SocialLearning

Social learning

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.

Is education over the Internet already the killer app?

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In 1999, everyone in the nascent e-learning industry was citing this quote by John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems:

The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error in terms of the Internet capacity it will consume.

Yah, right, say the skeptics who lived through the Dot Com bust and have watched as e-learning (education and training) continues to play a junior role at the boardroom table. Even the largest e-learning companies are mostly unknown outside the industry.

Well, I think that Chambers was right. We’re just measuring the wrong things. Education over the Internet is huge. Consider – Wikipedia, Wiki-How, Google search, personalised information pulled through RSS, social learning networks, learning with blogs and collaboration with wikis. Add all of these together and e-mail is starting to look like a rounding error.

Step outside the box of academic courses or training departments and online learning is growing and not looking like it will stop. As learning becomes essential for our knowledge society, we will become like fish in water, not realizing what it is we’re swimming in. One challenge for learning professionals will be to remain relevant as all of the action moves beyond their traditional turf.

From e-Learning to s-Learning

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James Farmer has started an excellent conversation on learning management systems and how new systems can be developed on a looser configuration of individual controlled nodes by using blogging software. The general theme is that less management is better, and that individual learners could write all of their posts, assignments and papers from their own site, and these could be directed to each class as web feeds. The classes would aggregate the feeds from all the students and instructors. The beauty of this kind of system is that each student keeps all of his/her content, and it does not get locked away in an inaccessible archive of a centrally controlled LMS.

Boris Mann and Will Pate add their comments, especially from the Drupal perspective, with Will pushing for a move away from electronic learning to social learning. I think that a shift of focus (and development effort) away from the management aspects of learning and more on the social aspects of learning can only be positive for the learner.

We have the technology to do this, and Drupal only needs a few more functions in order to be a “learning community in a box”. It’s exciting to know that we are getting to the point of having a real alternative to the LMS. I have tried in the past year to convince some organisations to move away from the LMS model, but the alternatives have been a bit messy, especially for the IT department. Rob Paterson’s course at UPEI showed that an online course could work without an LMS. The development of an “off-the-shelf” social software tool, designed for formal learning interventions, could really kick-start a new direction for learning technologies.

Update — and the Drupal development community has begun to discuss the creation of a module for educational sites, starting with quizzes, but ending who knows where.