Creating a Sketch Note Gallery for CIPD NAP 2015

Rachel Burnham writes: Inspired by last week’s #PKMChat I found myself spending the CIPD NAP conference in York drawing pictures as sketch notes, rather than doing my usual live tweeting. I have curated all my pictures drawn at NAP 2015 in an album on Flickr. Here is an account of that experience and my learning from it as a late addition last week’s #WOLweek.

 

Sketch Note of opening keynote from Ryan Cheyne

As I often do, I set out for the annual CIPD Northern Area Partnership Conference in York having packed a sketch pad, set of pencils and a packet of fine tipped coloured pens.  I often add them to my luggage, because I like to doodle and sometimes find the odd half-hour or so when I’m staying away to work on a drawing.  My intention was to live tweet from the conference sessions as usual, but during the opening session, I found myself reaching for pencil and pad, rather than phone and drawing out a title page.

As I hadn’t planned to do this, I used my drawing pad of the moment, which is spiral bound and does work better for me as a notepad, compared to the cloth bound sketch books from which I am always losing pages.  My first pictures were drawn using pencil, but I quickly started to incorporate some colour and these are much more distinctive and reproduce better.   

 

Positive Psychology - with lily

I kept the pictures simple and didn’t think about them too much – picking out key words, using arrows and other easy to draw symbols, plus images that sprang to mind from what was said.  If you look at the gallery you will find that I often add in flowers, trees and other greenery, because that’s what I doodle when listening – even if it is not immediately relevant to what is being said!

During the session, I took photos of the pictures to live tweet.  I don’t think the quality of the pictures is that great, I kept getting the conference badge or bits of cardigan or shadow in the way, but they were useable.  

On the second day, I switched to drawing in a notebook provided in the goodie bag for the event – this felt great to draw in and is a lovely record of the event for me.  However, I think this isn’t as easy to scan as the spiral drawing pad and so is not so good for sharing electronically.

Reviewing the pictures after the event, it is very apparent that the easiest sessions to sketch note were the sessions that had the clearest messages and where the presentations were more strongly structured.

I decided to curate the pictures using Flickr and first scanned them into my PC, so that I had clearer images than those ones created during the session.   I collated the pictures into an album for the event and Flickr provided me with a shortened link to the album.    I think an alternative way of doing this would be to use Pinterest and may well try this out at some future point – but I’m out of time tonight!  

I am really pleased with this approach.  I tend to make notes at events and find that I have books and books of notes taken from various meetings and conferences – and I hardly ever look at them.  These notes at least look more attractive, so possibly might get refered to again.  Certainly I can recall them better – at this stage…

Let me know what you think of my sketch notes.  Why not have a go yourself?

Rachel Burnham

22/6/15

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

Spaced out, Igniting Swallows or My CIPD L&D Show 2015 Experience

Rachel Burnham writes: Everyone has their own story to tell, their own set of experiences from participating in an event like the CIPD L&D Show, which took place this week at Olympia.  The L&D Show includes a conference, exhibition, free events during the day and fringe events – so it is possible to participate in one of these events and have a completely different experience from a colleague depending upon which sessions you attended, which conversations you participated in, which tweets you read and of course upon your own mindset.   

As for me, I had a really good L&D Show – this year I didn’t go to the conference, but was out and about around the exhibition and in the free sessions.   And the sessions I participated in were amongst the very best I have experienced at this sort of event.   I felt that the sessions I participated in both contained great content and were delivered in engaging ways, with not too much sales pitch.  

One of the first sessions I got involved in was titled ‘Learning Science for Blended Learning’ and was from @iManage.   It focused on introducing us to three areas of research findings about how to make learning more effective:

·       The learning environment

·       Spacing out learning

·       Interleaving learning topics

Each topic was introduced and research shared.  We were then encouraged to discuss our ideas for applying this practically with our neighbours and tweet our ideas to the presenter.   Relevant content, delivered in a lively and thought-provoking manner that helped us to digest it & consider how to use it.

A number of sessions focused on the development needs of our own profession, to enable us to be effective in meeting the challenges facing our organisations.   Each of these sessions referred back to the recent report produced jointly by CIPD and the benchmarking organisation Towards Maturity ‘L&D: Evolving Roles, EnhancingSkills’ which sets out very clearly that many of us in L&D have been neglecting our development.  There is an urgent need to particularly develop:

• Business & commercial understanding of our own organisation;

• Skills in facilitation of social learning;

• Digital skills; 

 

• Performance consulting; and

• Analytical skills.

