Tom Haskins has a series of interesting posts - on the topic:First, I have to jump on the comments in these posts by Stephen Downes and Michelle Martin. Stephen tells us...
Clearly this is a different use of PLE's than those outside the firewall, for free rangers, and for learning from everything of personal interest.and Michelle says ...
And they are not, therefore, PLEs.
A PLE that is 'inside the enterprise' is a contradiction in terms.
I have to agree with Stephen here. What is the most engaging to me about PLEs is that they put power into the hands of individuals, rather than corporations...First - let's clarify when we talk about "inside the enterprise" what does this term mean. It could mean -
- Only available to employees inside the enterprise with no ability to reach people outside the enterprise.
- Tools provide by the enterprise that will sometimes reach outside the enterprise to give public visibility.
Second - while I would expect Stephen to argue about the issue of control (see below for why corporations likely will want access, ownership, control), I'm surprised to see him argue that the same tools provide by the corporation or access completely independent of the corporation changes it from a PLE to not being a PLE. I could understand an argument that it would be preferable for individuals to be able to use the same tools outside the corporation for personal interests - but I don't see his argument that it is no longer a PLE or PWLE.
Third, Michelle, while there is definitely an issue of loss of content if you (as an individual) use tools provided by the corporation, I disagree that this does not still empower an individual's learning in a substantial way. Even if this isn't ideal (to you and Stephen), it still doesn't turn it into "not a PLE."
In PLEs are power tools Tom tells us ... I'm on the same page as Cammy Bean about Personal Learning Environments:
So all the talk about tools and maps has struck me as odd. How do we quantify or control something that is so unique to each of us? For me, I add -- why bother? Just do it.This kind of argument strikes me as odd. Learning is certainly very individual, does that mean we should help people learn how to learn? We've spent centuries studying this and we spend years teaching people these skills in schools. While Tom is right that "Life is my PLE", that doesn't free all of us from understanding how these new tools, techniques, skills, the network, the understanding of who vs. what, etc. has changed learning and in reality how it changes tacit work. Let's find the patterns here and help some folks. Certainly posts like Michelle's wonderful - My Personal Learning Environment or even my Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools are helpful in us finding patterns.
Andy Roberts posts - More Discussion on Personal Work Learning Environments where he juxtaposes Jay Cross’s comments:
Pitting individuals against corporations is not productive. Nor is the implication that businesses are out to steal workers’ intellectual property.versus my question:
.. if people will adopt these tools and approaches over time, then as a corporation, if you want to be able to keep the content after an employee leaves, especially blog content … then shouldn’t you make sure you provide these tools now rather than having tools adopted that are outside the firewall and personally owned where you will lose the content if the employee leaves?There were a few comments in Blogging Inside or Outside the Corporate Firewall that help to highlight the issues we are dealing with: Karyn Romeis said...
Hmm. I'm worried about the labelling of the various LEs. This speaks of clearcut boundaries. The separation of for-work learning from other learning. I would have trouble separating a PWLE from the rest of my life, let alone the rest of my learning.I think this highlights, but also confuses the problem. I can't separate my work from my learning except in unusual circumstances such as going to a class. Most of the time, I am doing things like researching topics that relate to issues that face my clients. It is clearly both learning and work. Tacit workers do both at the same time. Thus, there's no separation between a PLE and a PWLE. I'm suggesting the term PWLE because it highlights this exact issue. So, I agree with Karyn that you can't separate the two.
Karyn continues with ...
Also, by saying that a learning environment needs to be "set up" imputes a measure of formality that I'm not sure is warranted.What I'm suggesting is that learning departments should provide ready access to a set of tools and help employees (through training, resources, guide-by-the-side, etc.) learn how to use these tools and build skills in employees that ultimately makes them better tacit workers. Yes this does provide some formality to it. As a community, we need to think of ways to help people get better at learning.
Karyn continues ...
