Adventures in Corporate Education

I am editing this post, because this month’s Biq Questions are:

• Should workplace learning professionals be leading the charge around these new work literacies?
• Shouldn’t they be starting with themselves and helping to develop it throughout the organizations?
• And then shouldn’t the learning organization become a driver for the organization?
• And like in the world of libraries don’t we need to market ourselves in this capacity?

Back to my post already in progress—

These seem to be the question of the week, they are being asked everywhere. It’s being asked at the No Straight Lines blog (this person blogs about autism too, what a coincidence!!), on the Work Literacy Blog, and we’ve been starting to talk about it at work. And now they are officially the Questions of the Month at the Learning Circuits Blog.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is what happens if we design all this interactive learning but no one uses because they don’t have the required skills to use the instructional technology? As I said in one of my last posts, I think we either have to make the technology invisible or we have to teach people to use the tools.

But more importantly, how can you design with these new tools if you don’t understand them? How can you apply them to your existing systematic learning system if you don’t know what the heck wiki even means? So, yes, learning professionals must learn and use these tools, and then apply the tools to there existing framework.

So what are “the tools”? Here’s my list

• Wikis: How to edit, how to read, how to link to
• RSS Feeds: What are they, how do I read one, once I have a reader set up how do I scan info collecetd, how do I share info using one
• Blogs: How do I write one. Why SHOULD I write one. How do I evaluate info from one. How do I scan, collect keywords, and rescan to crystallize ideas and information?
• Information Creation tools: Exps: Youtube, SlideShare, Flickr. How do I use. Why/When do I use.
• Tagging: What is this? Why is it important? How do I use with content I create? How do I use to search for info I need?

These are the ones I can think of, just from interactions with my class team this semester, and from conversations I have had with co-workers. I think one of my goals this quarter will be a lunch and learn on at least one of these topics - to help get my co-workers up to speed. Maybe I’ll call it: What is a wiki and why the heck do I care?

Tony Karrer suggests going for the small wins, specifically by taking the following steps:

• “implement a small Wiki that has performance support materials that goes along with your eLearning on that new software application
• at first have it only editable by the authors
• then open it up to edit the FAQ and Common Issue pages by your help desk
• and then open up editing to end-users
• and to more pages”

hmmm

This post has been bubbling in my brain for about two weeks. Our group finally turned in our midterm project, so I have a little time to get these thoughts out of my head.

Before I start let me say something to my group. I am just using our collective painful experience to illustrate a point. If you disagree with anything I say, please leave a comment and set the record straight!

I am in a class this summer called “Designing Online Collaborative Learning”. To the best of my recollection, there were no technical prerequisites for the class. I took the class because I wanted to become more familiar with how the principles of group theory could be applied to a Learning 2.0 environment.

After completing a survey, we were put into groups to create a lesson that has learners define factors that make Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) successful, create causal maps, create a shared theory of CSCL, do research to support that theory, and finally create a web page.

Now my group are self-professed non-techies. And they really are not very technical (it’s true guys!!). About 75% of my time has been devoted to helping and coaching everyone to learn some of the social media skills needed to complete our project. We used a wiki, slideshare (which went down for most of the weekend the project was due!), polldaddy, meebo, and  edublogs.

Now I’ve been using tools like this for about 12 years, so I can figure out the nuances between different sites. If you don’t use them all the time, those nuances are huge barriers. It takes time to figure them out. And if you want the project to look professional, it may take even longer!

My classmates became frustrated because they had to learn these web 2.0 skills PLUS the academic information. I am frustrated because I had to spend so much time coaching my teammates that I don’t feel I learned the academic information at all.

So how does this tie into my corporate life?

Learning 2.0 will not be successful unless it is implemented with good design principles.

Opening up collaboration and communication with the web 2.0 tools is not as easy as just pointing students to one of these sparkly tools and telling them “Go! Learn!”. Asking non-technical people to just learn a new technology places an unfair cognitive burden on those learners. It also places an unfair burden on the technical person in the class.

