Xyleme Learning Blog

We were recently able to talk with both Elliott Masie and Dr. Conrad Gottfredson about informal learning, multichannel publishing and performance support for the Xyleme podcast series.

Challenge and Need

Gottfredson said that it was the job of learning professionals to support learners throughout their journey, and has identified five key moments of need where they require support. He started by listing the two traditional points of need; when learning new information and when building on past learning. He then added three additional stages where learners often need on-demand information and assistance; applying and remembering what they’ve learned, troubleshooting and resolving problems, and when facing change.

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Learning and elearning luminaries on the subject of your edification …

Eliot Masie’s Learning TRENDS: Masters and Doctoral candidates are encouraged to apply for a research sabbatical or learning fellowship at the MASIE center starting this summer.

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It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about hobbies, liberal arts and knowledge of current events as luxuries, but our minds work better when our learning experiences are broad rather than narrow. Few people would directly argue that creativity be left behind in childhood, but many of the interesting experiences that promote cognitive adaptability have been left out of the workplace, and increasingly out of public schools.

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What are the edubloggers talking about today, I wonder …

Janet Clarey: Being a workplace ethnographer, systematically gathering information about how people interact with their environment with fresh eyes, can generate new insights into the needs of learners.

Jay Deragon: Looking towards the next step in the relationship economy, some musings on what the new generation of social networking would look like.

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“Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” - The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

We’re coming to the end of another economic bubble, this time in the financial sector. The folks who underwrite all our commercial activity got infected with the madness of crowds and tried to have themselves a post-fact economy. Didn’t work out so well. Home prices and consumer confidence reflect the reality, the post-post-fact economy, the hard truths that are reflected in economic forecasts and consumer billing statements everywhere.

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Your window into the learning and elearning blogs …

eLearning 2.0 Technologies and Concepts: Thoughts on how social networks benefit learning and a range of cognitive skills.

eClippings: Teaching through stories can make for a memorable, effective and engaging learning experience.

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No.

It’d be nice to give you better news, but the right answer is no.

You can’t always rely on user-generated content being good, promoting e-learning, or even being there at all. You can put up a great Web 2.0 tool, like a Wiki, and get nothing out of it but blank web pages.

Getting good, sustained, useful interactivity comes from setting a content baseline, having goals, and facilitating useful communication among users. Your users and employees don’t want to write for its own sake, they want to write to accomplish something.

Are they having a useful conversation or creating a reference they’re going to want to come back and use? Can they relate it to their every day tasks in a way that’s helpful, as opposed to adding extra, unwanted chores? Will they be able to reuse their content elsewhere?

Technology gets you learning tools. Engaged users give you learning communities. I think we all know which is more useful.

It all starts with the people, not the software.

They talk, we read …

Janet Clarey: Making e-learning engaging. — The learning professionals’ list of 6 dangerous things to do.

eLearning Technology: What’s the scope of a learning professional’s responsibility?

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From Seth Godin’s book, small is the new big:

… As we’ve turned human beings into competent components of the giant network known as American business, we’ve also erected huge barriers to change.

In fact, competence is the enemy of change!

Competent people resist change. Why? Because change threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like being competent. That’s who they are, and sometimes that’s all they’ve got. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to rock the boat. …

It’s easy to forget that learning new things and facing new challenges involves being, let’s face it, incompetent. That’s never fun. Remember when you were learning how to ride a bike? You were frustrated at first, you felt like a dolt, you had skinned knees and a bruise on your shin, you wondered if you’d ever be good at this, even though everyone told you you’d pick it up in no time.

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Some educational reading for your greater learning contentment …

Janet Clarey: An instructor I use to work with told a story one day about a manager that had called him up to complain about the course he’d taught to one of the manager’s reports that week. His complaint? The employee … if you can believe it … had fun! So the instructor asked if, really, the manager was mad about the employee having fun at a mandatory training. There was spluttering, then sheepishness. Anyway, I was reminded of that story when reading Clarey’s guide to avoiding red alert levels of boredom in courses.

Jay Deragon: Social networking convergence is coming, exemplifying the way technology should provide support to human enterprise, but isn’t an end in itself.

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