CivieBlog

I recently read a very interesting post by Terry Anderson, Edublogers as a Network of Practice.

Network of Practice - a distributed aggregation of members who share some common interests and values, but their correspondence and especially face to face meetings occur much less often or not at all. Leadership and activities in a NoP are emergent and usually informal. NoP members interact sporadically and develop their network in an informal and spontaneous manner that is occasioned through blogs, social software based communities, perhaps a face-to-face or online conference, newsgroup, mailing list or other shared social networking interactions. Membership in a NoP is voluntary, usually open, often transitory and likely many of the NOP members are strangers to each other.

There are some good discussion in the comments about whether or not you would consider Edubloggers to be a Network of Practice (NoP). I must say that I don't know enough to really comment on whether it is or isn't.

The realization I had as I read it is how complex networks become. They are incredibly rich and often there is no clear boundary. Is someone or something like a blog part of the network – often it's not at all clear.

This is both a good thing and a challenge for Topic Hubs. I think it's good because for many people, they cannot easily understand this complex network. As I say in that post –

It's hard to understand a single blog. It's even harder when you try to understand a network of bloggers.

The discussion that goes on in Terry's post really points out how it's so hard to that you can't look at an individual blogger and neatly put them into a network and especially not a Network of Practice. Scott Leslie says -

there is no singular “network of edubloggers,” indeed what I find constantly amazing is when I come across another self-styled edublogger with whom I share absolutely NO points of connection.

Of course, that's the claim of Terry in his response to Scott Leslie -

edubloggers do have ONE thing in common - they all are interested in education - else they wouldn’t describe themselves as EduBloggers. Now it could be that their conception of education and likely the larger ideas of learning are very different from yours, but I still argue they do NOT “share absolutely NO points of connection” with yourself.

My personal experience is really someone who tries to define Topic Hubs. Topic Hubs are based on networks and require a defined topic with a particular lexicon or way to make sense of what's being discussed. There's a real challenge to find the edges and define who should be consider inside or outside the network. The reality is that the complexity of networks don't really work that way. When I looked at creating a Topic Hub around edubloggers, I gave up because the network and topics are so big, diverse and messy. There likely are many good Topic Hubs within the space, but most edublogs blog about all sorts of topics. If you try to define a more narrow topic, it doesn't seem to work.

The Big Question this month is Workplace Learning in 10 Years:

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? What will the mix of Push vs. Pull Learning; Formal vs. Informal supported by the organization? Are there training departments? What are they doing? How big are they as compared to today? What new departments will be responsible for parts of workplace learning? What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years?

The answers to this have been very interesting. I like that the predictions are all over the place. Some people are suggesting getting rid of training departments and starting fresh. Others, including myself, don't believe training departments will go away any more than educational institutions will no longer exist. There will always be some level of training/education required. ut I think it's fair to say that most every response expects the role of training to either diminish or to change significantly in the next 10 years. But there was another significant trend in the answers…

Learning and Work Converge

In a world where Knowledge Work and Learning is Inseparable, finding ways to support and improve work is the same as finding ways to support and improve learning. Jay Cross in Ten Years After puts it:

In a knowledge society, learning is the work.

Who in an organization is responsible for supporting and improving work?

Isn't that the definition of management. Well not quite, but it is pretty dang close to the definition of Management Consulting in Wikipedia:

Management consulting refers to both the industry of, and the practice of, helping organizations improve their performance, primarily through the analysis of existing business problems and development of plans for improvement.

In this world, you can't really distinguish the mandate of Management Consulting from the mandate of:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Knowledge Management
• Learning & Development

I do think there's a slightly different historical mind set and skill set, but Training Departments are going to need to think and act quite different or they will be marginal.

Take a look at some of the responses with this context in mind.

Supporting Concept Workers

In The Future of the Training Department by Harold Jarche and Jay Cross, they discuss how work models are changing. This is very similar to what I discuss around Concept Workers and Work Literacy but they attack the change based on complexity – which is truly why concept workers are so important.

The main objective of the new training department is to enable knowledge to flow in the organization. The primary function of learning professionals within this new work model is connecting and communicating, based on three core processes:

* Facilitating collaborative work and learning amongst workers, especially as peers.
* Sensing patterns and helping to develop emergent work and learning practices.
* Working with management to fund and develop appropriate tools and processes for workers.

…redeploying training staff as mentors, coaches, and facilitators who work on improving core business processes, strengthening relationships with customers, and cutting costs.

In 2019: A workplace learning odyssey

Performance support will be built into the workflow and take the form of online tools, networks and coaching.

In Minute Bio's Post -

We will see much more informal learning and knowledge management. There will be a need for trainers and/or knowledge managers who will guide, coach, be a catalyst for, and monitor social media and informal learning.

In The Big Question the folks from Bottom Line Performance say:

The challenge for instructional designers is no longer finding some relevant information on an obscure topic. Wikipedia does that for us. The challenge becomes identifying the most important content, the facts and information that will best support the performance the organization needs to drive business results. Ruth Clark tells us that people learn more from a short description of how something works than from a longer description of how something works. Learning professionals can weed through the nice to haves and create a program that best meets the needs of the business and the learner.

Matt Moore in an article Learning & Knowledge = ? (PDF) and his associated blog post Learning + Knowledge = ?

L&D and KM share something simple: an interest in improving the performance of an organisation through increased capability.

Jacob McNulty responds in a comment -

The KM + L&D merger is bound to happen - they’re both fundamentally about ensuring people have the information they need to perform…whether that’s obtained through a knowledge network or rapid elearning shouldn’t matter.

In my post Corporate Training

I do think that each and everyone one of us should be out understanding the ways in which you can support concept workers to be better at their work and learning. We should be looking to shift some resources within our corporate training department in that direction.

Changing our Understanding of Management

After thinking through what I expect to see inside organizations in 10 years, I think there's a very interesting change that's going to occur.

Drucker told us that productivity of the knowledge worker would be the primary challenge of the 21st century. I'm not quite sold on the term productivity, but if you put in performance and change it to the concept worker then it sounds right:

Performance of the concept work is the primary challenge of the 21st century.

But if learning and work are inseparable for a concept worker, then

Effective learning is part of the definition of performance.

This is central to the very definition of how to make organizations more effective.

Individual work and learning will be the focus of all levels of management.

When I look at the definition of management, I don't really see this called out. In Wikipedia, it's defined

Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.

In 10 years, this definition is either going to change or it will include support for concept work and learning.

Workplace Learning in 10 Years

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see?

The idea that work and learning are inseparable will be mainstream and CEOs will have spread responsibility for workplace learning far and wide. It will be part of management.

What will the mix of Push vs. Pull Learning; Formal vs. Informal supported by the organization?

There will still be Push/Formal, but most of the real learning will be Pull and Informal. Heck it's what everyone is doing every day.

Are there training departments? What are they doing? How big are they as compared to today?

Training Departments will still exist. They are responsible for delivering content that is for large audiences at a novice level. They are smaller and marginal players.

What new departments will be responsible for parts of workplace learning?

This is going to start with interesting new departments that focus on things like community management or enterprise 2.0. But since this becomes central to management, there will be other kinds of services within the organization that focus on particular needs. Management will be the primary owner.

What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years?

Half of the current members of training departments will still be there. The others will have first jumped into these new departments. These will be the individuals who focus on performance, who get informal/pull learning, and who take the lead on understanding the role of technology.

I would predict that this half becomes some kind of management consultant within the next 10 years.

Hence my overall prediction -

50% of Workplace Learning Professionals will call themselves Management Consultants in 10 Years

One of the common themes on my blog is the world we live in with availability of trillions of web pages, millions of people, and thousands of tools, has meant a significant and continuous change in our work literacy.  It also has an impact on Learning Design and Learning Organizations … more on this below.

Read the Whole Thing?

A little bit ago I was skimming through a presentation that asked the audience whether people read the whole thing.  (Sorry, but I've forgotten where I saw this and my Better Memory strategies didn't easily find the right source.  Note to self, figure out how this could have worked.) 

Many of us are familiar with the Horizon Report for 2009, The World Is Flat, and Stephen Downes - The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On.  And if you aren't, you should be familiar with these.

But, how many of you who are familiar with these have read the whole thing?

In the audience, very few people read the whole thing.  I have not, but I've done a lot of Skim Dive Skim on these.

I've had this discussion before in other forms, and certainly there are a mix - some people who are much deeper readers – some skimmers.  And likely the answer is that it also depends on the topic, length of the item, the timing, and way too many other variables.  So, let's just say that we need to assume varied depth of content consumption.

This also means that a key skill is develop better memory methods that help us individually deal with the fact that we are skimming more stuff and will have an ever increasing need to quickly get back to it.

Implications for Learning Design

If we know that people are likely to consume information in this way, what does it mean for Learning Design.  I've often focused more on issues of Good Writing and Write for Skimming but the reality is that the implication is bigger than that.  No one will sit through long detailed pieces of information.  They quickly tune out or quickly skim through.  Learning Design must accommodate this and I particularly believe that we should Shift from Courseware towards Reference Hybrids – put as little as possible in the courseware and provide well-organized, well-written, easily saved, easily accessed reference material.

Of course, this is assuming that Learning Organizations are still in the position of being a publisher who is pushing content to learners.

When we talk about the Long Tail Learning and Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis, the focus is on how to help learners when you cannot possibly get in front of all the information.  Part of this is helping them to learn skills and adopt practices to make them more effective in self-serving their knowledge work and learning.

However, this is also where Learning Organizations can jump in to help by playing an aggregator role.  There's a lot of content that is likely being skimmed or even possibly is not being seen.  There's opportunity to make it more easily found and skimmable.

This is a topic I'm pretty sure I'll be revisiting quite a bit.  After all, this is pretty much the question I'm often asking:

What does Learning Design look like in a world of eLearning 2.0?

I need some help with appropriate way to handle a somewhat common situation.  Let me set this up a bit …

I've said many times in presentations and on this blog that I really like to get questions.  To me, that's the fun part.  It's so much fun that I spend time on posts like Social Grid Follow-up just going through and answering the questions that came up during the presentation.  I also have an open invite to engage me around Conversation Topics.  Both of these helps me learn, understand what is interesting to others, and where people find challenges.

Linked In Question Template

One of the things that I mentioned in the Social Grid Follow-up post was a particular template for asking for help via LinkedIn:

Hi <X>,
I'm hoping you'll be open to a brief conversation. From your profile you have a great background and it seems like you'll have lots of thoughts around my issues.

I'm working on XXX.

I've spent a fair bit of time researching and have been finding YYY.

I'd like to set a time to discuss this with you and get your thoughts.

The Questionable Question

Possibly because I had just written this, when I received the following inquiry:

I was wondering if you could provide me with your definition of a “Rapid Elearning Tool”.  I cant find an industry definition for this only examples of tools.

There was a bit more around the context for this question (why they were interested).  I sent the following response:

You will find varying definitions, a couple of posts:

• http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/06/what-is-rapid-elearning_13.html
• http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/09/rapid-elearning-more-definition.html

You can also take a look through:

• http://www.elearninglearning.com/rapid-elearning/&query=definition&showMore=true&sort=relevance

It's pretty rare I won't respond, but I think there's something important in the template above – show that you've done your basic homework and turn your question into something more interesting.

Question Homework

Before you ask me (or anyone) a question you should:

1. Search My Blog

Clearly this person had not searched my blog for definition rapid eLearning.

There are a couple of ways they could do this:

1a. Use site: on Google

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aelearningtech.blogspot.com+rapid+elearning+definition

1b. Use eLearning Learning to search my blog

http://www.elearninglearning.com/?query=rapid+elearning+definition&source=elearning-technology

The exact posts that I cite come up pretty easily.  FYI – there's a search box under the eLearning Learning logo that goes directly to search results on the eLearning Learning site which is much better than blogger's search.

2. Search Other Blogs and Web Pages

In this case, it's pretty easy to see what other people are saying via eLearning Learning:

http://www.elearninglearning.com/?query=rapid+elearning+definition

http://www.elearninglearning.com/rapid-elearning/&query=definition

You can also use plain old Google Search:

http://www.google.com/search?q="rapid+elearning"+definition

When you ask me a question, it's good to cite what I've already said, but it's MUCH BETTER to also mention some other sites and what they have to say on the matter.

