Learning

Christian Long has posed a thoughtful question at the end of this post on learning, education and schooling.

So, here’s my challenge back to you and all others who are even mildly interested:

Show me the spirit of learning first. Follow its path. Follow the learners where they take you. Then, and only then, begin to show me and tell me and demonstrate in real time what those programs and those places and those calendars of ‘school’ are…and then perhaps, out of the corner of my eye, begin to highlight the emerging networks of ‘education’ that loosely draw them together. But if learning is not front and center, the learner leading the charge, and the path discoved en route, then there is no more need to argue the semantics of “industry” or “industrious”. The later is inate. The former irrelevant. And we’ll all ring around the rosey, ashes ashes, we all fall down.

Christian has put forth what I would call a first principle, from which our actions should follow – “learning front and center”.

There is an article featuring the Queen Street Commons, the Innovation Commons and Workspace in today’s Globe & Mail newspaper (page B9):

The timing of these ventures [Work Commons] seems right, and they’re a phenomenon to watch. The past 10 years have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of contract positions and freelance workers, along with a proliferation of mobile computing technologies. Third working spaces capitalize on both trends, and have the potential to change the way labour is organized. Small businesses might, for instance, decide to use such environments instead of putting contract staff in their own high-priced office space, or forgo setting up their own facilities altogether. These environments may become the place where trends in small business IT use and spending are determined.

Third working spaces could also be the physical representation of the collaboration that blogs, wikis and related technologies have fostered over the Internet. Finally, they could change what we expect out of the working experience. In the dot-com days, companies installed foosball tables and beanbag chairs to lure talent and make them comfortable. After the bubble burst, those perks disappeared. Third working spaces propose something in between — a much-needed renovation of the workplace concept, rather than an extreme makeover.

More fodder for our Commons‘ business plan :-)

Charles Nelson takes exception with my post on The Relevance of the Learning Profession:

There are two false assumptions here. One is that subverting hierarchy results in no experts …

The second is that “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”.

I guess that we differ on the need for experts in a field. Dr. Nelson feels that experts are necessary, or “learning can become derailed or even stopped in its tracks.” He says that experts should proceed with humility, but that experts are necessary for our field to progress. We appear to be on divergent learning paths.

Today, expertise is being eroded in many fields. Medical doctors are confronted daily by patients who have researched a disease, from reputable sources, in greater depth than the doctor has time to do. Patients are becoming co-managers of their health. Even bloggers can get the scoop on expert journalists. It is getting difficult for anyone to be an expert other than in a very narrow field for a short period of time. As a consultant, I live this every day because I am only as good as my last project. Knowledge workers are like actors, we are only as good as our last performance. For a fleeting moment, we may be viewed as experts, but for not much longer.

Hierarchies and experts have a symbiotic relationship. Without hierarchies, no authority can tell us who is the expert. Were humans able to learn before there were hierarchies and experts? Would they be able to learn in spite of without experts?

Personally, I know that hyperlinks subvert hierarchies. That’s how a dispersed group of a dozen free-agents can out-manoeuver and under-bid a Fortune 50 company by 90% and secure a contract with a government agency. That’s how our Informl Learning Unworkshop [workshops] can be filled to capacity without spending a dollar on marketing expertise.

By subverting traditional business hierarchies, a lone consultant in Atlantic Canada can do business around the world. But does that make me the new expert? I have never purported to be an an expert. I have some skills and some knowledge, but my greatest asset is my network. Perhaps individual expertise is gradually being replaced by collaborative expertise. I’m not sure; but then I’m no expert.

The world is not flat, it’s kind of lumpy. By the time it’s truly flat, we’ll take it for granted. One flattener is the ability to create any digital artifact and post it for immediate worldwide access on the web. These posts can then be hyperlinked to any other post; it’s extremely democratic but also chaotic.

Most bloggers (including me) have been echoing the Cluetrain refrain that “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”. Many edubloggers have been saying that the educational system is no longer relevant to the needs of a knowledge society and none more succinctly than Chris Lehmann. As the world flattens, so will corporate and bureaucratic structures, but not without struggle and confusion.

The challenge for learning professionals will be to change their toolsets from prescriptive to supportive. For instance, in our informl learning unworkshops we’re trying to foster a community with the tools and connections needed to address that essential 80% of learning that is ignored by formal training and education. I really do not believe that formal approaches, like instructional systems design, will be able to help these learning needs.

