RavingLEARNatics

Your world, your learning responsibility

"We’re entering a world that increasingly rewards individual aspiration and persistence and can measure precisely who is contributing and who is not."  -- Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist, It’s a 401(k) World.

The Learning Democracy taught us that due to a work environment and workforce that are both changing dramatically, learners want/need more responsibility and control over their learning. We want autonomy and personalization too. Let us decide when, where and how.

Shifting responsibility . . .
This changing world means, according to Friedman, "Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it." He continues . . . "If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing."

Accepting responsibility for the education you need to succeed and being self-motivated to shape, consume and apply the learning is more critical now than ever. We must ask ourselves probing questions like this one from Byron Auguste, a director at McKinsey and one of the founders of Hope Street Group "how do I build my own competencies to be attractive to employers and flourish in this world?” If we don't, we fall behind, we fall through the cracks.

So the learning responsibility shifts to learner, but companies have a responsibility too. Leadership must inspire "individuals to act on their own" according to Friedman, and companies/employers must do a better job of identifying and articulating the competencies that best enable their employees to achieve success. As Friedman says in his column,“for students and workers to take advantage of the opportunities open to them in a ‘defined contribution’ world, they will need much better information to inform their decisions. Right now it’s much easier to evaluate a choice about buying a car or picking a mutual fund” than to find the competencies employers are looking for and the best cost-effective way to obtain them." 

 

 

 

 

The capacity to innovate

The article Need a Job? Invent It by Thomas Friedman is fantastic, very Learning Democracy relevant and a must read. Some excerpts . . . 

“because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”

“We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over, . . .”

“Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, of course,” he said. “But they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated — curious, persistent, and willing to take risks — will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own — a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear.”

“Finland is one of the most innovative economies in the world,” he said, “and it is the only country where students leave high school ‘innovation-ready.’  They learn concepts and creativity more than facts, and have a choice of many electives — all with a shorter school day, little homework, and almost no testing. 

Google - Rapid learning

What makes a workplace innovative? That's a question that NPR's All Tech Considered asked. This is something that companies like Google and Facebook have spent a lot of time studying. According to Fortune magazine, Google attracts some of the best minds, is ranked by as the best place to work in the country, and earns close to $1 million in revenue for each person it employs. Google uses a data-driven approach to manage its workplace and so does Facebook. According to John Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University and workplace consultant "Google and Facebook are metrics machines. So if you ask them what's the average time for a promotion, what's the percentage of women being promoted, they have it to a dime."

Sullivan lists three factors to that set innovative companies apart:

1. Rapid learning - not structured classroom but self learning by casual interaction. 
2. Collaborations 
3. Fun 

"Most people just don't get that," Sullivan says. Below is the NPR piece . . . 

 

 

Education is changing, and it’s changing fast!

The Learning Democracy is starting to take hold and it is being led by "free radicals" (those who take their careers into their own hands) a term coined by Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance. Check out this great FastCompny article by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, CEO of Skillshare - Does The Online Education Revolution Mean The Death Of The Diploma? Here are a few tidbits from the article . . . 

• "What we’re witnessing is a bottom-up revolution in education: Learners, not institutions, are leading innovation."
• "Students are taking responsibility for their own learning, and the lines between student and teacher are blurring. Learners can determine their strengths and weaknesses and connect with one another to help and teach each other based on their areas of expertise . . ."
• ". . . everything’s going digital, and top learning institutions are offering their courses for free on the Internet."
• Formal learning environments are crumbling, and learners are finding their own paths to knowledge through independent thinking and experience in the real world. Teachers are figuring out how to teach each student the way he or she learns best."
• "Lady Gaga’s Empowerment Foundation, supported by Harvard University, is helping students discover their interests and develop strategies best suited to their own, individual future plans."
• "The more people are culling unassociated resources and experiences to learn specific skills, the more urgent it is for there to be a place for them to record their efforts and success, to study with peers, and to present their learning portfolios to future employers or partners in a meaningful way."
• "The education paradigm of the future is all about the doers . . ."
• The new anti-resume: companies lik "Skillshare, as well as Kickstarter, Mzinga, and The Unreasonable Institute refuse resumes from job applicants. Links are the new CVs, portfolios aren’t just for artists anymore, and experience reigns." 
• "The most important skill we’ll have in a world where 50% of people see self-employment as more secure than having a full-time job is the ability to go out and get the right knowledge for the right purpose at the right time."

The future is now, and it includes more learner responsibility, influence, autonomy, choice of medium, and learning personalization. Bring it on!

 

Learning gets personal

Personalization and pulling learning content are two important pieces of the Learning Democracy and past Chief Learning Officer of the Year Tamar Elkeles talks about in the brief video below. Elkeles shares her thoughts on self-directed learning environments and predicts CLOs will play a bigger role here this year.

L&D to Get Personal in 2012 from Human Capital Media on Vimeo.

 

Learning Democracy rebels use MOOCs against the Training Monarchy

Rebels in the Learning Democracy's battle with the Training Monarchy have unveiled a new viral learning weapon that leverages key Learning Democracy ideals - learner autonomy, responsibility, control, a personalized experience, and the ability to gather and share knowledge from other learners in an open environment. The new weapon of choice, a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), is a free online course that is open-ended and could include thousands of participants using a variety of social tools like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, websites, blogs, discussion boards, etc. They become viral as word of the MOOC spreads quickly through social networks fanning the flames of democracy!

 

A quick guide to the Learning Democracy

The rise of learning democracy and end of the training monarchy . . . 

Where is e-learning heading as our workforce and work environments change dramatically? It’s moving from a centrally controlled Training Monarchy to a Learning Democracy. In a Learning Democracy, learners have more influence and control, more responsibility, autonomy, choice of medium, and personalization.

Download Dawn of the Learning Democracy pdf

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Flexible work & worker autonomy meets the Learning Democracy

A Fortune magazine article on the CNNMoney website titled How flexible work actually works is a great look into how the workplace is changing, and supports the Learning Democracy concept.

A quick overview of the article . . . what if you offer employees control over their schedules - no mandated office hour, unlimited paid vacation and sick leave, with no mandated office hours, optional meetings? Nothing gets done and the company tanks, right? Wrong. According to a new report on effective workplaces, the companies profiled are having different results. One company, MeetingMatrix International, a Portsmouth, N.H.communications firm shows increased sales (in a sagging economy) longer customer support hours, and 100% retention. The message? Focus on the end results, not hours in the office.

At Ryan, LLC, a tax services company in Dallas, employees and teams are measured on performance objectives that truly matter . . . revenue targets, 360 review scores, customer service ratings, etc. The Ryan employees don't have to account for their time, can take unlimited paid vacation/sick days. Results: voluntary turnover went from 18.5% to 6.5% from 18.5%, releasing poor performers increased from 4.3% to 6.9%, profits and revenue hit company record highs in 2009 and 2010. 

With leading edge companies moving to workplace sturctures that allow employees more autonomy and responsibility in their everyday work decisions, doesn't doing the same thing with employees and corporate learning initiatives? Of course it does . . . Behold the Dawn of the Learning Democracy!

 

 

 

Free & open learning

More ammunition for the Learning Democracy revolution . . . a very interesting video based on Anya Kamenetz's book DIY U . . .

Games, stories, learning

Computer games is the fastest growing form of media. Games have the ability to motivate, compel and engage us. There are a number of lessons learned from the gaming industry that fit perfectly with the concept of the Learning Democracy and should be applied to the learning programs we create.

"The fundamental premise behind most gaming experiences is the journey that participants are taken on - a journey through levels of increasing difficulty toward the eventual mastery of the game. During this journey, players can remain engaged for hours, days, and even weeks at a time." The previous excerpt was from an article in the May issue of Training + Development magazine by Ben Betts, CEO of HTC, titled The Path to Engagement: Lessons From Game Designers. There are some great takeaways from that article as well as a fantastic TED talk by Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain:

1. "Define a starting point and objective, but not the path to be taken" Betts suggests. Give the audience choices and the ability to make decisions that will impact the path they take. We're not talking multiple choice options or the ability to continue by clicking the next button, but real choices. We are all different. We process information differently, we learn differently, we have different personality types. Then why do we have to all follow the same path in a course to achieve the learning objective? Because it is most convenient to build it that way. The reality is that it's, much more effective and efficient to simply give the learner a "starting point, an objective, and a method for assessing when they have reached that objective . . . " as Betts says. When we specify the path the audience needs to take, it makes it an unpleasant experience for many, and it's just not necessary. An unspecified path adds an element of uncertainty. According to Tom Chatfield, a known reward excites people, but what really gets them going is the uncertain reward - not knowing if or when they would get it. When we can't quite predict something with certainty we want to go back and learn more. All of this makes a great case for giving the audience autonomy (remember the Learning Democracy).  Give them multiple long and short terms aims/tasks. By accomplishing these long and short term tasks, the audience makes decisions that force the story to evolve in different ways. This also builds confidence - games make players braver. The user becomes more willing to take risks, to try things. It becomes harder to discourage them. So let them make decisions and influence the direction, allowing the experience to evolve in different ways.
2. "Stop measuring page numbers and start measuring experience" - Page numbers and progress indicators . . . blah. According to Betts, this only "gives the illusion of progress and is an example of measuring the wrong thing . . . the learner believes that if she clicks the next button x more times, she will have completed the learning." Games use a more valuable and realistic way of measuring progress by giving feedback, rewarding effort every time you do something and allowing the audience to reflect on the journey and compare their progress against that of their peers. It's hard to learn if you can't link consequences to actions and feedback and results do this. According to Chatfield, "games offer intense emotional rewards to users, individually and collectively."  Because games can measure every single thing a user does, it allows us to determine the rate, nature, type and intensity of rewards that most effectively keep users engaged. Also, in games users get more "experience points" for digging deeper, uncovering more, spending more time perfecting a particular skill. You get more points for more important actions. As Betts says, the audience is rewarded for "learning the secrets to success and the tactics to win. They know how they did something the first time, and they adapt their strategy to do it better the next time." 
3. "Play with people, not computers" - Chatfield says that "collaboration really excites humans. People want to work with other people to solve problems and achieve things. "Most games, like courses, are designed for the audience to go through it once. Adding a social dimension can change that. It shifts the focus from the scripted part of the course or game and adds the element of other people and their experience into the mix. It lets them influence the content and the learning experience, again from the Learning Democracy.