One of the highlights of the free programme of sessions were the two ‘Ignite Labs’ that took place – one on each day of the event.  Each session involved a series of short presentations – 5 minutes in length from a range of L&D practitioners, each supported by 20 slides timed to change at 15 second intervals.  Such a challenge!   The topics included a great variety of topics from: changing the approach to L&D in an organisation, practical examples, appreciation, a dialogue approach to change management, the importance of digital skills, improving the blood transfusion service in Uganda and moving from lurking to learning on Twitter.  I particularly valued Jonathon Marshall’s session on changing approaches to L&D at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the insight that ‘L&D needs to get off the stage, but not leave the room’.

Other interesting sessions included exploring the value of volunteering as a learning experience, something which CIPD has been encouraging through the Steps Ahead Mentoring scheme and links with iwill.org.uk.   There are win-win-wins to be gained here for the employee doing the volunteering, for the organisation in terms of the impact of the learning & engagement and for the community benefitting.  

It was good to hear Andy Lancaster, Head of L&D for CIPD talking about the ‘Leaders in Learning’ Network which has been running for about a year in London and which is now beginning to regionalise.   This brings together people in L&D to network, discuss great practice and case studies, talk technology, share research and problem-solve together.  These evening sessions about 4 times a year are very interactive and are highly valued by those who participate.  Meetings have recently been held in Scotland, East Anglia and future meetings will also be taking place in Manchester for the North West.

One of the very last sessions, I participated in focused on ‘storytelling’ and was led by the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama.  This session explored why story telling is so important to us and how we can use it to aid learning in our organisations.  Early on in the session we were invited to remember a favourite book from our childhood and to think about why it had had such an impact on us – my choice was ‘Swallows and Amazons’ by Arthur Ransome – it is full of strong female characters, each individual and distinctive – apparently based upon the author’s own sisters.   The session considered different ways of using story telling and was full of inspiration for me – I know I don’t use story telling as much as I might.

My overall impressions of the event - I have come away with lots of ‘I could try that’ and ‘I’d like to find out more about that’.  Were the ideas shared in the event brand new? Probably not, but there was lots to learn, adapt and provoke thought & action for any L&D professional. And that is good enough for me.

Rachel Burnham

17/5/15

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

Feedback would happen all the time if ... we encouraged peer feedback in learning programmes

Rachel Burnham writes: This blog is written as part of the #FeedbackCarnival curated by Helen Amery @WildFigSolns, a series of blog posts all written on the theme of ‘Feedback would happen all the time if…’.  As I have left it to the very last day of the carnival to write something, I am very aware of just how good the posts have been and that ‘feedback’ has been discussed from pretty much every angle and point of view.  It has been exalted, debated, dissed and dissected.  

But still I want to contribute.  So, I thought I would share some of my experiences of building the giving & receiving of peer feedback into learning programmes. 

  

This is an approach that I use in a number of the learning programmes that I facilitate, particularly when developing the skills of L&D professionals and people new to training.  It is built into face to face sessions, but also interactive webinars and activities taking place using discussion forums on a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment – in this case Moodle based).  I think it can be an incredibly powerful learning tool – I notice huge differences in people’s confidence and in people’s ability to reflect & learn by observing others from using it.  It is an aspect of the programmes that participants frequently comment on as being valuable.   And it is something that can be taken away and used in many other contexts.

I have been influenced in my thinking around this by PhilRace’s Ripples Model of Learning.  I don’t know if you are familiar with this approach to learning which was developed within the context of higher and further education and (very simply) views learning in terms of a series of activities that are happening simultaneously & concurrently & affecting each other rather like the ripples in a pond.   The first factors or ripples are all about the learners experiences, but he goes on to suggest that further deepening of the learning takes place when you teach a topic – I know that this is something that I have experienced - that deepening of understanding that comes from facilitating learning of others, which is why ‘teach-back’ can be such a useful learning method.    

 

Image: mycourse.solent.ac.uk

But Phil Race also suggests that assessing others learning also provides opportunities for further learning and again this fits with my own experience.  When assessing work, I get see a topic or skill from many different points of view; to see it expressed in many different ways, to see it applied in many different contexts, to see it misunderstood, poorly explained, explained more clearly than I can ever hope to and turned on its head & upside down.  Sometimes I think I have only really got to grips with some skills/topics once I have seen them really worked through by a group of ‘learners’.  

So, why not involve get ‘learners’ involved in assessing and providing feedback to their peers?  

