Professional Development – Page 28 – Whose Education Is It Anyway?

“No more sitting on the fence” (Learning Technologies 2013 Summer Forum)

It was great to hear this, just a shame it was from a Learning Management System (LMS) vendor talking specifically about Tin Can. However, it was my take away message from the recent Learning Technologies 2013 Summer Forum (LTSF). The statement acts as something of a wakeup call; Learning and Development departments need to deliver, not just responding to fads but offering a joined up approach. A Learning Management System that offers holistic support is, realistically, probably the easiest way to structure that support.

The challenge in my eyes, however, is if a LMS remains realistic. In many ways they have evolved to the point where they cross over with many other systems, not least the near universal SharePoint. Their USP remains testing/SCORM tracking and as such a stripped down basic LMS might work better than one which supports all the possibilities now discussed at events like LTSF. If you are going beyond this then you need a joined up approach between L&D, Knowledge Management, competitor intelligence and other teams for:

Internal communication,
Sharing resources
Learning

With this in place professionals’ (in whatever company) know where sharing is recommended (although they’ll of course still use Twitter), how to collaborate, where to access relevant learning (preferably embedded with the relevant work tools) and have a clear understanding of how their career can progress both within their current organization or elsewhere.

Fad – A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.

L&D now have tools to deliver what a business needs by combining pieces of the puzzle so they are no longer seen as fads. Indeed the LTSF presentation I attended from MindClick outlined some of the ways an LMS can be used for 1-2-1 support (the importance of which has been recognized by Bloom and others) at a distance, including via personal development plans, BYOD and badges (which in isolation could be seen as fads). One way for your new LMS to not be seen as impractical is to make money and the SAAS LMS model is increasingly being sold as one to enable course sales via the extended enterprise. This could be a fundamental shift for some L&D departments from pure internal support and, arguably, help drive up quality as a result.

The LTSF was dominated by a number of topics/tools for me:

1) Tin Can/The Experience API/xAPI

2) (Open) Badges

3) (Learning) Analytics

4) Mobile (Learning/Delivery/Authoring)

5) Social (Learning/Collaboration)

6) 70/20/10

7) Personalization (development plans/personalized curriculums)

8) LMS/Portal developments

9) eLearning

So, when is a fad not a fad? Perhaps items 8 and 9 on this list can now be seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary but the others are still gaining slow adoption. The struggle for mobile adoption picked up by Andrew Jackson’s article (The shortest lived technology fad ever?) over on TrainingZone. He also points out that eLearning is still revolutionary for many businesses which, whilst keeping some e-learning companies and consultants going, is – I would say – just a little depressing really in 2013.

I would agree that mobile was a fad but I would say it must now be considered as part of the learning designers’ toolkit, just as it is for marketers and other industries. I would effectively consider 3-9 ‘traditional’ tools and 1-2 simply new ways of doing old things. Ultimately the speed of ‘new’ technologies has changed and working them into a learning model should not be as hard as many people at such events seem to feel they are. That said, they are not always as easy to adopt as the vendors would like to suggest but that is technical adoption rather than the enthusiasm of working something into your learning approach. Enthusiasm, vision and a willingness to try things do not really need to be restricted by budgets either. It was clear from a number of LTSF stalls that ‘phase 1’ deployments are something vendors are willing to support to prove concepts locally.

Yes, as Andrew says, we shouldn’t get hung up on the technology but neither should we discount the potential (especially of Tin Can) to transform learning and development. Both 1 & 2 potentially open us all up to the world and make us think about our skills development in new ways, which can only be a good thing in my opinion (taking into account certain risks of course). That said, LMS tracking, certifications and other tools did some of this in the past. The outstanding question at LTSF seemed to be if capturing experiences should be automatic via Tin Can or rely on self certification. I can see a value in a learning log of the (noun>verb>object) statements but reflection is also needed somewhere in terms of goal setting, and understanding your own learning. I can see TC and Badges reinvigorating the personal web space and ePortfolio debate (or at least pushing LinkedIn into full adoption).

I think what Andrew tries to suggest is that, with mobile, we have simply responded to new devices, fine, but I would like to think that that response is about acknowledging issues such as flash vs. html5, app vs. browser, form factors, location of learner, etc. it should have never been about tablet vs. phone vs. laptop vs. desktop per se. Similarly Epic’s talk at LTSF correctly identified that the Experience API (aka Tin Can) is useful in what it can mean for analytics, such as assessing the impact of learning, and thinking differently about the courses rather than about the development of a Learning Record Store for the sake of the learning logs alone. KnowledgeAdvisors hinted at the potential of combining MetricsThatMatter data sets with performance data to change how L&D operates. This includes making use of data to drive “performance based vendor management”, such as paying eLearning vendors only a percentage of their bills if their materials fail to improve workers’ performance.

