Learning Conversations

The Learning & Skills Group conference today was probably one of the best learning events I have ever been to.

It was very much an interactive event, with few "speakers" and lots of conversation.

Key thoughts that I came away with:

1. Learning & development and internal communications are (or should be) just different views of the same thing.
2. Many organisations find that motivating their employees to take responsibility for their own learning is a limiting factor.
3. Changing behaviour is one of the main reasons for having a learning & development function. The experts in changing behaviour are marketing people. L&D can learn a lot from marketing...
4. Single-sign-on between systems is critical to the success of a learning strategy that comprises of "small pieces, loosely joined".
5. An effective global search across systems (cf. Google) can significantly increase the likelihood of people using your content and systems.
6. Open source software is being seen as a valid option, with the recognition that it still comes with a price.
7. Compliance training is a necessary evil. It has no effect on learning or behaviour, but exists purely to tick a box.
8. Management understanding of the implications of learning technologies is a limiting factor to their successful adoption.
9. Bottom-up initiatives often fail when they become too popular as the infrastructure is not there to handle them.
10. Top-down initiatives often fail because end-users do not buy-in to them.

In writing Moodle Administration, Alex Büchner, from Synergy Learning has created an extremely useful resource that I would recommend to anyone in charge of a Moodle site.

He starts from the point at which you have chosen to use Moodle, and systematically introduces each element of the administrator's role:

• Installation
• The Moodle system
• Course management
• User management
• Roles and permissions
• Look and feel
• Configuration options
• Monitoring activity
• Security
• Performance and optimisation
• Backup and restore
• Third party add-ons
• Moodle networking

In doing so, he covers virtually every aspect of being a Moodle administrator.

These types of reference manual usually answer the questions:

How do I do a particular task?
What are the options available to me?
Why should I choose a particular option?

Moodle administration answers the "How?" and "What options?" questions admirably, in clear language with screenshots throughout.

Much of this is available in the online Moodle documentation, so it could be argued that the book version is immediately out-of-date as compared to the online version. Yet, having the information in book format, allowed me to discover for the first time a number of Moodle features - notably those around performance and optimisation.

The book could be improved, particularly in the earlier chapters , by addressing more of the "Why?" questions. Not necessarily "Why Moodle?" (that's a book in its own right!), but, for example, looking at the impact of:

• choosing a hosted solution over self-hosting
• managing authentication and enrolment via an external database over self-service authentication and enrolment.

The book also seems to assume that most people will be hosting their own Moodle sites, and thus goes into a lot of detail around the technical aspects of installing, optimising and securing the software.

I tend to recommend that organisations will be better off procuring a hosted service which handles all of those aspects, unless any one of these apply:

1. The organisation has a robust technical and support infrastructure
2. The organisation wants to integrate Moodle with other systems inside the firewall
3. The organisation wants to make major changes to the Moodle core code

Most small to medium organisations don't have these requirements or the infrastructure and so opt for hosted solutions, often from a Moodle Partner. Administrators in these situations may be scared off by the first chapters about installing Moodle, LAMP architecture etc. They will want to go straight to Finding your way... , and then onto Course Management. This could, perhaps, be signposted better.

Even so, I have a number of clients to whom I will be recommending this book wholeheartedly.

Moodle Administration (2008)
Author: Alex Büchner
Publisher: Packt Publishing

When it comes to designing a large-scale learning programme, the processes you work through are probably not much different to building something just for your team. The difference is that you will need to be much more explicit in your thinking, rather than relying on gut instinct.

When I start out with a new learning programme I try to split my work into three core areas:

• Learning architecture
• Technology infrastructure
• People (probably the most important)

Getting the learning architecture is important, but, if you get the technology or the people aspects wrong then nothing's going to make the learning work!

Much of the thinking is iterative; as soon as you get one thing sorted you need to go back and work out its impact on the rest of the design.

Throughout the process, the role of the Solutions Architect is to balance the needs of the organisation and the needs of the learner with the resources available (eg. systems, budgets, people).

Just like in a real-world building project, getting the architect in early is essential. On large-scale projects there's no point giving the builder their instructions on what to build, and then bringing in an architect to make sure they do it properly. The architect is the link between your organisation's real (rather than perceived) needs and the solution to those needs.

Learning architecture

Building a learning architecture

Business need

Before you even start thinking about what the learning programme is going to look like you need to consider the problem that it is meant to solve.

