E-Learning News

Last week I invited readers to take my latest Learning in the Workplace survey, where I asked how regularly are you “learning” in the workplace.

Although there are probably few surprises in the responses to the four main questions themselves, it is when you view the amalgamated results that you  can see the bigger picture. 

Read more in my blog post here

I'll be talking with Jay Cross on Wednesday 23 May on how "Social business takes social learning".

Find out more about this webinar HERE as well as how to reserve your place and leave your own questions for Jay in advance of the webinar.

Learning in the workplace is not just about taking courses or other training workshops to acquire new skills and knowledge, but is also about

• keeping up to date with what is happening outside the organisation - in your industry or profession
• keeping up to date with what is happening inside the organisation - in your work team or organisation, as well as
• solving ad hoc learning and performance problems - as you do your jobs.

It is clear we now use many different approaches, sources and systems to do all this - but just how regularly are we doing  it?

Please help me find out by taking my latest Learning in the Workplace survey.

I'll report back on my findings shortly.

<a href="http://c4lpt.polldaddy.com/s/personal-learning-strategies">Take Our Survey!</a> // ]]>

Once again I'll report on my findings shortly.

In May and June, Harold Jarche and I will be running another series of our popular public online workshops at the Social Learning Centre.

These take place over a 2-week period and involve 5-6 web-based assignments, some individual activities, as well as conversations and discussions with other participants. Your time commitment is about 1 hour per day.

Here are brief details of what we are offering, together with some  feedback from previous participants. To find out more about each workshop and how to sign up, click through the relevant link.

14-25 May
Setting up and sustaining an online community
Guidance and tips on how to build and maintain an online community
Led by Jane Hart

“Thank you very much for offering the programme and putting so much thoughtfulness and guidance into it. It has helped in substantially getting my thoughts together for a new community and for helping me reflect on the existing community and how that came into being." 

11-22 June
Personal Knowledge Management
Tips and techniques how to connect with the digital reality of the connected economy
Led by Harold Jarche

“Without any coherent strategy I often was not persistent in my undertakings. This course gave me an excellent opportunity to evaluate my position and to work out an appropriate approach.”

18-29 June
Using social media in formal learning
Ideas how to use social media in a formal training programme - classroom, workshop and/or online.
Led by Jane Hart

"One of the most useful aspects of both this and the previous course was learning how to organise and manage an online course. I have found your delivery model to be excellent – enough assignments to make me carve an hour out of my diary every other day but not so much as to be overwhelming."

Please note, that we also offer these workshops on a private basis for learning teams, so please get in touch  with me Jane@SocialLearningCentre.co.uk - if you'd like more information about this.

For an overview of all the other activities we offer at the Social Learning Centre, visit the About page. We now have over 1100 members,

Here is my pick of the resources that I shared on Twitter and in my Pick of the Day in April.

Note, for easy reference, all the resources in my daily Picks  are collated monthly on my 2012 Reading List.

>>> April 2012 Pick of the Month

For me, the key to informal learning is where the locus of control lies; so if someone plans, organises and manages what you learn, then this is not informal learning. With informal learning, it is you, the individual, who are in control.

Read the full blog post here 

Yesterday, Harold Jarche shared the image on the right, in his post To learn, we must do.

For me this is spot on. Whereas most people are concerning themselves with the new social and collaboration technologies, or how to get people to collaborate, for me the key to successful social learning is how the individual engages in his/her networks and contributes what s/he has learned or is learning along the way. PKM is therefore the key to successful social learning.

Read the full blog post here

My previous blog post that revealed that around 70% of respondents in my recent survey found training (including e-learning) “unimportant” or only “somewhat important” has generated quite a bit of interest.

A number of comments focused on how we now need to make training/e-learning more “engaging” or “effective” to recapture the interest of these people. But I think this is rather like shutting  the stable door after  the horse has bolted; it’s just too late. An increasing number of the workforce –  smart, social, autonomous workers – are already doing their own thing and solving their own learning and performance problems much more quickly and more easily by using their own tools and devices.

So just as some IT departments have realised the futility of banning personal devices in the workplace and are now beginning to adopt BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strategies, L&D departments might also want to adopt a BYOL (Bring Your Own Learning) strategy and embrace all the learning that is taking place outside of training. 

That was one of the findings of my recent anonymous survey on how people learn best in the workplace, and even I was surprised by the results.  But I think the biggest take-away from my survey is that we can no longer assume we know how people like to learn in the workplace nor how we think people should learn.

