Here’s the second part of my interview with Clive. This clip covers:
Thoughts on recent research into the human brain and how it’s being taken on board by L&D
More behind the 4 contexts for learning
Thoughts behind taking a top down and bottom up view on these
Hopes on how the model may be used
Click the links below to view the other interview clips.
I’ve always enjoyed watching video interviews and I’ve had a hankering for a while to try my hand at them.
My blog has already featured a review of both the Blended Learning Cook Book and The New Learning Architect. When looking for a guinea pig as my first interviewee, I immediately thought of Clive Shepherd especially as I was interested in his inspiration behind his recent work. Clive very kindly agreed to help out.
We arranged a mutually convenient date and travelled down to Brighton to the First Light studio to record the interview. I’ll tell you more of what turned out to be an eventful trip another time but I’m sure you are all keen to hear the first instalment of a 4 part interview with Clive Shepherd. I have added all the question topics in each instalment below.
You’ll be able to view the full interview on YouTube once they’ve all appeared on my blog by the end of the week – just to keep you all in suspense. Click on the links below to view subsequent video interview clips.
Part 1:
The inspiration to write The New Learning Architect
Describing a learning architect
Explaining why order takers are like builders rather than architects
Thoughts about why there may be more builders and architects in organisations
Advice to those nervous of challenging orders
Part 2:
Thoughts on recent research into the human brain and how it’s being taken on board by L&D
More behind the 4 contexts for learning
Thoughts behind taking a top down and bottom up view on these
Hopes on how the model may be used
Part 3:
The 70/20/10 model and The New Learning Architect
Thoughts for those sceptical about the role informal learning plays in individual development
Advice to those wishing to measure informal learning activities
Part 4:
Exploring thoughts behind including the 10 profiles in the book
How these case studies might be helpful to potential learning architects
Final piece of advice
If you have a little over 1hour and 17 minutes to spare, here is a very interesting debate from late 2009 (but still topical nonetheless) on the whether the VLE (virtual learning environment) is dead and that the PLE (personal learning environment) is the way to go for learning.
I’m going to sit firmly on the fence here. It might get a little uncomfortable at times and I can waver a little but for me certain things come to mind before we force a decision. Perhaps we’ll be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
Do we really know what our VLE can do?
Have we taken enough time to investigate the functionality?
Have we exercised enough creativity in what we could do with it and in it?
Did we forget to ‘be there’ providing that human touch or have we just left our students to their own devices with merely a map to guide them through the maze of content.
Are we going to going to remain within our secret walled garden of the VLE or could we, as Dicken and Mary did in the novel ‘The Secret Garden’, unlock the door enjoy the best of both worlds?
Remember that we can easily create doorways out into the social world and PLEs with the use of links. For instance, one activity within the VLE could be to take a conversation beyond the walled garden and out into a social network where students could share resources more easily, upload photos and videos for comment and discussion and return to the VLE to post a conclusion or analysis of their ‘field trip’. Maybe you’d create a Facebook account for the course or a Twitter account using hashtags for grouping the assignment conversations (after establishing whether your audience can access these of course), the limitations are really only your imagination.
Maybe we need to invest a little more time into these creative ideas and encourage the meeting of these worlds rather than an exclusion of one or the other. It’s not always necessary to make a decision between one or another.
Another case for blending methinks.
There have been 659,042 Tweets in the Haitian Creole language of Kreyol Ayisyen within a user group of 7,468 and Cymraeg (Welsh) is the third most popular language Tweeted with 261,083 Tweets altogether between 2,729.
These statistics have been gathered by Indigenous Tweets as reported by the BBC last week. According to the article, Indegenous Tweets is “about encouraging minority language speakers to discover each other online”.
This got me thinking about how Twitter can be used to help people learn a language. I’ve always been told that the only real way to learn how to speak a new language is to use it – regularly. However, speaking a new language may not necessarily help you get to grips with writing it.
What’s a better place to interact with others in a particular language to try out your skill and improve them.
Here are some ideas I’ve had:
Because Twitter is just another tool by which we can hold conversations, it’s important we think beyond the prejudice and barriers and start thinking creatively on how we can harness it for learning. Of course, we don’t want to use these tools ‘just because’ but perhaps we need to start thinking more about ‘what can be’.
Classroom trainers have been very creative in the past about how to include different tools and activities to aid the learning process. Just think about how we introduced video and DVDs to the classroom course. The set up little group to collaborate using flip-charts, then PowerPoint. We’ve introduced games and adapted them to encourage problem solving. The only difference now is we no longer have to be bound by walls and have a much richer collection of tools.
As some of you may have guessed, I’m a really big fan of social media. I think it’s the best thing invented since sliced bread. Now for the uninitiated, when I mention social media and in particular Twitter, the initial reaction is either ‘oh no here we go again’ or ‘I can’t see the point in hearing what everyone had for breakfast’. But social media is so versatile. It’s just another conversation tool – just like the telephone.
