Learning Conversations

In the first part of this article, I raised a number of questions around how, in general, we are not yet realising the benefits of online learning within our schools, universities and workplaces.

Outside of these structures, we can see new technologies breaking down the boundaries between organisations and people, providing ready access to information, and democratizing the knowledge economy. Inside them, much is the same as it has been since the start of the industrial revolution - with hierarchies and control to the fore.

Responding to a follow-up comment, I wrote:

How many schools have changed the way they use their classrooms, because of what can now be achieved through online methods? How many have changed their teachers' contracts to allow them to work from home? How many are accepting students on a more flexible basis? How many schools still close down all operations when there's a bit of snow?

In the workplace, it's more common to find organisations blocking the very tools that are used outside for learning, than embracing them. Until cooperation and communication finds a place at the heart of the work we do, organisations will remain reliant on centrally-driven elearning programmes that simply reinforce the status quo. By so doing, these organisations will continue to lag behind in a business and cultural environment that is changing far more rapidly than they can.

You can find examples of institutions and workplaces where the potential has been seen by visionary leaders; where the boundaries of the underpinning organisational structures themselves are pushed, and occasionally completely reformed.

I have worked with schools where teachers' contracts were re-written, to allow them to support city-wide live online learning sessions from home. Thus enabling sharing of resources between schools.

Other schools, eg. Hollinsclough Primary School are providing flexible schooling - working in partnership with home-schooling parents from across local authority boundaries. They are leading the way in showing how pooled resources can help small schools and home-schooling to remain viable.

Some teachers, schools, and sometimes even whole local authorities (US: school boards) are exploring different models of learning, where classroom time is seen as too valuable to devote to one-size-fits-all lock-step teaching. Instead it's used for conversation, problem-solving, peer support. The teacher's role becomes that of a facilitator, coach and guide. How else can we manage increasing class sizes and diverse student populations? Who says that every hour of a student's time in school has to be spent in a classroom with a teacher? Why not build managed self-study into the timetable, thus allowing classroom time to have a better student:teacher ratio?

Some workplaces are taking the best of what happens on the real-world internet, and bringing it in-house. Deloitte's use of Yammer (a Facebook/Twitter-like tool - discussed in this video by its CEO) has been a catalyst to breaking down hierarchies - but with real business benefits. Cash America's use of user-generated video content has provided a simple, but effective means of upskilling front-line staff. Software developed under collaborative, open-source models now drives the majority of the world's web servers, powers thousands of learning institutions' online learning functions. Open source, collaborative development has also begun to take shape in the real world, with "distributed DIY projects" (see video below).

But these are just the outworkings of a new model.

What sits behind them is a sea change in how we deal with people. Rather than hierarchies and control, the underlying principles of this new paradigm are contribution and trust - leading to self-organisation (discussed and demonstrated brilliantly by Sugata Mitra at ALT 2010 (Youtube)