Real Workplace LearningExploring informal and social learning

“Learning to Fly” blogger Amanda shares a great example of social learning for real life:

“I want to share a great example of social learning that I have observed recently that captures the motivation, ability and opportunity to learn. My husband Gareth is really into his tequila and I’m talking the real tequila here. No shots with salt and lime, and no worms. These being the first things people not in the know ask about when either one of us mentions good tequila. We do seem to have some backward notions of tequila drinking in NZ, but that is slowly changing.

Now aside from a trip to Mexico a couple of years ago, most of Gareth’s knowledge about tequila comes from what can only be described as social learning. He learns from live-streamed videos, Facebook discussion groups and whatever else he can glean from the Internet. He’s passionate and motivated about it and he’s connecting with like-minded, passionate and motivated people to share ideas and ask questions. Obviously, New Zealand is geographically isolated from Mexico, but social media provides the opportunity to learn without necessarily being there. .. I think it’s helpful to pay more attention to these unintentional methods of learning, as we might learn something ourselves. See the full post at: http://learningtofly-poppyd.blogspot.com/2012/03/social-learning-example.html?spref=twTweet

Yesterday we held the 4th #realwplearn chat.

The topic was Experiences not Courses.

These were the questions we asked:

Q1 – What learning “experiences” (rather than training) have you personally had?

Q2 – What learning experiences could/do you provide (a) for newcomers’ first days on the job

Q3 – What learning experience could/do you provide (b) for first time use of any new software?

Q4 – Where do experiences work better than current training?

Jimmy Hobson, @jimmy_hob saved an archive of the chat here http://t.co/MgPrpU6u

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Join Jane Bozarth and Jane Hart on Wednesday, September 14 at 3 pm ET, 8 pm  BST for this month’s #RealWPLearn chat. Experiences not Courses

In preparation for this chat, take a look at this series of 3 postings by Randall Case:

• http://sighborgmusings.blogspot.com/2011/05/experiences-versus-courses.html
• http://sighborgmusings.blogspot.com/2011/05/courses-versus-experiences-part-2.html
• http://sighborgmusings.blogspot.com/2011/05/courses-versus-experiences-part-3.html

See you on Wednesday!Tweet

Yesterday we held our third#realwplearn chat.  The Topic was on Social without workflow is doomed.  The pre-reading was provided here.

During the live chat session we asked 4 questions:

1. How has SoMe helped you solve a problem?
2. What social media tools work well in the workflow?
3. How do we ensure that new social tools don’t create a new silo?
4. How do we avoid the “Field of Dreams” approach?

I’ve captured the last 500 tweets in  this Tweetdoc.  (Note: it starts just after Q1 has been tweeted).

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Join us on Wednesday, August 10 at 3 pm ET, 8 pm  BST for this month’s #RealWPLearn chat.  Topic:  Without workflow social is doomed

In preparation for this chat, take a look at the following article, which posits that ‘social’ must be positioned in workflow, not some add-on to our busy day.

Without workflow social business is doomedTweet

In the latest blog posting in my Smart Worker series, The Smart Worker : shares what s/he learns, I described two different projects that have been set up in organisations to support sharing of employee-generated content.  I reproduce them here:

1 – Dare2Share – sharing of podcasts and other resources

“Dare2Share allows BT employees to learn from each other by rapidly capturing and spreading learning throughout the organization in the form of podcasts, discussion threads, blogs, RSS feeds and other traditional knowledge assets (documents, courses and portals).” [BT Dares to share]

Here’s a video showing Peter Butler, from BT, talking about Dare2Share (hosted on their enterprise intranet platform, MS Sharepoint), and explaining that it would have been impossible for L&D to provide all the learning materials that BT Engineers needed unless they had taken this “sharing” approach to learning.

2 -Intelpedia – collaborative resource building

Intelpedia is a project set up by an Intel engineer Josh Bancroft in November 2005, when he decided that his co-workers should have quick and easy access to a raft of company information, from internal projects to historical background.   Intelpedia is hosted on the open source MediaWiki software.

When interviewed by SocialMedi.biz in 2009, and answering concerns about the use of a wiki in an organisation, Josh reported

“In the four-plus years that Intelpedia has been up and running, I have had exactly zero reported instances of an unwanted edit — of someone spamming or vandalizing or doing something inappropriate. …  I’ve heard the same from other companies, which should allay the fears that some corporate executives still harbor.”

Summary

Note, that in the case of Dare2Share, this was an initiative implemented by the L&D Department, but in the case of Intelpedia, it was one engineer who started it at the grass roots.  Projects like this are probably already underway in your organisation, initiated by individuals and teams who recognise the value of sharing for their teams.  But there may be other teams who could benefit from your help and support in getting something in place for their own needs.

