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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Wiki Owner

Stewart Mader points us to Sarah Denman's look at the four groups most likely to be involved in a wiki or other enterprise 2.0 implementations. The list is:

  • IT
  • HR - and no it doesn't include learning or training - it's more the compliance side of HR.
  • Business
  • Executives
Obviously, I'm posting because most people reading this will say that learning or training is missing from this list. The responses to Lead the Charge suggested that we should be leading this, but we don't seem to be even involved.

From Masie's recent social learning survey it appears that there is a lot of adoption by learning professionals.

Do you use any of the following technologies in your organization? Choose all that apply
Technologies Used Percent %
Corporate Collaboration Portal (eg. Sharepoint) 57%
Peer Coaching/Teaching 52%
Media sharing (images, videos) 48%
Collaborative Spaces - Wikis 47%
Blogs 45%
Learning Systems for Social Learning (LMS/LCMS) 42%
Social Networks 41%
Employee Profiles 33%
Content Ratings and Reviews 13%
Twitter and Mobile Content 12%

So I'm not 100% sure I get the disconnect. Why are we not seen as a player when it comes to Wiki or Enterprise 2.0 ownership? How come Stewart and Sarah left us out?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tony,

I'm also a bit surprised that L&D isn't on the list, but I think we should be cautious about using results of the Masie survey as evidence of widespread adoption. I've commented previously on Clive Shepherd's post about the survey about some of the problems with the data from it.

Essentially, the only data you can pull from it are absolute figures. So, while 57% of the respondents say that a 'corporate collaboration portal' is used in their organization, all that really tells us is that 609 people work in an organisation that has sharepoint or something similar. There's no way to tell how many of that 609 work for the same organisation, what industries they work in, how representative they are of the L&D community as a whole etc (I'm particularly suspicious of the finding that only 11% of the respondents say that 'social learning' is a fad, having heard something quite different at conferences and seminars).

Sorry, long rambling, rant like comment but I'm actually quite disappointed that the survey promises something interesting but doesn't deliver anything that can't be viewed with a high degree of skepticism.

Anonymous said...

... and I'm also sorry about that appalling double negative in the last sentence.

Anonymous said...

I am not that surprised!
When the world shifted a few years ago away from courses and eLearning to learning at work using2.0 technologies I took the jump from our corporate academy to IT/IS to support these new technologies.
I think the learning world is still stuck in a very course centric mindset. I see expressions as using a wiki in training, how to take advantage of blogs in learning - Totally missing the point IMHO.
In my organisation (www.Grundfos.com) it certaionly is IT and Business that are first movers with HR and Executives following just after. The learning departments are left behind and discussion next years ILT courses.

Adam said...

While I agree that the results of the survey should be considered only at a high level (I was one of folks in the seminar that helped create it; Elliot himself said that this was intended to be a general gauge and not concrete actionable data), there is a clear message there. That is, learning professionals should be engaged in implementing the next generation of social media tools, but typically aren't.

I work for a large consulting firm and a larger government client, and learning teams in both are very resistant to thinking of learning in a "2.0" way. Why? They feel it jeopardizes their jobs. Obviously, this is only my opinion, because none would actually admit to this. Instead, they hide behind excuses like "what if the information is wrong?" or "what if the learners go off on all sorts of tangents?" (I'll resist the urge to rant/explain why these are completely irrational). What happens when learners across the organization are open and transparent, sharing knowledge freely with one another? It only improves the "content pool" from which traditional instructional designers can build great courses!

I recently came across a very insightful presentation on slidehare and I recommend anyone who is interested in social media and learning check it out.

Tony Karrer said...

Great comments. Thanks for the pointers about the true meaning of the survey numbers.

This does make me think that we are likely going to be trailing adoption by other parts of the organization.

"world is still stuck in a very course centric mindset" - at a recent ASTD conference that certainly felt very true.

And love that presentation by Dave Wilkins.