6 Ways Students Can Use Sketchnotes to Aid Studying

 

Rachel Burnham writes: In this article, I want to share some of my experiences of how students can make use of Sketchnoting to aid them in their studying.

Sketchnotes are rich pictures, which you create yourself, that make use of a combination of both words and simple pictures.  There are many styles and approaches to Sketchnoting – in Sketchnoting there are no rules, it is about finding an approach that works for you.  For example, I like to make use of colour in my Sketchnotes, whereas Mike Rhode, who came up with the term Sketchnote in 2007, creates fabulous sketchnotes just using black ink.  Some people create Sketchnotes using a tablet & software, whereas I prefer paper and pens.

I have been using Sketchnoting for about 6 years and have introduced many people to Sketchnoting to aid their work, thinking and learning. I have worked with Learning & Development and HR professionals, engineers, digital marketeers, coaches, forensic scientists, geographers, university lecturers and many others including school and university students.  From this experience I have become convinced of the value of Sketchnoting to anyone who is studying, whether at school, college, university or for a professional qualification. 

Sketchnoting is a flexible tool that can help you to be more effective in the way you study.  It can be used to create memorable notes; to aid you in making sense of what you are learning; for planning your work including assignments; for reflection; when revising; and when communicating your ideas to others.  In addition, many people with dyslexia seem to find Sketchnoting a helpful approach to making notes.

One thing that concerns many people when they first hear about Sketchnoting, is the fear that you need to be good at art to be able to use Sketchnoting.  Fortunately, you don’t need to be able to draw to start Sketchnoting, as the drawings used are very simple indeed, which can be picked up quickly with a little practise and an open mind. 

In this blog, I want to explore practically how Sketchnoting can be used to aid learning.  As I do this, I will make links to the concept of ‘dual coding’ which is a well-researched approach to learning which has been extensively studied in cognitive psychology.  Dual coding essentially identifies that information which is presented with words and pictures is coded by the brain in two different but linked ways.  This means when you make notes using a combination of words and visuals, your brain creates linked memories, which you have a much better chance of recalling.   The power of ‘dual-coding’ is at the heart of what makes Sketchnoting effective.

Here are the 6 ways you can use Sketchnoting to help you study:

 

1.  Note-making

Sketchnoting can be used both for making notes of lectures and discussions, but also to summarise material studied through reading, watching videos or listening to recordings.   Sketchnotes enable you to make personal notes, that focus on the key points from the session, lecture or reading.  When making notes in a class or lecture it is awfully tempting to try and write everything down, but the very effort of trying to record everything, can mean that you almost stop thinking about what you are writing in the effort to capture it all. When Sketchnoting a lecture, talk or class, it is impossible to record everything, yet this apparent weakness, is one of the strengths of Sketchnoting. If you are Sketchnoting you do not attempt to record everything, just the key points, but because you are actively choosing which points to capture and which words & images to use, you stay focused and engaged.  When looking back at your notes, your memory is then triggered to recall additional detail not directly captured in your Sketchnote.  To get the full benefit of this, it is helpful to look back over your notes and actively seek to recall the full information.  If you do this, say the day after creating your notes, you will also gain the benefits of retrieval practice, which I will discuss in more detail when looking at revising.

You can also use Sketchnoting to summarise information gained from reading books & articles or from watching videos or listening to recordings.  Once again, the benefit of Sketchnoting over other forms of notetaking, is that it requires you to think through and actively identify which are the key points to record. 

  

2.  Connecting ideas and thinking things through

Often when studying a subject it helps to think about how the different aspects of that topic link together to deepen and broaden your understanding. You can use Sketchnoting to help you do this, by creating a Sketchnote that shows the connections between the topics.  If you are researching a topic, you can use a Sketchnote to show the relationships between the information you have gathered. 

 For example, I was researching with a colleague the ways that virtual reality (VR) could be used to facilitate training in the workplace – we talked to experts, read articles and tried out different VR applications ourselves.  We realized that one way of making sense of all the different ways of using VR was to consider how much the different VR apps immersed learners and so we arranged all the uses we had come across along a rating scale of the degree of learner immersion and I drew the following Sketchnote to illustrate this. 

Leonardo Da Vinci, who was not only an amazing artist but interested in a wide range of scientific subjects, used to carry out ‘thought-experiments’ in which he regularly sketched out pictures illustrating ideas he was exploring such as wave patterns, light & the moon, river eddies and added notes alongside them.  Effectively he was Sketchnoting! Some of his notebooks still exist today and so you can see how he did this.  

 

3.  Planning

Sketchnotes can be used very flexibly to aid you plan all kinds of work tasks including assignments, presentations and projects.  When using Sketchnoting for planning, I often create much messier and more unfinished looking Sketchnotes than for other purposes – I rarely keep them beyond the need for the immediate task.  Here is an example of a Sketchnote I created when preparing a presentation on Networking:

One of the advantages of using Sketchnotes for planning is that you can begin with whatever ideas first come to mind and you can then go back and decide the order in which you tackle the tasks or the order in which the sections go.  In this respect, Sketchnoting has some similarities to MindMapping, though there are many more options about how you lay out your Sketchnote.

 

4.  Reflecting

Many courses encourage you to carry out reflection during your time of study, perhaps as preparation for using reflection as part of continuing professional development (CPD) in a work role. It may even be an integral part of the whole course or a requirement within one or more assignments to carry out a reflection.  The idea behind reflection is to take time to learn from experiences (whether those experiences involve doing an assignment, carrying out a task, doing some research or from a life experience) by identifying  what went well and why, what could be improved and what you will do to be even more effective in the future.  This process of reflection may make use of a model such as Gibbs' reflective cycle (1988).

Reflection can be done and recorded in many ways, in the form of a journal, a blog, through a video recording, through a professional discussion with an assessor.  Sketchnoting can also be used to record your reflections.   Some people find that this is an alternative approach that works for them in a way that other methods don’t.  Others have commented that it allows them to slow down and reflect more deeply and for this reason they find it more effective.

   

5.  Revising

One of the powerful lessons from cognitive psychology is how to revise effectively. Often when revising people use the approach of reading and rereading their notes.  Many experiments have shown that it is more effective to use an approach called ‘retrieval practice’, in which you study a topic and then return to it and rather than study the same material again, instead actively try to bring the material back to mind – this could be through questions posed by a tutor or teacher or fellow student or jotting down what you remember from the topic or you could create a Sketchnote of what you recall.   Once you have done this you can then check back against the original study material, to check for any errors and also fill in any gaps.   This method of revising is highly effective even if you find that you struggle to recall much material at first.  But when you return to it again, you will have reinforced the links to the correct and full information far more effectively through that process of struggle.

If you allow some time to elapse between revisiting the material in this way, you will also tap into the benefits of ‘spaced practice’, another well evidenced learning practice from cognitive psychological research. If you are interested in finding out more about ‘dual coding’, ‘retrieval practice’ and ‘spaced practice’ it is worth checking out The Learning Scientists Podcast for easy to understand explanations and examples.

 

6.  Communicating your ideas

Finally, Sketchnotes can be used as a way of presenting your ideas, perhaps within a seminar or session or even in an assessment.  Some courses make use for example, of academic posters for presenting ideas and Sketchnoting would be an excellent way of producing one. 
 
These 6 ways of using Sketchnoting all come from experience and make use of what we know is effective in learning.  They are all practical ways of adding to your study skills and enabling your study experience to be both effective and enjoyable. If you think that Sketchnoting could help you with your studying this year, why not learn to Sketchnote?

 

Rachel Burnham

2 September 2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

More than content consumption

Rachel Burnham writes: Learning is more than consuming content; more than consuming information.  In our information rich world, where there is an abundance of information and content wherever we turn, it is easy to focus on consumption. It is easy to give the impression that more is better.  

It is easy to feel that if only I read more books; kept on top of all my social media feeds; read those journal articles and listened to just one more podcast – then I would be up-to-date, then I would be meeting my own development needs, then I would be role-modelling effective CPD for my colleagues. A counsel of perfection!  Sometimes people share their challenging book reading targets for the year (I’ve written about this before – ‘Read and Relish’) or how they pack in listening to podcasts or audible books in every available space in their lives.  I am not going to pretend to be immune to this.  It can feel like being on a information hamster wheel at times.  Perhaps it is the equivalent for informal learning of the content-dumping sometimes found and decried in formal learning?

But learning is more than consuming yet more and more information.  How do we digest this information, critique it, contrast it with other information, put it into our many contexts, integrate with our current understanding and skills, challenge our thinking and behaviours – how do we sense-make? With all our talk about the abundance of information, ease of access and dangers of feeling overwhelmed, I wonder if we are under-valuing and under-practising sense-making?

I spent some time last year interviewing a number of  professionals, primarily from the fields of L&D and HR, about how they manage the information they need to stay up-to-date in their work.  One of the areas we discussed was this area of sense-making.  Here are some of the approaches they used, plus some of my thinking based on my reading and doing in this area:

A) Bricolage & Curation

Bricolage is a very evocative term that refers to the practice constructing or creating something from a diverse range of other things.  When applied to sense-making, it emphasises linking information from different sources together and looking at the relationships between these different pieces to identify trends, patterns or create new insights and approaches. It is something that Andrew Jacobs has written about on many occasions.  

When curating information or resources, we can use a range of different strategies to do this, such as:

·     Selecting the very best or most relevant pieces and by doing this reducing the noise and adding value for ourselves and others;
·       Grouping information or resources to show the broader picture or pattern;
·       Contrasting information – often there is more than one view on a topic, acknowledging this can deepen our understanding and enable us to be more nuanced in our thinking;
·       Identifying sequences in information eg use of timelines of thought or sequences of activities.

Each of these can help us with sense-making.

B) Mapping & drawing

Many people, even those with very effective digital skills, find it helpful to map out ideas using pen, pencil and paper.  I, of course, very often use Sketchnoting to do this. 

A number of the people I interviewed talked about using paper and pen to draw out ideas and the relationships between them when thinking things through.   Often it can be quicker to rough something out on paper and it can be easy to play with different ways of visualising, testing out approaches, adjusting, rubbing out and trying again. Diagrams can be simple – lots of arrows and basic shapes or more complex.

Whilst the use of pen and paper, doesn’t require drawing skills and pictures, these can allow for the use of metaphors, which can bring in another dimension and stimulate further thinking.  

C) Blogging & writing

Amongst my group of interviewees, probably the key tool in sense-making that they identified was writing.  One commented that ‘To know what I think, I need to write. ’ Writing can take many forms: from handwritten notes, created to capture key information and aid recall; through to writing for reflection, still for personal use; through to writing for sharing either as a blog or for publication in an article or book. 

Once you start writing to share publically, this forces you to clarify your thinking and tests your commitment to what you think.  Clive Thompson in his book ‘Smarter Than You Think’ writes:

‘Audiences clarify the mind even more. Bloggers frequently tell me that they will get an idea for a blog post and sit down at the keyboard in a state of excitement, ready to pour their words forth.  But pretty soon they think about the fact that someone is going to read this as soon as it’s posted.  And suddenly all the weak points in their argument, their clichés and lazy, auto-fill thinking, become painfully obvious.’ (Pg 52)

This is known the ‘audience effect’ and it means that when you are setting out to communicate with someone else, you are forced to think more precisely and with greater clarity.  So this has the advantage of encouraging more effective sense-making.

 

D) Conversation

Another effective aid to sense-making is conversation, whether that is in person or on-line.   It could be as simple as talking through your ideas one to one over a cup of tea, which can help you to clarify what it is you think, but also expose you to other perspectives.

Online conversations can also help with this.  One of the challenges though is that light and shade can be harder to hold onto in an online conversation – trust and listening are just as important as in a face to face conversation, but are often harder to achieve. Some of these online conversations happen in real time such as a Twitter Chat, but they can also take place asynchronously, which can allow for a more reflective approach.  

It is also possible to share online, particularly with Twitter, snippets of insight and practice, which can test out your thinking and gather feedback from others.  This is often referred to as the practice of ‘Working Out Loud’. 

A variant on writing and conversation is to sharing your thinking via a short video, which is also known as ‘vlogging’.  It would be interesting to know whether the ‘audience effect’ also impacts on the quality of thinking when using a video format.  

E) Testing out & Playing

For practical skills, you can’t beat actually having a go at using those skills.   Playing with, testing out, experimenting and then reflecting on this, are all vital aspects of sense-making.  Documenting your experiments is such a valuable contribution to the collective understanding and effectiveness of our profession, but like writing publicly, it can feel like a scary and exposing thing to do.  

Each of these 5 approaches involves reflection.  And underpinning all of that, time and space is essential for sense-making.  

When planning this blog, I searched for a simile or metaphor to capture the importance of this time and space for sense-making.  At first I was drawn to the idea of pools of time for reflection.  But I have settled on the idea of woodland glades. In a forest, with many, many trees close packed together, the dense canopy of leaves can mean that little sunlight reaches the ground and under the trees is a rather sterile environment.  But if a space is cleared and a woodland glade created, where the sunlight can reach through, then all sorts of seeds will germinate and plants grow up and flourish.  A much more diverse and richer environment is created.  This is what sense-making needs.

Let’s make some woodland glades and let the learning flourish. 

Rachel Burnham

10 February 2019

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.  

Read and Relish

Rachel Burnham writes: From time to time I see articles that remind us how assorted well known successful people all read a humongous number of books each month. I have occasionally had exchanges with individuals who report ‘reading’ or rather listening to a book a week.  I notice comments from people who have set themselves a target to read a certain number of books a year, but are confessing that they are not succeeding in doing this.  I hear people saying they aspire to read more.  I hear people apologising for not reading much.  And there are services now that claim they can abbreviate books so that you can ‘read’ the key points from 5 books in a day!

I find myself at odds with this. 

Not because I don’t thinking reading books is a good thing.  I love to read, it is my lifeblood.  I have always been a bookworm. I am never happier than when I have my nose in a book – well possibly, if listening to live jazz, played in a garden, whilst reading!  My home is filled with books of all sorts – fiction, histories, picture books, business books, books about gardening, books about physics, books about patchwork, Greek plays (my son’s influence), thrillers, poetry, books about books.  Books are a kind of extra insulation layer to the house.

I usually have several books on the go at a time – usually some fiction, often a work related book of some kind and probably some a non-fiction book. I make time in my week to read.  I turn the television off or retreat to my bedroom to read.  I have been known to take a week off work to read.   But at most I read about 40 books a year – I know, I keep a list.  I have lists going back many years now.  I will never reach the output of books read that some of these articles report or that some people set themselves as targets – I like time to think about what I read.

One of the joys of reading for me, is pausing and pondering – letting my imagination wander, seeing the world created in a work of fiction come to life in my mind or exploring the ideas and connecting them and applying them in life.   I find I can’t do that if I race through a book. 

I think reading is about the journey, not the destination.  For me it is not the ticking off of a checklist or a point towards a target.  I think there’s a risk of missing out on the delights along the way, of not digesting what has been written, so I prefer to take my reading slowly.

Read for pleasure.  Read for learning.  Read to share with others.  Read for information.  Read to be amused.  Read to have your mind boggled.  Read out loud, for the sounds and rhythms.  Read for the pictures and diagrams, for the bindings and design.  Read for the smell of a new book. Read to be provoked.  Read to critique.  Read to have your bias confirmed or challenged.  Read to inform your own writing. Read to apply.  Read to inspire.  Read to fire up your experimentation.  Read to hear other voices.  Read to visit other places or times. Read to escape.  Read to relax.  But above all read and relish.

Rachel Burnham

9/9/18

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.  

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.  

5 Tips for Getting Started with Sketchnoting

Rachel Burnham writes: I have recently started offering workshops in Sketchnoting and as a result have been contacted by a couple of people asking for help in getting started with Sketchnoting and making use of visuals in their work. 

Sketchnotes combine simple pictures, with words and graphics – they are often colourful and are a way of making notes that are memorable and aid reflection and sense-making.  I started Sketchnoting about 3 years ago and these are some of the things that have helped me.

Recent Sketchnote summarising a book chapter

1.  Getting beyond ‘I can’t draw’ and ‘I’m terrible at drawing’

If I am ever talking about Sketchnoting or drawing or using visuals at work, someone is bound to say ‘I can’t draw’ or ‘I’m terrible at drawing’.  So many of us hold this belief!    And of course, this belief makes it hard for us to get started at drawing or sketching, which in turn makes makes it harder for us to practise and get better and more confident at drawing.

As children we all draw.  Confidently, unworriedly, messily, happily.   And then most of us stop.  There are all sorts of factors in why we stop, but opportunities to practise and fear of looking foolish are probably two key ones. 

The latter is something I work with all the time – I can picture this rather disapproving looking person with her hands on her hips looking over her shoulder at my pictures and pursing her lips and saying ‘What makes you think you can draw!’ She is probably based on one of the art teachers I had at school.

I find what helps me to ignore this voice, is to recognise that there are all kinds of levels of ‘drawing’ and types of drawing.  There is beautiful art work, there are rigorous representations of the real world, there are lovely drawn illustrations in children’s books, there are cartoons – so many styles, so many purposes for drawing.   And what I draw  is ‘good enough’ for my purpose  - my Sketchnotes work for me – they help me to recall information, I refer back to them all the time,  they help me to make sense of disparate information, to summarise what I am listening to or reading and so on.  And I know from sharing them, that other people find them of interest and of use.  So, they work and that is ‘good enough’. 

This is my very, very first Sketchnote from June 2015 - we all have to start somewhere!  

And secondly, I can see that my pictures are getting better all the time.  

This was live-Sketchnoted in November 2017 - my Sketchnoting has definitely come on a bit! 

I think we can all draw.  But like any skill, if you don’t use it, you lose it.  And for many of us, we haven’t drawn for a long time, so we are rather rusty and a bit stiff and self-conscious.   We need to play and relax and have fun.

2.  Make it easy to acquire the drawing habit

If you want to draw, then you need to make it easy to practise.   And that means have things to draw with easily to hand. 

For Sketchnoting, I use A4 blank notepads that are spiral bound.  I prefer using Staedtler triplus fineliner pens – they are easily available for lots of shops and when the children are starting back at school, can usually be found at a better price.

I now always carry a pencil, black felt tip, rubber and pencil sharpener so that I can draw whether I am – I have them pre-loaded into my everyday handbag.  I recently read Gretchen Rubin’s book about habits ‘Better than Before’ and she says if you want to build a habit, one approach is to make it convenient.

3.  Practise – build your visual repertoire

Even if you think you can’t draw, there may be things that you already doodle.  Sunni Brown in ‘The Doodle Revolution’ suggests that there are different kinds of doodlers – some of us are drawn to doodling words, some to faces, some to abstract shapes and some to naturalistic shapes.   If I am ever in a meeting or long phone call, I will find that my notes are interspersed with doodles – mostly plants – sunflowers, roses, trees, tropical climbers and ferny dells.   So you may find that there are some things you can already draw – even if it is only arrows – and this in part will be because you are already practising them – they have become part of your repertoire.

The next step is to practise drawing simple outlines, to form simple images of things.   I would suggest objects – it is useful to build up a bank of simple images/icons that you are likely to use eg laptop, mobile phone, pens, car, sun, sea.  What images you are likely to use will vary depending on the field you are working in.

Secondly, think of metaphors for more abstract ideas and again practise drawing them eg heart, rainbow, mountain top, ladder, measuring tape.

It is also good to practise lettering and symbols such as exclamation marks, question marks, plus signs, speech or thinking bubbles.

Gradually, build up the range of things you feel comfortable drawing.   This takes time.  I am still working on this.   

4.  Practise – listening and sketchnoting

The next step if you want to Sketchnote is to put it altogether and create sketchnotes.   Again, it is useful to practise.

A useful place to start is to create a Sketchnote to summarise something you have read or to listen to a podcast and summarise key points in a Sketchnote.  

When Sketchnoting from a podcast or to a ‘live’ session, listening is key.   You can’t capture everything, so deciding what to include and what to skip is essential.

5.  Let go of perfection

I want to return to the mindset needed for Sketchnoting as I think this is the crucial thing.   When you are Sketchnoting, you don’t need to aim for perfection in your drawing – actually I don’t think this is possible or even desirable. 

I think the drawings I do are a bit like home grown vegetables from my allotment – they may not have the glossy perfection you would find on a supermarket shelf, but they taste good!   Like a home-made cake, that is sometimes a bit wonky, hand drawn images may not be perfect, but they are personal and memorable.

Marmalade Cake - with a terrible crack in it, but it tasted lovely! 

So, don’t worry if your Sketchnote isn’t perfect – if a line is a bit wobbly or a drawing a bit hard for anyone else to recognise.   If I make a mistake, I draw a flower over it!

Have fun and have a go!

Rachel Burnham

16/3/18

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.