It might be that your client organisation is wanting to explore new approaches to a particular aspect of its work, where the outcome is uncertain.

Or there may be a need to proove that the organisation has complied with particular legal or regulatory requirements. (I'll leave it for others to debate whether that means training is the only solution.)

Perhaps the organisation needs to ensure that there is a consistent skill base across the whole workforce.

Your client might have decided that people need a raised level of knowledge and understanding of what you do.

Or perhaps there's a strategic need to change behaviours across the organisation.

Whatever the business need, you must understand it. And you must get to the bottom of the reasons behind that business need. Alongside that you'll need to know very quickly what drives the organisation's culture. Without those two converging streams of understanding, you will find it extremely difficult to create a learning solution that matches the client's needs and expectations.

There are two tools that really help in this process with clients. One is Cathy Moore's action mapping presentation. This, very clearly, shows the client the importance of focussing on what they want people to do, rather than know.

The other tool I use considerably, especially in client workshops, is some sort of visual mapping tool. Options here include:

• MindManager - a very powerful mind mapping tool that integrates well with MS Office.
• Freemind - an open-source mind-mapping tool. Fast and simple to use.
• CmapTools - a free concept-mapping tool

These tools are useful to both collect ideas together, and then to re-present those ideas back to the client as your understanding of what they are trying to achieve.

Measurement

As an adjunct to understanding the business need, you will also need to understand your client's expectations of what they will measure.

As soon as you put any part of a learning programme online, you run the risk of measuring things just because they are easy to measure, rather than because they are important. Online learning provide huge amounts of data about what learners are doing and when they're doing it. Much of that data might be useful as aggregated statistics (given a large enough population sample), but it tells you very little about the individual learner.

The challenge is to find the things that you can measure that will give you meaningful information about whether you are achieving your business needs.

Consider what it is you want to find out:

• Learners' skill levels before and/or after the learning intervention?
• How your learning intervention is perceived?
• How many people took up your offer of the learning intervention, and to what extent
• Whether your learning intervention made any difference to learners' behaviour?

You'll also need to consider whether the measurements are "high stakes". In other words, are other actions dependent on the results of the measurements.

Next time

In the next installment of this post, we will look at the routes a learner will take to, through and after your intervention - the learner's eye view...

Except where otherwise noted, this content is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.

If you're using ExponentCMS to drive your website, and you suddenly find that your admins can't login, then do the following (this is only tested on version 0.96.6):

• Use PHPMyAdmin or similar to explore the database
• Under the Structure tab, look for the table exponent_sessionticket
• Does it say "in use" next to it?
• If so, then try to repair it - tick the box, and select Repair from the drop-down at the bottom
• Try to login to ExponentCMS again
• If you still can't login, then you'll need to DROP the table and rebuild it using the SQL code below. [Be careful that you only drop the sessionticket table!]
• Try to login again

I've no idea why this table gets corrupted, but it's one to watch out for.

Here's the SQL code to rebuild the table:


CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `exponent_sessionticket` (
`ticket` varchar(23) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`uid` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`last_active` int(14) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`refresh` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`ip_address` varchar(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`start_time` int(14) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`browser` varchar(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
PRIMARY KEY (`ticket`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;


Forum discussions that helped fix this:

http://www.exponentcms.org/index.php?action=view_thread&id=8928&module=bbmodule
http://www.exponentcms.org/index.php?action=view_thread&id=7481&module=bbmodule
http://www.exponentcms.org/index.php?module=bbmodule&section=75&action=view_thread&id=7975

My role often tends to be that of interpreter - helping IT people understand HR/Learning specialists and vice versa. This often means I'm involved in discussions about choosing and using software, particularly social software, often known as web 2.0.

HR and Learning & Development see web 2.0 tools in use around the world, connecting people and ideas, and want to make that happen inside their organisation. The IT team see risks, loss of intellectual property and bandwidth hogging. Gross generalisations, I know. But they'll do for now.

So, here are my top 10 tips for choosing and using software that will help both groups - and their senior managers - achieve their goals.

1. Know your audience. Will they readily adopt social software? Are they already active on Facebook/Myspace/Bebo? Do they do social bookmarking with Diigo or Del.icio.us? Are they consumers or producers of information? Do they Twitter? Do they have blogs? Would they know a mashup from their RSS? What can you offer inside the organisation that they can't get outside it?
2. Find the people that are actively involved in these networks to put together a web 2.0 policy for your organisation. Most corporate policies will be similar. Tony Karrer's collection would be a good place to start. Even the US Navy has a web 2.0 policy.
3. You will never compete with Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Diigo, Ning etc. Don't even bother. Instead, get them working for you. Sell the benefits of participation. Not just those to the organisation, but those to the individual. Give permission - but, whatever you do, don't make them mandatory!
4. Learn the capabilities of the free tools like Ning, Wikispaces and Google docs. They are more secure & private than many people realise.
5. Discover for yourself the benefits of working outside of the porous pyramid. Join a group on Ning that is in your area of interest. Search for blogs about your specialism and collect them using an RSS reader. Perhaps even start your own learning log.
6. Have a NetSafe campaign inside the organisation - focussing on the implications of not keeping your blog / facebook entries / Flickr photos under control. Not just organisational implications, but personal ones.
7. Start small. Stay under the radar for as long as possible. Let usage grow organically - virally even. A big bang launch will often just lead to unsustainable expectations, and long term negativity.
8. Collaborative tools, such as wikis and forums need a common factor - a reason for being there, and a reason to contribute. Learn from those that are successful: Wikipedia, Pfizerpedia, Manager-Tools, Moodle.org. Consider what makes them so special, amongst the many thousands of "failed" collaborative networks & forums. Understand what helps and hinders adoption. Creating a space for networking is fine, but how will you stimulate people to actually do that networking. Learn from conferences - they don't just land people in a room and let them get on with it. They provide stimuli of one sort or another.
9. Consider how important the data in the social networks is to your people, and to your organisation. This blog is hosted by me, at my expense, because it's my data, and I want it under my control, not my employers. That's why I also don't host it on a free service - however good it might be. Free services are great if the risk to the business is minimal if the service stops. If that risk is great, then think about spending some money, perhaps even bringing it in-house.
10. If you are looking to source real software, and spend real money, then start by looking at some of the open source tools like Elgg - social network/blog/CPD portfolio, b2evolution - multi-user blogging, Scuttle - social bookmarking, Gregarius - RSS aggregator, Dim Dim - virtual meetings.

Three final points - just to wrap up...

• Whatever you do, get your IT team on board, so they're aware of what you're doing and understand what you're trying to achieve.
• Always think about it from your user's perspective. On the web, if it's too hard, people will lose interest and go to something else.
• Don't be afraid to get help. The technology's the easy bit. It's making it work for you that's far, far harder.

I leave you with this short presentation, from the Slideshare presentation-sharing site, on web 2.0 in the Enterprise:

This was originally posted as a response to Clive Shepherd's post. So read that first, to set the context.

If you're not going to do that, then you need to know that Itiel Dror was speaking at the Learning Technologies conference. He demonstrated two investigations he'd carried out, which illustrated factors that affected how much people remember after certain periods of time.

The first looked at how we present information:

• linearly (click next to continue)
• content alongside a map of the rest of the content
• a map only - which users return to after looking at each piece of content

The second looked at how people remember more from a health and safety video when they're asked to interact with the video - making choices, identifying issues etc

I had big questions about Itiel's first investigation. The key thing for me was that the pages of content were unrelated. This, therefore, bears no relation to real-life situations where the content within a site/module is usually related in some way.

All the learners were being asked to do was remember the content on the pages. So, it may be that the "linear" one just offered fewer distractions and allowed them to focus on one topic at a time.

Itiel's second test was far more realistic, and therefore far more impressive. It clearly showed the benefits of interacting with the content (as well as people). But then people like Terry Anderson have been saying that for years.

The critical thing here is understanding the nature of interaction.

It's not something that can be added in to the content at the last minute, it needs to be embedded as a coherent part of the way the content works.

An interaction, for me, is where the learner does something to the content - expecting a response, or vice versa.

It could be as simple as asking a question which then pushes the learner into the next stage of the materials.

Or a set of questions which force the learner to reflect on the previous chunk of content. But, write the questions first, then the content.

Or a branching navigation, where your score is displayed progressively as you make your choices.

At its most effective, we get games. And here I mean real games, that are engrossing, even addictive, demanding time, ingenuity and imagination from the learner.

How much of what we call training is actually just ticking boxes for someone else's report?

What would be the real impact if you called a halt to all training activity in your organisation? Would anyone notice?

When people come to you and say we need training, do you ever ask them why? Keep saying "Why" until you get back to the real heart of the problem, then, and only then, can you suggest a possible solution. That might include training, but it also might include:

• changing systems & processes
• providing performance support (eg. like Google does so well)
• making sure managers are managing
• encouraging sharing of knowledge
• better internal communications (the vital link between internal comms and training is something I want to explore further - later)
• improving recruitment to find people who are ready to learn

What proportion of your training activity actually produces meaningful performance improvements? And, if we're not improving performance, why are we training?

(Inspired by something Donald Clark said, but I can't remember where it was!?)

Some time back I wrote a post about my ideal Learner Support System.

Well, I spent a while wandering around the Learning Technologies exhibition last month looking for a system that would meet those needs:

It's very difficult to find them. Underneath all the Web 2.0 marketing guff, most of the Learning Management Systems out there are still doing the same old thing - putting management in the middle, rather than the learner.

One product that did catch my eye, which I'm investigating further, is Involve from Infinity Learning

On first looks it hits some of the key points:

1. Each piece of content should be individually addressable;
2. The metadata about each piece of content should be fully searchable;
3. Users should be able to find content by searching and sorting, by faceted classification, and through automated recommendations (other people who used this also used X);
4. Users should be able to leave comments and ratings against each item of content;
5. Users should be able to link up with other users with similar interests/learning needs;
6. It should allow particular groups of users to be targetted with promotions about particular content items;

So far, so good. But, as I said at the conference, without testing how a system works in real life, it's very hard to come to any conclusions... Infinity, are you listening?

I've been looking around for networks of new primary teachers (preferably with a UK focus), but can't find any. I thought there'd be a Facebook group or a Ning network at least.

If anyone knows of one please let me know.

This was my first Learning Technologies conference, and I was pleasantly surprised. In the past, I've found conferences unsatisfactory affairs - often promising more than they achieve. Gradually, though, they are starting to change. These days, the conference or event is often the culmination of professional relationships that have developed online, whether through LinkedIn, FaceBook, or via the other various blogging, Twittering and RSS-based networks that we have.

Having that pre-knowledge of the people who will be at the conference enables you to leapfrog the introduction process, since you already have that initial understanding of where they're coming from.

Having said that, it was a pity that only about 15% of the delegates took advantage of the provided online social network area to interact with people in advance of the conference itself. It feels like people in Learning and Development want to be able to show off all the whizzy technology, but don't actually want to use it themselves.

I can appreciate that when you're talking about the typical corporate elearning module (as if anyone would volunteer to trawl through one of those!) but we're talking here about a tool that would help delegates get much more value from the event itself. At nearly £1000 per person you'd think they'd want to...

If we could set an expectation that included pre-conference online activity it would also mean that we could significantly redesign the event itself to make far better use of the face-to-face environment.

You see, I really don't understand why 1000 people want to go to the effort of coming to one place, simply to sit in rows watching people presenting their ideas. How can you justify that as good use of time?

Wouldn't it be better to:

• Provide all the presentations beforehand? As videos, as narrated Powerpoints, or even just as old-style conference papers. That way, when you get a really in-depth, thought-provoking session, like George Siemens', you can rewind it, take notes, and think about the implications.
• Encourage interaction before the event, based on the ideas in the presentations? Wouldn't that start the debating juices going?
• Use the face-to-face time to pick up on the issues raised beforehand? Split us up into smaller discussion groups, focussing on specific ideas. Or get the presenter to respond to questions - posed in advance or as an outcome of the discussion groups. Face-to-face time should not be about listening and watching, but about interaction, debate and action.
• Pick up on the successful Teachmeet concept, where practitioners sign-up to give micro (7 minute) or nano (2 minute) presentations during a 2-3 hour informal session? Perhaps this could be offered to delegates to the exhibition at a small cost (£30 including free drinks - or get sponsorship from the exhibition stallholders?), to run from 4pm to 7pm?

So, what I'm saying is... keep the people the same, but stimulate the interaction more, so we really get the full benefit of face-to-face time.

Of course, this does mean that delegates will have to be set clear expectations about what the conference will involve. That's not impossible - the Manager-Tools team do that very successfully with their conferences.