Changes in business, public education and corporate training will happen in fits and spurts and those in bypassed jobs will not notice that they’re irrelevant until it’s too late. That’s the way with revolutions; you don’t know you’re in one until it’s almost over. The indicators though, are pretty clear.

Look at the advances that open source software has made in the past three years. Three years ago I strongly suggested to my LearnNB colleagues that this region should develop expertise in open source learning applications and become a major node of skills and knowledge on these tools that were available to anyone for free. Of course I was seen as an open source radical and ignored. Imagine if a few companies had started to develop expertise in Moodle, now adopted by major universities around the world, three years ago.

Today we are are seeing the beginning of the turning of the tide, in spite of the current market success of a few large vendors. There is now a general acceptance of open source software and even open source content (e.g. Wikipedia) as viable options. We are also seeing the subversion of institutional software systems via quick and dirty web applications (free IP telephony, free blogs, tagging as our own semantic web, and a multitude of social networks) that can be set up in minutes.

It’s not just open source that will change our institutions; it’s the realisation that individuals now own the means of knowledge production. In a knowledge economy, the individual is the knowledge creator and relationships are the currency. It’s getting easier to set up alternative systems if you know who to connect with and get things done.

Democracy is subversive and so is the Web. In a connected world, every learner brings his or her own network with them. Learners no longer integrate into the educational system, they connect their network to it – if they want to. How relevant is an educational system that does not allow learners to connect their personal, professional or vocational networks to the “system”?

As a learning professional, it’s time to take a stance. Enabling learning is no longer about disseminating good content. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and then taking a back seat. In a flattened learning system there are no more experts, only fellow learners on paths that may cross.

Patrick, at Green Chameleon, writes about the limitations of knowledge management systems, their constraining characteristics and the real world knowledge sharing practices of the medical community. There is an excellent graphic that shows the symptoms of the Industrial Era grating against the Knowledge Era. The medical field is still working in silos of specialist knowledge, where doctors and nurses learn in separate schools and from different perspectives, but about the same thing – human health.

These separate disciplines, with their mores and practices dating back in time, are now confronted with the patient who has instant access to a lot of information; not all of it accurate. Patrick notes that not all knowledge sharing is equal, but my feeling is that the informed patient is someone whom the medical system has not yet comes to grips with. If the medical profession, with all of its specialties, cannot share information with members outside the tribe, then how can information be freely shared with the patient?

Friction will continue in hierarchial corporations and bureaucracies as knowledge era clients rub against industrial era service providers. One of our challenges in the training and education fields with be to provide methods and tools to overcome these knowledge-sharing obstacles. Enabling learning flow in a networked knowledge society is much more important than creating learning content.

The Atlantic Wildlife Institute is developing a regional wildlife emergency response network and part of our work is the creation of learning resources. We have identified two major knowledge areas to be addressed: the identification of local wildlife, and how how to deal with these animals when they are in distress. People often don’t know what to do when they see what appears to be an orphaned or possibly injured animal. In many cases, the animal should be left alone, as the mother has probably left it alone intentionally.

Today, we tested out some learning programs, as we had visits from veterinary technician students as well as a Grade 7 class. Generally speaking, the average person’s ability to identify local species of wildlife is not very good. As a society, we are out of touch with our habitat, and we don’t understand the roles that wildlife have in our environment, which we share with them. For instance, killing off certain predators creates other problems down the food chain or increases disease in other populations, which may be transferred to humans. Identification of wildlife and then understanding their role in nature are the first two steps.

The Grade 7 students had a tour of our facilities, including our 102 foot long aviary flight cage, followed by some fun activities. The students ran a 50 metre course and were classified as predator or prey, based on their times. The prey set off on an obstacle course and were chased by the predators – all good exercise. We also set up some artificial treees and the students had to build an eagle’s nest, by playing the role of builder or gatherer. This activity was thoroughly enjoyed.

At the end of the afternoon I think that most of our visitors had some understanding of the complexity of nature and that simple solutions are not enough. It’s a start …

Photo: Grade 7 students from Marshview Middle School building their own eagle nests, while Bob the goose supervises. Bob has been at AWI for 3 years, and refuses to migrate with other geese.

Here are some more wildlife photos.

[NB: I’ve posted this twice as my WP installation seems to have eaten the last post.]