I’m struggling to complete my reading assignments for George and Stephen’s online course on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge. I can’t let go of a great opportunity to learn but I sense I’m not going to be getting enough sleep over the coming twelve weeks.

The final reading for the first week, Bill Kerr’s challenge to connectivism, got me engaged, and that’s the seat of learning, so I thank him in spite of the fact that I find his criticism shallow and largely irrelevant. I’ll boldface Kerr’s remarks to separate them from my opinions.

simply put, there are other theories around about distributed cognition, so why do we need a new one?

George’s Connectivism combines older theories and new realities to come up with an explanation of learning that fits with today’s realities. Most other theories address yesterday. Connectivism would not be diminished even if Vygotsky got there first.

assertion: “the pipe is more important than the contents (simply because content changes rapidly)” The immediate rejoinder here is that content is important too. And then some will argue, reasonably, that some content is more important than other content. This leads into a discussion of the nature of knowledge (content), is there some knowledge that is more fundamental than other knowledge, what is the difference b/w a new idea of substance and a fad? This is a discussion which has to be had. The slogan leads into this discussion but does not provide an answer to it.

This is a specious argument. Content and context do not exist without one another; they are sides of the same coin. We could spend years trying to answer “What is truth?” The fact that George hasn’t answered it for us doesn’t invalidate Connectivism.

assertion: “the half life of knowledge is declining.” …I would say that at any given time some knowledge is more durable and important than other knowledge - and that “half life of knowledge” arguments obscures that fact. This term is provocative and good a discussion starter but needs more analysis. I am not arguing that there is such a concept as “fundamental knowledge” but that at a given time some knowledge is more important than other knowledge. What sort of knowledge?

Generalities always obscure detail. (You can drown in a river that’s an average of 6″ deep.) Of course, there are foundation elements of knowledge which change at a glacial pace if at all. Reading and writing, critical thinking, and the scientific method aren’t going out of style. However, that’s not why an electrical engineer who doesn’t continue her professional development is out of date and out of business in three or four years. This course is a demonstration that educators thirst for new approaches; I’ll suggest that’s because there are heaps of new things to learn and similar measures of things to unlearn. Good Heavens, how can anyone fail to notice that human progress is accelerating at a mind-boggling pace?

the most important issue is not teachers who haven’t woken up to the potential of the internet yet, it’s those who are blocking the process higher up the chain of control…. what is really needed is for those who want to change education to form a more politically aware movement, something that teachers have been reluctant to do in the past

Agreed. This strikes me as an argument in favor of connectivism, not against it.

This is BIG. Nearly 2,000 people have signed up for George Siemens’ and Stephen Downes’ free online course, me included. Here’s a great map of the course learnscape. Keep up to speed with the course Pageflakes aggregator. And here’s an outline.

What’s connectivism? George explains what’s new here:

Here’s a wordle of where we’re starting:

Here’s George’s 15-minute intro to how the course works. The environment includes participants’ individual blogs (tagged CCK08), The Daily (a once-a-day summary similar to Stephen’s OL Daily, Moodle for centralized discussion, Twitter feeds, online presentations via Illuminate every Wednesday, and moderated discussions every Friday via UStream.

While the event has only just begun, George and Stephen have already imparted a great deal about connected learning with the collection of tools and philosophy inherent in the design of this course.

A directive from the National Director of Intelligence says the mission has shifted from need to know to need to share.

In this informal interview, Defense Acquisition University’s Mark Oehlert describes how the CIA uses an internal wiki with thousands of articles, a YouTube-like video service, internal blogs, and social bookmarking to enrich (not hide) its findings. Moreover, the CIA now works more closely with its main client, Congress, by providing a context-rich stream of intelligence instead of a standalone “finished” report.

Decentralized Intelligence Agency

More intelligence

An organization’s learnscape is a mash-up of business needs, networks, learning, environmental change, internet values, web tech, and unlearning. (Click for larger image.)

Join me and some pals for a conversation about Enterprise Learning. (It’s a platform, not a program.)

Thursday, September 11, 2008. 10:30 Pacific, 1:30 Eastern; 17:30 GMT
Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 432-1601. Participant Access Code: 391096#
Hint: Save phone charges by using Skype to call in.

Thirty minutes of give and take. (Bring your issues.) Die-hards may keep the conversation going for a full hour.
Sessions are recorded. Invite your friends and colleagues to join us. When you arrive, mute your damn phone.
Reference page

Facebook is a runaway success but I’ve never been much of a fan. It struck me as streams of trivia. Another intrusion into my time for reflection on loftier issues. This post by JP Rangaswami opened my eyes as to how Facebook can improve learning in the enterprise.

In large measure, we learn our jobs by watching and copying how other people do theirs. We mimic.

Facebook and similar tools make it easier to watch what others are doing. As JP writes,

It could be as simple as: What does my boss do? Whom does she talk to? What are her surfing habits like? Whom does she treat as high priority in terms of communications received? What applications does she use? Which ones does she not use? When she has a particular Ghost to deal with, which particular Ghostbuster does she call?

What makes her tick. That’s what they want to understand, that’s what they want to learn from.

In the past, the corporate learning function attempted to lift important lessons out of the flow and offer them up in concentrated form. In a well-functioning learnscape, workers can tap directly into the flow itself. They can drink the bouillon rather than choke on a diet of bouillon cubes. Think of it as cognitive apprenticeship based on peering over your mentor’s shoulder.

This type of learning is not just about subordinate-to-boss and succession-plan related, it is also about newbie-to-old-hand, mentored-to-mentor. A picture of the activities and relationships and paths followed, a “let me show you” session, is worth a thousand “let me tell you” sessions.

More and more, knowledge management is going to be about reducing the cost of, and simplifying the process for, letting someone watch what you do. Nonintrusively. Time-shifted. Place-shifted. Searchable. Archivable. Retrievable.

That’s how we are going to create the right learning environments. I think Facebook has the tools to capture much of this in the nonintrusive time-shifted place-shifted shareable way. Let the patterns emerge. Share the patterns. Get inside people’s heads

Enterprise learnscape architects are opportunists. Perhaps “holistic” is a more polite way to put it. When you look at corporate learning from an ecological perspective, you take advantage of whatever works so long as it’s cost-effective. If tweaking the office lighting improves performance, I’m all for it. If something improves the learning capacity of individuals, that’s game, too. Which brings me to brains.

Fit brains learn better.

I just received the SharpBrains Fitness Newsletter from my pal Alvaro Fernandez. Alvaro is a former McKinsey consultant who helped turn around several major eLearning companies before founding his successful venture in cognitive health and fitness research.  SharpBrains  maintains a searchable index of 600+ articles on brain fitness and research.  A few relevant examples: 

Should Social-Emotional Learning Be Part of Academic Curriculum?: It is clear by now that our brains are more than cognitive machines. For example, emotions can either enhance or inhibit our ability to learn. Daniel Goleman explores the implications of “new studies that reveal how teaching kids to be emotionally and socially competent boost their academic achievement.” Brought to you in partnership with Greater Good Magazine.

Retain older workers beyond retirement: BusinessWeek covers a best practice in a topic of growing importance: how large companies, such as American Express, can retain older workers in productive ways beyond a set arbitrary retirement age. As Dr. Art Kramer told us recently, “as a society, it is a massive waste of talent not to ensure older adults remain active and productive.”

Exercising the body is exercising the mind: Dr. Adria Preda explains research conducted at Gage laboratory that supports the merits for physical exercise to be recognized as a form of brain exercise too.

What You Can do to Improve Memory (and Why It Deteriorates in Old Age): Is there anything we can do besides “exercise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?” Yes: focus, focus, focus, suggests Dr. Bill Klemm.

Where does the “Feeling of Knowing” comes from?: Dr. Ginger Campbell shares some insights from her recent interview with neurologist Robert Burton (author of On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not). “While it might be true that one can learn to become more aware of the emotional signals coming from one’s body, Dr. Burton argues that “gut feelings” or intuition should not be assumed to be true without testing.”

Alvaro will be speaking at Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovation in mid-November. That’s the free, online, weeklong, alternative event on the future of learning that’s being sponsored by George Siemens, Tony Karrer, and Internet Time Group. 

New structures and spaces of learning: The systemic impact of connective knowledge, connectivism, and networked learning

While this brilliant paper from George Siemens deals with schools and universities, it applies equally well to corporate learnscaping. First we create our habits (in this case, classrooms), and then our habits shape us. Here are a few choice morsels.

Limitless dimensions of learning

In addition to formal education, learning occurs through games and simulations, mentoring and apprenticing, performance support at the point of a learning need, self-learning that arises through critical and creative thinking, communities of practice and personal learning networks, as well as the many informal learning situations that arise through conferences, reading, volunteering, and hobbies. A future model of learning must embrace the broad-spectrum of learning situations and recognizes the value of different modes of cognitive and social development that arise outside of institutional structures.

Moving away from hierarchy and classrooms

…a classroom is a physically-bounded space that, again, by its design, suggests a certain view of learning. Learning is seen as bounded, structured, managed by a single expert (the teacher), and occurring within the confines of a small group of peers. In contrast, the internet can be seen as an ecology of learning with different affordances. For example, the internet, with its emphasis on openness and diversity, challenges the classroom conception of authority and expertise. The structured approach of information filtered in advance, by the educator, and presented in a fairly coherent form defines classrooms. In contrast, the internet is a hub of creative chaos. Educationally, the challenge is one of defining the type of ecology that will permit the formation of the broadest array of networks and communities to address the desired learning tasks and outcomes. The concern is not with structure itself, but rather with the assumption that structure is required across all spaces of learning. If ecologies are the spaces of learning, then networks are the structures of learning. Networks do not occur in a vacuum. They arise in a space that both supports and confines their creation.

If you’re not familiar with George’s work on connectivism, and you should be, here it is in a nutshell:

The centrality of networks as an organizing scheme is also reflected in education, teaching, and learning (Siemens, 2006) under the concept of connectivism. Connectivism is essentially the assertion that knowledge is networked and distributed, and the act of learning is the creation and navigation of networks. The distributed nature of knowledge and the growing complexification of all aspects of society require increased utilization of technology to assist our ability to stay current, manage information abundance, and solve highly complex problems.

Concluding thoughts

Education is not an end in itself. Education will continue to develop as the central element in preparing individuals and societies to participate in the information and knowledge age. The critical challenges facing humanity are many. A highly connected and well educated populace appears to hold the greatest prospect for meeting these challenges.

Education is concerned with the act of becoming. As with classical Greek educational objectives, learning assists individuals in coming to understand the world, to contemplate worthy and significant ideas and concepts, or, as conceived in a liberal arts education, learning is the process of coming to understand the world broadly and from many perspectives in order to see one’s role in advancing the needs related to ethics and humanity. While this need has been well-served by traditional education, the forces of technological change, new opportunities to create and share information, and increased ability for interact with peers globally require a new model based on networks and ecologies. The current age should be one of throwing open doors of learning to bring as many potential contributors to our future as possible.

Nancy White has posted a wonderful summary of the way learning is changing in the world. Co-authored with Josien Kapma, the article demystifies communities of practice.

Social interaction provides the context for learning. Our learning is not mandated, it is voluntary…. We participate because we can and we want to improve our practice and we want to produce value for our community. With today’s technologies, we have both global potential and impact. We can tap into a broader set of skills, work with a wider set of perspectives and really work with a unique edge that is valued by ourselves and our organizations.

Nancy and Josien break out six success factors. We’ve been drinking the same KoolAid, for these are major themes of what I call Learnscape Architecture.

From training and classes to communities and personal learning

Our organizational members and employees can no longer be sufficiently served by formalized internal training. The personal background and learning styles of employees are diverse, as are their job-contexts. This determines what and how people learn. More critically, much of what needs to be learned is ever-changing. It is moving faster than we can create structured learning opportunities. While traditional training methods are still useful for repeatable and repetitive tasks (i.e. learning a new software program, manufacturing, safety procedures) many training needs are about evolving practices such as marketing using social media, cross-organizational collaboration or responding to emerging markets. Informal and voluntary learning becomes a key strategy to move faster than we can accommodate with formally constructed training initiatives.
From expert-led to peer-driven social learning

…A new generation of Internet based tools (often called ‘web.2.0′ or ’social networking’) allow individuals to build a unique online presence and profile including what they know; and, they facilitate connections between individual users, allowing each user to build a personal network around a knowledge area. People can find, trace and track others who share the same interest, even if it is very specific, creating a group of knowledgeable peers, and learn with them. They don’t have to wait for the expert.

The millennial generation has far less interest in authority or being “taught.” They learn with and from each others. As HR managers prepare for the future, training efforts must respond to this culture shift. Instead of connecting employees with a small defined set of experts, you help them tap into networks of expertise.
From formal associations to communities and loose networks

People flock together without the need for a mediating organisation. Instead of formal “expert” associations, loose “peer” networks are emerging. The resulting groups can be highly effective learning opportunities. We are used to team collaboration, communities and networks can add extra ‘layers’ to collaboration. Millions of people are gaining experience with these “new ways of learning”, but mostly in the hobby spheres, like sharing music or tips on travel. A great potential for more job-related, productive uses is waiting to be exploited.
From behind the firewall to beyond the firewall

The dramatic drop of costs of ICT (server space, memory, user hardware, bandwidth etc), combined with improved access and usability have transformed information scarcity to information overload. Control over sources of information or channels of communication is no longer the privilege of few. Before, the boss signed letters and the PR department made sure all corporate communications were checked for quality. Now organizations have to deal with the fact that they can no longer keep track of, let alone control all the communications flowing out of the organization. Maybe it doesn’t matter all that much, as what others say or write about the organization is at least as, if not more, important than formal company messages. In this new reality, not secrecy and walls, but transparency, openness, and compatibility with others, are determinants for success. This counts for learning and talent management as well. As people flow in and out of jobs and organizations; they form their personal networks and portfolio (which often span multiple organizations) along the way. The professional and personal, formal and informal increasingly get intertwined. Recognizing the role of these other communities and networks is a prerequisite for organizational vigor. Ignore them, and your talent will either be limited, or gone.

Addressing broader motivations

People’s motivations to contribute go beyond a paycheck or a demand from the boss. Identity and relevance of the job, feeling they are making a useful contribution as well as working on personal development and social capital, are important. You can’t control people; instead you can empower them. Personal motivation is also a prerequisite for innovation — one organization alone and classic knowledge transfer in itself are no longer sufficient for sustainable innovation in an ever more complex and interdependent world. Innovation requires connections and stimulation beyond the people in our organizations. So tapping into the motivations of employees to participate in the larger world is something else to consider.

From the Big Mouth to the Big Ear

With the advent of Web 2.0 the model for communication has been turned upside down. The “former audience” is now just as much a broadcaster as any large organization. The incredible abundance of information and communication has two effects. First, it created an attention scarcity and media fragmentation. Compared to before, our messages need to be very relevant or audiences filter them out. So instead of talking louder to unfocused audiences, now organizations need to engage in meaningful dialogue with relevant partners. Second, it created an immense pool of searchable communications among others. This buzzing universe of linked sites and blogs is an incredibly rich source of organizational information and learning… if we know how to listen. Organizations need to listen to conversations about them, niches or needs they can fill, feedback and suggestions for improving what they do. It is about tagging and remixing and mapping the network of relationships, looking for where to respond, and where to catalyze action. It is a little bit like listening to the universe.

These tasks can’t be done by an individual. They require the diverse “ears” of communities, the wider net of networks, seeking to make connections between people that advance our organization’s learning and goals. If all your employees are part of the Big Ear, you are ahead.

I really, really, really want to read the forthcoming book on communities of practice that Nancy, John Smith, and Etienne Wenger have been writing for the past four and a half years. Rumor has it that it’s coming soon.

Today a small group of us conversed about the concept of the un-book.

The un-book attempts to overcome some of the limitations of traditional books: long lead time, content frozen in time, author cannot learn from audience, and more. Here’s a recording of the session,

Slideshare presentation

Back channel Skype discussion

Recording of conversion: wav, m4a