Real Workplace LearningExploring informal and social learning

I recently wrote about how I hosted a live Twitter chat during an event on informal learning.

“The idea was that those in the room who knew how to use Twitter would “buddy up” with those that did not, so that they could pass on their knowledge, and the newbies could ask any questions of them; there would be no formal “teaching” of how to use Twitter.  We used Tweetchat to display the hashtag stream on the two screens so that everyone could see what was happening and this provided good opportunity for us all to chat about what we were seeing and what it meant.”

I think the picture above (taken by @mikecollins007) sums it up.

How could you use this approach in your organisation?

Read more about the event as well as see some pics and videos, and see what some of the participants thought in my posting here.Tweet

My boss was in a meeting the other day that concluded with a request for attendees to review and submit their changes to a document — all via email.  She said, “I suggest we use Google Docs for that,” and explained how that would work.” Amid the rolling eyes and responses of “that  sounds too hard” and a “is it legal?”, her boss cut it off and said: “This is learning. We need to try this.”

The next-level boss gets it: “This is learning.” Does yours? Why not? What do you need to do to get recognition of and appreciation for learning to this level?Tweet

There is a lot of talk lately, much of it in the abstract, around the idea of  ”design experiences”.  These can support new learning or, depending on your definition of ‘learning’, at least new thinking. They are carefully crafted experiences designed to elicit specific affective and cognitive responses, as well as create memories, in the atmosphere of a particular desired user experience.  Randall Case (on Twitter as @Djudje) wrote a series of blog posts about the need for more experiences and fewer courses.  The example here offers such disparate experiences as carnival games, WII, and Build-A-Bear.

What experiences already exist in your organization? What experiences need to exist? What is your role in that?

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“…Christian saw this as an illustration of how cardiologists could learn on Twitter. But I think it tells us a lot more about learning in the open. I am not a cardiologist. I’m a generalist. I don’t diagnose NSTEMI ( a type of heart attack in which diagnosis is partly dependent on troponin levels) but I do manage little old ladies who are discharged on multiple medications after having NSTEMI diagnosed in hospital. So I was interested in this and through commenting on Christian’s blog I was able to discuss this issue with him.

And of course patients and the wider public will also be able to gain insights into how many of the things which seem certain in medicine are perhaps not so certain. And that I hope can only be for the good.

See the full text at: http://wishfulthinkinginmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/2011/06/more-learning-via-twitter.htmlTweet

A Canadian PhD student recently leveraged Facebook to complete a research project:

“In two weeks the team had collected over 5000 specimens but, with only a few days of the expedition left they came across an almost impossible problem; the terms of their research permit required them to report an accurate count for each of the species collected to the Guyanese government.

Bloom came up with the idea of using Facebook, and expedition leader Dr Brian Sidlauskas of Oregon State University, loved the idea and started uploading photos of the fish. Less than 24 hours later the team’s network of friends —many of whom hold PhDs in ichthyology and are “diehard fish-heads”— had identified nearly every specimen!”

Read the full text of the article here.

What situations have you faced that might have been more quickly dispatched by calling on the wisdom of crowds? Where  could you see this approach working now in your own world?

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WebWorker Daily recently reported on the Startup Genome Project report.

“For innovative teams — those in startups as well as those innovating within established organizations — traditional professional development, or PD, has become an anachronism.

While those in traditional fields may pursue study and qualifications in order to advance their careers and earning potential, and see PD as both a reward and a motivator, for those in working in technology and innovation, the pathways for — and value of — professional development aren’t so clear-cut.”

It cited the research found in the report:

“Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth” than those that don’t. No mention is made of the value of formal qualifications as a basis for startup success.”

How are you helping your people with their professional development – in less formal ways?Tweet

Good Luck

From Michael Palko

Before we introduced a learning community, that’s what we relied on to educate our customers:  luck and a little formal training.

