Last night I was musing over what is, why it is so, and what could be. This isn’t something out of the ordinary for me - I do it on a regular basis really. But this particular session was about a project I have been undertaking at work lately. We are rolling out a series of interactive webinars to our blue collar workforce as part of a company restructure. This entails some serious efforts on the part of our team. Webinars are new to everyone:
our trainers - as subject matter experts (8 )
our moderators - driving the technology (5)
our learners - geographically dispersed with low digital literacy (2000+)
And everyone has been putting in a truly herculean effort to make this project the success that it is so far (224 sessions across varied subjects in 10 weeks).
Following that, I have been watching the progress of our trainers with much interest. My experience as a moderator, conversations, and observations prior to this project led to me believe that it is more difficult for a face to face trainer to cross the digital divide and train in a virtual space. In some respects the project has reinforced this idea. Why? Because trainers aren’t just learning to teach online, there are preconcevied ideas about teaching and learning that sometimes don’t translate to the online medium. It could even be said there are things which need to be unlearned.
The area my musing focussed upon was dealing with silence. I noticed in the debriefs of many of our trainers first webinars that I was commenting on the potential of the trainers to increase interaction, stating that not doing so results in a mere conveyence of information (Ellen at aLearning Strategies has some musings about why this is a bad idea). How was this potential being left unfullfilled? By asking questions and answering them themselves. By letting only one learner answer a question and not building discussion. By not allowing learners to correct each other. Basically by not taking all the opportunities available to have learners participate. Noticing that this was a pattern amongst first timers, I had to ask “why is this happening?” Two of my theories, based upon conversation and observation is as follows:
Nerves - Silence is uncomfortable. As a face to face trainer, you can supplement silence with body language, silence can be visually meaningful. As an online trainer, interaction and communication supplement body language. So faced with a short silence after asking a question the easiest way for a trainer to break the silence is to speak again. Unfortunately this leads to passive participants, who may be providing silence in a more true sense by not listening to the trainer’s efforts at “non-silence”. It is more brave to use the silence in another way that gets participants talking, when participants interact and join in the conversation, true silence is less likely, even if there are a few pauses for thought.
A shift in power - Trainers are comfortable in and used to a face to face environment. They can wield their power bestowed by their position as a trainer easily in this environment. They stand, they learners sit. The learner is subordinate to them (see Ira Shor’s Siberia). In webinars, the physicality of the trainer is not so present. In our set-up, they are listed on the screen amidst the participants - the equivalent of sitting with the learners in a certain respect. So how can a trainer reclaim their lost physical power? By talking. Lots. By answering your own questions to show that you are indeed the expect. Of course, this proves ineffectual, and once again creates true silence as learners opt to check their emails etc.
To the credit of our trainers, they have acted upon the feedback provided to them and continue to move from strength to strength - there is alot less “talking at” and alot more “talking with” going on these days. They are a credit to our organisation and an example of what good e-Learning can achieve. They have moved beyond “The Sound of Silence” Simon and Garfunkel sang in reference to our focus on ourselves and lack of communicatin and have translated their focus on the learner in the classroom to the online environment.
I’ve been designing my first ever commercial collaborative spaces at work over the past month or so. By design I mean coming up with a whole heap of web 2.0 ideas and storyboarding them into one place so someone can build a mash-up containing and feeding in all sorts of stuff for us. It is a really exciting time for me because the way I see it, this is an opportunity to make some positive changes in my organisation. Situations like this don’t come around every day (supportive team, funding, momentum, minimal red tape, no prior e-Learning history), so I want to make the most of it.
I was fortunate to have a really good teacher when I was studying e-Learning and she instilled in me very thoroughly that we need to design for what we want to achieve, not for what a piece of software can do. I would dare say that it is the best piece of e-Learning advice I have been given and has shaped my practices in other e-Learning projects I’ve been involved in. I generally start to design my work and ideas based on the premise of “wouldn’t it be great if…”. This avoids the “build it an they will come” (no they will not, trust me) mentality which is so often associated with e-Learning failure.
