Informal Learning

The conversation around informal learning has been heating up a bit lately, with Stephen Downes’ critique of Jay Cross’ mixer analogy, as well as Bill Brantley’s attack on the entire book.

Personally, I’ve really appreciated the insight that Tom Haskins has brought to the conversation. Tom picked up on my connecting informal learning with critical theory and then proceeded to develop the free range chicken metaphor. Tom followed this post with an examination of how informal learning on the Web eliminates the middle man, and therefore puts a lot of jobs in jeopardy (my last post is an example of how difficult it can be to continue the course-based e-learning business model).

Learning from learners and learning without content delivery – offers “no further income” for centralized production enterprises. It’s a similar problem that file sharing gives CD manufacturers, blogging gives print journalism and digital video gives movie houses. Perhaps a better term than early adopters would be ‘early defectors” or free agents, cultural creatives, long-tailers or Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Perhaps this is why the conversation is heating up. It’s dangerous to question other people’s modus vivendi.

Tom Haskins is a relatively new voice in the cross-connected blogs that I have consistently followed over several years, but he has been thought-provoking and respectful at the same time. Definitely worth a read at Growing, changing, learning, creating, if you haven’t been there yet.

Jay has used the term free range learning for a while in reference to informal learning and Tom Haskins has picked up on the free range chicken metaphor. Perhaps we need a cool logo to show that we support free range learning.

I grabbed this Public Domain graphic from Open Clip Art, but I’m sure there’s a graphic artist out there who could make a better graphic that we all could share. How about a graphical meme?

Social media on the web (blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos) have given the 1 billion connected people on the planet the basic tools of production in a knowledge economy. We can create mental abstractions that represent our knowledge and then share them with the world for validation. For the first time in history, the workers own the means of production of the valuable assets of the current economy – intangible goods. We know that intangibles are valuable because that’s what our stock markets tell us. For example, the S&P index is over 85% intangibles.

This ability to be the means of production makes informal learning on the web very powerful. We have always learned informally; in corridors between classes or when interacting on the job. Now we can have many more of these interactions and we can find people who are as passionate about an issue as we are. Informal learning in our networked society is not something that you inject into formal training nor is it something you add to your favourite mix of “blended learning”. Informal learning is a paradigm-shifting phenonomen that has arrived because we are now connected, we have cheap technologies and we need to increase our knowledge due to the complex challenges we face in our economies and societies.

As we become more connected, I think that informal learning may become the only way that we will learn in the future. We will need individual, customised experiences and we will decide what these will be. Formal, standardized training & education will become second class. Standardized jobs will be the lowest paying ones, so who will want standardized education? Not anyone who has a choice. The choices will be various and many will be free. They already are.

How can organisations take advantage of this? Create a compelling reason for workers to want to advance the purpose of your enterprise and then give them the means (unfettered access to tools and other people) to learn on their own. If your organisation deserves it, then your workers will figure out what’s best for them, their organisation and our society. Sound radical? It is.

Diagram by Dion Hinchcliffe

Update: and then I come across Chris Sessums’ blog post on Read, Write, Mix Burn … where he refers to a paper written by Robbie McClintock seven years ago:

“In a world in which each individual can pursue most any personal purpose in most any place that suits him, all on his own initiative, the habit of relying on authoritative institutions, which operate through commands enforced by penalties and inducements, may sharply diminish. With the change of phase in the opportunity factor, people need less and less to rely on formal institutions for a chance to fulfill their personal purposes. And as more and more people become aware of the unlimited choices that they have in their personal lives, sanctions and incentives will become ineffectual means of administering authoritative commands in government, society, business, and education.” (para 101)

I really enjoyed presenting at TK2007 this week, even though our session was moved to a new venue and it was at the end of the day. Being that the topic was informal learning, the session was – informal. The next day I reviewed the participant evaluations with Jay, who has already noted several of the comments. Needless to say, there was a wide spectrum of opinions. Perhaps the best comment was, “They didn’t have the presentation down – too informal for me. I like the irony.”

I too, liked the irony. Perhaps it’s the difference between entertaining and facilitating learning. Sometimes you need to have your cognitive tree shaken a bit. I also noticed that those who have been following the blog conversations were ready to jump in and add some more.

With the opening-up of the informal learning unworkshops, I hope that more people jump in to this flowing conversation. Informal learning is obviously not new, but the Web has opened up some fascinating new ways of conversing, collaborating and creating meaning.

It’s been a hectic week, with a full-day session in Ottawa followed by a long flight to Las Vegas, and then three days of TechKnowledge 2007. It’s been a time to connect and re-connect with many people and have several long conversations. I guesss that this trip has reinforced my understanding that learning is conversation. It’s how you make meaning, by having conversations in the trusted space that you’ve been lucky enough to create.

I didn’t get to many of the sessions but I’m glad that I was able to attend Tony Karrer’s presentation on blogs and social tagging. Each time you see someone else explaining a concept to others, you understand a bit more how to communicate it yourself. Tony did a great job working with an audience that had wide-ranging levels of skills and knowledge.

There hasn’t been much time for reflection on all that’s transpired but that can wait for the red-eye flight back to Canada tonight. There will also be some announcements concerning the unworkshops next week, so stay tuned.

Of course, there has been a been some time for little bit of sightseeing …

but I didn’t get a chance to take in any of the shows:

Some links and references that I promised during yesterday’s workshop in Ottawa are here.

The discussion on networked learning, with Leigh Blackall

Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users

Presentation Zen Blog

Judy Brown’s Web 2.0 Tools

Robert Paterson’s interview about blogging with PBS. Follow the link that Rob provides and look on the right box called Extended Interviews.

The Five Minute University video

Lawrence Lessig, On free and the differences between culture & code, Google Video

Just add a note in the comments if I missed something. Some other links will be sent to everyone via e-mail.

I’d like to thank everyone who came out and helped to make a great day of meaningful conversations.

The CSTD Ottawa Informal Learning Workshop is tomorrow, Tuesday January 30th.

I’ll be discussing informal learning in general, personal knowledge management, various tools and analysis & implementation techniques.

If you would like share your views or say how you’ve implemented some type of workplace informal learning then Skype me between Noon and 4:00 PM EST (GMT-5) for a quick chat with the participants. We’re expecting about 25 people from various industries and government departments in the Ottawa area [for those on my skype contact list, I may be pinging you tomorrow].

This past year I used Elgg as my blogging platform for the Informl Learning Unworkshops, as I wanted to keep my posts separate from my main website. As many readers already know, I am a real fan of Elgg, which is a social networking, blogging, aggregating and e-portfolio system all in one. It’s also available as a free service or as open source code to host yourself. However, the experts are always available for additional services.

I recently revisited my site on Elgg, where I have a number of informal learning-related articles. Since I last posted, Elgg has been updated and is even more usable, in my opinion. Today, as I was explaining how it works, the ability to tag each post with a level of privacy (Public, Logged in Users Only, Specific Community Members, Group Members, Private) was seen has a great feature, especially to those new to blogging and Web 2.0 applications.

I’ll be covering Elgg in some detail during the CSTD Ottawa workshop next week and thought I’d give a heads-up to anyone who may want to create an account, explore a bit and discuss their experience.