CivieBlog

I was just reading a post - Top 5 tips to gain buy in for learning with social media.  The tips were many of the usual suspects (click on the link for details):

1. Build a solid measurable plan
2. Do your research and put it to the test
3. Choose your words carefully
4. Blitz the stigma
5. Educate the decision makers

This is good stuff, but it also got me to thinking that this might be way more complicated than it really needs to be.  Instead, one of the things that I Learned about Learning in 2009 and was an important eLearning Predictions for 2010 was to “Be a Jack”.  What does this mean?

I detailed it in Selling Learning Communities – Not Everyone Will or Wants a Group Hug.  Go listen to Jack and how he describes what he does.  And the key in selling social learning / learning communities was the simple explanation of what they are in a value proposition.  Here’s what Be a Jack sounds like:

If I can bring together outside experts and/or people from across the organization with expertise and facilitate a conversation on the critical business issues you are facing and help you capture that so that it can get distributed in the organization – is that something you would want?

Absolutely!  In fact, we all want that all the time! 

As an example, the way that I should have described a SharePoint Social Learning Experience if my audience was a CLO or VP Learning would be:

If I can bring together people from across your learning organization in a facilitated discussion possibly with outside peers or experts so that they can explore the implications of social learning, informal learning and Using SharePoint in the organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions – is that something you would want?

Or the HP example out of that same post:

Help marketing professionals understand the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.

Am I wrong, or doesn’t it make a lot of sense to simply Be a Jack?

Great post by Tim Kastelle - Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Innovation.  He’s talking primarily about Innovation pipelines based on crowdsourcing.  His diagram:

 

Show a fairly common model for how things can be filtered.  This is similar to the model that we used on Project Greenlight – the scriptwriting and director contest by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  Anyone (hopefully everyone) could submit their script / movie.  From there, we had smaller and smaller batches of people reviewing until it got down to the core team looking at the top few submissions. 

This caught my eye because it’s a bit different than the model we are using on Browse My Stuff that powers sites like eLearning Learning.  In Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning, I described the flow that it uses:

In this case, the input is curated content although it can come from virtually anywhere.  It then relies on social signals from everyone to filter it down.

I’m not claiming that one is preferred.  And I think that you can argue that Digg uses a slightly different model.

The other part of this thought process is that the feedback on my Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 was that I should have Information Overload and Information Filtering as my user chosen prediction number 10.  I tend to agree with that.  But there’s a challenge to it.  And that challenge is somewhat hinted at in this month’s big question: Instruction in a Information Snacking Culture?

• Are the training solutions being produced part of the problem of information overload?
• How do we shift to a position where we are helping to filter information and reduce overload rather than possibly contribute?

Certainly, I’m paying attention to this and I’m going to go through Tim’s post – Personal Aggregate, Filter and Connect Strategies to see how it might impact my Tool Set 2009 tools and methods, especially Information Radar, Networks and Learning Communities).

Good stuff Tim!

I had a great conversation last week that sparked an early stage idea for what I think would be a wonderful way for learning and development organizations to leverage SharePoint better. 

HP Web 2.0 for Marketing – Social Learning Experience

The concept is probably easiest to understand by considering what HP did around their course on Web 2.0 for Marketing.  You can find more on this by going to the LearnTrends – SharePoint in Corporate Learning Recordings.

The basic concept was that HP’s learning organization wanted to help their marketing professionals get up to speed on the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.  Of course, that’s an interesting learning problem in that the answer around “implications” is not defined. 

The L&D organization created a social learning experience that brought together 60 marketing professionals from across the organization.  They established a goal of having the group produce a summary of what they found and what Web 2.0 could mean for the organization.  In many ways, this was a facilitated work task more than a learning experience.  The L&D organization provided some instruction on the basics for how the sessions would operate and some information around Web 2.0, but a lot of the effort was discovery by the marketing professionals themselves.

In the picture below, you can see some of the mechanisms they used:

• Social Bookmarks to share resources they found
• Discussion Boards to ask questions and have discussions.
• A blog that helped spark conversations around key topics.
• A wiki that served as a repository for the resources they collected.
• Virtual class sessions to share what they were finding
• Learners were encouraged to do quick screen capture movies to explain their thoughts around particular uses of Web 2.0 technologies and share with the group.

The results were pretty incredible for HP.  And it’s exactly this kind of facilitated social learning experience where the result is somewhat a work objective that makes a lot of sense.

SharePoint Social Learning Experience

Based on the above description, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with what I think would be a fantastic learning opportunity for L&D organizations who want to understand what it means to Use SharePoint in their organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions.

The idea would be to:

• Set a goal to produce a presentation and set of recommendations to be presented to senior L&D management
• Get a cross section of L&D professionals and possibly others within the business
• Setup an environment that will be used both as a sandbox and as a support for the learning experience
• Introduce SharePoint (and/or other technologies) to participants
• Facilitate activities and discussions that ultimately lead towards the presentation and recommendations

Of course, there’s nothing preventing variants of this being done across multiple smaller organizations.  And certainly there are lots of external professionals that likely would make sense to either help make this happen or include as third party experts as part of the learning experience.  See Learning Community, Peers and Outside Experts for more description of possible design elements.

I also think this is a great way to help build understanding of social learning within an organization.

I’m hoping to get feedback on this?  Does it make sense as a model?  Are organizations already beyond this or should it actually be a facilitated discussion around learning technologies period, not just SharePoint?  Will it make the most sense as SharePoint 2010 begins to roll out into organizations?

One of the interesting things that was not included in the announcement of the iPad yesterday was support for Flash.  It’s a nice big device, perfect for browsing the web and remote learners.  But it doesn’t have Flash support.  Apple has said in the past that they plan to support Flash at some point, but I’m beginning to wonder.

In the meantime, it seems like HTML 5 is picking up steam.

Any guesses on Flash support on Apple mobile devices going forward?

And if it’s not going to be supported, does this mean we’ll be looking at other delivery technologies going forward?

I recently posted my Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 and did a presentation on the topic.  You can access a WebEx recording of the presentation here: https://nethope.webex.com/nethope/ldr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=58772167&rKey=9ac6286700094e6f

Thought I’d do a quick post with some random follow-up thoughts:

Skim Long Posts

I asked at the start of the online session how many people had read my post that basically was very similar content.  There were only a few people who answered that they had.  And several who said they skimmed it.  My guess is that most everyone who saw it prior to the session had taken my advice from long ago Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim and really just skimmed it.

Social Learning Communities

It was interesting that ASTD DC / Todd Slater has created a Ning community.  My belief is that we are going to see lots of virtual communities created as it makes sense to aggregate outside of a local geography for common interests.  That certainly goes along with what we’ve done with LearnTrends and what’s going on with social learning.

Is Mobile Learning Real This Time?

A question was asked:

There was a big interest in mobile years back and then it seemed to disappear, we will be seeing this come back?

Mobile learning a couple years ago was an attempt to put courses on mobile devices.  There are a few people out there who are claiming success doing this.  However, I think the amount of content that people will consume on mobile devices is limited. 

Instead, tools, quick reference guides, quick hit videos, etc. will be the real win.

What’s the real change though is that we are becoming used to getting content both via our computer and on our mobile device.  Thus the questions will be a bit different this time around.

We’ve come through the trough and are starting to see smart, slow growth.

Home vs. Work

I asked the audience if it was easier to get information at home or at work or about the same.  Generally people felt they had easier access at home.  This goes along with the prediction that employees will increasingly hack work so that they can get access to information and people they need to reach. 

Some comments:

• home is better -- @ work there are blocks on our network as to what we can and can't access
• Firewalls an issue at work
• Work has faster connections
• not supposed to access internet at work
• less network security at most homes, or firewall issues
• Firewalls at work prevent connections

Certainly the issues with access certain sites, e.g., our LearnTrends site that’s hosted by Ning, is an issue.  People end up staying home to be able to attend virtual events.  That should be a bit of a “wow”.

I ran into a post about Using Twitter at Work.  I expected it to be about how to use twitter as a knowledge worker.  Instead it was about hacking work.

If you are working for a company that falls in the first category (no social media please), its better that you install a Twitter mobile app on your cell phone and not use the office computer at all for tweeting. After all, your boss will get a web usage report at the month-end and he will easily figure out which sites have you been visiting secretly during office hours.

Fast and Okay Rather Than Slow and Good

One of the predictions I made was that we would be creating more, lower cost learning solutions.  There were a couple of great questions/comments around this:

• Learners are trying to absorb the most amount of info in the shortest possible time
• Fast & OK rather than Slow and Good

Well said.  There was concern around skills that take time to develop.  There will still be that kind of thing.  But the pain point for companies and for CLOs is responding to the pace and living up to the commitment that they are going to do more with less.

