stickylearning

TEDxMelbourne - a great day of learning!

A quick post to review today's excellent TEDx day. For those who don't know of TEDx or TED, a quick explanation. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and is an event originally held in the US where notable thinkers spoke in these three areas spoke to other (invited) like-minded people in a spirit of "Ideas worth spreading". In more recent times talks have themselves spread beyond the three original areas to now encompass innovative and important ideas from any area and the talks themselves are now available free to anyone who wishes to watch and listen at TED.com. 

TEDx is related to the original TED but is local and smaller. For example today I attended TEDxMelbourne, an event with a limit of around 100 attendees, at a TEDx day the format is that there are videos of TED talks and live talks, after each talk attendees break into small groups to discuss the ideas brought up by the talk. This format really appeals to me as it really mirrors what I do with this blog and my reading, I like to bring ideas from diverse disciplines together to then exert influence on how I think about what I do, learning and education.

And so to today's event. (with some of my own and others ideas scattered through - it is really what TEDx is all about, it gets you thinking!)

Introduced by Warwick Merry and Rod Sherwin we were told to expect to be "out of our comfort zone" and that whilst we could listen to some of the talks at home the benefit here was that we could then discuss our ideas with others. We were then shown a brief intro to the TEDx concept by Chris Anderson (curator of TED). And so it began....

First up was a video talk by Juan Enriquez. This was filmed in the US at the height of gloom and doom about the credit crisis and the talk begins with a quick review of where things were at in the US (summary not good!) He then used this as a counterpoint to highlight the upside of the future, human's use of science to 'improve' our own biology. That is through our mastery of science we will not just control nature but also control human evolution. My take - yes we are gaining control of a whole lot of new things but in many ways it is just an extension of what human's have done for millennia, agriculture, urbanisation, industrial revolution and so on. For me change is just what happens, I'm an optimist. I'm not meaning that there won't be major challenges and questions to answer about our use of technology, however I believe that human's will work their way trough these issues and then move on again.

The next talk was excellent - Temple Grandin - speaking about how the world needs all kinds of minds. So many good points and a great talk, Temple has autism and as she describes it this means that she has a 'specialist mind', not great at everything but excellent within certain spheres. She describes how she thinks strongly in pictures and how she sees the world in quite a different way to many other people - but she doesn't see this as a problem, but rather as different. In fact the point of here whole talk is that it is the variety in people that provides strength, or as she says, "the world needs all kinds of minds". There is a bit of Ken Robinson in what she says, lamenting the pigeon-holing that occurs in education today. A super talk and well-worth the time to listen to it!

Now we went to the first 'in person' talk of the day - it's good to have a mix of video and live!

Pat Naughtin, who runs a consultancy called Metrication Matters, spoke about the costs and benefits of metrication, or the lack thereof! A one person said afterwards, he didn't imagine that he'd ever be interested in a topic such as this, but the really enjoyed it! A fair point I reckon! Pat is a very good speaker, throwing in a good dose of dry humour along the way. The key point of his talk was that where people don't use metric measurements (mainly the US!) thee are huge financial and other costs associated with this, examples quote included deaths in medical errors, some due to confusion over non-metric measures. The key point I think though is that Pat's talk was about simplicity and communicating this clearly and unambiguously. He showed a slide with 199 words/measures that have been used to describe energy during climate change debates in recent times. How can anyone be expected to really understand science when people trying to explain it use so many different words and measures to try to describe something. It becomes impossible to really understand. Science must use simpler statistics if they hope to clearly understand climate science!

After a very enjoyable Korean lunch with 4 other TEDx attendees the next speaker (again in person) was Mauricio Buchler. Mauricio spoke about education - obviously close to my heart! he demonstrated an online virtual world he's been working on to assist with English language learning (see here). Mauricio also spoke of his frustration with the education system and passionless teachers, a tricky question really. What comes first? Do people enter teaching with no passion or does it disappear later on? My view is more often than not the latter and it is this that needs to be addressed. Mauricio also believes that passion must be an entry marker for prospective teachers (but how to keep the passion).

Mauricio also spoke of how he believes learning should be fun. OK, my view, yes pretty much, but sometimes more than this it needs to engage learners, this mightn't always look like 'fun' but learners are 'loving' the learning (if you understand what I mean?)

The TEDx day finished with a brace of 3 short videos arounf the theme of success.

First was Richard St John with his 8 keys to success - only 3 minutes long, short and to the point. 

Our next video was Derek Sivers - a really interesting talk that shows that there is more than one way of looking at things. What is true and obvious to me is not to another person. I liked his example of how in most Western countries city blocks are the un-named places between streets, whereas in Japan it is reversed, streets are the un-named places that surround blocks. If this confuses you watch the video, t's only 2 minutes long!

