LearnTrends: Microlearning

These are my live blogged notes from Janet Clarey’s LearnTrends session on Microlearning. My side comments are in italics.

Official description:

Microlearning: Beyond Learning Objects and Just-in-time Performance Support

The need and pressure to learn continually, coupled with limited time available to learn, make new digital media viable for professional development. Microlearning – the learning that results from “micro” content published in short form and limited by the software and devices used to view it – offers alternatives to traditional development methods for workers who deal with web-based information as part of their job. Let’s discuss how microlearning might address the realities of learning in a digital age.

Missed the beginning due to a phone call, but glad to actually hear Janet’s voice after all this time interacting through blogs, Facebook, etc.

What is microlearning?

• Current context since 2002
• No single definition
• Specifically focusing on OTJ skills & knowledge

Single songs from CDs, Single articles from Magazines, Ringtones from single songs

From a 2008 microlearning conference “There is a need and pressure to learn continually due to rapid change in society and the economy…Knowledge gaps are widening.”

Basic goal: make learning more effective through new media

Why study microlearning? To know if it’s effective

In chat: Moderator (Tony Karrer): In some ways – we are spending more time learning – if we aren’t learning, we should examine if it’s a good use of our Knowledge Work time

Current definitions:

• Microlearning emerges from microcontent. Microcontent is little bits of digital information in a permanent state of flux and circulation.
  It is often a single topic, limited in length,  consumed quickly,and often imited by software or device. It is the sharing of resurces.
  It relies on human-to-human interaction and interaction with Internet media.
• “…occurring at the most minute of levels…minutes or seconds of time.” Hug & Friesen, 2009

What microlearning is not

• What’s the difference between this and a “learning object”?
  • Learning objects are
  • in repositories
  • reusable
  • portable
  • content, not context
  • not created by the user
  • for learning/instructional purpose
• What is Just-in-Time?
  • needs-based, point of need
  • need to know
  • training when I need it (whoever I am)
  • delivered to you
  • created by someone in advance
  • not always digital
  • instructional/educational purpose

Differentiators

Not all of these things are required in every microlearning example–

• No formal teaching structure
• situated
• No repository (unless you view the whole web as a repository)
• Not dependent on time or place
• Doesn’t always help you meet a specific learning objective
• no grades/ratings/certifications
• Relies on peer-to-peer interaction
• folksonomy rather than standardization
• No leader
• Relies on interaction with internet media

Reflects every-increasing fragmentation of info sources & info units

Focused on knowledge workers–people who use digital info in their jobs

Who doesn’t this work for?

• not knowledge workers
• those w/o internet tools
• people on retail floor
• plumbers
• farmers Janet said this, but lots of people disagreed–farmers can be very high tech, have wifi in tractors etc.

Very few companies have strategy for social media–many say it won’t work in their culture

Lots of tools used traditionally

Now, new tools

• conversations getting smaller
• classes get fragmented
• courses get shorter

New terrain

Pathway to community; you have to be embedded in the community to help

Complex communities of practice where individual identity is constructed

Do you think many people at your organization can do this kind of learning without guidance?

We are all in these communities so it’s easier for us–how do you help average knowledge workers?

Architecture & politics: architecture determines what is possible to do

Politics of institutions vs. individuals: LMS vs. PLE

In the LMS, your learner environment is observable & formalized

PLE: Individual surrounded by tools, people

Moderator (Janet Clarey): “…emancipation-through-technology underplays the dependence of these activities on on carriers, providers, division managers, infrastructures, and more. Control of these infrastructures and services presuppose a signifcant level of economic enfranchisement and social integration, and technical and communicative competency.”

Corporate learning serves multiple roles

Metaphor: organic learning vs. $1 value menu at McDonalds OK, somewhere I lost this thread–there was an analogy here but I didn’t get it

Summary

• Research is new, minimal
• no standard definition
• Need to address the realities of learning in the digital age

References will be on her blog shortly

Q&A

If you join several bits of microlearning together, can you make it into “normal” learning?

