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February Informal Learning Hotlist

Jay Cross — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:36:00 +0000

February 1, 2010 to February 27, 2010

The following are the top items from featured sources based on social signals.

Rethinking Open Data- OReilly Radar, February 1, 2010
10 Ways to Build Social Media Expertise Using Personal Web Projects- HarvardBusiness.org, February 2, 2010
“The Class” – parody of The Office- Digital Ethnography, February 7, 2010
Secure Websites in Plain English- Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English -, February 9, 2010
The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps- TechCrunch, February 5, 2010
Google Buzz re-invents Gmail- OReilly Radar, February 9, 2010
The Great to Good Manifesto- HarvardBusiness.org, February 3, 2010
The Man Who Looked Into Facebook’s Soul- ReadWriteWeb, February 8, 2010
Shifting Identities – From Consumer to Networked Creator- Edge Perspectives with John Hagel, February 12, 2010
If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present- TechCrunch, February 9, 2010
International Amateur Scanning League- OReilly Radar, February 10, 2010
Wikimedia Strategy: Ideas for Strengthening Online Communities- HarvardBusiness.org, February 9, 2010
Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login- ReadWriteWeb, February 10, 2010
Brain surgery boosts spirituality- Scientific American, February 10, 2010
How To Make Money In Online Video- TechCrunch, February 7, 2010
Data not drugs- OReilly Radar, February 11, 2010
Intel’s Social Media Training- HarvardBusiness.org, February 3, 2010
Blog – Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy- Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories, February 2, 2010
Kevin Rose’s 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs- ReadWriteWeb, February 19, 2010
How To Make Money In Online Video- TechCrunch, February 7, 2010
Four Steps to Gov 2.0: A Guide for Agencies- OReilly Radar, February 8, 2010
In Asia, Marketing 101 Doesn’t Work- HarvardBusiness.org, February 5, 2010
Exploring Why Social Business Will Drive 21st Century Enterprises- Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog, February 1, 2010
Meet The First Miners of the New Social Graph - ReadWriteWeb, February 10, 2010
Facebook’s Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product- TechCrunch, February 5, 2010
Cyber warfare: don’t inflate it, don’t underestimate it- OReilly Radar, February 11, 2010
Sometimes, It’s Better to Brainstorm Alone- HarvardBusiness.org, February 4, 2010
The internet, depression and drinking a glass of water- Mind Hacks, February 3, 2010
5 Simple Twitter Listening Tips Every Marketer Should Know- ReadWriteWeb, February 2, 2010
Israel’s Time To Know Aims To Revolutionize The Classroom- TechCrunch, February 2, 2010
Extreme Scale Computing- Irving Wladawsky-Berger, February 11, 2010
30 seconds to creativity- Adaptive Path, February 2, 2010
Become a Gmail Master Redux [Hack Attack]- Lifehacker, February 4, 2010
Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life- Fast Company, February 8, 2010
The evolution of Cynefin over a decade- Cognitive Edge, February 7, 2010
Pranksters Attach GPS Device To Google Street View Car- Forbes.com: News , February 7, 2010
Informal learning from the horse’s mouth- Informal Learning, February 3, 2010
Excellent Technical Resource for Mobile Learning- Workplace Learning Today, February 9, 2010
SharePoint Social Learning Experience- eLearning Technology, February 1, 2010
EdTechTalk Episode #5: Promoting Learning Through Asynch Discussions- Learning Visions, February 5, 2010
[2b2] Long-form, wide-form- Joho the Blog, February 3, 2010
Rhizomatic Translations 1 – Buying tech for learning- Dave’s Educational Blog, February 2, 2010
Pew Report Interview- Half an Hour, February 20, 2010
CopyTrans 4- Lockergnome Blog Network, February 19, 2010
A modest revenue proposal to the BBC- Doc Searls Weblog, February 19, 2010
Formalizing informal learning?- Learnlets, February 16, 2010
Vegetable sheep- Purse Lip Square Jaw, February 10, 2010
The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus – a joint JISC, SURF, EDUCAUSE, and CAUDIT report - Fortnightly Mailing, February 7, 2010
Get More Done with Less Effort: A Systems Story- You Learn Something New Every Day, February 6, 2010
iPAD: a baby boomer, narrative device- Donald Clark Plan B, February 4, 2010
Rosetta and Long Now on Life After People- The Long Now Blog, February 4, 2010
The pad will blow away the clamshell- Skys Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation, February 4, 2010
Spotify for Desert Island Discs- edublogs, February 2, 2010
Does Apple Think Multitasking Is A Bug Not A Feature? And Other Questions….- stevenberlinjohnson.com, February 2, 2010
Reading Joyce’s Dubliners With Imaginary Friends- Full Circle, January 31, 2010
Jay’s latest book focuses on social & informal learning in the cloud- Internet Time, January 31, 2010