The very last video was of Joachim de Posada speaking on really interesting research that links the concept of delayed gratification (in childhood) with later success in life as adults. He shows humourous footage of experiments with children trying to resist the temptation of eating a marshmallow that was put in front of them (they were told not to eat it). I must say that I'd not do well in such a test, now or back when I was a child. Could there seriously be a link between this and later success? Perhaps it has got something to do with the ability to focus. To resist eating the marshmallow a child must keep the thought of not eating it foremost in their mind, they are able to focus their attention. Back in Richard St John's talk he certainly listed focus as a key element of success! (along with persistence)

And so the day ended. I really enjoyed the day. Warwick and Rod were right, I was (happily) "out of my comfort zone" and on top of that I got the chance to meet people in person whom I'd only ever tweeted with, met others for the first time entirely, found many others who read similar books to myself (see my book ideas here) and thought about things I certainly don't normally do on a Saturday. Thanks to all who helped organise the day, I look forward o the next!

Autonomous Learning - is it the same as informal learning?

Formal learning and informal learning. I get the idea here, there is learning that is structured and there is learning that happens outside of structured environments. Marcia Conner's explanation of informal learning is a good starting point in understanding the thinking underlying informal learning. I have also written previously on informal learning in these three posts:

• Informal/Social Learning - Concertina Style
• Permission Learning - encouraging the informal
• Fish are the last to recognise water = informal learning
  

As you can see I've used the term, informal learning myself, however, my question in this post is....

Is the term, informal learning, the best description of non-formal learning?

Jay Cross, author of the book 'Informal Learning', says:

"In my book, formal learning has a curriculum: informal learning does not. Hence, exploration is generally informal, i.e. at the will of the learner rather than the teacher. This is not always true since all learning is part formal and part informal. If I'm told to explore a cave in order to earn a merit badge, is that formal or informal? It's a little bit of both." (also look at his video explaining informal learning)

OK, Jay Cross knows more (alot more) about informal learning than yours truly, however I want to ask, is there is a another (better?) way of defining and separating formal learning from non-formal learning? I'm wondering whether instead of focussing on whether a curriculum exists in order to separate formal/informal, a clearer delineation could be achieved by simply focussing upon who controls the learning.

I'm not just trying to be divisive here, I think it is possible that a term other than 'informal' may better describe non-formal learning. I just ask you to stay with me for now and then let me know what you think when you've finished reading!

How I started thinking about this!

I have just finished reading Daniel Pink's latest book, Drive. (also one of my book's of the month) To start with the book is a good read, I like the way Dan writes, a book filled with stories, learning that is easy to digest. I'll 'borrow' the 'Twitter Summary' of the book to give you an idea of it's main premise:

"Carrots & sticks are so last century, Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose"

Drive is all about motivation, what makes people want to do things? Carrots and Sticks represent the way things are in most workplaces, that is, 'if you do this....then you'll get this', a world focussed upon extrinsic motivation. Dan Pink presents evidence of another approach, one that focusses upon a person's intrinsic need for autonomy, mastery and purpose in what they do. He believes this is the way of the future.

I'm not going to fully review the ideas in the book here (I recommend you buy it), instead I'll use the book as a platform for my thoughts on formal/non-formal learning. In reading Drive, I was struck by the clear links between formal learning and extrinsic motivation on the one hand, and informal learning and intrinsic motivation on the other hand.

You see, after reading the book I think that 'Autonomous Learning' better describes non-formal learning than the term 'Informal Learning' does.

So, what is autonomous learning?

Firstly, look up any definition of informal learning (for example, here on wikipedia) and simply replace the word informal with autonomous. OK, that's easy, but I think the term autonomous learning actually adds real meaning and value. Here is my short definition:

Autonomous learning: you are in control of what you learn, where you learn and with whom you do the learning.

There is a clear difference here from what is termed formal learning but it also better describes the process of learning 'informally'. It is in essence a difference of control. Formal learning is controlled by 'somebody' else, autonomous learning is controlled by you.

Your views?

What do you think? Does formal vs autonomous learning do a better job than formal vs informal? Would it just be easier to modify the definition of formal/informal learning to include the concept of control? For me, I'm currently sold on the concept of autonomous learning and am already thinking through another post that spins off this. I'll be interested in your views!

PresentationZen Design - Review

Garr Reynolds' new book, PresentationZen Design, is his follow-up to his first book, PresentationZen of 2008. His first book was in many ways a summary of Garr's presentation style, looking at presentation preparation, design and delivery. I suppose it is no surprise that his second book expands on one key area from his first book, slide design - I say it is no surprise because it is Garr's design style that most defines him. If you already have his first book, this new book is really chapters 5, 6 & 7 expanded, however don't take this as a negative, what Garr has done here is to write a whole book about slide design.So what should you expect from a book that's subtitled, 'Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations'?

