Category Archives: Learning

The subject of education

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I mostly focus on workplace learning here, but I want to put together some of my previous thoughts on public education. My opinions are based on watching our two boys go through a public education system, now complete, plus a fair bit of reading, in addition to many conversations with educators over the years. If we change how we think about public education, we may also be able to improve how we support workplace learning.

school_country__abiclipa_01.jpgWe do not live our lives based on academic subjects, and no workplace is subject-based, but almost all of our curricula are stuffed into subject silos. Education systems should focus on facilitating learning and critical thinking. When students are ready to enter the workforce they will then have the learning skills to blast through whatever job training interests them. Getting the education system out of the job training business will likely make for happier learners, teachers and and maybe even parents.

What would a curriculum look like if you eliminated any specific content and any reference to particular technologies and instead focused on universal cognitive processes? Many varieties of this “curriculum” could be created, using various content areas or communication technologies. I imagine a curriculum that is open to teachers’ expertise and students’ needs, based on processes like those suggested by Marina Gorbis in The Nature of the Future:

  • Sensemaking
  • Social and emotional intelligence
  • Novel and adaptive thinking
  • Moral and ethical reasoning

What would be different about this more basic curriculum is that students would be able to choose how they would learn these process skills and how they would show mastery. Self-expression could be shown through writing, blogging, art, drama, mechanics, etc. This approach would also free up a whole bunch of teachers in administrative curriculum development positions. Without a subject-centric curriculum, teachers could choose the appropriate subject matter for their particular class and the school system could concentrate on ensuing that students have mastered the important processes.

All fields of knowledge are expanding and artificial boundaries between disciplines are disintegrating. Our education systems need to drop the whole notion of subjects and content mastery and move to process-oriented learning. The subject matter should be something of interest to the learner or something a teacher, with passion, is motivated to teach. The subject does not matter, it’s just grist for the cognitive mill.

Discussing what subjects we should teach is the 21st Century equivalent of determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The answer is infinite. The real debate in education is whether we need subject-based curriculum at all.

The Connected Workplace

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The Connected WorkerToday’s digitally connected workplace demands a completely new set of skills. Our increasing interconnectedness is illuminating the complexity of our work environments. More connections create more possibilities, as well as more potential problems.

On the negative side, we are seeing that simple work keeps getting automated, like automatic bank machines. Complicated work, for which standardized processes can be developed, usually gets outsourced to the lowest cost of labor.

On the positive side, complex work can provide unique business advantages and creative work can help to identify new business opportunities. However, complex work is difficult to copy and creative work constantly changes.

But both complex and creative work require greater implicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge, unlike explicit knowledge, is difficult to codify and standardize. It is also difficult to transfer.

Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their paycheck. But if we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in organizations today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done.

Becoming a successful social organization will require more than just the implementation of enterprise social technologies. Developing, supporting, and encouraging people to use a range of new social workplace skills will be just as important. Individual skills, in addition to new organizational support structures, are both required.

Personal knowledge management (PKM) skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization. Keeping track of digital information flows and separating the signal from the noise is difficult. There is little time to make sense of it all. We may feel like we are just not able to stay current and make informed decisions. PKM gives a framework to develop a network of people and sources of information that one can draw from on a daily basis. PKM is a process of filtering, creating, and discerning, and it also helps manage individual professional development through continuous learning.

Collaboration skills can help workers to share knowledge so that people work and learn cooperatively in teams, communities of practice, and social networks. In order to support collaborative working and learning in the organization, it is important to experience what it means to work and learn collaboratively, and understand the new community and collaboration skills that are involved. “You can’t train someone to be social, only show them how to be social.” Practice is necessary.

The power of social networks, like electricity, will inevitably change almost every existing business model. Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust. The 21st century connected enterprise is a new world of work and learning.

For example, traditional training structures, based on institutions, programs, courses and classes, are changing. Probably the biggest change we are seeing is that the content delivery model is being replaced by more social and collaborative frameworks. This is due to almost universal Internet connectivity, especially with mobile devices, as well as a growing familiarity with online social networks.

Work is changing and so organizational learning must change. There is an urgent need for organizational support functions (HR, OD, KM, Training) to move beyond offering training services and toward supporting learning as it is happening in the digitally connected workplace. The connected workplace will not wait for the training department to catch up.

#itashare

Military Training and Simulation

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aerospace allianceI’m attending the training and simulation conference, hosted by the Atlantic Aerospace & Defence Industry Alliance in Halifax this week and spent the day getting caught up on what is happening in the Canadian Armed Forces, an organization I left in 1998.

I learned about the current Army training review that is fundamentally changing the existing training system. The military seems to understand the changing times and its challenges. What is interesting is that “learner centric” is a new priority for the Army. What we call mobile & local is what the Army calls “location independent”.

It was noted that legacy software systems will continue to be a barrier to adopting new technologies. This is the same as the other industries I have worked with. There is no money to replace existing expensive existing systems that still work. Even more interesting was an example of open learning resources. The US Army Ranger school has made all of its courses available online with open access for all. This facilitates the distribution of learning resources to all potential students, when and where they need them. The Canadian Armed Forces cannot (or will not) do this. This is a major barrier to access.

There was also a point about using subject matter experts as instructors. I was told that military personnel can get burnt out when employed as instructors at training units. It was questioned by the military if it was worth it to use SME’s in this role, due to the high demands of continuous teaching. Training seems to be a tough business in the military.

The major themes included the need to get agile in personnel development and training, as well as a strong requirement to address the increasing complexity faced by the military. There seems to be a significant impetus to integrate individual with collective training. Currently the two are separate. Military training needs simpler systems, we were told. It was suggested that mass customization for training was becoming an imperative. This means addressing the needs of individual soldiers, sailors and airmen, all within operational constraints. It was obvious that the existing Cold War structures [my time in the military] need to change, especially the Canadian Forces Individual Training and Education System. From the way I see it, the challenge is shifting to a Probe-Sense-Respond perspective on change.

One more thing, I did note that the military still love their massive bulleted lists on Powerpoint slides. Some thing do not change.

Work is already a game

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI came across a statement saying how it would be a good thing to ‘gamify social learning‘, or words to that effect. I’d like to unpack that short statement. What does ‘gamify’ really mean? It could mean that people can be more engaged while playing games and therefore could learn while playing. Star Trek fans may think of the holodeck as the ultimate game-based learning platform.  I have spent a fair bit of time working with flight simulators and can attest to the value of simulation and emulation when it comes to learning how to fly aircraft. There is also significant research to show how epistemic games can be used for learning.

David Williamson Shaffer’s book, How Computer Games Help Children Learn, is mostly about epistemic games, or “games that are fundamentally about learning to think in innovative ways”. He begins the book by showing the fundamental weaknesses of our Industrial School System, another game:

Not surprisingly, the epistemology of School is the epistemology of the Industrial Revolution – of creating wealth through mass production of standardized goods. School is a game about thinking like a factory worker. It is a game with an epistemology of right and wrong answers in which Students are supposed to follow instructions, whether they make sense in the moment or not. Truth is whatever the teacher says is the right answer, and actions are justified based on appeal to authority. School is a game in which what it means to know something is to be able to answer specific kinds of questions on specific kinds of tests.

Shaffer shows the need for teaching how to think and how to be creative, instead of how to memorize, and lays the argument for the use of games in learning. Most of his examples are outside of the classroom because it is obvious that these kinds of epistemic games would disrupt classes and learning management. The games that are discussed are called monument games, or exemplars of good practice. The ideas and concepts presented are critical for anyone who wants to use games in learning, not just playing bingo and using words or figures out of context. The latter does not help learning. That’s a different sort of ‘gamification’.

