I was thinking about today’s post, wherein I was talking about a couple of packages that might help organizations move forward. I was reflecting back on some previous posts about engagement models, and was reminded of a more recent one. And I realized this has played out in a couple of ways. And these approaches did provide away to develop the organization’s abilities to develop better learning. So this is another model for support for developing at least the learning side of the equation.
In a couple of instances , I’ve worked with organizations on a specific project, but in a particular way. For each, my role was to lead the design. In one case, it was for a series of elearning modules. My role was to develop the initial template that the rest of the content fit. Note that this isn’t a template for tarting it up, but instead a template about what the necessary elements and details around them were to ensure that the elements (e.g. intro, concept, practice, etc) both fit together and reflected the best learning science. In a more recent instance, it was on a specific focus, but there were several modules that used a similar structure.
What happens, importantly, is that by working collaboratively, we learn together. Each of these organizations was in the business of developing content, but they were looking to raise their game. So, for instance, through leading the Workplace of the Future project but sharing the thinking behind it, by working out loud in that sense, it’s possible to develop a shared understanding. And in the latter case, though they’d read the Deeper eLearning series, they got a lot more out of working it through with me. (And, I’ll suggest, more than also reading the subsequent blog posts I wrote about the project.)
In each case, we created an overall template for the learning, and then detailed what the elements for the template were, and the critical components. When we applied it, usually with me doing it first, and then handing off. It’s really a Cognitive Apprenticeship approach.
So, it’s a slightly more involved approach, with a much more variable scope, but in conjunction with other approaches I’ve mentioned like critiquing content or design processes, it’s one way to get a jump on deeper learning science. Just trying to think of models that can support improvement, and that’s what I’m trying to push.
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