Informal Snake Oil

Jay Cross — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:43:59 +0000

“As soon as the software vendors and marketers get hold of a good idea, they pretty well destroy it,” writes my colleague Harold Jarche in his post on Social Snake Oil. (That’s his graphic above.) Jane Hart chimed in, reinforcing Harold’s point that “social learning is being picked up by software vendors and marketers as the next solution-in-a-box, when it’s more of an approach and a cultural mind-set”.

I watched vendors hi-jack the term eLearning, and I don’t want to see it happen to social or informal learning. At the 1999 Online Learning conference in Los Angeles, CBT Systems announced it was “Smartforce, the eLearning Company.” This was ground zero. No one else on the exhibit floor even mentioned eLearning. Yet at the ASTD Conference six months later, dozens of vendors claimed to have eLearning. Most of them had changed nothing but their brochures and their signs. The “e”? Perhaps you could ask for help via email.

This old story is playing out again. In additional to social learning, vendors are claiming to provide informal learning. Instead of email, you get blogs and wikis tacked on. This is akin to saying that word processors write novels: it’s hardly the whole story.

Informal Learning in a Nutshell gives my definition of informal learning.

LEARNING is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work, and in the groups that matter to you. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn on the job. Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route. The rider can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or go to the bathroom. Most of the time, novices ride the bus; seasoned performers ride their bikes. Taking advantage of the double meaning of the word network, to learn is to optimize the quality of one’s networks.

When you see “informal learning” on an LMS vendor’s brochure, you might inquire if they’re using Jay’s definition. And how they do that.

Sleight of hand

In the last ten days, I’ve been invited to attend three different webinars on formalizing informal learning. The topic arises from faulty semantics, a word trick.

None of the speakers really call for formalizing informal learning; that would kill it. What they mean to say is that informal learning is too important to leave to chance. The formalizing means giving an official blessing to building an environment that encourages informal learning. Thus, it’s generally a good practice to provide comfy nooks that foster conversations; it’s malpractice to tell people what they should talk about in those nooks.

Une interview de Jay Cross, l’auteur d’Informal Learning

Jay Cross — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:10:36 +0000

Une interview
Par Harold Jarche (Traduction Thierry de Baillon)
Mercredi 17 Février 2010 13:21

Jay Cross, Chief Scientist à l’ Internet Time Group, est l’auteur de Informal Learning: Rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance (NDT: Apprentissage informel: A la redécouverte des voies naturelles inspirant l’innovation et la performance), publié en 2006.

J’ai demandé à Jay pourquoi il avait écrit ce livre, et il m’a répondu que peu de choses avaient été publiées au sujet de l’apprentissage informel en milieu professionnel, bien que ce soit ainsi que l’essentiel de l’apprentissage se déroule. Les chiffres ont démontré qu’environ 80% de l’apprentissage en milieu professionnel est informel, mais que peu de professionnels de la formation s’y intéressaient. L’apprentissage informel est une idée très en marge en ce qui concerne la formation et l’éducation en entreprise. Les idées développées dans le livre sont nées bien plus tôt, vers 1999, et comprenaient l’apprentissage visuel et les meilleures manières d’utiliser les représentations graphiques. Avant même de commencer à écrire ce livre, Jay avait déjà rempli plus de 30 carnets sur le sujet.

