Slick Podcasts for Corporate Trainers
By Gary Woodill | May 6, 2008
When I look at the literature on emerging learning technologies, I find that for the most part it is being produced and used by people in schools and universities. This is especially true for the latest technologies known as Web 2.0. Corporate training on the web still seems to be instructor led and course based with lots of multiple-choice tests.
So it is exciting to find examples that break out of this model. The Cascadia chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in Oregon and Southwest Washington has produced a slick set of podcasts for corporate trainers that rival professional radio shows. The half-hour podcasts consist of introductory music, conversations, interviews, and news about the chapter. In the latest episode, I was interviewed by chapter members Aaron Munter and Christine Martell about future trends in learning technologies. There are over 50 other podcasts available, produced by volunteer Richard Watson. The hosts are chatty and fun, and the interviews are informative and fast-paced. Try them, I think you’ll like what you hear.
Topics: General, Learning Technologies | 1 Comment »
Learning to Be Funny
By Gary Woodill | March 14, 2008
A great comedian appears to be spontaneous, giving, and having a great time. In truth, most comedy acts are delivered by highly insecure people using carefully contrived and rehearsed material that has often taken years to develop. This is the lesson from watching Jerry Seinfeld in the documentary film Comedian, and from reading Steve Martin recent autobiography Born Standing Up: a comic’s life (New York: Scribner, 2007). In Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is shown developing a new stand-up comedy routine by trying out new ”bits” at small clubs over a period of a year. After a year he has an hour or so of new material to deliver as a coherent “show”. We see him with his peer group, other comedians who are doing the same thing as Jerry. They give him feedback, share stories, and generally support each other, even though they are in a highly competitive business
Steve Martin’s route to fame and fortune is even more tortuous. He sums up the journey as follows: “I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.” At the end of Martin’s success was burn-out, mental exhaustion, and a need to walk away to start a different career in film and writing.
Much of the learning being promoted in corporate training and the new learning technologies is based on memorizing things - what some have called surface learning. Deep learning requires years to acquire, engaged immersion in the world and lots of hard work.
Topics: General | 2 Comments »
Tools and Technologies to Support Collaborative Learning
By Gary Woodill | February 19, 2008
I have just finished a report called Computer Supported Collaborative Learning: Tools and Technologies in which I try to enumerate all the different information technologies that can be used to support collaborative learning. In trying to make sense of the myriad of software packages available, I divided them into environments, networks, and tools.
I then divided each category into 6 sub-categories as follows:
- Environments for Collaborative Learning
- Shared Computer Resources in Classrooms and Workplaces
- Online Collaborative Workspaces
- Web Conferencing Software with Collaboration Features
- Knowledge Collectives
- Collective Immersive Environments
- Collaborative Augmented Reality
- Networks for Collaborative Learning
- Personal and FOAF Networks
- Group Forming Networks
- Social Mobile Networks
- Peer Sharing and Production Networks
- Community Computing Grids
- Self-Organizing Mesh Networks
- Tools for Collaborative Learning
- Communications Tools
- Collaborative Process Tools
- Presence Tools
- Social Markup Tools - Annotation, Bookmarking, and Rating
- Project and Team Management Software
- Community Management Tools
I was able to find examples of technologies for collaborative learning in all of the above sub-categores. All classification systems are arbitrary, but my starting point for this one was the 2005 report from the Institute for the Future on Technologies of Cooperation, especially the concept map of the technologies on page 15.
Topics: General | 1 Comment »
5 Surprising Things about Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
By Gary Woodill | January 9, 2008
In his 1999 book Collective Intelligence Pierre Lévy observes that “no one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity.†I thought I knew something about the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) because I’d been teaching a graduate class at the University of Toronto in the mid-1980s when Marlene Scardamelia and Carl Bereiter started a collaborative learning project with grade school children called CSILE. I saw the demos and read the theory, even though I was not directly involved with the project. CSILE was one of the earliest examples of purpose built environments to facilitate collaborative learning. (The CSCL label goes back to a conference in Italy in 1989 and is now the generic term that is used most in the field).