The major problem with the ‘gamification’ of professional learning is that work is already a game. It is an artificial construct that society has created, and many of us have to play. Adding badges, or other extrinsic motivators, to professional learning only detracts from the real game. It also creates incentives that, when removed, may result in going back to previous behaviours.

So yes, good games, and especially epistemic games, can help people learn. The military has engaged in simulated exercises for millennia. However, adding a game layer to our work does nothing more than take us away from our work. As Dan Pink showed in his book, Drive: rewards, consequences and motivation at work, much of what we have taken for granted about work is just not supported by the research. Extrinsic rewards [gamification] only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, as shown in this video.

Where the ‘gamification’ movement could focus its efforts is on epistemic games, simulations, and meaningful contextual practice, not badges or making points.

Keep democracy in education

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I liken our dominant educational structure as the offspring of a shotgun wedding between industrialists who needed literate workers to operate their machinery, and progressives who wanted to lift up the common person from poverty and drudgery. It wasn’t an easy marriage, and the children are a tad dysfunctional now. The union was never able to clearly identify the guiding principle of education. One book that has influenced many of my opinions on public education is Kieran Egan’s, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Egan says that Western education is based on three incompatible principles, where all three can never be achieved in a single system.

  1. Education as Socialization (age cohorts, class groupings, team sports)
  2. Education as learning about Truth & Reality, based on Plato (varied subjects, academic material, connection to culture)
  3. Education as discovery of our nature, based on Rousseau (personal sense-making, teacher as facilitator)

If you put emphasis on one of these principles, the others get ignored. The industrialists would have preferred education as socialization and the progressives would have leaned toward education as learning about truth. We have seen some attempts, like Waldorf schools, to develop systems that promote education as discovery of our nature, but that does not go well with a standardized curriculum, whether it has a corporatist agenda or a progressive one.

I think we may soon get invited to another shotgun wedding, this time between techno-utopians, with financial speculators as bridesmaids, and libertarians, who feel the state and teachers have screwed-up education. It’s education as socialization, but socialization to the dominant business paradigm. But any problems with the education system are a result of the governance and economic environment in which it resides. It is through democracy, all of us, that we can improve education. Public education does not need a VC-backed Silicon Valley start-up to be saved. It needs more of us to participate in it. It needs democracy.

deweyIf social business is merely a hollow shell without democracy then the same goes for the new social education, currently manifested as xMOOC’s, those backed by large institutions or private interests. Audrey Watters provides a good overview of the flaws around the notion that our new education couple will be any better than the last arranged marriage:

Hacking Your Education advances the notion that education is a personal (financial) investment rather than a public good. The School in the Cloud project posits that education is a corporate (financial) investment rather than a public good. Why fund public schools when we can put a kiosk in a tech company’s annex? Why fund public schools when you can learn anything online?

The future that TED Talks paint doesn’t want us to think too deeply as we ask these questions. But what happens,when we “hack education” in such a way that our public institutions are dismantled? What happens to that public good? What happens to community? What happens to local economies? What happens to social justice?

As such, the vision for the future of education offered in Stephens’ new book is an individualist and incredibly elitist one. It contains a grossly unexamined exceptionalism, much like the Hole in the Wall which, at the end of the day, worked best for the strongest boys on the streets.

So despite their claims to be liberatory — with the focus on “the learner” and “the child” — this hacking of education by Mitra and Stephens is politically regressive. It is however likely to be good business for the legions of tech entrepreneurs in the audience.

We have not yet been able to effectively integrate democracy and business. Our current education systems, while flawed, still have some democratic oversight. In a networked world, our society needs to be more democratic, not less. Just as some business leaders are beginning to realize the potential of democracy in the enterprise, now is not the time to remove democracy from education. If work is learning, and learning is the work, there is little hope for democratic business if education becomes a business. For our future to remain democratic, both education and business need to be based on its fundamental principles. We are at a crossroads. Let’s cancel this wedding.