Because my learning journey is lifewide as well as lifelong, it existed before any formal structures were set in place - either by me or my employer. Not only does it follow me from job to job, but it follows me home, and to university and to church and behind the mic at band practice and and and....Fantastic point! So, if we provide tools and skill building for learners that can be used as part of their work-learning, these same tools naturally would be useful in all sorts of other tacit work activities. So, as an individual, I may want to have these same tools and skills to be available to me outside the corporation's control to support personal work-learning activities. This is going to cause some friction. Likely you will get supported in some corporations to help you use their tools that will allow the corporation to have on-going access to the work-product. They won't want you to do personal work-learning in these tools. So you will end up with two sets of similar tools.
Finally Karyn tells us ...
The concept of a formalised PLE (or PWLE or PXLE) speaks to me more of training and less of learning. My employer might have a form of LMS which might include a space referred to as my PLE, but I don't restrict myself to it. Just as my life is bigger than my job, so my learning is bigger than any formalised environment that exists, on or offline.This is the only part I really have issue with. Providing a blogging tool and helping employees to learn how to use this as part of their PWLE would seem like a great idea for many corporations. Maybe this is the whole issue of the The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?). Karyn is not comfortable with trying to understand how to support PWLEs because it might formalize it too much?
Mark Prasatik said...
Well I have to admit that this conversation frustrates me a little bit. I think that all people have a PLE just as Stephen, Jay Cross and others have said. Nothing new there even if it's only a cell phone and TV. I also think that the explosion of Web 2.0 tools has created incentive for many of us to move much of that PLE online and at the same time add the PWLE part as well.Great points, although again, I'm not sure what "add the PWLE part" means. Mark continues...
Companies used to own the PWLE because it was on their computers, network etc., but now that it's online the genie will be out of the bottle. The PWLE will be more the responsibility of the learner and will also be more the property of the learner except where intellectual property rights are concerned. Maybe this PLE/PWLE gets taught/encouraged from within many environments (school, work, non-profits) as a way to promote a good life much in the way we treat health issues.Mark points us to the exact problem. The corporation used to be able to know that the work product created as part of tacit work would be retained on their computers. Now, if we use web services and we have every employee create their own blog that they control, we could easily see situations where the work product is no longer available to the corporation after the employee leaves.
I just saw a really good post on this by Mark -PLE/PWLE debate and my thoughts that highlights the issue and I think helps us separate some of the issues.
Somehow, lot's of people are not comfortable with considering the issue of the rights the Corporation should have to Intellectual Property that is created as part of work and learning efforts done while employed or in a work-for-hire situation. Clearly a corporation has a reasonable expectation that work done while they are paying you should be done on their behalf. They should have rights to the end work product.
If one of my employees creates something for us or for our clients on a for-pay basis, you had better believe that there's an expectation that the owner expects to have continued access to the work product after the employee leaves. Has that somehow been changed or suspended?
Of course, it has always been a little dicey dealing with things that people have inside their heads and where the line can be drawn if they go to a new corporation or go out on their own. I can't claim any great insights into this part of the complex issue.
What's really interesting here is that blogs, used as part of a personal work learning environment (PWLE), will bring this issue front and center. Corporations could lose access to significant, captured IP that will exist in the blogs of employees if those blogs sit outside the firewall and are controlled by the individual. When the employee leaves, they could theoretically take the content down and the corporation would no longer have access to that resource - to all of the ideas, thoughts, learning of that employee captured in the blog.
Naturally, most corporations are reasonably going to want to keep access. Maybe that simply means making copies of personal blogs that are archived by the corporation in case the employee leaves. In other words, maybe all we do is keep a copy of all RSS feeds, social bookmarks, wiki pages, etc. under the control of the corporation. I would guess that this will start to happen as corporations deal with the proliferation of web services.
The more likely scenario in the near-term is that corporations (and their learning departments) will provide tools to employees (a blogging tool for example) and will encourage their employees to use those tools (as opposed to using tools that the individual controls). This is already being done. And, likely will increase over the next few years.
12 comments:
Great post, Tony with an excellent round up of the current ideas floating around.
Just to clarify--I'm not saying that if the corporation provides the PLE tools that it's no longer a PLE. I agree that particularly for those people who would not set up a PLE on their own, starting one through their jobs would substantially empower their individual learning.
For me the ideal set-up would be what you describe where as a society (through schools, corporations, nonprofits, etc.) we help people access the tools and resources to manage their own learning on a life-long basis. During those times when an individual's learning intersects with working for a corporation, I agree that the company has a right to continuing access to that knowledge and that provisions should be made for that after the person leaves. But I would like to see individuals regarding having some kind of PLE and a focus on life-long learning as being something that they own and that is in their control so that they continue using it after they leave a company.
As I've said before, my personal interest in all of this outside of my own learning is to find ways to facilitate others in becoming more efficient effective learners. In a knowledge-based economy, I think that creating lifelong learners would benefit both individuals and corporations. I also believe that individuals should be more deliberate in the development of the tools that they own--their knowledge and skills.
Michelle, I'm glad you clarified it for me. I had really misunderstood what you were saying. I was thinking of the context of here and know for corporate learning organizations looking at helping their learners. Certainly from the perspective you've taken in your comment, I can understand where you are coming from.
And given that, it adds to the dimension of how corporations will effectively work with people who have a well established PWLE when they enter the workforce.
For right now that's less of the immediate issue, but it's going to be a big issue.
Excellent synthesis Tony! The kind of learning you're doing by writing this post is essential to a PLE. You read the other blogs, quoted them here, provided the links and then tied that all together into a thoughtful exploration of the many connections between all this. Notice that you are free and empowered to have written this. This was no click2death module that you completed. You were not given the content from an exemplarily elearning process. Your completion of this post is not logged in to some LMS that recycles your learning into a KM system. You created it on your own for our mutual benefit outside any firewall.
Notice that the only tools required were an online connection, a blog reader, a browser and a computer. It hardly matters where you (or anybody) got those tools, who owns them, or what happens when you change work places. What matters is the kind of learning you engaged to write this post. Unlike studying, complying and completing tasks, this is "something that is so unique to each of us".
Giving the same tools to others will not get them to learn like this. The discussion on my blog about "empowerment of learners"and "interference with learning" addresses how learners become capable of far-reaching, integrative reflections like this post. When anyone is coerced, controlled and manipulated, the chances of this kind of learning occurring are significantly diminished. When people are given permission, support, respect, and validation to learn like this, it will increase. "Helping people learn" involves their freedom and self-motivation (more so than their tools and training). You, I and most active bloggers already have what it takes to quote, link and tie together blogs like you've done here. Helping others do that is the big challenge I see posed by PLE's. Once they are empowered, life long learning will follow naturally, as Michele is foreseeing.
Isn't the main tool of the PLE our very own little brains? It's the best software around and completely portable. I can take it with me from job to job; from hobby-project to family life. It's personal and personalized. It's mine and a corporation can never ever own it...or can it?
Tom - great comment and truly thanks for your recent posts and coming here to help my thinking - another big part of what makes this a PWLE for me.
"The kind of learning you're doing by writing this post is essential to a PLE." - I completely agree and this is POWERFUL STUFF. It's why I say Blogging - I'm Pushing Harder Now.
When you talk about "coercion" and that it's ineffective - a lot of education is coercive. Teachers used to force me to write several paragraphs and turn them in. They often made me look stuff up in particular text books. Answer particular questions. Force me to use a particular programming language. Study particular things. And if I didn't, I would get a lower grade, possibly fail, etc. Highly coercive stuff. And, it's not like as a professor I didn't do the same things to my students.
I would claim that when I do a hands-on training session that shows people how to use Blogger, del.icio.us and pbWiki, students are being coerced. They have to use those tools for the training and are HIGHLY likely to use those same tools after or not do anything at all. Should I stop? Should I not show them patterns of how I do certain kinds of personal and group learning?
If a companies were to run a series of internal workshops showing their knowledge workers how to use a blogging tool, a wiki tool and a social bookmarking tool as part on-going personal learning - is that wrong? They likely wouldn't make it mandatory that people in the company use it, but like my workshops, it makes it more likely they will adopt those tools.
While this is manipulation and possibly coercion, it also follows some of what you are suggesting in terms of "permission, support, respect, and validation to learn like this" ...
And, I agree with you that we need to step up and help others do this.
I'm hoping you'll help me understand where my message is crossing into the "dark side" of coercion, manipulation, controlled. Or is it that I'm raising the issue of corporations wanting their tools to be used so they feel control and that's inherently evil?
