Learning

Learning

Future business of learning

by

The future business of Learning (or whatever name we finally settle on) lies in providing organisations with the tools, techniques and environments to support them in building employee capability and performance in an increasing range of areas. It certainly doesn’t lie in the provision of ‘ training’. Traditional training may have a role in the picture going forward, sometimes, but it will certainly be only a minor role.

In The Future Business of Learning for Suppliers Charles Jennings shares his perspective and experience from Reuters. I’ve noticed that when we moved to e-learning the mainstream approach was to stick an “e” on industrial, classroom training and have away with it. When that didn’t work, the mainstream started talking about “blended” learning, meaning stuff bolted on to the original system. Now we’re getting collaboration and informal learning slapped on legacy systems, but much of it is lipstick on a pig. The pig hasn’t changed, it’s just a different shade of lipstick.

After 15 years of being in some way involved with web-centric learning, I’m seeing glimmers of hope that we’re going to dump the “horseless carriage” metaphor of e-learning. The financial system collapse and peak oil are two major factors, as we have hit a wall in doing things the old way. We also have a generation entering the workforce who don’t know what life before the Web was like. They don’t know a world where you can’t connect with anyone at anytime and with the device of your choice.

What needs to be jettisoned is the concept of learning as receiving information. We are swimming in information. We need to make sense of our connections and relationships. Connections should be made between several fields of practice and the best taken from each. I think there is great potential in combining the best of organizational development, knowledge management, training, human performance technology and information technology to develop methods for working and learning in digital networks. I wonder though, if we’ll take the easy route and just buy the next version of silicon snake oil that comes along.

What are you selling? Lipstick on a pig or something that works? What will you buy?

Join us at The Future of Learning as a Business on 23 July to discuss these issues and more.

clttop2

Other PKM processes

by

It seems that Stephen Downes isn’t enamoured with my PKM process:

My first thought was, do I do it this way? And, of course, I don’t – my process is much too haphazard to be dignified with the term ‘method’. But then I thought, what does the concept of a ‘method’ here imply? That there is a ‘best’ way to manage knowledge an information? Isn’t that what we’ve learned there isn’t? It’s a pick-and-choose sort of thing: the way we manage information has a lot to do with the information, and a lot to do with who we are and what we want the information for. “categorizing’, for example, is something I do only if my head is in a vise and I have no alternative – and even then, I use scripts to do it for me.

To be clear, my intention is to show what works for me and perhaps some part of this may work for others. All of my articles on PKM are descriptive, not prescriptive. Take what you need, as there are no “best practices” for complex and personal learning processes.

For example, here is a graphical representation of Lilia Efimova’s process:

knowledge-work-framework-efimova

This is Urs Frei’s representation of PKM:

Frei_PKM_20

And here is a model of social networking technologies and PKM skills from a group of researchers at the University of Florence:

networking_pkm

These representations offer different perspectives on the PKM theme, with a few similarities, and perhaps are of some use for others.

Here is one more by Sumeet Moghe (posted Jan 2010):

PKM_cpor-process_sumeet_meghe

Creating your PKM processes

by

In Sense-making with PKM I described some personal knowledge management processes using various web tools. The overall process consists of four internal actions (Sort, Categorize, Retrieve, Make Explicit) and three externally focused ones (Connect, Contribute, Exchange). Personal knowledge management is one way of addressing the issue of TMI (too  much information).

pkm-flow

A sense-making routine can be regularly reading certain blogs and news feeds, capturing important ideas with social bookmarks and then putting ideas out in the open on a blog. The power of this process is realized after many iterations when you have created a personally contextualized knowledge base. PKM takes the notion of a personal journal and extends it significantly.

In Web Tools for Critical Thinking I expanded on Dave Pollard’s critical thinking process, showing how web tools can be used to develop critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is an important aspect of PKM but I had not put the two together explicitly. I created the following table to integrate my PKM process with Dave’s critical thinking process. You may have noticed that I’ve changed the order of  Retrieve & Make Explicit, but this is an iterative and non-linear process, so it doesn’t really matter.

