic:

pkm21.jpg

Some of my practical problems, when I started this blog were:

  • I needed a way to connect with others in my field in an inexpensive way (blog)
  • I wanted to mine some of the knowledge out there (feed reader)
  • After a while, I wanted to share what I was finding, or have it available when I was in a discussion (social bookmarks)

What I found out later was that I was creating a resource that I could use whenever I had some related work to do. My blog is the first place I search when I have an article or report to write. The process of writing, reflecting, discussing & annotating has given me a digital library brimming with my own sticky notes that I can easily find.

If you’re looking for a resolution for 2008, I would recommend the adoption and use of some kind of Web PKM system if you don’t have one yet. Here’s a reason why, from Ryan Lanham:

Leading, or leadership, is the process of using our own learning to enable the learning of others.

Blogs at the core of KM & Collaboration

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I’m helping to create a collaborative work and learning space for a group of executives and this is part of the introduction to the site:

Blogs: The main communication tool is your blog, which each participant has registered in his or her name. Think of your blog as a professional journal, where you can record your thoughts and ask questions of your peers or the staff. Each blog post has a unique identifier, called a permalink, which can be referenced by others. Blog posts do not need to be perfect essays. Blog posts can help make sense of your learning process. Comments can be made on another person’s blog, or you can discuss it on your blog and then connect with a hyperlink to the other one. This creates a network of the conversations around an issue or topic. Here’s a video called Blogs in Plain English.

Wikis: Blogs are personal, while wikis are for groups. A wiki is a collaborative web document that records all activities so that any person can add to it, without losing what was previously written (it’s like “track changes” in MS Word). Here’s a video called Wikis in Plain English.

Jon Husband has dusted off a piece on blogging and dialogue that he wrote in 2004, which I think bears repeating:

  1. Firstly, individual or group blogs that are focused on a domain of information and expertise chronicle and catalogue the blogger(s)’ knowledge. Over time, this grows to create a recognizable “body of knowledge”.
  2. Secondly, by offering the capability of commenting and interacting, the information on offer can be better defined, refined, explored, tested, and built upon.
  3. Thirdly, the information on offer provides a latent platform for action – information that can be acted upon often turns into knowledge that can be shared and used in various ways.
  4. Fourth, by linking to the blog or blogs that offer related information, the knowledge that is built can be shared more and more widely, if desired.
  5. Fifth, the rhythym and cadence of the posting, reading, commenting and linking replicate the dynamics of dialogue in very effective ways. There aren’t the same kinds of interruption and distraction that so often occurs in conversations that only weakly replicate the dynamics of dialogue.
  6. Finally, an ecosystem of knowledge can develop that consists of the aggregated sets of links and content the participants in a blogalogue create. And this “body of knowledge” and understanding remains online, available to anyone who cares to become involved.

The more online communities and social networks that I’m involved with, the more I view blogging as a core process that keeps them going.

Learning Classifications

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Readers

Informal learning is a theme of this blog and has been an area of professional interest for the past couple of years. There is a link between informal learning and collaborative work; the latter is a key focus of my consulting. This link was highlighted by Teemu Leinonen in a recent post on networked learning, starting with a definition of informal learning:

Informal learning means learning that is taking place in every day life situation when we are interacting with the outside world or with our own inside world. Most of the learning is informal and purely accidental and random.

This is an adequate working definition, in my mind, but what I find most interesting is Teemu’s definition of non-formal learning, a term that I haven’t used much or really noted:

Networked learning can also be non-formal. Non-formal means that it is informal but with objectives. If a group of criminals are organizing a discussion group in a bar to share ideas about latest burglary techniques they are having a non-formal learning session. It is informal but with an objective.

Given these definitions, I would say that much learning in intentional online communities (such as a community of practice around knowledge management) is non-formal, whereas it is more informal in looser social networks like Facebook. My sense of this is that non-formal learning would involve mostly self-generated objectives though objectives could also evolve from the group. Formal learning would differ from these in that most, if not all, objectives would be externally directed.

These three working definitions may help in defining and explaining different approaches or strategies when working with communities of practice, work groups, professional networks or even classes.