So in my latest blog post on Learning in the Social Workplace, I share the data from my survey, some of my thoughts about the results, and the importance of undertaking your own survey.

Runs 23 April - 4 May 2012

Hosted by Jane Hart and facilitated by Harold Jarche at the Social Learning Centre.

This online workshop on adapting to the networked world of work includes tools, tips and techniques from two facilitators who have been connecting, communicating and collaborating online for over fifteen years.

The workshop is for anyone looking to understand the digital reality of the connected economy. Whether you are a freelancer, work  in an organisation, or want to connect beyond the corporate walls, this is designed to give you a head start in developing a personal sense-making framework. Here are some comments from our previous workshop:

"There is a saying that “when the student is ready the master (teacher) shows up” and that is how I see this course."

"Without any coherent strategy I often was not persistent in my undertakings. This course gave me an excellent opportunity to evaluate my position and to work out an appropriate approach."

"I used a time tracking tool to get a feeling for how much time I spend on seeking, sensing and sharing ... So reducing my seeking and spending more time sensing (converting things into high quality content) is my most important goal for the next few months."

Over the two-week period there will be 5 (web-based) assignments that provide an introduction to the topic with links to additional reading as well as individual activities and group discussions. You can complete the assignments whenever it is convenient for you. There will be one synchronous activity at the end. Your total time commitment should be about one hour per day, though there is the potential to do more optional assignments should you desire.

For the full Agenda and details how to sign up for the Workshop, visit the PKM Online Workshop page at the Social Learning Centre.

My next guest in my In conversation with … webinar series is Mark Britz. 

Topic :  Social Media uses for Onboarding

Date: Wednesday 18 April 18.30-19.30 BST  | 13.30-14.30 Eastern  |  10.30-11.30 Pacific

Mark Britz is currently the Manager of Learning Solutions at Aspen Dental Management Inc. (ADMI) Before joining ADMI in 2008, Mark worked to design and manage instructional tools and resources for companies such as Smartforce (SkillSoft), KnowledgeNet, and Pearson Digital Learning.

As part of the Work Embedded Learning initiative he is advancing, Mark serves to promote the use of social media to enhance formal training and expand opportunities for peer-to-peer learning across the organization.

Mark’s blog is LearningZealot

Find out more about the webinar and how to reserve your seat here.

It is becoming clear that more and more people are using a variety of ways – not just training – to help them (a) acquire new skills and knowledge as well as (b) learn continuously in their jobs. 

What are the ways that you find important to acquire new knowledge and skills as well as learn continuously in your job?

Read the blog post and take the anonymous survey here. 

There were lots of great resources made available in March that I shared on Twitter and in my Pick of the Day. Here are 12 of my favourite resources together with key quotes from each and/or embedded resources ...

Read the full blog post on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

This short online programme being offered at the Social Learning Centre runs 9-20 April

Social media tools are increasingly being used in classrooms and workshops as well as in online courses. This short programme provides some ideas and suggestions for using social tools to enhance the social aspects of formal learning in your course, programme or training event.

Find ot more about the programme here and how to sign up : How to use social media in formal learning

This post is an extract from a new Internet Time Alliance whitepaper, available in both web and PDF formats.

In the Workforce Development Services Framework  there are 4 key service areas although there is a high level of overlap in the activities provided by the different service areas:

1. Training/Instructional Services focus on designing, delivering and managing  training, e-learning and/or blended learning events
2. Performance Support Services focus on providing access to, and supporting use of a range of resources (content and people) for performance improvement
3. Social Collaboration Services focus on supporting collaborative working and the building of internal networks, communities  and  collaboration spaces
4. Performance Consulting Services focus on finding the best solution to a learning or performance problem, which may well be a training/instructional solution but is more likely to be a performance support or social collaboration solution.  This service area  will therefore serve as the main entry point in the Framework. In other words, instead of managers coming with requests for courses, they would come with requests for help with performance problems.

Although many L&D departments are introducing more social approaches into their training initiatives, as well as moving slowly into the performance support area, social collaboration services are a completely new area of work – but  for me it is the missing piece of the L&D jigsaw .  However, it is important to be clear, this area of work is not about the design and delivery of training but about the facilitation of learning through collaborative working. So let’s take a closer look at it.

Social Collaboration

Oscar Berg’s Collaboration pyramid shows how …

“The majority of the value-creation activities in an enterprise are hidden. They happen below the surface. What we see when we think of collaboration in the traditional sense (structured team-based collaboration) is the tip of the iceberg – teams who are coordinating their actions to achieve some goal.  We don’t see – and thus don’t recognize – all the activities which have enabled the team to form and which help them throughout their journey. We see the people in the team, how they coordinate their actions and the results of their actions, but we rarely see the other things which have been critical for their success. For example, we don’t see how they have used their personal networks to access knowledge, information and skills which they don’t have in their team already but which are instrumental for their success.”

Now Oscar Berg doesn’t mention the “learning” word  - but he does mention about using personal networks “to access knowledge, information and skills” – and this is the same thing. So social collaboration then is both about working and learning.  So do people work and learn collaboratively automatically?  Some do for sure, but others will need help.

Social collaboration services are therefore both about helping teams work collaboratively as well as facilitating learning through collaborative working.  It involves

(a)  encouraging workers to “connect and collaborate” and engage in new collaborative work practices, so that there is a  symbiotic relationship between collaborative working and learning; and

(b)  developing the new collaboration and community skills  to enable groups and teams for effective working. Although as I explained in my recent blog post, Collaboration and community skills are the new workplace skills, when I discussed some recent work with an organisation, it requires a different approach

“.. as for the new social and collaboration skills that workers require, well you simply can’t train people to be social! What was required was getting down and dirty and helping people understand what it actually meant to work collaboratively in the new social workplace, and the value that this would bring to them.  My Internet Time Alliance colleague, Harold Jarche,  refers to this as modelling, not shaping.

So this new service area requires:

• a new learning mindset – think facilitating or supporting learning through working rather than training
• working with a new set of tools – it’ll involve using the very same social collaboration tools that people work with not course authoring or learning management systems
• and a new skill set – not instructional design but collaboration and community skills

I have been working with learning professionals around the world to help them acquire these new skills in order to provide these new social collaboration services in a number of different ways:

• I run a number of online programmes (hosted within learning communities)  in the Social Learning Centre, e.g.
  • Setting up and sustaining an online community
  • Supporting social collaboration in the workplace
• I work with organizational teams within in-house community initiatives to support them as they discuss and/or provide these services in situ. Contact me at  Jane.Hart@C4LPT.co.uk if you want to find out more about how I can help your team.

For many years I published a daily post featuring a new tool or article here on this Jane’s Pick of the Day blog.  With the rise of Twitter I eventually stopped doing it on a regular basis. However, my monthly picks of resources have proven so popular on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog, that I have decided to collate the daily links I share on Twitter in a new daily posting at the C4LPT site – which will also give me room to provide taster quotes that give a flavour of why the resource was of interest to me.

Take a look at some of the recent postings here of articles and resources that caught my attention.

If want to receive the new Pick of the Day postings, you will need to catch them there. Here’s the link to subscribe to the RSS feed

I'll keep this blog active for a little while longer .. posting extracts from time to time

What does the 21st century classroom (learning
environment) look like to you?

What does the ACCESSIBLE 21st century classroom
(learning environment) look like to you?

What does the 21st century athlete need to succeed?

Please respond at:

http://www.readwritetechnology.com/blogs/cherstinane

(Please only respond to the three questions, no soliciting)

Yesterday I listened into the #lscon Twitter stream for Learning Solutions conference in Orlando, Florida. There was some discussion about social learning, so I tweeted a few of my own thoughts. I’ve been asked to repeat them in a blog post here, so here are some of my tweets plus a few more points. As  I’m not constrained by 140 characters I’ve added a few more words to some of them.

Read the 10 points on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog

Social tools are changing not only the way that professionals are working and learning but also the way that organisations are transforming into social businesses. In the new connected workplace, current training, e-learning or blended learning services, which take a top-down, ”command and control” approach to organising and managing “learning” will not be appropriate to support these new ways of working and learning. What will be required is a completely new range of services – which we might call non-training services – that are focused on supporting continuous performance improvement and learning in the workflow as people do their jobs.

The Workplace Development Services (WDS) framework has therefore been developed to help organisations understand the range of new services and activities that will be required, as well as the tools and platforms to power these activities, and the new skills and mindset involved.

Read the full article on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

On March 8th, WCET (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies) hosted a webinar that I co-presented with John Bower (CEO, uBoost) on badges for learning. Topics included: Game-based learning and badging basics Applications in higher education and online learning Innovative uses... Anne Derryberry http://imserious.typepad.com/imserious/2012/03/badges-for-learning.html