France_in_XXI_Century_School

The post-job economy

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Learning may be the work in the network age, but that does not mean that learning will get you the work. Inge De Waard discusses this in MOOCs change education, but jobs decline in a knowledge era:

The simple truth is that not all of us get jobs even when graduating from universities, and if MOOCs add to that particular degree market (universities), we are stuck, for indeed if even the ones that graduate now are not always finding jobs, with the declining job market in mind, most of the new wave of graduates will get stuck as well. A knowledge era is a fine thing, it sounds great … for a minority of people. So how do we (re)find a balance between jobs and people having them?

I’ve highlighted Inge’s question because other people are asking similar ones. Much of my professional focus is about learning at work, and improving how people collaborate, cooperate and innovate in internet time. I call it sense-making for the connected workplace. Helping people adapt to this type of workplace is a big challenge. An even bigger challenge, for which I do not have any simple answers, is: How do people adapt to a post-job society?

Many MOOC’s are based on an educational model that has a curriculum from a body of knowledge that, so the logic goes, when mastered will prepare someone for meaningful work. Improving one’s education to get a job is often a primary motivator for participation. It’s the way the system has worked for decades. The “job” was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. America has hit peak jobs TechCrunch informs us. The New York Times calls it  the rise of the permanent temp economy. The recession, combined with technology, is killing middle class jobs, reports the Associated Press.

We will not find a rebalance between jobs and people having them.

We have connected the world so that data and information can flow in the  blink of an eye. There are fewer information asymmetries, as companies like Amazon bust down one industry after another. One recent example is a local startup that is reducing information asymmetry in the used car business. This interconnectedness and increasing computational power will continue to automate work and outsource any job that can be standardized. New businesses are employing fewer employees, while manufacturing is moving to an increased use of robots.

One of my clients is an educational institution and I was heartened to learn that they are moving away from job preparation to a focus on entrepreneurship. They see the numbers. Their graduates are not getting jobs. Creating our own work will be the only option for many of us.

Ross Dawson provides some good advice on what we can do to prepare for a post-job economy.

As I often say, in a connected world, unless your skills are world-class, you are a commodity.

However there are three domains in which individuals and organizations can transcend commoditization and push their value creation to the other end of the spectrum, where they can command their price and choose their work.
The three domains are:

    • EXPERTISE …
    • RELATIONSHIPS …
    • INNOVATION …

The future is stark. There will be a large and increasing divide between those who have one or more of these core strengths, and those who do not and whose livelihoods are on an ongoing path of commoditization.

labour and talent

 

Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motor_Manufacturing.jpg

The future of learning is the future of work

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Where skills and qualifications have been acquired through formal education, many find themselves unable to secure work that makes use of these; where skills are acquired informally, the challenge is to represent these effectively to potential employers. – The Regeneration of Meaning

This image, from a series on the Future of Learning by Gerd Leonhard summarizes how technology is changing our concepts of learning, training, and education.

SoLoMo by Gerd Leonhard

The role that institutions played as gatekeepers is changing, and the support systems that many of us depended upon, like jobs, are disappearing. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, for good and not so good.

hyperlinks hierarchy

The answer, I believe, is to use nearly unlimited information, self-publishing, and ridiculously easy group-forming to our advantage. Thierry de Baillon, co-author of the most popular post on this blog, writes about “a new set of managerial and operational paradigms” in My Social Business Predictions, namely: no boundaries; trusted exchanges; a culture of experimentation; and emergent and adaptive structures.

Returning to the initial quote on this post, the author, Dougald, shows some concrete examples of new operational paradigms: Centers for New Work; Access Space; West Norwood Feast; the rise of house concerts; and unMonasteries. I know of many more examples, and organizations like Shareable are highlighting these new models and experiments.