Now, I appreciate my main interest is in Learning Technologies but many people seemed new to Tin Can and Badges. That so many people did not seem to comprehend these is worrying and indicative that, like with mobile, we face years of presentations, white papers, etc that simply rehash arguments. Maybe I have a ‘start-up mentality’ but I would rather see people presenting on early adoption failures than introductory presentations. I hope this is what we see at Learning Technologies in January but I will not hold my breath. Even better will be successful coming together of the two with experiences (captured via Tin Can) driving badge creation. Another interesting piece will be to see the development and interaction of “apps everywhere” (as NetDimensions called them) with learning record stores and/or LMSs. However, this is potentially not too different to offline LMS access that NetDimensions, and others, have supported via USB drive LMS systems.

The problem may be that for L&D to succeed in implementing what appears to be an optimized learning strategy it would need to be all encompassing of an organisation. People will only socially collaborate and ‘surface’ informal learning in a tool if it is a tool they have to use or, unlikely, want to. Thus, new ‘social learning’ tools at LTSF do not fill me with confidence – if someone is already using SharePoint, Yammer or similar has L&D not got to leverage that? It would seem nigh on impossible to work in a light weight LMS/social tool such as Svelte Social (new to me I think at LTSF) if you have other tools in place. NetDimensions, whose presenter used the “fence” idea, did a good job in explaining if the LMS can fit in as the social tool or not by saying organisation need to decide what system will be the “social bedrock of their organization”. Here I would argue culture comes in as, say, a university has an advantage that the ‘place of work’ will be the VLE/LMS so the university’s staff can be encouraged to use that same tool for their own development as it is already the “bedrock” for their daily work. It is more difficult in a corporate context but the big tools, like Salesforce, have acknowledged it by working social into their own tools.

I came away from the main Learning Technologies event earlier in the year feeling somewhat underwhelmed. The question now seems to be, as vendors are making the jump into Tin Can and other solutions, can Learning and Development departments use these appropriately to meet business needs? Simply adding on bells and whistles to an existing, monolithic LMS doesn’t seem to be an option to me. Instead, organizations as a whole need to consider if L&D professionals in their organization really are just about running/building courses (as NetDimensions pointed out L&D and LMSs in some organisations are simply for compliance) or if they are true partners in making organizations “collectively smarter”.

For the record these are the talks I attended:

1) The use of Tin Can and Open Badges for learning programmes (EPIC)

2) Meeting learning objectives with Totara LMS (MindClick)

3) How to build a business case for formalization of learning analytics (KnowledgeAdvisors – largely the same as these slides)

4) What you need to know about portals (Redware)

5) LMS – Evolution or extinction? (NetDimensions – seemingly a follow up to this article)

6) Apps and video communications – top 5 things you need to know (Dreamtek)

CILIP rebranding and professional futures

Things have moved on quickly since I first drafted bits of this post (I’ve been away from home) but its still useful for my own reflections on what is happening…

Back at the start of the year there were a number of events which considered the future of the ‘information profession’. I had planned to blog my thoughts on the topic at the time but did not get around to it. However, the recent CILIP survey related to a proposed re-branding and the resulting outrage/discussion got me thinking about it again.

Firstly, some personal background:

When I first joined a (law sector) information team the suggestion was largely that CILIP would be irrelevant to me. When I completed my MA, the lecturers were far more positive about the organization, the message I took away was very much “you get out what you put in”. As a result, once I was in a ‘professional’ post, I was keen to get involved and volunteered for the local professional development group’s committee. That committee was not short of members so I eventually joined the local branch committee instead. After a couple of years I then stepped down as I could not commit the time due to starting an MSc course. When on the committee I performed the “communications officer” role and can testify to problems with the current CILIP brand, website, typeface, etc from that role in setting up new web pages, Twitter feeds, etc.

Therefore, within a relatively short space of time, I had gone from graduate post, to postgrad student, to active member and through to completing another course and being a lurker. Partly due to my work, the changing workplace and that second postgrad course I now have a quite complex work profile, as mentioned in previous posts CILIP (even though it is an umbrella organization aiming to cover a wide array of roles) is only one of a number of organizations that relate to my professional identify.

Thoughts on professional futures and CILIP’s rebranding:

The CILIP president’s blog post on the rebrand hints at some major issues with the organization:

One of my responsibilities as CILIP President is to act as a conduit between members and CILIP Council and senior staff…in the interests of transparency that the first I knew of the contents of the survey was when it was presented to me last Friday afternoon

A lack of harmony between members, staff and the complex setup of groups, branches and council seems to foster a lack of genuine collaboration within the organization. The second point, on the President not having seen the survey in advance, seems particularly odd and indicative in that a person who holds that position is not involved from the offset. Yet that would be wrong too, CILIP should be as strong as its members – not offering them a longer list of suggestions for something as important as the organization’s name seems odd at best and against the membership at worst. The one thing I do hope for is that any new tagline recognizes what the organization represents “members of the information community” not representing “for the information community”. Whilst advocacy is a key part of CILIP’s role it should not be seen as distinct from its members/staff. I know there are legacy issues about not being a trade union but the gap between CILIP HQ and members threatens the organization, in my opinion, more than downsizing in public libraries, off-shoring in corporate libraries, Higher Education budget cuts or any other challenge.

