Posts Tagged ‘social learning’

Checklist of Social Learning Strategies

Jan 12, 2010 Adoption, E2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Implementation, Learning 2.0, social media

Feb 1-3 I will be presenting at the Training 2010 conference with Dave Wilkins (@dwilkinsnh). In preparation, we came up with a bunch of things that one would need to know when creating a social learning strategy.  Each one could take a deep dive, but we wanted to make the list available.

We hope this will help to spark some imagination and help you see, as you plan and implement, some areas you may have missed. (Here is the list in document form.  This work is under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.)

Please feel free to add to the list in the comments below.

Checklist of Social Learning Strategies

Cultural Issues Related to Social Learning
What do you want it to be?  What is it today?

  • Openness vs. planning?  Where is your balance point?
  • Autonomy and self-direction vs. top-down mandates?  Where is your balance point?
  • What do executives, key stakeholders and “rank-and-file” think about social media and sharing?
  • What are your organizational attitudes about transparency?
  • To what extent do learners take personal responsibility and accountability for their learning?

Social Learning Approaches and Methods
What “kind” of  Social Learning models are you pursuing?  How do they integrate?

  • Codified?
  • Collaborative?
  • Emergent?
  • What kinds of social learning interventions do you need?
  • Do you need focused Communities of Practice or decentralized social learning that is part of all learning experiences?  Or both?

    Read the rest of this entry »

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Where Has All the Accountability to Learning Gone?

Jun 12, 2009 slqotd

SLQOTD’s Blog Project asks: “How does SL change the lrnr’s accountability to learn? How can an org encourage lrnr acctblity?”

WARNING:

<rant>

When was it ever NOT the learner’s accountability to learn?  When did someone (or something) take that over?  My answer?  NEVER.

Class of 2009

Creative Commons License photo credit: That Erum Kid.

CASE IN POINT: Schools – public or private, it doesn’t matter.  Who is accountable to make sure that the child learns?  It is the parent.  (Technically, it is at first and then it slowly switches to the child as they gain more maturity, but that is another post in and of itself.)  Most parents automatically hand over the responsibility to learn to the schools.  Yet the accountability never changes – it stays with the parent.  But in transfering the responsibility to the schools, they feel they have transfered the accountability as well.  Then, when their child does not get the education they think they deserve, or the school ‘does them wrong,’ the parents blame the school for their child’s lack of education

Over time, the schools have taken on this fake sense of accountability.

I call this the “Subsumption of Accountability.”  This is when the accountability to do something (in this case, learn) is placed incorrectly on the wrong person or group.  Or when that person or group incorrectly takes on the characteristics of accountability from someone.  They don’t actually take FULL accountability, but it seems as if they do.  But in the end, who suffers when accountability fails?  Not the person who has subsumed it, but the person to which it rightfully belongs.

</rant>

Did you follow that?  I have a book I have started to write on that because it is one of my passions.  So I may have totally lost some people because I glazed over a topic that goes WAY deeper, but I hope it makes sense.

Back to the original question – how does social learning change the accountability for the learner to learn?  It doesn’t.  It may change the responsibility in that they don’t assign it out to the company and instead take it themselves, but it does not change the accountability.

And this is the point we need to drive home.  Sometimes an organization subsumes the learner’s accountability to learn, weakening the learner’s accountability, drive and passion and full responsibility.   So what do we do?  Give it back.  Stop taking it.  Allow the learner to take charge and understand that THEY are in charge of their learning.  Fully.

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Training vs. Learning – What’s the Diff?

Jun 5, 2009 Social Learning SIG

There are A LOT of thoughts floating around about the difference between training & learning.  Here is my take:

Learning in Relation to Business Goals

Learning in Relation to Business Goals

As I see it, eLearning is a subset of Training is a subset of Learning is a subset of Performance Improvement is a means to the end: Accomplishing goals – in this case business goals, but more often personal goals.

There are many ways to learn.  Training is one way.  Whether that be eLearning or ILT (instructor led training).  Other ways? Social learning (of course), job aids, experential discovery, mentoring and a thousand other subtle ways.

