Our workshop was followed by Andy Jones, speaking about his experiences of moving "from elearning to knowledge sharing" at Thomson Reuters. At the heart of that was the idea that trainers are not the right people to be taking new ideas out to the workforce. Instead, they pull in champions from the business to design materials, take ownership for them and then to spread the message back in the business. Makes perfect sense, and is a far more scalable and cost-effective way of supporting change.

There were two things that really grabbed me over the two days:

1. The amount of evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, to support the concepts/ideas of social learning, communities of practice and learning ecosystems. This came from a range of sources, but primarily Josh Bersin and Mark Oehlert. As soon as their slides come online, I'll reflect more on this.
2. The disconnect between what was happening upstairs at the conference and down on the 2nd floor at the exhibition.

Jane Hart described the exhibition as showing "first generation elearning", and I'd have to agree. When asked about what was down there, I described it as "same old, same old". It seemed like every stand was either trying to sell you a Learning Management System, a means of turning Powerpoints into online "learning" materials, or bespoke materials development.

There were exceptions of course. Caspian Learning stands out, with their Thinking Worlds games designer (review to come), and Infinity Learning, with their Involve system that takes ideas from Amazon in providing access to learning materials. Although I would like to take issue with their negative statements about free systems (I'm assuming they mean Moodle et al), which are simply spreading unjustified Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - especially when you consider their own website is built on the open-source Wordpress content management system!

Outdated products, which won't work

Vendors go where the money is. The people holding the purse strings are probably not the ones who are attending the conference. That's a pity, because if they did, they would see that they are, quite often, spending money on outdated ideas - many of which just will not really add any value to the business.

Outdated is a strong word. But let's take Learning Management Systems as an example. In the discussion below, please note that for me, learning does not equate to remembering. Instead learning = change.

Many (most) of the systems on the market today are based on the idea that you can deliver learning. That learning is a commodity which can be pushed into someone. Nowhere in any educational theory does this concept exist. Behaviourism says that behaviours can be changed based on a stimulus. Cognitivism says that people learn by organising knowledge into coherent structures. Constructivism says that we learn through the process of taking other people's ideas and building our own out of them. Connectivism says that we learn through making connections between internally and externally held knowledge. (For more on these start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_%28education%29 ).

Nowhere in these theories is there any space for the statement "delivering learning". Yes, we can deliver materials, lectures, workshops and spaces designed for learning to take place. We don't deliver learning any more than the Tesco's van delivers good health. Learning is an individual process of change.

OK. So can we manage learning? That depends on what you mean by management. For many, management = control. So that's what they look for in a learning management system. But can we really control the process of learning? Can we really say who should learn what, and when, and how? No. Not really. We can provide motivational factors, environments that are conducive to learning, and materials that are designed to help people learn. But no way can we say that any of these will ensure learning has taken place.

Most learning management systems are based around the "management" part, and very little on the learning part. As environments conducive to learning, they are sadly lacking. Similarly very little emphasis is placed on the cultural aspects and the motivating factors which Josh and Mark so eloquently described.

We like our systems. I like systems. They help us feel in control of things. Sometimes they're even useful. The trouble is, the individual process of learning just doesn't fit nicely in systems. Learning is messy. It happens at the oddest times, for the strangest reasons. Trying to systemise learning is like trying to pick up milk in your hands. Yes, some of it might stick, but that will be the exception rather than the rule.

We do need systems. But we need ones that will are based around learners and the various ways in which they will learn (NB. Not learning styles - they are a discredited concept - but the fact that we all have different factors at different times that will help us to learn better). Systems that are designed around the manager or around the business needs are not learning systems. They might be content delivery systems or tracking systems. But there's no way you can say they are supporting real learning. They simply provide measurements that are easy to make.

Return on investment - why bother?

The constant question that came up throughout the conference was "How do you measure the return on social learning?"

We're very hung up on that idea. So hung up that we try to measure anything that will stand still long enough. We track "progress" through SCORM packages - knowing full well that all it measures is the number of times someone clicked a button. We count attendance at workshops - although all that shows is your workshops were popular. We quiz people at the end of our materials - knowing that they will have forgotten most of it 20 minutes later.

We are making the measurable important rather than the important measurable.

What's important? Whether change has taken place in that individual that leads to measurable impact on the organisation.

These are hard things to measure. We need to accept that. Often only a university research project will collect the hard evidence that shows that it was your learning intervention that made the impact on the organisation.

I don't believe most L&D departments really want to face the cost of providing that sort of evidence. So, instead, we provide lots of numbers that demonstrate that people like what we're providing. By doing so we run the risk of the business treating the L&D department as irrelevant to the real business.

So what evidence can we provide that we're actually making a difference?

A lot of it is a matter of perception. Does the business trust us? Do we speak the language of the business? Do we understand what the business needs are? Are we ready to challenge the business when a performance or a compliance problem is immediately seen as a learning problem? (On that matter, why is compliance always seen as a learning problem? In my opinion it's internal communication and management that have the key roles to ensure compliance. L&D have wrongly taken responsibility for it, and thus diminished their standing within the business.)

As I said earlier, learning is a messy process. Similarly evidence gathering will have to be messy. It might be anecdotal, or based on case studies, or surveys of managers and learners. But it should always focus, not on the learning intervention, but on the change that was intended from it.

Summary

This rambling reflection has helped me to realise that effective L&D departments must:

• understand the needs of the business in depth and in detail.
• create environments, materials and interventions that are based on a solid theoretical understanding of how people learn.
• work to ensure that the culture within the organisation becomes more conducive to people sharing, learning and changing
• be prepared to use proper educational research methods to evaluate the effectiveness of their interventions.

