Jane's Pick of the Day

Shrink the change

My work involves helping people and organisations with new thinking around workplace learning. For many this means a big change in the way they do things.  I am therefore very interested in helping them make this change more manageable.

I have recently been reading a book called “Switch: How to change things when change is hard” by Chip and Dan Heath. [Available at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com]  which takes a new look at how change happens and how we can make it manageable.

You can hear Dan Heath (at Fast Company) talk a little about this in the video below, but here’s a brief excerpt:

“Any time change feels daunting, we’ll try to dodge it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about personal change or organizational change or societal change. In situations like this, where the change feels too big, we’ve got to shrink it, so it feels more manageable.”

I’m going to be using the concept of “shrink the change” in my work to help organizations work and learn smarter – that is how to make small, quick and easy changes and get big wins – so more to come on this.

The Social Learning Handbook is now available

I am very pleased to announce that my Social Learning Handbook: A practical guide to using social media to work and learn smarter is now available to purchase  as a paperback book on  Lulu - You can go to directly to the relevant page by clicking here.

This is what appears on the backcover:

"It is becoming apparent that we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way that both learning and working is happening in organisations. The revolution that is social media means that now everyone can have access to the Social Web and a range of services and applications to support their own as well as their team's learning, performance and productivity.

This should not be seen as a threat to the L&D profession, but as an opportunity to take on the new challenges it offers. The first step will be to understand the changes that are taking place, and then become immersed in the new social media tools that are underpinning this change in order to help others in the organization work and learn smarter. Social Learning, after all, is not something you just talk or read about; it’s something you do!"

This Social Learning Handbook covers both theory and practice:

• Part 1 considers the emergence of social media, its impact on workplace learning the difference between social training and social learning, the range of social technologies available as well as strategies for supporting and encouraging social learning in the business.
• Part 2 looks at some of the key social technologies and how they can be used to work and learn smarter.

You can view the Contents list, a synopsis of Part One, as well as excerpts from Part Two in 10 ideas to use social media for professional development.

The Social Learning Handbook is a companion book to the Internet Time Alliance's Working Smarter Fieldbook, and just like  the Fieldbook is an Unbook, in the sense that it is a "work in progress" in this fast moving area. Consequently, a supporting online site will help keep purchasers up to date with new articles, new resources and new thinking , as well as provide a place to ask questions and discuss topics with other readers.

The Working Smarter Fieldbook 2010

Just released!

The Working Smarter Fieldbook by Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Jon Husband, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, and Clark Quinn aka The Internet Time Alliance

Read excerpts

Buy it. $24 (£16.66). Free shipping

Join the discussion on Facebook

The socially networked classroom

I received my copy of this book by William Kist a few days ago.  It is intended as an "accessible guide for Grades 5–12, teachers of all levels of technological expertise can help students develop the new literacies necessary to succeed in a digital world."

The backcover blurb is as follows:

Web sites like Facebook and Twitter have transformed the way young people interact and communicate. With appropriate guidelines, students’ social networking skills can be harnessed to develop new literacies and deepen teaching and learning in the 21st century.

The Socially Networked Classroom  demonstrates how pioneering teachers have successfully integrated screen-based literacies into their instruction. This book includes:

• Real-world activities and lesson examples with assignment sheets, assessments, and rubrics
• Ideas on fostering collaborative learning using blogs, wikis, nings, and other interactive media.
• Tips on Internet safety, blogging etiquette, protected blogging sites, and more
• Blog entries from classroom teachers

With this accessible guide for Grades 5–12, teachers of all levels of technological expertise can help students develop the new literacies necessary to succeed in a digital world.

This book is informative, practical - with almost recipe-like ideas - as well as reflective - providing "questions to consider" -  and consequently covers a lot of ground. 

Click the image above, to take a look inside.

You can get a copy at Amazon.  Here are direct links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

"Drive" by Dan Pink

I've just finished reading this book, which was recommended to me by a number of colleagues including Jay Cross.

The promotional material on Dan Pink's website says it all:

"Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action."

This is a book that all learning professionals should read.  Here are just a few of the gems I've picked out ...

"Human beings have an innate drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another.  And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives."

"The opposite of autonomy is control.  And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us to different destinations.  Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement."

"It means resisting the attempt to control people - and instead doing everything we can to reawaken their deep sense of autonomy"

"A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude.  According to a cluster of recent behavioural studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout and greater levels of psychological well-being." 

"L&D still stuck in the course paradigm" - how can we change things?

Yesterday I retweeted a tweet (from @CharlesJennings) with a link to an ASTD article by Allison Rossett that showed that most Learning & Development (L&D) departments are stuck in the course paradigm.  All my tweets are automatically sent to Facebook, so it appeared as follows:

This triggered off a long series of comments which covered a lot of ground and included some interesting resources.  Janet Clarey remarked..

I have therefore copied the comments below. 

Maggie McPherson Interesting! Agrees with our Systematic Lit Review Findings: http://www.journal.elnet.com.au/index.php/impact/issue/current Donald Clark Complete failure to recognise that e-learning is now largely web-based, informal learning. The very fact that we're posting and looking at this report via a link on a tweet says it all. ASTD folks are carthorses with massive side blinkers. I'm sure that all those song and dance trainers will 'like this'. Christina Merl @ Donald Clark: what's your definition of a "song and dance trainer"? Donald Clark Those who see the classroom as the primary means for the transmission of knowledge and skills, and who are so wedded to the model that they can't see the wood for the trees. Training has long attracted hordes of 'amateur-dramatics types' who confuse learning with 'performance' and 'teaching'. Christina Merl Thank you. This is an interesting definition. And I do not necessarily disagree. But how would you define the learners then who ask for the 'amateur-dramatics types'? Donald Clark They're conditioned into thinking that this is the only way that 'learning' takes place. Conditioned by trainers and teachers, who should know better. In training, it's a day off work to watch someone talk at you - easy, lazy and inefficient. Christina Merl Interesting perspective. And I fully agree with your last sentence. So what would be necessary to change the system? Maggie McPherson For my MSc in 1991, I did a evaluation of learners' views of f2f compared to CBT - learners liked f2f because: day out and away from the office (often in nice hotel), free lunch, token of appreciation by employers, being 'entertained' by trainer - CBT meant: no free lunch, lack of employer's appreciation, a working 'break', lower status in company. Similar reasons remain, I guess... Jane Hart Maggie, I don't think the traditional CBT/e-learning approach is any better - as it just automates the traditional face-to-face teaching approach. Organisations need to be aware of the different ways that people learn - see my piece http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/state.html Maggie McPherson Employers need to understand not only 'how' people learn, but their motivation for doing so too :) Jane Bozarth Always concerned that this is a false distinction: There's plenty of bad F2F training and great online; there's plenty of good F2F but surely plenty of bad online. As a learner, I want the one that gives the best experience, meets my needs, helps me learn. For me it depends on the quality, not the delivery method. Christina Merl @ Jane Bozarth: Thanks for your valuable comment. It is wonderful to finally get a learner's perspective on this! Jane Hart Maggie, I read this recently in an old article on self-directed learning "What these studies have shown is that adults learn what they want to learn. Other things, even if acquired temporarily (i.e., for a test), are soon forgotten (Specht and Sandlin, 1991). Students, children, patients, clients, and subordinates may act as if they care about learning something, go through the motions, but they proceed to disregard it or forget it-unless, it is something which they want to learn" Jane Hart Here's the URL of the article - http://www.eiconsortium.org/reprints/self-directed_learning.html Jane Hart I take this to mean that training - whether f2f or online - is not likely to succeed unless the learners WANT to learn. In fact the article says "The "honeymoon effect" of typical training might start at 30-40% improvement immediately following the training, but within 1-3 months it would drop to about 10% and stay there." Jane Bozarth Christina: I doubt I'm the "learner" you may have in mind. Don: LOVE "song and dance trainer" and am stealing it now... Christina Merl @ JB: Aren't we all learners? Jane Bozarth Jane H, to your comment on the Specht and Sandlin piece, Tough has done some interesting research on the adult learner and self-directed learning that might interest you -- motivation in their view is not "learning" so much as "solving a problem" . Jane Hart Thanks Jane, do you have a link? Jane Bozarth I need to find it 7 am here and I am not even on my 2nd cup of coffee yet! Give me a little while ... :-) Jane Bozarth I used the data in my "Growing Better Learners" workshop years ago; I apparently had it in paper copy rather than electronic. The Allen Tough piece is Tough, A. "Major Learning Efforts: Recent Research and Future Directions." Adult Education 28 (Summer 1978): 250-263. (ERIC No. EJ 197 451); my notes say it was also cited in Piskurich, G. (2004). Getting the most from online learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.   Jane Bozarth Also, a really perspective-changing grad school piece for me was Schommer, M. (1998). Role of adults’ beliefs about knowledge in school, work and everyday life (Chapter 7). In Smith, M.C. and Pourchot, T. (Eds.) Adult Learning and Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, She sent it to me in PDF if you want it-- JB   Jane Hart Thanks Jane - please do email it Jane Bozarth On the way-- have a good day! Donald Clark Interesting debate - probably because we're not in some classroom listening to some trainer reciting stuff. One thing I would add is a reaction to the phrase "Employers should..." The problem is not, in my experience, employers, but the training profession, who reactively trot out classroom courses year after year, without much reflection on whether they're good or bad. A clutch of useless happy sheets and everyone's content. Maggie McPherson Aha - that's true. I'd agree that the training profession needs to rethink the notion of trotting out the "same 'ol, same 'ol", but it is the employer who pays them and lets them get away with it... Donald Clark Boards tend to be indifferent to 'training' departments because training is not presented as a core business activity or even aligned with business objectives. With the advent of oodles of dull compliance training, that situation has got worse. My belief is that training departments are eating themselves alive, while less fossilised 'classroom' alternatives are being found. Jane Bozarth Donald: Dave Ferguson has a new blog post today, includes comments on employers being 'complicit' in allowing poor training to self-perpetuate: http://www.daveswhiteboard.com/archives/3060 Jane Bozarth I've seen 2 instances where vendors have circumvented the resistant training dept and gone straight to IT to get solutions different from traditional training implemented. Jane Hart Jane, that's right - and I've seen many more sort it out for themselves, by organising their own informal, personal or group"learning" (often using social media) Jane Bozarth I did too. That sort of community of practice (self-created, self-managed, volunteer members) was the subject of my dissertation. Also see Orr's "Talking about Machines". Donald Clark Organisational leaders may be complicit, but they're largely responding to a fixed model presented by training professionals, who long ago abandoned 'learning' in favour of amateur 'theatre'. The real question is what happens next? Will training professionals rise to the challenge or continue to be sidelined, while others innovate in learning? I know where my money is! Jane Bozarth I worry that as long as senior management thinks "learning" looks like people sitting in a room at a desk, with a (pick one) teacher/facilitator/instructor/trainer, and as added benefit being entertained, that change will not be very widespread. Jane Hart Yes, Donald - Like you, I see L&D/Training "painting themselves into a corner" if they continue to think that formal teaching/training/theatre is the only model that works. Jane Hart So, the question is: How can we REALLY change things? Jane Bozarth For one: We need to work on changing management beliefs about what is "learning". The data we throw at them conflicts with what they believe to be true. Donald Clark That's right - Kirkpatrick has held back training for 50 years with it's over-worked, often irrelevant, statistically flawed behaviourist approach to evaluation - giving a talk on this at Learning Technologies London at end of month. Jane Bozarth I know-- Kirkpatrick TAXONOMY, not theory, not 'model'. I included chapter on that in my 3rd book. Here's an abbreviation/blog post from early 2009 http://bozarthzone.blogspot.com/2009/01/alternatives-to-kirkpatrick.html Donald Clark The problem is that Kirkpatrick is widely regarded as being founded on theory (which it is - just old behaviourism). Glad to see that someone else is similarly sceptical. See my Donald talks bollocks post http://tinyurl.com/ykcfphw Jane Bozarth Very good. I also think it's fun to watch people get all tangled up in their taxonomies: Devotees of Kirkpatrick are also devotees of Level 5 ("ROI") of training, and don't realize Kirkpatrick himself says there's no such thing.

If you'd like to continue this discussion, please do add your thoughts in the post's comments below

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Jeff Stanford emailed to tell me about his book, published by Packt, described as "A recipe book for creating language activities using Moodle 1.9".

Moodle is in joint 14th position on the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list, and is in fact the only Learning/Course management system/Virtual Learning Environment on the list.

About the book

This book breaks down the core components of a typical language syllabus – speaking, pronunciation, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and assessment – and shows you how to use Moodle 1.9 to create complete, usable activities that practise them. Each chapter starts with activities that are easier to set up and progresses to more complex ones. Nevertheless, it's a recipe book so each activity is independent. We start off with a brief introduction to Moodle so that you're ready to deal with those specific syllabus topics, and conclude with building extended activities that combine all syllabus elements, making your course attractive and effective. Building activities based on the models in this book, you will develop the confidence to set up your own Moodle site with impressive results.

About the author

Jeff Stanford is from London, UK, and has worked in over 20 different countries. He has more than 20 years experience as a language teacher and teacher trainer, which he has applied with abundant enthusiasm to ICT for the last ten years. He is a portfolio worker and each of the strands of his professional life have contributed to this book: as an associate tutor on the MA TEFL course at Leicester University; as a communication skills tutor; as a web site designer; and as a teacher trainer.

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

[More articles and books in our Moodle Readling List]

Visual Language for Designers:

Connie Malamed wrote to tell me that her book that synthesizes cognitive science and visual communication has just been published.

With an instructional design and art background, she thinks instructional designers, information designers, and graphic designers will be able to benefit from this year-long project.

The book is called Visual Language For Designers: Principles For Creating Graphics That People Understand.

You can buy it at Amazon here:

Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com

Connie's website is: The eLearning Coach

What would Andrew do?

Jay Cross has a new un-book out, What would Andrew do?  Here's the description:

Chief Learning Officers and training directors are struggling to convince executives they are making a difference. To be successful, they must think and act like business people. This takes more than jargon and metrics. This un-book explains what a training director must do to get budget, keep her job, and make solid contributions to the bottom line. What Would Andrew Do? will challenge you to convince a hard-nosed, self-made Scot that your proposed learning project is a worthwhile use of his money. If you can do that, convincing your organization shouldn’t be a problem. This is version 4.5 of What Would Andrew Do? It is a work in progress. It’s incomplete. Don’t buy this book unless you’re willing to put up with messiness in order to get its message.

You can access What woudd Andrew do on the Lulu Marketplace, where you can purchase a downloadable or print copy.

Here's Jay's own blog posting about it

The Twitter Book

Not got into Twitter yet?  This book might tempt you.  Here's how it is described:

"This practical guide will teach you everything you need to know to quickly become a Twitter power user, including strategies and tactics for using Twitter's 140-character messages as a serious--and effective--way to boost your business. Co-written by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein, widely followed and highly respected Twitterers, the practical information in The Twitter Book is presented in a fun, full-color format that's packed with helpful examples and clear explanations."

Here's a sneak preview on Slideshare:

The Twitter Book - A Sneak Preview

The Twitter Book