Archives for knowledge_worker

What Competencies do Knowledge Workers Need?

Posted by  on Wednesday, July 2nd 2008     

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 collected, 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?

category: corporate_training, knowledge_worker
tags: , ,

All about PLEs

Posted by  on Monday, April 28th 2008     

PLEs, or Personal Learning Environments, are being discussed all over the place.  The blog eLearning and Deliberate Moments defines PLEs this way:

“a Personal Learning Environment is a facility for an individual to access, aggregate, configure and manipulate digital artifacts of their ongoing learning experiences”

This is an interesting definition. How does this facility look technically in a corporate setting? Is it a portal with links to an LMS, to online communities relevant to the user, to the user’s blog, etc? Does it provide a way to publish and share the aggregated artifacts? Does it provide a way for other learners to edit the published artifacts?

Even more importantly, if we build it will the users come (and use it)? Michelle Martin over at the Bamboo Project has this post  that talks about  how knowledge workers now hold the means of production in their heads. I think this is a good point, and explains information seeking behavior of some people in a corporate environment.

If knowledge is power, and you have more company or technical knowledge than anyone else in your organization, aren’t you more powerful if you keep your knowledge to yourself? If you are in charge of knowledge workers, is it better to control them by convincing them the only way to learn is to consume what you have laid out in a carefully crafted curriculum?

I think not only the way we design training needs to evolve, but also the way corporate training is consumed by learners has to change. I think knowledge workers need to actively search for information,  and we need to design instruction so the learners are supported in that search.

category: knowledge_worker, PLE