If the class truly becomes a collaborative group, and I feel mine was, the techie will try and bring the others in their group up to speed. That may take up all the time alloted for instruction - meaning the team learned to use a shiny toy, but did not learn the materials assigned to the course.

I think there is a lesson here too for those people who think Web 2.0 is going to save the world. You may have grown up using a computer, but there are many people in this country who can not afford a computer. There are people who can’t afford to pay for an Internet connection, or they can only afford dial-up. These people are entering the workforce too, and they don’t have the skills you have because they didn’t have access to the tools you did.

I have not heard much lately about the Digital Divide, but it’s still there. Aside from not being able to afford the Internet or equipment, there are lots of people who have to work 2 and 3 jobs to pay their rent. I can guarantee you that if they are able to be online, they aren’t worried with managing their brand. They get online to relax - play poker with their friends, play games, send stupid chain letters even though their techie daughter has told them a million times to look at Snopes first (ok off topic rant, sorry!).

What I am trying to say is, not everyone has the Web 2.0 skills because not everyone has access to the tools, and not everyone has time to get online and develop the skills. This has to be taken into consideration when creating training for a global audience.

I am NOT saying that we should avoid Learning 2.0 in our curriculum. I think these tools are powerful and should be harnessed. I AM saying this new way of instruction must be implemented thoughtfully.

We cannot afford to create instruction that requires the learner to learn how to use the instructional tools as well as learn the class materials. We either have to make the technology transparent, or we have to start teaching some of the Web 2.0 skills to our audiences.

Whew I feel better now that I’ve gotten that off my chest! Let me know what you think of these ideas.

I know they probably don’t read my blog, but I have to put it out there that I love our ops guys! I asked for some equipment, and had it the next day. Sweet!

I also have a much deeper love now for our video production guys. I am building camtasia videos for my school project - and I am finding that it is not so easy to:

1. PUBLISH THEM! and
2. Make them look professional.

I am so grateful that for work, all I have to do is produce the raw content and and our media team works their magic and I have beautiful, professional presentations.

I saw an internal training session that my team didn’t publish, and we probably should have. I mean the info is all there, but it’s hard to hear in many places, and there are long silent spots with no way to fast forward.

Yesterday at the Social Media Breakfast in Boston one of the speakers commented that sure many of these new ways to share content are free, but there is still a cost. There is a huge time cost, and there is a cost to your brand if you throw something out there that is not professional.

I think it’s the same with education - sure anyone can throw some videos and how-tos up there, but how long will that ad hoc “stuff” engage the learner?

At any rate, yay to our ops team and our video production team! You guys are so awesome!

The Engaged Learning blog has been posting Objections to using social media for education. The last couple of days have had some interesting posts on this topic!

Objection #12 was “How Will you measure that it’s working”?  Basically, how do you go from recording each course consumed in the LMS to measuring informal learning?  He suggests using web analytics to see what learners search for, share, and comment on.

Objection #13 was “How do you measure ROI?” He suggests we really don’t care what the learn, if they don’t use what they learn to benefit the company, so we should measure the benefit we think the company will get from the training.

I wish there were more concrete ways to measure ROI. Maybe actually defining the investment needed is a step towards that measurement?

I’ve decided to come out about where I work. I develop technical training in the Education Services Department at EMC Corporation. EMC a global leader in storing, managing, and protect information intelligently and efficiently. My department has won many awards - in 2007 we ranked 2nd on Training Magazine’s Top 125 list and won an ASTD Best Award.

I am writing this blog from the point of view of an Individual Contributor - I’m just a cog in the machine so to speak. I wanted a space to apply what I am using in my graduate program to things I see at work. I also will probably talk about how the emerging Web 2.0 technologies can be applied towards education, but these thoughts are all my own and not necessarily a direction my group is pursuing.

I also have to put the standard disclaimer up - so go see it on my “About Me” page.

I think this post about EMC’s latest ON Magazine (which has several E2.0 articles) is what pushed me over the edge to “come out” as an EMC employee. One of the articles in this issue of On talks about how DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) had the first real E2.0 system - adding fuel to my argument that these tools are not new, and they are not the domain of the so-called “digital natives”.

I started writing this as a comment to a post on the Silence and Voice blog. That post is about where are all these users who are supposedly chomping at the bit to use Web 2.0 in educational settings? My comment was getting so long I decided to turn it into a blog post.

I want to add a technical slant as well as an instructional design slant to this discussion.  Just because we have the “L 2.0″ tools doesn’t mean that learners will automagically use them. Similarly, just having the new tools doesn’t mean those tools are the best ones for every instructional situation. These technologies are still just that - tools. To me, this means the use of the tools will require design work.

We have started discussing how we will use these tools where I work (developing and delivering technical training). There is a great potential to use the tools to solve all sorts of problems our audiences face. However, for the transition to be effective and smooth there is also alot of design work that will have to happen up front.

One thing I think is being left out of the conversation is the cost of these new tools. There is a human resource cost: instructors and developers must be taught about the tools, how and when to use them effectively, etc. The audiences must also be  retrained, I think especially in a fast-paced corporate setting. For years and years and years they have been taught to come to class, get info dumped into their head,  and take a test to prove that taking time off to go to training was well spent. After years of this conditioning, we are expecting them to just suddenly act completely the opposite: Be open, be collaborative, feel free to make mistakes, etc. In some industries, undoing that culture of control is going to be a challenge.

There is also a cost for machines, for bandwidth, for software. Is it really any wonder that  E2.0 made it look like this change will happen tomorrow? All of  the vendors presenting there  (including my company) are selling the physical tools that will make this new world happen.

I am working hard to help my organization start to think about how we can use these tools. I’m always surprised at the objections I hear. Some are very valid from a systems point of view, and are things I hadn’t thought about. The things I am learning in my class this semester are helping me to think of ways to overcome the objections, but there is still alot of work to do.

In the class that I am taking this summer, we are applying group theory in education to designing an online collaborative class. This class has been very time-consuming, not because the ideas are difficult, but because our professor has not made technology we are being asked to use transparent.

So far, we have used jMAP (a juiced up Excel template for comparing causal maps), wikispaces, Blackboard, Google Docs, diigo, and gliffy as part of our assignments. My group is also using meebo for live conferencing and edublogs for a final project.

The problem we are having is that I am the only real technical person in my group. The instructions for all the new software programs we are being asked to use are not very technical, or detailed at all really. We have lots of theory reading every week, and we are being asked to add to the cognitive load by learning new technologies every week as well.

Here’s the deal, I’m having a hard time with the technical piece, and I am very technical. My teammates are very, very frustrated with the technology part of things. Being the technical trainer that I am, I am helping everyone. I don’t mind, I sorta think that kind of thing must be in my DNA. But it puts an extra burden on me.

For the record the class we are designing is going to be so documented it’s crazy.

What I am learning in this class is transferable to work - if we want to use these new learning technologies to help our students learn faster, the technology must be transparent. They can’t be expected to just “figure out” how to use new tools AND learn the lessons the class is teaching. Work Literacy linked to a story about using wikis for group work, and all the comments talk about making the technology easy so the tools can actually be used to do the work, not work needing to be done to figure out the tools.

If you want to follow my group’s progress, check out our wiki.

There is a post out there right now about Edupunk, and how they are upset that corporate LMSs. The comment that caught my eye:

“My bias has been for a long time that an LMS is sold by and sold to senior levels in an organization, and doesn’t often involve the people who are directly trying to create better learning within the organization.”

Then I saw this link about the differences between higher ed and corporate ed. Although I disagree with #10 - I complain.

Tony Karrer picks up on the conversation, and mentions that at some point trainers are going to end up in the middle of this issue, in between users who are already using 2.0 tools in their personal learning environments and the official, corporate LMS.

So how do we design so that students can use the tools they use to learn everything else when they come to corporate training classes? I am not sure yet. I have more ideas on how to design collaborative elearning assets. I am learning stuff at school - let’s see if I am able to implement.

mLearning is mobile learning. Here is a great white paper on the topic. Including technology.