• No, she doesn’t see it that way

Is this completely separate from formal learning, or is there some relationship with formal learning?

• If you need to semi-structure it, start with a question & let people create

Two different ways of looking at microlearning: on technology side, measure frequency of instruction, ratings, # of contributions; on the social side, lots of qualitative research

Jane Bozarth: Trying to “measure” too much can jeapordize it

Jane Bozarth: Quickest way to destroy a CoP is for management to try and “harness the collective knowledge”

Discussion of Communities of Practice vs. Networks

Jane Bozarth: There is also interesting lit on perception of who “owns” knowlege. Orgs think it is theirs (ie, intellectual property), often those who share view it rather as a public good. = tension

Is there any difference in microlearning in a CoP vs. network?

So what do we do about it? What do we do to help this in organizations?

First step: build a community?

Ronny Lohuis (NL): Isn’t the first step to make people aware and than give them skills to do it themselves?

Jane Bozarth: @Ronny Lohuis  Learners don’t necessarily define themselves as “learners” or as being in the act of “learning”.

Daily Bookmarks 11/19/2009

• Harold Jarche » PKM Overview

  Resources from Harold’s LearnTrends session on sense-making with personal knowledge management

  tags: knowledgemanagement, ple

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Bookmarks 11/18/2009

• Problem-Based Learning and Scenario-Based Training: Operations & Tactics at Officer.com

  Comparison of problem-based learning and scenario-based learning, where problem-based learning is text-based case studies and scenario-based learning is interactive, dynamic, and time-limited.

  tags: pbl, scenarios, training

• e-Learning: What’s Hot and What’s Not? « Performance X Design

  Overview of current trends in e-learning. According to this post, what’s hot is social media, informal learning, simulations & scenario-based learning, virtual worlds, rapid learning, mobile learning, open source, and performance support.

  tags: e-learning, socialmedia, informallearning, simulations, rapid

• Cognitive Load Theory: Failure? « EdTechDev

  Explanation of cognitive load theory and the problems with it, both conceptual and methodological. Lots of sources to dig into deeper if you want more research on this issue.

  tags: education, learning, e-learning, instructionaldesign, cognition, research

  • Numerous contradictions of cognitive load theory’s predictions have been found, but with germane cognitive load, they can still be explained away.  de Jong does not use this term (unfalsifiable) but instead states that germane cognitive load is a post-hoc explanation with no theoretical basis: “there seems to be no grounds for asserting that processes that lead to (correct) schema acquisition will impose a higher cognitive load than learning processes that do not lead to (correct) schemas” (2009).
  • 2. Poor external validity of lab-based studies.  Moreno doesn’t touch on something in the de Jong article – the fact that most cognitive load (and multimedia learning) studies are conducted in labs that “includes participants who have no specific interest in learning the domain involved and who are also given a very short study time” (de Jong, 2009), often only a few minutes.  Quite a number of findings from these studies have not held up as strongly when tested in classrooms or real-world scenarios, or have even reversed (such as the modality effect, but see this refutation and this other example of a reverse effect).

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

LearnTrends: Reinventing Organizational Learning

These are my live blogged notes from Jay Cross & Clark Quinn’s LearnTrends session on Reinventing Organizational Learning. My side comments in italics. Update: The recording of this session (and the rest of LearnTrends) is now available.

Article they wrote for CLO mag: “Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer”

Need to be more agile & change

If you don’t know the solution & need to network/collaborate to find it, that’s learning

Internet Learning Alliance: They were all working independently, decided to work together and practice what they preach. I don’t really think they were working independently–they were working in parallel. Lots of parallel conversations in all their blogs, with clear interaction & influence between them. Harold says “parallel but not coordinated”

“20 pounds of crap and only a 5 pound bag” Jay makes me smile. He is totally authentic online–he shows who he really is, take it or leave it

Clark: “we’re the people who’ve retained our love of learning despite our education”

View from the balcony–what you can’t see when you’re too close to the ground

We are going through a total shift in worldview–not world as machine, world as biosphere. We can blame this on networks

How networks evolve: hierarchies are crumbling, rate of change much faster–we don’t know what’s coming next

What is the Chief Meta-learning officer to do when we don’t know what’s coming?

• Broaden definition of learning
• increase learner population
• improve learning process
• expand venues

Broaden definition: not just formal. Learning professionals haven’t gotten a seat at the table b/c they haven’t earned it–focus is too narrow

Learner Population: We thought of businesses as walled off. Now that businesses are ecosystems, we should be training customers, vendors, etc. 2/3 of CLOs have no involvement in customer learning, partner/supply chain learning. We focus too much on novices. With high performers, if you improve performance 1%, big impact.

Learning Process: Shift from push to pull, empower learners to find their own stuff. More about setting up conduit for content, not the content itself. Novices need more formal learning; Practitioners need to fill in the gaps mostly with informal; Experts’ main job is informally sharing what they know

Expand Venues: Push –> Pull. Mobile learning–most impt is making sure people have the tech. Most CLOs don’t think CoPs do their jobs at all.

Hallmarks of Future Work

• Curriculum –> competency
• Clockwork, predictable –> Complexity, surprising
• Stocks –> Flows
• Clock time –> Time to accomplishment
• Learning –> Just do it

What makes a really effective learning organization?

• supportive learning environment
  • psychological safety: safe to share–org culture
  • appreciation of differences
  • openness to new ideas
  • time for reflection–lets you improve process, therefore outcomes
  • These things don’t just happen–you have to take responsibility for creating this kind of culture
• Concrete Learning Processes & Practices
  • Information collection & analysis
  • Experimentation–have to try things and see what tools work
  • Education & Training
  • You can’t just assume processes will work; you have to scaffold & support them.
• Leadership that reinforces learning
  • Explicitly acknowledge
  • Align incentives
  • Model learning for others

ADDIE is content centric. Jay says obsolete b/c things aren’t predictable anymore–SMEs don’t know what will be important to know. No fixed alternative to ADDIE b/c depends on ecosystem/learnscape

Clark says ADDIE is a process, there will be a role for it (I think–I may be misrepresenting what he said)

Experimentation should still have a process, shouldn’t just be random–have to have a way to figure out what works & have a systematic process. Problem is that we need a new process; ADDIE has been too much for formal learning

Jay: We need to think about ourselves as business problem solvers

ROI isn’t the only measure–other ways to look at business performance

We can help people get over barriers to working together

Example: Learning group–couldn’t create enough courses to meet all the needs so created a wiki. Realized that this worked better. Need to work around the silos to be more effective. Your customers have knowledge that would be useful for your employees–how will you get access to that info?

In chat: Gillian: As jobs become less ‘for life’, surely the indiviudal is assisting in breaking down the ‘do unto’ mode of course provision and actually fostering self-reliance and curiosity in learning – if only for personal economic survival

It isn’t about creating courses–it’s about being partners in people’s success, having more productive relationships

Jay: annual performance reviews are broken–need intermittent, continuous feedback

Clark: need more mentoring, performance reviews don’t replace that. But perf reviews can provide time for reflection

In the long term, learning facilitation will be distributed to everyone in the organization, but there will still be a role for people who help others learn

Gave example: Get rid of the training department–don’t need the central control. Deploy people as performance consultants & coaches

Our training models don’t work in complex environments; they were designed for complicated environments. If you can’t analyze the system like you used to, that old training won’t work. You can train some processes, but not for what’s going to happen. Example: H1N1. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

ADDIE looks backwards, looks for old best method & replicates that. Doesn’t work in complex environments.

You’ll never figure it out so don’t try. The world is unpredictable and will always be so.

Q: What if people who are high value individuals are spending time on lower value resources? How do you justify that?