Le livre de Jay développait des idées inédites. L’idée majoritairement admise à cette époque était que la formation en entreprise était le moyen ciblé le plus sensé pour dispenser de la formation sur les compétences essentielles. Jay a été l’un des penseurs qui contribua à modifier cette attitude. Dans un commentaire écrit sur mon blog en 2006, Jay écrivait, « je me heurte dans mon livre à la question des compétences de base. Mes relecteurs (tous les trois) souhaitent que je supprime ce qui se rapporte au storytelling, à la prise de parole en public, etc., parce que ce sont des compétences personnelles, et donc ne relèvent pas de l’apprentissage en entreprise. » En 2010, il est devenu plus difficile de dire que le storytelling ne fait pas partie de l’apprentissage en entreprise.

plus

Parlez-vous francais? Allez vite à Enterprise Collaborative.

Entreprise Collaborative est un laboratoire d’idées multiculturel permettant d’échanger entre experts et praticiens autour des concepts de social learning et d’entreprises en réseau afin de développer des organisations plus performantes.

Vive la France!

Where Social Learning Thrives

Jay Cross — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:08:56 +0000

Read this inspiring Fast Company blog post by Marcia Conner. She nails what I have been calling learnscaping.

Growing a culture of service is more like planting a garden than building a shed. A garden requires tending, whereas a shed is built once. A social learning culture requires design, training, guidance, leadership, monitoring and celebrating successes, large and small. People need to know where the organization is headed and why it matters. It’s not easy for people to make the shift from a culture where they fear they are not good enough and need to improve, to one where they feel safe enough to want to improve for the enjoyment of it. Some will think it impossible for a whole culture to shift from fear-based fixes to joy-based learning, from coercion to inspiration. Others have witnessed it and will cheer along.

As you’ve heard many times before, “it’s not about the technology.”

Informal learning from the horse’s mouth

Jay Cross — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:34:35 +0000

Every morning, my email is littered with very basic questions about informal learning. I’ve been ranting about informal and computer-supported learning in organizations for twelve years now. I’m the Johnny Appleseed of networked, social learning

I make 95% of my work available on the net at no charge. You can find it in blogs, presentations, articles, books, YouTube, free book chapters. Google “informal learning jay cross;” go to the Informal Learning Page, for an overview and links..

(20 minutes later) I just set up the Jaycross FAQ. It’s going to encourage people who want the basics to read this interview with the eLearning Coach before asking questions. It’s all in there.

The eLearning Coach interviewed me a few days ago. Fun questions. Visit her site. (Isn’t this great? It’s the Coach’s list of Stock Photo sites.

The Coach

Welcome to readers around the planet! This is the website of Connie Malamed, an eLearning, information and visual designer with a Masters Degree in Instructional Design & Technology and 20 years of experience in the trenches. The eLearning Coach is where I share actionable strategies, practical content, personal reviews and resources to help you design, develop and understand online learning.

The interview:

Connie: A funny thing happened while we were learning informally. A few astute people noticed it, wrote about it and brought it to the forefront of the learning arena. In fact, the buzz about informal learning seems to grow every day. You’ll find it discussed in training forums, featured in conferences and the subject of many presentations.

Social learning technologies, which often facilitate informal learning, seem to have paved the way for greater interest in this approach. So I think readers of The eLearning Coach would appreciate an interview with a person who wrote the book on the subject … literally. Meet Jay Cross, author of Informal Learning, speaker and consultant.

Connie: What is your definition of informal learning?
Jay: Learning is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work, and in the groups that matter to you. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs.

Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route. The rider can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or go to the bathroom. Learning is adaptation. Taking advantage of the double meaning of the word network, to learn is to optimize the quality of one’s networks.

That said, all learning is part formal and part informal; neither exist in pure, unadulterated form. The issue we’re really addressing is whether the learning is mainly formal (imposed) or informal (sought).

Three hallmarks of formal learning are: a curriculum, a schedule and recognition upon completion (even if only a checkmark in an LMS).

Coach: What are examples of offline informal learning?
Jay: Learning to walk, talk, eat, kiss, smooch, run or ride a bicycle.