My own PKM process has changed lately with my increasing use of Twitter and this is noted in the tools and strategies column.

PKM Critical Thinking Process Web Tools & Strategies
1 Sort Observe & Study Use an aggregator (feed reader) to keep track of online conversations

Follow interesting people on Twitter
2 Categorize Synthesize & Qualify
 Use Social Bookmarks

Find a Twitter App to suit your needs
3 Retrieve Draw Inferences Now that information is in a DB, use Search, instead of file folders.

Create online (reusable) mind maps,  graphics and text files of your thoughts
4 Make Explicit Form Tentative Opinions Tweet

Write a Blog post
A Connect Identify Missing Information (and people) Connect via Twitter, follow blogs or join Social Networks
B Contribute Develop Supporting Arguments Join in Tweet Chats

Write Blog Comments
C Exchange Analyze & Challenge Arguments Continue and extend conversations from news sources, other tweets or blog posts

Learning to work smarter

by

Anne Marie McEwan’s Smart Working nicely summarizes the shift that is taking place in how we work. These shifts have happened before – when we developed agriculture, moved into cities, or created powered machines. Now we are becoming networked.

The term ‘smart working’ has in recent years been associated with flexible and mobile working, that is ‘anytime, anywhere’ ways of working enabled by communication technologies. Another view, broader than the narrow focus on location and time independence, is that smart working is about flexibility and autonomy in where, when and how people work.

In my view, smart working is the outcome of designing and putting in place systems, working environments and governance principles that are known to be associated with effective business performance, including workforce autonomy and self-determination, and which seek to maximise opportunities to use and develop people’s knowledge, skills.

I’m in the process of putting together several threads as a single article, and this is where I do my thinking in public.

In The Learning Age I said that business models and work practices are becoming networked and global, speeding the rate of time to implementation. The lines between work and leisure are blurring, as with work and learning. Today, about 16% of us can be described as hyperconnected but that is expected to grow to 40%, and I would say those people will be the main drivers of our economies and societies.

Effective knowledge sharing is essential for all organizations today but the mainstream application of knowledge management, and I would include learning management, over the past few decades has got it all wrong. We have over-managed information because it’s easy and we’re still enamoured with information technology. However, the ubiquitous information surround may put a stop to this. As enterprises become more closely tied to the Web, the principle of “small pieces loosely joined” is permeating our industrial walls. More and more workers have their own sources of information and knowledge.

At an individual level we need to make sense of the ever-increasing signals coming from our networks, while reducing the noise. This is why I developed sense-making with PKM which I am continuing to refine. Just yesterday I explained social bookmarks, feed readers and using Twitter as a search engine to a “digital immigrant” the same age as me. The light went on when I showed how she could connect with a worldwide cooperative community that shared several of her professional interests.

The power of micro-blogging with Twitter so far is quite impressive and I was one who adopted this medium with a fair bit of skepticism. I just noticed that in the past few months Twitter has replaced Google as the prime referring site for visitors here, surpassing Google.

With some individual skills in using social media, the next question an organization may ask is how to start an online community. Of course starting one doesn’t mean it will grow or be useful. Communication does not equal collaboration, and that is a challenge in “building” communities of practice (CoP). Just because the communication tools are in place does not mean that people will automatically collaborate.  You can’t really build a CoP, it has to emerge through practice; but you can put in systems and processes to support CoP’s.  You know you’re in a real community of practice when it changes your practice.

Taking advantage of social networks for business can give a temporary advantage (everything in business is temporary anyway) and help to develop disruptive business models. So that’s it – there are significant shifts in how we work which will require new skills and if used effectively can create new ways of generating wealth. The information age status quo isn’t the same for the learning age.

Friday’s Finds #8

by

It was a very busy week that left me little time to blog but I still found some gems on Twitter:

via valdiskrebs Nice short article by one of the “key players” in social network analysis — knowledge creation & network structure.

via jmcgee – Mike_Wesely #QUOTE: “Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert.” ~ Robert Brault

via fdomon – jobadge : Social:Learn – a place to organise, share and record learning online in a social way

via JaneBozarth – aenclade – skipzilla : Great exchange between preschooler & her dad: He says he teaches art in college. She puzzles, “You mean they forget?

