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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Formal learning & social networking

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After hearing Mark Oehlert and Brent Schlenker do such a great job on eLearning 2.0 at the Guild’s Summer Seminar, I got my own chance to talk about it to a corporate group, but with a twist.   Much of elearning 2.0 is about informal learning, but the organization was moving to using social networking tools to scaffold their move from face-to-face to more online learning.   So I was asked to talk about social networking and formal learning.

I started from the informal picture, however, both to introduce the 2.0 tools (their environment in particular had blogs, feeds, wikis, discussion boards, portals, and profiles), and to talk about some case studies of successes.   I led to the point that the informal participation has big upside potential, but you can’t spring it on them when they move beyond novice stage, and that wrapping it around the formal learning is a vehicle to help them become comfortable with the tools.   That is, the first reason to use social networking around formal learning is to make it part of the repertoire of the community.

I then segued to my second point, which is that social networking tools are better formal learning. To help make learning ‘stick’, to achieve our goals of retention and transfer, I have previously suggested that there are several activities that accomplish the memory elaboration, specifically connecting it to personal experience, to exercise and extend the conceptualization, and to apply the concepts to specific tasks.   Each of these can be accomplished well through social networking tools.

For example, blogs are really personal (or group) journals, and it’s easy to have a learning task to reflect a couple of times a week (for example) on what the current course means to you personally. It can be to explain things observed in the past, how it applies to current situations, or how it will better prepare people for the future.   It’s about re-activating and re-processing the information (Thiagi‘s exercises, for instance, are great at getting people to re-process information), but here adding in that connection with pre-existing personal context.   Of course, reading other learner’s blog posts, and commenting, can extend the value of the individual post.

Discussion boards are a great way to support extending conceptualizations.   Learners can be asked to post a response to a thought question (or even to have to create one), and comment constructively on someone else’s post. Well-written questions can ask learners to rethink the information in ways that the lecture and examples didn’t cover.     The point is to reprocess and elaborate the information.   Critically reflecting on another’s elaboration requires integrating their thinking with your own, for a real challenge in coming to grips with how they’ve interpreted it (and opportunity to refine one’s own understanding).

While simulations may be the ultimate learning application environment, another valuable tool are group assignments.   Having the learners respond to a challenge where, in teams, they create some written output collaboratively on a wiki is a great chance for them to have to express their understandings.   In doing so, by applying the concept to a context, they need to a shared understanding of the concept, which fosters greater comprehension.

Profiles, as well, can help individuals flesh out information about their fellow learners, and make more meaningful connections (as well as potentially track down useful mentors).   While not as rich as face to face interpersonal interaction, adding personal details helps extend their persona in ways that bring technology-mediated interaction closer to that personal exchange.

These few examples suggest how social networking not only facilitates informal learning, but can and should play a role in formal learning, for the sake of both formal and informal learning.   I’m finding it increasingly difficult to think about when formal learning shouldn’t include a social aspect (except the situation of ‘critical mass’ in totally asynchronous learning).

I’m still not convinced there’s an LMS that integrates social networking tools in a way that makes a smooth segue from formal to informal, though I know Mzinga’s making a stab at it.   You want to move to loose coupling, yet you want seamless integration.   Not sure what the reconciliation is of these.   Your thoughts?

Facebook Apprenticeship

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Jay Cross has an interesting post about using Facebook in the organization, and makes a connectionCognitive Apprenticeship I hadn’t seen (and wish I had :).   He’s citing another post on FaceBook and the Enterprise, where JP Rangaswami posits that Facebook can be used to allow individuals to track what their bosses are doing, as role models.   Jay connects this to Cognitive Apprenticeship (my favorite model of learning), where the boss is modeling his thinking processes, and the employee can use that model as a guide to performance.   Modeled performance is one of the components.

This is a great idea, making individuals thought processes visible for others to see, though whether it has to be the boss specifically, or others employees worth tracking (the more experienced practitioner, the expert in a particular area of interest) is an open question.   Likewise, the employee’s actions might be made visible as a basis for coaching/mentoring.

I’m not sure Facebook is the right tool, but a combination of tools might make sense and Facebook’s APIs might make it possible.   As I commented on Jay’s blog:

I‘m reminded of an interview I heard (wish I knew where; time for Evernote?) where this guy talked about how he kept his team on track: his del.ico.us tags, using basecamp, IM, etc left a trail of what he was paying attention to, where everyone was at, letting them work in tight synchrony.

That sort of open process can be quick, informative, and how Web 2.0 might really transform the ways people work, making personal learning a process of looking in the window of other’s working, and vice versa.   Of course, there are other issues, like privacy, and having a culture where sharing is the basis for improvement, not chastisement.

This actually might fit in with Tony Karrer’s post over at the Learning Circuit’s blog about to-learn lists: could we couple learning goals with semantic web to track relevant actions/posts/tags/etc to auto-support to-learn lists?   And this may be one of the answers to Brent Schlenker’s question about what is eLearning 2.0.

JP’s message recalls how his employees actually wanted to see not how he handled the incoming mail, but how he responded; his outgoing mail.   Very interesting.   Somewhere between seeing what someone’s paying attention to, and seeing how they actually communicate, is a very interesting opportunity.   Blogs provide some insight, tweets another.   So do del.ico.us tags (which I don’t use yet, and perhaps should). You can follow the people blazing the paths, at least. I’m happy following blogs and tweets so far, and learning from it.   Are many of you doing that?   And finding it valuable?

eLearning 2.0

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During the 1st day of Mark and Brent’s Collaboration summer seminar, they got folks active: starting blogs, wikis, webtops, etc.   They’re doing a great job:

c2sss

Naturally, in addition to the tactical questions (“how do I move this tab”?), the conceptual questions started: when do you use a blog versus a wiki, how do you make sense of all the options out there.

Now, as part of my performance ecosystem, I think blogs are a personal reflection or a history (as I told an attendee, it would be great for capturing a ‘war story’), whereas wikis are for collaboration to create a unified view of something (e.g. the way to tune a network).   I don’t think blogs support a rich discussion and aren’t that collaborative.   Also, one of the problems I see is that we often forget old tools in the excitement of new tools: discussion boards are a great way to have an ongoing conversation; you don’t need some new tool for this. Yet wikis are really good for capturing the output of a collaboration.

Also recently I’ve been having conversations with folks about integrating tools to meet larger needs.   Ning is a tool that provides ways for individuals to have profiles, to have forums, to list events, etc.   Increasingly, LMSs also have these capabilities.

The interesting thing is the great spate of tools out there: Google, Central Desktop, Zoho, Wetpaint, PBWiki, an ever growing list. There are suites of web meeting apps, web-based productivity tools, etc. How do you make sense of it? I think there’s another ‘bubble’ with these, and eventually a bunch will fail and out of the ashes a few will persist.   The good thing, I think, is that by getting your hands dirty with a variety of these, you’ll access some generalized skills.   And web apps are not going away.

I believe training anybody on any particular tool (even the seemingly ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite), is the wrong way to go.   Talk to them about the skill (writing, creating presentations, etc), and then give some assignments across a couple of different tools.   This gives you transferrable skills, which will equip you to communicate and collaborate regardless of the latest wave of tools.   And that’s what’s important, in this day of increasing change.