May 19, 2012

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Free E-Learning Tutorial: Choosing a Social Media Platform for Formal and Informal Learning

May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I have just released episode 23 of the Connect Thinking E-Learning Academy free video and audio podcast series. This is the first of a series of three podcasts exploring social media platforms for formal and informal learning in organisations. This episode explores things to think about when choosing a social media platform for learning.

You can doenload our free elearning tutorials from iTunes.

Or read the podcast 23 transcript.

Or watch the entire free e-learning tutorial series on our E-Learning Academy YouTube Channel.

Episode 23 is embedded below.

Filed Under: Announcement, Social Media Strategy

Work-based collaboration tools and the elephant in the room

April 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve had the privilege to work with an organisation who is implementing a well known work-based collaboration application for customer data management. I have admired this platform and the company from afar for years, and now that I’ve have played with it, it hasn’t disappointed.

For the team receiving this application, they are facing 2 changes – the introduction of a mobile tablet to their day-to-day tools of the trade, and the application itself. The cloud-based application enables real-time customer data entry & retrieval. It features a feed, like a Twitter feed, of new information as data is shared. The hyperlinking of data between views is phenomenal. And, the reporting will be amazing.

Okay, already there is 1 new concept I have introduced in my description – data is not just being entered and stored – it is being actively shared.

I know I’m not the first to write about the themes associated with the transition to work-based collaboration tools, but until my immersion in this very role-specific application (as opposed to collaborative learning evironments which are fleeting in use in comparison), I didn’t quite realise the enormity of the change and what it means to issues of transparency, reputation and accountability. The transition needs to be thought about carefully; talked about and supported.

Transparency

This application has phenominal power to search and manage client data ‘in-time’. The reality is, everything entered is time stamped and associated with a profile name and picture. This means, perhaps for the first time, there is an overt way to monitor the quality and timeliness of data entry. Everything team members do or don’t do is very noticeable – activity is very obvious.

Reputation

With transparency comes reputation. Are you a regular and timely contributor or not? Do you share useful information or not? How is your ‘air time’ in the Twitter-like feed received by the team? Personal online work activity may cause team members to develop different perspectives about each other.

Accountability

With transparency comes accountability. Every entry is shared and seen by others many times a day. And, it cannot be removed. The data entered must be of good quality, useful, succinct and appropriate.

What does this all mean?

I love collaboration platforms. But my nature and motivation is well suited to them. I prefer to be transparent; wanting to reassure clients’ trust in what I am doing for them. I like to share my thoughts by the written word, building an online reputation for both business reasons and for altruistic reasons. But not every user will share my preferences.

Many will be suspicious of authority, of the root reason why the platform was implemented. Many will tire of adding and looking up data in a timely manner – this was not the required practice before. Many will get annoyed by seemingly useless Twitter-like entries until a norm is established. Many will prioritise other work-based activities ahead of contributing to the platform.

How do we prepare staff for work-based collaboration tools?

Communicate,  Educate and Model the new behaviour
  1. Communicate honestly the reasons for the change in work-based practice and workflow. Let’s face it, this tool is as much about productivity, profit and measurement as it is about collaboration, team-management and, in this case, customer service.
  2. Help staff, especially teams, establish norms on how they will work together in the new online space.
  3. Reward positive behaviour.
  4. Ensure the executive team demonstrate the behaviour expected of staff by contributing, and responding to others regularly.
  5. Communicate the positive outcomes that come from the platform being used well – outcomes that are meaningful to end users.
  6. Actively search for and detect the not-so-positive consequences of implementing the platform into staff practice. Ask staff to be open with their experiences, and deal with issues quickly, with the same level of transparency the organisation expects of it’s staff.

If you have a personal experience of a role-specific work-based collaboration tool, I’d love to read it. Please leave a comment. Thank you.

Filed Under: Social Media Strategy, Work-based Collaboration Platforms

E-Learning – The Fast Food of Organisational Learning?

April 7, 2012 By 6 Comments

I recently reviewed a 2010 Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson where he argues for change in education. He warns us against the industrialisation, systematisation and standardisation of education – how this linear, ‘one size fits all’ treatment of education stifles the organic nature of learning.