Coach: And examples of online informal learning?
Jay: Getting an answer from the Help Desk, asking Twitter friends for an answer, looking at a FAQ on a wiki.

Coach: What motivational factors underlie informal learning?
Jay: The primary motivation is needing to learn something in order to do something. There are so many forms of learning, it’s tough to generalize. I might want to learn Italian to foster my relationship with Sophia. I might learn to program Cisco routers in order to get a raise. I might seek an answer to a customer’s question.

Coach: How do you think cognitive processes differ when someone is learning informally as opposed to formally?
Jay: Generally informal learning is demand-driven. I’m more interested because I’ve chosen the subject matter and extent of the learning. It’s likely I’ll reinforce my learning almost immediately and that will make it stick. (Can anybody really remember the content of their high school coursework?)

Coach: Formal and structured learning can potentially promote efficient organization in long-term memory. Would this be an advantage of formal learning over informal?
Jay: Organization in a curriculum isn’t efficient unless it’s the right stuff. Generally, informal learning will take less time and effort to learn an equivalent amount of material.

Coach: Is there more potential for picking up incorrect information or developing inaccurate mental models when learning informally?
Jay: There’s potential for picking up incorrect information from informal learning or formal learning or newspapers or television or one’s brother. Learners need to be able to apply tests of reasonableness. Can the information be substantiated? Do others agree? Has it been vetted by thousands of others? Does it make sense to me?

Coach: Are there advantages to informal collaborative learning as compared to informal individualized learning?
Jay: Learning is social. Most learning is collaborative. Other people are providing the context and the need, even if they’re not in the room. Relative advantages would depend on the nature of what’s being learned. I don’t sense that there are absolutes.

Coach: How can organizations optimize the workplace for informal learning?
Jay: I’ve written books on this, but in short, organizations need to trust their people. People confronted by high expectations tend to live up to them. (And when confronted with low expectations, they tend to sink down to a low level.)

There are hundreds of smaller interventions that nurture informal learning. Examples might be setting up facilities to encourage conversation, providing time and encouragement of reflection, displaying graphics that explain company processes, building a social network infrastructure, setting up ways to share information, and viewing learning as part of every job.

There’s a lengthy summary of this at Internet Time Wiki. That’s the “informal learning page” I set up just for people who are curious about informal learning. You can download book chapters, watch a video, find white papers, etc.

Thanks for a great interview, Jay!

You’re quite welcome, Connie. I’m on a crusade to show businesspeople the enormous potential return on small investments in informal learning. Investments in learning return huge amounts; neglect of informal and social learning both demeans employees and leaves gobs of money on the table. Thanks for putting this together.

Free Learning to Learn course going strong

Jay Cross — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:32:42 +0000

Addictive Learning That Sticks

In a hurry? Enroll in the course here.

I announced this free course on Learning to Learn on this blog two days ago. Fifty people have enrolled. Most have completed their first three questions. 16% of the participants answered question 1 correctly and won’t see that one again. Only 8% answered question 2. 10% got question 3 right.

There’s still plenty of room in our virtual classroom. Please join us.

Related
Announcement of free Learning to Learn course

Take this free, brief, online course on Learning to Learn

Jay Cross — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:03:29 +0000

Addictive Learning That Sticks

In a hurry? Enroll in the course here.

Learn by answering a few emailed questions every other day? SpacedEd co-founder and CEO Duncan Lennox says that is precisely what his product is doing for physicians. (SpacedEd was invented at Harvard Medical School.)

SpacedEd is a platform designed to allow learners and teachers to harness the educational benefits of spaced education. It is based upon two core psychology research findings: the spacing effect and the testing effect. In more than 10 randomized trials completed to date, spaced education has been found to:

Improve knowledge acquisition,
Increase long-term knowledge retention (out to 2 years),
Change behavior,
Boost learners’ abilities to accurately self-assess their knowledge.

In addition, spaced education is extremely well-accepted by learners.