3. Keep a List of What You've Found

4. Read through What You Find

5. Compose What You Find Into a Preliminary Answer

6. Figure Out What the Real Question Is

7. Ask the Real Question

Good Question Basis

If you go back to the template above, it's quite intentional that I'm saying:

I've spent a fair bit of time researching and have been finding YYY.

This is where I include what I've found so far and what it's been telling me.  If I was going to ask someone about the definition of Rapid eLearning I would certainly cite some definitions out there.  In fairness, they said that the definitions they found were lists of tools.  But they didn't put in links to those posts and they clearly had not searched my blog and read through my existing posts.

My Question to You

Now here's my question -

If I receive a question from a person that has clearly not done these steps, is it appropriate for me to simply send them a link to this post?

Others must run into this right?  What do you do?  Are these appropriate steps to gently providing guidance on how to ask better questions without offending and discouraging further questions?

Skills Gap

There's a great post by Catherine Lombardozzi - Learning 2.0 that discusses the skills that "many employees … well beyond school … could use help in developing … skills are different." She goes on to list out the skills and I think it's quite a good list.

When I combined this with a common theme across a lot of my writing and on Work Literacy:

• Tool Set 2009
• ASTD Follow-Up

I'm more convinced all the time that there's a gap in awareness and skills among Concept Workers. I describe this as the Tilde Effect.

Skills Training?

As I was thinking about this week's: SharePoint in Corporate Learning - Free Micro Virtual Conference and my presentation March 17 on Web 2.0 for Service Professionals, it made me start to really question -

Do Concept Workers need some kind of Skills Training to keep up?

Of course, I happen to strongly believe that various kinds of Skills Training is needed and that it is something that every Corporate Learning department should be doing. But, its a bit curious that we've not seen much more than presentations and scattered skills training workshops (Work Literacy Workshop). Maybe it's partly that I'm recommending fairly traditional learning (skills training) approaches? Maybe it's because employees will be able to figure this out on their own?

I'm going to be curious to see what is described during the SharePoint sessions. Most training associated with SharePoint rollouts are more aimed at features and functions and it is up to the individual to figure out how that applies to their work and work group.

I'm not so sure that really works. And I'm not sure that the pace of this meets the needs of organizations.

What do you think – should Corporate Learning organizations be planning Skills Training to help address this gap?

A little more than a year ago, I published a post Touch Typing - Cursive Writing - Why? that asked why they would spend so much time teaching my kids cursive writing and not teaching them touch typing. The comment that I just received on this post was great and I couldn't let it be buried ...

I am as perplexed as you why many schools do not see the need for students to learn how to touch-type. In my daughter's school, they spent time learning cursive and then were not required to use it except for limited projects. Are they expected to type their reports, though? YES...without learning how to type beforehand.

I am a business teacher who has taught keyboarding in Grades 9-12 for many years and who taught keyboarding in Grades 3 & 4 for two years. Our school did not want to have to hire an extra teacher, so when a high school business teacher resigned, I was moved back to the high school and the keyboarding program was dissolved.

My daughter is now in fifth grade in the same school district as I teach. It drives me crazy that the administration does not value proper keyboarding skills. In fact, our superintendent deleted keyboarding in Grades 9-12 WITHOUT placing it anywhere else in the district. He believes students do not need to spend a class period learning to "doink" on the keyboard.

We teach students how to properly hold a golf club, football, tennis racquet and such...however, we do not teach them a skill that they use everyday of their life. It amazes me that more people are not outraged by this. However, many believe that people can learn to type their own way and that is sufficient.

Within two years, none of my older kids are still using cursive writing. And now my youngest is about to go through learning cursive writing.

I believe we have pretty good schools here, and I really like some of the things they do (writing starts immediately in elementary school). But this does make me wonder:

• Should I be outraged?
• And if I was outraged, is there actually anything that can be done if you believe things in schools should be changed?

Great article in Wall Street Journal - Information Wants to Be Expensive (found via Big Dog Little Dog) suggests that more people should be charging for content online. There was definitely some good points about what people will pay for:

People are happy to pay for news and information however it's delivered, but only if it has real, differentiated value. Traders must have their Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters terminal. Lawyers wouldn't go to court without accessing the Lexis or West online service.
...
For years, publishers and editors have asked the wrong question: Will people pay to access my newspaper content on the Web? The right question is: What kind of journalism can my staff produce that is different and valuable enough that people will pay for it online?
...
American Lawyer founder Steven Brill argues that "local newspapers are the best brands, and people will pay a small amount to get information -- whether it be a zoning board or a Little League game -- that they can't get anywhere else."

So people will pay for differentiated, quality content that they can't get anywhere else.

Journalists as Human Aggregators

As part of working on Topic Hubs, I've come to realize that there's a lot of very high quality content already out there. It's free. But there's friction finding it, organizing it and making sense of it.

Many of the people who write the blogs who are included in Topic Hubs are the same people who are being interviewed by Journalists for articles. Take a look at the recent hub around Electric Vehicles. This includes folks like Chris Paine - Who Killed the Electric Car - who is regularly interviewed. In thinking about this, I realized that:

Journalists are human aggregators.

They go look at the information, often in areas they don't understand that deeply and pull it together into a meaningful piece. They are quite good at this aggregation role. And no current automation is able to produce as high a quality result as a good journalist. But ...

The information behind the article that a journalist produces is already available for free somewhere.

There are cases (the local little league game) where no one else has captured that information or where the journalist truly creates something new. But it's like the old adage ...

In order to bake a cake from scratch, you first have to create the universe.

It's pretty rare to be working on truly new, differentiated, high value content. Most of what we work with are derivatives. I think of everything I'm writing now as being new - because it's new to me - but I'm sure that there's discussion of all of these issues out there somewhere.

Aggregation

It's pretty rare when I disagree with Stephen Downes, see Stephen Downes is Wrong. But he left a comment on my Topic Hubs post:

Topic hubs are not the way forward. Focus on being a network, not being spikey.

I found this to be quite interesting. I think of Stephen as being one of the biggest topic hubs out there. His OLDaily is Stephen doing amazing things by finding interesting articles and tagging them; he also has technology that pulls it together and organizes it. This helps to make sense of a large network of bloggers and other information sources and organize it for consumption by folks like me who are not going to subscribe to all of those blogs individually. He also helps to organize the information for you via tags that allow you to find stuff on topics at a later time.

I think that Stephen provides tremendous value on top of a network (and is part of the network himself). And I guess I think of him as a human-centric aggregator. Maybe a better term is provided by Robin Good - he calls this - NewsMastering.

Newsmastering is the process by which a human being identifies, aggregates, hand-picks, edits and republishes a highly-focused, thematic news via RSS.

It's interesting to see the term "human being" - both human and singular.

I believe that Topic Hubs like eLearning Learning, Mobile Learning, Informal Learning Flow, Communities and Networks Connection provide a similar kind of value as Stephen and Robin - but attack it differently. In this case, social signals (human activity across the network) surface posts such as shown in eLearning Learning Hot List Feb 1-14, Work Literacy Hot List - Early February, Hot List from the Communities & Networks Connection, Mobile Learning Hot List.

Each of them combines human decision making about what should be brought in (Thanks Judy, Nancy, Jay) and social signals, activities across the network - thanks everyone!, to determine what's likely good stuff. This relies much more on automation and doesn't have the editorial that Stephen or Robin provide. There certainly is a difference when you have a single individual (or small group) providing editorial control. Robin puts it this way:

The real added value is specifically in the ability of the newsmaster to manually pick the very best and most relevant stories for its target audience.

You can argue that none of the information provided by a Topic Hub is new. However, it is new in that it provides value on top of existing information much like Stephen's OL Daily and a journalists article. They use different methods to surface what's interesting or relevant. They create additional information and structure on top. And there's value in that additional information and structure.

Aggregation Types

As I'm thinking about this, there's likely a few different forms of aggregation implied by looking at systems like Social Media Today, OLDaily, Communities and Networks Connection, Techmeme, Sphinn and Digg.

• Centralized content or distributed content. Do they pull all the content into the central site or leave it distributed on the original source?
• Organization and Access - how do they organize the content. Human tagging? Automated? How do you access it?
  
• Editorial Distribution - Single person, small group or widely distributed control of what comes in and what is best?
  

Each of the different approaches has a reason and rational. I look forward to trying to figure out what makes sense in what situations.