eel-learning

Working Smarter webinar

I attended a free transatlantic webinar featuring members of the Internet Time Alliance - Clark Quinn,  Charles Jennings, Jay Cross Harold Jarche and Jane Hart. They had invited questions beforehand, and this is a short summary of the points that came up in the discussion.  I think the presentation benefitted from the pressure to address each of these questions. The leaders 'rotated', addressing each question in pairs, with the others chipping in occasionally. That made the overall presentation brisk and to the point. The theme was that social learning is less about learning and more about working in a 'smarter' way.

What's 'Working Smarter' and why is it important?

• it's about conversation, not packaged information
• it's to enable us to cope with the avalance of information
• because our current company practices are from the pre-information age
• as routine work gets automated and outsourced, we're left with exception handling, complex work  and creative work. Trad TNA and training aren't geared for these non-repeatable operations
• it's about augmenting our brains with technology

Examples of using social learning to support formal learning

• Jane Hart - managers' learning community in a South African power station company
• returning the focus of training to apprenticeships, away from the classroom

How do you motivate busy people to do social learning when their schedule's full already?

• demonstrate that it's easier, cheaper and more flexible than the alternatives
• show that it saves time and effort. Google demonstrates that people take the line of least resistance to find what they need
• show that it's more fun

How do you sell the idea of social learning to a sceptical manager?

• show the benefits to his/her own practice, or at least to yours
• don't call it 'learning' or 'social' or 'networking' - call it effective collaboration

What's the role of an L&D specialist in Working Smarter?

• 'network weaver'
• removing barriers
• NOT checking technical correctness - examples of Wikipedia and Dare2Share show self correction works
• facilitator of communities - some will need input and help
• a minor part will still be developing content and courses but this can be outsourced if in conflict

What part will mobile learning play in this?

• four functions of mobile device - get content, compute (make us smarter), capture (photo, mic, video, sensor), communicate
• not just a delivery platform for more elearning
• connecting with your network. If networks inhibited by corporate restrictions people will use their mobiles
• slow learning - a continuing relationship with the learner, not event-based
• performance support should be training's top priority
• predicted that in 2-3 years, majority of internet access will be from mobile devices
• Google now design primarily for mobile before desktop

What are the ingredients of a successful community of practice?

• you need a shared purpose and eagerness to learn from each other
• so you can't mandate a C of P
• it's about nurturing, more like gardening
• start to embed a collaborative culture (this term appeals to senior managers)
• 'You know you're in one when it changes your practice'

How do you create a groundswell for informal learning without alienating management?

• it has to be 'seeded, fed and watered'
• it has to be both bottom up and top down - senior champions. BBC and Reuters had support of top people willing to blog

How do you measure the impact of social learning?

• get out of the learning mindset into a business mindset
• business outcomes, changes in behaviour, business metrics
• push-button reporting (like LMS) won't work. LMS doesn't measure business performance
• talk to people - even a sample of 24 people is enough
• see McKinsey report on speed of access to knowledge. 'Knowledge workers spend 50% of their time doing things they don't want to do - dealiing with email, searching for information, making appointments'

What's the most important thing you can do to move the Working Smarter agenda on?

• demonstrate the value to yourself first - social learning is something you do
• immerse yourself in it
• don't assume people have the skills or motivation to share - they need nurtured and 'safety' has to be created if it isn't there
• find seniors who 'get it' and bind them in closely as examplars not just endorsers
• measure business results in thes same way you'd measure engagement or sales
• don't focus on learning, focus on work.

The Internet Time Alliance

Working Smarter Daily

Starting a Community of Practice

I've been working on a Community of Practice for all those involved in any way with online learning across my organisation. Last week saw the startup event, which was very encouraging.

Why a CoP?

We've just been through one of the biggest mergers in UK corporate history. During this we found that there were lots of people with an interest in online learning who didn't know each other.  Some were creators, others regular purchasers from external suppliers. Some relied on 'e' for their formal learning programmes, others were L&D people who wanted - and needed - to understand better the range of media encompassed by 'e'.  I was particularly keen to get talking with the people who regularly buy from outside suppliers as I had a suspicion they could only visualise what they'd seen before - page turning tutorials - and the suppliers would be only too happy to provide the staple diet. Not only were there no standards across the organisation about 'e' but there was no common language even about what online learning was.

My managers and I also realised that we'd only understand social learning by doing, and that this was a golden opportunity to learn about how to set up a CoP by actually doing it.

What form does it take?

There's an online element and a face to face element. The online element consists of a forum, a resources page (with links to top bloggers like Tom Kuhlmann, Charles Jennings and Clive Shepherd) and an internal blog platform. The forum and blog are hosted on our server, external to the firewall. That way we're not forced to use the over-controlled corporate  Sharepoint.  Even then we still have quite strict limitations on the kinds of software we can use, and the ones we've chosen are just enough to get us using these facilities. If the idea catches light, then we'll be in a better position later to discuss better, more dedicated platforms like Yammer. We launched the forum first, with a 'Who Are You?' topic, as part of the build up to last Thursday's launch event, where we attracted over 50 to our conference centre.

There we had a keynote talk from the Director of Learning, who is an iconoclast and a great enthusiast for this sort of thing, from Charles Jennings, opening our minds to the end of the separation of work and learning, and an after-lunch rant from me about the things that set my teeth on edge in elearning. The most important part of the day was a 'knowledge cafe' style discussion, first in small groups then in the larger group on the theme of 'what are we going to do about it, then?'.  To kick this off we had very short introductory statements from three of us (along the lines of 'scrap formal and compliance training', ' don't throw the baby out with the bathwater', ' conversations are more powerful than training ').

I'd been very particular about calling this C of P 'online learning' rather than 'elearning' and the day certainly spent a lot of time talking about knowledge sharing, user generated content and performance support as well as 'traditional' elearning.

The large group conversation brought up a lot of the expected barriers - Group IT and Group Brand being the main ones - but also the encouragement of the Director of Learning to try new ideas, to be willing to experiment and learn from failure, and to enlist his support in the bigger internal battles that we'll meet when we try to extend our role beyond order-taking to consultancy.

I was delighted by the response - both in terms of the numbers that came and the enthusiasm with which they threw themselves into the discussions. And the main objective - that they should simply get to know each other - seemed to have been met. We're now in the crucial phase of not letting it all get beaten by the Return to the Inbox. I'll report back after some time on how it's gone.