Creating an ecosystem within a learning organization

One year ago today the organization I work for held it's collective breath as we flipped the switch and moved to a new Human Resources and Learning Management system. For the first time the two were connected together; employees find themselves in both systems with the same hierarchical structures and activities. We didn't lose anyone, we didn't lose any payroll entries! All in all it was generally a success. For the first time, we have the opportunity to connect people, learning, performance, and compensation. 

So what have we learned and what do we still need to learn or grow into?

First, as a conservative organization, we are slowly learning how to make the systems work together from the 'people development' perspective. We, like all organizations, have made mistakes in believing that a new technology is 'the' answer to whatever misses or issues with learning offerings. This is the case here as well. 

Technology alone isn't the answer to making a system work. We are continuing to hear (and starting to hear anew from some) that the system (the LMS, the performance management system, etc) isn't solving problems because the systems are.. fill in the blank. True. All of it. To make the system work, you as a human need to do that work to connect your people and their activities and use the technology to record their activities. The technology isn't the system; the people are the system and the technology is a tool.

Second, we have to think more about how the real life activities of individuals contributes to their development as much as the formal learning systems we've put in place. As I've mentioned earlier, workplace learning is more than simply plunking people down into a classroom or having them complete projects for their development. Workplace learning is developing an environment (eLearning Guild and others would call is an ecosystem) where formal, informal and accidental learning is made available to help employees get better at their roles, find a place in the community that is the organization, and move the organization's goals forward. This is more than structuring classrooms, eLearning, on-the-job activities, mentoring, and performance tools for an individual. This is about purposefully creating a community from the employees' perspectives and creating spaces where opportunities to grow, connect and practice are available. Technology systems can help provide locations and structures, but they can't create environments - organizations have to do that on purpose.

Finally, I think the team I worked with has started to learn about the strength and power of saying 'no' to things that aren't a fit to the technology. We've started to learn that there is strength in considering the differences between what we can do and what we should do. A technology system has purpose-built functionality and we are learning to work collaboratively with our partners and vendors to find ways to work within the technology and find new technologies to support requirements that our learning partners have which don't fit with this system. We aren't ignoring or MacGuyvering the system; we are finding new ways to help our learning partners accomplish their goals. So we are learning too!

This shift in technology, in design thinking for building a learning ecosystem, and the literal move of millions of pieces of data has made quite a year. We birthed the baby and now it's sleeping through the night. Next year it will grow and develop; I hope we can keep up!

eLearning and anthropology connections

eLearning and Digital Cultures MOOC

So this course has begun by asking us to examine utopia and dystopia with regard to the concepts around technology in education. I'm reminded of two things that I haven't thought about in a long time. The first is my experiences as a linguistic anthropology student in my undergrad days. The second was this guy:


http://www.startrek.com/database_article/data

For those of you not familiar, this is Mr. Data from the American television show, Star Trek the Next Generation. Data is a character who is an Android; modeled after a human and built (or born) to be as human as possible. In fact, he displays all of the aspects of human behaviour and many of human thinking. Data can create, can reason, can develop and share his opinion, can make friends and have emotion-based relationships. Data represents a utopian view of human technological advances. He is the 'better' human because he doesn't age, he is symmetrical and evenly proportioned (which passes consistently for attractive). He is also kind, artistic (in his own way) and thoughtful toward the people about whom he cares. The thing is though, from Mr. Data's perspective, his personal internal existence is an eternal dystopia.

Mr Data is trapped in an endless loop of wanting to really be human. He approaches human in so many ways and demonstrates so much humanity you might wonder how close he really needs to be to truly be human. But he isn't; and this is the dissatisfier. He can't tell jokes. He can't feel extremes or emotions. From our perspective, the technology is perfect; from inside the sentient being, it is otherwise.

Which brings me to the second thing I thought of: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Occam's razor. According to the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, people who speak a language together share a similar worldview because their ideas and the expression of those ideas is governed, limited, and moulded by the language they use. Following this, the translation of ideas from one language to another is relative to the shared worldview of the different language speakers. Essentially, people's language cloaks the information and ideas in relative terms.

What does this mean for Mr. Data, technology and education?

Educational technology can be seen as the savior of education by providing ideas and opportunities for many more people to share ideas and multiples of opinions and new creations. But it can also be seen as a limiter by only showing people what someone has deemed appropriate, linked, and 'close' to the work environment or the 'real' world. For the creators of this learning, like the people that Mr. Data works and lives with, it is good enough. Their perception of learning from within their experience as experts, learning designers, subject matter experts, etc. the training delivery, performance support and activities are going to bring about change to benefit both learner and environment. From within the learning experience though, the pre-determination of what is being taught in which format can limit and feel like something is missing, something is almost like the real work world... but not quite the same. Technology can limit how a person thinks about what they are learning.

We can't just believe that technology (from immersive simulations to paper support tools) is going to solve a learning problem. We also can't believe that the introduction of new technology or changes in how learners access learning opportunities is going to disrupt or limit a learner's opportunity. The focus really has to be on the learner; on Mr. Data. Helping the learner to construct a new reality and perhaps shift their mindset to apply information and create new meaning for themselves.

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