The SpacedEd approach is predicated on a set of core principles:

- Short Repeated Bursts: Because it uses a regular schedule and an adaptive algorithm, learning can be delivered in small amounts that can take as little as 3 minutes a day.
- Push Learning: The learning comes to you on a regular schedule. You don’t have to remember to do it or set aside large chunks of time.
- Adaptive: The daily content adapts based on past performance automatically to drive long-term retention while requiring less time.
- Immediate Feedback: Once a question is answered, detailed educational feedback is provided. Users are also given performance data (their course progress and performance relative to peers) which feeds their addiction to the courses.

I was skeptical. People are supposed to learn by answering questions they at first don’t know the answers to? Yesterday I put together a sample course to put SpacedEd to the test. It took less than an hour all told.

Topics covered:

Formal & informal learning
Learning celebrities
History quiz
Jeopardy questions

When you complete the course, please leave a review at SpacedEd or a comment below.

Charles Jennings has written that we need to learn less in order to know more. In an age of ubiquitous computing, I don’t need to know all the details if I know where to find them.

SpacedEd could be a great way to learn the core learning content, the small orange dot above.

January 2010 Informal Learning Hotlist

Jay Cross — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:32:21 +0000

Top Informal Learning links for the first month of 2010.

Yesterday’s #lrnchat was on crowdsourcing. This is an example. The crowd picks this list, not I.

Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English- Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English -, January 6, 2010
A Few Thoughts on the Nexus One- OReilly Radar, January 5, 2010
Networking Reconsidered- HarvardBusiness.org, January 4, 2010
Tonight On CrunchGear: Live At CES- TechCrunch, January 7, 2010
The opposite of “open” is “theirs”- Joho the Blog, January 14, 2010
Tools for Finding Creative Commons Images- Full Circle, January 2, 2010
What’s going on with OAuth?- OReilly Radar, January 8, 2010
Three Questions Executives Should Ask for the New Year- HarvardBusiness.org, January 4, 2010
The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages- Scientific American, January 21, 2010
Questioning Pedagogy- Half an Hour, January 4, 2010
Blog – The Case of the Collider and the Great Black Hole- Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories, January 4, 2010
Skinner Box? There’s an App for That- OReilly Radar, January 4, 2010
A Better Way to Manage Knowledge- HarvardBusiness.org, January 19, 2010
2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day- TechCrunch, January 1, 2010
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over- ReadWriteWeb, January 9, 2010
Electric Icarus: NASA Designs a One-Man Stealth Plane- Scientific American, January 19, 2010
Google and China: What’s the real story, and where does it go from here?- OReilly Radar, January 14, 2010
The Future of Decision Making: Less Intuition, More Evidence- HarvardBusiness.org, January 7, 2010
Ten Technologies That Will Rock 2010- TechCrunch, January 1, 2010
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time- ReadWriteWeb, January 10, 2010
Challenging Mindsets: From Reverse Innovation to Innovation Blowback- Edge Perspectives with John Hagel, January 6, 2010
Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010- eLearning Technology, January 18, 2010
How Ford Got Social Marketing Right- HarvardBusiness.org, January 7, 2010
The Father of All Business Models- Doc Searls Weblog, January 6, 2010
Idle Minds and What They May Say about Intelligence- Scientific American, January 6, 2010
Top Tools For Tracking Topics on the Web- ReadWriteWeb, January 21, 2010
Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Facebook Takes Best Overall For The Hat Trick- TechCrunch, January 8, 2010
The Decade in Management Ideas- HarvardBusiness.org, January 1, 2010
Knowledge sharing across silos: Part II- Cognitive Edge, January 12, 2010
Flattery Will Get You Far- Scientific American, January 11, 2010
Everyday RFID- Purse Lip Square Jaw, January 4, 2010
We go with the flow- Mind Hacks, January 28, 2010
Four pointers to the chasm between elearning and video game designers- edublogs, January 4, 2010
20 Best Marketing And Social Media Blogs By Women- Forbes.com: News , January 14, 2010
The Best Times to Buy Anything, All Year Round [Buying Guide] - Lifehacker, January 5, 2010
Massive increase in words consumed- Donald Clark Plan B, January 6, 2010
China rising- The Long Now Blog, January 18, 2010
Are You Ready For The 21st Century ?- Wirearchy, January 9, 2010
Open course-wars, redux… the real nastiness is elsewhere- Abject Learning, January 5, 2010
Bright Green: Collapsible Shipping Containers- Fast Company, January 11, 2010
Do I Need to Know It, or Just How to Find It?- Workplace Learning Today, January 20, 2010
The K-factor Lesson: How Social Ecosystems Grow (Or Not)- Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog, January 5, 2010
Michael Allen describes the future of authoring systems- Internet Time, January 5, 2010
The End of the Industrial Training Era- Informal Learning, January 2, 2010
Facebook usage statistics by country – Dec 31st 2009- Robert Paterson’s Weblog, January 11, 2010
Disabled Girl’s $10k Laptop Computer Stolen – Turns Up On Craigslist- Lockergnome Blog Network, January 11, 2010
Blogging as an Exercise of the Brain- Irving Wladawsky-Berger, January 2, 2010
Community as Curriculum – vol 2. The Guild/Distributed Continuum- Dave’s Educational Blog, January 27, 2010
Blog Post: If traditional incentives can have a negative impact, what’s the workaround?- Gurteen Knowledge-Log, January 11, 2010
Adaptive Path in 2010: A Look Forward- Adaptive Path, January 6, 2010

I find lists like this great for serendipitous learning. There’s always something I haven’t tripped over before. Informal learning is like that.

An example of informal learning from Europe

Jay Cross — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:44:02 +0000

Three years ago I talked with a former KPPG consultant, Harm Wegstra, at Online Educa Berlin. Harm told me about his team’s experience with informal learning in an engagement with Sara Lee. Here’s an extract of an email Harm sent me.

Hi Jay,

As promised, I send you some details about the research I’ve done at Sara Lee, being then a senior manager at KPMG Consulting.

Sara Lee wanted to invest in technology in the domain of learning.

At the beginning of this century, learning management systems were quite dominant, and therefore dominant on the radar screen of Sara Lee. But I had doubts if a LMS would be the proper solution for Sara Lee.

That’s why we suggested to set up a meeting, in which we would explore where the learning takes place within the organisation, more specific, within the sales and marketing department, for which the technology was meant.

About 20 employees attended the meeting: sales and marketing representatives, and representatives of the management and the HR department. We asked them to write down (individually) all their work-related learning experiences. When finished this individual brainstorm, we plenary discussed the results, what resulted in the following list of learning activities:

- Experiences on the job
- Refer to manuals and instructions
- Training programs
- Networking
- Mentoring & coaching
- Special assignments (e.g. temporary job rotations)
- Workshops

After we agreed that this was the correct list, I asked them to individually estimate how much time they spend on an average a week on each of these activities. After plenary discussing and negotiating the outcomes, we concluded the following relative importance of each of the learning activities:

- Experiences on the job 45%
- Manuals and instructions 2%
- Training programs 8%
- Networking 30%
- Mentoring & coaching 3%
- Special assignments 2%
- Workshops 10%

Having a closer look, I concluded that the list of activities could be divided into more formal and more informal learning activities.

Formal:
- Training programs
- Special assignments
- Workshops
- Mentoring & coaching

Informal:
- Experiences on the job
- Manuals and instructions
- Networking

Given their relative importance, this means that 77% of the activities can be labelled as highly informal and 23% as highly formal.

We summarized the findings in this pie chart:

Sara Lee was quite surprised. More precisely: the majority in the meeting thought that they made a mistake and suggested to reconsider the time they initially thought they spend on an average on each of the activities. I suggested to first benchmark these findings to research at other companies. After a desk research we found an astonishing amount of evidence that these employees at Sara Lee probably collectively made a quite adequate estimation of the time spent on the distinct learning activities. This knowledge since then is at Sara Lee leading in the decisions about investing in learning within the organization.

I hope you like the story and can use the results.

Using the pie chart is no problem.

Please refer to the research I’ve done at Sara Lee, with my team at KPMG Consulting. The research was conducted in 2002.

Again, it was a pleasure meeting.

Hope to meet you an other time.

Kind regards,

Harm Weistra
WeistraConsult

8 Dirty Words

Jay Cross — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:19:38 +0000

CLO online edition

Dirty Words

by Jay Cross

Last year I led workshops in London, Madrid, San Jose, Quebec, and Berlin on how to sell social networking and informal learning to senior management. Top executives have little time so it’s important to have a one-minute elevator pitch ready for chance encounters with them. The workshops culminate with everyone role-playing that interaction.

We all know that you shouldn’t use training jargon (e.g. Kirkpatrick levels, Gagne, kinesthetic) when talking to executives. Many CLOs fail to realize they should also purge some common words from their vocabularies because they trigger negative thoughts among decision-makers.

Comedian George Carlin had a skit about the seven words you were not allowed to say on television. Most of them are four letters long. His words were dirty; mine are bad for business. Here we go:

Learning is a dirty word because executive managers have a hard time hearing it. You think of improving skills and increasing knowledge. They think of classes, teachers, and school. They remember how ineffective school was at getting things done. You forget most of the lessons before you have a chance to use them. Learning taints the conversation. Better to speak of collaboration or boosting brain power. I changed the name of my new book from Informal Learning in the Cloud to Working Smarter.

Learner is banned because no one but the training community uses the term. They are workers first, and learners second. Talking about learners conjures up the bad old days of taking people off the job to learn. Increasingly, learning takes place on the job. In fact, I foresee work and learning converging at an astonishing rate.

Social learning is the hottest thing since electricity among web enthusiasts. However, MIT’s Andy McAfee warns that executives who hear social flash on scenes of Woodstock and other non-business activities. (See The S-Word on McAfee’s blog.)

Likewise, executives hear the word informal and take it to mean haphazard. Most job-related learning is informal, and there are enormous opportunities to make it better. Collaborative networks, expertise locators, reducing fear of failure, graphic design, workspace architecture, and many other techniques increase the productivity of informal learning. Better call it collaboration if you want to sell it.

Knowledge management may be two words, but it’s a single concept. That concept is broken. Knowledge is inherently unmanageable. Traditional, top-down KM has failed over and over again. It’s based on the assumption that an elite can figure out what workers need to know, package it as explicit data, and serve it up in a database. Most of the knowledge workers seek is tacit and beyond the reach of databased systems. The smart money is betting on bottom-up knowledge bases, compiled and maintained, by the people who use them. By the way, I also contend that you can’t manage talent and that LMS do not manage learning.

You have probably stopped using the word training, but just in case, let’s review why it’s inappropriate. Training is something you do to someone. Learning is something people do for themselves. You hope that people learn from training, for that’s the objective. Talking about training can blind you to alternative means of learning.

Despite growning evidence that eLearning can produce results superior to those from the classroom, early failures sullied its reputation. eLearning circa 1999 was for the most part deadly dull and uninspiring. People stayed away in droves. Completing an eLearning course was the exception rather than the rule. Avoiding eLearning because of a bad early experience is like going to a movie and saying you’ll never go to another one of those because movies suck.

It’s better to talk about cost/benefit analysis or meeting specific goals than to speak of ROI. Many managers use the strict accounting definition of returns: changes in the assets and liabilities on the balance sheet. Accounting is increasingly the wrong yardstick. The majority of value generated by businesses is intangible. It’s social capital, know-how, patents, and relationships. Traditional ROI fails to measure the most valuable returns.

People who banter about Web 3.0 betray their lack of understanding of what’s going on. 3.0 would be the linear progression of 1, 2, 3, 4… that characterizes software releases.

The “2.0” of Web 2.0 Tim O’Reilly described wasn’t a version number. Rather, it signaled that the web did not die in the dot-com bust. The bubble took down many overly enthusiastic investors but the internet kept right on improving. Now we are entering an era where the benefits of the web will grow exponentially. Tim calls what’s coming web².

Editorial. A few of you have asked how my blog posts differ from the columns published in CLO. For one thing, CLO doesn’t print pictures and diagrams in its columns. And sometimes they have to cut a few words to fit the column on the page.

Related post: Webinar to kick-start collaboration and informal learning in your organization.