In my role as a Solution Education Manager at Thomson Reuters, I am responsible for training our customers on how to use our software solutions.  One of our products, CareFocus, is a clinical surveillance tool that allows hospitals to do real-time monitoring of their patient populations.  This helps them to more easily identify patients with certain conditions in order to improve the quality of care, avoid medical errors, reduce length of stay and optimize reimbursement.  I’m also responsible for managing an online community, consisting of customers using that tool.  This “user group,” as it’s referred to, is made of IT staff, pharmacists, nurses, hospital educators, physicians, and those responsible for the variety of ongoing quality initiatives; really anyone who uses to the tool.  It’s a closed community, meaning membership is by invitation only and must be approved by the community manager.  Experience levels run the gamut from novice to super user.

Prior to starting this initiative about 2 years ago, we’d sell the tool to the hospital, implement it, train the software administrator via a web meeting, then pat them on the back and wish them well.  When we followed up with them 6-12 months later, we’d always be surprised that they hadn’t done what we expected them to do.  In retrospect, we shouldn’t have been surprised at all.  We essentially gave them a tool, told them once how to use it and practiced with them for a combined total of 90 minutes, then left one or two people on their own to figure out the rest.  Oh yeah, they also had full-time jobs to do.  So, guess what happened when they tried to use the tool on their own?  Right…very few were successful.  Those that were had more time to devote to the trial and error of learning.  Those who weren’t successful gave up after only a few tries, too burdened by their other duties and the 100+ page user guide.   If we’d been listening more closely, we would have heard the wheels of progress grinding to a halt, if in fact they’d even begun to turn.  The few successful customers we did have, got more of our attention and, voilà, grew even more successful.  That led to them be asked to act as references for prospective customers. (And when I say “asked” I really mean “bombarded with requests.”)

We eventually came to a crossroads and decided that something needed to be done to increase the use of this (very valuable) product.  Existing customers were considering not renewing their contracts because they couldn’t see the ROI in it.  They weren’t finding the patients they’d hoped to find, mainly because the tool was collecting dust.  Prospective customers wondered aloud why we didn’t have more reference-able customers.  And so, a user group was created.  The mantra would be “Support.  Educate. Connect.”  In addition to the technical support we offered, it would be used to help support their efforts to achieve the hospital’s strategic goals around quality of care and reimbursement.  It would be used to provide continuing education on the features and functionality of the tool.  And it would connect the business to the customer.  We felt that if the company better understood how the customer wanted to use the tool, we could see just where the shortcomings were.

Well, it did just that…and more.  What we overlooked was that not only would this connect the business to the customer, but it, even more importantly, connected customer to customer.  And that’s when the REAL workplace learning began.  All of the customers were trying to solve the same issues I outlined above.  All of them had a tool that could help.  But none of them were talking to one another!  We instituted a monthly live web meeting.  It took place on the same day and the same time each month; a predictable, planned time for learning.  The phone lines remained open throughout to encourage comments and questions.  In the web meeting, we demonstrated a “Tip of the Month” re-enforcing some feature or functionality.  Each month, we also showcased the work of the community members: “Look at what Becky did.  Here’s how she did it.  Here’s the impact it made.”  It made Becky feel good about the work she’d done, it showed Becky’s bosses that they were now getting a return on their investment, they were achieving more of their goals and it shined a positive spotlight on the hospital.  Oh, yeah…it also gave EVERYONE in the community the blue print for success.  Customers began copying from, er, collaborating with one another to reproduce those successes at their own facilities.  People began asking to make presentations!

In addition to the web meetings, we also created an online forum for the discussion to continue in between meetings.  It housed a library of the items shared in the monthly meetings.  It held an archive of recordings of all of the meetings in the event members could not join in live or wanted to hear it again.  It became a place for even more collaboration with members sharing works in progress and asking for help from the community to complete them.  Each new facility was publically welcomed and each new member was purposefully introduced to others in the community who shared similar backgrounds or issues.  We also instituted an e-mail “Did You Know…” newsletter, prompting members to return to the site to see the latest contributions and discussions.  The new customers were talking with the long-time customers about lessons learned.  People were getting ideas about how which patient populations to target and the issues they faced in providing care.

