Do Learning Professionals Make the Worst Learners?

The old adage:

Doctors make the worst patients.

The new adage:

Learning professionals make the worst learners.

Overlapping Events

I was truly struck by several interesting overlaps at the recent Training 2006 conference. Consider the following:

Item 1 - Marc Rosenberg’s Presentation - As experience level of learners grows, we need to provide learning and performance through access to knowledge and collaboration with the learner really owning the learning. See my previous post for more on this.

Item 2 - Saul Carliner’s Presentation surveyed the audience of roughly 200 people:
How many years of experience do you have as a learning professional?

· 1 year or less – 10%
· 2-5 years – 30%
· 6-10 years – 30%
· 11+ years – 30%

Where do you learn about what’s new in learning?

· Publications, e.g., Training Magazine, CLO, etc. – 99%
· Blogs – 2.5% (5
hands went up out of 200)
· Attending conferences – 100% (all of them were
at a conference of course)

I don’t remember if Saul also asked about participating in communities, but I know that participation is dismally low in learning professional communities.

Item 3 – Stephen Johnson’s Presentation - The author of Everything Bad is Good for You made several interesting points, but one that stuck with me were the examples of how people participate heavily in forums around things like the game Civilization IV and the TV Show Lost. See my previous post for more on this.

Item 4 – Many Presentations including My Panel on Blended Learning - The key to successful learning interventions is planning for follow-up. Providing a singular learning event without follow-up is destined to fail.

Not much controversial so far.

Questions for Each of Us

But, then why is it that as a learning professional, we are comfortable going to or sending our people to a conference like Training and treating it as an isolated learning event?

Why are we willing to talk about follow-up and collaboration, but not to do it for ourselves?

Why do we as a community not care about what we do as much as the people care about Lost or Civilization? How many people are going to leave the conference and write something in their blog?

Heck, how many people will even begin to read blogs? Or read threaded discussions? Or in any way really extend the learning experience beyond a few days in lovely Orlando sunshire?

What to Do After Attending a Conference?

Opportunity

Let me turn this around for a minute, and pose this as an opportunity. Let’s assume for a second that we are learning professionals and that we want to help people grow. They are going to be attending a conference.

What types of things would you recommend that they do after attending the conference in order to make the conference become part of a larger personal learning and growth experience?

What sources exist to help us with this?

FYI – I did a quick search and what I found was an article that said:

If your HR staff are less productive after attending a conference, here's why. Workplace stress saps productivity, according to a survey of 600 frequent business travelers commissioned by Kensington Technology Group (San Mateo, Calif.). Business travel makes it worse, with two out of five business travelers reporting headaches, back or neck pain, or sleeplessness while traveling. Nearly three out of five endure "significant fatigue." Travel time itself is unproductive and upon their return, half of travelers need two full days to catch up on work responsibilities and some (12%) say they need three days.

Hardly the glowing praise for attending a conference. :)

Action Items

I have some ideas of what could be done, but I would be curious what other people think? Post your comments here or on your blog and point me to your blog post via comments.

If you are among the 2,000 learning professionals who attended Training 2006, or maybe a different event, am I being unfair about how well you are acting as a learner?

Since you are reading this blog, you are likely in the 2.5% that read blogs, but if this is an isolated occurence, i.e., you don't even have a blog reader set up, then I would say that right now, this very instant go to BlogLines and set yourself up with an account and subscribe to my blog and the list of blogs on the right. At a minimum, that will help you stay in the loop of ideas that will emerge about how we should all improve ourselves as learners.

What other immediate actions do you recommend or are you going to take?

I’m going to try to post these questions a few places to see what kinds of answers, I would welcome your comments.