Tom Gram answers LCB big question in depth: it’s still about improving performance

Elizabeth May Advocates Against “Crazy Copyright Laws”

University campuses must be among the most inefficient uses of land and real estate imaginable

Skills for learning professionals

by

In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

That’s the LCB big question, and my article on Skills 2.0, written one year ago, addressed this very question. So when this question was posed I had to make sure that I hadn’t changed my perspective in the interim. My basic premise was that working and learning in networks is an important aspect of professionalism:

Today, active involvement in informal learning, particularly through web-based communities, is key to remaining professional and creative in a field. Being a learning professional in a Web 2.0 world is becoming more about your network than your current knowledge.

I said that the main skill needed by learning professionals is attitude, especially being open to continuous learning and opening up your learning to public view in order to collaborate with other professionals. I’ve called this life in Beta.

In the past year, I’ve found that an open attitude is becoming more important. The people who blog or connect on Twitter can get things done quicker, find answers, get advice and can be more effective for their organizations. While working for a client this past week I used my online networks to quickly get advice that was important for the project. But you can’t do this without a network and it takes time to build trust. People usually have to know something about you before they help you out. Without some persistent point of presence (blog, Twitter, podcast), you’re invisible online unless you’re already famous.

Putting yourself out there as a learner first means that you may need to check your attitude before going online. People who pontificate or don’t help others may not be able to build a trusted network. This is even more evident on Twitter with its asymmetry, where people you follow don’t have to follow you back. Having no followers may be a sign that you don’t have much to give back to your network. That could make it more difficult to get information and advice when you need it. Twitter has amplified many aspects of blogging. You can follow more people, send out more (short) messages and get really quick feedback. This amplification will likely continue with future social networking technologies.

Last year, I concluded:

If we limit our conversations to only those in the same office, we’re missing out. People with larger and more diverse networks have an advantage as learning professionals and in dealing with change. This constant flow of sense-making through conversations in our workplace networks makes the idea of learning as a fixed event in a specific place look obsolete.

This year, I would add that it’s not just an advantage to belong to diverse professional networks but that the situation has tipped so that it is now a significant disadvantage to not actively participate in social learning networks.

Friday’s Finds #7

by

From the Twitter files this past week:

via @c4lpt – 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 3)

via @1ernesto1 – Cheater or Collaborator?

via @johnsgunn – Canadians have no legitimate expectation of privacy when they use the Internet

via @kdwashburn –  Florida school boosts achievement by jettisoning textbooks

ROI:

Productivity in a Networked Era: Not Your Fathers ROI  CLO article

Flexibility has it’s own Return on Investment

Connecting ideas with communities

by

I use the chasm model to explain my professional work of 1) seeing what is ready to cross the chasm by 2) staying connected to the innovators & being an early adopter so that 3) I can help mainstream organizations. It’s a good graphic summary of my consulting practice.

Five years ago I looked at a couple of models (Rogers & Gladwell) in the Dummies Guide to Change and came up with a model on how you might be able to effect a change in a population. It wasn’t tested, it was just an idea. One of the core ideas was the law of the few, or the notion that a few key types of people help to speed social communication. As Charlene Croft puts it [looking at how Twitter is used]:

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.

I figured that if you want to foster large-scale change in an organization or even a network, then you would:

  1. connect the right Mavens with the potential Innovators,
  2. target the Early Adopters via the Connectors and then
  3. find the Salespeople who will influence the Early Majority

I also figured that the Late Majority and the Laggards were not worth the effort, time and resources.

I’ve noticed that this is what has happened with some of the ideas that I’ve worked with in those five ideas. For example, informal learning in the organization was an idea five years ago. Jay Cross (maven) published one of the first business books on the subject in 2006 – Informal Learning. Many connectors, especially educational technology and business bloggers, took the idea and spread it. Then in 2009 we see it being discussed as the core idea of the ASTD opening keynote, and moving into the mainstream by several salespeople (vendors, service providers) looking for business opportunities.

This is just a working model but it may help in looking at how you can get your new ideas into the mainstream.

Friday’s Finds #6

by

It seems that Twitter has been the only subject discussed here this week, so I promise to broaden the subject matter next week. Here’s my synthesis of some of what I learned on Twitter:

Business

A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture via @johnt

John Hegel’s Shift Happens Redux via @jalam1001

“Just heard of several faculty who left research & teaching because of toxic workplaces” via @ellenfweber (related to my work at Mental Health @ Work)

Learning

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists via @josiefraser @courosa

Questions on Informal Learning and the Future of Corporate Training via @fdomon

Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed – How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part 1 via @denniscallahan

Food & Energy

(related to my volunteering with Sackville CSA)

Biggest seedmaker, Monsanto, to prune 900 jobs + does a drop in potash sales = less food? via @folkstone

Longest path between here & the truth is through a McDonalds PR campaign on sustainable agricultural practices. via @rhh

Learning and micro-blogging

by

I’m presenting on Twitter and its uses for education and learning later today, as I noted in my last post. During the past few weeks I’ve been looking at my own uses of Twitter and compiling a list of resources on the subject. There are lots of how-to presentations on Twitter, and I would recommend the CommonCraft videos (available in multiple languages) for starters. After that, Jane Hart’s slideshow on specific steps to get going is very practical.

For Twitter in (higher) education, the video and accompanying commentary about a university History course at UT Dallas is the best I’ve found so far. Nicole Melander’s Why I Hate Twitter and Why I Love Twitter posts about a Social Networking and Business class are also of interest to educators.

I think that Twitter used only inside a course is quite constrained. My experience has shown that the “course” is not a good model for the Internet, and is best-suited for the classroom, from which it came. Without walls, courses and curriculum become rather messy. That may make Twitter, like blogs, best suited for personal learning environments (PLE) in academia, so that learners can use it for several courses and connect to their non-academic networks as well. As educators experiment with Twitter, it will probably be at the course level, but that should not be the final limit.

One of the greatest aspects of Twitter I’ve noticed is its asymmetry, or the fact that I don’t have to follow people who follow me. This lets me tune my network to get better signal and less noise. If you find Twitter boring or useless, then you’re following the wrong people. Blogs allow this asymmetry but social networks like Facebook don’t. Dave Emmett shows on this graphic the difference between what Seth Godin describes as tightening & broadening networks. Twitter & blogs foster broadening networks.

My own focus is using Twitter as another tool/process in personal knowledge mastery. Twitter can be  used as a collaboration tool, performance support or knowledge management application. I’ve integrated Twitter into my sense-making process with Friday’s Finds. This helps me synthesize the various threads over a week and addresses one of Twitter’s weaknesses; long-term archiving. In addition, synchronous events like #lrnchat, held each Thursday, may take a little to get used to but are fun, informative and help build community.

The mechanics of micro-blogging, like blogging, are rather simple. Of course Twitter is now being hyped, much as blogs were a while back. But what’s the bigger picture?

Charlene Croft provides a sociological perspective on Twitter:

“Twitter is a social networking site predominantly used by individuals who are high-level communicators and organizations/businesses who want to reach those communicators.   Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a good lens through which to view Twitter users.  He talks about the Connectors, the Mavens and the Salesmen as being the three types of individuals which start and spread what he calls ‘social epidemics.'”

One conclusion you can draw from Charlene’s post is that Twitter, like blogging, is not for everyone, especially if you’re not a Maven, Connector or Salesman in your work. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be a passive participant (lurker) or use Twitter as a search engine or information gathering tool.

I will leave the final and most important words from Howard Rheingold, who says that Twitter, like most social media, requires a certain level of skill and literacy in order to be understood and used [my emphasis]:

Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it – on knowing how to look at it.