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.

#edcmchat

Learning 2012 Conference - Day 3

Global Leadership Development

The conference has given me a lot to think about in the field of leadership development over the past three days. I will share what I've learned and some things perhaps to think about as we go about developing leaders in an increasingly smaller global space.

There seems to be an increasing awareness of the lack of talent who are capable of taking on global leadership roles. As we grow organizations around the world and expand our footprint in foreign lands, we have the expectation that we will be able to increase our intake of foreign-trained leaders. However, according to Accenture's Rahul Varma, talent development in emerging markets like the BRIC countries is not keeping pace with market growth. In these  countries, 1 in 7 people have access to technology that they can use to grow their capabilities. He says that we need to make the online resources available to those who have access also available offline so that emerging market talent has a chance to compete. 

John Ryan would agree. Ryan's comment on global leadership development is that one can't start too early or too organically. Recognizing the target culture and preparing high potential leaders for the culture, values and culturally defined capabilities within that new environment will go a long way to enabling success. 

The biggest risks we're making in preparing and growing our leadership talent? Ryan says focusing on the individual's performance and not on their agility or potential. According to Ryan (and the Centre for Creative Leadership) it is a person's learning agility and their potential to both learn and grow in breadth and depth of experience that determines a good leader.

Here's a good video with a short explanation of how to maximize global leadership development:

Learning 2012 Day 2

Today's focus: Professional practice and building a centre of competence

Today I focused on learning more about what others are doing and have been thinking about around building communities of practice in the field of learning.

The CIA (yes, THE CIA) has taken an interesting approach to developing their learning pros and also their new learning people and SMEs. They are creating a program that pairs masters with novices to work side by side in a kind of apprenticeship/ mentoring program that they call "tradecraft". They have taken this approach with their other  employees in transferring and mastering field, ahem, techniques that can't effectively be taught in a classroom or a lab setting. This way, the long held 'secrets of the trade' can be passed along to the people who will need to know and will need to use them.
Another interesting thing the CIA is doing is applying action based learning to their development team to help them capture lessons learned and grow in their own governance of the learning professional practice. Cool!

Along the same lines, I also had the opportunity to listen to Richard Culatta from the US Dept of Educational Technology talk about developing local communities of innovation to build better collaborative opportunities in developing people 'outside the box'. Richard recommends having an entrepreneur in residence to give you another way to think about scale and other ways of looking at your audience.

According to Culatta, Michael Porter says that regions that work together as a region work better together than groups that are geographically distributed and increase innovation hugely - you need education innovation clusters. To increase your innovation opportunities, you need to invite people who aren't in your workspace and partner with developers and entrepreneurs to see what you can do to help each other support and develop innovation for your area.

The last piece of today's quest to find information about professional practice is about growing online communities. The best advice I got in this respect is to:

• Take it slow. Communities take time to grow organically and you need to have patience. To help with managerial expectations of instant success, keep the bar low on the number of adopters at first.
• Give your community members something to look at and interact with right away. People don't have a lot of time these days and to have to imagine where they 'may' hang out later, its hard. Populate and encourage people to contribute. 
• Keep your audience and their location and their interaction styles in mind when selecting and developing a platform for hosting your online community. If you don't go where your audience is, they won't 'get' your community and you'll have an empty neighbourhood!

Learning 2012 Conference - Day 1

Today's the first day of the Learning 2012 conference put on by Elliot Masie and it's the first time I'm attending. I am going to share some of what I am learning and also consider what all of this means to myself as a learning professional and also for the organization that I work for right now.

So tonight's opening presentation had 1600 people all together and came in 4 main parts that I found interesting.  Here's what I liked.

