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and adaptive tools both for learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education they are paying for?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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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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With the announcement of Open Social, being spearheaded by Google, there is a lot of interest and questions about what is Open Social and what it means to Business. I know this is a Learning blog, but in the interest of learning and sharing, I wrote about it on the Matrix Meridian corporate site, but I’m sharing it here as well as a lot applies also to the future of online learning technologies.

Follow the link to take a look.

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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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In an article by Mathew Ingram for the Globe and Mail, the question is posed of whether Web 2.0 technologies and social media are being adopted by the corporate world. The answer is mixed. Some companies are trying out the technologies in order to provide business solutions such as building a knowledge base or to connect people in a “war room” type situation.

My sense is that companies don’t get it. Technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and other collaborative tools are pretty much mainstream. Really, trust me on this, the Internet is here to stay and despite the überhype, Web 2.0 is REAL.

The problem is that companies view these technologies to something akin to a faster server–something that will give them a productivity gain or solve a business problem. These companies have to wake up. Anyone tuned into popular geek culture will know that there is a revolution underway.

The revolution of social media is about breaking down the structures and barriers that have kept people from having a relationship with each other and expressing their thoughts and desires. Web 2.0 technologies are still nascent, but already they have created meaningful collaborations such as Wikipedia for sharing knowledge, Flickr for sharing photos, and my favourite new addiction Twitter for sharing bits of your life.

So why do any of these technologies matter to business? They matter not because the technologies are the latest and greatest. They matter because the technologies are mainstream and are forcing a rethinking on the relationship companies has with their own people, their customer, their vendors and even their competitors.

For example, over the years, much lip service was given to the premise that the biggest asset a company has is its people. If so, why is there currently even less workplace satisfaction than ever and the negative health-effects of workplace stress continue to climb?

Structured properly, the implementation of technologies that allow people to collaborate easily and relate more openly will level the hierarchy in large companies. This allows people to interact on a more human level and as equals. I know this is shocking to big business, but most of the great ideas in a company do not come from the C-level suites!

One of the biggest opportunities for social media is in changing how a business relates to its customers. For decades, in the golden age of big business, it was the companies and the marketing firms that told us what we need and should desire. I would posit that we are at a stage where we are so saturated with advertising being pushed at us, that the tables are about to turn.

As the saying goes, he heart wants what the heart wants…the consumer is starting to tell companies what they want and how they would like it. Why fight it? Instead of paying for market research, consumers are telling you want they want!

It isn’t all about big business either. There are some goods that aren’t economical to mass produce, but have niche markets where the consumers are willing to pay a bit more for what they want. A fine example of this is how Threadless.com T-Shirts is using collaborative technologies as an integral part of its business model.

At Threadless, you find people competing to have their T-shirt designs printed. The designs submitted each month are entered into an online contest. The site’s members vote for their favourites and the winner gets their design professionally printed by Threadless. The shirts are then sold online in a limited edition until they are gone.

In this model, the designer has a shot of winning $2,000 of cash and prizes. Happy customers get a chance to collaborate, and gets the product that they truly desire. The business, of course, gets free designs submitted regularly, the opportunity to print a design that it knows will be a winner, and…PROFIT!

This use of social media can promote an authentic relationship between a business and its vendors, competitors, and especially its lifeblood…its mighty customers. Companies are going to have to work hard at figuring out how to engage and delight their customers with the new tools available to them.

Companies that don’t “get this” will be trounced by those that do. This isn’t something to be taken lightly. Regardless of its size and position in the market currently, companies that continue to ignore the changes brought about by social media will stagnate and slide into oblivion. Scary stuff, indeed!

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Many of my clients are interested in moving away from isolated learning events (classroom training, conferences etc.) and moving towards an integrated blended learning program. When strategizing about a workable solution, the question often arises as to what constitutes a good “blend”.

There is no simple answer to this question. Each organization is unique, and what works in one organization will not necessarily work in another. To begin developing a customized blended learning program, I ask clients to work with the following “Blended Learning Recipe”

_________________________________________________________________________

Blended Learning Recipe

Step 1: Examine each of the menu items below.

Menu #1 Live In-Person
Instructor Led Classroom; Coaching and Mentoring; Conference; Presentation; Workshop; Lunch and Learn

Menu #2 Live Virtual
Instructor Led Classroom Web; Webcast; Conference Call; Skype Session; Video Conference; Web Chat

Menu #3 Virtual Collaboration
Web Discussion Forum; E-mail; Blogs; Wiki

Menu #4 Self-Paced
Courseware; Podcasts; Self Assessment Tools; Archived Webcasts; Job Aids; Referenceware; Books; Articles

Step 2: Select one learning activity from each of the 4 menus. Choose learning activities that work best with your people.

Step 3: Sequence the 4 learning activities in a way that makes good learning sense.

When the activity is completed you will have a customized blended learning program for your organization!

______________________________________________________________________________

Now, of course, it is not as simple as this. A lot of time and effort has to be out into linking learning activities to performace competencies, and to aligning learning goals with business objectives.

I use the “blended learning recipe” as a starting point towards developing a customized blended learning program for clients. It provokes a lot of discussion, and it helps to establish a framework for some of the decisions we will make.

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While doing the post for Cluetrain, I did some Googling and found this post from Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com. You may know Hugh as the guy that draws cartoons on the back of business cards. However, his main gig is a Marketing Strategist with a specialty in Web 2.0. There are some really good posts in his blog, and I love his cartoons.

Anyway, his post reflects what we are trying to do with our own blogs, and what we advise our clients to consider. Read a lot, think a lot, and write regularly with passion and focus.

Also, Hugh is also one of the people that doesn’t think that blogging is about “monetizing” the effort even though it may pay back indirectly. “Love, respect, trust and goodwill are the main currencies. Cash will only get you so far.”

Without further ado…

[Today I’m speaking at the Online Traffic Optimisation conference in London. Here are my notes:]

So you want to use blogs to boost your bottom line. Here are some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. The First Rule of Blogging: “Blogs don’t write themselves.” Be prepared to fail. Blogging is a work in progress. Blogging is experimentation. Blogging is more about “The Porous Membrane” than direct selling.

2. Read Robert Scoble’s “Corporate Weblog Manifesto”. Most of it is dead on. Also worth a read is the book, “Naked Conversations”, which Robert wrote with Shel Israel.

3. Read Seth Godin’s blog. Every day. Just shut up and do it.

4. Ditto for Jeff Jarvis.

5. Ditto for Kathy Sierra.

6. Ditto for Guy Kawasaki.

7. Ditto for Doc Searls.

8. Ditto for The Cluetrain.

9. Ditto for Steve Rubel.

10. Blogs are a good way to make something happen indirectly. I proved this to myself once and for all with the work I did with Stormhoek, a small vineyard in South Africa.

11. Passion. Authority. Continuity. Without those three, you have nothing.

12. English Cut, a blog I started with Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon is often cited as my first big blog marketing breakthrough. A couple of months ago I gave a list of eight reasons why it had worked so well. Here are three of them:

Continuity. He kept at it. He didn’t expect the blog to transform his fortunes overnight. As I’m fond of saying, “Blogs don’t write themselves”. Based on our experience, if you want blogs to transform your business, I’d say give yourself at least a year.

Focus. It was always about the suits. It was never about what he had for breakfast, Technorati rank or frothy gossip about other bloggers.

Thomas spoke in his own voice. Thomas is a straightforward, affable fellow, and the voice on the blog is the same as the voice you meet in real life. He never tried to misrepresent himself on his blog, nor try to create some over-glamorized image of his profession. He just told it like it is. And people responded well to that. As he once put it, “We’re so lucky we don’t have to create the brand out of thin air. We just tell the truth and the brand builds itself.”

13. Love, respect, trust and goodwill are the main currencies. Cash will only get you so far.

14. A lot of marketing people seem to be hoping for a proven blogging method that is (A) invented by somebody else, (B) easy to replicate, (C) easy to implement, and (D) easy to sell to their boss. Good luck.

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The Cluetrain Manifesto was created in 1999 by
Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger as a statement of in your face ideas about doing business on the internet.

I re-read this recently and a lot of it is still right on the money. In particular, I was thinking that this section is very applicable to companies trying to use new media to drive down their ideas in a hierarchical manner. Bad idea…

42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.

48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

If you are interested using the internet and new media to help your business, spend the time and read the book. It is available for download FREE!

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