Personal Learning Networks (personal and community-focused)
Following up on the distinction between groups and networks, Downes says, “A group, in other words, is a school (of thought, of fish…) or a class of some sort. Or: classes and schools are just groups. They are defined as groups. Can we even think of schools - and of learning - without thinking at the same time of the attributes of groups? A group is elemental, defined by mass and sameness - like an ingot of metal. A group is a collection of entities or members according to their nature; what defines a group is the quality [of sameness] members possess and [their] number.”
One can certainly argue with Downes, but isn’t the slide interesting when thinking about schools as groups and online personal learning spaces as networks?
Individualized Networked Learning
As I’m trying to think more and more deeply about what networked learning really means in the context of how I might want my own children to apply it their own lives, I think this quote struck me because it made me consider how little I’ve actually engaged in group learning around a particular objective within the network. It is, as Teemu says something that doesn’t really appear very often. This has become, for me at least, a very individualized experience. I’ve referred to it in the past as “nomadic learning” because it happens in a very non-linear, concrete objective-less way. (Technically, I think most are attaching the word nomadic to it because of the mobility of the technology to learn, not the randomness of it.) My learning has a general focus and direction, to be sure, but it’s trajectory is determined by whatever is in my aggregator or on my screen at the moment. There are no written down goals or outcomes that I am attempting to achieve which is one of the reasons this is so different from classroom learning.
What does learner-centric look like?
There is a paradigm shift from instructor-centric to learner-centric model of learning. (Refer to diagram)
The priority at upper management level may well be principally around the cost-cutting benefits of online delivery, but it is a different story for those who have operational responsibility for the outcomes achieved by e-learning and blended learning programmes.
There is already an 'old days' of organisational learning, looked back on by few with nostalgia, when it was all about the 'country house' model; very 'event-driven', very 'top-down' in character. Times have definitely changed.
The most obvious difference, with the advent of the internet, is one of location. Learning can now take place in a variety of environments, including the workplace, a learning centre attached to the workplace, or even in the home.
This change is not only being driven by what is happening within the training departments, however. The way we work has been altered radically, in many cases, by the advent of email, web access and intranets. These provide tools for just-in-time learning, reference and knowledge management much of which falls outside the remit of training per se, but which is nevertheless altering attitudes to what constitutes a learning experience.
As a result, a new generation of learners is coming up that expects to access learning in different ways.
So what is it that these new learners want, exactly, from a learning experience?
Moving from 'training push' to 'learning pull'
When the mode of the music changes, wrote Plato, the walls of the city shake. Since the advent of e-learning, and particularly blended learning, there has been a definite change of tune from the training and development function (now rebranded 'the learning community'). A chorus of voices - heard in conference and exhibition halls across the land - urges us to 'put the learner at the centre of the experience'. We need to move, it is trumpeted, to learner-centric learning.
And indeed, this particular change of mode poses a palpable threat to certain key bits of masonry within the ambit of organisational learning. We're not talking solely metaphorically here. More than one global concern in recent times has closed down its bricks-and-mortar training centre in favour of an online equivalent.
Are we experiencing a paradigm shift? Or is this no more than mood music designed to cover the sound of axes being swung? Is the real driver behind e-learning adoption a cost-cutting agenda - which seeks merely to pare away expensive face-to-face interventions, while leaving existing organisational structures untouched?
Clearly, not all learners want the same thing.
What they want might vary widely depending on the type of company they are in, as we have seen. Likewise, different groups of learners within an organisation will have different needs and priorities.
Segmentation is the art (or science) of dividing up an audience into appropriate target groups for marketing purposes. It allows these sub-groups to be marketed to according to needs and motivators that they share in common. It also allows an appropriate allocation of resources among the various groups according to the value that can be expected to be derived as a result of marketing activity.
The learner-centric organisation will need to take this logic on board when marketing its learning provision internally. The first step in doing so is to establish what the various needs and motivators are.
Useful information in this line can often be derived from looking at take-up of existing learning programmes. For instance…
Marketing water to horses
Early experiments in creating learning-centred environments, where generic e-learning was offered without any marketing or line manager support, and with no blending, had disappointing results. The moral of this story was that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
So let's take a marketing approach to this problem.
The horse needs to be thirsty (incite desire). It might need some reassurance about the quality of the water (create a trusted brand). If it is an extremely sceptical horse it might need to be convinced that drinking water here will deliver health improvements (sell the benefits), and told a little about the deleterious effects on health of not drinking water in the long term (okay, a bit of stick). Lastly, and most importantly, it needs to be told about these things in a language that it can understand - i.e. horse language...
No comments:
Post a Comment