Cammy - what's really interesting about your comment is that I'm finding my PWLE to be helpful to build my brain, but actually it's also helping as an extension of my brain - lots of stuff I'll never be able to remember, connections I wouldn't remember, ability to recall those things, etc.
I've started a practice of taking electronic notes at all meetings (I used to write on a scratch pad) and by using desktop search I can find stuff really fast and I free myself from a lot of memory. And I can concentrate on using my brain for analysis and hopefully I retain a bit of what I get to as a result. But, I can always check my blog or my notes or my email or my docs or my presentations, if I want to remember what I thought about a topic in the past. And, what's funny is how often after a little bit of time passes people (including myself) give different answers to the same question. So, it's helpful to have that memory extension around tacit work.
Your welcome Tony.
I added a post to my blog this evening to flesh out the "interference" issue. I hope it helps.
Relax. I don't think any of us instructors, educators, or content providers can stop coercing the learners just yet. For one, it takes 24/7 delivery, not breakout sessions at conferences, web casts or courses. It also takes a difficult psychological transition for the millions who have been raised on classroom coercion. All the damage, disempowerment, incapacitation is addicting and resilient. They want to be taught and balk at thinking for themselves, unless the learning is entirely personal. You and I have both taken it and dished it out, as you've said. Most instructors teach the way they were taught. It will take decades for coercion to work itself out of the system.
My hope for learners getting immersed in permission, support, respect, and validation -- comes from everything that can be found online. Compare two people who have learned to use pbwiki. One was coerced by the time the class was held, the predetermined content, the practice session to induce behavioral change and the deadline to get it before the session ended.
The other had a need that a wiki could solve, did a Google search to see what's out there, found several approaches to explore, blogs that mention them, a few tutorials and free downloads. The process of collecting and connecting all that stuff, gave this second learner a better sense of how it could solve his/her initial problem/use case. Meanwhile all this learning is occurring freely, as needed, like a game and entirely self-motivated. In most cases there will be more lasting change, evidence of skill transfer and follow through to refine the skill set further.
The coercion will end when all we "educators" do is "cut the learners loose to find what they need" and offer guidance if they get stuck, bewildered, defeated or confused. Most everything will get figured out by trying things, making sense of what happens and getting better ideas of what to explore next. Until then, providing content, structure, time slots and group processes will be necessary. Keep up the good work!
Tony, I absolutely agree about using technology tools as an extension of the brain. Take all of those memorization tasks off the system to free up your real working processor to do all that hard stuff. And paper tools, too. Gadgets are alluring, but sometimes I still like to make lists on paper. It's very satisfying to check them off the list with a great flourish of ink and scribbles.
But this just reminded me -- see my brain is overloaded and I can't even remember all the tools I do use -- that I've recently started using Google Notebooks and I get the same satisfaction with checking stuff off.
To the conversation you're having with Tom: I think corporations will always be seen by some as the evil, dark side. Capitalism and profit rule over the people. Individuals get squashed in the quest for the almighty dollar. Power to the people. Coercion or not, I think there will always be some level of resistance. That's just human nature.
Good post and a useful summary.
First...
You write, "Clearly a corporation has a reasonable expectation that work done while they are paying you should be done on their behalf. They should have rights to the end work product."
It's not so simple as this.
Someone pays me to produce x, and they expect to obtain the rights to x. OK. But when I pay somebody to produce a newspaper, then why don't I get the rights when I buy it?
Mere payment does not confer transfer of rights, and therefore, the fact of such payment does not denote a certain type of ownership.
Moreover...
Like many employees, the work I produce belongs to my employer whether or not it is produced at the office. If I have an idea in the shower, and it relates to my work, then my employer owns it.
Yet my employer requires that I fill out time cards (AP Sigma time recording, actually, one of the most useless applications ever deployed inside a corporate firewall). Thus, my employer is very explicitly not paying me while I am a home taking a shower.
Hence, non-payment does not denote non-ownership either.
'Ownership' is a legal construct, not a causal one. People can come into, and out of, ownership of various things - including their own ideas - for a variety of reasons. Payment is only one factor, and is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.
Second...
There are different things that can be owned, in the context of our current discussion.
We can talk about the ownership of specific entities, such as blog posts.
Or we could talk about the ownership of the ideas contained in those blog posts.
Some things, no matter how produced, are not owned by the employer.
I state, for example, on my blog that "I am a socialist." This thought is not owned by the employer (though the post in which it is expressed may be owned, even though my employer may wish it wasn't).
I built bookshelves for my dining room. Even if some of the work was done on employer time, or with employer tools, they employer does not own my bookshelves, because it is the wrong type of thing (note this changes if I am employed as a carpenter, not a researcher).
Third...
Some things cannot be owned.
Owning humans, for example, is illegal. The ownership of a human is called 'slavery', and even if a substantial sum of money is paid, no ownership can be exerted in this way (the closest you can come is the 'personal services contract', of Wayne Gretzky fame).
Can parts of humans, therefore, be owned? In some cases, they evidently can. If a person steals a kidney from a hospital, it is considered theft', which can exist only if the kidney were owned.
Can one person 'own' another person's learning? That is the crux of the debate here.
It does not follow that, simply because the employer is paying the employee, that the employer has a claim to 'own' the person's learning.
Indeed, if a person's learning is 'personal', an aspect of the self, then there is a strong argument, rooted in the argument against slavery, that an employer cannot own a person's learning, for a person's learning is inseparable from the self.
But against that, it ma be that a person's learning is more like a kidney, part of the self, but separable and transferable.
Fourth...
What is it to 'own learning'? Thre are several distinct possibilities...
On the one hand, it may be to own the products of learning - the notebooks and tests and other artifacts.
On the other hand, it may be to own the knowledge or IP that was (if you will) 'transferred' (if you are a constructivist you need to depict the learning as the product of 'work for hire').
Moreover, it may be to own the 'process' of learning - that is, to dictate and determine the manner in which learning will take place, whether it be by reading, taking a class, watching a video, and so forth.
It may also be to own the 'content' of learning, that is to say, to be able to determine what will be, and what will not be, learned. My employer, for example, may require that I study Adam Smith and not Karl Marx (lest I become an employer-owned socialist).
And finally, it may be to own the learning environment - the classroom, the books, the learning environment, and the rest (though, manifestly, not the teachers).
Fifth...
Let me ask: if the self is produced via (the content of and the process of) learning, then isn't the ownership of (the content of and the process of) learning the same as ownership of the self?
I am not talking about the ownership of the artifacts - of the output of leaning, or the materials used for learning. I am talking about the learning itself.
By analogy: if 'you are what yu eat', then isn't the employer attempting to own what you 'are' by controlling what you eat?
We (mostly) wouldn't tolerate this, would we? If McDonalds required that its staff eat Big Macs for lunch, we would consider this abuse, would we not?
If my employer attempts to force me to learn Adam Smith, and not Karl Marx, isn't that the same as my employer forcing me to eat Big Macs, and not whole wheat bread? Isn't this my employer trying to own who I am?
The mere fact that my employer is paying me does not (automatically) entitle my employer to ownership over my learning.
There are (to my knowledge) no legal constructs granting ownership over 'learning' (in the sense of 'what is learned' and 'how it is learned'). That's why I can keep reading Karl Marx, even though my employer doesn't like it.
Sixth...
The 'personal learning environment' (as a concept) is an explicit assertion that learning (as opposed to the artifacts of learning) is owned by the person, not the employer.
To define learning is to define the self, which is why learning must be personal, and manifestly, must never be owned by the employer.
This is why the attempt to define the personal learning environment as something provided by, and owned by, the employer, is contrary to the concept of the PLE.
It is an attempt to create a legal construct in which a new type of ownership is created, ownership over one's learning.
The very tool - the PLE - that is intended to liberate us, could be used instead to enslave us.
There is to me a very clear line of demarcation here.
On the one hand, there is a perspective that is essentially supportive of personal learning, that supports learning, that supports personal development.
And on the other hand, there is a perspective that is essentially supportive of employer ownership, one that is essentially opposed to personal learning, one that views persons as employees to be shaped and molded according to corporate objectives.
It's a question of ownership; there isn't a middle ground. A person's learning can be owned by the person, or the employer, but not both, for should there ever occur a dispute - whether or not to study Karl Marx, say - one, or the other, must prevail.
Seventh...
Can we remain silent on the question of ownership? Can we not describe the PLE as a list of features only, the way we could (say) describe a word processor?
No. Because the list of features that characterizes a PLE is inseparable from the question of ownership.
For example: one feature of the PLE is that 'the person can choose which learning materials (or learning feeds) to subscribe to).
If the person cannot choose - if ownership over this function is instead vested in the employer, then it is not a PLE.
An analogy: we cannot describe a set of behaviours as 'driving a car' if the function of 'steering' is controlled by some other person.
(It is worth noting that these considerations apply equally in the world of formal learning. If a person is not allowed (by the college or by the school board) to access certain learning materials, then the tool they are using is not a PLE (it is an LMS)).
Stephen, thanks for the substantial thoughts. We agree on quite a few things, but there's a few points where I'm not sure I agree with you, but I don't claim to hold any real answers either. I think this discussion is raising some really interesting questions. Hopefully these questions are similar to those in other context that we can look to.
As you said - the crux of it is who owns the learning? And as you suggest - there's the issue of who owns the ideas and who owns the capture of those ideas. Who owns the intellectual property that is created as part of tacit work? When you research something and figure out an answer, who owns that result? This has always been a bit thorny. Where's the line? Do you own a tangential idea that you think up in the shower? This is going on already all the time - thus it's already an issue. I'll leave it to lawyers to continue to parse that. But the real question is - How is this different in the context of a PWLE?
A separate issue that you raise is the responsibility and style that members of a corporation should take relative to supporting PWLE. This is a bit different than the issue of rights and ownership, but they do seem to intersect. In other words, we run into the issue because it's also a question of where things get captured, right?
I hear what you are saying around a line between being supportive and being only focused on trying to own the result. KM partly failed because it often seemed more on owning the results than helping people do their jobs better, learn better, etc.
However, while you say "there's a clear line" ... I don't see the clear line. It's seems like a fuzzy space across ownership and support level. I guess you could try to be highly supportive but also work hard to make sure you don't own anything at the end. But, why would any corporation realistically try to do that? At the same time, as a CEO I am continually helping people in my organization learn - and lots of what they learn will likely help them substantially outside of being an employee and working for my clients. Most corporations recognize that.
Relative to the ability to be able to direct learning, I think we may be coming at this from considerably different angles. A corporation could certainly ask you to read Adam Smith in order to make sure you understood his concepts if that pertains to your job. They can even require you to act like you agree with Adam Smith in front of clients if that is part of your job. If you refuse, they have every right to fire you. I'm not sure that constitutes "trying to own the individual."
Can a corporation direct employees to learn about certain things? Surely they can and do.
Can an employer ask that people subscribe to particular feeds? Of course. They ask employees to monitor particular things all the time. Stay up to speed on X.
Stephen, I have this funny feeling that you assume all corporations (and by extension all people working inside a corporation) are inherently evil. My experience is that while there are some, that's the minority. Most of us are trying to do a good job and trying to help each other do a good job and at the end of the day recognize that we are all much more than our lives inside the corporation.
Probably the most interesting issue - in terms of practice is the statement you made - "The list of features that characterizes a PLE is inseparable from the question of ownership."
Important questions such as should corporations provide tools that might be part of a personal work and learning environment (PWLE)? And when people have their own PWLE tools that are outside the corporation, does the corporation have the right to make copies of the content? What content? How will the tools support this? How can content that is private to the corporation be appropriately controlled? What content should the individual have rights to keep after they leave the corporation?
Likely we are not alone in grappling with these issues. While I've not seen much discussion, certainly organizations looking to adopt hosted tools (think Google applications) must be trying to figure out these exact issues. I've not looked in detail, but it would seem to be much the same.
I look forward to continued refinement of the real questions that can define the choices that we need to make.
There's also a funny aside here ... corporations are actually motivated now to make sure you don't eat Big Macs at lunch - to keep you healthy, productive, etc.
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