How do people get information? Brandon Carson, the facilitator from Sun Microsystems, gets it from Google. Most people, however, go to peers. It is about the relationships they built. Executives get their information (almost 100%) from direct reports or peers. We need to open it up to forge relationships.
37% of the worlds information is sitting on Sun product. 1/2 of their work force does not work in an office. They can work on a Mac, Windows, or other machines. What ever they want. Average age of the employee is 43. In the average age new hire was 23. This is causing some chaos. Net Geners are having a big impact on things. they are used to informal, social relationships. There are 14 million in colleges and universities and they are coming to work for you. They expect, freedom, collaboration, mobility, fun, innovation and customization. As learning professionals we need to give them more ways to get to information.
He just showed a two exchange text message his daughter and friend did – oh my goodness. I didn’t understand it at all! But it was fine for them.
Learners are changing learning. We expect a richer, more social interaction. Technology can help with that learning.
Brandon put up a blog post that had links into the intranet. Instantly, he was getting comments saying “you can’t do that!” The community was watching and corrected him.
Their executives are saying, “Why aren’t you doing the 2.0?” to everyone, including their I.T., while others’ are saying, “Why are you doing it?”
The New Hire Process
Objectives:
- Smooth they onboarding process
- Reduce Frustration
- Increase speed-to-competency
- More than just benefits information
- Present Sun as a cool place to work
60% are onboarded in Santa Clara, the other 40% Webex in to get the information.
Their model:
- Create an ecosystem of mutual trust and engagement
- Build in understanding and flexibility
- Foster an environment that helps participants develop shared experiences
Four behaviors of the learner:
- Attention: Want them to be interested in it. Their home page is vivid, high-resolution with images. Get some emotion going in. Good UI techniques. It is themed with iconic navigation with action verbs: Accelerate, Participate, Learn, Explore, Play. It is tied to Google analytics. The left to right works, it is the second most visited page besides the home page. It is public (http://learning.sun.com/newhire) – the sun wanted it that way! Open to the world for prospective employees.
- Motivation: Arouse them to action to share information. Learners are motivated better, usually, by short-term goals. But if they are too easy, you lose them. You must have FLOW. HALO designs you for 30 minutes of Flow. He shoots for 2-3 minutes
- Participation: Encourage them to engage. He was hired to create learning games. Within a game, you must have a story. The one he shows is more narrative based.
- Retention: Of course
- Show meaningful context
- Present evidence and credibility
- Remove invasive user interface clutter
- Remove irrelevant visuals
- Strip out jargon and corporate-speak
- Remove barriers to content – the games are not linked to the LMS.
And the Collaborative Learning Environment pulled them all together.
Get out of the way of the content!
What worked:
- Great new gateway for all new hires and potential new hires
- Redefines the learning landscape at Sun
- Is a first iteration of a CLE within Sun
What didn’t work:
- Wiki platform is complex and hard to design to – Wiki markup killed them. Search was really big for them – everyone goes there first.
- We still don’t have a unified learning management / content management system
- Not many people are playing the games
Design tips:
- Consider committing to a moderator as a job description
- Build an environment of trust
- Set learning goals for individuals and teams
- Be prepared to deal with problem behavior
Question: How many people are tagging content?
Answer: Not many people without prompting (Oddly enough, we are not having that problem. I wonder what the difference is?)
