It’s the last day of December, the last day of 2009, the last day of a decade. But I still want to answer December’s Big Question:

What did you learn about learning in 2009?

Grad School

Personally, I took five graduate courses (for my Master’s degree in Instructional Systems at FSU)

• Development of Computer Courseware: I am not sure if learned anything new about learning in this course – I did learn that my organization at EMC does a very good job of creating computer courseware though!
• Inquiry and Measurement of Instructional Systems: This is the class that started me thinking differences in the language used by education people to describe measurements, and how these differ from language used by MBAs
• Web 2.0 Learning and Performance: I’m not sure if I learned anything new in this class either, but I did get to try out some new ideas I had about aggregating information sources. This is a great class, if you are in the IS program take it when it is offered!
• Introduction to Program Evaluation: This course introduced me to “The Standards“. They are pretty sense guidelines for conducting evaluations, but a nice reference.
• Performance Systems Analysis: This was  my HPT course. As much as we talk about innovation and doing things differently, all systems we analyze (at least from an academic standpoint) are built on principles created by the men who pretty much got us in this mess. Should we be studying them differently – as the bad examples maybe?

Blogging

According to the social signals for my blog posts at eLearning Learning, people liked the printable Twitter Cheat Sheet I posted.

Twitter was big last year. One of the most important additions to my PLE was #lrnchat. How amazing is it to be able to connect with education and performance experts from all fields? The remind me that there are so many ways to look at topics, not to fall into the trap of believing the hype, but to really analyze and evaluate systems…have reasons for the things you suggest and believe. And also not to take it all so seriously, that is nice too.

Another popular post (based on social signals) was one where I tried to find a definition for informal learning. I actually wrote this for one of my executives. I knew if I put my thoughts out there, my PLE would challenge it. And y’all did not disappoint!!

Wrangling with the idea of how to use communities in corporate learning took me back to my undergraduate days (my BS is in Information Studies) many times, especially in a post I made about Communities, PLEs, small groups, & power. This is something I’m still wrestling with. If Social Media is about the social, then finding a way to manage the power networks that allow (and prohibit) connections to networks is critical…especially in a highly political corporate environment. This is probably a core reason you can’t just build it (a community for learning) and expect learners to just show up. I’m sure this will be a big topic for me in 2010 as well.

I also wrote a post explaining how I personally use social media to learn. I compared it to fishing, I guess in a nod to my Gulf Coast heritage. I don’t think I’m unusual, especially for someone who works with technology. I still have to explain to people how important blogging is to me as a source of personal growth. The connections and shared information I’ve made from the blog have really helped me stretch and verify my thought processes.

Wrapping it up..

In summary, I’ve learned that I know lots more about learning than I knew. I’ve also learned that there is so much I have to learn. So, here’s looking to 2010. I’m sure I’ll have more provocative posts, and I’m sure you guys will knock my back down to reality!

I’ve been talking at #lrnchat about our report on Geary Rummler. Its 90% done, so I posted it on slideshare. We have to fix a couple of things, the biggest one is our citation page.

Please bear in mind the assignment was based on a chapter about Rummler, and we only have about 7 minutes to present, and we’re the last thing anyone has to do for the semester…..

Weird blog post title right?

I’m taking two performance courses this semester. In one of the courses we are studying the origins of Human Performance Technology (HPT). I’ve been blogging that homework (see here , here, and here). As I’ve learned about the history, I’ve had a growing feeling of unease.

I blame it on CCK08 – last year’s Connectivism and Connected Knowledge course. That class really got me thinking about what it takes to create an environment for learning. And what I learned there is very different than what is in practice, and to some extent what I’m learning at school. (The course has started up for this year, check it out here).

I made a nice network of folks from that class as well. One of them, Mike Bogle, wrote a post a couple of days ago that describes part of how I feel. In the post he said this:

How on Earth can I make a difference and affect change in a culture that is almost diametrically opposed to my way of thinking?  How can I reconcile the growing notion that so much of the culture I am currently situated in, I completely disagree with, and likewise disagrees with me?  Quite literally I’m grasping at straws for an answer right now.

