Reflections on using Curation for Designing Learning Programmes

Rachel Burnham writes:  This week the topic of using curation for design has been much on my mind.  Partly because I have been doing an update and refresh of a programme I work on that makes use of curated resources.  Partly because I have been thinking through how to further improve another programme I work on to make most effective use of the resources within it.   Partly because of conversations I have been having around this topic, through #LDInsight and particularly with Michelle Ockers (@MichelleOckers) and also with my regular collaborator, Mike Shaw (@MikeShawLD) as he puts the finishing touches to a presentation on this same topic for the World of Learning Conference in Birmingham.  

So the topic has been circling around my head and I have been reflecting on my own experience of curating resources when designing programmes.   Looking back I can see that I have been doing this for some time, though it is only in the last few years that I have consciously thought of it as curation.  It is now just a part of how I do things. 

What is curation for designing learning programmes?

What I mean by curating resources when designing programmes, is using existing resources, typically publicly available, as a substantial part of the triggering material for a learning programme.   It involves seeking out relevant materials, selecting carefully which to use, explaining the reasons for your choices so that they are put in context for the intended user, possibly sequencing and combining materials and then making them accessible to the intended user.  I make use of Harold Jarche’s Seek, Sense, Share model to support this.  This repurposing doesn’t stop there, as it also needs to include some tasks or activities that challenge the user to make sense of the material and identify what and how they can apply this to their own work.  It is this latter part that turns this from a collection of resources into a learning programme.

I know that the issue of whether simply using resources could lead to learning, was something that was bothering some of the participants in the recent #LDInsight chat that took place on 5/10/18.  For me, it is the addition of reflection, practical tasks and social and collaborative elements that transmutes these resources into rich and rewarding learning experiences.

Whilst conversations about using curation for designing learning programmes, often focus on the use of existing external resources, these are not the only elements that can be made use of.  Ben Betts in a chapter of ‘Ready, Set, Curate’ describes on pg 58  ‘thinking in thirds’:

• ·       Making use of existing material within the organisation – this could be learning material, performance support material or other useful stuff.  This allows you to make best use of what you already have and also to include material that is highly specific and particular to your organisation and its way of doing things. 
• ·       Secondly, is the external, already existing material.  This is great for subject areas that are in common across many organisations or where you want to bring in particular expertise from outside of your organisation.
• ·       The final element is newly created resources.   There may be somethings that you simply can’t find ready-made or where you want to tailor some content to be particularly specific to the needs of your intended users. 

Why use a curated approach?

For me, there are three main reasons for using a curated approach when designing learning programmes:

• ·       Abundance - there are already a lot of existing resources, either in-house or externally, around the topic and it therefore makes sense to build with these existing building blocks.   So this is about using resources wisely – time, effort, energy and of course finances.
• ·       Agility – this links to the first, but places more emphasis on the ability to meet learning needs in a timely fashion, creating a minimum, viable product or solution and possibly building on this in subsequent iterations.
• ·       Access to different voices, perspectives and expertise – I think this one is often the most compelling reason. Using curation allows you to give access to material from different sources that can lead to a wider and richer learning experience.   Michael Bhaskar in his book ‘Curation: The power of selection in a world of excess’  makes the point that we can search to find things that we know exist, but what curation adds value by giving us access to things we don’t know about.  So curation can enable us to introduce users to a topic and directly to experts in that field, enabling them to more quickly build foundation knowledge and understanding.  It also enables us to help users to stretch by encountering different perspectives and emergent expertise, because curation can allow you to easily update and refresh a programme.   Actually, if the programme stimulates and supports social and collaborative learning, it may well be the participants in the programme, who identify and share that emergent thinking either through their own work or by sharing other resources that they uncover.  

Three reflections from my experience

A.  Using a curation approach when designing a learning programme alters how you design.   When designing traditionally, broadly speaking, you identify needs, specify aim & objectives and gradually get more and more specific about what is required in the design.  And you can be as specific as you like. 

When designing using curation, again you identify needs, specify aims & objectives, but you then need to search and see what is available already both in-house and externally.   And you need to be rather more open-minded about what you are looking for, because if you are over-specific you may not find it or spend so long looking that this is a poor use of time.   Once you have identified what is available, then you can fill in gaps with material that you create.

So, the traditional design approach is a bit like commissioning a tailor-made outfit in a particular colour combination to your specific measurements.  Whereas a curated approach is more like looking through your wardrobe, reviewing what you have, then going shopping to see what is available that combines with what you have, and recognising that you may not be able to find exactly what you picture in your mind’s eye in the shade you want.