This graphic was used in the Overcoming Top 10 Objections To Social Learning webinar (with Dave Wilkins) to explain how to ovecome the objection, “What does social learning have to do with training?”  I go into more of an explanation there, but this is the crux of it all.

(This post is part of the Social Learning Question of the day’s Blog Project.  For more posts about the difference between the two, use the link to see the Twitter conversations.)

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Who am I? Where am I going? A Self Reflection

May 29, 2009 Social Learning SIG, collaboration

Having a ‘real’ job helps you to define yourself.  You might be a graphic designer, a chemical engineer, a nurse or gardner.  But when you are a consultant, the question “Who are you” is largely up to you to define.  This is the challenging (yet exciting!) situation I have placed myself in. Doing this for one main, steady company and doing other projects on the side (which is what I have been doing for years) is MUCH different than all contracting and consulting.  What a fun time it has been so far!

When I talk to either one person or a large hall of people about what I do, I get so excited!  The possibilities for them are HUGE!  Most people, because they don’t understand all this, do not realize the impact and savings of time, money and other resources that they would see.  And when they finally take the plunge it is wonderful to see their eyes light up and get just as excited as I am.  It is even better when they experience, first hand, the effects and become a hero in their organizations.  Maybe that is what I do – I create heros.  Hmmm.  I need to think about that more!

Selling myself, however, has never been my strongest attribute.  I just want to get in, do a great job and show them how to make some real gains.  My ‘proof in the pudding’ is my work, not a hyped up sense of self.  BUT, I do realize that to be able to be a part of those projects I have to so some selling.  So I have taken a stab at defining myself in a more generic way.  I have decided to do it as a post instead of in a doc that I horde myself.  Feel free to make any comments.

Where is my focus?

Primary focus: Using social media and social networking for performance improvement and customer communication.

Secondary Focus: Using social media for marketing; creating performance improvement solutions including learning environments and curriculum; creating and delivering the training (standup, eLearning, etc.).

What does the Primary Focus look like?

  • Education on how social media / networking can drastically increase performance improvement and customer communications through keynotes, conference sessions, workshops, webinars, trainings, writings
  • Setting strategy – Working with key stakeholders to identify
    • Goals / objectives
    • Resources
    • Culture which will help or hinder project
    • Roles & responsibilities
    • Skills and abilities of employees
    • Current vs. future processes / procedures
    • Timelines, milestones, tasks and measurements of success
  • Implementation
    • Managing the project
    • Creating the environment culturally
    • Creating the environment technically
    • Educating all involved on all levels
    • Marketing (internally & externally)
  • Ongoing management and support

How have businesses benefited from this?

  • Increase in
    • sales
    • time to ‘onboard’ a new employee
    • innovation and idea creation
    • the customer ‘working’ for the company for free
    • finding and exploiting new and untapped markets and industry potential
    • finding necessary information
    • finding the experts in a given subject
    • communication with and between employees
    • communication with customers
    • finding answers to questions
    • brining out and storing the knowledge and wisdom of employees and customers
    • working and more efficient processes
    • focus on direction for employees and customers
    • customers supporting themselves and each other
    • customer feedback
    • effectiveness of training
  • Decrease in
    • customer support instances and time/instance
    • number of meetings and meeting time
    • number of emails
    • redundant tasks (duplication of efforts)

Current Side Projects

I am pretty blessed to work with some pretty smart people.  Those in the industries of social media, search engine optimization and marketing (SEO / SEM), Learning and eLearning  and hardware & software.

So, that is who I am – my self reflection.

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Overcoming Objections to Social Learning – One Week at at Time

May 9, 2009 SlideShare, Social Learning SIG, objections, slqotd

Last year at DevLearn I presented a session about the top 15 objections to social learning and how to overcome them. It was a GREAT session. In fact, it was where Dave Wilkins and I met and where we started doing the podcasts, webinars, Social Learning Question of the Day on Twitter and other projects.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I did a similar session, but as a webinar. There were over 200 people that attended. We thought that was good and we were happy with that. Then Dave took the webinar, slides and audio, and put them on SlideShare. Over these last two weeks, to our surprise, the webinar was viewed OVER 1400 MORE times! We are blown away!

Obviously, there is a need for this. So, to fulfill the need, we will be taking one objection a week and discussing it on the Social Learning NING group. It will give more people more space and time to give suggestions, voice concerns and really network ideas together.

So come join the 230 other people in this network.  Tell us your real live objection here, and we will add it in the mix.  Then put in your two cents (or more if you would like) for each objection.  Together we can get some fabulous perspectives and solutions!

I have embedded the webinar once again just to give you a feel for some of the topics we will be talking about.

Here’s to solving all our problems (or at least a few of them!).

Overcoming Top 10 Objections To Social Learning V2

View more presentations from Mzinga .

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{#aft} Adoption vs. Addiction of Social Learning

May 6, 2009 #aft, Adoption

Adoption vs. Addiction – { #aft } from Kevin Jones on Vimeo.

THINK BIG!  Why do we meddle with the ordinary and mundane when there is SO MUCH MORE!  In this video I talk about the difference between adoption of social media / social learning and addiction.  It stems from a tweet by Gia Lyons of Jive Software and a TED.com talk by Benjamin Zander.

Re: Picture – When my children tell a lie they get soap in their mouths for as many minutes as they are years old.  Thankfully, it rarely happens with 7 kids or we would run out of soap pretty quickly!  When one of them is above the age of 10, it takes a toll on the bar of soap.  Like the one at the beginning of the video. (And, no, they don’t actually swallow it…)

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ROI: Measuring Social Media / Learning

Apr 13, 2009 Social Learning SIG

Last week I had a meeting with a client of mine who asked me if I knew how to do ROI on social media/learning.  My answer was, yes, but there isn’t a magic bullet.

For example, there isn’t a formula that will come up with what you want.  Sure, there are plenty of examples of ROI, but they never tell the full story.  For example, after I created the GTSCommunity Portal we saw 20% of all interaction with the technical support team originate through the portal.  What is the ROI on that stat?  We could calculate out what a phone call costs and how much we have saved by not having the team on the phone.  We would come up with a number that would be very nice.

Yet, what about those times when that information they answered for that one person answered it for another without the second even contacting the team at all?  Or what about those times when a customer searches for other information, finds it, is satisfied?  Or the times when they find another customer with the expertise they would like and they make a connection and benefit from that? Or the time when a prospective customer sees the online support they are receiving and that is just one more reason to purchase the product?

Can we ever capture these?  Not really.  We can see the indirect effects of them right away.  (Yet I don’t want to discount what we CAN measure, which is a lot.  There is a lot of proof there as it is.)

Then I thought about Stephen M.R. Covey’s TRUST video (Can’t find original, but this will do.)  He said that TRUST is measurable.  And he is right – to a degree.  There are a TON of other ways that TRUST can influence things that are not directly measurable.

So we go to the next question.  Do we measure what we can measure, and call it good?  Or add in there some Super Stories that show the value.  Or stick to the numbers? Or is there another way?  My personal way is evolving, but I would love to hear the opinions of others.

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Why #8: Roam & Learn

Dec 12, 2008 Selling Social Learning, Verbs of Social Learning

(Continuing a series I have not updated in too long… The “Why’s” of Social Learning.)

WHY #8: Roam & Learn

Another characteristic is that we can choose when to learn – it is not time bound.  There are three aspects to time.  Before now – now / this moment – later.

Email is timeless on two fronts – it satisfies the need of now and later, but not before now. Before email, there isn’t a discussion.  You start at now.

Books are on two fronts as well – before now and now, but not later.  There is not a discussion afterward.  For example, the book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell was just republished.  Why did he republish it? Because he wanted to update it, something that an author cannot do easily.  Once you write it, it is written and done.

An instructor-led training class is usually just a now.  There isn’t a lot of before, nor is there a lot of later except for the notes you took.

Social learning has a history, as we have pointed out, a now and a future all combined into one.  You learn from what others in the past have made for you and you discuss it further to further expand on it.

What I have casually observed is that because the information is available whenever we want it, employees are more willing to learn on their own time, which is a great PRO when you are talking to executives.  They choose to listen to podcasts when they are going home.  They choose to log in at home and learn something really quickly because they have a question now.

