What questions should we be asking? is the Learning Circuits Blog Big Question for the month. Mentioned is a fear that we might not be asking the right question at any particular time.
Perhaps because I’ve just finished reading Verna Allee‘s The Knowledge Evolution (all about systematic levels of knowledge; an insightful book, it even discusses wisdom :), but the core of my responses is the way to ensure you’re asking the right question is to take a level step up and ask if your question fits into the bigger picture.
One of the things I keep seeing is that people are focusing on elearning tactics, while not considering how those tactics fit into a strategy. If you’re asking about how to better support conversations, you should make sure that you’ve got a culture that ensures sharing. If you’re asking about creating portals, you should ensure that your instructional design is up to scratch.
So I guess my short answer is that your first question should be if you know where you’re going, and if you do, you should be asking questions about the next step along the path. If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter what you ask!
“If you’re asking about how to better support conversations, you should make sure that you’ve got a culture that ensures sharing.”
I sure agree with that. Too often, people are looking for quick, tactical answers, without considering the culture. Culture trumps all, and some of these Web technologies and methodologies can be quite disruptive, or as James Farmer calls them; “incorporated subversion”.