The results:

• Increased user adoption
• Finding success stories that previously would not have been uncovered
• Quicker times to success and to realizing return on investment
• Increase in the number of reference-able accounts
• New sales attributable to very existence of a learning community; a competitive differentiator
• One of the members being named to ModernHealthcare’s Top 25 Clinical Informaticists for 2010
• A pool of front-line staff ready, and eager, to give their opinion on proposed enhancements of the tool and on the product roadmap
• One member even went as far to say “The User Group is one of the most useful services Thomson Reuters provides with the CareFocus product.  It’s been extremely valuable to learn how other facilities use CareFocus and we look forward to sharing ideas and profiles each month. It’s a great resource.”
• Better patient care in hospitals all across the country.

Did I mention that I learned, too?  After working with the product for over 5 years, this learning community taught me a few things about the tool by their many creative uses for it.

In my opinion, this is a good example for real workplace learning.  The members of the community don’t share the same workplace, but everyone shared the same work and issues surrounding it.  Because a collaborative environment was created, everyone benefitted: the company, the customer and the patients they serve.

I’m looking forward to your comments and questions and to hearing about your success in implementing similar strategies.

Good luck!!

Connect with me:

LinkedIn

Twitter

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Our first #realwplearn Twitter took place yesterday at 3 pm Eastern / 8 pm BST (=GMT+1).  Thanks to everyone who took part and helped make it a very successful first event.

The conversation and questions in the chat were around this recent article by Tom Gram, Designs for Natural Learning

These were the questions we asked:

Q1  How do knowledge workers really learn to do their jobs? #realwplearn

Q2 P1 “It doesn’t make sense to build a whole department around training when there are so many other ways to help people learn.” #realwplearn
Q2 P2 How can you “move” out of the training department  into the workflow to help people learn as they work?  #realwplearn

Q3 P1 “Instead of learning programs, you are designing work environments, tools, information and feedback systems. Think of it as performance design.” #realwplearn
Q3 P2 How can you move from learning program design culture to performance design ? Small steps or bold new approach? #realwplearn

Q4 P1 “This focus on designing work to enable natural learning resembles what progressive managers see as there role and they are not wrong.” #realwplearn
Q4 P2  How can you help managers fulfill that responsibility better?  #realwplearn

My intention was to capture all the tweets from this chat session in  a TweetDoc.  However, as there were so many participants in the chat, the resulting Tweetdoc  has only shown the last 500 tweets of the chat – that is those from 7.23 pm BST onwards, so I am working on retrieving the early part in some format.  But here’s what has been captured so far.

Real Workplace Learning Chat 8 June TweetDoc – from 7.23 pm onwards

Our next Tweet chat takes place on Wednesday 13 July, when the topic is Performance Support: what does it look like.  More to come on that chat session in the next few weeks.Tweet

Our first Real Workplace Learning Twitter Chat takes place on 8 June at 3 pm Eastern and 8 pm UK time.

Topic: From Learning Design to Performance Design

If you would like to take part in the Twitter chat  on 8 June, please read the following article by Tom Gram -  Designs for Natural Learning

The hashtag for the chat is #realwplearn

You can find out more about the principles behind this new Twitter chat here.Tweet

With so much discussion of  ”social learning” as if it 1. is a concept created sometime in 2010 and 2. Needs to be managed, controlled or directed, we are always looking for examples of real learning as it is happening. An opportunity to watch this presented itself on the night of May 22, 2011, during a Twitter event called #blogchat. Here is an overview of that experience as it first appeared on Jane Bozarth’s blog  http://bozarthzone.blogspot.com/ :

“Something really interesting happened on Twitter last night. The backstory: There is a regularly scheduled discussion, #blogchat, that happens on Sunday evenings at 8 pm ET (oops–update, correction: 8 Central). Participants share ideas for generating content, growing readership, that kind of thing. I don’t usually participate but I follow several people who do. Last night I happened to see a tweet from @MackCollier with a link to http://mackcollier.com/congrats-to-the-four-blogs-that-will-be-reviewed-at-blogchat/ . Turns out the #blogchat group decided to dedicate some of their Sunday nights to offering critiques of one another’s blogs. Participants wanting feedback submitted their blogs for consideration; 4 were chosen this time with a promise that others would be considered soon.

Those who offered their blogs up for review got a good deal of feedback useful particularly for them, but also for others in the group. For example:
@newdaynewlesson: Make your type left justified. Centered screams amateur.
@Collin_K: Font in the header looks too much like comic sans. Hard to take you seriously.
@blogdash: You want your readers to focus on your content. Everything else is a distraction. Choose your distractions wisely.
@Collin_K:  I’ve never been a fan of the double sidebar. Takes too much attention off of content.
@TheOnlineMom: I love how you share your objectives of the blog right off the bat.
@MikeHale: You can get a premium template for $100 and tweak it, you don’t need to do a whole custom design.
@AmyAfrica  If you want a new design & are on a budget, get a new header. It’s affordable & it will make biggest difference.

I think last night’s #blogchat is important for several reasons:
1. So many organizations show interest in Twitter and other social tools, but then worry about making online conversations private, or locking them up inside the company’s firewall. I always say that’s not really the point, and last night’s #blogchat is exactly why. These are people who otherwise don’t know each other, or work together, but who share a common interest — and improving could be quite valuable to some of their employers. Talking about top-secret research on a new drug the company hopes to patent, or a pending indictment of an SVP? Maybe not in public. Talking about making your corporate blog better, or tweaking your leadership academy, or communicating with a global workforce, or finding the best productivity apps for the organization-issued smartphones? Why not a Twitter chat, or a LinkedIn discussion, or a Facebook group open to the rest of the world?

2. The fact that this happened in public means I got to learn from  it, too. Because I happen to follow some of  #blogchat’s regular participants, their tweets started showing up in my feed.  My takeaways: In blogging, content matters more than most anything else, and “choose your distractions wisely”. I also found a couple of interesting new folks to follow. How many of us work in organizational silos and have discovered — often too late — that employees in other silos were having really interesting, useful discussions relevant to our own interests and work? Or were working on a project that we could contribute to? Or were replicating work that’s already been done? Another thing that happens by living out in the big wide world: You may find new things that interest you. Hagel, Brown & Davison’s Power of Pull describes this as “increasing your surface areas”.

3. Popular talk about  ”communities of practice” (CoPs) focuses a great deal on ‘community’ but rarely on ‘practice’.  Per Wenger, a CoP is comprised of people who work together with the explicit intention of getting better at what they do (not just talking about it, or complaining about it, or ‘conferencing’, or sharing ‘best practices‘), but to actually apply their new learning and improve their own practice.  #blogchat is a great example of what a CoP does. The community members don’t want to just gripe about problems with blog products, or trash other bloggers who don’t participate in #blogchat, or complain that someone else’s blog is better because that someone else has funding for it. People engage within the CoP with the intention of improving their practice. Most are open to offering up their own work and saying, ”How could this be better?” – if the feedback is given in a spirit of cameraderie from peers or other credible sources. Most people are willing to share what they know. Most people want to help each other. And what organizations often just can’t grasp: People can gather based on their own self-identified needs and self-manage to get better at what they do — without excessive administrative oversight or elaborate procedures.

Here’s the thing: What happened in #blogchat last night goes on all the time in workplaces. People say they’re having a problem and ask coworkers or others for help. They likely don’t think to document it on their TPS reports, or include it on a time sheet, or maybe even mention it to anyone else. They don’t call themselves “adult learners”; they call themselves “solving a problem”. Last night it happened to happen on Twitter. Where is it happening in your organization?”

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