Part 1: Richard Cullata, Director Educational Technology, US Dept Education

Richard was called an "edupunk" by Elliott and enjoyed the moniker. His take on edupunks, or eduhackers, was to think of himself as a person largely concerned with using technology as a disruptive force to increase learning. He sees the largest changes in learning will come with the ability to analyse 'big data' and says thst this will change the way we deliver learning. We will be able to see where people are really learning (and where they're guessing for example) to be able to build a better system that gives agency to learners to control their own experiences. Perhaps, he mused, learners will be able to take control of their learning to such an extent that they will be able to demonstrate competency and earn badges rather than take courses and get paper certificates.

Richard is looking to  find 'educational entrepreneurs' who will be able to see the hole end-to-end picture, make learning that is scalable, flexible and functional for these newly activated learners.

Part 2: Lisa Pedrogo - CNN

And now for something completely different! Lisa works for CNN and apparently has been working with the learning consortium for a couple of years. Anyway, they did a piece on creating video for learning and the main rules go something like this:

1. Keep it simple. You probably can only fit about 2 1/2 minutes of video into someone's head at a time so don't feel you have to get too fancy.
2. Plan your storyboard and shots before you get out the camera. This means:

• Figure out what your learners really need to know
• Create a realistic storyboard that captures the essential elements using visuals and sound
• Create your content script and gather images

2. Shoot, but before you tear down, check your shots against your storyboard

3. Edit!!!

You could also use this a start for immersive eLearning and simulations... or really great presentations. You could go here to experience it yourself: 

Nancy Duarte at TED

It's the Human Touch that we need...

So you have a lot of information available to you but you don't have time to read it or act on it. Isn't that the truth for anyone interested in the world and in their own business these days? I have heard it said that "Information wants to be free, but custom information wants to be really expensive". If you read this post from Wired Magazine you'll understand that even more.

It is important that business owners and others trying to make their way forward in the world need to keep abreast of information but very few have time to work their way through all of it to do what they want well. Wired reports on customized searches and summaries done by humans, not machines. Cool! So the algorithms are giving us too much and aren't thinking for us. At the end of the day, it all comes back to us having someone help us out with all the information.

This is true in running a business. You can't do it all and you can't see it all. You need help, so you hire employees, advisors, specialists and consultants. But at the end of the day, you still need to sift through everything and make the decisions. What if you don't know what decisions to make? Perhaps you need someone to help you summarize your biggest challenges and problems so that you can take a better "birds-eye view" of them and make your next successful move. Perhaps what you need is a mirror and a magnifying glass (conceptually) to help you. Penny Ferguson is fond of saying, "The brain that has the question also has the answer" and that's totally true. After all the reading, information, and process, you need someone to help you by really listening. You need the human touch...

Three steps to creating better working environments

I had a really great conversation this week about how to make better working environments. It centred around work done by the folks at Gallup. According to the experts in research sampling, there are only three crucial things needed to make a work environment great, and to make the company productive and profitable. Here they are:

1. Hire people and give them an orientation that creates brand awareness and a sense of ownership.
2. Communicate to everyone in the business on a regular basis using information and language that is meaningful and relevant to them.
3. Teach people how to use the tools to do their jobs; and then let them do it.

Now, I don't know about you, but that seems pretty straightforward to me. The folks at Gallup apparently looked at all sorts of things that make a business powerful and these were the three biggest ones to keep the business running smoothly and profitably. I have had the experience of creating all three of these, and I have had the experience of not having these three. There is a powerful difference between the two. I wonder why so many companies can't get this mix right? A good realistic look and an experienced Instructional Systems Designer (ISD) can help; perhaps this is why not so many people have gotten it right; many view the ISD role as simply one to come after the brand and positioning.

Posted by Ben McConnell on January 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (2)

January 25, 2007Dante would be proud
Think you have it bad at your job? Here's a true story: A well-known law firm is trying to teach its partners to say "thank you" and "good work" to its associates. You know, that weird common courtesy stuff.

It's no joke. The firm lost 31% of its associates in 2004 and another 30% of them in 2005. Each year, one-third of highly educated associates who make about $160,000 per year decide the money's not worth it.