Informal Learning Survey

In an article in July's Learning Circuits magazine: Informal Learning, Overlooked or Overhyped?, there is an examination of a recent survey of Informal Learning adoption at various organizations. When I read though who was being queried and what the context was I was somewhat surprised:

"The core was an online survey of 1,104 human resource and learning professionals, who completed the survey between March and April 2008. The majority of them (86 percent) were managers, directors, vice presidents, or C-level officers. Most of the respondents represented large enterprises (60 percent had workforces of at least 1,000 people) that operate in multiple nations."

I have several problems with what I saw in the article regarding the study:

1. It's not clear whether they were asking these folks if Informal Learning was being sponsored or otherwise endorsed rather than spontaneously occurring.
   
2. Depending on what they really wanted to ask and find out they may have been asking the wrong folks - i.e. if they wanted to know about true adoption that didn't happen to fall within the context of an organization's approved resources or practices, then many of these high level respondents might not have actually known what learning mechanisms their employees were or weren't using.

The questions that should have been asked then are these:

• What if any Informal Learning programs and / or capabilities are being offered or supported by your organization ?
• What Informal Learning do you think is occurring outside of that context and how do you track or other find out about such activities?
• And of course, ordinary members of the organization should have constituted a larger proportion of those taking the survey (and perhaps could have been given their own specially tailored survey).
  

This would have provided a much more comprehensive view of who was really do what in the enterprise with Informal Learning and begins to provide a foundation to possibly bridge the gap between management and employees on this issue.


copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Response to July's Learning Circuits Big Question - Lead the Charge

I apologize for being away for some months, I was involved in a rather intense project and neglected the blogs for a bit. This post is in response to Tony Karrer's question/post on The Learning Circuit's Blog: "Leading the Charge."

I'm not sure whether this month's query is a question or a proposition, but I happen to agree with it whole-heartedly. I believe that this issue is not restricted to the technology du jour either, whether we're talking about Web 2.0 or Audio / Visual capability (remember language labs) or the introduction of computers or even typewriters it is part of our responsibility as educators to understand the technology that learners must use or that learners can exploit to help understand whatever it is they need to learn.

Some of us have taken this to different levels, myself for example. Originally I had pursued a degree in education but eventually switched to Information Technology. This led to an interesting mixture of motivations and projects which in turn got me involved in E-learning at its inception. I still consider myself an educator but in a new and different context. My view now is this: I can empower others to learn through the technology solutions I design and/or deploy rather than being directly responsible for 'teaching' or 'training' others within the context of a specific set of expectations.

This is more or less what I've been describing for the past number of years as "The Learning Enterprise" or "Me-Learning." (see previous posts in this blog). Ultimately, I think that this philosophical shift is much more important than any particular technology that might be applied to Learning per se. The real revolution is one of personal empowerment; i.e. giving the Learners the freedom and responsibility to think for themselves. We preach "critical thinking' all the time but traditional education has practiced conformity since its inception. We are indeed at a cross-roads in our perception of what learning can or should be be. It is definitely a revolution, one that can be equally applied to both the personal and organizational level.

Those educators who truly believe that the learners come first and that learning is a continual process should not feel intimidated by whatever new technologies emerge that might be applied to education. This is not a threat - it is enhancement that enriches both learners and educators. The single best way that I can envision to help educators cope with and learn as their careers progress is an open-minded attitude, both on their part and the part of the organizations that support them. The expectation should be from day one as an educator that tools and methodologies will evolve and that this evolution is a good thing.

copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Response to - The March ASTD Big Question

What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?

[One was a Chief Learning Officer panel discussion where it seemed that supporting informal learning or communities of practice was not something they were considering. There was also discussion on my blog around the fact that in corporations there is a limit to what we can do as a training organization]

I think it is a good question, but I’m going to answer a bit differently perhaps than others on this forum might. First of all, I don’t believe the scope of Learning responsibility is by any means restricted to folks who consider themselves to be learning professionals. The whole notion of E-learning has been more or less predicated upon the ability for IT to provide Learning services (whether this occurs to end-users on Google, or college students exploiting Ipod university or folks receiving corporate training through an LMS makes no difference).

I’ve always had a problem with the term and title “Chief Learning Officer.” I once worked in a company that had one and found it to be more or less irrelevant. Worse than that though for our industry it tends to build up a wall or separation precisely where no such walls should exist. Learning is part of the other core lifecycles of any organization – when it is viewed as part of the whole rather than a disconnected after-thought it tends to be valued from entirely different perspective. I am not in the least bit surprised that the CLOs are slow to adopt social publishing for e-learning as many of these folks are the same ones who insisted that there is only one right way to teach, only one right set of e-learning software, only one set of standards etc.

The rest of the world has been inventing E-learning on their own for the past 5 years since many of our E-learning “experts” essentially turned their back on the core premise underlying the technology that makes E-learning possible. People whose heritage is traditional training may never fully get what E-learning is about and these folks represent a barrier – one that has prevented many organizations from taking advantage of capabilities that exist already, forcing their members or employees to do it on their own.

The short answer is that everyone in the enterprise (organization) has a responsibility to help both the collective group and the individual member grow through education. This is what I refer to as The Learning Enterprise and it represents the single most cost effective method of improving productivity. This isn’t an ivory tower exercise – it is a business survival imperative.

Part b -

Do educational institutions and corporate learning & development departments have responsibility for supporting Long Tail Learning? Do they have responsibility for learning beyond what can be delivered through instruction? If so, what is their responsibility? Where is the edge of responsibility?

Yes, but not the primary responsibility, they share in it of course but the CXO’s are ultimately responsible for all aspects of the organization and this one is perhaps the most important one (even if most of them don’t quite realize it yet). When the folks who are charged with delivering education finally see that their mission is understood and appreciated it will change their effectiveness and overall motivation – making the learning process even more efficient. Ultimately of course, every member of the organization must be motivated to both grow and contribute back…

Part c-

Similarly, does the instructor have a responsibility to help students make sense of or deal with content he or she did not teach the students? In other words, if a student finds information on the Internet or some other place, how much time and attention should the instructor allow for the discussion of such content? Should it be discussed at all if it is non-conventional or generally thought of as not credible or contradicts the instructor? Who determines credible research? Is all non-referred research questionable?

There is no such thing as 100% “credible” research. Every scientist, every researcher, every historian, every human being has agendas and biases. Whether a certain writer has been acknowledged by his or her community doesn’t necessarily validate the credibility of their work, merely the conformity of it. Being from the Dayton area, I’m often reminded of how the Wright Brothers were mocked by the established scientific community of their time. Should their research and findings then been banned because no one would cite them ? They reinvented their field step by step, piece by piece. The unbelievable power of the Internet is the ability to allow greater dissemination for a wider variety of voices – this is a good thing. Educators should not act as gatekeepers and guardians of the ‘sacred’ knowledge, they should be the mentors that help us to think for ourselves.

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.