Design Matters

The title of the first chapter gives you a good idea of the focus of the book - Design Matters. As most people who create slides for learning and presentations are not trained designers, Garr takes us on a journey through his design thinking, drawing heavily on the Zen design traditions of his adopted home, Japan.

It is clear that design matters a lot to Garr....

and quoting the designer Donald Norman,

I mean if it was all about content, why have live presentations and workshops? You may as well just send out pages of text and let people read it themselves! Slide design is Garr's passion, and to be honest, thank heavens it is, because his approach to presentation slide design may just save us all from having to sit through another slideshow chock-a-block full of bullets, complicated charts, corny clipart and flying text!

So what does PresentationZen Design teach us that will improve the design of our slides. The book is divided into three key sections:

  

Components

In this section the book covers the often ignored importance of Typefaces, particularly the choice of type and it's placement on the slide. Next Garr looks at Communicating with Colour. In addition to looking at some expected terms related to colour and it's use, for example hue, value, saturation, colour combinations, emotional connections and colour choices, Garr brings in aspects from the Zen aesthetic through a lesson in Sumi-e. In Using Images and Video to Tell Stories we enter the area that in many ways defines the PresentationZen style, the use of full screen images to complement and strengthen the spoken and written message - I particularly liked this area! Area covered here again include some technical aspects of image creation and editing as well as reviewing 10 things to avoid when using images. Finally in the component section Garr looks at how best to Simplify Data, how charts can communicate and indeed miscommunicate key messages, I know from experience that many presentations use charts that are barely readable, with far too much data, if all presentations followed the advice given here there would be less sleepy and bored learners and audience members!

Principles

So many slides used in presentations and workshops are full of text, bullet points, charts, and data. 

The first part of this section looks at Seeing and Using Space, beginning with a lesson in the Japanese art of flower design, Ikebana. Garr looks at the importance of white space, symmetrical/asymmetrical balance, Gestalt theory and the importance of 'less is more'. 

The use of focal points in slide design is illustrated through the Japanese room design feature known as a Tokonoma, in essence this part of the book, Creating Purpose and Focus, is about how to ensure the audience's eyes move see what you want them to see. Too often there is too much clutter on slides overloading the brains ability to focus on what is important, indeed once overloaded it is likely that no information will be retained, so less is actually more. 

Finally the section looks at Achieving Harmony in your slide design. Here Garr looks at the 'rule of thirds' and grids in general when aligning aspects of our slides and working to connect the various elements to create balance and harmony. Garr must adore his food, because he loves a Bento Box, I've seen photos of his lunches uploaded via Twitter on more than one occasion! There is a point however, Garr sees harmony in a Bento Box, a balance of flavours, colours, sizes - doesn't food always taste better when it looks good!

Here's an example from my lunch yesterday!

The Journey

Finally Garr provides pages of examples of great Slide Samples that illustrate the principles outlined throughout the book. It is always good to see examples, as just as the book reminds us, visual messages trump the written word. 

The book concludes with a chapter on Continuous Improvement, a good way to end, reminding readers that improving your slide design is a journey not a destination, that through continually learning from the lessons that are all around you - Billboards, Advertising, TV, brochures, package design - your slide design will continue to improve.

Finally I really liked how the book was scattered with 'guest appearances' from Nancy Duarte, David Rose, Maureen C. Stone, John McWade and Scott Kelby. They add further information and another perspective to the book.

The Conclusion

If you want to design slides that engage your learners/audience this book is the one, it must be on your book shelf!. If you live near me, that is Australia, the book is rather hard to find, (I got my copy via Amazon, click here to get to Amazon), but that's no real drama at least you won't have to drive around looking for it, it's only a few clicks away!

10 Best (Learning) Books of 2009

After my longest break away from the stickylearning blog I thought a good place to begin was by reviewing the 10 books that I got the most from during 2009. When writing blog posts I draw ideas from a pretty wide range of areas and my reading over the last year has been equally wide. If you haven't seen or read all the books in the list, I can highly recommend all of them!

1 The Designful Company

A clear winner for my best 2009 book! Marty Neumeier's book has had me coming back to re-read bits of it time and time again and has definitely influenced how I view design in learning. I think this should be a must read for anyone involved in learning!

2 Delivering E-Learning

Kenneth Fee's book was a timely read for me in 2009! With a clear focus upon elearning strategy I found Kenneth's approach towards learning design refreshing, up-to-date and it fitted well with how I see learning moving in the future.

3 a fine line

a fine line continued my reading in 2009 around design, not specifically learning design in this case. This is an easy book to read with clear explanations of Esslinger's design approaches with clear applications for learning design.