A: What if you can take that one top engineer, have them spend time helping all other engineers in the long run, that’s better. Get beyond those short term “what makes money right now”–developing people is work time & effort

On the other side, also need to help high performers get better–you need to take care of them

Sounds like part of the deal here is that we can’t assume learning should be the same for everyone

Get away from the individual worker model–think about the group. About better groups & networks & organizations, not individual skills meeting the standards

“least assistance principle” what’s the smallest thing we can do to make people effective (Clark)

Easy to attack ADDIE. Let’s try to figure out what will work in the future. What we’ve been doing isn’t enough.

We can’t meet all the needs with formal courses–think about how to help groups work together better. But don’t assume that the master tailor is good at teaching the apprentices; facilitate the process for that tailor.

LearnTrends: The Immernet Singularity

These are my live blogged notes from Tony O’Driscoll’s LearnTrends session on The Immernet Singularity. My side comments are in italics. Update: The recording of this session (and the rest of LearnTrends) is now available.

Official description:

The Immernet Singularity: How the Immersive Internet Will Redefine Learning and Collaboration. Four technology arenas, 2D Synchronous Learning, Knowledge Sharing Spaces, Web 2.0 Tools and Virtual Worlds, are on a convergence trajectory towards an immersive web future that will redefine how we work, learn and play. This session will describe how this convergence will create a new platform upon which immediate, intuitive, interactive and immersive learning will take place.

Good attention getter–started by showing a rectangle on a dark screen & asked people what it was. Without context, we don’t really know. Then he showed the rest of the map so we could see that it was Wyoming–context matters

If content is king, context is the kingdom.

Socrates could walk into a university lecture and recognize it as a school.

Digital avatars watching digital presentations is a dumb use of virtual worlds

Crossing the chasm from knowing to doing

• Formal –> informal
• content –> context
• topic –> task
• ?? Sorry, wasn’t fast enough

Learning professionals can help others cross the chasm

Seven Scary Problems

• Autonomous learner
• Timing
• Packaging
• Performance
• Routinization
• Transfer
• Value

Our packing for learning tends to be about topics, not tasks

Most performance issues in the enterprise have to do with poor processes and workflow, not lack of training/knowledge

Transfer: the problem isn’t knowledge transfer, it’s behavior. <10% transfers

0.44% of revenue is spent on learning. Increasing the efficiency of training isn’t going to be enough to give us a seat at the table

We say “we’re instructional designers, we don’t deal with autonomous learners” but they go out and use Google anyway. We focus on formal learning & productivity but ignore informal learning and performance.

• Web 1.0 “Connect To”
• Web 2.0 “Connect Through”
• 3Di “Connect Within”

Web 2.0 is User Generated X–fill in the blank (content, filtering, organization, distribution, etc.)

Knowledge Management is an oxymoron–you can’t manage knowledge Very interesting seeing this perspective after Harold’s PKM presentation yesterday. Not sure I agree, but this may be a matter of terminology–he’s still talking about some of the same tasks, but with different terms. Maybe there is a better term than “manage” for riding the wave of information…

Fundamental shift from Stocks to Flows of information: you don’t stockpile information, it flows around you

School has confused us into thinking learning is about information dumps, not “tuning the network”

i-web = immernet = immersive internet

1. 2D synchronous learning (WebEx, Elluminate, etc.)
2. Knowledge Sharing Spaces (SharePoint, Blackboard, Yahoo Groups)
3. Web 2.0 (knowledge discovery, blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS)
4. Virtual Worlds

1+2 = People want networked virtual spaces that include 2D synch + knowledge sharing (1+2)

2+3 = Dynamic Knowledge Discovery

3+4 = 3D Social Networking

4+1 = 3D synchronous

1+2+3+4 = Immersive, immediate, intuitive, interactive = i-web

New value chain with information

Q&A

People still have content in their heads–how can people be the “flow” in the value chain?

Tony: yes, knowledge is in heads, but it’s about the interactions and flow and how people share the information

Q: 90-9-1 makes it tough to get Web 2.0 work started. Is it still that ratio of lurkers? How do you work around it?

