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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

I’ve got your content right here

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I was engaging in a mobile strategy session with a small not-for-profit the other day, and naturally it became an overall technology strategy session, as you really can’t do mobile strategy without considering social media strategy, learning technology strategy, even enterprise technology strategy. Mobile is a platform for all of the above, and you

One of the questions they struggled with was their social media strategy, as they were (as many people are) struggling with their existing workload.  And there are lots of elements that can, and should, play a role.  But their problem was really much simpler.

They had a Facebook page, and a twitter account, and a blog they had a placeholder for, and they couldn’t figure out how they were going to populate these.  They were naturally concerned about what to blog, what to put on the Facebook page, what they would tweet about, and how they’d get the content for it, and keep it up.

The interesting thing was as we discussed it, talking about what a wide variety of material would make sense: reviews of relevant articles, updates about courses, etc, they started realizing that the content they needed was regularly being produced already. One enthusiastic staff member was always sending emails about things they should pay attention to. They also had notices about courses they were offering.  And there was a regular stream of events that occurred.

It became clear that there was a lot of content available from their various channels, what they needed was curation.  I was reminded of the fabulous job David Kelly does in curating conferences, and it’s largely the same set of skills (here’s Jane Hart interviewing Dave on the topic).  Curation in many ways seems just an external manifestation of Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Management (an extension of the share part of seek-sense-share).

It seemed plausible  that they could give a few hours a week to a young person eager to add ‘social media’ to their resume who would do a minor bit of editing and get this to their blog. They wondered whether Facebook should have the same, and in this case the answer appeared to be ‘yes’ (blog allows RSS, some folks don’t go onto Facebook), and then the tweet stream could be for shorter pointers, announcements from the posts, whatever.

The result was that they had a simpler path to a coherent approach than they had realized.  There’s more: it’s an org change and there’d have to be the usual messaging, incentives, etc.  It’s only a start, but it gets them going while they develop the longer term strategy integrating mobile, web, social media, etc.  Do you have a social media strategy in place, and is there emergent content from within your organization?

Detailing the Coherent Organization

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As excited as I am about the Coherent Organization as a framework, it’s not done by any means.  I riffed on it for a Chief Learning Officer magazine, and my Internet Time Alliance colleagues have followed up. However, I want to take it further.  The original elements I put into the diagram were ad-hoc, though there were principles behind them.  As a start, I wanted to go back and look at these elements and see if I could be more systematic about it.

Working Collaboratively and cooperativelyI had, as Harold’s original model provided the basis for, separate groups for Work Teams, Communities of Practice, and Social Networks.  Within each were separate elements.

In Work Teams, I had included: share problems, co-coach, assist, brainstorm effectively, continuous feedback, welcome contributions, learn from mistakes, align with mission, narrate work, champion diversity, and measure improvement.

Under Communities of Practice I listed: document practice, leave tracks, workshop issues, share examples, co-mentor, discuss principles, continually refine practice, think ‘out loud’, and share concerns.

And in Social Networks I had put: share, contribute, listen, care, interact, and discuss values.  I also had connecters between the groups, each ways, so Work Teams were connected to Communities of Practice by bringing in outside ideas and sharing progress, while Communities of Practice were linked to Social Networks by tracking related areas and sharing results.

What I couldn’t claim was that this was the exhaustive list.  I’d put them in there with some thoughts of both putting in and taking out, but I wanted to go further.

What I did was separate out each of the three areas, and start grouping like terms together (I just took all the terms in the above diagram and dropped them into a new diagram, and started sorting). As I did so, some commonalities emerged. I ended up with the following diagram, which is very much a work in progress.  What I’m  trying to get to is the set of behaviors that would be essential for such an organization to succeed, ultimately coming up with a set of dimensions that might be useful as an assessment.  What emerged is a characterization of several different areas within which behaviors fall, which is useful because then I can look for missing (or redundant) elements.

Looking for emergenceIn addition to the connecting tasks, we see several overarching types of behaviors.  Besides the connection between the areas, they grouped like I show here.

