My Un-book Learnscape Architecture is no more. After spending a couple of days talking with a Fortune 50 firm about their learning ecosystem, I concluded that Learnscape Architecture was too intellectual and snooty. People just want to get stuff done.
So I re-crafted the un-book to address more practical matters. It’s now titled Learnscaping. I’ve added sections on how to assess organizational readiness and think about cost-justification. I chopped out pages that lacked oomph. I added pages to the accompanying Cloud (the online component).
The price for the former un-book was $20 hardcopy, $40 softcopy. Half bought the former; half bought the latter. I bumped the price of the new hard copy to $25 and cut the online price to $37.50 just to see what happens.
For heaven’s sakes, buy it before it morphs into something entirely different.
From the back cover:
Industrial age workers used machinery to manufacture objects in factories. Now, knowledge workers create value, not on the factory floor, but in what I call learnscapes. A learnscape is the platform where knowledge workers collaborate, solve problems, converse, share ideas, brainstorm, learn, relate to others, talk, explain, communicate, conceptualize, tell stories, help one another, teach, serve customers, keep up to date, meet one another, forge partnerships, build communities, and distribute information. Learnscapes are where and how modern work is performed — including workplace learning.
Historically, platforms for learning have been happenstance affairs, a rippled reflection of the organizational culture. The learnscape architect nudges the platform to help it evolve into an environment that is coherent, balanced, natural, connected, and interoperable. Learnscape architects sculpt flexible, loosely-coupled frameworks for learning. They rise above events to manipulate the connections in processes.
Learnscaping is a handbook for learnscape architects.
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Jay, guess I haven’t been following your blogs close enough lately to know you were working on this, but I bought in like I did on Informal Learning (which I continue to enjoy.) You are a good writer and the primary elucidant on Informal Learning in the enterprise these days. Your ideas mesh well with my thought leader in Knowledge Management, Thomas Davenport.
Your statement, “People just want to get stuff done” cuts to the core motivation for learning. I look forward to what your new unbook has to teach me.
Out of respect for the specificity of learning, I would simply add a “be able” and say “people just want to be able to get stuff done”. Learning is not just for the present but also the future. But to be complete we should say, “people just want to be able to get stuff done… and then do it.”
After that it becomes cyclic and iterative since “doing it” also shows what we need to learn to do it better. This is especially (or perhaps only) true when it takes place within communities, who can mutually evaluate the actions undertaken and model new, more effective ways of “doing it”.