I don’t have to sign up for this learning.   There isn’t a schedule or registration.  It just happens.

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Creating a Learning Ecosystem – Why Blended Learning is Now Inadequate

Nov 19, 2008 Social Learning SIG

(WARNING – this is an unusually long post for me.  And, as Mark Oehlert pointed out recently, I echo Mark Twain’s quote, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” )

Blended learning is now inadequate – it is only mediocre.  Let me explain why I think so.

Blended learning assumes some characteristics.  For example, here is the Wikipedia definition:

The instructor can also combine two or more methods of delivery of instruction. A typical example of the delivery method of blended learning would be a combination of technology-based materials and face-to-face sessions used together to present content. An instructor can begin a course with a well-structured introductory lesson in the classroom, and then to proceed follow-up materials online. The term can also be applied to the integration of e-learning with a Learning Management System using computers in a physical classroom, along with face-to-face instruction[1]. Guidance is suggested early in the process, to be faded as learners gain expertise (Kirschner, Clark and Sweller, 2006). (Bolding added.)

What do you notice in there?  The paragraph keeps mentioning the title “instructor.”  I don’t know about you, but when I think of blended learning I think of combining ILT with a job aid with some online training with a podcast – or something like that.  Part of Elizabeth Israel’s class, Getting your Sales Force Productive with True Blended Learning, which was presented at DevLearn08, was described this way:

This session will show participants the various rapid e-Learning development and deployment learning solutions one company developed and implemented using Articulate, Camtasia, and Captivate. You will walk through how using Live Meeting sessions, toolkits (self-study), and case studies increased performance and readiness of the sales and technical sales teams. This real-life session focuses on the design, development, implementation, and effectiveness results of creating a true blended learning environment. (Again, bolding added.)

Again, all very focused on creating and delivery from an instructor point of view.  Before I go on, I want to point out that I am in no way against this.  I was not able to go to Elizabeth’s session – which I think is a great topic.  So please don’t misunderstand me, but do understand this: It has its place, but by itself blended learning is not complete.

Being a big proponent of learning using social media, I must fully admit that this, too, is not complete.  It must all be taken in together.  But this time with a different view.

I was recently listening to a podcast entitled, “Is Innovation Withering on the Vine?”  It was part of the “Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series” by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.  In there, Judy Estrin, author of “Closing the Innovation Gap” talked about the essential characteristics of innovation.

During the presentation she talks about an ecosystem.  Not the one us business people might refer to, but one a biologist would think of.  And this was her definition.  Ecosystems are:

Communities of living organisms that interact dynamically with their environment.  And one very, very key thing about this is that for an ecosystem to sustain life, it must be in balance.”

Later she says, “The ecosystem is a combination of the organisms and the environment.”

KEY: Living organisms; environment; balance.  They all play together.  Translate this into learning.  Unlike a traditional blended learning environment where those who learn are fed from one source, a learning ecosystem balances those organisms (people) with the environment (organization, culture, tools).  When we think of it this way we suddenly realize that we all rely upon each other to learn.  I am accountable to ’stay alive’ and not be forced to rely upon one ‘hand’ to ‘feed me.’  Rather, I interact with all the organisms as necessary, within the environment.  Sometimes the actions of us organisms changes the environment and culture as we start relying on each other and use the tools in non-conventional, but extremely useful ways.

Rather than creating a training department or curriculum, we should be thinking about all the ways learning can happen within an organization and apply the correct ointment where necessary.  Sometimes it will be an ILT.  Sometimes it will be eLearning.  But more often than not, it will be people teaching people of which the training department will have nothing to do with except to help create the environment.  Sometimes it is the role of mother nature to create that environment and step back and let the organisms figure it out.  We must learn to do the same and then be amazed at what they can do.

So really – what is the difference between blended learning and creating a learning ecosystem?  Blended learning takes on the funnel mentality.  All knowledge must funnel through the learning department’s people, systems, processes, packages and must be measured in standard ways as it goes through.  If it does not route and measure in these ways it is out of our circle of influence.