Informal Collaborative Social Learning & Work

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Some recent threads seem to be interweaving and creating patterns in what is becoming my de facto field of practice – “informal collaborative social learning & work”.

One thread is what Jay Cross has referred to with Hole-in-the-Wall Learning (HiW), which I first came across in the book Design Like You Give a Damn, and this conversation has been picked up by Peter Isackson:

It seems to me that the fundamental key to the success of HiW is the notion of “self-organized groups” who learn on their own. If education is to become truly non-invasive, as Jay suggests, it must refrain from defining both the goals and the means to reach them, entrusting the groups with this task. If educational gurus (authorities) notice that a group is neglecting what is considered “essential” in the curriculum (for whatever reason, whether it’s basic security, survival or inculcating an existing set of values), the group could be challenged to account for why they may be neglecting a certain topic or reminded of the interest in pursuing it. Respecting the self-organizing group and its decision-making capacity is the sine qua non of success. It also happens to be the absolute opposite of the organizational principles of traditional education and training.

The idea of self-organised groups is a key theme in informal workplace learning, which Jay and I experimented with last year in the “unworkshops“. The HiW data is corroboration that we may be on the right path, though these studies involve young children only.

The other thread came via Michele Martin when she described some “new” roles that may be jobs of the future. The roles of Personal Learning Environment Assistant; Social Media Specialist; Online Coach; Social Network Catalyst and Social Network Analyst are ones that I’ve taken on at some time over the past few years. These descriptors are, for me, a clarification of the work that I’m doing.

One on my constant challenges has been in describing my work to others, and these roles can help with that. A current project with the Advanced Leadership Program of the Canada School of Public Service has me in the roles of Social Network Analyst & Catalyst and perhaps later as PLE Assistant. As we develop the online aspect of the wildlife emergency response network with AWI next year, I will assume similar roles and perhaps even that of Online Coach. If we use these terms in our proposals and work descriptions, they will become mainstream and should make it easier to get away from industrial-style roles such as workshop trainer, when not applicable.

online-collab.jpg

The two threads of self-organised learning and some commonly used terms in online collaboration have come together for me and should make it easier to ‘splain just what the heck I do.

KM & Web 2.0

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How’s that for a geeky title?

Anyway, I took the time yesterday morning to listen to Jon Husband’s podcast interview with Dave Snowden. Let me say that this is worth your time if you’re interested in how knowledge management (KM) can be accomplished in our current technological surround. I intend on listening to this podcast again (thanks, Jon).

I took a few notes but there’s a lot more than this in the interview. Here’s what struck me [my comments in brackets]:

  • The most important word in Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 is “Context” [same for learning, IMO]
  • There should not be any rewards/incentives/money for knowledge work. It should be intrinsic and based on trust. External rewards will only have people gaming the system. [Sounds like every organisation I ever worked in]
  • You cannot create a knowledge-sharing culture, but you can make it easier for people to connect.
  • Knowledge work is not subject to corporate objectives, it is by its nature, “informal” [so informal learning supports knowledge work?]
  • It doesn’t matter what tools you use, because all web 2.0 tools should inter-operate; so why do companies spend time trying to figure out what wiki/blog software to use?
  • Most effective knowledge exists in flows and is contextually created in times of need [makes it difficult to tap and impossible to stick into a database].
  • The major Web 2.0 KM issue is the recall of knowledge in blogs over time (keywords, tags, search, narrative).
  • Dave: “Since I’ve left IBM I’ve had fewer virus attacks working in an open Web environment than I did in a secure corporate environment.”

Update: Jack Vinson and Ray Sims have more commentary on this interview.

Informal Learning – Show me the money

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Jay Cross has made Chapter 3 of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance available online. I went through my copy and noticed that I had  a note stuck in this chapter, when I had used it for a previous workshop:

The leading human performance authorities “have all demonstrated that most performance deficiencies in the workplace are not a result of skill and knowledge gaps. Far more frequently, they are due to environmental factors, such as lack of clear expectations; insufficient and untimely feedback; lack of access to required information; inadequate tools, resources and procedures; inappropriate and even counterproductive incentives; task interference and administrative obstacles that prevent achieving desired results” (Stolovitch & Keeps, 2002, p. 1).

I’ve discussed this before, but it’s worth repeating.