Sketchnote - Are you 'Networked for Learning'?

Rachel Burnham writes: The theme for ‘Learning at Work Week’ 2018 14-20^th May was ‘Networked for Learning’.  Here is the Sketchnote I created to celebrate this theme.  I designed it as a tool for reflection.

Rachel Burnham

22/5/18

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.  

Networking: What is a Personal Learning Network?

Rachel Burnham writes: Thank you very much for all the comments and feedback on the blog post I wrote last week ‘Networking: How my perceptions and practice have changed’.  It seemed to reflect a lot of people’s experiences both with  ‘traditional networking’ and how this has been changing to a more positive and helpful approach to networking as a vehicle for learning.

So, I thought it might be useful to explore in a bit more detail what a ‘Personal Learning Network’  or PLN means to me.  For me, a personal learning network is ‘those people who you learn from and with’. 

It is a network, which is loose and open, rather than a defined group of individuals.  Some of the connections are close and frequent, some more fleeting and transient.

The first part of that definition, ‘those people who you learn from’ is perhaps what we might immediately think of when focusing on networking for learning.  People who we learn from because they share useful information, put us in touch with resources or other people that are helpful or share articles and ideas that help us to become better informed or extend our networks. It can also include people who inspire us, who we may seek to emulate in some respect – perhaps to try out a specific tool that they have used, or to develop some aspect of a skill that they excel at or to adopt a behavior or approach they use.  These are people who are role models, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small ways.

One of the people who responded to my previous post was @MJCarty, who had previously written in his blog that the idea of PLNs made him feel uncomfortable or twitchy and that the concept of a PLN ‘could be interpreted as a framework for consciously using people for just one purpose’.  This got me to question my thinking about PLNs more – could you use a PLN to ‘suck the learning out of other people’? Perhaps as it was Halloween this week, I heard this in more of a blood-sucking way than I would have done otherwise.  But it made me realise, just how integral for me to a personal learning network are the values of generosity and mutuality.

I think what makes me ‘twitchy’ is the idea of ‘thought leadership’. That there are some people set up – by themselves, by other people, by particular platforms – I’m not quite sure – but I know that it doesn’t sit well with me.  That setting apart of some individuals to lead the thinking of others is in my view, almost completely the opposite to the idea of a personal learning network.

I think the most important part of a personal learning network is the learning with other people.  It isn’t enough to just take learning from others, I think the joy – the magic, if you like – really happens when you are also contributing.

That may be through sharing resources; helping people to make connections; acknowledging others contributions and through this encouraging them in their explorations; and sharing from your own experience.  This links it with the idea of Working Out Loud (WOL).

I think that learning with others is at the heart of a personal learning network and this involves dialogue and doing.  The dialogue can come in many forms – in person conversations over a cup of tea, a quick tweet or two, exchanges within a twitter chat – I know I learn so much from participating in the regular Friday 8am – 9am (GMT) #LDInsight twitter chat.   Dialogue can be quite spaced out - reading someone’s blog, reflecting on it and some way down the line writing your own take on that topic - that is a conversation too – with more time for reflection than we usually allow within an in person conversation and it may be all the better for that! 

A conversation may begin with one group of people and continue with someone else in a different setting. Some of my learning has come about from dialogue that started out in MOOCs or other on-line courses that I’ve participated in and have spilled out into other forums and conversations.  There are colleagues who I work with who I rarely see in person, but we share ideas, offer feedback and just talk through an almost seamless mix of texts, phone calls, emails, tweets and Dropbox inclusions.  Through this dialogue the focus may transmute, the prism through which you see a question or topic may change and something quite different can emerge.

Just as important, is learning by doing. Taking some insight or idea and incorporating into your practice or experimenting with it. Our personal learning networks include our colleagues and clients who we work with on a daily or occasional basis. The trusted practice partners who we try out new approaches with.  The people we seek feedback from and those who generously offer it, even when we haven’t asked. The colleagues or clients who are willing to take a risk or who sometimes place demands on us that push us into learning something new.   

So, for me my Personal Learning Network is all those who I learn from and with.  And that includes you! 

Rachel Burnham

6/11/16

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. 

Networking: How my perceptions & practice have changed

Rachel Burnham writes: I am writing this post about networking, as a number of the L&D practitioners I am currently working with have recently raised the topic of networking and its value.

I used to see networking as one of those things I ‘ought’ to do as a professional.  It was always listed as one of those things that an effective and well-rounded professional ‘should’ do. And like many things one feels one ought to do, I could never quite see the real benefit – and just like cleaning out the cupboard under the sink, it was a task that I would put off until I really had to do it.  I saw it as a necessary evil, part of the downside of freelance work, as one strand of developing potential new clients. 

I always associated it with rather awkward events where a lot of strangers would gather eat canapes, exchange business cards and try to sell to one another.  (Or possibly exchange canapes, sell cards and eat … well may be not!) Definitely not part of my comfort zone.  Made worse, by a combination of introversion and lack of practice.  Rather a self-fullfilling, downward spiral.  Hideous.

But no more! Now I see networking rather differently.  Now, it is part of my day to day work.  And I even enjoy it!

So what has changed?

The key shift for me was when I started to see the purpose of networking differently and started to see it first and foremost as about learning.   More and more people are seeing the value of their personal network for learning and you now often hear people refer to their PLN or Personal Learning Network. Why not check out #PLN for many interesting links and references?

This shift enabled me to let go of a lot of baggage and distaste towards networking, as being all about selling yourself and seeking business benefit.  Instead I am able to focus on networking as learning, which fits far better with my values.   Paradoxically, this has also allowed me to reap immediate and ongoing benefits from networking, from the exposure to new information, exchange of ideas, access to resources and opportunity to test out my own experiences against other professionals in the same field.

I have also changed the way that I network.  Using social media is a big part of this.  Using social media to network and particularly Twitter, has enabled me to come into contact with a much greater variety of L&D and HR professionals than before, both here in the UK and across the world.   And, also to make contact with people in other fields too.

I find using social media works well for me as an introvert.  I have been able to build relationships with people at my own pace and switch off when I want to.  It gives me time to reflect before responding  to comments.  And it means when I do meet people in person, I feel far more relaxed and have much more interesting conversations that I ever did before, because we are often building on an existing relationship.  The foundation has already been laid.

One of the things I do now as I network, is to share what I am currently working on. This Working Out Loud (WOL) can give networking much more value and interest.  For me this changes networking from a ‘promotional’ activity in which a glossy front is maintained, with perhaps rather superficial exchanges, to something that is a bit more real, messy and hair let down.  Not that every networking conversation is a deep exchange about L&D practice – sometimes I’m discussing growing carrots or dandelions in the lawn or what music I’ve been listening to (‘cause I’m into gardening & jazz)  – but often when we do talk work it is a bit more honest in my experience, than in those traditional networking events.

My other revelation in relation to networking, is that it is possible to network and meet up one to one!  Not sure quite why the penny took so long to drop for me with this!  I now have lots of one to one networking meet ups for tea/coffee and cake or lunch.  I find I have much more productive conversations one to one or in a small group.

But the funny peculiar thing is, now I have made those changes, I now am much happier in group networking events and so now participate in far more than I ever did before! 

I will write more on this topic shortly and explore the second part of my Sketchnote, which covers some practical tips for networking.

Rachel Burnham

30/10/16

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