He was talking about his experience in higher ed, but I feel the exact same way sometimes. Mike and I aren’t in the “mushy middle”, and I want to believe that at some point we’ll start to see the change we hope to affect.

But then I do my HPT homework.

Why am I studying about the guys that dismantled indigenous ways of learning in favor of industrialized performance management? Are these guys really the founders of HPT? Or were the behavioral scientists of the 50s and 60s trying to undue the damage that was done by treating people as mere extensions of machines (or resources)?

I know I have lots of explaining to do. What is indigenous learning? I’m going to save that for an upcoming blog post. All I can say is it is the opposite of the Gervais Principle of management, which states:

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

I think its all triangles as opposed to circles. I’ll explain more in the next post.

I just wrote my final (official) blog post for my summer class about Web 2.0. One of the biggest things I learned this semester is that we have to stop this idea that we can apply old themes and metrics and ways of doing things to these new tools.

I am not saying we need to throw out the old stuff. On the contrary, we need to build bridges between the old and the new. We need to bring the good principles from our old way of designing learning to the new. We need to align to the business. We need to design learning objectives that are tied to what people need to learn to do so they actually learn the core of what they need to do their jobs before they start wading through the gazillion terabytes of information that is out there.

Kenny and Susan marching to the capital bldg

But we can’t measure how someone learns the way we’ve been trying to do it for the last hundred years. That’s why I marched against Jeb Bush’s One Florida scheme when I was at FSU as an undergrad. With my child on my back (literally) for most of that march.

Learning is more than just a bottom line number on an accounting sheet. When someone truly learns – not when they learn to a test, or attend a mandatory online class – but truly masters a topic you’ll know by looking at what they can accomplish.

As learning professionals, we need to start thinking about how we can enable this mastery learning to happen. In my class blog post I talk about a Learning GPS. We should be able to point people to the fastest route to mastery, as well as the side roads that may help provide the local color to fully understand the nuances of a topic.

At any rate, we can’t allow the old ways of doing things to become the de facto way of designing instruction and measuring learning in this new Learning 2.0 world. We have to be the ones to come up with the new ways.

What do you think??

I’m working on the first assignment for my Web 2.0 course. I have to make an example of “produsage”. What I settled on was creating a wiki so people can share how they use technology to overcome issues that come along because of Executive Functioning deficits (here is the link to the wiki).

For example, my daughter and I always carry our cell phones if we go someplace together. If she starts having sensory issues because its crowded, loud, hot, etc, she will go non-verbal. But for some reason she can still type (this is so weird to me). So she’ll text me to let me know she’s having issues, and we work things out from there.

Here’s the post on my class blog explaining why I picked this topic.

The link to the wiki is here. It’s in a moodle instance.

If you see a login page, click “Login as Guest” if you only want to look at the wiki.

If you would like to edit the wiki (and I hope you will!) please sign up for an account. The only reason I ask you to sign up is to discourage people who just want to be mean on the wiki.

Please check it out, and let me know if you have any suggestions! Thanks.

I’m taking a class called Web 2.0 Learning and Performance. There are over 30 people in the class, and I’m having flashbacks to CCK08.

I may blog less here for the next few weeks as I have to keep a seperate journal for class. That journal is here.

We’ll see if I survive July — if you don’t hear from me send help!

I am done with this semester. YAY!!!

Here’s a look at the final projects for my classes.

In one class, we spent the semester carrying out a mini-study. My team looked at this question: Do people who say that they want to “live green” actually buy cleaning products that are environmentally friendly?

Here’s our final paper (its the doc on the top of the list: SSPP7T03). IF you want to see how students in an online course collaborate, have a look around that wiki!

And here is the link to my final project in my famous eLearning course: Executive Functioning Deficits. I had a good time making this module. I had never used Articulate before. But I used a combination of hyperlinks in the PowerPoint presentation, branching in Articulate and locking slides down in Articulate to create an interactive experience (I hope).

The one thing I wish I could have done was roped people into being actors in my scenarios. Maybe next time.

So I am free from school till June. I have a half-semester class this summer – its about Web 2.0 and Performance. It should be interesting!

I was nominated for the “Best Distance Learning Student” in the awards ceremony for my school this year. I didn’t win – a very honorable classmate of mine did (way to go Matt!!).

Three of the nominees and our professor met each other on Landis Green in Second Life. Apparently they also had it displayed while we were waiting – which is a little scary because we were being quite silly.

Here are the pics I took.

Congrats Matt!!

ASTD’s Learning Cirtuits Blog Big Question for January is What are your Challenges, Plans and Predictions for 2009?

Since I haven’t done my New Year’s post yet, I’ll just talk to this question.

Challenges

I’ll talk about the challenges from a personal level. How do I incorporate what I am learning about connected learning into my “day job”? How do I weave more of the connected learning concepts into my graduate studies? How do I move away from straight up developing technical courses into doing more of what I am learning about (designing), especially in a down economy?

I think that latter question is the hardest one for me right now. I do pretty well influencing my peers, or maybe one level up from where I am organizationally. How do I learn how to influence people who can really make the decisions to change things? How do I know when I am pushing to hard and when I need to back off? How do I convince my organization to take a chance on some of the ideas that I have? These are the things that I want to get better at this year.

Plans

I am about half-way through my graduate program. I need 6 more classes and one internship. I think I want to try and finish this year. I am taking 2 classes in the spring, that means I need to do 2 in the summer, and then 2 in the winter plus the internship. I am planning on walking at graduation, so that means I’ll be back home (well Tallahassee, close enough) in December. I can deal with that.

I plan on continuing to expand my network using this blog and twitter. I plan on continuing the Knowledge Worker Competency series I started at work, helping folks understand how to use these social tools for learning and sharing so when my organization starts using them for training everyone will be comfortable enough with the technology that it won’t be a barrier to instruction.

I haven’t forgotten about using these technologies to assist adults on the autism spectrum. I’d like to do some work on that this year.

I also want a paper published. If that doesn’t happen, I want my organization and my grad school advisor to realize that this blog has a bit of reach too. Why can’t it carry the same weight that getting published carries?

Predictions

I predict my organization will start using social media tools as part of our instructional offering. OK maybe I am really hoping we are able to do this!

Here’s my dire prediction: some organization is going to be hit by a data loss caused by social media. Then everyone will clamp down on all these activities, and we’ll be back to square one. I hope I’m wrong about that one.

I predict that I will lose my 4.0. But not by much.

I’m looking forward to 2009. Lots of things to try, lots of things to learn. Plus hopefully a year from now I’ll have my master’s degree!, and my son will only have 3 semesters till he graduates!

I thought I’d just share my new theory on why I feel like I am going crazy. Those folks closer to me may have other more valid theories, but this is my blog so I get to talk about my ideas!

I’m learning so much in my program. I’m learning about things like instructional theories, learning theories, how to tie learning to performance, how to tie learning to business requirements, and ways to measure all these things.

I’m learning that my technical skills are important as learning moves to a web 2.0 platform. I’m learning my experience as a community organizer is very transferable to building online communities. I’ve learned my background in information studies helps tie all these things together.

I should be happy right?

Well, now my eyes have been opened to all the possibilities. Participating in courses like CCK08 helped accelerate my thinking on the real possibilities of change that are available now. At the same time the realities of being part of a large organization and my responsibilities are more clear to me now too.

So I have this big feeling of — what am I doing? Are the things I am learning just “book learning” (yes I was told today I am book smart, and that may not really translate  the “real world”. sigh).  And the economy isn’t helping. I feel I’m going to be stuck doing the same thing forever with all these cool ideas in my head that will never get implemented.

I feel like for everything I have learned, I know even less now than when I started a year ago.

I’m hoping this is just normal winter blues. Or that this is the way I am supposed to feel half-way through my program.

Anyone got any advice for me?