So… for this project I have looked at what we want to achieve, what we currently do, what we could improve, and how we can use technology to help us achieve our learning outcomes in a spectacularly engaging fashion. This has resulted an approach which is centred on learning through technology, rather than technology “transmitting learning”. Why do I say this? Because we had to go through a process of conscious thought about what we actually need and want. We had to be creative, we had to educate ourselves as to what was possible, and then we have expanded this with our ideas. We didn’t decide on a piece of technology and ask ourselves how we could make it work. As it turned out we decided on many pieces of technology all in one place, known as a “mash-up”, defined here on the Servitium technology’s blog.
This inital process meant that when we met the varied providers, we could do something which some of them didn’t expect - we could talk in an educated fashion about what we want, we could even show them a basic storyboard and some examples of specifics. This meant that as a customer, the power was back in our hands, and the providers could provide some valuable consultancy. We weren’t wandering through the darkened forest of e-Learning eating poisonous berries, we were having a picnic in a sunny park somewhere in suburbia.
I’ve been thinking about this digital literacy thing from my own reality. There are heaps of definitions out there which basically say that to communiucate properly and safely online you need to be digitally literate, I’ve found Leigh Blackall’s work useful in the area of digital literacy. As our physical and digital lives increasingly converge, things are becoming more complex. Just as we have a set of social rules and norms when communicating face to face, we have a set of norms and rules which guide our behaviour online. I wouldn’t tell my professional contacts about my crazy weekend, just as I wouldn’t bore my friends with intricate workings of my latest work project over coffee. So why would I do it online?
Let me clarify… Some of us are always going to be more willing to share different aspects of our lives (particularly Gen-Y’s apparently, but that’s another discussion).
For instance, my Facebook contains people from all walks of life. My Facebook is also my generic “catch all” online identity - I’ll even show it to my classmates on the projector screen. I’m a pretty open person, and if it’s there, I’ve deemed it fit for public display - social and professional. My lecturer knows I like Pink Floyd? Good for him! My coworkers know my favourite books? - great! However, my Facebook will not tell you what I don’t want “the world” to know so readily. It will not tell you what course I am studying, it doesn’t acknowledge the existence of my blog, my (real) friends know it is not cool to tag me in photos doing incredibly stupid things… and so on. I have other identities for these things.
For example, my varied Ning memberships will tell you all about my work responsibilities and opinions surrounding e-Learning, but nothing about my favourite books. This is because I choose to use Ning for professional pursuits, just as some may choose to use facebook purely socially, or purely professionally.
My del.icio.us tags are similarly professional in intent. They are all about surprise, surprise - e-Learning. However, if a professional acquaintence found me on Flickr I’d be surprised and a little confronted as my personal photos are listed under a totally unrelated alias and not referred to on any other social sites on purpose because they aren’t intended to cross the social and digital divide between friends and professionals.
In short, just as my personality is multifaceted in the physical world, it is in the digital world too. Most importantly, who sees what is up to me, it’s my decision what is online, and where it is online. Digital literacy is about understanding the digital medium so you can use it in a safe and well informed manner, and for me, that means keeping some boundaries between the different parts of my life, being aware of the forum into which I am posting my thoughts, considering who may be looking at what I’ve written and so on. There’s more to digital literacy than that, but that’s my short take on digital identity and digital literacy.
Oh, and where do I live? I live online of course B-)
So I’ve just signed myself up as a moblogger at moblog.co.uk. What a great tool! Part of my job deals with gen-y’s who have non-computer type jobs and need to show competency at what they do. I think that moblogging has enourmous potential to engage these guys. Some broad assumptions around gen-y’s lie around them being digitally connected by either phone or computer, which means that this technonology is fitting with their broad characteristics. Other implications more specific to my situation are around my particular group’s preference for practical tasks and avoidance of “school type” assessments. If these guys can learn and show competency by doing something which is fitting with their lifestyles, the learning that arises has the potential to be more meaningful because it is less threatening than the traditional written test, more practical, and has more potential to be revisited at a later date.