SharePoint

We had some very interesting exchange around SharePoint.  But I had to share the comment:

When I train on SharePoint, the biggest issues is that people don't understand what's possible.  They don't know how it will make their lives better.  Once they have the vision in mind, it's not too hard to use.

I really think that’s a big source of SharePoint Fear and Loathing by Learning Professionals.

I just read a great post by Dan Pontefract - SharePoint 2010: The New Employee Gateway? that explain a lot of what’s going on around SharePoint and learning organizations.

Google Wave as a Mashup?

When I was discussing Mashups and pointed to the Twitter Captivate Integration and my example of taking notes/asking questions widget, someone suggested:

Google Wave looks like it has a lot of potential for that

Great point!  I must look into Google Wave as the basis for social interaction that goes along with a course.  It’s instant threaded discussion.  Can I easily mash it with a course?  Maybe not yet, but soon.

Squirrel

You had to be there – was very glad there were a couple of people who understood me. :)

Open Courseware

Turns out that a lot of folks are not familiar with what’s going on around this.

Virtual Worlds

Great comment:

Your number #1 point was how busy everyone is, who has time for virtual worlds???

I agree that access of virtual worlds needs to be as simple as getting into a WebEx session.  The barrier is a bit too high right now for mainstream.  But it’s amazing that WebEx doesn’t have avatars for participants or any sense of space.  I’ve given up on my predictions of a 2.5D virtual world, WebEx type product.  But it will happen at some point.  It won’t take any more time than what we currently have.  And it will make you feel much more part of the event.

One of my Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 was “Lots of SharePoint”.  I received the following inquiry in between the time I finished writing my predictions and when it went live:

I found your post, SharePoint Examples, regarding finding others using SP in training organizations.  I have recently been charged to lead a team to assist with the design, look, feel and governance of our existing SP deployment.  I work at a University and one of our first task’s is to work on a template that might meet 80% of an Academic Departments needs.  Things like a policy and procedures, meeting agenda, budget, etc. I’m wondering in your search if you’ve come across others who  may have created a more customized template that better suits the needs of a department vs the out of the box templates that you might be able to share.

This is an example of a kind of request that is going to happen quite a bit.  I actually don’t know where to find templates that might go behind the kinds of use cases that I discuss in Using SharePoint or that is described above.  In fact, I don’t believe these are even called templates, so …

What would you call what this person is looking for?

How would this person find SharePoint templates that they could use / modify for their purposes?

Please help.

Related to my recent post about eLearning Certifications, someone went back through some of my older related posts such as eLearning Certification, Online Degrees Get No Respect and particularly: Lower Value of Online Degree Programs and asked:  

I am curious, now that things have changed over the last three years, where do you stand with online degrees, specifically, WSAC (regionally) accredited online PhD degrees?

Don't you think that a person with an accredited PhD and has real world experience should be a top candidate versus a PhD who has been going to school for the last 10 years?

It’s great to have someone willing to call you out.  They are likely referencing my statement back in 2006:

I personally hire mostly folks with undergraduate degrees and mostly they are technical. I look at the individual first and foremost - but that said - I definitely am looking for an undergraduate degree from an in-person program first and foremost. For graduate programs, I probably have less of a bias and I would value an online graduate degree from a bigger name higher than an in-person from a local, lesser name program. That said, I still would value the in-person higher than the online for the same university. Given my passion around distance learning, it's a bit weird to admit this bias. But, I wonder if this isn't shared and that people should be aware of it?

My thinking has definitely changed over the past few years, but if I’m being honest, I still value an in-person degree a little bit higher.  But look closely.  If going for an online degree allows you to attend a better program, then that ranks higher than a lower quality but local degree. 

Also the person asking the question also asked about “real world experience” combined with a degree, e.g., a PhD.  Of course, that’s going to come in above someone who has no real world experience.   And since a lot of people who are doing online degrees are also working, there’s a lot to be said for finding a quality program online and attending while you are working.

In our field, that may have even higher value as the experience of having attended a quality online program likely will give you a leg up.  As an example take a look at: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank.  Becky really learned how to have effective online discussions by going through a great experience herself.

All that said – my guess is that there’s still bias – even three years later.

What do you think?