What’s the betting that when telephones started to be installed in more homes, people just rang each other up to find out what they had done that day. It’s a novelty thing. It’s a ” We just gotta try it out but I can’t think of anything profound so I’ll just say the first thing that comes into my head” sort of thing. In fact, my mum still does that. I’m not going to tell you my age but I think you’ll guess I’m not a kid any more but I still have to telephone ‘home’ every night when I travel anywhere. There’s usually no new amazing news to hear so I just get “have you had your tea? What did you have?”.
But of course we also use the telephone for some of the most important of calls as well as keeping in touch with our loved ones. The same goes for e-mail. I remember when e-mail was first introduced where I worked. There were e-mails being sent all over the building just saying saying “hello, how was your weekend” even when we were just in the next office (or even in the same office). It was a novelty. Then came the policies on how to use e-mail responsibly, how to communicate correctly and all was good with the world.
What I’m seeing now though is e-mail being misused in as much as it is becoming a conversation tool. Yes, I know it IS a conversation tool in a way but we’re seeing it being used for chit-chat again even if that chit-chat is work related. Yet there are many more appropriate tools we can use for this type of conversation within a work environment:
Skype for example. Here people can have real time business conversations either on a one to one basis or group.
If it’s more about collaborating on a project, what about using Google Docs and Google Buzz.
If we need to share research, discuss ideas, view and review little videos we’re planning, what about creating a Facebook Group for your team.
We are so blessed nowadays with a variety of different tools that do different things can we really look back at our current practices and say we are working efficiently? Of course, we need time for a bit of research but sometimes, we just have to give it a go.
And that’s just what I’m just about to do now. I’m going to create a team Facebook Group for collaborative working projects and see how it goes. How about you?
I’ve just watched Craig Taylor’s excellent Pecha Kucha ‘Using technology to enhance an assess-train-assess approach’ in which he shares examples of how assessing competency levels before automatically mandating everyone attend the same annual refresher has had a positive impact on business.
a) there is an update
b) compliance -staff are required to attend refresher training every year whether they need it or not
c) there’s some new approaches to working practise
However, before you automatically go through the usual motions and go down the ‘we’ve got to design a new course’ why not ask yourself the following questions:
How much do they know already?
How often would they carry out that work?
and the biggie…. What REALLY tells you whether they are competent or not?
Why do we insist on putting everyone, no matter how experienced they are in the subject, through a course before establishing whether they actually need it? Even when the instructional design is top notch including relevant task based interactive activities, it’s a waste of resources and staff time if they already know the subject matter and are applying successfully. Of course we need to maintain quality and adhere to legal requirements but is herding us all through one-size-fits-all courses the most efficient or, indeed, effective way of doing this?
It seems we often pay more attention to recording ‘bums on seats’ – virtual or otherwise instead of establishing the quality of work performance. So our workforce are all too often taken off their important jobs and attend compulsory training where there is limited flexibility in what they can choose to do. There is a simple, logical and very effective solution – assessments not courses.
As I said in a comment to Ryan Tracy’s blog post ‘online courses must die‘ “why force individuals to go through the same mandatory content year after year when all they may need is a yearly, skills based assessment. If that assessment highlight skills gaps then a more flexible learning programme will make sure individuals learn only what they need not what they don’t”
Now I’m not saying that we’ll never need formal courses ever again. This would be ridiculous and untrue. Besides, I’d be talking my way out of a job if I do that. There are many reasons why someone will need formal courses. But before we decide, we do need to be more analytical before designing how to facilitate our workforce’s learning paths. Yes, it may mean more hard work gathering all the information you’ll need. Yes, it will mean we would need to encourage ownership of learning more to the individuals themselves and help them develop their meta-cognitive skills. And yes, it will mean L&D professionals would then become more cultivators of learning.
When reflecting on why this ‘herding’ approach occurs so frequently, I was reminded of a conversation I had recently around the reluctance in considering just assessing staff to prove competence before deciding whether anyone needed more formal training. It appears it all boiled down to the quality of the assessment – or rather the poor quality of the assessment. This meant that everyone had to be forced to attend the same training course to make sure the content was covered (not I didn’t say learned) and which could be tracked for statistical purposes and to prove attendance. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but the whole point of an assessment is to test whether a person is competent in the subject matter.
If you spend the valuable time and effort in creating great learning programmes, whether they are formal courses or a collection of learning nuggets on-demand, the only way learning can be confirmed is by completing an assessed activity. If that assessment can easily be ‘guessed’, then the learner doesn’t have to use any problem solving techniques to analyse and apply. If you honestly have little confidence in the assessment at the end of a learning programme, of course you won’t want to put it out there on its own. It will about as much use as a chocolate teapot!
We’ve often discussed what makes good learning, ‘e’ or otherwise. What now begs the question is “what is good assessment?”