I’ve just finished a new research report on the application of CSCL in Training and Development (due out shortly), and realized that I really didn’t understand the concept of CSCL as deeply as I thought I knew it. In preparing this report, I encountered at least 5 surprising things about this topic that I want to share:
1. CSCL remains an academic field, still mostly centered on schools and universities. Of the more than 500 references to collaborative learning that I found, only about 20 dealt with corporate training and development. That doesn’t mean that collaborative learning doesn’t take place in training settings, but that almost all the research on CSCL has been about its application in school and post-secondary settings.
2. A parallel field of study, called Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), which also started in the 1980s, has developed very little research on learning or training. The surprising thing here is that both CSCL and CSCW each have their own books, journals, and conferences, but don’t seem to have ever seriously connected with each other. There are a few articles on learning in the CSCW literature, but mostly it is about office automation and cooperative work processes. I’d not even heard about CSCW until I undertook this research.
3. I was intrigued by the idea from Gerry Stahl at Drexel University that individual learning is mostly the result of group learning. In his recent book Group Cognition, Stahl concludes that individual learning may automatically take place within collaborative interactions. “It may be that group learning often supplies an essential basis for individual learning, providing not only the cultural background, the motivational support and the interactional location but also an effective mechanism for ensuring individual learning†(p. 274). This idea definitely needs more exploration, as does the distinction made by Stahl between individual learning and group cognition.
4. Most research on collaborative learning argues that it doesn’t happen just by putting people together in a room or a network, but requires a great deal of structure and intervention to make productive collaborative learning happen. While instructors do move away from direct presentation of materials to learners, their position in CSCL systems include scripting of roles and procedures for learners, and many other interventions including:
- Modeling to illustrate performance standards and verbalize invisible processes
- Coaching to observe and supervise students, thereby guiding them toward expert performance
- Scaffolding and fading to support what learners cannot yet do and gradually removing that support as confidence is displayed
- Questioning to request a verbal response from learners while supporting them with mental functions they cannot produce alone
- Encouraging student articulation of their reasoning and problem-solving processes
- Pushing student exploration and application of their problem-solving skills
- Fostering student reflection and self-awareness (e.g., through performance replays)
- Providing cognitive task structuring by explaining and organizing the task
- Managing instruction with performance feedback and positive reinforcement
- Using direct instruction to provide clarity, needed content, or missing information
This list, adapted from Bonk and Cunningham (1998), shows that the versions of CSCL being advocated in the literature have a much stronger role for instructors than I expected in my initial conceptualization of collaborative learning.Â
5. In addition to the need for intervention and structure, the literature shows a long list of issues that need to be dealt with in order to have successful collaborative learning. These include the development of trust among participants, motivating participants to engage with others, having participants learn methods of argumentation, creating an organizational memory as a repository of group ideas, leadership within the group, change management, creation of “presence” for online environments, lack of technical standards, and little agreement on how to assess the results of collaborative learning.
I’m not sure that computer supported collaborative learning needs to be that complicated, but that is what the literature is suggesting.
Topics: Research on Learning | 2 Comments »
Ten Learning Technologies to Transform Training in 2008
By Gary Woodill | January 3, 2008
During the past 2 months I have given workshops on emerging learning technologies in 6 locations in Canada and the United States. Most workshops were attended by 10 to 20 people, most of whom had developed at least one online course for their organization, but who were looking for what was coming next. Interestingly, only about 10% of the workshop participants were under 35. I know that because I would ask who had a Facebook account. Invariably, it was the one or two people in the group who were younger ”digital natives” who volunteered to show the group their Facebook account.
The rest of the group had heard of blogs and wikis, but had usually never tried them, not even to enter a comment into a blog. But, they were there because they knew they were being left behind. The workshop time was used to introduce group members to about 10 technologies emerging in corporate training, with a chance to actually try them out.
So what ten learning technologies should be the focus of my 2008 workshops and webinars? Here is my list (but I would love to hear yours):
1. Technologies of collaboration - wikis and teamspace software will grow in use in non-academic organizations, and the field of ”computer supported collaborative learning” (CSCL), now mostly found in schools and universities, will develop outside of academic settings, including corporate training.
2. Learning Games for Business - This field is old news to die-hard gamers, but just being discovered by most people in corporate training. Most of the participants in our workshops and conference in September tried a training game for the first time. Games are being used both for training and for recruitment of a new generation of employees.
3. Distributed Computing Technologies - I introduce “mashups” and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to workshop participants because this is a fundamental shift in how we view “websites”. Instead of sites, we need to think of a group of agents harvesting and gathering content and applications from many locations, and delivering it as a dynamic personal mix based on a user’s profile and needs.
4. Embedded Learning Technologies - computing power is already almost everywhere, from toilet seats to cell phones. I show the “hug shirt” (it vibrates and squeezes you in response to a friend’s phone message) as an example of the convergence of affective computing, wearable computing, mobile computing, haptics and teledildonics. One person at last year’s ASTD conference asked me if a “kick in the ass pants” was being developed. Hmm…
5. Multisensory input devices - Computing is mostly a visual and auditory experience. The use of touch (”haptics”) is rapidly becoming more common, led by the interace for Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft Surface technology. Watch for levers, gloves and places to put your finger in new training applications this year. While haptics will lead the way, technologies for the senses of taste and smell are not that far behind.
6. Rollout Flexible Screens for Mobile Devices - the ability to reach employees with information as they need it through mobile devices is very attractive to many training departments, but is held back by the small screens and keyboards. The introduction of flexible rollout screens (”digital paper”), with touch capabilities (”digital ink”), gesture recognition, and speech recognition for mobile devices may break that logjam. I know that this has been forecast for the past ten years, but now that it is in the Economist, it must really be happening.
7. Social Bookmarking and Automatic Synthesis of Tags - As people add tags to just about everything, a new set of technologies that gathers related tags and makes something out of them will construct some amazing synthetic worlds. Already the millions of photographs on Flickr.com are being used to develop 3D models of buildings and landscapes, through such applications as Photosynth.
8. Personalization Technologies - software for automatically constructing personal profiles beased on e-mail, web use trails, and user input is now available and is being used in recommender systems (e.g., Amazon), dynamic museum exhibits and information systems that change for each user, and adaptive tutoring systems. Watch for training to become more personalized.
9. Visualization of Complexity - computer data systems can continuously compile huge amounts of information. The problem is what to do with it. Because of our strong visual processing abilities, transforming large and complex data sets into pictures may be the best way for us to grasp its meaning. See www.visualcomplexity.com for lots of examples.
10. Location-based Augmented Reality - the Global Positioning System (GPS) will track where you are through cell phones and other GPS devices, while vast amounts of data stored in Geographic Information Systems and applications such as Google Earth will drive augmented reality applications to add to your experience of any location on the globe. This information will be superimposed on the world as you move through it.
Those are my 10 learning teachnologies with great potential to shake up training in the coming year. Let me know what you think.
Topics: General | 11 Comments »
Mesh Networks Bring Broadband to Rural Areas
By Gary Woodill | November 21, 2007
In late August I moved to a country house looking over 23 mile long Rice Lake, 10 km North of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. The only problem was the fact that the area did not have high-speed internet, a must for someone working from home doing research.
 Consequently, I had to suffer through 6 weeks of a “dialup” internet connection, and had to go to town just to be able to download large files. What a pain!
We tend to forget that millions of people still get their internet through less than adequate pipes, at a time when the sizes of files that people want to see and download continue to go up. For me, using dialup was equivalent to regressing back about 10 years, in terms of speed of access to what has become an essential service.
 I investigated using a satellite hook-up, but, while faster than dialup, it has delays as your antenna communicates with the satellite. And, it is only relatively fast in downloading, remaining painfully slow for uploading files.
Help came in the form of a new point-to-point wireless “mesh network” that uses radio-based repeater stations with a line of site range of about 15 miles. The particular technology used in my village is from Tranzeo, and my provider is Airnet, which bounces a digital signal in from Cobourg to a group of towers and rooftops along the lake and other rural areas of Northumberland County. For those who are more technically minded, Tranzeo has a white paper that illustrates the network setup with lots of diagrams and tables.
Here is a photo of the radio/antenna that is just outside my office window. My experience of the service is that this is the fastest internet connection that I have used to date. While the weather can cause problems, in general it is a great technology that brings high speed internet to areas that the big providers won’t touch.
For me, it brings me back up to speed…
Topics: General, Learning Technologies | 3 Comments »
Guess Who’s Coming to Santa Clara…
By Gary Woodill | August 7, 2007
The Innovations in Learning Conference in September in Santa Clara is the first conference that Brandon Hall Research has organized, and so we are very interested in which groups in the training field will be represented there. Based on an analysis of the first 200 delegates to register, here is a breakdown of the demographics of the group, based on their type of job within their organizations:
Executives – CEO/President, CLO, VP, Partner or Chair – 10%
Directors, Managers and Coordinators – 47%
Programmers or Developers – 13%
Instructional Designers – 10%
Trainers – 6%
Consultants – 5%
HR Staff – 3%
Other – 6%
In terms of geography:
Delegates from the USA – 85%
Delegates from Canada – 10%
Delegates from other countries – 5%
To me that indicates that decision makers, both executives and middle management, of American companies are interested in what is happening in the field of emerging learning technologies. This is also born out by the fact that as many delegates have signed up for my pre-conference workshop on Twenty Technologies to Transform Training as have signed up for the other four pre-conference workshops combined.Â
Topics: Conference, General | 3 Comments »
Emerging Technologies in e-Learning
By Gary Woodill | June 29, 2007
Yesterday I presented a webinar using the WebEx platform on “Emerging Technologies in e-Learning”. Over 900 people signed up for the event and over 400 attended (apparently this is a good ratio, according to WebEx staff). The slides and the audio for the webinar were recorded and are available from WebEx. As well, Cammy Bean has summarized my talk as a set of notes, with additional commentary, on her blog, Learning Visions (thank you, Cammy) - a good example how collaboration extends the power of individual contributions to ideas and makes them part of collective learning.
Topics: General, Learning Technologies | 11 Comments »
Technologies of Collaboration
By Gary Woodill | June 11, 2007
Last week I presented twice to the American Society for Training and Development conference in Atlanta. About 300 people came to the two sessions, and I had a lot of positive feedback. Here are the slides from my presentation.
I took a rough poll by show of hands on several questions and was somewhat surprised at the results.
About half of the training professionals had used Google Earth, but almost none had tried Second Life. In fact, I had the impression that much of what I showed was completely new to most of the attendees.
This is probably because of the age of those who attend ASTD. The show of hands indicated that maybe 20% of the group was under 35 years old.
I had a similar experience speaking to a regional chapter of ASTD in Buffalo about a month ago. Only 2 people out of the group of 40+ had even heard of Google Earth, and no one knew about Second Life. One person later told me that he had a PhD. in instructional design. Again, I would say that almost no one in the room was under 35.
In 1999 I also attended an ASTD conference in Atlanta, where all the major learning management companies, online universities and e-learning content companies had hugh booths. This year there was only a handful of smaller booths on e-learning, but lots of exhibits on coaching and consulting. All this indicates that the training profession as a whole is not keeping up with the myriad changes in the world of learning technologies, and as a group, is coasting to retirement.
Topics: General, Learning Technologies | 5 Comments »
Do Learning Management Systems Have a Future?
By Gary Woodill | April 24, 2007
For several years now a number of industry pundits have been predicting the demise of learning management systems. Personally, I don’t think they’re going away, but will be part of a mix of systems for tracking learning experiences that will range from LMSs to personal electronic portfolios. It is true that learning management systems have evolved from simplistic imitations of school-based control systems to more elaborate enterprise systems that allow a for a variety of ways to track and facilitate learning. Recently, I reviewed the evolution of learning management systems in the Canadian HR Reporter.
As long as there is a demand for tracking and reporting of courses, assessments, and achievements within large organizations, I believe there will be a demand for some form of learning management systems. For a copy of the article, click here.
Topics: Learning Technologies | 9 Comments »