Using Social Media for Learning

Using Social Media for Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: Using Social Media for Learning was the subject of a special LDinsight Twitter chat held during Learning Live in September.  Whilst I also use social media to aid my own learning, that particular discussion got me thinking about some of the ways in which I have experimented with using social media to aid the learning of others.  I decided I would find it useful to review what I had tried and how these attempts had worked.  And I thought I would share this through my blog, so that others can learn from this.

Some of these examples worked, some didn’t.  There is nothing outstandingly original here, just the small types of trial that can be easily integrated into existing programmes and your day to day work.

Using Twitter

Twitter is my favourite social media tool and the one that I find most fruitful for my own personal learning.  It has just been voted the top learning tool in the poll, which Jane Hart runs, for the 6^th year running, so clearly I’m not alone. I have recently moved from simply enthusing about Twitter & its value for learning to individuals whenever the opportunity arises  (and sometimes even when it is clearly neither the time or the place), to incorporating a short introduction to using Twitter for professional development into some initiatives around career development that I have been working on with a client.  There is interest, but whether it will translate into action is another question.  I will have a better handle on this after next week and the main roll out.  (Can’t escape the irony of doing a face to face session on using Twitter – but there was demand for it!  Have also created a free standing starter handout and will be using a great short video on how social media can aid professional development, that we will be playing during some of the activities next week)

I have also had a go at using Twitter in the context of a module on Coaching from within the Certificate in Learning & Development Practice (CLDP).  As there were two workshops on this topic separated by a month, I thought it might work to encourage learners to share practical coaching tips between workshops, via Twitter, with other people from the group through a common hashtag.  This would enable students to put some of their learning into their own words and also aid preparation for the practical coaching session assessed in the second workshop.  I tried it with two groups and encouraged participation & shared tips myself.  However, this really did not work. 

So, I had another go and did the same activity but this time through the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) used throughout the programme and it worked a treat.   

From feedback from the groups involved and my own observations, my learning from this was that you have to go where people are – the group were already on the VLE and had become comfortable using it - they had to use it for the rest of the programme - so it was convenient to use it for this particular activity.  My second thought was that perhaps for some it would have felt too exposing to share their thoughts on coaching with all and sundry via Twitter, whereas they felt comfortable doing this with their fellow students who they already knew.

I am now trying out using Twitter to encourage contact and sharing between groups who are doing the same programme but in different locations.  The jury is still out on this one, but I think the same issues are cropping up.

Scoop It!

Scoop It! is a curation tool for articles, blogs, video or sound clips and pictures.  You can create two collections of materials for free and after that you need to pay a subscription to create further Scoop It!s Once you have curated a selection you can then publish this.

I find this tool very easy to use and I really like the way you can add your own ‘labels’ to each of the resources you have added to your collection, as this helps readers to understand the thinking behind your picks and how these will be useful to them.  This is an easy way you can ‘add value’ to the collection of resources and means you can include your own ‘critical’ voice to the materials you have curated.

I have used this tool to curate collections of resources to support face to face sessions.  This means you can substantially reduce the need for paper based handouts, which is good for the environment and less costly.  I have also found that this approach has enabled me to add in particular resources to tailor the information provided for specific individual needs.  It is also possible to easily update and refresh the Scoop It and all those with access to the link can then get the updated info – no need to reprint!

I have also used a Scoop It as a handy way to maintain a common body of resources to support collaboration on a common project between in-house team members and myself as an external consultant.

The third way that I plan to use Scoop It! is to support ‘treasure hunt’ type activities either face to face or at a distance, where I provide a range of resources for learners to tap into and use as a base for tackling some kind of a learning challenge.  Whilst it is great to get learners doing their own open research, sometimes it is good to give them a starter pack to accelerate the process and Scoop It! would be a great way to do this. 

The limitation with Scoop It! is that you only get 2 free and then need to move into a subscription service and maintain this to maintain the collections you have built.   I plan to experiment with social bookmarking tools to see how these compare, but haven’t had the chance to do this yet.

Blogs

The third social media tool I have used to aid others learning is blogging.   We have used this on MOL’s CLDP programme to great effect and require each learner to maintain a reflective log in the form of a blog.  This has worked so much more effectively than the old hard copy reflective log and I think this is down to the interaction it generates between the individual learner and their tutor, which often leads to dialogue.   These blogs are held within the VLE for each course group, but the blog is only accessible to the individual student and their tutor, neither the public nor other students in the same group can read it.  I would love to hear from anybody who has experience of using blogging in the context of a learning programme where other students could read each others blogs. 

The blog feature is one of my favourite aspects of the CLDP programme, it provides very immediate feedback from learners on their learning – it feels honest – I know I have certainly had students expressing critical views of the programme and sharing their individual challenges with the programme and this gives me the opportunity to address those concerns individually.  I also find the detail on how students are applying their learning and how they challenging practices in their organisation hugely motivating for me!

I would be most interested in hearing of your experiences of using social media to support others learning and look forward to reading your comments.

Rachel Burnham

5/10/14

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

5 Books to Help You Get Out of the Training Room

Rachel Burnham writes:  Here are some wonderful, practical yet inspiring books to help you to create relevant and useful learning opportunities that aren’t limited to face to face delivery in a training room.  They aren’t brand new books – but they are full of useful advice that can help you to try out different approaches and build on the experience of experts.

‘The Blended Learning Cookbook’ 2^nd Edition by Clive Shepherd (2008) Published by Saffron Interactive.

As the title suggests this book is all about blended learning and how to design learning effectively using a mix of learning methods.  It opens with three short sections which provide some background to the topic and overall thinking, before moving onto the core of the book which is a series of practical examples of different blended programmes designed to meet a range of needs.   The great thing about these examples is the sheer variety and this means that it can give you some great ideas for starting points for designs to meet needs in your own organisation.  

‘Informal Learning At Work – How to Boost Performance in Tough Times’ by Paul Matthews (2013) Published by Three Faces Publishing.

In this book Paul Matthews explores informal learning – those very many learning opportunites beyond formal courses and education.  He sets out the advantages to be gained from recognising & encouraging informal learning in organisations and sets out how L&D teams can encourage a learnscape that facilitates this.   He includes many examples to illustrate his points and provides evidence of the effectiveness of informal learning.  He includes lots of examples of different forms of informal learning, so that you get a great sense of the range of possibilities.  

My only criticism of this book, is that there are sometimes so many examples provided that you lose the narrative thread  (well I did!), but this does make it a great resource bank.

I have also written about informal learning in an earlier post 'Lift off for Informal Learning'.

‘Social Media for Trainers – Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning’ by Jane Bozarth (2010) Published by John Wiley.

This book has a very special place on my bookshelf, as it played a significant part in getting me into using Twitter.  I had taken it along to a workshop to share with some CLDP students, one of whom was already on Twitter.  Before the workshop started she tweeted Jane Bozarth and by the time we broke for morning coffee, we had had an answer back from Jane!  I was sold on Twitter from that moment!

The book is both great as a guide to key examples of social media – Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and Wikis and even better at providing many, many suggestions of how these can be used to enable learning.  These suggestions are set out so clearly, that you don’t need to be particularly tech-savvy to see how these can work and to give them a go.

‘Job Aids & Peformance Support – Moving from Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere’ by Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer (2007) Published by John Wiley.

Job aids & performance support are playing an increasingly important role alongside learning opportunities.  Performance support enables us to draw upon resources at the point of need to enable us to do a task efficiently & effectively.  This means that there are a whole range of work related tasks that we no longer need to learn in their entirety, but can rely on finding the resources to help us, either to prepare or to use during completion of the task.  At a time when there is more and more that we need to be able to do and constant change in the information we need to work with, it makes sense to not only use learning to meet these needs, but also performance support.  Sometimes learning on its own will be appropriate, sometimes performance support will be sufficient and sometimes both will be needed.  

Again, this book is packed out with examples & illustrations to enable you to see the possibilities and start to make use of them yourself.

‘The New Virtual Classroom’ by Ruth Colvin Clark & Ann Kwinn (2007) Published by John Wiley

I found this an invaluable guide to designing & delivering webinars/virtual classrooms ie usually short learning sessions delivered via the internet which bring learners at a distance together at the same time.   It provides excellent suggestions and tips for creating effective interactive webinars to meet different sorts of learning needs from computer based skills to knowledge & understanding  The book is all based very firmly on research and experience.   I have also found that it has influenced my practice in face to face delivery, as many of the points have a wider application.

I have also written about my own experience of webinars in a previous post, which you may find of interest 'My Learning About Webinars'. 

Each one of these five books has earned its place on my bookshelves.  With this collection to draw upon, there is no reason to limit yourself and your organisation to face to face learning in workshops and every reason to consider other options.

I would love to hear your comments on these book suggestions and also your own ideas.   What has been your experience of making use of these other learning methods?

Rachel Burnham

15/9/14

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

Lift Off for Informal Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: About a month ago, I was intrigued by a series of tweets, which together read ‘Problems are treated as well defined and readily soluble, and therefore susceptible to formal, standardized types of training’.  

This immediately resonated with my own experience of neatly packaged ‘learning needs’ being brought to my attention by line managers, and my experience of investigating the need only to realise that the learning requirements are much more ‘particular’ to a context and often more ‘messy’ than they had suggested ie less easily labelled and defined.  In my experience when you really want to impact on performance, off-the-shelf easy answers and neat stand-alone training courses on their own are rarely the way forward. This is a topic that I have often discussed with the CLDP students I work with.

The tweets were from @AndrewJacobsLD and when I responded to them – it turned out that they were from the closing paragraph of a paper by Michael Eraut in 2004, titled ‘Informal Learning in the Workplace’.  Michael Eraut is now Emeritus Professor (Education) at the University of Sussex. This paper sets out some of the key frameworks that he developed from years of research into how professionals actually learn.  Over the years he has worked on many projects to identify how professionals, technicians and managers develop the skills and knowledge needed to be effective in their roles.   He identified that the vast majority of this learning in the workplace was informal.  By informal learning he simply means learning through other means than formal courses or education. Through these projects he was able to identify different forms of informal learning and also the kinds of factors that aid informal learning.  

The paper is detailed, thoughtful and there are lots aspects to consider within it.  Andrew Jacobs and I had fun discussing it one afternoon, relating it to our own experiences and trying to get our heads around it.  Andrew is also blogging about Eraut’s work, so do read his article too 'But what is informal learning?'

 

Two aspects of Eraut’s article particularly stood out.  The first is a typology of different kinds of informal learning – more of a map of the territory - rather than a simple listing of different methods of informal learning.   In this typology of informal learning, Eraut considers three levels of intention in learning – implicit, reactive and deliberative.   By implicit learning he is getting at learning that occurs without conscious attempts to learn.  Reactive learning refers to learning, which is intentional, but ‘it occurs in the middle of the action, when there is little time to think’. (Eraut, 2004).  Finally, deliberative learning, for Eraut, includes both deliberate learning which is planned for and also involvement in activities in which ‘there is a clear work-based goal with learning as a probably by-product’ (Eraut, 2004) such as problem-solving or planning.  Eraut then considers each of these levels in relation to three time frames – past, current & future to get a grid of nine forms of informal learning.  I have adapted Eraut’s typology to produce a graphic version of it.

Coincidentally, a recent post by @fuchsiablue 'Learning Echoes' explores some of the forms of informal learning found in Eraut’s typology from a personal perspective.

This typology gives us in L&D another way to think about how we are approaching learning – we could use it to review what we are doing and challenge ourselves to make use of a much greater range of informal learning methods both for ourselves and the learners we work with.   

The second element of the paper which really impacted on me was Eraut’s model of the factors which affect learning in the workplace.  Again, I have adapted his model in my own illustration.  Eraut has identified two sets of factors – ones to do with the individual learner & a second set to do with the work context, which will influence the extent to which informal learning can take place.  These factors enable informal learning – they give a ‘lift’ to informal learning.  

The ‘context’ factors which Eraut discusses are similar to those discussed by Paul Matthews under the idea of a ‘learnscape’ – the learning ecoysystem which can encourage & enable informal learning or lead to an informal learning desert. 

I think there is a great deal to get us thinking about in this paper.  A recent report from the ELearning Guild by Jane Hart identifies that there is a lot more that L&D could do to support informal learning in organisations. I encourage you to use these models to consider the extent and range of informal learning that you and your organisation are making use of.  And I look forward to hearing your comments.

  

Rachel Burnham

29 August 2014

Michael Eraut (2004) Informal Learning in the Workplace, Studies in Continuing Education, 26:2, 247-273

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

My Learning About Webinars

Rachel Burnham writes: I have been wanting to write about my experience of working with webinars for some time, mainly because I want to pull together my learning for my own benefit, but I have decided to share this.  

The allotment - definitely a work-in-progress - just like me & webinars!

First Experience

My first experience of participating as a guest speaker in webinar was about 5 years ago and of course there are lots I don’t remember about that experience.  I do remember a thoughtful & helpful practice with using the technology, a couple of hours before the session, supported by a technical specialist that made all the difference to my confidence. I do remember feeling less prepared for how the content all worked together, as I only had a small 5 minute slot in a 75 minute session and wishing I had sight of a session plan, rather than just the powerpoint slides that were being used.  

What I remember from the delivery of that session was just how truly weird it felt to be speaking to a group of people, but with no visual feedback from them at all – I particularly remember how peculiar it felt to not make eye contact.  On that occasion, there was little feedback through the chat-box, so there was an absence of much feedback at all.  But the other aspect that made it a very strange experience, was that I was also cut off from the other presenters & facilitators – for some reason I had decided to switch to using the Mac, rather than my PC and found to my dismay that it didn’t support many of the features that I had practiced using in the technical run through earlier that day – so I had no access to the chatbox myself and couldn’t even ‘raise my hand’ to attract the attention of the lead facilitator.  Note to self – practice on the equipment you will be actually using.  A limited & limiting experience.  But I was asked back to do more guest slots, so I knew I needed to learn more about webinars.

Participating in Webinars

At some stage I adopted the approach of signing up to participate in lots of different webinars in order to learn about what was effective practice and to build my own experience.  I had noticed that they were becoming a learning option used by more organisations and wanted to make sure I was keeping up with this growing practice.   I probably had begun to do this prior to my first experience as a guest speaker, but I certainly hadn’t participated in more than a couple before to this experience.  So now I started to participate with more of a pressing need.

I participated in free sessions offered by the providers of various webinar/virtual classroom technology; sessions offered by my former university by visiting speakers; and sessions delivered by a number of ‘expert’ presenters – ‘expert’ in their topics or in webinars.   Some sessions involved a single facilitator, some a panel, some a facilitator & also a guest speaker.  The level of interaction with participants varied tremendously between the sessions and my experience was that the most effective sessions were the more interactive sessions.  All of these webinars involved some use of slides, but some used a range of other tools as well.   

One of the sessions from Aston University made use of a video camera, alongside very visual slides and this gave this session the feel of an expert & effective lecture - just delivered at a distance.  There was opportunity to put questions to the presenter, who gave them time & attention. It was great being able to see the speaker – the visual made them seem more real.  Other sessions had incredibly lively chatbox discussions going on throughout the session, in which participants posed questions, answered them, challenged the speaker, challenged each other – this was when I first became aware of the learning power & vitality of a ‘backchannel’ alongside the formal learning delivery.

One session, which was focused on how to design & deliver interactive webinars, was great for demonstrating a range of tools for doing that – it really delivered on its promise.  During the session polls, whiteboards, the chat box were all used effectively.  But we also got to do some things that had never occurred to me before in the context of a webinar – such as drawing pictures and then discussing what we had drawn (and as I love to draw, this really fired my imagination). 

It became clear to me that webinars have the potential to take a number of different formats and be effective.  I also realised that the typical format of a webinar of a talk supported by powerpoint, can be made much more effective by applying many of the same design principles as a face to face session and particularly by making them more interactive.

But the webinar that had the greatest impact on me, from which I learnt the most, was the most awful, boring webinar that I have ever attended!  It started badly for me, as I had a random technical problem joining the webinar and of course this had nothing to do with the organisers of the event, but it meant that I joined about 4/5 minutes after the start.  This is always a risk with webinars, so it is something to consider in your design that people may join late.   By the time I had joined the first speaker had started talking – I had missed the introduction as to who they were or what they were specifically speaking about and there was nothing on the screen to indicate this – no photo of the speaker, no name, no title and no slides (this is one of those rare occasions when I would have cheerfully welcomed more powerpoint slides).  They spoke for 20 mins and I hadn’t a clue to what they were talking about – as the whole session went on it became apparent to me that the focus of the session was somewhat different to the session I had signed up for (or at least what I had understood from the session description) – I stuck with it because I became fascinated by how the session was being run – though I do confess to switching to answer an email during his talk – the only time I’ve done this.  I admit that the second & third speakers were slightly less dire, mainly because I heard the introductions and they did use powerpoint, but the bar had been set pretty low & they didn’t raise it that much.

You may be wondering why I didn’t assert myself and use the chat box to ask another participant who the speaker was etc.  Have a guess?  They had turned off the chat box!   It was the most dispiriting realisation that they had chosen to do this – it was in the long, long 60 minutes that followed that I learnt just how important that feature is for enabling webinars to be a vehicle for learning – this is where the real exchanges take place and they are mostly between fellow learners. 

The other learning I did was to do some reading around about webinars.  Perhaps it seems strange to seek out a book to learn about how use webinars/virtual classrooms, but this is such a valuable way for me to learn that I didn’t want to ignore it and found an excellent guide in ‘The New Virtual Classroom’ by Ruth Colvin Clark & Ann Kwinn.   It is full of practical advice and enabled me to put some of my observations & experiences into a wider context.

Growing My Experience

So I continued to regularly contribute as a guest speaker to webinars and started to apply some of my learning, particularly around the value of involving participants and making use of the chat box. 

We did this by making sure that we posed questions very early on in the session both verbally and using the chat box itself and inviting participants to respond.  We kept the questions simple eg Where are you calling in from? and frequently repeated the instructions about how to use the chat box, as each session often included people new to webinars.  It helps to have more than one person working on each webinar, so that whilst one person is speaking another person can respond to questions via the chat box – just as in a face to face session, having your questions responded to promptly and respectfully tends to encourage more questions and sharing.

Another advantage of having more than one person involved in the session is that it gives you more flexibility when things go wrong.  On one session the sound quality for the main speaker was particularly dreadful – even though they were using the same equipment & set up as in many previous times – I was able to privately communicate with them via the chat box and take over an earlier part of the session to give them time to switch over to a telephone from a microphone connection.

Designing & Delivering Webinars 

Eventually an opportunity came for me to design & deliver some webinars from scratch, as part of a wider blended learning design.  The design involved a series of three webinars as part of the blend for a group of learners.   This gave me the chance to apply more of my learning and also to design for others to deliver the same webinars.

Here are some of my key learning points from this experience:

·       Keep the design simple – Although there are many tools you can use in a webinar, you don’t have to use them all at once.  As many of the intended learners and also the other facilitators were new to webinars, it was important to build their skills & confidence in using this new medium and these tools.  So I designed the webinars to gradually introduce a mix of tools & methods.  Each session was designed to meet the learning objectives and as a result different methods were appropriate in each case.  I began with the chat box, polls and paired discussions and then in subsequent webinars added in other features.

·       Build in lots of interaction – I don’t design face to face sessions that are lecture based and I didn’t think this would be effective in a webinar either.   I concentrated on finding ways to prompt interaction between learners, initially mostly through the chat box and I was delighted with the quality & depth of the discussions possible.   But then this is also true of discussions via Twitter!

·       Don’t rely on verbal interaction too much – We have struggled to get a consistent level of sound quality to enable group discussions verbally.  This is in part because we are designing sessions for learners who are based in different organisations and who also may be participating from home or whilst travelling with variable bandwidths on different equipment.  Therefore, we have kept mics on silent for the sessions – except when a specific individual is presenting work – most of the interaction takes place in other forms.  That said two of the sessions do involve learners each doing some presentation.

·       It really helps to have some tech support – I have discovered that it really helps to have some additional technical support from a colleague at the start of the session.  It is my practice to be available to support learners entering the webinar from about 30 minutes prior to the start of the formal session to iron out any technical issues and test mikes.  I find it helps to have an additional person on hand during this time and for about the first 15 minutes of the actual session.

·       Create social presence – I usually include in my webinar view a photo of myself, so that I seem a bit more present for participants.  It would be great to use video to enable this, but we have decided not to go down this route because of issues of variable bandwidth (see above).   I also encourage learners to chat & share during the pre-session time – just as I would in a workshop setting, so that ideally each participant establishes their presence.  One group in particular changed the font colours in the chat box so they each contributed in a different colour – they each had their own voice.

·       Allow plenty of time -  It took me far longer to design & practice each of these webinars than it would a face to face session – unsurprisingly, but then I have many years of face to face facilitation experience.   This was also true for the other facilitators – for the first webinar where I was also still learning how to use Adobe Connect, I estimate that the set up and practice time for a 90 minute webinar was about 21 hours – that is aside from the time spent designing the session, creating activities & materials.  It is also worth bearing in mind that you will need people to practice delivering the webinar with - I worked both with my co-facilitators in doing this, but also had to draft in my son (always noted for his robust feedback).

I am still learning & experimenting with webinars, so this is an opportunity for me to stand back and assess my progress to date.  I feel I have lots more to learn & try out with webinars.  My colleagues are also doing some interesting experimentation using the webinar technology in different ways.  Webinars won’t replace face to face or other more self-directed learning methods, but they are another useful option.

Rachel Burnham

27 August 2014

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