Tag: newlearningarchitect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the third and last part of chapter 10:

Top-down approaches

There are many ways in which an organisation can encourage experiential learning on a top-down basis::
Benchmarking
Project reviews
Action learning
Job enrichment
Job rotation
Performance appraisals
Continuous improvement
Optimising the working environment

Bottom-up approaches

Employees can also take the initiative themselves when it comes to experiential learning and in many cases this happens quite naturally, as individuals reflect on successes and failures, and talk things over with colleagues, friends and family. The following are additional bottom-up initiatives which can be actively facilitated by employers:
Blogging
Getting a life

Conditions for success

Experiential learning happens whether we plan for it or not, but it will only thrive in a supportive culture. That means:

• a culture that encourages innovation and accepts that mistakes are an inevitable consequence of this;
• a culture that does not seek to apply blame or find scapegoats when initiatives fail;
• a culture in which mistakes from which lessons have been learned are valued as highly as successes;
• a culture that is always looking to learn lessons from the successes and failures of other, comparable organisations;
• a culture in which employees are regularly exposed to new and unfamiliar situations, in order that they can develop and grow;
• a culture in which employees are encouraged to reflect openly on their work experiences;
• a culture that values the participation of all employees in its quest to change and improve;
• a culture that appreciates the importance of diverse out-of-work experiences and encourages a healthy work-life balance.

This culture starts from the top.
Coming next: Chapter 11 – Putting the model to use
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the second part of chapter 10:
Experiential learning occurs whether we want it to or not, but there are good reasons why we should be actively supporting and encouraging it:
Because everyday work experience is rich with opportunities for learning: However hard you try to create authentic learning scenarios in the classroom, you will never match the real thing.
Because we don’t always take the best advantage of these opportunities: In the mad rush of everyday life, we don’t always take the time to reflect on what has gone well and what less well. True, if an incident has a major emotional impact on us, we can’t help but reflect on it, so much so that we may find it hard to sleep; but there are many less monumental learning opportunities that end up being wasted.
Because, if something goes well, we want to repeat it: Every effect has a corresponding cause, and when these effects are positive, we would be foolish not to try and pinpoint the causes. Obviously we may just have been the beneficiary of good fortune, but chances are there are some good practice lessons to be learned and ideally shared with our colleagues.
Because, if something goes wrong, we want to avoid it happening again: Children soon learn not to bang their head against the wall, because it hurts. But as adults we aren’t always so keen to learn from our misfortunes; we often just hope things will work out better next time. It may be more painful to reflect on our failings than our successes, but change is often painful, and learning is change.
According to James Zull, “Little true learning takes place from experience alone. There must be a conscious effort to build understanding from the experience, which requires reflection, abstraction and testing the abstractions. Testing our ideas through action is how we find out we are on the right track. The only pathway that seems unproductive for learning is the pathway that excludes testing of ideas.”

References

The art of changing the brain by James E Zull, Stylus, 2002
Coming next: The experiential learning toolkit
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the first part of chapter 10:
As learning and development professionals we are most alert to those opportunities which will help employees to ‘learn to’ carry out some task or fulfil some responsibility; we want to get ahead of the game, to equip employees with the knowledge and skills needed to meet the requirements of current and future job roles. Even when we put in place facilities and resources to support just-in-time learning-on-demand, we still have a forward looking focus, trying to get ahead of the game, even if only at the last minute.
Yet for many people, the greatest insights come not through ‘learning to’ but by ‘learning from’ our day-to-day work activities. Experiential learning is literally learning from our experience. It occurs consciously or unconsciously as we reflect upon and react to our own successes and failures at work as well as those of our acquaintances. It introduces an extremely valuable feedback loop into our everyday work.
Without experiential learning, all we are left with is the ‘doing’. We repeat the same actions over and over again, never improving and constantly at risk to every new threat that appears in our environment. Experiential learning is ‘doing’ plus an essential additional ingredient – reflection. Without reflection, we can have many years of experience and learn less than someone who is a relative newcomer but who has learned how to learn.
The natural way to learn
Experiential learning is the natural way to learn. According to Charles Jennings, “70% of adult organisational learning takes place on the job. This learning is gained through experiences that develop, through facing challenges, through solving problems, through special assignments and through other activities that an employee carries out on a day-to-day basis.”
We are hard-wired for experiential learning, as John Medina explains: “When we came down from the trees to the savannah, we did not say to ourselves, ‘Good lord, give me a book and a lecture so I can spend ten years learning how to survive in this place.’ Our survival did not depend upon exposing ourselves to organised, pre-planned packets of information. Our survival depended upon chaotic, reactive information-gathering experiences. That’s why one of our best attributes is the ability to learn through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas.”
And what’s more, this ability does not fade with age: “The adult brain throughout life retains the ability to change its structure and function in response to experiences.”
Employees are well aware of how important experiential learning can be. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) asked 2076 employees in the UK to identify the activities that had been useful in helping them to do their job better. Here’s what came back. The figures show those who found the activity ‘very or quite helpful’, with those who found the activity ‘of some help’ shown in parentheses:

1. Doing your job on a regular basis 82% (13%)
2. Being shown by others how to do certain activities or tasks 62% (23%)
3. Watching and listening to others while they carry out their work 56% (26%)
4. Training courses paid for by your employer or yourself 54% (20%)
5. Reflecting on your performance 53% (30%)
6. Drawing on the skills you picked up while studying for a qualification 45% (21%)
7. Using skills and abilities acquired outside of work 42% (29%)
8. Reading books, manuals and work-related magazines 39% (24%)
9. Using trial and error on the job 38% (27%)
10. Using the internet 29% (18%)

Unfortunately these options are rather ambiguous and overlapping, but it is safe to say that numbers 1, 3, 5 and 9 are all aspects of experiential learning.

References

The Point-of-Need: where effective learning really matters by Charles Jennings, article in Advance series from Saffron Interactive, 2008
Brain Rules by John Medina, Pear Press, 2008
Practice Makes Perfect from NIACE, 2007, www.niace.org.uk
Coming next: The argument for experiential learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the fourth and last part of chapter 9:

Top-down approaches

A number of options exist for organisations to support employees with on-demand learning:
Performance support materials
Mobile learning
Help desks
Online books

Bottom-up approaches

On-demand learning can also be supported from the bottom-up through the use of technology:
Online search
Using forums
Using wikis

Conditions for success

On-demand learning occurs whether or not an organisation takes active steps to provide encouragement and support. Every time an employee turns to a colleague for help with a task, they are engaging in on-demand learning. However, on-demand learning is more likely to thrive when l&d professionals recognise that:

• it is often unnecessary, if not completely futile, to try and teach employees everything they need to know to do their jobs; there is too much to know and it changes too quickly;
• resources need to be shifted from teaching everything there is to know, to covering the key underlying concepts, principles and skills formally (unless, of course, the job situation clearly demands that these be memorised / fully embedded) and then providing high quality, context-sensitive, usable, easily-accessible information at the point of need;
• in many organisations it is impossible to provide all necessary information on a top-down basis; employees need to be encouraged and empowered to form communities of practice, to develop knowledge networks, to share best practices, and to collaborate in seeking solutions;
• everyone knows something, nobody knows everything.

Coming next: Chapter 10 – experiential learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We start the new year with the second part of chapter 9:
The abundance of information is weighing heavily on the knowledge worker. The statistics are frightening, as Jay Cross reports:

• “In many professions, knowledge workers spend a third of their time looking for answers and helping their colleagues do the same.”
• “Only one in five knowledge workers consistently find the information they need to do their jobs.”
• “Knowledge workers spend more time recreating existing information they were unaware of than creating original material.”

While we’re doling out statistics, let’s add some more from Charles Jennings:

• “The information available to humans is currently growing at a rate of 30% per year. This growth is increasing year on year and showing no sign of slowing.”
• “Ninety percent of the new information generated each year is stored on magnetic media of some type.”

The message hasn’t necessarily got through to the l&d department, as Jennings explains: “Even though we are all aware that we are operating in a world awash with unstructured information, many learning professionals and managers are still obsessed with the task of transferring information into the heads of learners/employees. They, and many of their managers, see that as the end-game of their endeavours.”
The inability to find the right information at the right time has a huge cost, as Paul Strassman, former VP at Xerox, reports: “Most businesses that are well endowed with technology lose about $5000 a year per workstation on ‘stealth spending’. Of this, 22% is for peer support and 30% for the ‘futz factor’. The second includes the time users spend in a befuddled state while clearing up unexplained happenings and overcoming the confusion and panic when computers produce enigmatic messages that stop work.”
So how do we respond to these pressures? Well, according to John Seely Brown and John Hagel: “Because you don’t know what to expect, planning is folly. It’s better to be as responsive as possible when the future arrives.” That’s on-demand learning.
References:
Learning is strictly business by Jay Cross, 2007
The Point-of-Need: where effective learning really matters by Charles Jennings, article in Advance series from Saffron Interactive, 2008
Quoted in The Social Life of Information, by John Seely Brown and Paul Duquid, Harvard Business School Press, 2002
The only sustainable edge by John Seely Brown and John Hagel, Harvard Business School Press, 2005
Coming next: The argument for on-demand learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We close the year with the first part of chapter 9:
We move on to look at the third element in the contextual model, on-demand learning. To refresh our memories, on-demand learning is a form of ‘learning to’. It occurs because we don’t know how to perform a particular task and therefore need immediate help to acquire the necessary knowledge. To use more familiar terminology, on-demand learning can be regarded as ‘just-in-time learning’ or ‘learning at the point of need’.
Some would argue that on-demand learning isn’t learning at all, because the objective is to support performance not to teach. There’s no guarantee, indeed there may be no real concern, that an employee acquires in any permanent way the knowledge needed to carry out the task, just so long as they can do it right now. After all, a task may only ever need to be carried out once or only so occasionally that the effort required to retain the knowledge may not be justifiable. However, there’s a very blurry line between just-in-time performance support and long-term learning. The information itself is likely to be the same; the same people may be approached to provide this information; the same materials may be used in each case. The main difference comes with the strategy:

• When the goal is performance, the information must be available at the point of need for easy reference.
• When the goal is learning (a more or less permanent set of new connections in the brain), the intervention must go beyond providing information to include practice, assessment and feedback.

L&d professionals may argue that it is not their role to provide reference information. There may even be a completely independent team responsible for technical documentation. But this argument doesn’t stand up to close analysis:

• Trainers have always contributed to the provision of reference material through the handouts and job aids that they provide with their classroom courses.
• Technical documentation may be an option of last resort, but is unlikely to be a user-friendly and easily-accessible resource that does the job on a day-to-day basis.
• The fact that much of the same content is required for both training and for performance support makes it uneconomic to develop separately.
• L&d professionals are uniquely well equipped to present information clearly and simply.

Another way to reconcile the concept of performance support with learning is to conceive that knowledge can exist beyond the individual, in their own personal network of digital and human connections. The idea of the ‘outboard brain’ is closely associated with a new theoretical perspective to learning called connectivism, as developed by George Siemens:

“Instead of the individual having to evaluate and process every bit of information, she/he creates a personal network of trusted nodes: people and content, enhanced by technology. The act of knowledge is offloaded onto the network itself.”

Connectivism places new demands on the l&d professional who, as a facilitator of learning networks, should help to provide the infrastructure that enables employees to more easily make connections with sources of expertise. Underpinning this role is a realisation that “the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing. ‘Knowing where’ and ‘knowing who’ are more important today than knowing when and how.”
As Jay Cross reminds us, “Successful organisations connect people. Learning is social. We learn from, by, and with other people. Conversation, storytelling, and observation are great ways to learn, but they aren’t things you do by yourself.”
References:
Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens, 2006
Learning is strictly business by Jay Cross, 2007
Coming next: The plight of the knowledge worker
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we bring chapter 8 to a conclusion:

Top-down approaches

Employers have a wide range of non-formal options at their disposal that they can implement on a top-down basis:
On-job training
Coaching
Webinars
Podcasts
White papers
Mini-workshops
Rapid e-learning
Internal conferences
Online video
Bottom-up approaches
There may well be a plethora of opportunities available for top-down non-formal learning, but there’s still plenty of scope for bottom-up initiatives:
Open learning
Continuing professional development
Communities of practice

Conditions for success

To enjoy success, it is important for the l&d professional to recognise that:

• learning needs to be continuous throughout employees’ careers;
• not all learning needs to be packaged as formal courses, because more informal approaches are often perfectly adequate;
• many, short inputs will have more impact than a few lengthy ones;
• many players can contribute to the provision of learning experiences and materials, not just learning and development professionals;
• skills in the development and provision of learning experiences and materials should be widely distributed within the organisation.

