eLearning Technology

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

#1 Social Learning Models and LMS and Social Learning

I've changed the title of the first post to make it more enticing. While it talks in terms of SharePoint, really the patterns described relate to all different types of tools.

#2 Conversation Topics

Maybe while I'm out you could take me up on this and start a dialog on one of these. For example:

24. A long, lost blog post that needs to be revisited.

80. A search tool other than Google that I use, when and why.

86. Hip learning trend during the past that was way over hyped.

99. How I find blog topics

#3 Data Driven

I firmly believe and have seen how this approach to performance improvement really does move the needle. I'm still not sure why there's not more discussion and adoption.

#4 - Examples of eLearning 2.0

Wonderful set of examples of what people are doing out there around social learning and eLearning 2.0.

#5 - LinkedIn Connection Approach Rethought

Take my vacation as an opportunity to walk up to me and introduce yourself in the biggest networking cocktail party in the world. I'm frankly not sure why you are reading this and are not linked to me on LinkedIn or for that matter following me on twitter - @tonykarrer.

#6 - Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis

Newspapers are failing by the day. We need to pay attention to that and recognize that we are publishers as well. Or at least we are right now. As work continually moves towards concept work demand for publishing will decrease and enabling tools, providing support and providing skills training will increase. The fat end of the long tail and the loss of attention is a critical issue that I'm not sure we are really ready to come to grips with. Can we file Chapter 11 for our training department?

#7 - Second Life Learning Videos

I still like these videos. They really show some of the power of virtual worlds for learning. Can you point me to a few more more recent videos that show this kind of thing?

#8 – PWLE

A bunch of posts (via eLearning Learning) all about the PWLE. It's a PLE, but emphasis is on concept work. And I still believe we need to be leading the charge around helping employees in our organizations figure out a rationale PWLE?

#9 - Social Grid Follow-up & ASTD Follow-Up

These are both follow-up posts to recent presentations. Both of these I thought were pretty good.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Top 100 eLearning Items

Using eLearning Learning, I thought it would be interesting to go look what it thinks are some of the top items of all time.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

News Commentary Curation Distribution

The post The Future of the News Ecosystem pointed me to the Stephen Johnson Picture shown above. While I don't necessarily believe that things are nearly so linear, it is a good picture of the kind of flow, enhancement, filtering that happens.

This was great to see and think about with the launch of several new Topic Hubs:

Like earlier topic hubs, they rely on News from bloggers and web content from other sources as indicated by bloggers. The commentary layer is very light in that it only occurs as part of coming up with hot lists (Hot List) Curation is aggregation, group filter (social signals) and lightweight editing (selection).

There's definitely an open question of what makes sense in what case as described in Aggregation Types.

In these we consider some of the differentiation among the various forms of aggregation:

Centralized content or distributed content. Do they pull all the content into the central site or leave it distributed on the original source?
Organization and Access - how do they organize the content. Human tagging? Automated? How do you access it?
Editorial Distribution - Single person, small group or widely distributed control of what comes in and what is best?

In this case, it considers different forms of distribution separate from the forms of curation. I'm going to need to think through how to best categorize this, but I like the picture.

While I'm on it, great post - Feed Standardization Will Commoditize Feed Aggregation, So Let’s Create The Semantic Web! by Nick O'Neill. While he's talking primarily about feeds of updates, e.g., facebook, twitter, friendfeed, etc., I think this applies pretty well to aggregation more generally:

As we move toward a standardized way of presenting feed stories to aggregators, the value provided by the aggregators is essentially commoditized.

At the end of the day, value is maximized through more efficient custom filtering services that the users can participate in creating.

Participate is somewhat a loaded term. Really participation can be automatic or manual. But the point that part of filtering can be based on user activity is a good thing to consider. What's missing from the picture above is the consumption side of things. Part of consumption is likely personal filtering as well.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

LMS and Social Learning

As a follow on to the discussion of social learning and formal learning in Long Live … great post by BJ Schone - Have LMSs Jumped The Shark?

I constantly hear people (across many organizations) complain about their learning management system (LMS). They complain that their LMS has a terrible interface that is nearly unusable. Upgrades are difficult and cumbersome. Their employees’ data is locked in to a proprietary system. Users hate the system. It’s ugly. (Did I miss anything?)

We’ve recently seen LMSs shift to include more functionality, such as wikis, blogs, social networking, etc. I think they’re heading in the wrong direction. I don’t really understand why LMS vendors are now thinking they need to build in every possible 2.0 tool. If I want a great blogging platform, I’m going to download WordPress (it’s free and has a huge support community). If I want a great wiki platform, I’m going to download MediaWiki or DokuWiki (also free and they have huge support communities). And when it comes to social networking, as a co-worker put it, “Do they really think I’m going to create a ‘friends’ list in the LMS? Seriously?”

I've wondered the same thing. Mzinga seems to have jumped out early with a strong social platform that also has an LMS capability. But there does seem to be a difference between what you expect with an LMS and what you expect from your social learning / work platform. Dave Wilkins from Mzinga talks about the two models of social learning as depicted by the diagram on the right.

There's social learning wrapped around the formal learning resources. He calls it the Amazon model with the learning being like a book. Lots of stuff wrapped around the book on Amazon. Then there's a model when the community is first and foremost and the formal learning is part of this overall model.

BJ's point is that trying to get people to spend enough time in the LMS so that you have a vibrant social learning community is problematic. We will see some level of social interaction going along with a formal learning event. But you really are much more likely to success when the social tools are the same tools that will exist beyond the formal learning. And I don't think that many of us expect our LMS vendor to provide the solution that organizations will adopt more broadly.

Thus, the question …

Why aren't the LMS vendors looking at deeper integration with other offerings?

In some ways they are. SharePoint and LMS seems to be a more common discussion:

Likely this is the beginning of a wave of this kind of approach.