Collection of Sketchnotes from eLearning Network event 2018

Rachel Burnham writes: The eLearning Network event held its second event in Manchester on Friday 20^th July 2018.  Here is my collection of Sketchnotes from the event. 

Rachel Burnham

23/7/18

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.  

5 Pointers for Getting Your Head Around the New E-Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: I have had an amazing time over the last year participating in the Curatr based MOOC ‘E-learning: Beyond the NextButton’.  This was a 12 month based free online course to explore new ideas and approaches to e-learning – each month new material was released and an international group of participants explored a whole range of e-learning related topics.  I have learnt so much.

I was already aware that e-learning is a much broader field, than the traditional e-learning course, which is often used to deliver compliance training and involves those endless ‘Next’ buttons to take you onto the next page (hence the title of the MOOC).   I have previously used the CIPD definition of e-learning

‘learning that is delivered, enabled or mediated using electronic technology for the explicit purpose of training, learning or development in organisations.’

(Egan, 2012)

And this recognises that e-learning can include: webinars/virtual classrooms/live online learning; podcasts; use of video; discussion forums; digital resources such as blogs/infographics/e-books; and the use of social media and enterprise social networks.

What this MOOC introduced me to was e-learning as also encompassing the use of AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality), AR (augumented reality), Wearables, Proximity Beacons and Bots, plus how these links to some of the research into effective learning, such as spaced learning.  So it has widened my understanding of how technology can be used to support and enable learning hugely.

This is a rapidly expanding and developing field.  It was great to hear about the possibilities of AI to enable much more personalised learning experiences and to experience the use of AI in language learning through programmes such as Duolingo. It is fascinating to hear how rapidly messaging is growing and along with this chat bots that are being used to answer customer queries. These can be used in learning both to provider learner support and also to aid with learning practice.

‘Wearables’ is another rapidly developing field – probably most of us have heard of tools such as Google Glass and fitness bracelets, which opens up the possibility of using wearables to host performance support tools. Proximity Beacons came as something entirely new to me, but are beginning to be used in museums and galleries to provide additional information directly to visitors’ phones where they have the relevant app installed and again I can see the huge potential in these for performance support, particularly in equipment rich environments.  

Augmented Reality or AR hit the public awareness over the last summer with the Pokemon Go craze, but as the technology develops there are lots of possibilities to use AR for performance support and as a new kind of resource for learning.   Virtual Reality or VR is already being explored by very many organisations to provide opportunity for people to have immersive experiences with lots of potential for impacting on behaviours and attitudes as well as to orientate people to new roles and locations.

With so many different kinds of e-learning and with the speed of developments in this field it is easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this.   In L&D we urgently need to steer a course between being an ostrich with our head in the sand and being a magpie picking up every new and shiny thing that comes along.

Instead, I have 5 pointers to help you get your head around these developments.

1)  I recommend deploying your Personal Learning Network (PLN) to help you keep up to date with developments in these fields.  By PLN I mean your network of colleagues, contacts and acquaintances that you interact with both in person and virtually.  Make sure that within your PLN you include people who are already working with these kinds of technologies  - follow them on social media, read their posts & blogs and engage with them.  They will act as translators & conductors for developments in these fields helping you to stay in touch.  Plus, this will give you some ‘go-to’ people as starting points if you want to find out more about any particular technology.

2)  Develop a broad awareness of each of these technologies in terms of their particular characteristics and how they can be best used to aid learning - what are their strengths and weaknesses.  This is just the same as understanding when and how best to use a game or video or other more traditional learning tool.  Not every tool is useful in every situation.

3)  Link this awareness to a deep understanding of what is needed in your own organisation to help people and teams perform to their very best ability.  Consider carefully which tools will help to make learning more effective. Some tools will have potential for use in your organisation and some won’t.  Avoid magpie tendencies to get excited about something that isn’t relevant to your own organisation.

4)  Don’t fall into the trap of just limiting these tools to creating more effective learning.  Keep focussed on performance.  Some of the tools may do away or reduce the need for learning at all, by substituting the need for learning with improved performance support.

5)  Experiment – once you have identified which tools have potential within your organisation, try them out.  Experiment with small trials and learn from this.

So these are my 5 pointers to help you navigate through this changing technology and steer a course clear of both ostriches and magpies!

Rachel Burnham

23/1/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  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. 

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

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