It is a change in mindset.

B.  The importance of building in regular maintenance and refreshing.

As with any learning programme, it is important to keep a curated programme up-to-date and current.  What can be different is that links to particularly external resources can stop working and resources can be withdrawn or move behind a firewall and so no longer be available.  This means that there is a need to build in regular maintenance of the programme and it may be necessary to replace links to materials with alternatives.  As ‘like for like’ replacements may not be available (see point A), this requires a flexible approach.

It is tempting to think that the answer to this issue, is to ensure that you include full copies of the material you have curated within your programme, but that of course will bring problems of copyright.   Stick to links, but be alert to the need to update.   You may find this helpful guidance from Ben Betts at HT2 Labs of assistance in relation to these issues around copyright. 

My conversation with Michelle Ockers reminded me that this maintenance review, is also an opportunity to refresh a programme and that ideas for this may well come from recent participants and what they have shared within the social and collaborative elements of the programme. 

C. My third reflection comes from working as an external contributor to curated programmes and realising that pricing work for curated programmes is an interesting challenge.   Often we have experience to base the pricing of creating content and this is well understood by clients.  Pricing the curation of content can be a bit more tricky - the product of a link to a resource seems like the work of a moment, but like many other roles involving professional expertise, it is the underlying expertise, skills and judgement that have led to you finding and selecting that particular link, that is being paid for.  

I would be very interested in hearing your experience of curating resources for learning programmes and in your response to the points I have shared.

Rachel Burnham

14/10/18

Burnham L & D works with individuals and organisations to help them learn and work more effectively.  As part of this I help L&D professionals to be even more effective through updating their skills and know-how.  I have a particular interest in curation and the use of digital technologies in learning.  I frequently Sketchnote at events and offer workshops in Sketchnoting.  

The Smartphone as Swiss Army Knife

Rachel Burnham writes: I found myself looking at my Smartphone last Thursday afternoon and thinking about all the different ways I use it to support my own learning.  As I tend to, I picked up a pen and started to sketch a few of these out – then thought how interesting it would be to hear from other people in my network about how they use their smartphones. 

This is the tweet I shared:

Thank you to all who responded and contributed over the next few days.  I received lots of great suggestions – some I had thought of and lots of additional ones too, plus different perspectives, which is just what I had hoped for.

Many people shared with me the different ways that they used their phone to enable learning – some mentioned listening to podcasts, or using Audible to listen to audio books.  Others mentioned reading articles and blogs and also saving these articles or other resources and making use of tools such as Evernote or Pocket, so that you can return to them.   Many people mentioned watching short videos and some mentioned using screen capture and annotation or specialist apps such as that provided by @Coach’sEye.

For a couple of people a key factor was being able to ‘learn on the go’ and that their smartphone enabled this.  For example, @LindaRuthMcGee shared that she had completed several MOOCs using her smartphone and that its convenience had been crucial to this. 

A couple of people mentioned the importance of access to a search engine, Google, as a vital resource for them via their smartphone.   This led to some discussion about whether the information gathered in this way was learning, or just data.  We had different views on this. Richard Martin @indalogensis homed in on the fact that I had asked about Smartphone use to enable learning and reminded me that our phone is just a tool.  I think the learning comes with how we respond to the stimulus from our phones, whether a tweet, a podcast or a search that we do – does it lead to reflection, insight, action?  So how we use our phones may lead to learning or not. 

You can link this to Harold Jarche’s ‘Seek, Sense, Share’ model of Personal Knowledge Mastery.  Lots of us immediately focused on the ‘Seek’ part of this model in reporting on how we use our phones. 

But people also mentioned using their phones to capture notes, ideas and plan actions eg through use of Trello. The sense-making aspect of Jarche’s model. And some also mentioned sharing, particularly through their networks.

And of course, asking this question on Twitter meant that lots of people mentioned using their phone for conversations with their network – ‘to expand my network’, ‘to learn via my Twitter feed’ and twitter chats.  People also mentioned other networks and groups such as ‘WhatsApp groups’. I particularly liked the breadth of Helen Blunden’s response:

One additional element, that is important for me is that my smartphone helps me to easily collaborate with others and this has been a significant source of learning for me in recent years – one example being my collaboration with @niallgavinuk to explore the use of VR and AR in learning – here is a link to our most recentcuration of resources. 

Taruna Goel @write2tg summed it up for me ‘A smart phone helps me to stay connected and engage in continuous, self-directed learning.’

