Learning in 2009: My Story

I have not been a regular responder to the LCB's Big Question of the month. However, I do read the responses that flow in each month from varied bloggers. This month's question prodded me out of my lethargy because
a) it is that last question of the year, and
b) it forced me to think of what I have learned and done differently in 2009.
I couldn't ignore point b and sat down to do some serious bit of introspection.

Siting the Big Question here: What did you learn about learning in 2009?

What has 2009 been for me? It has been a year of:

1. A new job
2. A new city
3. Challenges
4. Confidence
5. Knowledge sharing
   
6. Solitude
7. Retrospection
8. Beginnings and endings
9. Learning
   

In this post, the last point is my focus.

1. What did I learn?
2. How did I learn?
3. How was this learning different?
4. What does my Personal Learning Network (PLN) look like now?

It was in the December of 2008 that I joined Twitter on a whim. With all the skepticism of a non-believer. The word Social Media was not even in my dictionary, and Facebook and Orkut had left me cold till then. What drew me to Twitter were the 140 character limit and a few names like Tony Carrer and Jay Cross.

At the same time, I changed my job and moved to a new city because of it. A city I had never been to before. I also rented a flat and started living on my own, going home only over the weekends, sometimes on alternate weekends.

When I look back now, I can see how all of these came together to form a pattern--something almost providential in nature--that set the tone of 2009 for me. And each of these was to become for me a key learning point in the year that followed. In many ways, the year has been a turning point in my life.

1. Twitter exploded across my universe, expanded it beyond my wildest dreams and suddenly I literally had the "world at my desktop".
2. Twitter introduced me to blogs that became another leading source of learnign and conversation for me.
   
3. The new job brought unique challenges that forced me to read, research discuss and apply what I had only known theoretically.
4. The new job brought new people who became the harbingers of a paradigm shift in my learning and thinking, one person playing a key role.
5. The new city offered me time and space and solitude for reflection.
6. Living alone meant I filled my time reading, researching, assessing, assimilating...

My list of 20 from each of my learning spheres.

Twitter:
Twitter and subsequently #lrnchat introduced me to all that I had been consciously and subconsciously seeking to learn. I truly felt the power of collective intelligence in creating meaning, in generating answers, in accessing diverse points of views, in a real-time scanning of the web, and in separating the wheat from the chaff. I found people with common goals and passions and questions whom I have never met but whose thoughts and words could have been my own. The feeling was akin to an arial view of a gigantic crossword puzzle where the pieces were falling in place and the pattern was visibly emerging.

I have to mention here some Twitter friends I actively learn from, in no specific order:

1. @stickylearning
2. @cammybean
3. @c4lpt
4. @JaneBozarth
5. @kkapp
6. @marciamarcia
7. @Quinnovator
8. @dwilkinsnh
9. @kasey428
10. @KoreenOlbrish
11. @hjarche
12. @jaycross
13. @bschlenker
14. @jclarey
15. @KevinDJones
16. @moehlert
17. @jmarrapodi
18. @michael_hanley
19. @manishmo
20. @followVasan (wish would tweet more often)
    

AND
#lrnchat (a very special group of friends, some I have had the pleasure to meet in person)

Blogs:
I follow too many blogs to mention them all here, but the 20 I do visit regularly:

1. seth's blog
2. stickylearning: Michael Eury's blog on practical ideas for learning that sticks!
3. Learning Visions: Cammy Bean
4. Making Change: Cathy Moore
5. Kapp Notes: Karl Kapp
6. E-Learning Curve Blog
7. Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
8. Learning and Working on the Web: Harold Jarche
9. Internet Time Alliance
10. Learnlets by Clark Quin
11. Informal Learning Blog by Jay Cross
12. The Bamboo Project
13. Full Circle Associates
14. Engaged Learning
15. bozarthzone
16. eLearning Technology
17. elearningpost
18. The Learning Circuits Blog
19. Learn and Lead
20. Learning Practice
    

Reference Sites:

My two key sources for all things e-learning:
Kineo
ASTD

Books:
20 Books that helped me make a quantum leap in my thinking:

1. Made to Stick
2. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
3. Outliers
4. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
5. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
6. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
7. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
8. Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques
9. Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance
10. The Wisdom of Crowds
11. Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
12. Tribes
    
13. E-Learning Solutions on a Shoestring: Help for the Chronically Underfunded Trainer
14. Telling Ain't Training
15. Training Ain't Performance
16. Designing
    Successful e-Learning, Michael Allen's Online Learning Library
17. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
18. HPI Essentials
19. Project Management for Trainers
20. The Importance of Living

What does my PLN look like? 

Blogged with the Flock Browser

New Skills for Learning Professionals

This month's Big Question from LCB has received a huge response. I have pasted the question here:

"In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?"

This is not a very new question and has been doing its rounds in different forums. My colleague and I had begun a similar discussion on our "explore learning solutions" forum as well. We also have a fair idea why this question is cropping up in various forms...Today, the role of learning professionals have undergone and are undergoing a paradigm shift. The main reason is of course the shifting, evolving technology and a flatter world with organizations spread across the globe.

As I read through the different responses to this month's Big Q, I saw that most of the major points had been covered.

Therefore, instead of trying to make the same point using different words, I thought I would synthesize my learnings from the different posts. I have not yet been able to cover all the posts but from what I have read, I have made the following jottings for myself. As I read the rest, I intend to add to this list.

The interpretations are mine and so is the synthesis I have arrived at. The original writer's intent may have been different.

While the key trends I have spotted so far focus on a learning professional's ability to:

Keep learning: Professionals have to become constant learners to be in tune wth the ever increasing flow of knowledge

Be a knowledge networker: Be a knowledge networker capable of identifying patterns and make connections

Solution provider: Use the best solutions and be able to bind different learning ecologies

Be tech savvy: Be comfortable with technology, especially the tools that can be used to create a "learning ecosystem or end-to-end learning solutions" at organizational levels (talking of organizational training here since that forms a large part of our "business")

Be adaptive: Be adaptive enough to see the link between theories of andragogy to present day technological innovations.

Be a social networker: Be good at networking and connecting with the "right" people because there is no way one can know everything. The only way to keep up with the rapid pace of tech development is to share and participate in online conversations.

Don't think of yourself as an expert: Be aware of the vanishing concept of "expertise". Today, everyone can easily gain expertise with access to information and the tools available to share and disseminate.

Have a sound grasp of theories: Linked to the previous point>> this puts a lot of pressure on learning professionals to constantly "innovate" and be the creator of sound instructional design. Only way we stand out is the design/form/structure/format that we present the learning in. Hence, it becomes even more critical to know the theories of learning in depth and apply these in course designs if we have to still make a case as to why organizations should spend in asking us to create a training program.

Be open to criticism and be courageous: Have the courage to put up one's understanding and perspectives out there for all to read, respond, criticise, disagree with, argue, rip apart...This can preferably be done via blogs which is also a platform that allows one to synthesize and analyze one's thoughts. Without this kind of "putting oneself on the block" attitude, it will not be possible to learn.

Understand business drivers: Be a consultant and be able to talk to Line-of-Business managers and grasp the true need of the training. This means being able to ask the right questions and not only focus on the "learning" but the end need of the learning. What is the gap that is impacting the bottom line? That is all that matters to an organization.

All of this means that it is well neigh impossible for an individual to develop on one's own. There is a growing and imperative need to collaborate. To understand how collaboration is different from coordination or cooperation, read the post When should we Collaborate? The whole in this case is way greater than the sum of the parts and knowing how to acquire the necessary information is as if not more important than the specific information itself.

The list of posts I have read so far are:

# Mohamed Amine Chatti - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche - 2008 article on Skills 2.0
# Clive Shepherd
# Jay Cross - Informal Learning blog.
# E-Learning Curve Blog: Learning Professionals’ Skills 2.0
# Natalie - What Should Learning Professionals Know Today?
# Gina - Adventures in Corporate Education
# Jane Bozarth - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche -Skills for learning professionals
# Clark Quinn: Web 2.0 Learning Skills

The Big Question: Stuck? Getting Unstuck...

There's really quite a bit to this question.


I’ll begin by quoting something I read in Tony Karrer’s blog, eLearning Technology. In the post, What Clients Want: eLearning Technology, he writes:
Stunning: Even after all the hot air expelled ink spilled and electrons excited in the last 10 years regarding how we ought to be measuring business results, nobody is doing it !!!!!!!!!

This is precisely my feeling too…it is one of my pet grouch that this month’s Big Question allows me to vent. For months, I have been thinking of penning my two pence worth in my ID blog, but never got around to overcoming the inertia.

After handling a few projects as the senior/sole ID and consultant and solution provider(I used to imagine myself talking to the client, glancing at my list of twenty odd questions to see that I had the need for the training and performance gap analyzed and perfectly captured, suggesting the best solution and approach with the client listening avidly, mapping the solution to the desired performance output and ending with a quantitative analysis of the ROI), I have relegated the scenario in parentheses to my host of if onlies…That is not to say that I have given up! Not at all! I have just taken off those rose tinted specs and put on plain white ones—the better to see with. I can now see the challenges for what they are.

I realize that I could go and have gone blue in the face saying, “We can’t give the client what he WANTS; we have to give him what he NEEDS. We are the solution providers.” Nothing much will change instantly. We have to educate our internal and external clients because e-learning is still a nascent concept in India. We are still on our first generation e-learning courses—the linear, click and reveal types, where, for most corporate training departments, cost cutting is the major goal for shifting to the e-learning mode.

Maybe, even before we launch into needs and task analysis and learner analysis with a client, we should (using very simple, layman’s terms) educate them a little on what e-learning is all about. For most clients I have met here, e-learning means being able to access ALL the content through an online medium—more of a glorified “click and reveal” ppt. Educating clients could be one way of trying to become “unstuck”. J Of course, it is going to be a long, tedious and challenging process but we could make a start.

I am already imagining a scenario with my latest client—a particularly recalcitrant and determined one who wanted to have all the content of the world put into this one course, not one line could be deleted, the learner must be told absolutely EVERYTHING, explicitly.
I tried in vain to explain levels, discovery learning, arousing curiosity, concepts of andragogy…sigh!

Is this what happens when the client and the SME are one and the same?