A: Yes, it’s changing, but lurking was part of how Web 2.0 has evolved. When it started, it was clunky and hard. Twitter is easier than blogging. Easier tools allow more participation. Next gen doesn’t see web as passive

Learning professionals’ role is to help the enterprise & individuals deal with change

Q: How do we know what we don’t know? How do we get exposed to things we aren’t exposed to?

A: Doesn’t that question assume the current model allows us to do that? Social networks give us access to more negative info and more different opinions. Networks can give us more of that

Q: Data mining, federated search

A: “People don’t want to search; they want to find.” Given all these new tools, how do we help people make better decisions? You can still make the wrong decision based on raw info.

Q: What have you learned at Duke about bringing future managers up to speed?

A: Tries to practice what he preaches. Gets students to tag and share with cohort. Use a standardized process when working with people in different regions–cultural disconnects. They do interviews and produce videos about cultures, rated by their peers. Not traditional deliverables and vetting methods. They use virtual worlds & find it more meaningful for interaction.

Learning in 3D book–some description, but a bunch of case studies to show how learning outcomes are met

Virtual exoskeleton to travel around the world

LearnTrends: Personal Knowledge Management

These are my live blogged notes from Harold Jarche’s LearnTrends session on Personal Knowledge Management. My side comments are in italics. Update: The recording of this session (and the rest of LearnTrends) is now available.

Sense-making with PKM

When he moved to consulting and didn’t have an IT department and those resources, he realized he had to do something different.

Idea from Will Richardson: what do you do when you read a blog post and come across an interesting few sentences? What do you do with that system?

PKM is a set of problem-solving skills for work, focused on getting things done but not necessarily task focused

Personal directed learning as well as accidental, serendipitous learning

Too much information

More important advances in the future will be our advances in dealing with information & problem solving, not in computer technology (he was quoting someone–didn’t catch who, and this is only a paraphrase)

• Big KM = enterprise KM, lots of structure
• Little KM = processes used by distributed teams
• Personal KM = ad hoc, DIY, cheap/free

A PKM Method

Not the only method–not something to force people into, just one way. Basically, this is Harold’s way of dealing with the flow of info

Internal processes

• Sort
• Categorize
• Make Explicit
• Retrieve

External processes

• Connect
• Contribute
• Exchange

Interesting discussion in the chat about whether if you don’t pay for services if you can trust it. I asked if that included open source tools too–basically he trusts libre tools but not gratis ones

Harold uses different tools for different purposes

• Google Reader to pull everything in. Used to use Bloglines, accumulated lots of saved items but never looked back at them. He forces himself to not have too many interesting things in the “holding pen” at a time.
• Delicious: what he uses to save things instead of Bloglines
• WordPress
• Twitter
• Ning

Don’t worry about missing something interesting; somebody else will pick it up or you can ask someone in your network about it later. In the network, good things come back around.

Important to have a data backup plan. This is related to the trust issue–I’m more likely to trust services that let me get my data out to back it up somewhere.

Make the data searchable and shareable with others

When you bookmark on delicious, you can also see how others have tagged it

Over time, your practices change. For example, he now makes clearer blog titles so in 3 years he can find info easily, rather than being witty in his titles

If you follow dull people on Twitter, Twitter will be boring. He is collecting his “best of Twitter” in his “Friday Finds” each week. He uses favorites throughout the week and looks for patterns and groups. Makes it explicit by posting to his blog.

Other models for PKM

Different models will resonate with different people

Urs Frei: spiral model

Web Tools for Critical Thinking (Dave Pollard)

• Observe & Study
• Participate
• Challenge & Evaluate
• Tentative Opinions

People worry about putting ideas out there b/c not polished & edited, but you have to get out and participate.

It doesn’t make sense to work through this on our own–we should be sharing and working through things together

PKM is very much individualized process–we have to figure out how to make sense of things

As citizens, PKM is part of our social responsibility; we should be learning about issues together

Q&A

How does PKM relate to L&D organizations?