4 The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

This book by Carmine Gallo should be added to your shelf along with recent books by Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte. Like it or not powerpoint and other slideware is used in many learning environments. This book is a must read for anyone involved in facilitating learning workshops, it is chock full of useful tips!

5 Six Pixels of Separation

Mitch Joel's book fits the times well, increasingly we are becoming more connected through a myriad of online tools. Without a doubt this will is already influencing how people learn and will continue to effect learning environments into the future.

6 Twitter Power

I've included this book because it really helped me understand the potential of Twitter for my own personal learning and for learning in general. If you haven't used Twitter, or would like to get more from it, this is a great book to read.

7 Design Thinking

Edited by Thomas Lockwood, this book brings together 23 chapters by a range of design experts focussing upon integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value (all important from a learning design perspective).

8 The Backchannel

Cliff Atkinson, also author of the presentation skills book, 'Beyond Bullet Points', has written about what we all see in conferences, workshops and learning environments - The Backchannel. Increasingly learners share their thoughts on workshops with others via social networking sites such as Twitter. Whilst this backchannel can provide another learning tool it also has the potential interfere with learning. Cliff's book provides great ideas on how to accentuate the positive and minimise the less desirable aspects of the backchannel. We can't ignore that this new channel exists so we must learn to use it to assist learning!

9 Ignore everybody

40 creative ideas bundled up together, quick to read, and it gets your mind thinking (and we all need to get our minds thinking!)

10 Pow! Right Between the eyes!

Not your average choice for a top 10 book list on a learning blog! OK, true, but, Andy Nulman's book is really worth a read. I have his ideas in the back of my mind whenever I'm designing new learning materials and programs. Simply put, we don't remember boring things!

(10+1)the art of the idea

And just because I couldn't leave this book out, it expands my top 10 list just a little! A simple, visually beautiful book with 20 thought provoking observations. The book also shows the importance of the visual, each observation is accompanied by a graphic. The ideas work better with the visual (always worth remembering when designing learning materials!

In the next week I'll add a new post that looks at the books to put on your reading list for 2010, I've already had three new year deliveries and expect 2010 to be a great book reading year!

Online social networks, learning and viral expansion loops

It's just about Christmas time and now is the time of end of year catch ups and Christmas parties. The most common question at these is, 'so what have you been up to lately?" I respond, 'well I'm becoming more and more interested in the use of social media and microblogging for learning', I then get puzzled looks that say, "too much time on your hands", "what is he talking about?" and they nod politely! Some go as far as to put words to their thoughts with "isn't that sort of thing just for bored celebrities?"

Well, maybe that's what bored celebrities do, who knows? For me though I see a real role for social media as a platform for business learning.

Social media - fad or forever?

I suppose I'm attracted to new ideas and approaches, I like to bring together ideas from different spaces, I like to innovate. I did however miss the first wave of social media on the net, there are many who have written blogs for 5-10 years and are a great deal more connected than I am and are across everything web2.0. So, whilst I may be a little late, I keep being reminded that there are many, many people who are a whole lot less aware of blogs, social networks, wikis, microblogging and so on than I am.

Social media - a platform for learning

This year I have become more and more interested in the use of online social networks as a platform for business learning and knowledge management. Credit where credit is due, a great deal of this increase in awareness has come through my use of Twitter (especially #lrnchat) and through a number of online social networks, such as Seth Godin's Triiibes, LearnTrends, Problogger and LinkedIn groups. As I've used each of these I've been struck by how easily this format (social sites) could be used as a platform for business learning. In fact I've written a number of posts through the year that now track the development of my thoughts on this. (Permission Learning, Fish are the last to recognise water,  Breaking the learning drought, Informal learning - it's not new)

Where are we at?

At this point in time the successful use of social networks within business is rare and the use of social networks as a platform for learning is even more rare. Why is this so?

I see there being two key challenges to overcome:

1. The first issue is that businesses are generally uncomfortable about introducing online social spaces into their workplaces. I have previously written a post addressing this point, so I won't go into detail on this again here, however it seems to have a lot to do with a 'fear' of losing 'control' of conversations.
2. Secondly, if (when) businesses do introduce social media into their workplaces, the next challenge is to encourage employees to want to use it. In my post, "Permission Learning" I looked at one angle on encouraging uptake and usage of informal learning such as social media.

The remainder of this post will be looking at one another approach to improving the adoption rates of social networks. This approach is known as 'viral expansion loops' and is a way of conceptualising how organisations can implement and build user acceptance of social networks within their businesses.

 

Adoption of social sites
The image above is familiar to anyone involved in marketing, it describes how readily a new product is adopted by people over time. Without spending too much time on this, one issue with new technologies and especially social media is that there is quite a lot of hype when the product is first launched. The Innovators talk about it and spruik its benefits, however too often it stops there and never reaches a tipping point where it's use becomes commonplace, it's use never becomes commonplace and therefore it dies a slow (or sometimes quick) death. The aim therefore must be to make sure that the use of your social site moves beyond the Innovators and Early adopters through to the majority of your employees and perhaps eventually to the laggards.

Viral Expansion Loops

I first heard of this term whilst reading Mitch Joel's excellent book, Six Pixels of Separation, I'll explain the term with a story. One day Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, no doubt on the first day there were only a handful of users. It looked good, but with only a few users there were only so many connections you could make. Each of these early adopters saw that if they got all their friends to join, the platform would be a great way for them to keep up with what their friends and families were doing. So these people promoted the site, more people joined. These new people saw that the site would be better if all their friends joined and from there Facebook grew and grew.The key here is that it isn't just 'word of mouth' marketing at play, users saw that their experience would be improved by having more people connected. There were clear benefits in helping to expand the loop. Facebook would never have worked if users hadn't brought in their existing networks of family and friends. It succeeded because of Viral Expansion Loops.

Building a successful social (learning) site

Now I won't go into any technical details here. Businesses are able to adopt a range of systems and platforms for social sites, you can get sites fully customised for your business or you can use existing social platforms. The way I see it, there are two important parts to a successful social platform:

• Design and
• Content

Design

Again, I won't use this post to look at everything! From a design perspective I have previously looked at putting design into learning design, and this makes sense in regards to designing a social site as well. It would also be worthwhile to consider broader graphic design concepts as well to help ensure usability and overall simplicity. I reckon Garr Reynolds' PresentationZen, site and book, are a great way of looking at the visual side of design! And I'd really recommend pre-ordering his upcoming new design book! However, whilst design is important, it isn't everything! You need compelling content if your social site is to be spread virally through your business!

Content

When all else is said and done, employees will use a site if it gives them something that they need or want. Now the question is, "but what content do they need/want?"
The short answer here is that users within a business will want content that:

• will help them do their jobs more effectively and
• lead to greater personal/business success.

That's pretty broad isn't it! (but true)

A Case Study

I'll use a multi-store medium retail store business as an example, I'll rename it (imaginatively?) "A Retailer". This business had a creative owner (we'll call him Bob) who saw the potential of a social site to improve business communication and to share great ideas around stories. He didn't really see this as 'learning' at this stage, he just thought that it seemed to make sense. He began by using the Ning platform, set it up and sent out details to his team. He didn't just build it in the hope that 'they would come'. He had already got 4 of his best store managers 'on-board', they kick-started the site by using the discussion board to ask and answer questions.
This was a retail business so some of their discussions were around:

• setting up for the mid-season catalogue (pictures were included)
• how to reduce unnecessary markdowns
• recruitment tips
• handling difficult customers

These are all important points for retailers, every retailer could use tips on these points! Each of the 4 initial users began to talk about the site with other managers, spruiking how it had helped them. Soon there were a dozen users (the retail chain had 50 stores). Use of the site grew weekly, within 6 months all store managers were signed up and in many ways the site was replacing many other communication channels (eg email). A range of key business indicators were all positive, sales were above budget, staff turnover was reduced and overall morale really seemed more positive. It was at this point that one manager said that she'd learnt more through the new site that from many training sessions she'd been to. Now Bob saw the real benefit of the site, it meant that the best ideas from his team were shared, anyone could come up with a great idea and over time the site was becoming a resource for all types of knowledge.

What is the key?

Use of the Bob's site grew through a viral expansion loop because of it's:

• Design concept - it was easy to navigate through and use
• Content - it met users needs, providing a forum to ask questions and source solutions

Most importantly however it worked because it was social. Users had pictures and profiles, they all had similar problems to solve and worked in similar environments, they were talking with people just like themselves. The site really helped to bring the team of managers within the business closer together, sharing their expertise and looking out for each other.

Where to?

At the end of the day, learning is as learning does. Social sites mightn't look like learning, however if people learn through using them then let's not complicate things, they are a learning tool. I've really only scratched the surface in this post, as social sites become more and more embedded within a business's culture and users become more familiar with the platform and technology, users begin to create their own compelling content for the site, content that moves beyond write only into read/write and the use of multimedia such as audio and visual media. As the use of such sites grows, they will be seen as an essential component of business communication. My view is that they will also be seen as a key platform for knowledge sharing, innovation and business learning!

Anchors and Twists - making learning stick

It should come as no surprise to readers of my blog that I'm a fan of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath - I mean where did I come up with my blog's name!?

Today I was sent a link to a video from a friend in Texas (thank's Sue!) The video features Dan Heath speaking on the subject of 'Selling your Innovation". Unfortunately I'm unable to embed the video in my blog (well I could if I illegally copied it....) however just below is the link to the video. It's quite short, after watching it come back and read what I've got to say about it!

Video link: Dan Heath - "Made to Stick-Selling your Innovation"

Now, as I watched the video I was thinking, "this is similar to how learners process new ideas". Dan's key pont in the video is the importance of using an anchor and a twist.

Anchor = existing knowledge

Twist = old knowledge with a new angle.

This screenshot illustrates an example used in the video. When cars were first invented Dan Heath asks, 'how would you have described what a car was to a person who had never seen a car?' As it turns out the description that stuck was 'a horseless carriage'. Everyone already knew what a carriage was, so this became the Anchor, next a twist was added, Horseless, now people could visualise what a car might be. 

Mirror neurons

Anchor and twist, is a good analogy for how we learn and taps into recent research on a concept known as 'Mirror Neurons' (see an earlier post on this blog) In particular look at the later sections of the post looking at 'Mirror Neurons' and 'How can mirror neurons assist learning'.

Anchors, Twists and Learning

You may understand now why I like the concepts of anchor and twist. The anchor activates the mirror neuron, retrieving existing knowledge. The twist then uses existing context to build a new idea in our mind. I suppose I'm using the idea of 'anchor and twist' as I'm writing this blog post. My anchor is the video and it's take on selling innovation, my twist is to replace the term innovation with learning.

Remember anchor and twist when your designing your next learning program or writing a presentation!

Designing successful learning - walking 'a fine line'

Designing a way forward

Designing - the first word of this post's title and the overall focus of this post! Over the last couple of months I've read and re-read Hartmut Esslingers book, 'a fine line'. It's rare that I re-read a book straight after reading it, however my mind was drawn back again and again to the book. Upon each re-visit I left the book ever more certain that the design lessons contained within it were essential for successful learning design.

My recent post, Scared of first, finished with ten reasons why businesses are not fully embracing new learning technologies and approaches. In this post I was constructing my low point, how things are, but with a optimistic eye forwards to where I thought learning design may be heading. Perhaps it was this in mind that I read 'a fine line', the point being however, I am more certain now than ever before that the discipline and approaches of design thinking hold the key to businesses embracing changes in learning strategies and design.

a fine line

Hartmut Esslinger is the founder of the design company, frog design, and the design force behind Apple, Sony and many other businesses. In a fine line, he provides stories and examples to illustrate his design approach (these alone are almost worth reading the book for). When he began his business his goal for frog design was...'to redefine design as a strategic profession, and to continually promote its relevance to industry and business.' - For learning designers today this works beautifully!

I particularly like how he wanted 'all designers (including himself) to be masters of their own destiny, not just hired hands brought in to put a shiny new face on the same, tired old ideas' - it's almost like he is a learning designer today! Indeed as Hartmut puts it, 'innovation is a matter of life or death', successful businesses must innovate in order to stay in business. Our task as learning designers is to help businesses see that learning is more than an expense, in fact it is the key that has the potential to unlock innovation and provide a business with strategic reserves and competitive advantages.

The Design Process

Perhaps the book's gem begins on page 57! Here Hartmut outlines his innovation process - any learning designer could pick this up and just about use it as is when working with clients! The process is made up of three steps, very briefly (you should read the book!) they are:

Step 1: Groundwork - research the goals and challenges facing the business. Understand (learning) design's role in achieving these. It is also important to be selective, choose the right team, partners, clients and projects!

Step 2: Creative collaboration - this is where innovation begins and is a combination of brainstorming, ideation, projection and management. The inclusion of management in this step may appear counterintuitive however it is essential that there is a planning focus in place, it's where the rubber hits the road!

Step 3: Marketing - I have written previously about the links between marketing and learning design (here and here). Hartmut explains this step 'where minds meet money'! Money rules in business so it is essential that the design process prove its benefits and look to optimise (learning) design's role in business.

Finally Hartmut looks at the role of the community and social networks in enhancing and improving design outcomes. Whilst not focussing upon learning, there are clear lessons for learning and learning design in here (perhaps the topic for a future post?)

I could continue outlining innumerable points from the book, however the book is worth buying and reading! 

Permission Learning - encouraging the informal

I've been a keen reader of Seth Godin's perspectives on marketing (and everything) for a while now. But this morning one of his books caught my eye as I went to sit at my desk - Permission Marketing. It's strange how the mind works, I saw the title and I thought "mmm, that's how to get traction for informal learning in the workplace".

If you're not following my train of thought yet, let me explain! Seth's main point in the book is that what he terms 'interruption marketing' (think TV ads, newspaper ads, billboards etc) are all designed to get your attention via interrupting what you are doing - and he reckons that this type of marketing is doomed because of the information overload that we all suffer from everyday - the 'interruptive message' gets swamped by the deluge of information washing over us each day. From this position, Seth coined the term 'Permission Marketing' to describe a way forward for marketing messages in an world of information overload.

So, to informal learning! I've followed many discussions on blogs, webinars and twitter asking to promote a greater use of informal learning in workplaces. It's a good point! Right now there are increased cost pressures on businesses everywhere (especially L&D departments) As a result of this and the increasing profile of alternative learning technologies, there has been a renewed focus on whether informal learning can be leveraged to fill the gaps left by a lessening reliance on workshop and classroom-based learning.

In some places I've seen people discuss whether the answer is to put some structure around the informal learning that occurs in workplaces, thus allowing informal learning to be more effectively promoted in workplaces. This however runs the risk of removing the 'in' from informal, leaving us with just another type of formal learning. It isn't surprising that businesses think in this way as most businesses are built around structure, processes and systems. But, in the case of informal learning, structure is not the answer.

Let's look at how to promote informal learning in another way, let's call it Permission Learning (built around the same principles as Permission Marketing). 

The ideal informal learning scenario is that workers have given their express permission for knowledge and skills updates/videos/etc to appear via links in their inbox. The worst scenario is when learning videos/information emails just appear unexpectedly and without permission, think spam!

So, how would you like workers to view your learning/knowledge content? As spam? Obviously not, this would just mean that the content is effectively binned, along with your investment. Instead, you should aim for workers to eagerly click on any links that are sent to them because they look forward to them, they see value in it!

Remember, this is still informal learning. You are not making anyone do this, learners/workers want to!

So, let's review the 5 levels of permission (from Seth Godin) as they might apply to informal learning.

1. Intravenous
2. Points
3. Personal relationships
4. Brand trust
5. Situation

1. Intravenous

This is the highest level of permission. This describes a situation where the worker has given explicit permission for the business to provide them with the elearning/videos/webinars/etc that the business believes the worker might need and be interested in. Ideally this should be based both upon the current role the worker is performing but should also be referenced against what they have previously shown interests in. (ie give people what they want) This is the ideal situation BUT carries with it a great responsibility. If the business sends the wrong, or irrelevant, knowledge to the worker, the worker can immediately withdraw their permission. (and then engage in negative Word of Mouth marketing)

2. Points

The next level down on the permission scale is 'Points'. This is fairly straightforward to understand, reward the worker for each 'piece' of learning they undertake. The rewards could be anything, money, extra leave, or extra entries into a business-wide lottery for a grand prize! OK, this is less informal, but still the decision lies with the worker whether they use the learning resources or not.

3. Personal relationships

This is where an individual manager may encourage their team to participate and engage with the learning resources that are available. Personal relationships are good, but they take time to develop and are not transferable across the business. OK, if your business is of a certain size you could have one person whose role is to build such relationships and encourage workers' participation with learning initiatives. The upside of using personal relationships to promote an informal learning environment is that if there is a high level of trust, you are able to more strongly promote learning.

4. Brand Trust

You could use this concept if you created a 'learning brand' within the business. The idea is that trust is built up in the brand through performance. The trust is then leveraged to promote further learning. Such an idea may work as long as the learning opportunities provided continue to meet the workers' expectations of the brand. (don't be tempted to use Brand Trust to 'spam' the worker with other messages) Once broken such brands are significantly weakened.

5. Situation

This level of permission is the lowest (other than spam). It describes a situation where a worker needs to know something NOW in order to complete the task they are working on. In such situations they will seek the knowledge. There is a potential upside to this level of permission. If a worker's learning need is met by your online/informal learning tools, the worker will be more inclined to keep using informal learning channels for other knowledge/skills purposes. BUT, if the worker tries to find what they need informally, but your systems/knowledge prevent them from gaining this knowledge, they will NOT be inclined to do so again. As far as I'm concerned this appears to be the method used in most businesses, a sort of 'build it and they will come approach. The problem is that many businesses only use this approach then throw their hands up in the air and proclaim that informal learning cannot help their businesses! 

(6. Finally there is spam. But we all know what we do with spam don't we!)

I hope this has got you thinking! I believe that there is real potential in looking at informal learning in this way, perhaps informal learning could become 'Permission Learning!'

Putting DESIGN into Learning Design

I've written previously about my use of the term 'Learning Design' rather than the more regular 'Instructional Design'. Briefly, I approach my work from the perspective of designing a way forward for learners to take them from where they are now to where they would like to be. To me this put the learner at the centre of what I do, so therefore I am a person who DESIGNS learning.

A very worthwhile book to read on the design process is the book, The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier. I reviewed this book shortly after its release earlier this year. Re-reading sections of the book over the last few day has again made me think about what I do.

