- Informal Learning - Let's Get Real - Part II
- Informal Learning - Let's Get Real
- Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
- Guidance Needed - Are we Misguided in Informal Learning and ...
- Informal Learning is Too Important to Leave to Chance
I just saw two posts on Informal Learning that made helped me to realize the dilemma. First, was Informal Learning on Training Day, written by Michael McGinnis -who has been on a couple of panels that I moderated. In it he talks about three kinds of tools that he's provided that support informal learning: Structured OTJ Checklists, Knowledge Guides, Quick Reference Guides. What's interesting about this is that I normally wouldn't think about these as being "informal learning" mostly because while they aren't part of a formal learning setting, they are classic kinds of tools that we build as part of an overall learning intervention.
The other post was by Clark Aldrich, Is it self-defeating to write a book advocating Informal Learning over Formal? Where Clark says:
I am struck by a basic paradox. Can one criticize formal learning models in a
book? Isn't a book the epitome of what one is suggesting is the wrong model?
I don't really agree that you can't use formal learning techniques to tell or teach about a topic such as informal learning. This is the same as discussing virtual classroom tools at an in-person conference session. There's no problem, but it is ironic.
On the other hand, Clark's comment did make me think about the paradox that informal learning faces...
Once we give structure and form to a learning intervention, doesn't it stop
being informal?
This is much like the challenge of Artificial Intelligence that I was struck by back in the 80s. If you define a problem, such as playing chess and you say that requires intelligence - the moment you write a program that solves the problem, then you redefine what it means to be intelligent because in hindsight its pretty obvious how to play chess. It's just an algorithm. Intelligence must be more than that. It must be learning. But once you program a simple learning solution, then intelligence must be more than that.
Informal learning faces the same paradox. The moment you figure out the "form" of a solution - can it still be "informal" ??? Look at the words closely.
2 comments:
This is a pretty equivocal discussion. The words 'formal' and 'informal' are used in distinct senses.
In one sense, something is 'formal' or 'informal' according to whether it forms some part of a recognition infrastructure - the system of classes, programs and institutions that constitute our certificate and degree granting structure. Thus, when one has 'formal' qualifications, it is in reference to this infrastructure.
In a second sense, something is 'formal' if it is derived or represented in or as an abstract structure. In this way, systems or methods of doing things are 'formal', as are structures, 'forms' and other abstract entities. Thus, when we study 'formal' logic, we study abstract principles of reason, mechanisms for successful argumentation, truth tables and truth preservation, and the like.
Clearly there is a very large difference between having a method of doing something and having some educational infrastructure regulate and recognize the doing of something.
What complicates the matter is that the criticism - 'how can somebody write a book about informal learning' misses the mark in both senses. Because we have to ask - in what sense is a book formal?
The most that we could do is to try to adduce some sort of third sense of formal - something based on the length, or perhaps the book being organized into sections and chapters, perhaps, or even something based on the book being written in a language, which is at heart sequential. But neither segmentation nor sequence is sufficient to make something 'formal'.
I have over time lost patience with people who criticize informal learning on the ground that, if it is informal, it has no structure whatsoever. Articles like 'Informal Learning is Too Important to Leave to Chance,' I might add, fall into that category.
The mere fact that the learner is not being directed by some teacher or educational institution does not entail that there can and must be no structure whatsoever. nobody equates 'informal learning' with 'structure-free learning'.
The test for this is simple: ask any person who has learned something informally - whether it is how to program computers or how to tune and engine - how they learned. If they have any answer, then there was some structure to the learning. If a person says, "well I followed the discussion lists and then I looked up what I needed on Google," there's a structure. If he says, "Well I watched my uncle Fred tune a few engines, then I tried it while he watched," there's a structure.
What makes informal learning different from formal learning is not that it is formless, but rather, it that it is conducted outside the domain of the formal education infrastructure, with the associated and not trivial implication that it is managed by the learner, and not the professor or institution.
That's why a statement like 'too important to be left to chance' is so misleading. It implies that there is no reason why a person (whether an employee or a student) might choose this or that informal learning method. It implies that nothing can be done to support this person, to suggest some structures or mechanisms, to improve their likely outcome. It assumes that, unless we control this person, the outcome is 'by chance'.
But that's ridiculous. It is one thing to say, "I'm personally much more confident if I have a set of performance objectives that I can use to derive learning objectives and skill development opportunities around. I want to put structure in place that guides the learner along the way." It is quite another to say that the learner (a) must attend your class, and (b) must adhere to your learning outcomes and learning methodologies.
When I have characterized the distinction between formal and informal learning, I have done it this way: by saying, if you can walk out of the room, or change the shape of the discussion, or skip an activity, without (academic or other) sanction or penalty, then it's informal learning.
People can publish a book and still support informal learning. After all, picking up a book, reading it on your own time, and consulting it as necessary, is the epitome of informal learning. No classes, no structure, no tests, no grades, no degrees. Reading a book written by James Joyce is not somehow 'more informal' than reading a book by Jay Cross.
From my perspective, I see more of a tension when people refer to books as being authoritative on the internet.
For example, Dave Warlick did something to one of my comments recently to which I took objection, and when he asked me to justify my complaint he asked, "What book is it written in?" As though this would be authoritative.
When I replied, the internet, it was taken by some readers to be flippant or even rude. Why would I not provide a citation? But what citation would be better than the internet itself when addressing a question of what is or is not done on the internet? How would what is written in a book actually outweigh what people do online?
In certain circles, publishing a book still confers some authority upon its author, as though cozying up to some publisher (and signing away your copyright) somehow grants you some sort of status. But I don't agree.
We are at the cusp of a division between the age when people gained authority through what they printed on paper and when people gain authority through what they print online. It will not be a quick transition, because it is easy to recognize when somebody publishes a book, and much harder to recognize when they publish a quality website.
But as time goes by, and when we realize that Paris Hilton has published one too many books for our liking, or that some online writer has published one too few, this transition, from being anointed an 'expert' by the publishing industry, to being anointed an 'expert' by a community (of practice), will become easier.
It was extremely interesting for me to read this blog. Thanks the author for it. I like such themes and anything connected to them. BTW, why don't you change design :).
Post a Comment