Learning

PKM – start small

2009-10-07 by Harold Jarche

Tony Karrer responded to my question yesterday on what aspects of PKM I should consider for the LearnTrends conference:

Harold – my question is what organizations should be doing around this? What skill building?

The challenge is that it’s personal and quite different based on roles. Going around and coaching seems too expensive.

How do you begin to move an organization forward?

I still think that the easiest way to share knowledge is to make visible some of what we already do, without adding extra work or effort. Pretty well anyone with a personal computer saves web sites to their Favorites/Bookmarks. Changing that simple annotation process to something that can be shared is relatively easy. I’ve explained it before in Free Your Bookmarks.

If an organization or department decided to put everyone’s bookmarks into a social application it would make for a large repository of links. There may be some effort in going through these bookmarks and adding more descriptive tags but it could be spaced over a period of time. The department responsible could then look at all of these bookmarks, which might be on a variety of systems (e.g. delicious, diigo) and bring them together with RSS and publish them to a central web page. The page could include a visual tag cloud for easier searching. This is an example of the role of connecting & communicating that I advocate for the training department of the 21st century. [Note to self: Diigo looks to be much more collaborative than Delicious, and I have to test it out some more].

It’s doubtful that everyone will be good at sharing bookmarks that are relevant, annotated and appropriately tagged. I think that in a large enough group some people will shine at this and, once again, the leaders of the initiative should support them. The examples provided by peers will have more chance of influencing workplace behaviour than rules and regulations from above, so allow methods to develop over time. The early adopters of social bookmarking may become facilitators for some of the other knowledge sharing activities I’ve previously suggested (and I haven’t even mentioned twitter):

Aggregate

Converse

Reflect

However, in organizations where there is little history of online collaboration, I would wait a while before initiating these. For a lot of workers and organizations, the leap to online social bookmarks will be big enough.

PKM for LearnTrends

2009-10-06 by Harold Jarche

Another free, LearnTrends professional development event is gathering steam for November.

Like past LearnTrends events, there will be a great variety of presentations and conversations over the three days. I’ll be presenting on Personal Knowledge Management. The entire schedule should be out on October 15th. I’d appreciate any input or suggestions on what to focus on for the half hour or so I’ll have to present.

Here are some of my existing resources on PKM:

The most recent overview: Sense-making with PKM

One example: Creating your PKM Processes

More examples: Other PKM Processes

Also, Patti Anklam just concluded a three-part series on knowledge management, with The 3rd KM: Personal Knowledge Management.

Increased complexity needs simplified design

2020-05-272009-10-05 by Harold Jarche

In the book Informal Learning: rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance, Jay Cross draws a parallel between the development of:

1) Bands, 2) Kingdoms, and 3) Democracies

with

1) Small, local businesses, 2) Large, central corporations, and 3) Loosely coupled networks.

The learning analogy Jay provides is

1) One on One, 2) Classes & Workshops, and 3) Informal learning. I’d like to expand on this.

Most learning of skills was based on an apprenticeship model until quite recently and this model still exists in some fields. One of the limitations of apprenticeship is that it does not scale. Each master is limited in how many personal relationships can be managed.

With better communications, the course model enabled expertise to be collected, first with books and later with other storage media such as video and audio. However, the limiting factors were lack of access to the resources and the shortage of connections between expertise and need.

The course model is an artifact of a time when information was scarce and connections were few. Now that many of us live in messy democracies and work in loose networks, learning has become complex with more connections to influence us. According to the authors of Getting to Maybe, in complex environments:

Rigid protocols are counter-productive
There is an uncertainty of outcomes in much of our work
We cannot separate parts from the whole
Success is not a fixed address

As Jay has said, informal learning is a better approach for more complex environments. Given the above, here are some guidelines for what informal learning development could look like:

Spend less time on design and more on ongoing evaluation to allow emergent practices to be developed.
Build learning resources so that they can be easily changed or modified by anyone (allow for a hacker mentality)
Allow everything to be connected, so that the work environment is the learning environment (but look for safe places to fail)
There is no clearly defined start or finish so enable connections from multiple access points.

