Martin Weller is Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK (OUUK) and is the academic lead on the OUUK’s SocialLearn project which is developing a social network for learners. He blogs at The Ed Techie

He has written an essay as part of a special edition of the education journal On the Horizon. Authors contributing to the special edition of the journal were asked to contribute a blog post describing their articles in a condensed form; Weller's post appeared here.

The basic premise is:

Higher education faces a challenge. It may not now it yet, but it does. And the challenge is this – when learners have been accustomed to very facilitative, usable, personalisable and adaptive tools both for learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education they are paying for?

He argues that the experience provided by universities goes beyond simple classroom-based student-teacher learning. The main reason schools attempt to attract a diverse motivated student body is due to the fact that they play an important role in influencing the course of learning by directing discussions inside the classroom and continuing the interactions outside. From this view, universities act as learning aggregators: they form groups of students with similar interests and connect them with experts in the field and relevant resources.

Weller points out that Web 2.0 communities perform a largely parallel function, in that they foster groups with common interest and link them to relevant resources. However, these communities don’t fully replace the university experience as these communities tend to have self-appointed experts. Weller argues that comparisons between the two systems can’t be helped and being raised in a Web 2.0 world shapes the students’ expectations.

To this point, Weller is working on the Social Learn project, which is intended to be a replacement for the systems currently in use by univerisities. It is intented to be an extensible platform with well documented APIs for doing so. The group hopes to make the whole package open source in the future.

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The Learning Guys met up with Andrew Burnham last week. Andrew is the president of Being in the Moment.

Andrew is a dynamic, engaging facilitator, speaker and learning leader who specializes in applying re-emerging was of learning, change and being. Andrew has developed his improvisational thinking workshop to move people forward in the areas of team development, creative collaboration and facilitating solutions.

The Learning Guys think that Andrew is the kind of guy you have to hear. We have decided to do some recording sessions with Andrew and will post them here at the blog in the very near future.

Check back soon!

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I was at a client meeting the other day where the topic of discussion was “multi-channel delivery of learning content”. The client has a legacy collection of audio and video learning objects that it wants to make available to employees on an on-demand basis. I suggested that the client could group the learning objects into a series of topic areas based on job performance competencies. Employees could then select which topic areas they were interested in and have a tailored selection of content delivered to them via a personalized RSS feed.

I noticed some eyes start to glaze over at this point as we continued to discuss how we could set up an RSS feed to deliver learning content. The room seemed to be divided into 2 camps. Those that knew what an RSS feed was (me and one other guy). And everyone else in the room.

I should have shown everyone this clear and simple explanation of RSS brought to you by the good people at Commoncraft. Here is “RSS in Plain English”

After watching this video you will know all about RSS. Now let’s start getting that learning content out there!

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I’m coming up to the 10 month mark of my study of Mandarin Chinese using ChinesePod. I had 2 goals when I signed up for ChinesePod last January:

#1- To learn as much Chinese as I could in one year.

#2- To assess the effectiveness of the ChinesePod instructional design and delivery model (podcasting, e-learning, social networking, personalization).

Here is the short answer: I have learned a lot of Chinese, and the ChinesePod model is very effective.

Here is what has worked for me:

Continuous and flexible learning: I made a commitment to listen to at least one ChinesePod newbie/elementary podcast every day. Each podcast clocks in at around 10 minutes or so. I figured that I could find at least 10 minutes per day to listen to the podcast, and I believed that my comprehension of Chinese would increase greatly if I could keep this comittment. Aside from a bit of slacking during the summer months of July and August, I have been able to keep this commitment. Ken and Jenny (my podcast teachers) have become part of my daily life. I listen to the podcast on the subway going to the office, when I have a break at work, when I’m on a flight to visit an out-of-town client, when I’m doing the dishes at home, when I’m shaving, whenever I have 10 extra minutes. Continuous and flexible learning, even if only 10 minutes per day, has given me better results than I achieved in 2 previous attempts to learn Chinese in a classroom setting.

Personalized learning ChinesePod offers a “My Feed” option which enables me to select which podcasts I want to receive on a daily basis. I can choose from nearly 700 available podcasts, and I can tailor my learning schedule in a way that suits my own personal learning needs. This is “Just want I want” learning. I do not have to sit through an entire course or complete an entire online module, if only parts of it are relevant to my own needs. Rather, ChinesePod provides learning content in a self service fashion, and provides tools that help me to organize learning content into a personal learning playlist.

I am aiming for 1 year of continuous study of Mandarin. At the end of this period I will be able to make some solid observations about what it means to be a Web 2.0 learner. What will happen at the end of the year? Perhaps I will continue with ChinesePod and work to be an intermediate/advanced speaker of Mandarin Chinese. Or perhaps it will be time for Spanish at Spanish Sense (brought to us by the producers of ChinesePod).

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I am nearing the 5 month mark of my study of Mandarin with ChinesePod. I will answer your questions right away:

Yes. I am still studying (almost) daily.
Yes. I am continuing to make progress.

I have been seriously busy with work and family commitments over the past few weeks. Normally this busy period would have marked the end of any extracurricular activities, such as language learning.

What is it about the Chinesepod model that has allowed me to continue with my studies? I think it is the flexibility of learning options. I can pick and choose how and when I learn. Most importantly, I can decide on the intensity of my studies. When I have some extra time, I can study a lot. When I am very busy, I can lessen the intensity. But I never have to stop studying.

Here is what is currently working for me:

Daily Podcast: I continue to listen to a daily podcast. When I first started with ChinesePod, I attempted to sequence my podcasts in a logical progession. I spent a lot of time tinkering with the order of my podcasts. Now I am too busy to do that. I just listen daily to topics that interest me. It seems that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.

Rote listening: I have a playlist on my ipod with Chinese only versions of the daily podcasts that I have listened to over the past 5 months. Each day I listen at least once or twice to the complete playlist. This means that I am repeatedly going over everything I have learned. Again and again until it has become branded onto my brain. This memorization technique is pretty traditional stuff. But it works. See Ken Carroll’s recent post Listening and Learning for more on this, or look at my colleague Dan’s recent post on Back to Basics.

I am aiming for 1 year of continuous study of Mandarin. At the end of this period I will be able to make some solid observations about what it means to be a Web 2.0 learner.

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It occurred to me that there is a lot of pretense surrounding how even basic learning works.

Being old, when we went to school, rote memory comprised the bulk of our “learning”. When there were detours away from rote learning, teachers simply tended to leave out bits of detail in order to help the students “think.” Instead of thinking, this tended to leave the lessons vague and required the students to spend much more time learning the same rote things. Still, we worked things out, managed to get a half-decent basic education and moved on to being The Learning Guys.

Of course, there are the fanatical opponents to rote memory. They argue that rote memory is useless, and it is all about the synthesis of information. An recent example of this is the few decades of “whole language” education in our school systems. This approach is pushed by “holism” ideologues who deemphasized anything that wasn’t seen as contributing directly to developing meaning, such as phonetics, spelling, grammar, etc.

To me, this approach obviously didn’t work as we are left with a couple generations of kids that can barely read/write their way out of a wet paper bag, let alone enter university with the ability to express their thoughts or collaborate in the global academic community.

It seems obvious, but it is impossible to create meaning out of nothing. Shocking statement, I know… There has to be some foundation from which to base higher forms of learning. The teacher’s mission here is to differentiate the base knowledge for each area being taught and not be afraid to help the student with the rote memory task. This rote memory understanding of the material forms the basis on which the more rewarding analysis and synthesis tasks can be built.

When teaching a body of knowledge, select the material that lends itself to analysis and then admit the rest of the material is rote memory and teach it as such. There is no shame in this, and your students will thank you!

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Rumors that the training course is dead have been circulating for the past few months. Bloggers everywhere speculate that the cause of death was high cost combined with poor results.

Jay Cross says:
“Upon close inspection, you find that courses themselves are not that effective. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of what is taught in a course transfers to the job. Courses have a miserable track record when it comes to changing behavior. The most common way of learning one’s job comes not from taking a course but from asking someone.”

But is there a possibility that these rumors about the death of the course have been greatly exaggerated?

I still see the course everywhere. Many of my clients still invest in classroom based learning solutions (courses, presentations, conferences etc.), and there is still a strong belief that much can be accomplished when you bring a group of people together in a room with a skilled facilitator.

Formal learning events seem especially appropriate to foundational learning (beginner’s courses, 101’s etc.), when learners are at the same starting point with the material (they know nothing or little).

Formal learning events also work well for executive leadership development initiatives. A formal course format forces busy executives to take some time away from work, and gives them a chance to network, brainstorm and form communities.

But the role of the course is changing. Most of my clients are moving away from isolated learning events (courses, conferences etc.) and moving towards an integrated blended learning program. The time spent in the classroom is being greatly reduced, while self service learning options are being added. There is also a strong trend towards providing opportunities to collaborate with and learn from colleagues both formally and informally. Learning is becoming more closely connected with work, and learning programs are becoming more personalized.

Both formal and informal. Perhaps the most effective learning programs are a combination of formal and informal learning. We can use formal learning to build the foundation; and use informal learning to contextualize and extend the foundational learning experience.

What do you think?
This question goes out to learning designers and consultants everywhere. In this era of Learning 2.0 (highly contextualized, personalized, just-in-time, workflow, on demand, self service, informal, community), what role does the training course play in an organizations training and development initiatives? Is the structured course still relevant or is it an endangered species?

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Paul is a New Media Superstar!

Later tonight, before he goes online to do his nightly lesson with his Chinapod tutor, Paul Dillon will be interviewed by a journalist by the China Economic Review.

The interview will cover his experience with ChinesePod, thoughts on trends in learning, and generally cover the topic of podcasting.

Stay tuned for the full interview and more of our shameless self-promotion!

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We all know that media habits have changed radically over the past few years:

Print- Blogging is hot. Newspapers are not.
Radio- Podcasting is in. AM/FM is out.
Television- YouTube yes. Networks no.

3 significant trends have emerged:

1. Media consumers are now also media producers: YouTube is a great example of this. You can upload videos you have created for all to watch, and you can watch videos created by others.

2. Media consumption is personalized: Think iPod personal playlist. You don’t have to buy the whole album any more. You just buy the songs you want, and you organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

3. Media consumers/producers form communities: Like minded people have always enjoyed hanging out with each other. There is nothing more fun than spending a lot of time with people who are seriously into the same things you are into. My Space, Facebook, Twitter et al are all about the formation of communities of common interest.

Those of us in the business of learning design need to explore these trends, and figure out how to work with them. Some thoughts:

1. Learners become learning producers: Learning content will be increasingly produced by the learners themselves and not by learning designers. Think corporate wiki. Finding ways for people to share what they know in both formal and informal ways will become the task of learning designers. We will become facilitators of knowledge transfer as opposed to developers of content.

2. Learning is personalized: “Just What I Want” learning is in. Learners do not want to sit through an entire course or complete an entire online module, if only parts of it are relevent to their own needs. Rather, learners are increasingly demanding that learning content be available in a self service fashion, and they desire tools that help them to organize learning content into a personal learning playlist. The task for learning designers is to develop the infrastructure and implementation strategies that promote personalized learning.

3. Learning is a community activity: People learn best when they learn from each other. Learner designers need to explore the social nature of learning, and examine how Web 2.0 technologies can help us to provide our learners with access to authentic communities of learning. The key is to create opportunities for members of the community to share what they know through an interaction framework where everyone contributes.

I will revisit this theme in future posts. Your thoughts…….

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A recent membership survey from the Canadian Society for Training and Development listed the following as the top priority for workplace learning and performance practitioners:

Leadership and Development 70.7%

This is consistent with research findings from Bersin & Associates. A recent Bersin report listed leadership development as one of the top trends for 2007. From the report:

“Leadership development takes center stage - Research in 2006 showed leadership development and management training to be the highest area of program spending. Spending will likely be higher in 2007 as companies scramble to fill the leadership pipeline.”

For my clients, leadership development is now front and centre. The stakes are high, and results are demanded. The question now becomes: What will work in corporate leadership development?

Those of you that have been following my learning experiment with ChinesePod have seen that I have made some observations about what works for me as an adult learner. I think we can apply some of these principles to corporate leadership development programs:

1. Tailored program: I see a shift away from the one size fits all business school style courses towards more customized, personalized and contextualized learning.
Leadership development programs will increasingly blend best practices in instructor led training with leading edge action learning, e-learning, and virtual collaboration techniques. Leaders are looking for “Just What I Want” learning.

2. Learning at my own pace: Leaders need to be in control of when and how they learn. The design of a good leadership development program should provide flexibility for learners to determine their own pace.

3. Self Service: Leaders should be provided with a menu of learning options that they can access on a self service basis. This menu could include courseware, learning activities, job aids, archived audio and video presentations, manuals, PDF articles, self assessment tools and more.

4. One to one coaching and mentoring: I often hear from leaders I work with that they feel isolated. They find it difficult to discuss personal development issues with colleagues and co-workers. Working with a coach or a mentor will accelerate the leadership development process by providing access to positive and constructive dialogue about workplace leadership issues.

5. Community: A community of practice (CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations. An innovative leadership development program will finds ways to promote social networking amongst a cohort of leaders, and implement strategies that promote community building and collaboration.

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