Learning Technology Consulting

This week in my studies of Web 2.0, I am investigating social networking and bookmarking sites. For social networking I setup an account on Yahoo 360 and invited a few friends to my page. It seemed to work so far but I am not seeing the value yet. For social bookmarking, I setup an account on Yahoo My Web. I can save pages there but couldn't quite get all of the functionality to work.

Pros: I am a little more familiar with the purpose of these tools.

Delta: I would have like to have more of an overview of the purpose and value proposition of these tools along with a demo of the actions.

A colleague of mine, Jane Johnson, posted an article commenting on data privacy in the corporate environment, New Course Well-Timed for Agilent. This brings to mind the data privacy aspects of web 2.0 tools. It seems that these tools are all designed with the intent of sharing information with other and collaborating easily. This causes concern when you think about the type of data that may be discussed in the corporate environment. Also, while it is an advantage to utilize applications hosted outside the firewall, it presents another concern for data security. The security features need to be enhanced to provide ease of sharing without resorting to internal hosting.

This picture and text are coming straight to you from Golden Gate Park. It is my first attempt at creating a blog on-the-go with my mobile phone. If you are wondering what this has to do with learning in the corporate environment, just imagine the photo as some obscure piece of machinery on the manufacturing floor instead of my daughter on the play structure. In the spirit of Rapid eLearning development, you could illustrate some repair process right from the floor. Not nearly as cute as my daughter, but still possibly useful.

There are multiple issues to consider when forming teams; who choses the teams, how many members, what roles & responsibilities are necessary. But I think the most valuable consideration for forming teams is defining a common purpose/goal.

While working at an internet community site I was exposed to a model for creating successful online communities, "The 12 principles of Civilization: Guidelines for Designing Interactive Internet Services" created by Cynthia Typaldos. The first principle of this model is Purpose. This section reads...

"Because people come together for a reason, members in a community need to have something in common. But the common thread that links them can’t be just anything: they must be similar in ways that matter. It’s not enough to share something with a group of members. The shared element has to mean something; it has to provide enough of a hook to bring people together."

Another important aspect is the member selection. In Decisions in Forming Teams from the Foundation Coalition, the first decision is responsibility for assigment: who should select the teams.

"The first issue that arises in forming teams is who should have the responsibility for composing the teams. There are three alternatives.

1. Self-selection: Students decide on the composition of the teams.
2. Instructor selection: The instructor assigns each student to a team. An instructor might assign teams randomly, for example, students count off to form teams. This is quick and efficient, and ensures some heterogeneity in the teams. Stratified random may also be used to distribute prior skills or experiences. Or, as described below, the instructor might elect to consider several factors more systematically.
3. Joint selection: The instructor and students together decide on the composition of the teams. In one model of joint selection, the instructor might set criteria that team composition must meet, while the students form teams that meet these criteria. "

My most valuable experiences on teams in a learning exercise has been when the goal was defined by the students (validated by the instructor/facilitator) and then individuals were allowed to self-select their membership. This process creates relevant learning experiences combined with engaged participants.

Tony Karrer published an interesting article in March 2006...
eLearning Technology: Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic

I agree with his assertion that Web 2.0 tools have the potential to make a huge impact on how we present information. I am particularly interested in how to present information to corporate learners with the right balance of standard and customized (subscription) content. Corporations have been forced to build their learning protals with manual HTML to simulate this capability. But that can only take you so far. I have been advising LMS vendors to evolve their applications to include this modular web services functionality. The first ones to get there will win big. The others will go the way of the dodo.

This is the beginning of my journey into the world of Learning with Web 2.0.

Use of social networking tools has exploded for internet users. But the learning professionals and organizations in the corporate world are just beginning to explore how these tools can be used for informal learning and collaboration. Adoption has been delayed to ask all of the what-when-where-why-how questions;

• What is the Return on Investment?
• When should we adopt?
• Where is the justification?
• Why should we add another tool?
• How can we get our learners to change?

Even though we don't have all the answers, yet? We are compelled to forge ahead. Just beyond the horizon, we can see that our users will demand it. In a few years, a majority of our new hires will be adept in Web 2.0 and expect to use these tools to share information. We better be ready!