Information is no longer scarce and our connections are now many. If an organizational informal learning effort lets people connect more easily and communicate more effectively, then it will have a chance of success. Connecting & Communicating are central roles for organizational leaders whose workplaces are becoming more complex, either in terms of evolving practices, changing markets or advances in technology. Enabling the integration of collaborative learning with work is a more flexible model than designing courses that are outdated as soon as they’re published.

Informal Learning & Performance Technology

Analysis for Informal Learning

Note: this will be the theme of my Trading Post session on 20 October at the CSTD Conference.

Visual Aids for Search

2009-10-01 by Harold Jarche

Just when you think you know what you’re doing on the Web, along comes another tool. In Borrowing from the Library to Support Workplace Learning, Michele Martin gives some great advice and links to several tools. She mentions the Google Wonder Wheel, which I hadn’t heard about, though it’s been right in front of my nose. It’s a quick way to get an understanding of what makes up a field of practice or a subject area and here are two examples:

Photos you can use

2009-09-27 by Harold Jarche

A friend asked about online repositories of photos that can be used for academic presentations and I mentioned several sources. I realized after sending the list that many others may not know about the wealth of resources available, especially for teaching and learning.

Online photo repositories (check usage rights for each):

Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not! http://morguefile.com/

Creative Commons search, but check license of each photo: http://search.creativecommons.org/

Commons project from various institutions, including The Library of Congress: http://www.flickr.com/commons/

Wikimedia Commons, with many public domain images: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Updated:

Most of the media in these collections are attached to generous copyright licensing. http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/

Work Smarter – informal learning in the cloud

2009-09-21 by Harold Jarche

Just picked up my copy of Jay Cross’ latest book, Work Smarter, which sells through Lulu for a reasonable $19.99. As Jay says, this is not a traditional book. It’s an unbook and not meant to be read linearly, though you can if you want. It covers a wide variety of topics, as you can see in the preview, and features all of our colleagues at InternetTime Alliance as well as other friends of Jay.

The book is also updated from time to time, so it’s always current.

This is the kind of book to keep at your desk and peruse as you need, refreshing something you know or a quick read on a new concept. The sub-title tells it all, “informal learning in the cloud”. This is a great book to hand out to clients and others who want to get up to speed on working and learning in networks.

Thanks for all the hard work in putting this together, Jay.

If learning was free

2009-09-20 by Harold Jarche

Writing If TV Ads were Free, Seth Godin looks at the business and says that the reason there was so much talk about advertising instead of just doing it was because TV ads are expensive. Not all ideas could make it to the broadcast medium. However, with web social media, the cost is minimal with few barriers to entry:

You guessed it: new media is largely free. So why teach it in school as if it were a scary theory? Why encourage people to be afraid? Just do it. Build your own platform. Appear in the places that seem productive or interesting or challenging or fun. Experiment quietly, figure out what works, do it more. No need to be a dilettante, and certainly you shouldn’t spread yourself too thin or quit at the first sign of failure… but… quit waiting for the right answer.

Anybody see a parallel here with instructional systems design or curriculum development? These processes take time and money and once the investment is made, nobody wants to do it again. Web media can be created quickly and, if designed in an open manner, can change according to the needs of learners and facilitators. For instance, we developed the Work Literacy site in about a week and at no cost. It was added to and modified by the participants. Everyone was an unpaid volunteer. Total cost: zero.

Design is a craft and takes practice and so does instructional media design. Now you can practice these for free. With the web, learning is free; “quit waiting for the right answer”.

What training can learn from advocacy

2009-09-02 by Harold Jarche

On the Net, everyone is competing for attention, but two things seem to increase your signal strength – 1) make the media appealing 2) talk to people on their terms.

Here’s an excellent resource that shows how to get your message across – Visualizing Information for Advocacy:

Advocacy organizations tend to collect a lot of information.

They often package this information into detailed written reports. While these reports support policy recommendations and are valuable reference tools, they may not be the most effective way to make an impact within a campaign.

We live in an information-rich environment and in our daily lives constantly receive messages conveyed through design. Many of these messages seek to influence as well as inform, serving a variety of commercial and non-commercial interests. How do you make your message heard?

It’s packed with good examples of information design, as shown by the cover which has visuals from a campaign that developed an analogy between federal land grants and use of the airwaves (read the booklet for more information):

The message here is that all the information in the world won’t help if it’s not received, which is what the marketing and advertising industry has known for a long time. For those in non-profits, or in training, this is something that should be considered in all of our work. It’s especially important when people have the option of paying attention. As the authors say:

You’ve got data, now what to do with it?

How do you tell your story more effectively?

How can you move your audience?

Another example of getting your message across is a recent video by Canada’s Sons of Maxwell: United Breaks Guitars. It shows how a message can go viral on YouTube, much to the chagrin of United Airlines, whose employees broke the band’s guitar and the company would not pay compensation. This video got the attention of over 2.5 million people in less than a week. Though well-produced, it was the timing and the grassroots appeal that really spread this video. This is almost impossible to plan for and I wouldn’t trust anyone who “guaranteed” that my message would go viral.

Face it, even if your organizational marketing or instructional video is informative and professionally done, it probably won’t attract 2.5 million visits or ever go viral. That reinforces the need to also talk to people on their terms. This is especially pertinent if your audience is online and can click away at any time (Captive audiences are a different situation).

Communicating with people on the Internet means engaging in meaningful conversations, one at a time. As the Cluetrain Manifesto informed us 10 years ago:

Markets are conversations.
Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

So gather all that useful data, tell a compelling story using good design and understand your audience well enough to speak on their terms.

Here’s another fine example: the credit crisis visualized.

Learning about healthy workplaces

2009-08-31 by Harold Jarche

The Project did not last very long but I learned a few things along the way.

First, I saw how England and Scotland are using social media to address the stigma around mental health issues, with Shift and SeeMe. Advocacy and non-profit groups could take some lessons from these organizations, especially Shift’s high quality videos.

A clear answer to my main question eluded me during what should have been the first half of the project, “How can we engage senior leadership in organizations to take mental health seriously and adapt their workplaces appropriately?” Engaging business leaders on what is considered a non-essential area requires much time and networking. It’s a long-term campaign and social media are only one part of that.

I came across Beth Kanter’s excellent resource on Non-profits, health care and social media which included a comprehensive slide presentation. It seems that 59% of Americans (and one can assume Canadians as well) get their health information online. If you’re in the health information business, then you had better be online. Also, connecting people and communities is necessary, as “People tend to trust ‘a person like me’ more than authority figures from business, government or the media.” Here’s another reason why non-profits and advocacy groups should use online social networking – it’s cheap and connects people who share some values.

I learned a lot about mental health in the workplace, such as the fact that 2008 was the worst year for disability claims in the Canadian public service and that over 44% of these are mental health conditions, as reported in The Ottawa Citizen . From some of the facts, I created a slideshare presentation, using CC Flickr photos:

Do You Care?

View more documents from Harold Jarche.

In the short period that I looked at mental health in the workplace, I came to see it as the 21st century version of physical safety. In the 20th century concerned people and trade unions fought to create safer workplaces. Our mines, factories and work sites are now much safer in this country than they were 50 years ago. My step-father died several years ago from emphysema which was partially due to time working in the silver mines of BC without any respiratory filters. Most workplaces today have good policies and practices on workplace safety. In many cases, it’s the law.

Moving to a post-industrial economy many, if not most, of our products and services are now intangible. Much of the work we do is knowledge work, requiring more brain than brawn. Even farmers need knowledge on a wide spectrum of disciplines (weather, markets, genetics, financing) in order to run a successful operation. Our brain is our primary means of making a living, therefore keeping a healthy mental state just makes sense.

The concept of work/life balance is not just a feel good strategy but is essential for any knowledge-intensive workplace. So, do we really need all the numbers to justify a mental health policy for the workplace? The data show the importance of mental health in the workplace, but we don’t pay attention to it and we rarely discuss it.

What’s the future? A recent Canadian study showed that depression and anxiety affect up to 15% of pre-schoolers. Mental health is an important issue that will not go away and informed discussions are necessary at all levels. I’m glad I learned about this over the Summer.

Mind Map: The Networked Society

2009-08-26 by Harold Jarche

Over the years of writing this blog I’ve reorganized, added tags, categories and the Key Posts & Toolbox pages in order to help make sense of over 1,500 posts. A major theme in my writing has been our shift to a networked society and what that means in how we work and learn. I’m especially interested in the fact that working and learning are merging in many contexts. Learning (often viewed from the limited perspective of training or education) is not a separate activity, removed from work.

This mind map links several concepts and related articles around the theme of the networked society: