Sketchnote Infographic from Acas Productivity Breakfast Seminar

A Paean of Praise for the Bravery of Learners

Rachel Burnham writes: 

For the learners, who take risks and stretch themselves when being assessed, using technology to engage others (but that may or may not work at the crucial moment) or by choosing to go powerpoint-free.

For the learners, who offer their peers honest, constructive feedback when it would be so much easier to be nice, bland and safe.

For the learners, who freely share their expertise, ideas and resources with their peers, enriching the learning experience for all.

For the learner struck so nervous at the thought of a practical assessment that tears fell, but who successfully completed their assessment and has gone on to further learning in that same area.

For the learner who questioned the value of learning about report-writing most strongly and who took the trouble two weeks later to tell me they had been asked to write their first business report for work and were using the learning from the programme.

For the learners, who say ‘IT really isn’t my thing’ and then get experimenting with all sorts of tools & technology.

For the learners, who have graciously questioned their grades & feedback and sometimes have led me to find I’ve made a mistake.

For the learners, who have taken the time and had the courage to offer critical feedback to improve the learning experience, even though I was also their assessor and still had assessments of theirs to mark.

For all of us, who see ourselves still as learners, with so much to discover.

Rachel Burnham

11/10/15

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

This moment, this minute and each second in it...

Rachel Burnham writes: ‘This moment, this minute and each second in it’ – this phrase and the music that accompanies it have been haunting me all summer – echoing around in my head.  I have frequently found myself singing them whilst working, washing up, gardening or even walking down the street.  I couldn’t remember where they came from, but they seem to connect me to being more mindful in all that I am doing – to paying attention to what is around me, appreciating it and being fully present.

Yesterday, I picked out a CD to listen to and there it was – they are the opening lyrics to a song by Harold Arlen, who also wrote ‘Over the Rainbow’, ‘Get Happy’  and one that always makes me smile ‘Lydia, the Tattooed Lady’.   Apparently, his father, who was the cantor for a synagogue, was so proud of Harold’s music that he used to set the psalms to them and sing them in the synagogue - I’d love to have heard that!   The words to this song are by Johnny Mercer and it was written for a Fred Astaire vehicle.

‘This moment, this minute and each second in it’ is the opening line from a song called ‘My Shining Hour’.  I find the rest of the song rather schmaltzy, but this line inspires me and has clearly stayed with me.

Most recently I have been focussing on being more mindful in the sessions I am facilitating.  Reflecting on this, I find it makes me a much more effective facilitator, more attuned to the group and particularly to individuals, better able to help them to learn.  It aids my concentration and enables me to flow.  Incidentally, it helps me to enjoy the experience even more and the time just flies by.

I was recently asked about how as a trainer you can cope with and perform effectively, when you are doing the same session over and over.  My experience is that being more mindful helps with this.  By focusing on the here and now and what is actually happening with the group and with individuals, it makes every session different and unique.   By listening, observing and responding to what I notice, I am better able to co-create with the group a session that meets their particular needs – even if it is fundamentally the same material, based on the same learning outcomes.

Here are some of the things that seem to make it easier for me to be mindful when facilitating:

• Being prepared – If I haven’t done the preparation I need to for the session, then it is much harder to focus on the people I am working with and what is happening in the session and as a result I get too focused on the content and my delivery.   I work on doing enough preparation to build my comfort, so that I feel able to let go of the structure and the content and focus instead on helping the people I am working with engage with what they want/need to learn.  
  
  
• Being organised -  This is all about having all the materials, resources, IT facilities and other practicalities thoroughly set up and ready to go, so that they aren’t a distraction.   It can include making sure I am confident in any new equipment/software being used and also having a Plan B in place should things go wrong.
  
  
  
  
• Personalising and being personal – When I work with groups over more than one occasion, I like to include within my prep some time to think about the needs of each individual and also how the group may engage with the material to be explored.   This may not be terribly extensive, perhaps just in the journey time, focusing in on each individual and bringing to mind what I know about them – their role, their priorities, the progress they are making, any personal issues – not necessarily problems, it might be a holiday or house purchase.   By doing this, I think I am better able to draw upon this within the session. 
  
  
  Where I am working with individuals for the first time, it is good to be able to get chatting with people as they arrive and really pay attention to this – being mindful from outset.
  
  
• Being fully present in the session – The key thing for me here is choosing not to be distracted and to be really there with the people I am working with.  I am aware that sometimes I can get drawn into answering emails or checking social media or chatting to a colleague in breaks or whilst the group is doing an exercise – the lure of multi-tasking.  I am finding it more fruitful not to do this, but to stay focused on the group.

• Letting go – Sometimes, things don’t work out as planned – the technology for a webinar lets you down, the venue hasn’t set out up the room as requested, you’ve messed up and not got with you some prop or resource that you wanted to use, or learners are late.   And when that happens it is easy to spend time focusing on what you had envisaged and the gap with what is now possible or for feelings of annoyance or being hassled to dominate.   I am learning to move on and let go, focusing on what is possible rather than what might have been.  And that seems to be more helpful for me.


• Managing my own energy levels – I know I am a better facilitator when I am well rested, not overly stressed and feeling in good health, so it makes sense to pay attention to all these things.   On the day the things that personally make a difference to me are:
  
  
  • having a bit of peace & quiet as I get ready for the day, so I have a clear head;
  • eating well – I’m diabetic, so this is something I always have to keep an eye on – if I can feel myself getting a bit ratty or lacking in concentration, it is often because my blood sugar is a bit low, so a supply of healthy snacks is essential; and
  • making sure I get enough water to drink during the day.

You may find it helpful to think about what makes a difference to your own energy levels.

I have been finding it very helpful to focus on being more mindful, both when facilitating and in many other parts of my life.  If you haven’t tried it for yourself you might want to give it a go.

Rachel Burnham

4/10/15

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

On loving home grown tomatoes and what that's got to do with learning

Rachel Burnham writes: Like a great many people I much prefer home grown tomatoes to the ones bought in shops – in depth of taste and scent they are far superior.  The tomatoes in our allotment greenhouse aren’t quite ready to pick yet this year – but their distinctive slightly spicy scent is already in the air and the vines are filling with warm orange globes – maybe by the end of the week, we’ll get our first pick.  

 

Courgettes, lettuce, yellow rasberries and of course tomatoes - crop 2014

On our allotments, which we share with another family, and for which I can take precious little credit for this year, we grow lots of different fruit and veg – potatoes, onions, shallots, garlic, broad beans, runner beans, little purple beans, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries (personal favourite), spinach, chard, white carrots and so on.  In my view, the flavour of pretty much any of these is better than the shop-bought equivalents – something to do with picking when actually ripe; freshness due to less distance to travel; and of course being able to favour flavour over appearance, when picking which varieties to grow. 

I like home-made jams and pickles – and sometimes manage to make my own, but if I can’t get home-made it is great to get ones made by smaller producers with higher fruit content and fewer additives.  I have a great affection/craving for damsons and in recent years we have done a family trip to the Lyth Valley in Cumbria in order to get fresh damsons and secure essential damson jam supplies for the year.  This is the kind of jam that the big producers just don’t make – it is where artisan producers come into their own – though at a cost.

I love to cook and produce food from basic ingredients.  Nothing fancy.  An essential part of my weekend is making soup.  I make lots of meals from beans and lentils, having been vegetarian since my teens, with an emphasis on what is in season and available locally.

In fact, it would be fair to say that I love everything about food, cooking, growing it and of course, eating it.

And I love everything about learning – identifying what’s needed & what’s not, planning, designing, curating, facilitating, sharing and of course learning myself.  

But not everybody feels the same about cooking or learning.    

Some people say that they don’t know how to cook and that they can only do a few things and so get bored with what they can make themselves and rely on take outs or ready meals – always on the look-out for something new.   Others feel it is a waste of valuable time to cook and they’d rather get on with living – and I do seem to spend an inordinately large amount of time growing, preparing and washing up afterwards – the time seems worth it to me and a necessity that is part the richness of life rather than an alternative.   More parallels with learning.

 

Chard 2014

Of course, there are many whose choices around cooking are limited by poverty, even in this country and whose access to fresh ingredients, fruit and vegetable is limited by budget - where just getting enough for the whole family to eat is an achievement. 

And there are some people who love fast food – the pizzas, the burgers, the chips and the kebab.  Often the sights and smells of this have an immediate appeal – at a fun fair pink candyfloss can have its attractions – a bit like conference speakers who are full of jokes, funny hats and easy models.   Not that there is anything wrong with the occasional bit of fast food - I have a soft spot for the veggie burger made by one of the major burger chains and nothing, but nothing beats fish and chips after a cold November afternoon working on the allotment.

But the best meals, like the best learning opportunities, involve a number of aspects:

• Being hungry; 
• Fresh, quality ingredients – not disproven theories, or models pulled out dusty from the back of a cupboard;
• Skills in putting them together – more on this in a moment; and
• Presentation – my father could never understand my mother ‘fussing’ over the presentation of food and wanting to have a nice mix of colours in the food on the plate.  But presentation of food and learning does make a difference to the appetite for each.

Some of the best meals are the simplest, only needing basic skills that anyone of us could do with a bit of support.  Not every meal needs to be Michelin starred creation.  

I’ve learnt so much from home-made YouTube videos – production values not always that great, sometimes with a pause whilst the host puts the barking dog out of the room, but free, easily accessible and effective.   Not unlike scrambled eggs with mushrooms and grilled tomatoes (home grown, of course).

Sometimes, it is time with friends/family/colleagues that makes a meal special - the conversation, the exchange of ideas, the understanding of background & context.  The food is only an excuse – a starting point for the real feeding.  And the skills involved may not be in the content creation (the cooking) but in hosting and facilitating those conversations.

Sometimes it is right and proper to give a meal the full works – a relaxed setting, the elegantly nuanced menu, the skilfully prepared dishes, the choice of wine, the doggy bag to take home.

Just as with our eating habits, so we need to adopt a healthy approach to learning – it can’t all be restaurant meals or fast food, but a mixed and varied diet.  Home grown learning can be rich in flavour, contextual, simple but effective.

This is something that many in L&D are grappling with.  And more of us need to.

The occasional stick of candyfloss won’t do you any harm, but don’t mistake it for real food.

Rachel Burnham

2/8/15

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

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