I have used this approach when working on practical skills such as coaching, delivering learning sessions and also on design of learning and found it to be very effective.  For example, I make use of peer feedback process in a programme developing coaching skills.  Over the course of a session each participant gets to be a coach, to be coached and to observe & provide feedback on a number of peers coaching.  This process of ‘observing to be able to provide quality feedback’ really focuses the observation process and helps participants to notice & value what is working and also what could have been done differently.  Each experience of observing a peer brings out different aspects that have been done well and helps the observers to identify for themselves what effective practice includes.

Here are some pointers from my experience to get the most from a peer feedback approach:

Preparation

I find it works best to encourage some kind of discussion about what feedback is & why it is important, prior to encouraging peer feedback.  I find this is useful so that we get chance to explore our different perceptions of feedback, to encourage the valuing of positive feedback and to acknowledge some negative experiences that we may have had when being ‘given’ feedback.   This enables us to build a shared understanding of what feedback can be like.   I usually do this immediately prior to the activity in which the participants will be giving peer feedback.   This means that this introduction to ‘giving & receiving feedback’ leads into an immersion into giving & receiving feedback for real.  

I have used a variety of different activities to stimulate this discussion.  My current favourite approach is a card based activity, developed by a colleague, which invites participants to explore a series of statements about feedback and pick out the one or two that particularly resonate with them.  All the statements are helpful pieces of advice when giving or receiving feedback.  A lot of the value from this activity is getting participants to draw upon their own experience of what works & doesn’t work in the giving & receiving of feedback.  In exploring what feedback is, I tend to avoid using a particular model of providing feedback, preferring a more organic approach.

Role Model

If you are going to encourage peer feedback, then as a facilitator you need to model this yourself, both in the way you provide feedback and also in the way you receive feedback.

Recently, I was facilitating an introductory session around developing coaching skills and carried out a demonstration coaching session with one of the participants which was observed by the rest of the group.   I confess that this was not one of my better days - it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either.  Amongst other things, I became aware as the session progressed that I was asking multi-headed questions and of course, as soon as I became aware of that, it felt like I did nothing but ask multiple questions.   When debriefing this, I invited the observers to share what they had seen – fortunately there were ‘good’ bits to notice and then I went on to invite them to share with me what I could do even better – and I was delighted that they were able to pinpoint a number of things I could ‘sharpen up on’ including the multiple questions. At least I got good value out of that particular demonstration by receiving feedback graciously!

Support the peer feedback process

I find it helps to facilitate the peer feedback process.   In one of the programmes I work on, the same group get many opportunities to provide each other with feedback and they grow in confidence & skills in doing this.  The first time I find I often need to manage the process quite carefully providing a structure and almost ‘chairing’ the process, inviting individuals in turn to contribute feedback & at times managing the balance of critical & appreciative feedback or asking questions to get beyond generalities.   Whereas, in subsequent sessions, this too is handed over to participants to take turns at leading themselves. 

It is good to build in time to reflect on the experience of providing feedback – though at times it can get a bit ‘hall of mirrors’, when providing feedback on providing feedback.

Start with self-reflection

When encouraging peer feedback, I have found it makes sense to start with encouraging the individual who has been ‘doing’ to self-reflect on that experience.  So, when encouraging feedback on a coaching session, I usually start with encouraging the ‘coach’ to self-reflect or give themselves some feedback, before moving on to invite the coachee to provide feedback and then other peers who have been observing. 

 

I find this makes the feedback more personal to the individual, more responsive to their needs and their view of their performance.  What follows this it perhaps a bit more ‘messy’ than feedback delivered using a particular model, but it seems to make it more of a conversation and less of something which you are subjected to.

Appreciative feedback

I think we often underplay the huge value in feedback that helps us to notice, value and understand what we are doing well already.   Sometimes when encouraging peer feedback, I focus on encouraging purely appreciative feedback that picks out & highlights what is working well and why we think that.  I find this often gives enough food for thought to help us to further improve the way we are working, without the need to provide critical feedback.   For this to work, it does need to be more than a general ‘that was lovely’ and to be specific & detailed.

Design the criteria

One thing I haven’t done yet, but have in the pipeline, is to invite participants not only to provide peer feedback but also to design the criteria upon which it is based.   This would further extend the learning opportunity for participants by challenging them to crystallise their thinking about whatever the aspect of performance the learning is focused on and to put in their own words what ‘good looks like’.

I think encouraging peer feedback is a very useful & effective approach and fits in well with building an organisational learning environment that encourages continuous learning, both through self-reflection and social learning.

Given the theme of this post, I would of course particularly welcome your feedback.

Rachel Burnham

4/5/15

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

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