Reflections

We know that it is really important for us in L&D to be continuously developing our skills and insights, so one step in this direction would be to make sure we are making full use of our smartphone in doing this.   I know that this exercise, has given me a couple of ideas for how I can make even better use of my phone.  

It could be a useful exercise for an L&D team meeting to review and share ideas about how you and your colleagues are using your phone to enable learning.

And this could also be the basis for a useful short session or online conversation with employees – encouraging them to share tips and ideas for using their own phones to support their learning. 

And here is what you have been waiting for, my sketchnote:

Rachel Burnham

26/2/18

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I do this through: writing & design commissions; facilitating learning to update knowhow, 1:1 and bespoke ‘train the trainer’ programmes; and the use of Sketchnoting to facilitate learning.

Hurdling Tips for the Cobbler's Children

Rachel Burnham writes: In a recent Twitter chat hosted by L&D Connect we were invited to share what we took for granted in L&D.  One of the points I contributed (rather tongue in cheek) was that I took for granted that everyone in L&D will want to be learning themselves and developing their practice.   I was immediately reminded that much research shows that this is just not the case.  This has been a feature of the annual benchmarking report produced by Towards Maturity and this year again it reported that ‘This study has shown that whilst L&D teams have the vision and aspiration to deliver a modernised learning and development strategy they lack the skills they need internally to make it a reality.’ (‘Embracing Change’ Towards Maturity Industry Benchmark Report, November 2015 pg 63).

There are a number of areas that repeatedly have been identified as vital for many L&D teams to work on such as: business awareness; the skills of performance consultancy; and a range of digital skills.

I find that that the reasons offered for this gap in development for L&D teams fall mainly under three headings: limited resources available; limited time available; and limited awareness of what is possible.  I think the last one is particularly damaging and hard to break out of.  If you work in Learning & Development in an organisation where the experience of L&D (or probably training) is predominantly face to face, content heavy, powerpoint driven sessions and where there is little exposure to any other approaches to learning then it is hard to envisage the amazing range of possible alternative learning methods and just how effective they can be.  There are other challenges that we face in L&D, around our agility and particularly the way that technology is enabling learners to access learning for themselves bypassing L&D and again if your L&D world is limited to face to face delivery, then you may have limited exposure to these challenges.

So here are some practical suggestions for helping you and your team to overcome these three hurdles of limited resources, limited time and limited awareness.

Limited resources

Here are some suggestions for low cost ways of developing your skills in L&D and in fact all the suggestions in this blog could address this particular hurdle.

• Skills swaps – Get members of the L&D team swapping skills with each other or with other staff in your organisation.  This can be particularly useful for building confidence in digital skills.
• MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses can be a great way to access free learning opportunities and there are many ones which are relevant to those in L&D, particularly in the areas of informal learning and e-learning.  Many MOOCs are offered by universities and others by commercial providers.  They often include a mix of reading, video materials, online discussions and activities.  Search online to find ones that may be relevant to you. 
• Conferences via Twitter – An interesting way to find out what is going on at the many L&D related conferences is read the tweets from attendees.  Most conferences will now identify a hashtag for the event eg this week’s Learning Technologies event has the #LT16uk and if you search for this on Twitter, this will enable you to pick out all the tweets from this event.  Check out the publicity materials to discover what hashtag is being used.  Many events also will have blogs and video recordings produced and the Twitter feed is a good way of identifying these.

Limited Time

Harold Jarche said that ‘Work is learning and learning is the work’ so if limited time for learning is your challenge, then why not a virtue of this and consciously set out to learn from your work?  Here are some suggestions to help you do that:

• Embrace small experiments – The world of L&D is changing very rapidly, new digital tools (which can be used for curation, collaborative learning and to produce resources such as infographics and videos) are always appearing and the needs of our organisations are changing constantly too, so embrace the idea of running small experiments to try out new tools and new ways of working. Test things out on a small scale and learn from this.  Testing on a small scale reduces risk and enables things to be tried out more rapidly.
• Working Out Loud – Involves sharing your ‘work in progress’ with others to enable them to learn from it and this may also generate feedback and other ideas that enable you to improve your own work.   Working Out Loud can take many forms eg sharing verbally at a team meeting, a short post on an internal organisational network, a blog, a social media post, a video clip. 
• Action reviews – This is where a team or a team plus key stakeholders takes time to review how a project worked and what can be learned from the experience to make future projects for effective and efficient.

Limited Awareness

In many ways, I think this is the hardest hurdle to cross. but I also think it is the one with huge potential benefits.  If you can unleash your and your team’s curiosity and find ways to initially feed that curiosity, then all sorts of things will open out and become possible. 

• Learning Now TV – this is a free online hour long programme that is produced once a month.  It includes a terrific mix of interviews and practical tips sessions all about L&D.   There are also audio programmes available.  You need to subscribe to the service, but it is free and you can either watch it live as it is broadcast or download and catch up with it in your own time.  If you are feeling a bit out of the loop, this is a great and easy place to start to find out what is currently happening in L&D.
• Networking – Don’t groan too much – it is a great way to find out what is happening outside of your own organisation (and even inside of your own organisation to improve your business awareness).  Networking has had a bad name, but networking with the aim of learning is a much gentler, more mutual, easier prospect than networking to make business contacts.  The emphasis with networking for learning is to build and maintain a ‘Personal Learning Network or PLN’. This network of people can enable you to find new resources, tools and enable you to share practical ideas. This can be done in person or using social media and probably works best using a mix of these two approaches.  There are people I met first on social media and then have gone on to meet face to face - I have found the face to face so much easier  because we had already have begun to know one another.  Don’t feel that you have to network at conferences or big gatherings – my favourite form of networking is meeting up for a cup of tea!
• Mentor – Having a mentor can be a great way to gain exposure to different ideas and approaches.  A mentor may be able to guide you to useful resources and challenge your thinking.  

You may have noticed that many of these learning methods involved some form of online learning – not the traditional elearning stand alone package - but some form of online learning none-the-less and so these will also give you personal experience of a wide range of modern online learning methods.  So my 10^th tip is to try out a wide range of learning methods yourself – even if they are not your favourite learning method, it will all help to stretch you and broaden your exposure to a wider range of learning approaches and build your Personal Learning Network.

I am very aware in writing this blog, that the people it would be most useful for, probably don’t read blogs, so do share this piece and the ideas within it with your colleagues and anyone you think might find it of value.  Spread the word!

Rachel Burnham

1/2/16

(originally posted on LinkedIn)

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Silence, Space and Sense-making

Rachel Burnham writes: Back in the autumn there was a slew of blog articles about the value of silence and the importance of having space in our lives to think and consider.  In some of these pieces the author related this to meeting their needs as an introvert and as a fellow introvert this interested me.  I began to contemplate this article then, but somehow never found the space to write it…

Now, feeling the benefits of the break over Christmas and the space that gave me, I have made space to write this.

It is a commonplace when thinking about silence and the need for space in our lives to begin by acknowledging the sheer business of our lives and the myriad of information flows competing for our attention.  Particularly if you are into social media, like to read and have the usual array of electronic devices pumping radio, TV, and online options into your home and phone.  So I will take that as a given.

In the autumn, I started to switch off from the computer and social media for one day a week on a Saturday.  I felt I would benefit from time away – a proper break from work - and partly so that I could fully concentrate on other stuff.   I didn’t do this in a conscious ‘turning over a new leaf’ sort of way, it sort of emerged and then I found I liked it and did it more consciously.  I don’t have a hard and fast rule, so I might dip into Twitter, but I try hard not to have to turn my computer on.

And I have found interesting the different space it has created in Saturdays.   The different rhythm for the day.   And the different times it creates within the day.

I have been enjoying having silent times on Saturdays – not always possible when family is in and around our small house – but I like having even small pools of silence – shutting the kitchen door when cooking for example or working quietly on the allotment in the afternoon, when most of the regulars have already finished for the day.

I like have a task to do, one that engages my hands, but not is not too demanding – weeding always works, washing up is a good standby and during the winter I have been mending by hand a piece of upholstered furniture – just for the sheer pleasure to be quiet and contemplate.

One day in October, when I was in the house alone, working on that furniture, I just listened and thought about the ‘silence’.  It was still warm and I had the windows throughout the house open.  Here is what I heard:

Constant noises – the washing machine downstairs, water through the pipes, the soft drone of traffic on the nearby arterial road out of Manchester, a zooming noise – possible hoovering by a neighbour.

Intermittent noises – sounds like someone hammering, a vehicle slamming on the breaks, a car swerving, children laughing, person calling out, person shouting, bottles clanking in a crate – perhaps someone loading up the recycling bin, a door within the house creaking open, bird song (various), the sound of the wind – leaves rustling and my favourite the sound of a leaf falling (well, maybe a twig).

So, not silent at all.  And how much we miss, when we don’t pause and listen!

Often, it is when I’m silent that I really have time to think, recall, remember and make sense of what has happened, what I have read, heard, seen, said and done.  And can learn from it.  This links to Harold Jarche’s ‘Seek, Sense and Share’ framework.

My 'sense-making' image of Harold Jarche's 'Seek, Sense, Share' Framework

Yesterday I began reading ‘Cat’s Eye’ by Margaret Atwood.  It begins by reflecting on time ‘You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water.  Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing.’

And that’s how it seems to me in those moments of silence and space that memories surface – sometimes old and often more recent.

One day in that silence in the autumn, I found myself seeing again my grandad’s hands – brief but vivid scenes of time spent with him when I was a child – he died when I was about 8.  His hands planting young leek plants, puddling them in and his thumbs and fingers firming the rich dark soil around the slender green slip.   Entranced, as he tied string around the neck of a jam jar to create a handle so my sister and I could collect and pick blackberries with him.  Stretching up to reach a shrub hanging over a redbrick wall of a garden and taking a cutting with the small olive green pruning scissors, I now have as my own – and my feelings of deep embarrassment at a church minister cutting at someone’s plant in the street!  You can tell that he influenced my love of gardening.

And sometimes in the silence, it is things that I have read – blogs and articles, or heard, questions asked and unasked, things I have said, things I wished I had said and things I wished I hadn’t said – that surface.  Sometimes connections are made or contradictions become clear – previously unnoticed.   Patterns emerge.  Ideas or new questions to ask or chasms of understanding appear.  Sometimes, it is possible to see how my actions contributed to something positive or played a part in something less successful and it is possible to identify different options, alternative courses of action that I could take in the future.  Reflections. Sense-making of the past, sense-making for now, sense-making for future actions.

But for me, none of that sense-making possible without silence and space.

Rachel Burnham

17/1/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Social - it's a little bit like water

Photo: Berit Watkin under Creative Commons Attribution License

Rachel Burnham writes: In February I took part in the Curatr based MOOC #exploresocial, in which we were examining what social learning is and why it is valuable to organisations right now.   I got thinking about this again yesterday, after reading Mark Britz’s post ‘Social Inconvenience is Important’ which was all about when and where people connect.   And suddenly, I was thinking about social learning and social networking as being like water.

Ubiquitous

Water is everywhere around us on this planet. In the sea, the rivers, the air and in living things, including ourselves.  Social is a bit like that too – it isn’t just limited to social media or the use of technologies in learning – it is there every day, everywhere, every time we have a conversation. 

I remember when it suddenly became fashionable to drink bottled water in the UK and we were all urged to drink up to 8 glasses of water a day, as though we had never drunk a glass of water before and as though every cup of tea or coffee isn’t made with water!  And that is where we are at the moment with social learning – we are in danger of bottling up social with technology and fancy labels, when what we need to be doing is recognising where it already is and how we can simply make better use of it.

Powerful

Water is an incredibly powerful force.  Water has shaped our planet. Ice and rivers have carved out valleys and rearranged the landscape.   The sea and tides have changed the shape of this island and continue to do so – cutting away at cliffs and creating new land spits.

Social is powerful too.  We are only just learning how powerful it can be in shaping our political & social landscape.  We are only just exploring how social can enable people to work and connect together within and without organisations in new networks and formations.  If you want to read more about this then I would recommend Harold Jarche's blog.

The drip, drip effect  

One of the ways that water acts is by the slow accumulation of individual droplets of water that gradually seep through seemly impenetrable surfaces; that in caves make beautiful rock formations – stalactites and stalagmites – reaching out almost as though trying to connect.

Through social we are influenced one conversation at a time, one droplet of information, one tweet, one blog at a time.  But together the cumulative effect, the overall learning can be immense.

And the tsunami wave

Sometimes water is overwhelming and devastating in its almost instant impact.   And social has its nasty, destructive side too in trolling and social bullying – leaving wreckage in their wake.

Water flows

Water flows where it will, working its way gradually downhill.   It follows the gradient.  Rivers, streams, brooks, becks and burns all flow downwards. 

 

Which brings me back to Mark Britz’s post yesterday.  You can’t force people to connect in one place or another.  An organisation can’t mandate the use of an enterprise social network.  People will connect when they find it brings value to themselves - when it makes their lives easier or helps them learn or is fun. People will go where the flow is.  

Moving water up a slope is tricky and hard work.  Getting people to connect when it doesn’t meet a need for them, will need the equivalent of an Archimedes' screw, the ancient technology which it is thought was used to water the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Social is a bit like water. 

Rachel Burnham

16/4/15

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD