*as posted on homocompetens.blogspot.com *

It's 'back to school' day today in Belgium, so I'd thought I'd make use of the happy occasion to tell you about my first 'HoCo Concept site'. It is a site based on the principles of the book, and this first one targets learning. It has matured in the corner of my head for about two years now, and I finally found the energy and time to start programming it. Now it's ready enough for the first testers to take a look. Do let me know what you think!

The site is:
http://www.walkthe.net

PS: If you are still on this blog, please update your reader to homocompetens.blogspot.com . This blog on learning will be integrated in the Homo Competens one on competent people.

The Instructional Designer

Watch the little animation Patrick Dunn made on his blog.

So, is the future of instructional design in danger? Are Subject Matter Experts the ones we need?

I will only add this to the debate: I see a lot of 'degraded' instructional design roles, and to me an instructional designer for learning is like the TV format creator in entertainment.

Yes, degraded. When I look only at my own company to all the people that carry the title 'instructional designer' (especially in one country that attracts a lot of outsourced work and shall remain unnamed)  and I look at what they mostly do, I get worried. Somehow, over the years the skill of matching learning need with proper learning activity design degraded into how to arrange stuff on a screen. That is not what instructional design is about. If it is, or if it got degraded into that for most that carry the title, please let subject matter experts take over.

A proper instructional designer is like a TV Quiz format creator to me. It is the design of the 'template', where other people can make a 1000 shows on... We don't need 100s of instructional designers for that, but we need a few damn good ones.

Learning isn't knowledge transfer

Via Clive on Learning: this YouTube video. Learning isn't just knowledge transfer. (I would not make every learning activity based on emotion either... We would all need shrinks to cope with the affection overload.)

Google's CloudCourse

Google would not be Google if they didn't do everything themselves. That goes for the LMS too. Or at least what they need of LMS functions. They now have opened up the source code of what they call 'CloudCourse' for the benefit of the rest of us people. It runs on their appengine platform, which is their cloud computing service.

You'll find it here.

It comes as no surprise to me Google would internally reinvent the LMS for how they believe it should work. In a video from one of Google's learning folks (forget where or the name, sorry about that), they even don't make learning content anymore. They just find it on the net, and link it together. Makes sense if your core business is finding stuff. What could you possible want to learn about that is not somewhere covered by someone on the Internet?

So learning culture is the biggest driver for impact

Here is a quote from Bersin in one of his latest blogs on talent management:

 

"The core of this report is one major finding:  among all the HR and training processes we study, the single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of an organization's learning culture." 

 

And there we have it... learning culture is still the walhalla of corporate development and success. So all we need to do now is figure out how to succesfully shape these cultures, right?

Succesful learning cultures can make (all) the difference in the world, but knowing what constitunes one will not get you one. It is actually pretty safe for companies to share the secrets of their culture as they are not easily copied and remain a unique and strategic important asset to the company. 

 

The Bersin report lists 6 elements of learning culture:

- building trust

- encouraging reflection 

- demonstrate learning's value 

- enabling knowledge sharing 

- empowering employees 

- formalizing learning as process 

Leadership and management either foster or destroy the ability to learn and the motiviation to learn. Oh, and the outcomes of a learning culture are goodies too: agility, innovation, satisfied customers, ... As I said, corporate walhalla. 

 

 

More here in this very intersting article: 

Not so informal learning with Dr Werner

I've been giggling for 15 minutes watching Dr Werner explain in his best German/English the benefits of informal learning. It just happens and you need people to write a 10 page ROI report on it...  Enjoy...
(And thanks Paul for sharing this with me)

http://www.articulate.com/community/blogdemo/Werner-informal/player.html

Generation Y and beyond: there is no life after 35

As an add-on to my last post on the generations talk: a study by Jeugdonderzoeksplatform reveals that youngsters all want the same thing. Their perceived life path will not take them on a world trip or alternative life or a career head start. Basically they plan to have their first sexual intercourse at 17, first job experience at 22, leave the house at 23, get married at 25, and have their last child at 34, shortly before the peak of their career they situate at 35.
And there it stops, so there is no life after 35? (I'm being melodramatic because I'm turning 36 next April 18, do send me a present :-) ).

I don't remember how realistic my life path was when I was 16, but employers do need to worry about the expectation to peek professionally at 35. "Homo Competens" wise, I'd say you may peek at your first career after 5-10 years, but you'll have other careers before you retire. You would think the networked generation would realize that...

International e-learning conference in Hasselt in September

It is not that often an international e-learning conference takes place in Belgium, so for those that didn't know yet: from Sept 15-17, the ICL2010 conference will take place in Hasselt. It used to be in Austria, and it used to be for academics audiences mainly, but this year a corporate track is added. The call for papers is open by the way.

More info: http://www.icl-conference.org/.

Here is some wording from the conference flyer:
The interdisciplinary ICL conference aims to focus on the exchange of relevant
trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in
e-learning.
Learning has become an increasingly important subject of all organisations. It is a
main task to develop and to maintain the individual and organizational skills and
knowledge to create a sustainable competitive advantage, achieve superior
performance, increase efficiency, respond to changing environments, and improve
business results.
How to provide the most effective learning solutions and facilities for workplace
learning? It’s time to make the change and to benefit from the revolution of ICT to
enhance the quality of learning and provide better training by the usage of Elearning,
where learning materials and relevant knowledge can be delivered just in
time in the workplace by using internet technology
A special corporate e-learning track will be organized in the frame of the ICL
conference by University Hasselt in Belgium in cooperation with: BE-ODL, IBM, i-
KNOW, KBC, VDAB, CVO Antwerp South, OU (nl)
Topics of Interest
 Business experiences in and impact of the implementation of e-learning
 E-Learning readiness: measuring it and action plan
 Immersive learning models thanks to technological advancements
 Semantic tooling delivering personalised content and integrating learning in the
workplace
 Computer-Assisted Language Learning
 Personal Learning Environments
 Information retrieval techniques for e-Learning

And the generations are back...

The crisis must be over, at least in mindset. The generation debate "oh my, we have Gen Y entering the workforce" is back from where we left it two years ago. Earlier this week my newspaper ran a hallucinating article of a plumber and his 20 attempts only this year to find a suitable fellow. Some were stealing (never good), some just not showing up either on the first day or after a week (the dog needed care), some overly incompetent (and lying about it), etc. In the weekend edition of the same paper, there's more under the title "Employers don't understand youngsters." It lists some of the value shift in the generation now entering the workforce: more immediate, more attracted by smaller firms where they can make a difference rather than being stuck in the boundaries of a big corporation, driven by challenge, feedback and reward (immediate by the way), valuing short concrete projects over longer jobs, valuing work/life balance (yes, the distance home-work IS important), and then some other shifting values... Skills being more important than looks, for example, if the newspaper is any authority. In short: the generation debate seems back, so let's reflect on what is going on. What's new in this debate, really?

Disclaimer: I'm by the way well aware that you can't and shouldn't make any individual judgment based on the statistical characteristics of an entire group of people. I'm putting no one in a box here. But statistics about groups of people CAN be rightfully used to make predictions about those groups. So while nothing in this debate can be brought to the individual level, group-wise it makes sense.


Question: Is the generation entering the workforce unfit? 
Answer: Not more than our parents thought the same of us, or our grandparents about them.
There is nothing new in the debate 'they don't know work ethics anymore, you can't trust them, they don't know the rewards of hard work, bla bla.' It seems that every major generations thinks that of the next one. There is nothing new there. It won't matter either. Every generation is shaped by the experiences of their youth and growing up: by that technology, mindset, etc. So yes once in a while there's a clash of values, and gradually society and work will find ways to accommodate the values of the new emerging and soon dominant generation. It has happened before.

Question: Will the new generation bring the new technology and fitting lifestyle (social networks, a lot of instant communication etc) to the workplace?
Answer: Yes, most likely. We have a precedent with the Internet.
Yes, the new generation and their preference for social technology and networking, constant and instant communication will impact the workforce. My generation did that before with the Internet. I first went online at my second year in university, because that is where the Internet was in those days. When I entered the workplace four years later, the corporate world was in a big debate if the Internet even had business value and if providing access from the office would not harm productivity as people would be surfing all the live long day. The discussion of those days closely resembles the one we have today about banning social networks at work, and whether LinkedIn is a blessing or a burden on corporate life. Just as with the rise of the Internet in the business world, we will have experimentation and exaggeration or abuse at both sides. In the end the new technology will find its rightful place and the trend will be that abuse of good stuff is not good. This debate isn't new and it's outcome is predictable because we have a precedent. It has happened before.

Question: Does the corporate world need to accommodate or adapt to the new generation an its values?
Answer: Accomodate, but not as before. The workplace is multi-generation now.
We have had new groups/generations entering the office before. Traditionally, there is friction of values until the new generation is powerful enough to influence practice and process according to its world view, and then step by step they become the dominant generation and it starts all over again. This will NOT happen again soon. There are a few trends that make the succession of the 'dominant generation' unlikely: ageing workforce that needs to work longer before they are allowed to retire, at the same time new generations entering the workforce and the one stuck in the middle not wanting to give in. The trend is for a workfloor that successfully and equally integrates multiple generations and their values, rather than converging around the values of the dominant generation. So the balance exercise for the years to come is to integrate multiple expectations and value schemes into the same environment. That is the generation challenge ahead, not just worrying about a particular GenY entering. It has not happened before.

Question: Is there anything different really with the GenY or Milleniums?
Answer: Yes. They seem to have balls.
You can find tables with broad characteristics of semi-arbitrary labels as 'baby boomer', 'gen x', 'gen y', 'milleniums', etc. So they say that the new generations want to make a difference and have a job with impact on the world, with challenges and new stuff to learn all the time. Is that new? Did any other generation ever enter the workforce with the dream of a boring job with no impact on the world whatsoever? This is not so new either. It would be sad to start your career without goals, some healthy ambition and high expectations. And then it happens: promotions are not as fast as you had imagined, there is some boring stuff and lot things you can't do, etc. I spot a difference here with the new generations: crisis or no crisis, having to pay for a mortgage and children or not,  they will not stand for it. We were not necessarily happy, but we understood the context and blabla and we stayed. The new generation seems to have more balls. They will go. They will take matter more in their own hands. They are not patient, and they are not obeying stupid stuff. More than us they will hack systems and ignore stupid rules (like not installing applications on your laptop that help you do your job but IT hasn't approved). How much more balls they will have five years into the workforce, and how much of their values they will not accept any compromise for is unclear. We'll know more when they have families and houses to pay for, and start leading other people instead of just worrying about their own performance. But the trends are there and that is new. Exiting times ahead in the corporate world!

So to conclude my Sunday rant on generations:
- The debate is back.
- There are some shifting values, nothing new about that. That brings some friction, nothing new about that either. The dominant workforce will call them unfit or even lazy, again nothing new.
- But this generation is not going to overtake the position of dominant generation any time soon, the future is for a multi-generational workforce. That is new.
- And the new generation seems to have more balls to stick with their values than generations before them. Let's see what that gives.

What do you make of all this generations talks?

Training and education in Belgium

It's always interesting to hear other people talk about your country. In the February issue of Training Magazine, the world view column focuses on Belgium. Here are a few statements:

• "Despite its small size and lack of resources, Belgium has achieved success through its stellar training and education." I guess that one is true. We have a good reputation for high levels of education, specially in math and science, according to OESO. But our training once employed lacks behind those of other nations. Some told me that is linked to the high level of education we get before entering the workforce. I'm semi-convinced...
• "Because of the euro's strength, training costs are higher in Belgium that in the US. As a result, training program participants are motivated to do well." I'm not sure I'm following this logic. So if the dollar weakens, we get more motivated participants in training classes? Don't think so. Maybe the motivation is higher because you are not that often send to training.  It's almost a reward if you get to go.
• "Training is looked at very positively in Belgium, and trainers are highly respected." I've been an IT trainer years ago, and I was indeed always treated with respect. I can't really compare, but do participants throw dirt at trainers in other countries?
• "Participants feel that the trainer is the expert, and they should focus their attention on the instructor as opposed to their fellow trainees." Sadly true. There's a culture of 'let's shut up and listen to the expert, he is supposed to know it all and tell us'. Classes in Belgium are not as interactive as let's say in the UK or US, (or the Dutch, but they talk all the time :-) ). It is often very hard to get participation and Q&A going.
• "Don't single out a trainee for praise, as this can create an uncomfortable class environment". Funny tip, but true, we are modest people. Too modest?
• "The most popular training programs in Belgium deal with leadership, management and presentation skills." I didn't verify, but companies indeed focus on this.

There's more in the online version of the magazine (free by the way) on trainingmag.com.  As said at the start of this post, it is always interesting to hear other people recommend how to behave in your country.

Google part of learning process

I'm quoting an article on a study of Google use for learning purposes here. Researchers at Penn State University found that instead of looking for new information, search engines are primarily used to fact check information that you already know."Not just a place to find facts, but to show that you know the facts"

More here.