The President’s blog post later mentions that the current governance review will hopefully resolve some of these issues. However, I don’t see why the idea of the re-brand has had to come so out of the blue. Yes, the world and the CILIP organization are changing, yes the CILIP brand has always been questionable and, yes, it will continue to be so. My main concern really is that, as a professional organization, crowd sourcing possible names would have been just one example of making it more democratic, as the organization should be, than a survey on suggested names. Although it is important to point out that the difference between ‘survey’ and ‘vote’/’election’ seems to be lost of some members.

So, overall, I’m not against a rebrand but I do not think it is the correct time economically (the £35,000 budget being at least 180 members annual fees if my lazy maths is correct) and it certainly has not been handled in the correct way even though there are not a lack of good examples in related sectors. JISC, for example, has a lot of shared interests but whilst it has improved itself they have been a mix of internal improvements (better website, etc), crowd sourcing (which services could be stopped) and funder/owner led (HEFCE changes, etc). JISC has not always done this perfectly, but better than CILIP seem to have managed at least, and JISC was/is a more complex beast. CIPD, for example, has a very clear voice and has its opinions voiced through the media, by those in positions agreed with the membership, more efficiently than CILIP seems to manage.

What for professional futures? The point which has concerned many is that the survey’s proposed names all drop the ‘library’ word with “information” staying or both replaced by “knowledge”. This seems a mistake, surely any future proofing of the, once, ‘Library Association’ brand has to maintain the L word or it loses its relevance/grounding? Also the suggested names were awful and I did comment to this effect on the survey before the Twitterati backlash – ‘The Knowledge People’ sounds like a recruitment agency, ‘Information UK’ like a government agency or freedom of information watchdog [apologies if I’ve got those names wrong]. The President acknowledges this so, again, why bother with the survey step before crowdsourcing? This said, the term ‘library’ is far from popular, as pointed out by the President. Indeed at the CLSIG event earlier in the year an information scientist made it clear in the Q&A they didn’t feel associated with CILIP and disappointed that a ‘future of the profession’ evening was a talk about CILIP’s future (and I am pretty sure Francis did not mention a rebrand). There remain questions here over the original foundation (i.e. it wasn’t just the Library Association) and as such the original purpose of CILIP is still being questioned, as such it doesn’t fill you with any confidence that a rebranded CILIP will be any better than the current.

Back a few months (around the same time as the CLSIG event) and AIIM was running a webinar to report that its members had completed surveys saying they chose a preference for the title “Information Professional”. Now this is ‘CILIPs territory’ so to speak and you could well say that with today’s specializations the ‘library’ component is all that keeps CILIP unique from AIIM, BCS, etc. Indeed there was an interesting suggestion in the AIIM session that effectively IT professionals want a rebrand and that rebrand is some BCS/CILIP hybrid in terms of UK organizations. Personally I fear that, in the globalized workplace, CILIP should be branching out to the international groups it already has relations with or risk losing relevance for those within the changing workplace.

Finally, for now at least, is the point about CILIP dropping the ‘chartered’ tag. I suggested in the survey that this is a clear mistake, it is the one thing which keeps an organization above an informal learning and networking organization. Any dropping of this would, I fear, suggests a deprofessionalization. If you deprofessionalize CILIP then there is far less value in it is an umbrella organization and there would be fewer reasons for keeping the expense of the parent organization and not simply branching off the special interest groups into their own organizations.

Overall, it is difficult to reposition an organization, especially one that arguably is not needed, but considering the predictable feedback it is odd that the exercise has been conducted in such a way. There is also a risk of underplaying the public’s understanding of the ‘librarian’ role – I hold that title in my job title, partly because my employer still associates it with a certain skill set. ‘Information professional’ may be a professionals’ identity but I would doubt it holds such a sway. Ultimately the answer may be for CILIP to be far less inward looking in preparing rebrands and future advocacy and instead ask the likes of the BBC and major employers what make sense to them. This would be a sensible suggestion to other groups too, for example, and to show I’m not just picking on information professionals, ‘Instructional Designers’ disagree over their identity too.

A Future For CILIP?

One thing that does seem to be emerging from this is a re-invigoration of CILIP as the training/accreditation body – their own website release stresses some of the things in the pipeline:

some new offers have been launched, including the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base and others will follow – such as a new qualifications scheme, new accreditation of courses and a new virtual learning environment on a refreshed website.