What similar projects are running in your organisation?  How are you helping teams to share what they know/learn with one another?

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www.insynctraining.com offers extended courses in facilitating, producing, and designing for the virtual classroom (Webex, Adobe Connect, etc.) . Graduates form bonds with one another and the instructors during multiweek sessions, and asked for a place they could stay in touch and work together as they implemented their new learning.  After several starts and stops with a blog—which just didn’t lend itself to much participant-participant interaction, InSync started a Facebook group. Now at over 600 members, with perhaps 100 of those fairly active, InSync graduates use the space to discuss new products and changes to existing products, strategies for making live-online training more interactive and engaging, and questions about facilitation and other aspects of practice. Many of us, including Insync owner Jennifer Hofmann, already owned iPhones or Android phones, and many were part of the ‘2^nd wave’ of iPads when the iPad 2 shipped earlier this year. We also knew we’d soon be working with participants who are joining the sessions from mobile devices. So in conversation one day we came up with the idea of getting together to try out some virtual classroom apps on our new devices. We called it a ‘rodeo’, trying to make it clear there would be no instruction. The only really formal components to the event were choosing a time to have it and which apps to try, and as Jennifer had administrator-level to the products she needed to set up the sessions. We scheduled a Facebook event and added this note:

InSync Facebook Group Mobile App Rodeo

Hello everyone. As so many folks now have iPads, smartphones, and other devices, several of us wanted to try out the mobile apps for a couple of popular virtual classroom tools. We’re just getting together to try them out and see how they work – there’s no presentation or instruction, and we can offer no troubleshooting or advice. We’re learning, too.

If you want to join us, you’ll need to download the apps to your own device. We’ll try Adobe Connect at 11 am ET and WebEx at 11:30.

Please join in with your device using the info below: NOTE: For today’s test we will only be using the products + telephony. VOIP will be a test for another day. Should be fine for smartphone users, but those using iPads or other tablet devices will also need to call in via a regular phone.

 

During and after the rodeo several people using different devices posted photos and comments to the group:

Adobe Connect on Droid

screenshot of adobe connect interface on iPad2

Participants respond to the question 'what did you learn?'

Chris couldn't make the rodeo but posted her thanks for sharing

A couple of thoughts:

Discussion during the rodeo focused partly on the technology itself, but just as much on thinking about the minds of the app developers and the product vendors. InSync  community members want to use virtual classroom programs for, ideally, interactive training. Most vendors, however, seem to be developing products focused more on static delivery of content. With mobile apps we often found that information displayed well, but using chat, bringing in other voices, polling, etc. was challenging or nonexistent. Trainers and designers hope that developers work to make both the desktop and mobile versions of the products more training-friendly.

Finally: Even though we made it clear that this was not instruction in any form — we even called it a “rodeo”– it was interesting to see how many commented that they could not make ‘the class’ or later thanked us for ‘the training’. It this a sign that we need a culture shift, that the idea of intentional learning is so foreign that people can’t wrap their heads around it? Could be. After all, we don’t even have a word for ‘let’s go learn something together.”Tweet

Yesterday we held our second #realwplearn chat.  The Topic was on Performance Support.  Pre-reading and information was here.

During the live chat session we asked 4 questions:

1. What tools/devices do you use to support your own performance?
2. How can we help people not make mistakes?
3. What features make for the ideal performance support tool/device?
4. What is a low-tech support tool?

There was quite a lot of tweeting activity, which I’ve captured in a Tweetdoc.  (Unfortunately it only captures last 500 tweets, so it starts in the middle of the responses for Q1).Tweet

Join us Wednesday, July 13 at 3 pm ET , 20:00 BST for this month’s #RealWPLearn chat.  Topic: Performance support.

A critical factor of workplace performance is having good supports in place.   Atul Gawande’s popular Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right highlights the importance of knowledge workers and technicians having what they need, when, at their fingertips:  ”Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty,” Gawande says. “It’s also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.”

Let’s spend an hour discussing ways performance can be supported and enhanced via tools (technological and otherwise). Beforehand, please take a look at Clark Quinn’s experience with CERT Training and this interview with Atul Gawande. This will help us frame our conversation around a common understanding of performance support.  Meantime, give some thoughts to the tools around you that support your performance, and bring your own examples to the discussion.

We hope to see you Wednesday!

Jane & JaneTweet

Dan Pontefract talks about social learning at TELUS in this YouTube video:

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