Widget to my web store

Dokeos open course LMS becomes Chamilo

There are a few dozen open source Learning Management Systems out there like Moodle (most popular), ILIAS, aTutor, etc. For years I kept an eye on what Dokeos did, an open source from Belgium that did quite well. Dokeos I believe itself was a fork of the Claroline system because of some difference in view. For the last years Dokeos has gone more and more into a commercial direction, with a stripped free version. And now the community of Dokeos developers thinks that has gone too far, so meet the newest fork: chamilo. A few weeks ago this new project kicked off, bringing the old Dokeos code back to a 'real' open source and free community. It is so interesting to see what is going on with socially developed software and their communities. It's not Coronation street, but it is its own kind of soap :) .

Five trends for brainstorming on learning innovation

Disclaimer: written with dictation software

Last week I lead a brainstorming session for the learning innovation stream at work. It is based on the methods of the corporate GPS by the district of creativity. That method works pretty well because at the end of the afternoon or table was literally full of yellow sticky notes. the GPS brainstorming works with one central question and six themes. The central question was our department's motto "better learning for a smarter workforce", and one of the teams or trends is an open category. I wanted to share with you the five trends chosen.

We learning
We tend to have individual development plans, individual learning, individual assessment, leading to individual behavior and individual performance. for the large majority of services however individual performance doesn't matter. Unless you are an artist or a blacksmith, what counts is the performance of the team. There is not so much you can do just on your own. So this trend investigates what we can do to help the team learn better, and how to assess the competence of the team rather than the individual.

Gesture, touch and voice
This year we expect major breakthroughs in the interaction between people and computer systems. Just look at these videos of Microsoft's project not tell or debt TED video on sixth sense. so far in the learning we have worked primarily with audio and vision. What can these new interfaces do for learning?





More with less
There is increasing pressure on the learning and development department to do more with less, to become more productive. That demand becomes stronger in an economic crisis, but never ever goes away. The credo more with less is not only valid for the production side of learning programs, learners also need more relevant learning and have less time for the learning activity.

Not computers
This trend is about using any learning technology, but not the traditional computer or laptop system. Think about mobiles, think about TV, think about tablets, think about RFID tags, think about e-readers, think about augmented reality goggles, anything but computers.

Learning friendly
For this trend, try to get content out of your head, and focus on creating a learning friendly environment where the context and collaboration aspects are suited for optimal learning. What makes an organization in learning friendly environment?

I'm using a trial version of the site teepin.com to capture all ideas for our innovation work. So far feedback from people has been positive, and the ideas keep streaming in.

My take on 2010

Now it's my turn to make some predictions on this new year. I guess my main observation is this one: there is not one dominant trend for this year. Everything that was, will continue.

Technology
There are new emerging ways to interact with computer systems, and they are targeted for a breakthrough this year. I'm thinking off Microsoft's project Natal, and the sixth sense video on TED. Touching screens will become more commonplace, on traditional computers and all new toys like tablets. Speaking of toys: Google released one, and Apple might soon. Once again, this is the year that mobile learning is supposed to have a breakthrough. for the software part of technology, the bet is clear. if you still twitter is cooled this year, you will have missed the wave.

Integration
Within corporations learning and development and is encapsulates it evermore within the broader spectrum of talent management. That trend will continue in process, in platforms, and in departmental structures.

Productivity
This one never goes away: doing more with less. Crisis or no crisis, there will always be pressure on the learning folks to achieve more [and measurable] results in less time, which has budget, and less people. Don't just think of doing the same stings better, but doing other things. The way retrained 10 years ago will never return.

Multi-generations
The debate we had a few years ago about a new generation of learners entering the workforce, was not an accurate one. I'm not contributing to the big question whether learning styles in new generations really exists, and ig generations are defined by age. Research is not conclusive on that. What we will need to deal with in corporations is developing and transferring skills between at least four generations of workers, which may because of their history have different expectations and/or styles. So far boat education and training have mainly dealt with one dominant generation at the time. This simplified life is over, at least for the corporate world. It is not about new generations, it's about accommodating multiple generations, also in your training programs. my hope is that our solution will not be like the one we invent it to accommodate people with all kinds of disabilities for learning. Because of cost reasons, we don't often go for a one-size-fits-all, boring, least common denominator approach. I would hope that we find ways to generate a set of learning activities on the same topic, where people with different preferences and backgrounds will all find the learning they deserve.