So it’s important to note that it’s not really the future of learning we should be concerned with, because it is merely a symptom of the future of work. It is becoming obvious that individuals need to take control of their learning in a world where they are simultaneously connected, mobile, and global; while conversely contractual, part-time, and local. Watch how work is changing and you will see how education and training will change.

changing nature of work

Work environment design for learning

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Catherine Lombardozzi writes, in Time for an Evolution:

To those of you who feel like you just stepped into the middle of a conversation, a learning environment (to my mind) is a collect of resources and activities for learning. The resources may be inanimate or human; the activities may be formal or informal. A well designed learning environment is curated with a specific need in mind. It may be curated by an individual (as in a personal learning environment), by a group (such as a community of practice), or by a designer who is supporting a specific complex need that can’t be met by training or other formal programs alone.

I’ve been promoting learning environment design as a way of thinking about what we used to call blended learning, and as a way of capitalizing on informal learning resources by curating the best materials (in your judgment) and making them easily accessible by your learners.

I have taken her image and added a 70:20:10 overlay. This could serve as a decision support tool for allocating time and resources for organizational learning and development.

70 20 10

networked unlearning

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Our nature – our bias towards an inward focus based on tradition and the past, or an external focus on what we’re seeing around us – cuts across age. Those of us who are willing to question our assumptions will find that we can unlearn (and relearn) at any age. Those who put more weight on what they already know will struggle to change at any age. Today’s digital native will be tomorrow’s digital dinosaur if they are unable to unlearn. That bleeding edge agile practitioner who dogmatically insists that they won’t work with unless you follow these four (in their view) essential agile practices has more in common with their older colleagues still clinging to waterfall methodologies than they are comfortable admitting. - Peter Evans-Greenwood

How can we avoid becoming dogmatic? I think social media can help a lot. Today, we can easily connect to networks that offer diverse views. Inge de Waard uses the example of research tribes: “When joining forces with people that have a common language – but different viewing angles – everyone learns as there is some kind of zone of proximal development there, or it can be created based on mutual conversation and dialogue.” Social media are tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. Social media can facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices. Conversations that push our limits enable critical thinking, which boils down to questioning assumptions, including our own.

One way to build a cognitive web toolbox would be to start with each of the four critical thinking categories shown in the image above. Each sub-category is just an example, and includes many different tools. One can start unlearning by finding and mastering tools that allow you to critically observe and study your field, participate in conversations that  push your understanding, challenge your assumptions, evaluate others’ arguments, and make tentative opinions that in turn will be challenged.

Unlearning takes practice. Living in a state of perpetual Beta can also be uncomfortable. The key is to be engaged in your learning. It requires strong opinions, loosely held. That means going out on a limb knowing you may criticized. It also means putting forth half-baked ideas, which over time and exposure may develop into something more solid.

But finding and weaving our knowledge networks is getting easier with over two billion of us connected by the Internet. This scale and diversity is an advantage, not something to be concerned about. There is no such thing as information overload. I have yet to see someone completely filled with information. The real challenge is finding the right information. The more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn even more.

As Peter says in the article quoted above, “… it’s not learning that is the challenge, it’s our ability to unlearn that’s holding many of us back.” But we don’t need to unlearn alone. Our networks can help us unlearn; if they are are open, transparent, and most importantly, diverse. A more descriptive term for Personal Knowledge Management might just be Networked Unlearning or connected critical thinking.

L’innovation pédagogique

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Voici ma présentation hier soir à Moncton pour l’ouverture du colloque de l’ACDEAULF.

Résumé : Les médias sociaux, la dissémination du travail et l’information illimitée modifient nos relations en milieu de travail. Nous sommes désormais capables d’entrer en communication avec n’importe qui et n’importe où, et de trouver pratiquement toute l’information que nous recherchons. Les hyperliens réduisent à néant les hiérarchies, rendant superflues de nombreuses pratiques de l’éducation industriel.
Pourtant, nous nous accrochons aux méthodes traditionnelles d’évaluation du travail. Les compétences professionnelles étaient fondées sur des tâches stables et mesurables. Les cours sont le vestige d’une époque où l’information était peu abondante et les relations limitées. L’avenir du travail réside dans l’intégration de l’apprentissage et des méthodes de travail. L’avenir, c’est apprendre à travailler plus intelligemment.