Are we creating a ‘fast food’ standardisation mentality with e-learning courseware? I think we sometimes are. My position on this is captured in my blog post How we think about learning influences our e-learning practice.

I am personally very concerned about the ‘one size fits all’ approach of typical e-learning courseware for training staff on soft skills – skills that are associated with ambiguity and bias. This is why I so favour facilitated virtual classroom (webinar) for learning, sharing and collaboration.

As humans our bias to problem-solving is to think linearly and engage our habits. In soft skills, evolving how we communicate with others, problem-solve people issues etc, happens best when we pop out of our habitual way of responding - when people’s ideas and perspectives collide and we test our assumptions and develop new perspectives for ourselves. For the most part, e-learning courseware is passive and doesn’t provide the challenge and stimulus to pop staff out of their biases.

We also need to be careful when developing e-learning courseware for soft skills that we don’t assume all the learner needs to do is become familiar with the content. Of course it’s not – they need to be able to ‘apply’ the content into specific contexts. Generally speaking, people require multiple exposures to concepts and to detail to embed their learning. Often the topic requires practice and conversation between manager and staff, L&D and learner etc. If this isn’t happening, then there can be serious assumptions made of the learning outcomes being achieved by soft skill e-learning courseware.

Social media for learning soft skills and tasks

What does excite me is the connectivity and personalisation of many well-designed social media platforms – platforms that have used disciplines in psychology, human-computer interaction and usability to develop solutions that are really ‘in sync’ with how people work, behave and respond. What we need to do is to begin to really understand workflow – begin to ask new and different questions in our learning needs analysis.

The role of manager as coach; who understands how learning is occuring in the workplace and who can provide the opportunities to challenge staff assumptions, is an increasing imperative.

I strongly encourage any organisation with a decent budget to pop out of their e-learning courseware paradigm and begin to explore the opportunities of social media. Examine the ‘enablement’ principles of some well known platforms, the ‘chaos’ principles of sophisticated games and simulations, and explore how these might fit your capability development requirements.

Filed Under: E-Learning Strategy, Our Changing Practice, Social Media Strategy

Social media does not always equal social learning

January 28, 2012 By 5 Comments

I was recently asked to define social media. At this time I define it as: Content expressed as thoughts, experience, expertise, opinions…created in text, multimedia, pictures…and shared by individuals for different reasons. It is mediated by technology platforms whose functionality determines the distribution, retrievability and useability of the content.

Social learning, on the other hand, is learning that happens through social exchanges and activities, whether the exchange is motivated for personal reasons or for larger collective purposes (adapted from Aaron Silvers, T&D January 2012).

Okay, so the simple difference between the two definitions is social media = content, social learning = learning through exchange.

I spend a lot of time using social media, and I learn a lot by interacting with it. But I must only do about 5% direct exchange with other people. Most of the time I am reading alone and producing alone – they are activities of individual reflection and interpretation. I use strategies to share my social media contribution to the world and my network, but I don’t expect an exchange will ensue – because everyone is busy, and there is a lot of e-learning and social media content out there. If there is an exchange, it’s a bonus and I get rather thrilled about it.

The term I prefer for organisational learning strategy is social media for learning. This term is inclusive of individual and social learning. When we are developing a purpose, a strategy and an action plan for introducing social media, we need to design platform functionality and activities that enable both individual AND social learning.

Social media is a decentralised learning function

Personally I am not convinced at this time that social media for learning is a centralised function of organsiational learning. I believe (and know this belief is not only mine) that online social exchange in organisations happens best where relationships already exist. Social media can support communities to continue exchanges and activities beyond physical locations. These communities, where people care enough about each other to respond online, build upon conversation and even co-create, can be very powerful for organisational learning and knowledge management. But these community ’conditions’ are generally few and far between. The opportunity for social media for learning is best identified by people who know the existing community well. The community should be supported by decentralised social media initiatives; by people who care about the community on a local level and who deeply understand their needs and behaviours.

Id’ love to read your thoughts on this. Please feel free to comment – I’d be thrilled.

Filed Under: Social Media Strategy