And now for the big theme
So there is no single dominant theme. Big deal. Let's invent one. I declared this to be my theme for learning in 2010: learning for a better world. We tend to focus a lot on all the things that are wrong with learning or not adjusted to the current times anymore. But on a positive spin, learning has made a hell of a lot of difference over the years. We did fulfil on our potential to unlock talent and give it access to education and opportunity to florish. Not for all (yet), but for many more than ever before. We did achieve productivty gains in the learning administration and delivery. We did apply new technology and new insights for the better. I like to think that learning in all its forms does make a difference for the better in this world. So let's focus on that. Let us think about all the great things we have achieved, while also carefully considering where we might have done better, and should do so in the future. Learning makes the world a better place. Let us make that the theme of this year. It immediatly answers the ever heard cry for the results and impact of our profession.

PS Made with dictation software, so sorry for all the odd words I didn't spot before I pushed the publish button.

What other people predict for 2010

Disclaimer: I'm still playing with my dictation software. If you see any odd words, that's the reason.

By now, most people have reflected on learning in 2009, and made some predictions for learning in 2010. Some brave people even compared their own predictions which the reality of 2009. in this article, I'm going over some quotes that I found about what people think 2010 will bring in learning land.

Bersin: Josh Bersin released a report in December entitled "corporate learning and talent management predictions for 2010". here are the predictions that strike me:

• Human resources starts a major transformation from strategic to business driven
• Leadership development programs focus on first-line management
• A shift from e-learning to we learning
• More integration of talent management systems and the acquisition of stand-alone vendors
• Measurement of human resources and learning alike is a major priority

Inge (Ignatia): I hope Inge is right in expressing that in 2010 learning research will favor pedagogy over technology as the prime focus. Another quotes that strike me: "Learning again for the simple reason that the learning is all around us, and done with every tool we have". Predictions include ubiquitous learing and augmented reality.

Jeanne Meister: she describes corporate learning in 2010 with five words: social, mobile, collaborative, engaging, fun. Was engaging and fun not a promise we made about e-learning a long, long, long time ago? It's probably one of those good intentions you repeat every year, like doing more sports.

Learning Solutions Magazine (Bill Brandon): I think this one nails it: "for most e-learning practitioners, 2010 will be the same as 2009, with no significant changes in practice or tools. However, the need to cut costs will drive constant incremental changes in several areas." Other quotes that strike me:

• the area where management sees the most opportunity to cut learning costs is design and production.
• Most notable for tools is the shift of high-cost applications to cloud.(That's a substitution of tools.)
• subject matter networks as opposed to subject matter experts (via Mark Oehlert)
• Google wave
• and then the usual stuff about mobile learning, games and simulations, and augmented reality
  

Elliott Masie: his predictions include weariness with compliance training, and the search for alternative compliance communication other than making boring e-learning. That is a huge prediction if you know has almost 70% of all e-learning offered is for compliance rather than performance and development purposes. Another prediction is about social networks integrating actionable requests. And then some on video and Skype.

And those are just a few. So what to make of all of that? Where do you put your money?

I'm reading work smarter by Jay cross and friends

I've just read the first hundred pages of the un-book Work Smarter, written by Jay cross and friends. It is a self published book on lulu.com. Up to page 100 [where I am now] it is surprisingly good for a beta book. I will not write a review here. Instead, I will present you with some key sentences and slogans that have catched my eye. I'm a sucker for a good slogan, it will give you an idea of what the book is about as much as a review would do. I'm a reader of Jay's blog, so I am familiar with his thinking already.

The workplace is an open book exam. Indeed, why stuff all necessarily knowledge in your poor head? Nowadays it's more important to find out at the moment of needs by leveraging your connections and all the web content that is available at your fingertips.

Continual learning to problem solving and collaboration is the key. Again, I agree. You can give them a fish, or you can teach them how to fish. The likelihood that we can train people to deal with the exact situations we intend to train for, is small. It is better to train people how to cope with situations they might encounter.

Knowledge workers need leaders, not managers. Their work is better driven by values done by rules. Managing is not anymore when it's used to be. What does a manager know about the ever-changing world of the professional? These days, your hierarchical supervisor can tell you what needs to be done and where to end up, but not how to get there anymore.

Informal learning, the major source of knowledge and innovation, is left to chance. I'm not an advocate of turning in formal learning in perform on learning. Instead, I favor informal learning to be supported, encouraged, made visible, and in the end make it count.