This might work provided the organization recognizes the potential for members, and their employers, to influence the agenda and the PKSB, training, etc. keeps up with change.

Another key item, for me, would be to move Umbrella from its biannual setup to something different. A free event with paid for sections would be best – especially considering the success of CIPD, Learning and Skills, etc. in this regard.

Some more pointless stats

Following on from the dubious numbers in my Google Reader post, Slideshare have recently been kind enough to hint at what is possible via their pay plans by emailing me (on April 29th) stats on views of my presentations:

Questionmark vs Blackboard for online tests – 778 views
Whose education is it anyway? – Blackboard UK User Group 2010 – 566 views
Supporting the transition from the physical to the virtual classroom – 480 views
Using Blackboard for Pre-Entry Diagnostic Testing – 333 views
ALT-c 2011: Breaking the ice, an instructional design approach for institutional growth – 252 views

These basics stats are also available via the ‘My Uploads’ section – my most viewed item being Pdp: Its Role And Implementation In The Law Curriculum as of today (926 views).

In total my 7 Slideshares have been viewed 3503 times (as of May 10th).

An issue here is how Slideshare deals with sites such as docs.hut effectively copying the resource. Therefore, whilst there is some use in such statistics and analytics there is little value without some narrative from the users engaging with them, unfortunately a lack of comments means this is tricky to say the least. Slideshare do offer some further functionality but there are clearly issues here – for example the best interaction around a presentation I have had is perhaps the ALT-c 2011 one above whilst its numbers in terms of views are not great.

When LinkedIn recently took Slideshare content and worked it directly into your profile I removed the presentations, whilst I am happy for these to be shared they are very much of their time and I would not necessarily recommend them as examples of my work. I see Slideshare as something of a historic evidence archive of my development rather than examples of the kind of work I would produce today, another example where it is useful to keep different social and web tools separate for different use cases.

Cheerio Google Reader

So I’ve taken the opportunity of a long holiday weekend to jump ship from Google Reader.

My final solution has been to move:

most audio subscriptions to iTunes.
other RSS to The Old Reader – this seems fine so far, a little annoying that imports come in as unread but otherwise not too bad. The mobile version (on my Windows 8 phone) seems good enough.

For the record, my Reader stats were:

1682 subscriptions (The Old Reader said it imported 819 so I’m hoping that is ignoring dead ones rather than losing any)
42 tags/folders
Over the last 30 days I had read 629 items, clicked 54 items, starred 0 items, and emailed 12 items.
Since April 12, 2007 I had “read” a total of 178,020 items
8 starred items:

Revisiting some old notes

I am something of a hoarder – I tend to keep things and this includes materials from old courses. As you would probably expect, I rarely look at these. However, I recently decided to have a look at some old notes I found in one of my bags (I think I put them there to read on a train but never did).

I think looking back at the notes we make is a very useful experience in reflecting on our personal development, for example, it often shows when/how I was first introduced to a term or acronym and can be viewed in comparison to current practice to reflect on professional development.

Quotes from texts also help remind us of fundamental knowledge and perhaps where we are not doing what we should!

From these particular notes, mainly on instructional design and online learning, some bits jumped out:

The role of the professor is “master-guide” (Hype Versus Reality on Campus: Why e-Learning Isn’t Likely to Replace a Professor. Any Time Soon, by Brent G. Wilson and Lee Christopher) – useful in the MOOC debate.
Knowledge management is “how groups of people make themselves collectively smarter”, i.e. like training but not for the individual, in this instance knowledge is “a capacity to act” so KM is helping people make better decisions (Knowledge Management: From the Graveyard of Good Ideas, by William Horton)

Above are from the The e-learning handbook : past promises, present challenges / Saul Carliner and Patti Shank, editors.

“There are seven good reasons why portfolio-building is helpful:

as a tool for self development;
to asses prior learning;
to gain accreditation;
to share good practice;
to evaluate training;
to enhance performance;
to change a culture.”

The above is from Warren Redman in 1994 (Portfolios for Development: A Guide for Trainers and Managers) but these points remain fundamental. The arguments for and against ePortfolios must always remember these essential items.

Redman also made the following points which could easily come out of a L&D article of 2013: “increasingly there is a recognition that the key attributes needed by people in a constantly changing work environment are:

flexibility;
self-motivation;
communication skills; and
a willingness and ability to develop new skills”.

In looking back at our professional roots, such as these old notes (I think I made these about five years ago) we recognize the value in not repeating the mistakes of the past and also helps us remember that ‘new’ ideas are often not really new at all. One advantage of the academic route into a profession is that, via literature reviews and other approaches, you can be familiar with historic projects and theory/practice development. One fear in a less-university led world would be that historic knowledge is lost to information overload and we fail to build on the practice of the past.