Engaged Learning

Focus on the People, Not the Document/Information.

Aug 13, 2009 Uncategorized

Over the course of a couple hours yesterday and one today, I sat through a deep dive into a web site redesign.  They wanted to refresh it, bring it up to speed (so that, for example, it does not show an old cell phone on the front page).  They had plans to update layout and navigation and organize the current information a bit better and bring in some new info.  After some prodding, I found out that the purpose of this redesign was to help people find information better and just to make it look more modern.

In the old version there was navigation and search to help users find information.  In the new, there was search and a redesigned navigation.  The improvement for find-ability was very incremental.  But if that is really the goal, we weren’t doing it.

We forget that there are more ways to find information.  Search.  Heirarchical navigation. Tagging. “Others who viewed this also viewed…” and other techniques.  Those are the technical ways.  But we can’t forget that one of the best ways to find information is through PEOPLE.  I know – weird concept, but it works.  Link people together and they will find the information that is not in a system.  Rather, it is in their heads, or their desk drawer on a piece of paper, or on a local hard drive, or in a book you didn’t know about, or it hasn’t been discovered until you and they put your heads together to discover it.

Right now more systems focus on information or documents.  What they should focus on is people since they are the ones who create the information. Focus on the people and the information will take care of itself.  As @dave said during #lrnchat tonight, “Biggest thing for lrng professionals in adopting soc learning is changing mindset – let learners share expertise #lrnchat.”  Enable that and you are golden.

Tags: people, search, tagging

Tags vs. Hierarchy

Mar 16, 2009 Enterprise 2.0

They were easy enough to do, why not do more?

Tags vs. Hierarchy

Tagging Advantages:

• Results are much more contextual*
• Community tags
• Fits into many ‘categories’
• Tags are user generated
• Not lost in a sub-sub-sub folder
• Findability increases
• Learning increases

*With hierarchies you are limited to one category in which to place information.  In reality, one piece of information may fit MANY different categories (sub-sub folders for example) and may fit in one for a particular context and not in the same for a different context.  Tags allow for more than one ‘category’ and this information is not pigeonholed into one.

Tags: tagging, vs.

Why #10: Finds Information

Dec 22, 2008 Selling Social Learning, Verbs of Social Learning

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

WHY #10: Finds Information

Social Learning FINDS what you are looking for.  Or at least helps you find how to find.

What are the most common ways to find information? Did you notice that I did not say “search for information?”  This is because searching is only one way to find information.

The four major ways to find info are:

• Search
• Hierarchy
• Tag (Machine is using us)
• Personalization

Search is the most use.  Probably because it is most common and we are used to that.  But it may not be the most effective. How many times have we searched on Google and found a whole bunch of results that have the term(s) we wanted but didn’t have anything to do with what we wanted?  All too many times.

Hierarchy is good, but it is limited. For example, I may be able to save a document in a folder on my hard drive.  Oh, but wait.  It could also live in another folder.  And another.  It realistically live in all three.  Which do I put it in?  And when I go to find it next time, will I remember where it lived?  Yet it is another effective way to organize information.  A director of IT mentioned to me that one time he searched his network folders – which were not really THAT huge – and found 15 separate versions of the same document all with different information. Now, which one was the correct version?  Which was most up to date?

Tagging gives subjects to a bit of information rather than trying to pigeon-hole it into on label (which is what a hierarchy does).  For the best video on this, see  Information R/evolution.

The Personalization was pioneered by Amazon.  It can ’see’ what you are looking for and give you suggestions on similar pieces of information. The system does the work for you.  Also, it can help you find others who might know what you are looking for.  Many times what you want is not in a system but in someone’s head.  The system will connect you with that person.

Tags: amazon, personalization, search, tagging