Executives don't want learning: they want execution, they want performance. In a business setting, it's indeed all about performance and the value that performance will generate. In my book Homo competence, I use the picture below. Learning is only important in so far it helps competence.


Modern instructional design needs to focus on creating flexible environments that nurture learning, rather than rigid programs that attempt to force lessons into the head of learners. Maybe we should have a label "learning friendly", awarded by the learners themselves?

Performance support trumps training every time.but there is a lot of pressure to do the training thing. Even if we know we are overloading people at a moment they will forget because not relevant yet. In the defense of the training folks: they don't really get to say whether the training will go ahead, they just get to make it and deliver it.

Your charter as chief learning Officer is to optimize learning throughout the organization, not just in the pockets that once belonged to HR.The attention of learning folks should indeed spend outside of their traditional kingdom into all corners of the organization, its partners, and its customers.

Free range learners. I just like the terminology I can picture them in my head :-)

Too many people who talk about the ROI of learning are focused on being precisely wrong rather than directionally correct. The ancient 'impact of learning' debate.

You must manage what you can't measure. In the industrial age it used to be the other way around: you can't manage what you can't measure. Now you need to. But how? And how to do it in a meaningful and trusted way?

These are the slogans and key sentences that I wrote down until page 100. As I said before, there's nothing major I disagree which. I like his work. But I'm not part of the group that wants a revolution. I rather pragmatic and how we get to the promised land based on what we have today. You can't change false systems like education and corporate training in a small time frame. Not even if you shout at it.

The end of 2009 and the start of dictation

I've got a new toy for Christmas. This is the first article I am dictating instead of writing. For Christmas, I got speech recognition software. It actually works quite well. The software is called Dragon Naturally Speaking and it is actually a continuation of the software of L&H that was sold off when they got bankrupt. One thing bugs me: it assumes that people speak only one language. It's not possible to buy another language to add to your system, you have to buy the software again, including a new microphone, for every other language you want to speak. If my computer had actually shipped with the English copy of Windows Vista, I would have had speech recognition all along. But my Windows copy is in Dutch, so it is impossible to get the English speech recognition engine to run on it. What's up with that? Again, some company assumes that I only speak one language. Since I was an adolescent, I am a multilingual person. I speak Dutch, French and English and then some. Operating systems and programs want to reduce me to a one language man. So on my wish list for 2010 I hope software will recognize the reality that most people on this planet speak more than one language.

Speaking of 2010, what else can we hope for? Is this going to be the year that an LMS system becomes less important? It is going to be the year that the we take care of collaboration and connections more and focus a little less on content in our education and training programs? Is it the year we will discover that training individuals doesn't really matter because everything is done in a team? Is it the year we will come out of a crisis which fresh ideas or will we continue where we left off? Is it going to be the year of the final breakthrough of e-books and e-readers, making books as free and as pirated as music in the process? Will this be the year where we will interact with computer systems  through gestures and touch rather than mouse clicks? We'll see it all when it happens.

Have a great year end and a good start of 2010!

Bert

PS: I did manually correct the dictation. The software [or my voice] is not perfect.

Conference replays : Learning 2009 and Learntrends

Around the new year, there is some more time to look up from our busy busy projects and jobs to what is happening in learning land. That's probably why that is also the conference season for a lot of learning conferences. Traditionally, I only visit one conference in the flesh: Online Educa Berlin. But I've attended some others 'virtually', as they post replays of their sessions for free on the web. I wanted to share those:

- Learntrends: this was a completely online free conference done by Jay Cross, George Siemens and Tony Karrer. Replays for most sessions at the learntrends site.

- Learning 2009: This is Elliott Masie's conference in Orlando every year. He posted some video of the major sessions too. Go here.

If I don't find the time to blog before Christmas: have a merry one.

Battle of the bloggers 2009

I realise it has been ages since I blogged on this one. In 2009 I did a lot of internal blogging inside the firewall of IBM, and on my homocompetens blog, but less here.

 

Anyway, I've done it again. I mean hosting the battle of the bloggers at Online Educa Berlin. This year the panel had well known bloggers Clive Shepherd, Donald Clark, Ellen D Wagner and Jane Hart. Here is the presentation with the 5 topics of the 'battle'.

 

Battle of the bloggers 2009 - Online Educa Berlin

View more presentations from Bert De Coutere.

 

The title of the session is just great of course, and we all know it doesn't cover it. It's not a real battle (luckily :-) ) and it's not just about bloggers. The audience was even less talking and more into typing on the backchannel than last year. It was an honor to host it again.

Update: I realise you need more than the slides to get this year's battle topics. So here is how to replay your own battle of the bloggers.

• Warm up : In December 2012 (according to the calendar of the Mayas) the world will end. How will learning/teaching/tools/training be different between now and when the world ends? Look around what lives in research, what vendors are vending, the trends of learning land, etc.
• Round 1 : About the brain. There has been a lot of talk about the brain and learning this year. We still don't know much about the brain. The rest of the body is easy: that's just mechanics really. But there is so little we know about the working of the gray matter. The picture on slide 9 is taken from an art exhibition. It's a new ultra portable device that scans for brain activity. Based on what part of the brain is active, metal plates on the ceiling make noise. The press article mentionned potential application in the field of e-learning: you can tell when a learner is distracted and respond to that in the e-learning course. Mmmm. Scary thought. "Mr Stevens, I don't know what you are thinking right know, but I know it's not mathematics."...  At the one hand there are books such as 'brain rules' that provide practical tips for learning based on brain research. At the other hand, it's not because we know how two neurons communicate in the brain, that we can sensibly make any extrapolation on complex processes such as learning. What if anything can we use from brain science to make learning better?
• Round 2 : The picture on slide 12 is one of 'the oldest profession'. But that is not correct. If you ask me, our profession is the oldest. And with 1/60 Americans in the education business, I'd argue we are not only the oldest, but also biggest profession of them all. But we don't seem to agree on anything. At the one hand we celebrate 50 years of Kirkpatrick's 4 level learning assessment, but at the other hand you'll find a lot of reasons why that model is crap. There seem to be so many urban legends in learning: left/right brain, you remember 50% of what you smell, learning styles, etc. Is there a common language in learning? Do we agree on anything or are we all working in our little corners? Having common understanding and common language can lead to scale and scope effects and make our profession stand out more and more productive. At the other hand, a highly fragmented and unregulated profession that doesn't have a common language or understanding has more diversity. Or maybe we should keep using models even when they are crap, just because these half lies are the only thing that keeps our profession together. What do you think about the common language of the learning profession? Whe hold these truths to be self evident...
• Round 3: The picture on slide 15 is 'a fool with a tool'. Don't you find it strange? People will always tell you 'it's not the tool, it's what you do with it', and then go into a 1 hour discussion on specific features of specific tools. What's with that? The observation here is on the top 100 most used e-learning tools as traced by the Queen of e-learning tools, Jane Hart. Only one of them, on place 14, is a pure and hardcore learning tool. It's moodle. All the others are tools that at the best have learning as some by-product. Should we have more dedicated tools for proper learning? Or should we move more into the direction of finding learning uses in everyday tools? If we go for the latter, what with all the research funding and corporate R&D on the many learning tools, not to mention the dear old LMS?
• Round 4: This round in short is about the central question: will we have more success with instructionally sound or with contextually relevant learning? Instructionally sound is good content, with proper pedagogical models behind, and proven impact. It's the learning we would all like to develop and diffuse. It's the learning that gets awards. Contextually relevant learning is good enough learning but at the exact moment of need. The world moves at hyperspeed. Is there still time to create pedagogically sound material? Do monkeys run the show instead of professionals?
• Round 5: The wall. It has been 20 years since the Berlin wall came down. In our field, there are many walls. There are walls between the education and the corporate training world. There are walls between individual institutions in the education chain, as there are walls between the corporate divisional kingdoms that have their own learning organisation. There are walls between learning and the other functions of talent management and HR. There are walls between related (or equal?) fields as knowledge management and training. You can do two things with walls: keep (or enforce) them or demolish them. It's very popular to bring down walls, certainly in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Breaking walls in our field means open standards, open content, an education chain, learning integrated in the work, etc. But maybe some walls are there to protect us? What if you are not an English speaking culture, should you have walls to protect you against the flood of the wisdom of English speaking crowd? What if the walls keep us together instead of spreading us out in all directions? What if they keep out evil or ensure you can charge for your service instead of drowning in the all-for-free world? In short, this round is about walls, and which walls to keep, and which to destroy.
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On a sidenote: when I logged into slideshare.net to upload my presentation, my picture had changed. Is that a new feature? I don't care how much more you like that picture over my face, it's not me!