In a learning ecosystem the environment is created so that learning just happens.  It is a part of work rather than separate from it.  It includes traditional blended learning when appropriate (for each piece does not lose its significance) but the funnel, for the most part, is gone.  Formal learning intersects with social learning intersects with informal learning intersects with traditional learning…

This changes the environment in the eye of those who create the environment and in the eyes of the organisms.  Instead of, “I am going to learning” it is “I am always learning.”  Just as your heart beats and your lungs fill up with air, you know they are separate functions but one cannot live without the other.  They work toward the same goal.  Both very necessary but playing different roles.

We must strategically create learning ecosystems within our organizations where formal courses of all kinds, social interactions using all mediums and all types of informal learning blend together.  Creating this environment is much more strategic on so many more levels.  Think about accountability of learning.  Think about ownership of content.  Think about distribution channels.  Think about measurement.  The game changes because the goal and the path to get to the goal changed.

Done correctly, the ecosystem goes far beyond merely existing, always trying to keep up but never fully realizing its potential. Instead it will thrive – totally interconnected with it’s environment.  It is a holistic approach to learning.

Instead of being a subculture unto the larger, it is wholly integrated so that the learners don’t make a choice to learn, it’s just a part of what they do. Again, like breathing or the beating of the heart, it just happens and is not a separate event. At times they won’t know it is happening- other times they will. But these times will be more rare, so interconnected will be their learning. And the learning ecosystem will thrive by creating the culture which understands it’s more subtle needs and will adjust as necessary.  It will take more than the learning department.  More than an executive blessing.  It will take, and will affect, everyone.

In the modified words of Benjamin Zander (a ‘must watch’), “How would you act, what would you say, what would you do if you thought that learning happened at discrete times and in discrete ways and you controlled it.  Now how would you act, what would you say, what would you do if you felt learning happened by everyone ALL THE TIME!”

This may have been way too philisophical, but it really hit me when I listened to that podcast.  We finally have the tools to create full learning ecosystems, whereas before we only were able to influence a part of it.

In Sean Kearney’s session entitled, “The Bionic Brain: Learning, Technology, and Social Networks” at DevLearn, he asked, “How many of your learning organizations are a barrier to learning?”  Almost every hand in the room went up.  And that was from the people – the experts – who run the organizations!

I dare you to create these ecosystems of learning in your organization.  Think on a more global scale than you have before.  Don’t get caught in doing the same things for the same old reasons.  Do the same things, do more, change more – create that true balance between organisms and environment in which a learning ecosystem thrives.

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Live Blogging the Learning Technologies Conference

Oct 23, 2008 Social Learning SIG

The Learning Technologies Conference in Portland, Oregon is happening as I type.  Christine Martell, Michele Martin, Dave Richards and I are hosting.  There are a few things I wanted to point out as we are going through this:

  1. Learning and working are not exclusive.  They can happen at the same time.  We have such a tendency to separate them.
  2. Social Learning IS NOT training.  Unlike #1, we absolutely must separate these two.  Until we do we cannot grasp the advantages of using Web 2.0 tools for learning.  They fit very nicely together, but are not synonyms.
  3. Training = Delivery.  Social Learning = Creating the learning with others.  Training = 1:many.  Social Learning = many:many or many:1 where the one is you.  Creating an Articulate module or using Captivate is not Social Learning.  Ask: This piece of learning I am thinking of – will I create it with others or deliver it?  We must be clear what it is and what it isn’t.
  4. Many people worry about using Web 2.0 tools.  Many of them are false concerns – worries that are not even real worries.  Sometimes we work ourselves up against unseen and unrealistic monsters (and we lose every time).
  5. Content does not need to be perfect.  Look at Youtube.  The videos are horrible, but how many people watched and loved the fire eating rabbit?  Not that we want content to be trashy, but it doesn’t need to be perfect.
  6. Social Learning is not THE solution – it won’t solve all your problems.  There must be a balance with other tools and methodologies.
  7. You are accountable for your learning.  Not the training department, not your teacher, not your mother – YOU.  Flip that, and you are not accountable for another’s learning.  They are.  Let’s not try to take that upon ourselves.

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