Comments on: All or nothing

By: x28’s eLearn-Blog » Vielfalt

x28’s eLearn-Blog » Vielfalt — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:04:21 +0000

[...] Dabei erinnern die vielen Dimensionen an Jay Cross’ (stark kritisiertes) Mischpult, aber in Basel wird nicht versucht, ein für alle gültiges optimales Mix fest einzustellen, sondern durch Variation die Vielfalt zu berücksichtigen, die m. E. ja auch in den verschiedenen Lernertypen besteht, [...]

By: Jay Cross

Jay Cross — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:46:18 +0000

Folks, I am enjoying and learning from this conversation. I am particularly pleased that the dialog has gone intercontinental. But I would like to suggest a slight redirection. Please bear in mind that my mixer is a metaphor. I didn't mean to imply that someone in the studio is making all the choices; let's leave politics out of it. Nor did I suggest that the sliders are independent of one another; the best music results from a little of this or a little of that. The mixer analogy was intended to help explain that informal and formal learning are not separate things, but rather, the outcome of many characteristics. That's why this gets complicated. I like Guy's observation that informal and formal are intertwined, as long as we mean inseparably Epoxy'd together. I am still having trouble wrapping my head around a recurring theme here. Specifically, I don't understand how describing the characteristics of something implies there's no larger purpose or value to it. Saying my Ferrari is red doesn't mean that redness sums up the Ferrari. Saying that the duration of learning events is X doesn't mean duration is all there is to it. As I wrote on my other blog, I was inspired by David Cooperrider last month and am striving to look for opportunities instead of problems. Permit me to make a suggestion. Rather than redefining learning, quibbling over semantics, or restating what's already been said, how about we try to unearth ways to take advantage of informal learning to increase people's fulfillment in work and life?

By: e-learning2.it : Learning Mixer

e-learning2.it : Learning Mixer — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:19:14 +0000

[...] Da Jay Cross, un esempio di buona comunicazione visiva: come in un ogni concerto che si rispetti, la “musica” arriva dopo essere stata sapientemente mixata. Il mixer di Jay consentirebbe di ottenere un apprendimento bilanciato tra formale e informale. In questa versione ci sono soltanto sei “piste”. Sono sufficienti? Sono quelle corrette? [...]

By: Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:20:56 +0000

Hi Jay, Stephen Guy and all others,
I think the value of the mixer analogy is that it shows how formal learning can shift to informal learning and vice versa. Maybe the debate generated by Jay’s analogy brings out the more fundamental concept that has intrigued theorists for centuries, and that is “what is learning?”. In a formal and informal learning environments information can be gathered, stored, used, ignored, classified, discarded, etc. I have always felt that “learning” has occurred when I use the information to think, or to act. The stimulus to think or to act can come during a formal learning session AND OR in an informal situation immediately or some time later. The stimulus can be the simple fact that the sliders have moved and the significance of the information received appears and ignites my brain! When animating formal learning sessions, or when I am in conversation with somebody I always assume that I and the others will LEARN something eventually from the present experience. It can be in a corporate or social setting it doesn’t matter. Who cares who pays. Who care if someone pays at all? Sponsoring learning has nothing to do with informal or formal. What is important is that some or all of the information received in a formal or informal environment corresponds to the individuals learning needs. Only the individual can identify those needs and only the individual can determine if the info corresponds to those needs.

By: Tarmo Toikkanen

Tarmo Toikkanen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:04:01 +0000

Additional comment to Stephen’s criticism about the marketing flavour of the mixer (for the geeks in the audience):

Extreme Programming used to be a “all or nothing” approach. Either you develop software traditionally, or you develop extremely. There was no middle ground. Problem? Very few people found they could go all out extreme with their established development processes.

Look at Extreme Programming, edition 2. It’s no longer “all or nothing”. Rather it describes a set of values, a set of principles based on those values, and a set of practices supporting those principles. While various practices have interdependencies and synergies, you’re quite free to adopt new practices one by one, as your process and people gradually adopt to the new ways of working.

Now I make a claim that this is how people learn and adapt best: Not all at once, but one change at a time. This is also how the educational institutions will change – changing one practice at a time, seeing how it works, adapting it if necessary, and continuing with the next practice when the first has become routine.

Of course, to get to this path, the institutions should be able to agree on the values they want to uphold and the principles they draw from those values. And changing people’s values is a hard thing indeed.

By: Tarmo Toikkanen

Tarmo Toikkanen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:55:18 +0000

Informal learning happens all the time, unless one is doing some repetitive drone task and not paying attention. Formal learning is good for getting the basic understanding of a field (eg: buy a text book and read it cover-to-cover). Informal learning is good for filling up the cracks (eg: browse the text book to look for specific answers to your questions).

The slider is quite appealing in its way of visually demonstrating that there are many variations of how learning can occur. You could do some corrections to the labels on the scales, of course, but I assume you just threw some reasonable values to get conversation going. For example, in the “Time to develop” slider I’d want to have value “No development necessary”, since in Progressive Inquiry, for example, learning happens as a focused, self-motivated group effort that doesn’t rely on learning material.

Stephens criticism seemed to me that he’s worried that your slider will allow people to just tweak some aspect of their educational practice, and not go “all the way to informal”. I see no problem there. Formal and informal learning are meant for different situations.

Now, my personal opinion is that the methods used in formal learning would benefit from being closer to the methods used by learners in their informal learning. No need to learn two distincs sets of skills if one of them is only applicable to primary education, and the other one to everything else in life?

Someone could start a wiki where people could describe different teaching and learning methods and approaches using a set of dimensions, like you’ve presented in your mixer. It would be interesting to see what would come up.

By: Informal Learning Blog ::

Informal Learning Blog :: — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:03:48 +0000

[...] As you might imagine, I’m a bit frazzled. I was determined to smile and keep my cool while catching up on a few feeds before calling it a night. Whoa. I find I’m becoming a lightening rod for everyone seeking a foil for their gripes about informal learning or related cultural issues. This little brou-ha-ha began with a post I wrote about visualizing learning as an audio mixer. A mixer has sliders, not on-off switches. [...]

By: 教育中文翻译 » OLDaily[中文版]－2007年2月13日

教育中文翻译 » OLDaily[中文版]－2007年2月13日 — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:23:54 +0000

[...] Jay Cross几天前写了这篇文章，列举了一些非正式学习有别于传统学习之处。这篇文章促使我写了评论，呵，一旦开始我就停不下来，一直到获得相当清楚的理解，并从总体上对非正式学习能够加以描述。有人－－如Mark Berthelemy－－认为，不象我所追求的清晰化和准确表述，“多数的经理人、企业执行官们，不管你给他们什么东西去读，别让他们读学术讨论－－他们只对市场消息作出反应：有关的他们能够理解的简单、清晰的图画。” 如果是这样，他们要是会失败我也不足为奇了，商界人士同样应该去学习他们将要去管理的新东西。在一个题目为“政治上激进的－－完全自然的” 的帖子里，Tom Haskins 提出了有力的反对意见：“正式学习的基础并不是学习，而是控制。非正式学习并不足以改变控制的内在本质。” Jay Cross, Informal Learning February 14, 2007 [链接] [评论] [...]

By: Dave Lee

Dave Lee — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 04:49:37 +0000

Jay:

What a tremendous conversation you started. No matter the fate of your mixer concept, the mere fact that it generated this conversation makes the concept well worth it’s time.

I like others am torn between saying go forth and spread this idea and agreeing with Stephen that it’s all smoke and mirrors. To annoy Stephen, I think it is a “both and” situation.

The mixer is not the ultimate, academically verifiable definition of informal learning, but it is a concept that may help sell learning solutions aimed at promoting informal learning to the corporation’s benefit to the higher ups.

That said, no matter which direction you lean, the analogy needs work. Guy Levert suggests that informal and formal learning are entwined with each other. I agree. A part of your analogy that you left out of the mixer is the interrelatedness of the various scales on a mixing board.

On a true mixing board, or for that matter the equalizer in your computer’s sound system, each of the scales is related to the scales next to them. If you move the lever up on one scale, the scale(s) to the left and right of it will also be dragged up as well – but to a lesser amount as you move away from the scale you’ve adjusted.

In the sound spectrum no section is independent of those around it. In your learning mixer, no scale is truly independent as well. Let me give an example from traditional college learning. Were you ever enrolled in a seminar class with 5 or six fellow students that the campus facilities office scheduled in a large auditorium with fixed tables? It doesn’t work. the space and configuration of the classroom interferes with the intended intimacy of the seminar.

Jay, you’ve latched onto a great idea. But it’s a diamond in the rough. Now the challenge is to cut it with the right number of facets and then polish it up so it shines. Not an easy task, if you’ve ever learned about diamond cutting, but one that can be just as powerful as the Hope diamond if you do it right.

By: Nick Kearney

Nick Kearney — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 02:20:29 +0000

It seems to me the mixer imposes a centralised, formal paradigm on informal learning. Perhaps to make it palatable, but that is being discussed elsewhere, but I would like to ask here about the terms you use.
Under control, you refer to laissez-faire, this means letting people do things, who lets them? It seems to me that this implies that control remains but is not exercised. Doesnt informal learning imply NO control, rather than a controlled lack of control?

Delivery. Isnt this a push word? Doesnt it mean “I bring it to you”? How does “I found it myself” fit with this?

Author. The very word implies creation before “consumption”. Is that how informal learning works? Isnt it more that whatever can be construed as content is only perceived as such after the fact in informal learning? Again isnt the idea of the author incompatible in informal contexts?

Duration. Why should informal learning be 3 mins max? I have been learning (very informally) about informal learning for 3/4 years now. I would not be sure how to break that learning up into 3 minute chunks, and I strongly suspect that to try to do so would be to reduce it enormously. Indeed as I write I am learning (we only learn fully when we try to articulate what we are learning – Kaplún) and I would argue that all of that process is bound up in what I am saying. And it is taking longer than those 3 minutes.

Content. The wording implies a dichotomy you are avoiding, when you say what the learner needs, whose definition of their needs are you referring to, the learners or the company’s. These may be radically different. Furthermore if it is discovery is it discovery of what others (the company perhaps) have defined as necessary or the learner’s emerging discovery of her own needs, which change as she learns and evolves?

Timing. In what way is learning before or after work, or during more formal or informal? We learn all the time, don’t we? And this may be organised formally within our work schedule? Or take place by suprise in the bar after work?

Lastly, time to develop. To develop what? Is learning (formal or informal) “developed”? Or is it content that is developed? I believe there is a substantial difference.