In 'The Designful Company', Herbert Laureate, social scientist/Nobel prize winner, defines what it is to be a designer, he says,

"Everyone designs who devises courses 

of action aimed at changing existing

  situations into preferred ones"

Using an example that could almost be written for learning designers, Neumeier talks of the creative gap between "What is" and "What could be". It is this gap that learning designers are seeking to bridge. It can also be visualised as:

This encourages learning designers to move beyond 'off-the-shelf' solutions and to move into a true DESIGN mode. Again borrowing from Neumeier this is to contrast:

1 a situation where a learning designer analyses the learning outcomes required and then chooses from an existing 'set' of learning solutions.

versus

2 true learning designers who 'make' a new set of learning solutions

The learning designer then implements the best of these. This making process is the true essence of design, it is the creative process, using 'reflection in action' to create innovative new learning solutions.

Reading design books, and considering learning design as a subset of design generally is to place the the learning design process firmly in the creative, innovative realm. Successfully building learning solutions for organisations and individuals requires the same types of creativity as marketing and advertising. Learning design is about creating learning solutions that engage learners, keeps their attention, are memorable and become embedded in practice! 

The Village of Twitter

In an earlier post on Informal Learning I made the observation that social networks allow people to create their own villages of learning. What I meant by this is that people once had only one source of knowledge, the village. Even when a visitor brought new ideas, this new knowledge was shared amongst the group.

The industrial revolution introduced the benefits of scale to industry, further enhanced over the last 100 years by the structure introduced through Henry Ford's production lines. Education and learning followed a similar path, larger schools and prescribed curriculum. The results have been spectacular, never before have people learnt so much. This has resulted in the exponential rise of innovation and technological advancement. Schools, universities and formal learning have been undoubted successes.

BUT, as formal learning became the dominant mode, informal learning became to be seen as something less, not as good, unable to be tested by examination in the same way as formal learning. However this is now being questioned. In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he discusses how this is is happening. He explain how children in the USA complete the California Achievement Test at the end of each school year to assess their maths and reading skills. In one instance in Baltimore this test was also given at the beginning of the following year (allowing a measure of learning over the holiday break). It was found that some students continued to learn while on holidays whilst others learnt little or went backwards. The conclusion, the real difference in children's performance at school over a number of years was not due to 'clever' children learning more during the school year but rather it was due to some children being provided with continued informal learning by their family during school holidays. 

I strongly believe that something similar happens in the workplace. Workers learn a great deal through formal channels. But those that learn the most are surrounded by managers and co-workers who take an interest in their development, again informal learning.

Twitter has struck me as a way forward to the past - if that can make sense! What I mean is that Twitter allows people to create informal learning networks, just as people did in the past in small villages - now we have the Village of Twitter. 

What I am finding (as a real newbie to Twitter @stickylearning) is that I am building networks with people who have interests and skill sets similar to my own. This is beginning to mean that I can enter Twitter conversations around topics that interest me, I can put forward my own ideas and hear back what others think of these. 

I have also just finished reading Twitter Power by Joel Comm (@JoelComm). The book is about how you can use Twitter to build your business, however it is just as applicable to helping learners build their knowledge.

The key things I have learnt from the book (and by adding my own learning twist) are:

• Twitter is social, focus solely on business and people are not likely to follow you. Once you have broken the ice then you can move to business. (just like socialising and networking in real life)
• Use various Twitter tools (Twools?) to help you organise your Twitter Village. I have started to use Tweetdeck as I am able to create groups of followers according to my relationship with them. This could be used to form Twitter groups within business. You can make sure that your tweets are only visible to others within this group if you don't want tweets on the 'public timeline'. A further benefit of this is that Twitter can then be used to connect workers in businesses that operate in different locations or time-zones.
• Twitter is a great place to find experts in your field. You can search for particular words or conversation topics, denoted by #topic. You can add to conversations, provide helpful links/knowledge and feedback to others. You can build your profile.
• Twitter is another way of sharing information found on the wider web. Through posting links to can bring to others' attention ideas that they wouldn't otherwise come across - it saves time. 
• You can then also share information gained from one Twitter group with another by 'ReTweeting' the information. 
• And importantly, Twitter keeps things brief. No more than 140 characters per Tweet. In villages you may avoid people who ramble on and on, now Twitter makes rambling impossible!    

Twitter is recreating the village learning environment. A place where followers (villagers) can chat about their day, what they are having for dinner and how to create new software code or solve other workplace issues. Furthermore promoting informal learning also enhances creativity and encourages people (and businesses) to consider how learning outside structured environments encourages innovation and creativity.

So this is my Village of Twitter. Not just a place for informal learning but a step forward to a place past!