50 Shades of Learning.
50 Shades of Collective Learning – the new currency of the learner.
Sales of the book “50 Shades of Grey” are certainly climbing to new heights. If you haven’t heard of the book, firstly where were you and secondly did you know that it was written as a “fan contribution” to the twilight series (screams in the background for a dead vampire glowing in the dark) between the main characters? What started off as a spoof certainly turned out very lucrative for Me. James that has been married for some odd 20 years. She has now been included in the Time’s 100 most influential people of our time. Seriously?! Throw in some BDSM and you have a most influential person of our century?
So why is “50 Shades” so popular? Is it the hate love relationship? By all accounts it simply seems that the power of the collective once again made the book popular by providing feedback on the social networks. It’s that simple. If we were look at this from a learning design perspective…
Most designs that are created are based on Outcomes Based education - which in turn is based on a methodology (Behavioral learning) that was created for schools some odd 40 years ago...
Now it is ultimately what most companies are looking for. Most companies also prefer to link a course’s objectives to the specific task that individuals need to perform. In essence there is nothing wrong with this approach; heck learning and development specialist have been punting this for years. There is however a portion in learning psychology that we tend to overlook…collective self-regulated learning in the workplace is more powerful then guided learning. We also tend to not look at how the collective end users are discussing our end products with other users.
Just look at how quickly you learn something if you need it to complete a task, you actually want to learn, versus sitting in a class room / in front of a PC and being told that “this and that is important to do your tasks” (outcomes). Until you actually need the information or knowledge, do you really “apply” the information?
There is this old saying that “we only retain a small percentage of what we receive in the class room”. There is a reason for this…we actually don’t need the information, for now in any case. When we do need to complete a specific task and “we don’t know” we find the ways very quickly to know what we need to.
A lot of time our clients only want the essentials. They don’t want long explanations on it. So they Google, maybe ask around, they found the paths that have already been trampled by those before them. That’s how they learn.
Suddenly all the works the we have tried to instill are rather quickly discarded, as our clients fall back on the ways they have always found information. This seems obvious.
Yet we tend to miss this is learning. We ask “what must the individual know to complete the task?” we then establish what the outcome should be, maybe even where to find the information. That is simply not good enough anymore.
As development specialist we should really address self-regulated learning in the workplace. If something is interesting to the individual we should allow them to be able to search for this information. Too often companies policies are starting to inflict on search engine’s with “blocked content” messages. So what’s the implication of this? People start to lose interest. As learning specialist we should also advocate ways that we can facilitate true “collective knowledge” sharing sessions.
Would it not be great if we can build as part of the end products, once a week in an informal café style setting to share what end users have learn for that week? Maybe just an hour constructive discussions? What would happen if we can start to “control” the way that the collective learning takes place?
We could, according to “KnowHow” , try to incorporate 8 key competencies when we design courses, to increase the collective knowledge level:
1) The ability to link business and knowledge strategies for our learners, irrespective of their “level”.
2) Create as part of our courses the ability to grow the talent pool and competencies networking infrastructure.
3) The space and context for organizational knowledge exchange conversations.
4) Show individuals how to access and use organizational expertise to mitigate risk before engaging in high impact initiatives.
5) Show individuals where to publish ad share know how.
6) Build time in to reflect what was just learned.
7) Ensure that the learner understands organisational behavior drivers such as performance management, Hr strategies and leadership to support knowledge sharing
8) Build space in courses that link social networks within courses.
By creating these aspects within courses we should be able to ensure that a collective learning environment can be created and maintained. And that folks is some ideas on how we could incorporate and enhance collective learning.
Sales of the book “50 Shades of Grey” are certainly climbing to new heights. If you haven’t heard of the book, firstly where were you and secondly did you know that it was written as a “fan contribution” to the twilight series (screams in the background for a dead vampire glowing in the dark) between the main characters? What started off as a spoof certainly turned out very lucrative for Me. James that has been married for some odd 20 years. She has now been included in the Time’s 100 most influential people of our time. Seriously?! Throw in some BDSM and you have a most influential person of our century?
So why is “50 Shades” so popular? Is it the hate love relationship? By all accounts it simply seems that the power of the collective once again made the book popular by providing feedback on the social networks. It’s that simple. If we were look at this from a learning design perspective…
Most designs that are created are based on Outcomes Based education - which in turn is based on a methodology (Behavioral learning) that was created for schools some odd 40 years ago...
Now it is ultimately what most companies are looking for. Most companies also prefer to link a course’s objectives to the specific task that individuals need to perform. In essence there is nothing wrong with this approach; heck learning and development specialist have been punting this for years. There is however a portion in learning psychology that we tend to overlook…collective self-regulated learning in the workplace is more powerful then guided learning. We also tend to not look at how the collective end users are discussing our end products with other users.
Just look at how quickly you learn something if you need it to complete a task, you actually want to learn, versus sitting in a class room / in front of a PC and being told that “this and that is important to do your tasks” (outcomes). Until you actually need the information or knowledge, do you really “apply” the information?
There is this old saying that “we only retain a small percentage of what we receive in the class room”. There is a reason for this…we actually don’t need the information, for now in any case. When we do need to complete a specific task and “we don’t know” we find the ways very quickly to know what we need to.
A lot of time our clients only want the essentials. They don’t want long explanations on it. So they Google, maybe ask around, they found the paths that have already been trampled by those before them. That’s how they learn.
Suddenly all the works the we have tried to instill are rather quickly discarded, as our clients fall back on the ways they have always found information. This seems obvious.
Yet we tend to miss this is learning. We ask “what must the individual know to complete the task?” we then establish what the outcome should be, maybe even where to find the information. That is simply not good enough anymore.
As development specialist we should really address self-regulated learning in the workplace. If something is interesting to the individual we should allow them to be able to search for this information. Too often companies policies are starting to inflict on search engine’s with “blocked content” messages. So what’s the implication of this? People start to lose interest. As learning specialist we should also advocate ways that we can facilitate true “collective knowledge” sharing sessions.
Would it not be great if we can build as part of the end products, once a week in an informal café style setting to share what end users have learn for that week? Maybe just an hour constructive discussions? What would happen if we can start to “control” the way that the collective learning takes place?
We could, according to “KnowHow” , try to incorporate 8 key competencies when we design courses, to increase the collective knowledge level:
1) The ability to link business and knowledge strategies for our learners, irrespective of their “level”.
2) Create as part of our courses the ability to grow the talent pool and competencies networking infrastructure.
3) The space and context for organizational knowledge exchange conversations.
4) Show individuals how to access and use organizational expertise to mitigate risk before engaging in high impact initiatives.
5) Show individuals where to publish ad share know how.
6) Build time in to reflect what was just learned.
7) Ensure that the learner understands organisational behavior drivers such as performance management, Hr strategies and leadership to support knowledge sharing
8) Build space in courses that link social networks within courses.
By creating these aspects within courses we should be able to ensure that a collective learning environment can be created and maintained. And that folks is some ideas on how we could incorporate and enhance collective learning.