Sharing is individual putting out things, which is less pro-active and interactive than actually contributing.  That distinction isn’t quite clear to me either, but sharing might be more pointers to things where contribute is a more substantial contribution.  Which means my elements may not be properly categorized.

Monitoring is both watching what’s going on and pro-actively evaluating outcomes.  Does this need to be broken out into two separate areas? Personal is where you’re working with a specific person (or recipient thereof).  And the culture dimension is where you’re actively aware of and reviewing the underlying values behind what you’re doing.

By no means do I consider this ‘done’, but I share it as part of my commitment to practicing what I preach, thinking ‘out loud’.  This will get refined.  I most certainly welcome your thoughts!

#itashare

Wise organizations

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My ITA colleague Jay (always a spark igniter) has been thinking about well-being in organizations, and it activated my thinking on wisdom.  My interest in  wisdom  continues to ferment, slowly but surely, as a personal commitment.  My question was what would business wisdom look like, and what would be the benefits?

One preliminary issue is definitional: when I google the term, I mostly see good business practices wrapped up and trumped as business wisdom.  That’s not quite what I mean.  We’ve seen examples of people doing things that were smart in the moment, but not very smart over time (*cough* Enron *cough*).  Yes, there are some business principles that really do stand the test of time and could be considered business wisdom, but I’m thinking more about wise decisions, not wise principles.  Other folks tend to treat wisdom as ineffable or only obvious  in situ, you know it when you see it but you can’t analyze it. That doesn’t leave me much traction, so I focus on frameworks that give me some possibility for doing things differently.

So the definition I like for wisdom comes from Robert Sternberg, where he talks about making decisions that are not just smart in the short term, but in the long term.  Decisions that consider not just me and mine, but society in general. And decisions that are based on values that are articulated and examined, not implicit and potentially less then optimal.  I suggest that this sort of approach would lead to better decisions.

One of the things would be just to get people to start making decisions with this approach.  If you accept the view that for situations where we’re experts, we can trust our gut, this means more to slow down when we’re making decisions out of our comfort zone. It’s harder work, to be very conscious in our decision making process, but I hope it’s implicitly obvious that making better decisions is the best solution.

And this segues into the broader topic of the organizational culture.  I’m not immune to the view that there’s a certain personal attitude to wisdom. The wisest people I know are also the most unflappable, thoughtful and warm.  And I think that’s hard to accomplish in an organization where everything you say can and will be held against you.  You’ve got to have the appropriate culture for such an approach to flourish. Which ties to Jay’s interest in well-being, bring me full circle.

So, I think there’s an argument to be made for consider wisdom in business, as part of a longer term shift from short term returns to a sustainable differentiator. Coupled with appropriation of collaboration and cooperation, I suggest organizations can and should be working wiser and more coherently.

 

Inoculating the organization

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I was having a discussion the other day with my ITA colleague Jay Cross, and the topic wandered over to how to use the social approaches we foster under the umbrella of the Coherent Organization to help organizations  become one. And I went feral.

Working Collaboratively and cooperativelyDo we work top down, or bottom up?  In the course of the conversation it occurred to me that given the model we propose, that you can’t just have the broader social network create it, and you can’t even really build a community of practice (CoP).  The smallest unit is the working group; how could we use that?

The thought that struck me was creating a working group who’s goal was to create a CoP around being a Coherent Organization. That is, they’d have to understand the principles, start defining and discussing it, document the opportunities, and start disseminating the ideas through the organization.  Inherently, it  has  to be viral, and the most effective way to introduce a virus is by inoculation.

The idea then is that the mission of the working group is to develop a community of practice around understanding and implementing developing communities of practice. It’s a bit recursive or self-referential, but it’s the seed that needs to sprout.  Seeding it is the action that’s needed to get it going, and then some feeding needs to happen.  While it’s possible that a self-supported initiative could survive, having some external support may make sense in making this happen.

Yes, I’m assuming that the end result is desirable and possible.  The former is, I think, reasonably well accepted (short form: working effectively is a necessary survival tactic, going forward), even if the path to get there isn’t.  I’m suggesting that this is a path to get there. It’s not easy; it takes persistence, support, all those things that make organizational initiatives succeed, with an understanding of the strategies, policies, and cultural adjustments needed.  Yet I’ll suggest that it is doable.  Now, it’s time to do it!

#itashare

Focus on ‘do’

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I’ve been working on a project where we’re reviewing the curriculum before we design the learning outcome.  The level of detail is admirable: courses are defined by objectives, which then drive learning objectives, from which are extracted key concepts to present.  And I’m finding one approach that’s making this go really well.

There are problems with the existing content.  Some of the learning objectives are too specific, leading to an interpretation that won’t lead to transfer beyond the classroom.  Some of the coverage in objectives or concepts is biased, so some topics are not covered enough, and others too much.  Some of the learning objectives are focused on tasks that were clearly designed to incite learner interest, but not in an intrinsic way.  And I’m not a domain expert, but I can still apply enough real world knowledge to make this determination (and we’ll review with SMEs).

What’s providing a very useful lever in identifying these gaps, even prior to remedying them, is a rabid focus on ‘do‘. That is: “what will the learner be able to do with this after the class”. Implied are two things: 1) that the learner will care about , and 2) that will let them have an impact somewhere.

This focus is letting me see that some things are so specific that they won’t generalize anywhere interesting; to identify that some of the goals are not really relevant anywhere else (e.g. a focus on ‘celebrity’ examples).  That the coverage is spotty and some topics that have applicability have been skipped.

Such a focus will, I think, help in the discussions with the SMEs, and provide a way to work with them to get good outcomes for the learning and the learners.  It’s a learning-centered approach (I think that’s a better phrase than learner-centric) that helps us meet the client’s goals in ways they understand.

What  do you think?

Beyond eBooks

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Among the things I’ve been doing lately is talking to folks who’ve got content and are thinking about the opportunities beyond books.  This is a good thing, but I think it’s time to think even further.  Because, frankly, the ebook formats are still too limited.

It’s no longer about the content, it’s about the experience. Just putting your content onto the web or digital devices isn’t a learning solution, it’s an information solution.  So I’m suggesting transcending putting your content online for digital, and starting to think about the opportunities to leverage what technology can do.  It started with those companion sites, with digital images, videos, audios, and interactives that accompany textbooks, but the opportunities go further.

We can now embed the digital media within ebooks. Why ebooks, not on the web?  I think it’s primarily about the ergonomics. I just find it challenging to read on screen. I want to curl up with a book, getting comfortable.

However, we can’t quite do what I want with ebooks.  Yes, we can put in richer images, digital audio, and video. The interactives part is still a barrier, however. The ebook standards don’t yet support it, though they could. Apple’s expanded the ePub format with the ability to do quick knowledge checks (e.g. true/false or multiple choice questions).  There’s nothing wrong with this, as far as it goes, but I want to go further.

I know a few, and sure that there are more than a few, organizations that are experimenting with a new specification for ePub that supports richer interaction, more specifically pretty much anything you can do with HTML 5.  This is cool, and potentially really important.

Let me give you a mental vision of what could be on tap. There’s an app for iOS and Android called Imaginary Range.  It’s an interesting hybrid between a graphic novel and a game.  You read through several pages of story, and then there’s an embedded game you play that’s tied to, and advances, the story.

Imagine putting that into play for learning: you read a graphic novel that’s about something interesting and/or important, and then there’s a simulation game embedded where you have to practice the skills.  While there’s still the problem with a limited interpretation of what’s presented (ala the non-connectionist MOOCs), in well-defined domains these could be rich.  Wrapping a dialog capability around the ebook, which is another interesting opportunity, only adds to the learning opportunity.

I’ll admit that I think this is not really mobile in the sense of running on a pocketable, but instead it’s a tablet proposition. Still, I think there’s real value to be found.