Dave’s Whiteboard

In the same way that “value proposition” is often more proposition than value, “learning management systems” are often more management than learning.

Jane Bozarth briefly notes two other definitions for LMS:

• Learning Means Sitting (Will Thalheimer)
• Lecture Management System (Mark Oehlert)

Nothing in an LMS requires that the organization continue running the Little Corporate Schoolhouse, only with more and faster reports — but then, nothing in the concept of representative government requires that your state legislature be filled with lawyers, land developers, and once-and-future lobbyists.

Bug, or feature?

The lecture comment leaps out at me. I think many people have unexamined assumptions about words — we think that everyone understands the word the way we do.

If you disagree, read a couple blog posts and, each time you see “podcast,” substitute “portable lecture.” (TED Lectures?)

If we understand “lecture” as “someone talking while we have to listen,” then, usually, it’s not a good way to learn. Especially because in this conception the focus is on the delivery.

With “podcast,” we somehow shift from delivery to what happens once the package arrives. It is a portable lecture, and that’s part of its value: I can chose where and when to listen; I can back up or skip or drop out. I’m fitting the content into my personal network of connections.

I can’t do that easily with traditional lecture, a one-time, one-place event. That’s maybe a strong argument for not calling lecture-style content (in an LMS, or elsewhere) “lecture.”

Shakespeare the highway engineer might have asked, “What’s in a lane? That which we call a road by any other name would be a street.” Sometimes, though, the way we talk about something matters… especially if our coworkers and clients, when they hear a word like “training” or “LMS,” think of something that looks a lot like high school, but with less flirting and more coffee.

Podcast image by Oliver Hartmann.

In the past year, I’ve used learning-French podcasts and talked to more French people in Second Life than I ever have in France. I also saw my neighbor fling herself gleefully into learning French as she and her husband planned a trip to Europe.

As part of her professional activity, my wife will attend a conference late this year… in Rome. I’ve been mulling about how to get myself ready to tag along; we’re talking about a few days in another location, and then heading to the conference site (less than a mile from the Vatican).

One option: somewhere in the county I ought to be able to find Italian for Beginners (a course, not the engaging film). Or I could get one of those language-instruction books with…well, probably CD now, rather than tape.

Then, as I blog-hopped earlier, I came across Podcasts that Will Make You Smarter at Openculture. Nice grouping into categories that include “foreign language.”

Two clicks later, I’m at My Daily Phrase Italian (an offshoot of Coffee Break Spanish, which ought to trigger a smile). The site’s goal is to cover “all the language you need to know to get by on a visit to a Italian-speaking country.”

I found my way to the first of the 100 podcasts. Kicking it off, I recognized at once the voice of Mark Pentleton, host of the French verbcast I mentioned earlier. (One of the many fringe benefits of the verbcast was the English explanation given in a clear, and clearly Scottish, voice.)

Yes, I did already know buon giorno, arrivederci, and ciao, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll pick up a few things. I’m not planning to move to Italy, just to move around a bit while I’m there.

“Global world” photo by bass_nroll.

In a post about an experiment in collaborative learning, Manish Mohan wondered about guidelines and policies, especially for things like blogs that reach outside a corporate firewall.

Commenter Ray Sims posted a link to guidelines at Toby Ward’s blog, which in turn links to IBM’s blogging guidelines. Here’s a slight reworking of IBM’s executive summary, rewritten to apply to any company/organizational blogger:

• Follow our business conduct guidelines.
• Remember, it’s your opinion, not ours.
• When you blog about us, identify yourself.
• If you blog or comment outside the organization about the organization, include a disclaimer like “The posts are my own; they don’t necessarily reflect [the organization's] positions, policies, or opinions.”
• Respect copyright and fair use.
• Don’t divulge confidential or proprietary information (ours, or another organization’s).
• Don’t cite or reference suppliers, partners, or clients without their permission.
• Respect your audience.
• Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.

I liked the last two points so much, I’ll put them in verbatim:

Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.

Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.

Any good examples of blogs at work?

Cathy Moore wrote the other day about elearning bloat, though it’s clear that she doesn’t think bloat’s limited to elearning. She includes this parody as an example:

Cathy’s thoughts on cutting out extraneous material make a lot of sense, although she’s well aware that the client doesn’t always see “appreciation of the history of telephony” as “extraneous.”When I began my career in instructional design, my manager sent me to a workshop on programmed learning. This was 1977, before the personal computer; “programmed” meant design that included interaction and feedback — delivered mainly on paper. As we built our workshop projects (small lessons), the workshop editors critiqued and prodded us toward leaner and leaner materials.

Imagine it’s costing you $50 per word and $100 per image. Why is it worth spending the money to have that word there? What evidence do you have for including it?

The “evidence” question stemmed from the workshop’s belief in developmental testing: trying out even very early drafts on typical learners, and using any difficulties they experience to help shape subsequent drafts.

In other words: if someone can complete your lesson right off the bat, you don’t know if you’re just as talented as all get-out, or if the person knew that stuff all along.

A real challenge in corporate/organizational learning is: what can we expect the learner to know, and what can we ask the learner to do? I believe that people learn best when they work with material that connects to some desire or need that’s important to them.

If I have to submit my expense reports via Excel, or if I have to do performance reviews for my staff via some arcane system, then regardless of my preferred learning style, I’m going to learn at least enough to get my work done.

Some time back, I wanted to create a coaching guide to help supervisors encourage people to apply job skills they’d learned in a series of workshops. I’d been fiddling around with using CSS, but my desire to create an online, interactive guide pushed me to learn enough to make the guide work.

This frame of mind can have amazing effects on on-the-job learning. When I got back to my job after that programmed-learning workshop, I tackled the problem of helping people learn Amtrak’s reservation system. It had scores if not hundreds of computer entries, most with several options.

You used the availability entry to find out train schedules between two cities — departure, arrival, train number, days of the week, services on board, and so forth. If you’re in the mood, think about what you’d want to explain to someone about such an entry. Then click through to part two and see what I eventually came up with.

Parts of this post: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 •

I couldn’t let the day pass without a little something Celtic. What a pleasure to find a clip of Mary Black singing Song for Ireland: