Learning Conversations

On 23rd March, along with @bbetts @lauraoverton & @JulieWedgwood, I'll be running one of a series of workshops taking a fresh look at elearning.

The notes below are designed to help participants prepare for my workshop. It will be very hands on and interactive. In the afternoon, in Laura's session we will move from this case study approach to one that is much more focussed on the participants' particular contexts.

Any reference, inferred or implied, to real organisations is completely coincidental!

Background

XYZ Solutions Ltd is a 3000 strong global company, involved in providing outsourced IT support.

Within the company there are a number of key functions:

The problem

The company has an integrated customer-relationship management (CRM) system, that was designed to improve efficiencies across all the functions, and to enable consistencies in communication.

However, the promised efficiences have not been realised.

The IT manager has investigated, and discovered that:

• Some sales people are not using the CRM at all – preferring to work with their own spreadsheets
• There is confusion amongst the customer-facing functions over what information should go into what fields
• The quality of technical advice given to customers is varying, mainly because technicians are not documenting calls properly, and there is little aggregation of knowledge by team managers.

Senior management have decided that Learning & Development should be the team to solve this problem.

Success criteria

• Total spend (including travel & subsistence) to be within the allocated budget
• Time away from work for learning to be no more than 1 day per person, with no more than 1 hour in any working day.
• The solution should be sustainable, with minimal ongoing input, to enable new starters to “get with the programme”
• Efficiencies should be realised in both sales and front-office

L&D Culture

Up to now, the company L&D culture has been focussed on face-to-face, classroom-based training. Follow-up reviews indicate that much of the content is irrelevant and poorly presented. Also the training often takes place when the learner is least able to make use of it immediately.

The L&D team has created some elearning materials (using a rapid development tool) around topics such as information security, data protection, diversity and health & safety. Although most people have completed the training, it has had little noticeable impact on behaviours, and the general reaction has been that the elearning was boring and poorly presented.

Elearning is perceived as a poor substitute for attending a face-to-face course.

Solution

The L&D team have developed a programme which comprises:

• Ongoing identification of CRM best practices through a limited number of CRM champions from across the business
• Procuring a series of short, 3 minute videos which highlight the benefits of the CRM system, and focus on specific, centrally-affirmed best practices. These will be hosted in an off-site video-delivery system, with access only for XYZ staff on XYZ hardware.
• Quarterly face-to-face workshops for CRM champions to raise issues, share best practice and create new resources.
• A hints and tips hashtag for CRM champions (and other users) to share their knowledge on the company’s micro-blogging system

They know that, for the programme to succeed, initial and ongoing learner engagement is critical.

Your team has been brought in as consultants to help with this...

Encouraging Engagement

[You will be discussing these questions in small groups on the day - but feel free to comment back on this post for clarification or to test out ideas]

1. What problems can you forsee with gaining and sustaining learner engagement in this programme?
   Hint: Consider access, motivation, communication and management
2. What elements would you like to see within the design of the videos or the delivery system that would specifically encourage engagement?
   Hint: Consider the characteristics of Youtube videos that achieve high engagement, eg. usefulness, quirkyness, comedy. Also consider what gets and keeps people engaged with long term programmes such as video games, TV drama serials, sporting leagues.
3. What should go into the communication plan for this programme?
   Hint: Think about communications in four stages:
   
   Well in advance of start -> Just before it starts -> During -> After
   
4. What specific management practices would encourage engagement?

Related posts: Engaging the unwilling learner

The video below is from the workshop I did at this year's Learning Technologies conference.

Go to the conference video page

Engaging the unwilling learner Mark Berthelemy, IT Solutions Architect, Capita Click to play now

Whenever something new is introduced into an organisation it raises questions about the old ways. Should they remain? Should they be changed to accommodate the new?

Online and informal learning is a case in point. For decades, learning (whether in schools, universities or the workplace) was based mainly around the classroom. There were occassional forays into self-directed or distance learning, but primarily all learning activity was focussed on the interaction between the "teacher" and the "learner" at a particular moment in space-time.

Until the late 1990's, the closest many people got to informal learning was browsing the books at home or at the library - both of which were limited in scope.

Now, however, we have more information at our fingertips than we can handle. We have access to experts, pundits, friends and extremists in equal measure, from across the world. Lack of data is no longer an excuse.

This knowledge economy is also democratized. Anyone, with even the simplest smartphone or cheapest computer, can add into the ever-expanding global knowledgebase.

Yet our schools, universities and workplaces - the core, foundational structures of society - continue working as if nothing had changed.

Our classrooms and lecture theatres are still designed as places where knowledge is imparted, and their curriculums as the sole source of that knowledge. Anyone that strays outside of the proscribed norms of behaviour or ability is a problem to be dealt with or ignored, rather than the individual they are.

Our training departments and the dependency culture of learning they implicitly promote are unable to keep up with the pace of change, and run the risk of, at best, becoming irrelevant, or at worst, a barrier to development.

Our work is done in isolation from other people doing similar things. The freedom of communication taken for granted across the internet is rarely replicated inside our workplaces, and often blocked on work equipment...

If we were starting again, what would our learning institutions look like? What would be the essential skills, knowledge and behaviours that we would expect every school to develop? How would we organise (or allow?) learning inside our companies?

Online learning has the potential to break down boundaries between organisations and between people, and to allow knowledge to flow easily between them. Outside of our societal structures this is already happening.

Should we be seeking to make that potential a reality within our current model of schools, universities and workplace? Or do we need to rethink the very structures themselves, and look for alternative models of society that can make best use of the new knowledge networks?

To be continued...

* Matthew 9:17

"Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Hans de Zwart, writing in his blog this week about Automattic (the company behind Wordpress) states "They would say that their productivity as a company is dependent on how well they communicate."

I have seen so many examples of organistations where the opposite is the reality: Where the communication structures in place actually inhibit productivity.

If knowledge and information is the lifeblood of your organisation, shouldn't you provide every means possible to allow it to flow freely?

Thanks to Kate Graham at Ascot Communications, there's now a short video available of me talking about the key points from my Learning Technologies workshop.

If you want to see some of this in writing see my pre-workshop blog post.

You can find more of these at the Ascot Communications Youtube channel

With many corporate systems now coming with in-built social media tools, and bottom-up systems like Yammer & Socialcast gaining large numbers of users through exponential growth, who's job is it to prevent fragmentation of your internal social networks?

It seems like every corporate tool now has some element of social media contained within it. Sharepoint 2010 comes with a range of community tools (blogs, ratings, tagging etc). Salesforce has integrated its fully-featured Chatter social collaboration and networking product. Oracle has got the "Oracle Social Network" product. Project management tools, such as Huddle have integrated social tools. And every LMS vendor in the world seems to think their product contains the ultimate in social learning tools.

Alongside that, there are standalone commercial platforms like NoddlePod (worth a look just for a lesson in simplicity!), Yammer, Socialcast and Fusion Universal's Fuse. And in the open-source world, we have BuddyPress and Elgg.

Organisations are becoming more comfortable with the use of social media, and exploring its potential to improve the way the organisation runs. However, this now runs the risk of different parts of the organisation promoting their own particular networking or collaboration tool.

In a typical organisation you might find the IT team promoting Sharepoint, business managers promoting Salesforce, Internal Communications promoting Yammer, Learning & Development promoting Saba Social Learning, HR promoting Oracle, and your R&D mavericks promoting BuddyPress.

Multiplying social networks causes fragmentation of different interest groups - which is bad news for anyone hoping to break down organisational silos.

You could adopt a Darwinian approach and go for survival of the fittest - but that's not a quick route to change, and will potentially lead to a "space race" between competing departments.

My advice would be that there needs to be someone at the highest level taking responsibility, providing strategic leadership, working with system suppliers & integrators, and pulling together social media expertise from across the organisation.

With all the advances in online learning, why haven't we changed our approach to the face-to-face event?

We now have ways to easily deliver content, whether text, images, audio, video (or any combination) using massively scalable technologies.

Similarly, we can mix this with computer-marked activities and peer-to-peer communication and collaboration.

With all this, why do we still need the classroom / conference hall?

Doug Belshaw puts it very nicely when he says:

The face-to-face nature of conferences is, I believe, of even more importance in an extremely digitally connected world. Whilst it’s often the case that you can get to know people very well online, there’s something about embodied interaction that makes your knowledge of that person three-dimensional.

Conferences as Catalysts for Educational Innovation and Change

When you're completely engaged by a great performance (whether in speaking, sport or music), being there is often a better experience than watching it later. Although, as TED Talks show, even second-hand is far better than nothing!

However, most face-to-face learning experiences are not great performances. Most presentation style sessions, including my own, are distinctly mediocre when judged as performances, and, to be honest, not exactly memorable. Not really what you want when you're there to learn.

What we often forget, is that the best learning often happens when you try to explain things to other people, or ask questions, or exchange points of view. In fact, when you have conversations.

By provoking conversation, you are provoking the very thing that stimulates people to engage with the subject in question. If you have an expert in the room, that's even better. As they can ask the right questions, or feed in the right bits of information at just the right time.

That's great when you've got small groups, but how does that work as group sizes go up? This is an important consideration if you're looking at learning models that work financially.

One method is the Fishbowl technique. This is a method of dialogue that works for large groups, whilst allowing all to participate.

Alternatively, you can create a series of practical activities that learners will work through in groups. (This is the approach I'm going to take in next month's Elearning Network event: Getting started in elearning)

For longer face-to-face events, you'd use a mixture of different conversation techniques, with different sized groups, and different activities. But the thing to avoid is the presentation - unless of course you have an expert performer who can engage the audience.

To help any conversation-based session to work well, you need a number of elements in place:

1. A skilled moderator or facilitator who will provide the right scaffolding for the conversation, set timings, pull together arguments (see: Online Tutoring article) and not feel the need to take over the conversation.
2. A subject matter expert who will provide input to the scaffolding resources, and act as a sounding board and coach for learners (under the guidance of the facilitator)
3. Conversation that is at the right level for the people in the room - ie. just beyond their comfort zone - inside their Zone of Proximal Development.

Remember, too, that your learner's experience of your workshop starts when they first see the advert, and finishes when they try the ideas out back at base. From start to finish, it's your responsibility as the organiser to make the workshop the most effective learning experience they can get. This may include setting expectations about pre-workshop activities (eg. watching a video, reading an article). Just like the best teacher you had at school, you'll need to be consistent on those expectations. People will soon learn that they'll get the most from their experience with you if they meet them.

It's all about making the best use of the environments (both online and face-to-face) you've got available to you.

Related posts

Embedding learning in work
Reflections on Learning Technologies 2012
Breaking down the classroom walls
Conferences, presentations, streaming video and conversation
Ideas for an unconference process
Reflections on Learning Technologies 2010

Last week, I started thinking about my personal "elevator pitch".

The short version is currently: I work at the interface of people, organisations and technology - challenging the status quo, and pushing for improvements in all three.

But that needs filling out, so here goes...

It's important to have people who can act as a "translator" between IT people, learning & development specialists, and organisation managers. That's where I tend to sit.

It is primarily a communication role; preparing documents, articles, presentations, videos, workshops etc.

Sometimes it's proactive - trying to help create understanding, and sharing knowledge, between the different groups around things such as security, usability, learning theory and design, and change management. By necessity, this includes considerable amounts of research and reading to keep up to date with the changing environments.

And sometimes it's reactive, responding to the needs of the different groups and ensuring that effective communication takes place between them. This can include project management, requirements gathering, procurement support, sales support, supplier liaison, training and user support, and much more...

I support these communication pathways across organisational boundaries - working with people from both internal & external suppliers and customers (both prospective and current). Again, by necessity, this means working in multiple contexts, across the public, private and charity sectors, including formal and workplace education.

That's why building and maintaining an effective network is essential to me, and why I subscribe wholeheartedly to a connectivist approach to my own development.

Principles of connectivism

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Connectivism, a learning theory for the digital age, George Siemens, 2004

When you take exams, you're told to carefully read every question, and particularly the rubric at the beginning of the exam, which explains how the exam is going to work.

Even then, people don't read the questions properly.

When you're working on a screen it's even worse. According to people like Jacob Neilsen, most people really don't read what's in front of them. Instead they scan, picking out individual words and sentences.

As well as headings and bullets, users expect to be able to scan for links, and to be able to know quickly where those links will take them. It's a concept known as "scent".

When we give them a link that just says "here", or even "click here", it contains no information or scent about where that link will take them. And because the user is scanning the page, they are unlikely to read the information to either side of the link which does explain it. Or if they do, it's only because they've had to.

Your job, as an interface designer, is to make life easier for the user, and to remove barriers to usage. Forcing them to read where they would normally scan is unhelpful and inconsiderate.

Instead of the "Click here" link, provide a link that is explicit about where the user will go, or what will happen. For example: "Continue reading", "More information", "Location map"

For some designers, that's counter-intuitive, and can feel almost too abrupt or impolite. But actually it's the opposite. You are helping your users - and they will thank you for it.

If you really want to design your websites and applications for usability, then get hold of Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug. It's one of the best books I know on the subject!

It's difficult to explain to people quite what I do at work, so I'm trying to pull some ideas together. Any contributions gladly received!

Elevator pitch:

... a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name "elevator pitch" reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

How's this for size:

I work at the interface of people, organisations and technology - challenging the status quo, and pushing for improvements in all three.

.END.

I kept wanting to add stuff, which then needed more adding to make it meaningful, so have tried to keep it simple and open. I'd welcome any feedback though.