Too much of our training has been “we’ll tell you where to get the info.” We can’t assume that we will know all of that anymore.

Social bookmarks are an easy first step–lots of people can have a purpose for this

Social bookmarking sites are less often blocked by corporate firewalls. However, getting people to use the tools is a bigger challenge than IT lockdown

Need to find ways to give people some personal control within any system. What is effective for one person may not be for another.

Difference between PKM/PLE/PLN: PKM is more work-focused

Jay Cross: we have cast the IT department as the bad guy for too long. IT is focused on an entirely different set of goals from most of us.

Virginia Yonkers observed that Harold’s tools are mostly text–someone asked about multimedia in his PKM. He takes pictures, is starting to do slides, may do YouTube in the future

Daily Bookmarks 11/17/2009

• open thinking » 90+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy

  A collection of videos related to technology and media literacy, sorted in categories like “Conversation Starters,” “Influence of Media on Society,” and “Social Networks & Identity.”

  tags: education, edtech, k-12, 21stcenturyskills, socialnetworking, identity, web2.0, animation, mashup

• About e-Learning | Online Degrees | Online Colleges | Online Distance Education

  Info on colleges offering ed tech and instructional design degrees

  tags: e-learning, education, highered, edtech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

LearnTrends: Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations

Live blogged notes from Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations with Charles Jennings & Andy McGovern. My side comments are in italics. Update: The recording of this session (and the rest of LearnTrends) is now available.

Official description:

Thomson Reuters meets the challenge of supporting the learning and development of its employees across the world through the innovative use of technology and a strategy based on the 70:20:10 model. The firm has recently deployed learning solutions using 2.0 technologies including a ‘Learning Exchange’ based on Sun technology, a virtual Technology Institute and other global immersive eLearning solutions including a virtual world collaboration environment.

Charles Jennings

70-20-10 model–not original to them, others have adopted it since

• 70% learn and develop thru experience
• 20% learn & develop thru others
• 10% learn & develop through structured courses & programs

90% experiential learning & development

What’s in the 70 +20?

• social learning — sharing experiences
• workplace learning & perf support
• LiveLabs & scenarios — “day in the life”
• learnscapes — immersive simulations

“What’s the difference between learning physics and being a physicist?” –Jerome Bruner

Having the theoretical knowedge doesn’t make you a physicist. We teach not to create little living libraries on the subject, but practitioners.

Aspects of learning

• Experience
• Practice
• Conversation
• Reflection

Performance support–business process guidance & JIT learning

Difference between a map & GPS. GPS provides incremental instruction. A map lays out the whole journey, but you can’t remember the whole journey at once so you end up using it incrementally anyway.

We should be doing incremental instruction for process and procedure, not formal learning

LiveLabs: not simulations, using the actual network tools & hardware. Hands on practice with actual tools, but in a safe environment

Andy McGovern

Working with Sun for Thomson Reuters Social Learning Exchange (SLX)

A cross between YouTube & iTunes. Doesn’t replace the LMS. Focus on the tacit knowledge that is usually hard to share. Get experts to share, make it easy for them.

Not a lot of instructional design, just getting people to share content

Tried to show video of Meet Charlotte, but video doesn’t work well over Elluminate

Public version from Sun: https://slx.sun.com/, site about the product here: SLX

This is not a synchronous platform–experts can use a webcam and easily record and upload content. More like an intranet YouTube. Support communities of practice around domains

Virtual Collaborative Environment–prebuilt auditorium, conference rooms. They are using this with a group that has been outsourced. Works for them to collectively get together across time zones. They use it asynchronously too

Virtual World: Teleplace

Institute of Technology: Information shared with a heavily modified version of Sharepoint. Integrates JIT learning from their Books 24X7 site

None of these tools will work if you don’t spend significant time engaging with the business–engaging learners, change management. If you don’t engage them, they won’t use it and will find something else.

Q&A

How do you measure value? Business results?

• One answer in chat: money saved by meeting in VW instead of F2F
• Teleplace VW is about cost reduction in travel
• Broader is about enhancing collaboration–how you measure that depends on the tool. Harder to measure with general teams than specific ones with specific goals. Still working on that.
• Business results: for SLX, they are looking at how expert knowledge is transferred to others & applied
• ROI $3 Million for one project based on time saved finding solutions to problems. Metric is reducing time to competence

SLX makes it easy to attribute who contributes, comments, uses content. Attribution makes it not smart to be inappropriate.

Community ratings help judge what’s valuable–self regulating

They expect some people to record videos, but also asking people to record WebEx sessions and share those. Sounds like this is also about collecting things that may be happening anyway and just making it easier to share. Video won’t be the primary content in the long run

Most work gets done based on trust–you trust that your manager won’t undermine you, your manager trusts you to do your job. Relationships are important and matter for the learning. Important to get the ear of senior managers so they see the value of this and not just formal learning.

In chat: Christy Confetti Higgins: FYI – from Outsell Inc. – corporate high tech workers spend on average of 6.2 hours finding information vs. 5.4 hours applying it – anything we can do to save people time looking for business information (like Books24×7), the better and higher ROI

Learntrends: Convergence in Learning

These are my live blogged notes from the first LearnTrends session, Introduction: Convergence in Learning, with George Siemens, Tony Karrer, and Jay Cross. Awkward phrasing, typos, or things that simply don’t make sense out of the context of the live session are par for the course. My side comments are in italics. Update: The recording of this session (and the rest of LearnTrends) is now available.

Jay Cross

E-learning is 10 years old. Showed a graphic of e-learning companies that existed in 2000, then who’s still left now. Not many survivors.

Shift from Mechanical to Natural. Business ecosystem, learnscape.

“Golden Age of Training” 1945-2006: Training separate from work

Now, training is more in the context of work.

Future: Learning and work will be the same thing

Past: Teacher-centric. Worker-centric, focus on the individual. Social learning

Future will be group-centric, focus on the work group. Whole ecosystem of people who need to be involved.

We used to focus on novices, so lots of formal learning. What about people at different stages of their careers?

Tony

Convergence: a nice name for the mess we find ourselves in at a personal level and organizational level

Out of 150 participants, only 3 said they were under the age of 28

Asked those under 28 to identify pictures of card catalog and microfiche reader

Work and learning are changing–so many tools make it very messy

“For a concept worker…work and learning are inseparable”

Thomson Reuters Learning Methods–both formal and informal

When work and learning are inseparable?

• What do we offer?
• How do we work with other part of the org?
• How to we work with concept workers without making things messier?

George Siemens

“Information finds us”

You learn one tool, then the next one comes at you just as you’re getting used to the first. Change is so rapid that it’s hard to even get a handle on what the nature of the change is.

Training was about finding the information you needed to do your job.

Diigo and other tools change your relationship to information–information increasingly finds us rather than us having to find it

“Every act of expression is a potential connection.”

When you have more information it isn’t the same. You name one cow, but not 1000 head of cattle.

Abundance of information and tools means we can’t just do the same stuff. Continually improving a candle doesn’t produce a lightbulb; something fundamental has to change.

“Continual change requires rapid learning and innovation for individuals and organizations.”

Networks are really good at spreading information–good or bad

Current L&D is mismatched to need & doesn’t scale

Q&A

Virtual worlds?

Second Life is expensive and most orgs not ready for it yet. But other worlds are working well.

They provide another way to interact–different experience, different connection with people

Caspian Learning’s Thinking Worlds as one example, Proton Media is another

Walden Instructional Design Students

I’ve gotten a bunch of comments from students in the Masters of Instructional Design program at Walden in the last week—enough that I suspect that there’s an assignment that requires commenting on a blog. I’m not complaining; I’m enjoying the discussions and hope they continue.

However, I’d like to ask a favor of those of you in that program. Could you please comment here and let me know if my guess is correct? I’ve developed similar kinds of assignments in the courses I’ve created, and I’m curious how yours works.

Thanks!