Changes I would like to see to the conference

Just to finish off with. There are a few things I think would help to breakdown the disconnect mentioned above:

1. More opportunity for vendors to be challenged by the speakers in public
2. Small group facilitated conversations, perhaps organised by sector, by product or by idea. It is so easy to miss out on conversations that are taking place just because the conference is now so large. So let's structure it a little (not too much!)

Learning Ecosystems Handout

Next week, at the Learning Technologies conference, I will be hosting a mini-Moodlemoot; a chance for those of us using Moodle in corporate learning to meet up.

It will be in Olympia 2, Room 304 (on level 3) on Thursday from 13:00 to 13:45.

You do not need a Conference ticket to attend. It is open to all, including Exhibition-only visitors.

I see this as working as a whole bunch of independent conversations about Moodle, with people able to move in and out of the conversations as they wish. There won't be time for presentations, but feel free to bring laptops etc if you've got something you might want to show people.

I'll kick off with five questions, as discussion starters for five different groups:

1. Where does Moodle's social-constructivist background fit into corporate learning?
2. How do you get round Moodle's really clunky SCORM user-interface?
3. What additional modules would you recommend to other people?
4. What server architecture do you use to run your Moodle site?
5. How do you get user information into your Moodle site? Self-registration? Integration with other systems? Manually?

I'm looking forward to this. A good number of people have expressed an interest in attending.

If you are interested, please drop me a line via the forum post on the Learning & Skills Group.

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

I suppose I use the term learning ecosystem as it helps to illustrate the organic, uncontrollable nature of such systems and communities. It's an analogy that people can hook ideas onto, rather than a well thought-out theory. It may help some people understand how to cultivate the community.

To really dig into the idea of people learning together in communities/ecosystems, you need to read Wenger's work. Or, at least, first of all read his vignette of life in a claims processing centre. And then watch this video introduction:

Communities of Practice from Multi Media Vision on Vimeo.

Before "learning ecosytem" becomes another buzzword like "blended learning", ie. meaning everything and anything we do in adult and corporate learning, perhaps we need to be quite clear in defining it.

Let's look at the biological definition of ecosystem:

a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their physical environment

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

A complex set of relationships of living organisms functioning as a unit and interacting with their physical environment.

www.ndma.gov.pk/Publications/Terminology_Disaster%20Risk%20Reduction.doc

All of the factors that allow a healthy environment to function; the complex relationships among an area's resources, habitats and residents. An ecosystem may include people, wildlife, fish, trees, water and several other living and non-living elements.

www.opb.org/programs/oregonstory/land_trusts/glossary/index.html

Taking these definitions as a starting point, what we have then are three components that make up an ecosystem:

1. discrete organisms, each of which is trying to meet its core functions: eat, reproduce and breath
2. the physical environment within which the organisms carry out those core functions
3. the complex relationships between the organisms, each other and the environment

Let's map this onto learning and work:

In a biological ecosystem, every organism plays an essential part. It's impossible for one organism to go it alone. Similarly in a learning ecosystem, every individual has a role. Just as in biology, every organism is a consumer as well as a producer, so in a learning ecosystem every individual's contribution is important for real learning and thus real change to happen.

In a "controlled" ecosystem, like a garden, the gardener has certain objectives which s/he tries to meet by making careful changes to the system. They may add in a particular organism that has a certain place in the food chain - maybe producing beneficial chemicals or removing unwanted organisms. Or they may change the environment, perhaps increasing nutrients, changing the temperature, or protecting particular organisms from harm.

A human organisation has all these characteristics. Managers act as the gardener. Absolute control is impossible, but by making tweaks to particular relationships, individuals or the work environment the organisation can be pushed along particular paths.

In a learning ecosystem, the objective is to induce change to behaviours that meets the overall organisational objectives. Again, forcing people to change is nigh-on impossible. The Learning & Development team can only provide the conditions in which change is more likely.

Running up to the conference, I will be exploring in more detail what sort of things L&D teams can do in today's work environment.

By "elearning", I'm talking about corporate online products that are explicitly designed to fulfil certain learning objectives.

Thinking about my own experience, and the types of resources that I do go to for my own development... Here's what I do, with some examples:

I use Google to find things out, when I know what I'm looking for.

I listen to talks and conversations on my mp3 player when I'm looking for inspiration or challenge.

eg. Presentation basics - from Manager Tools
eg. Stephen Downes on Community Blogging

I watch videos on Youtube, or from TEDtalks. Some are practical how-tos, others more inspirational like the one below.

I read blogs from people I respect and from whom I want to learn. Here are the current posts from my current a-list. These often lead onto viewing or listening to other resources such as presentations, like this one:

I use w3schools to solve programming problems or to get started with new programming languages.

I've given up on Twitter as a learning tool. It's just too disjointed and distracting.

I can't remember the last time I worked through a corporate elearning module of my own volition.

So are there any common features to what I do use?

• Recommendation: I learn from sources that I respect or have been recommended by people I respect. Is that true of corporate learning resources?
• Search: Corporate learning resources that cannot be found by searching are missing a huge chunk of their potential.
• Social publishing: "Approved" corporate learning resources are often out-of-date by the time they get released and have all the appeal of an old, wet fish. Materials produced by my community of practice are fresh, slightly rough around the edges, mostly relevant and immediately useful.

I got a very prompt email from Tom Vinkler, who manages the TrainingSpotting.com site. He listened to my concerns and has implemented the following:

• Newly imported posts now have a Read More link which takes you to the original post
• The permalink to the post now points to the original post, not to the version on TrainingSpotting.com
• Comments are switched off for new posts

Thanks Tom.