MargB has a really down to earth and insightful presentation about moblogging which got me thinking. Check it out here.
I am always surprised by the amount of “web 2.0 bashing” by learning and development practitioners. My most recent experience was during a class about educational theory where a guest speaker had come along to tell us about web 2.0 as applied to learning. Basically - e-Learning 2.0 as defined by Stephen Downes. What I have found to be typical and skeptical response to the presentation was asked…
“it would be great for work, but it’s no good in the real world. Too social. Too many people you don’t know talking”
I feel compelled to address this briefly as it seems to me to be a contradiction. Web 2.0 is a social tool, it is used socially, that is how it emerged, unlike the classroom, educators do not “own” this domain.
Web 2.0 is designed for collaboration and communication, which presents a conflict with the banking model of education. In a classroom, we seem to face the teacher, who plops information into us while we sit there passively, in web 2.0 environments, those “chairs” form a circle, where everyone’s input is valid and people feed from each other, not just the teacher.
We do not naturally learn by passively sitting in a classroom accepting information, we have been conditioned into this as a result of the industrial revolution because mass production meant that the kiddies needed to be out of the factory and it seems the same mass production was applied to humans and machines. Prior to this, people learned from those around them in social situations it seems. Consequently web 2.0 presents an opportunity (and a conflict) to return to social learning, where people learn by collaborating and communicating because that it how we use it already. We expect to be able to comment, contribute and collaborate using these technologies!
The conflict presents itself when people go online expecting to have information banked into their heads because the method is at odds with web 2.0’s “circle of chairs”. Power relations are different. The conflict needs to be resolved, and this means the application of social learning theories. The banking teacher is replaced with someone who is more of a guide, asking questions, setting e-Tivities to build confidence and creating the necessary cohesion, cofidence and collaboration. Gilly Salmon’s model explains this process really well.
Banking information into people’s heads using web 2.0 has been tried time and time again. It has failed time and time again, and often when it does, practitioners look to blame the technology. Web 2.0 is just an instrument we can use as educators, a good one with lots of potential, but ultimately an instrument. As such it is important to use it because there is an identified need which is fitting with sound pedagogical principles. When you look at it this way, of course using web 2.0 to bank information into people’s heads would fail - because the requirement of banking is at odds with the social requirements of web 2.0. You can try it, it might work for a very short time, but it is destined to fail because the two concepts are fundamentally incompatible.
I went to a networking breakfast this morning about the use of social technology in organisations. I found it really interesting, and thoroughly agree with the premise that people like to be involved in knowledge creation and learn from each other. Social technologies can enable this if implemented thoughfully.
Toward the end of our workshop we took part in an activity which asked us about our fears around social technologies. A recurring theme was around what employees might say in collaborative spaces. People said “what if our employees say bad things on there?” and “this will let employees say whatever they want”. I started to wonder about these questions. Are employees really just itching for the chance to be given the opportunity to say bad things about the company they work for in a company forum? Provided there is some basic understanding (or education to create basic understanding should it be lacking) about what communicating online really means, I don’t think this would be happening, and it indicates larger problems within the organisational culture if it is.
Maybe employees will raise concerns, voice opinions and question decisions - but isn’t that what happens when people talk around the coffee machine etc anyway? A key part of our society’s evolution has been by reflecting on the past, engaging in dailogue and moving forward. We learn by looking back at experiences and analysing them, so employees discussing work issues could be considered learning, especially if questions are being asked to generate further discussion.
We employ people because they can contribute to our organisation, not because they are going to sit in a corner knowing and saying nothing. I think it is an indication that something is right if employees are discussing things online because it shows they are engaged. They care enough to actually say something.
When employees start questioning issues and discussing them online, they are just replicating their normal behaviour at the coffee machine in an online environment.
Maybe we need to change the way we think about what we read on a computer screen. People use computers to express opinions, just like I am now on this blog, or to connect with contacts, as I do with Facebook. Basically using social technologies in the worplace it is just another way to starta conversation, and we’ve been doing that since the beginning of time. Not so scary after all.
