Author: iangardnergb

My name is Ian Gardner and I am interested in various topics that can be seen as related to learning, technology and information. To see what I am reading elsewhere, follow me on The Old Reader (I.gardner.gb) or LinkedIn.

Quick thoughts on #BETT2014 based on my previous expectations post…

Sun rises above ExCeL and dockers statue
The sun rises on BETT 2014
Followup to my last post

What I will see/hear:

the economy’s improvements not being passed through to learning/education budgets

— yep, ‘more with less’ was still used a few times in sessions I attended. In the tradeshow there were a few ‘only costs as much as 3 iPads’ type comments, iPads seem to be becoming the new pint of beer.

even more BYOD over machine provision (with backlash from controlled/safe environment providers)

— somewhere in between. Schools clearly want to support devices but the suggestion in most cases seems to be provision via 1-2-1 type initiatives. Learner-owned devices will be a bigger deal at LT than BETT.

more on HTML5/adaptive design, but with some vendors still pushing Flash items (including old off-the-shelf libraries which are not getting refreshed very quickly)

— apps were the major thing at BETT, the announcements around responsive elearning will be a big trend at LT.

learning by individuals circumnavigating their organizations’ expectations and limitations (via PLNs, MOOCs, informal over formal, etc) whilst others avoid learning altogether

— yes, to an extent, be it extra support for high achievers in schools or more recognition of 70/20/10 in the workplace.

post-recession leadership crisis, risk of ‘The West’ losing out top-end talent jobs to the markets they have outsourced the manual work to previously (alongside concerns that India, Brazil and others are not becoming the sources of skilled labor that it had been presumed they would)

— a lot of stalls were clearly trying to react to changes in the curriculum, particularly around IT and the shift in thinking about what skills people will need in the future (not ‘zeppelin’ tech as Gove’s speech referenced).  To me, it also seemed like less European (especially Nordic) and more Asian stalls than last year.

more about academies (in school and workplace settings) and a disconnect between their supposed improvements in quality versus economies of scale and other loses

— Corporate Universities still seem to be the preferred option to try and form better L&D organizations (but with problems), talk of Free Schools and academies seemed fairly moot.

infographics, video, diagrams and other visuals to replace boring old text – oh it is so 16th century 😉

— video and animation are always well represented at BETT. The Workplace Learning stream covered visuals over text in one session. Not much on infographics, surprisingly.

some cool stuff with 3D printers in subjects such as Physics and Design and Technology.

— yep, Gove even called out 3D printers for particular praise in his speech and has promised the ministerial equivalent of a big bucket of cash so schools can have one; the problem, no doubt, will be ensuring they are actually used productively.

Learning Record Stores vs Learning Management Systems (the latter being dead unless it is at the core of the organization’s way of operating).

— schools face an ongoing challenge in selecting between multiple systems vs one system that might not be best of breed (for example, running everything including learning via SharePoint but missing out on some social learning tools, etc). This isn’t too different to workplaces who need learning embedded in teams’ “workflows” but when their work is based around tools it is tricky (Salesforce being one exception).

What I will not see/hear:

much in the way of evidence-based selling

— did see some to be fair, but its too often “look at what this person is doing” rather than the, to me more sensible, Problem > Solution > Example approach.

evidence of MOOCs being used to formally break organizational silos (both on the provider and learner side)

— some central resources such as JANET video conferencing offer the opportunities the break silos but organizations appear to be still too insular.

a convincing argument that Tin Can, Learning Record Stores and Badges can come together in a automated enough way to avoid people ignoring them (ala ePortfolios).

— nope, sorry.  I was correct to think it is still too early – one of the Workplace Learning sessions even called Tin Can out as not being the answer to L&D’s problems.

Thoughts ahead of the January conference season

A brief post to put down what I am expecting from BETT (I will be attending over the next two days) and Learning Technologies (which I will hopefully be able to go to at least some of the free exhibition).

What I will see/hear:

  • the economy’s improvements not being passed through to learning/education budgets
  • even more BYOD over machine provision (with backlash from controlled/safe environment providers)
  • more on HTML5/adaptive design, but with some vendors still pushing Flash items (including old off-the-shelf libraries which are not getting refreshed very quickly)
  • learning by individuals circumnavigating their organizations’ expectations and limitations (via PLNs, MOOCs, informal over formal, etc) whilst others avoid learning altogether
  • post-recession leadership crisis, risk of ‘The West’ losing out top-end talent jobs to the markets they have outsourced the manual work to previously (alongside concerns that India, Brazil and others are not becoming the sources of skilled labor that it had been presumed they would)
  • more about academies (in school and workplace settings) and a disconnect between their supposed improvements in quality versus economies of scale and other loses
  • infographics, video, diagrams and other visuals to replace boring old text – oh it is so 16th century 😉
  • some cool stuff with 3D printers in subjects such as Physics and Design and Technology.
  • Learning Record Stores vs Learning Management Systems (the latter being dead unless it is at the core of the organization’s way of operating).

 What I will not see/hear:

  • much in the way of evidence-based selling
  • evidence of MOOCs being used to formally break organizational silos (both on the provider and learner side)
  • a convincing argument that Tin Can, Learning Record Stores and Badges can come together in a automated enough way to avoid people ignoring them (ala ePortfolios).

Why we all need a wall

This week I have overheard a few comments about social media, mostly on trains, one was something like:

  • “I have twitter but I don’t do it”

and another:

  • “it is just another place and thing for people to check so nobody will use it”.

Both comments immediately strike me with fear.  Can expanding your own perspective really be seen as a chore and something you can not be bothered to do?  Sure, I am not the most active poster on Twitter but I recognize the value.  In the past I have done basic training on the value of social media for people, I suspect the people I heard above need such training!  Indeed, if the second person is talking the truth for their organization, perhaps it is a bigger problem that I suspected.

This all made me think back to my Christmas movie marathon, which included watching Shirley Valentine for about the first time in 15 years. As at the start of this clip, Shirley talks to her kitchen wall to consider the failings of her life.  This is, of course, a fairly common trait in movies via diaries (Bridget Jones/Twilight) and, more recently, blogs.  Now I suspect that something the people I overheard on the train miss the point of is that whilst social media is what you want it to be but should not be dismissed out of hand.  To me, it is used to learn about land from the world, I also know plenty of people who use it (well mostly Facebook) to effectively log their lives.  Fine, so be it.  If only one person interacts with each posting you have created something beyond what Shirley, Bridget or Bella had managed.

Reflecting on my GOSHLIC post

I have struggled with event related posts in the past, for example, my old blog was largely made up of blow-by-blow webinar accounts with little commentary.  However, I do believe in the value of disseminating the outcomes of attending events (especially when you are doing it ‘on the clock’).  The only time this ever led to a problem was when some ex-colleagues queried the logic of sending me to an international conference at a time of cutbacks – I took this as a sign to encourage a push for more transparency over internal budgets, priorities and communication.

In my current role, I have setup an in-house wiki for all members of the L&D community in my part of the business to feed back on external events and training.  As a result of this, I now have a clear place for writing outcomes aimed at my colleagues/organization.

This has led me to think about how best to write my event reports…inspired by the audience/context/content paradigm of LINE’s presentation at GOSHLIC2013 I wrote that post in four parts:

  1. “Background” (to set the context of the event)
  2. What was “new to me” (content of most value for this blog when I come back to review it for my own development – the primary audience being myself but also anyone else who comes here)
  3. “For us” (a section exclusively for the in-house wiki as a summary of major outcomes – internal L&D audience)
  4. “Longer narrative/explanation of the day’s sessions” (full details of events for anyone who happens to want to read it or has their interest piqued by 2/3).

This seemed to work okay for the first try with GOSHLIC:

Don’s tweet leading to one of the busiest days of this blog’s life which, combined with the very popular LinkedIn post, has seen a lot more traffic come this way than normal.

For anyone who has subscribed to the RSS feed as a result, thank you and do let me know what you think of the event report approach.

More on content curation for learning

Considering the current interest in content curation, as mentioned in posts including the GOSH event report, it was great to see a Learning Solutions article attempt to clarify what this means for instructional design.

I personally have a real interest in curation as my background (in terms of my MA and MSc at least) straddles the value of information (re)sources and learning design.  Indeed if you look at it from a HE perspective, content curation is not really new, it is about the valuable resources which support and enhance any learning from colleagues and/or experts.  The article points out that designers already do sift through source materials in other contexts too.

Therefore, why is ‘curation’ now becoming such a big issue in workplace learning and development?  I would suggest it comes from a number of factors, including:

  1. L&D departments realizing they can not ‘do it all’ – this is a response to the information revolution and a delayed response to the ‘1990 challenge’ outlined at that GOSH event.
  2. A late realization of the capabilities of Learning Management Systems to deliver resources and support communication/collaboration, not just SCORM-packages.  This change being partly fueled by the move of LMS systems for ‘training’ beginning to use/include the features previously more common in ‘education’.  Most noticeably, Moodle has spread into the in-house training sector (either vanilla or as Totara – partly helped by the cloud) as well as a realization of the possibilities via the functionality of SharePoint and other tools.  The Learning Solution article correctly identifies this as moving away from the ‘single-learning-event’ training model.
  3. Democratization of digital production.  Unfortunately, training providers got hung up on the ‘rapid’ development of SCORM packages a few years back rather than looking at the wider ecosystem.  This has in many cases, I would argue, led to a loss of control over related issues such as tacit knowledge management and social learning as well as some misconceptions.  Unfortunately, the Learning Solutions article echoes one of these misconceptions by arguing that ‘lower production values’ means low quality of learning.  It clearly does not, and if your learners argue they can not learn from something because it does not look nice then you are failing to sell them the learning’s purpose.

Bar my criticism in the above point 3, I would say the article highlights a useful way forward for many training providers in 2014 – the key message being to learn to consider a joined-up curriculum rather than silos of those ‘single-learning-events’.  What else could be done?  Below are some tactics which I have not seen much comment about:

  1. Leverage the sources of content curation directly from the SMEs – browser bookmarks, links currently hidden away on team sites, books in their offices, etc.
  2. Leverage the sources of current awareness – aggregate lists of recommended reading (email subscriptions, RSS reader exports) from SMEs and the training’s audience.

And if we consider what is happening in HE and elsewhere I might suggest three other bits of work for L&D in 2014:

  1. L&D professionals as the organizational ‘guinea pigs’ – spend time test driving MOOCs and other resources prior to recommending to their audiences.
  2. Audio/visual solutions – iTunesU type in-house solutions, Mediacore, etc.  I know a lot of organizations will have this already but I doubt many fully allow for upload/download flexibility across device and with appropriate curation tools (commenting, ratings, categories, etc).
  3. Data and semantics – many of the opportunities of ‘curation’ emerged from Web 2 (wikis, social media, etc).  This video does a good job of summarizing that data, analytics, semantics, etc will bring the next set of opportunities.