Coming next: We move on to focus on on-demand learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we continue with the third part of chapter 8:
We’ve already argued the case for formal learning, but it should be clear that, although running a course can often be the right way to address a need, there are many more cases where an alternative will be more effective and more efficient. Back in 1970, Peter Honey pleaded for us to ‘stop the courses, I want to get off.’ He argued that organising courses was the easy option, but that to create effective learning situations which were meaningful in terms of the job called for much more effort, imagination and innovation.
Nearly forty years later, Donald Clark took up where Peter Honey left off: “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that great staple of train the trainer courses, is typical of the simplistic junk that is thrown about in the training world, but he did have one great line: ‘If you walk around long enough with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail’. That’s training, folks. Our hammer is the ‘course’ – the pat solution for every problem.”
He elaborated as follows: “Courses are also at odds with the psychology of learning. We know that ‘spaced practice’ is a necessary condition for almost all learning, yet almost all courses do the opposite, delivering large, single doses. We also know that most skills need a ‘learn by doing’ approach, yet most courses are skewed towards knowledge. We know that learning is about long-term memory, yet most courses focus on short-term memory and assessment. We know that learning needs to avoid cognitive overload, yet most courses suffer from an obesity of content. We know that learning benefits from being situated in the context in which the learning is to be put to use, yet most courses pluck people out of this context. I could go on and on, but perhaps the greatest problem is the sheer lack of knowledge and awareness of the basics of the psychology of learning, and its application in training. It’s like engineers who build bridges but know nothing about physics.”
Perhaps, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s just a case of horses for courses. There are many good reasons why some learning should be formal, why some should be conducted in groups, why some courses should be carried out in real-time as opposed to being self-paced, and why some should be face-to-face as opposed to online. And there are equally good reasons for doing the opposite. In the end the choices you make should be made on the basis of the particular situation, not familiarity, prejudice or predisposition. And if that choice is made well, effectiveness will then depend on how well you carry the job out.
Reference: Stop the courses, I want to get off by Donald Clark, TrainingZone, March 2009.
Coming next: The non-formal learning toolkit
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we continue with the second part of chapter 8:
On-demand learning is just-in-time performance support – it’s there when you need it. But, although performance support has many advantages, it is not a panacea. Alison Rossett and Lisa Schafer have identified four situations in which you need to have the knowledge and skills before you undertake the task:
When aided performance would damage credibility: There are times when you would look amateurish if you had to go seeking out information that others might expect you to know. The obvious example is when you are dealing directly with customers or clients. No-one’s going to be bothered if you have to obtain help to deal with an unusual situation, but they would be justifiably annoyed if, say, you were a sales assistant in a retail store and couldn’t operate the till, or were an electrician who couldn’t wire a plug.
When speedy performance is a priority: In some jobs, there simply isn’t the time to go tracking down the right information or asking for help. A lawyer may have time to consult the books, but an airline pilot needs to be able to respond to an emergency using their own resources; a business person may be able to consult with a specialist before determining a strategy, but a professional sportsperson has to be able to swiftly select the right tactics to deal with a situation that arises unexpectedly.
When novel and unpredictable situations are involved: Some jobs are relatively stable and it may be possible for an employer to prepare performance support materials or systems to cope with every eventuality. Many other jobs are much less predictable and it is vital for the employee to be equipped with the core skills and problem-solving strategies to deal with the unexpected when it occurs. Take the example of an investment banker: although much of their work might be routine, they have to be able to deal swiftly with crisis situations that sometimes have no precedence.
When smooth and fluid performance is a top priority: Performance support is disruptive – it interrupts the task and disturbs the flow. No audience is going to wait while a presenter consults Wikipedia to look up a fact or asks for help in operating PowerPoint; similarly a telephone sales representative will not want to keep the customer waiting while they consult with a colleague.
Reference: Job Aids & Performance Support by Alison Rossett & Lisa Schafer, Pfeiffer, 2007
Coming next: Then why not formal learning?
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here we make a start with chapter 8, which focuses on non-formal learning:

What do we mean by non-formal learning?

We continue our tour of the contextual model with a look at non-formal learning. In a way we’ve already started, because both formal learning, which we reviewed in the last chapter, and non-formal learning are proactive approaches. Formal learning stands apart because it packages up the learning intervention in the guise of a ‘course’, with clearly established objectives, curriculum and assessment. In this chapter we look at the myriad of interventions which are much less formal, but still make a major contribution to learning and development in the workplace.
To refresh your memory, non-formal learning as we define it here is ‘learning to’ with a future perspective. It is not concerned with ‘learning from’ what we have done in the past, nor ‘learning to’ do something right now to address an immediate need. It occurs whenever we take deliberate steps to prepare ourselves for the tasks that we will be carrying out in the future or when others do this on our behalf. Some cynics label it ‘just-in-case’ learning, in contrast to learning that takes place ‘just-in-time’. Non-formal learning takes many shapes, but stops short of those interventions packaged up as formal courses.

The arguments for being proactive

Proactive approaches, formal or non-formal, are important because there are certain fundamental things we need to know and skills we need to have before we can make any serious attempt to function in our present jobs, or take on new responsibilities:
Induction and basic training: We are recruited as much as anything for the skills and knowledge we already possess, for our years of experience with other employers and for our qualifications. But every employer is different in terms of their culture, their particular policies and procedures, and the people that they employ. Even the most qualified new recruit requires some induction whereas, at the other end of the scale, many starters require weeks, months or even years of basic training.
Business change: Only rarely do jobs remain static – responsibilities change along with new strategies, processes and systems, creating new requirements for knowledge and skill.
Development: Looking ahead, organisations and employees themselves have an obvious interest in making preparations for employees to take on greater responsibilities.

Coming next: So why non-formal as opposed to on-demand learning?

Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect