Learn and Lead

I recently came across a question posted on the eCube LinkedIn forum that I responded to. While the question was how a person in between jobs could keep their instructional design skills up to date, I think it is important even for those with the jobs to keep their skills up to date.

How can an experienced Instructional Designer with very limited experience in current instructional design software tools update their skills in order to be recognized and considered as a candidate for e-Learning positions? How does a person in transition keep their instructional design skills up to date in order to effectively compete for instructional design jobs in today's job market?

Start reading a lot of blogs by other experts and connect with other learning professionals through your comments. It is always hard to know which blogs to follow. Here are the blogs that I follow, or you could also browse through the blogroll on this site.

Twitter is another great tool for connecting with others. This will give you an insight into what's happening in the industry and help you stay up to date.

If you are up to it (and I strongly recommend that you do make an effort), my advice would be to start writing a blog to articulate your learning. Your blog will be a useful showcase in your job interviews (I am of course assuming that you will write about learning/instructional design).

I would also recommend that you learn various tools used in elearning. These tools are usually easy enough to get started and learn on your own. You could easily work with the demo versions of the latest tools and to get your hands dirty.

Creating your elearning portfolio will also be useful to showcase your capabilities. Tom Kuhlmann makes a compelling case for creating your elearning portfolio.

And if you are indeed in between jobs and want to stay up to date, I would advice you to start picking up small freelance assignments. No better way to stay in touch with what's happening in the industry by actually being hands on.

It’s time to update my top 10 learning tools and techniques list. This time I’ll try to focus more on tools and services. You can view my previous lists of Aug 08 and Jan 08.

My top 10 learning tools in April 2009:

1. Google Reader – I read blogs via RSS feeds. I have tried Google Reader, NetVibes, Bloglines and Feedly, and I have stuck to Google Reader. It also allows me to share interesting articles from my feeds. In case you are interested, you can view my shared items here. I still find many people who don’t really know or use feeds. I don’t lose any opportunity to educate them to the merits of feeds and using a feed reader.
2. Twitter – I will complete one year of Twittering next month. It’s been a great learning tool. I read somewhere that Twitter lowers the barriers of communication. Completely agree with this. Have made more connections on Twitter than on any other network. Connect with me on Twitter @manishmo.
3. TweetDeck - can’t just complete this list without talking about some of the Twitter tools I use. TweetDesk desktop app helps me organize twitter contacts in groups and helps me manage tweets easily.
4. Google Chrome – IE feels extremely slow and archaic after I started using Google Chrome. I love the simplicity of the interface. And the best feature is ability to type anything in the address bar to search for it. No need to actually go to the search engine website.
5. Google search engine – Googling is now a verb. This is my most used search engine.
6. Compfight, a flickr search engine – Love this as it allows me to quickly search Creative Commons images that I can use on my blog.
7. LinkedIn – Okay, perhaps it is not a tool but definitely a network that I have found invaluable. I have made some great connections through the eCube forum.
8. Blogging – Blogging continues to help me reflect on my thoughts and crystallize my learning. I prefer self hosted Wordpress platform more. I still use Blogger for my personal blog and have moved to hosted Wordpress for my team blog.
9. Bubbl.us – Love this collaborative mind mapping service. Simple interface and great collaborative features. I have been using this to collaborate with my connections.
10. Mr. Tweet – this Twitter service has helped me identify new folks to follow based on my network’s network. I have found it quite useful in identifying new folks to connect with.

Image: Imagination by tjtrewin

Jul 2009 Update: You can find an updates list of blogs by Learning professionals and companies in India here.

Announcing the launch of eCube Community Social Networking site. Connect with other like minded professionals in the field of learning, education and training. Create your own social networking friend circle, write your blog, form groups to discuss specific topics, and share bookmarks, photos and files.

Register now and join the community. Set up your profile to share your interest and skills.

eCube now has a new look and feel. I wanted something bright and refreshing. I used the WP-Polaroid for Blogger template that I downloaded from eblog templates. It took more time than I expected but in the process I created a blog template upgrade checklist. I realized that there is too much code (analytics, tracking, label customization etc.) that is embedded that needs to be ported to the new template code. And the widgets got all messed up in the new template so I had to create many widgets all over again. Getting the author name was a challenge and I still don’t have the post date (only post time is visible).

There is still some fine tuning to be done over the next few days. I still don’t know how to automatically archive the Blogger poll widgets (so bear with them on the side bars). And the Outbrain rating stars still don’t appear on the posts. And post contributors will need to log on to their Blogger Dashboard to be able to create a new post on the blog till I figure out how to get back the top Blogger navigation bar.

Like it, hate it, have suggestions for improvement? Do post your comments on the new interface. There is also a new poll about the interface. Do drop by and provide your feedback.

Update: eCube has moved to Worpress platform on an independent domain: http://e3cube.co.in.

Dave Ferguson kicked off the first Working/Learning blog carnival (a collection of posts around one topic) on his blog. Blog carnivals are a kind of anthology-on-the-fly, a collection of posts from several blogs. For each issue of a carnival, participants post on their own blogs, and a host posts links to all the participating posts.The theme of the blog carnival is "Work at Learning/Learning at Work" primarily aimed at people who work in the training/learning area (that is, non-academics) e.g., how training/learning professionals go about their own learning, or how learning happens in the workplace. In the first carnival, there were contributions from Michele Martin, Cathy Moore, Harold Jarche, Janet Clarey, and Dave Ferguson.

The response to the second carnival edition has been, well overwhelming. A special thanks to all the contributors.

Here’s the second edition of the Blog Carnival:

1. Rupa Rajagoplan in her post talks about how different learners learn and provides her suggestions on what companies can do to encourage learning at work.
2. Viplav Baxi explores the challenges that we face in moving our organizations to the new 2.0 world.
3. Dave Ferguson in his post takes one of John Medina's brain rules, "remember to repeat," and talks about how we move information into long-term memory, how we get it out again, and what impact those things can have on how we manage learning at work.
4. Harold Jarche shares his post on Skills 2.0 for learning professionals who may want to know why it’s important to understand the Web for training and development.
5. Geetha Krishnan talks about three informal ways in which he learns at the workplace.
6. How often do you ask yourself the basic question “What Have I Learned at Work?” And if and when you do ask it, how satisfied are you with the answers? In this post, Jeff Cobb considers how we might get more out of workplace learning and issues a simple challenge.
7. Sonali Malik shares her learning sources in her post on the eCube team blog.
8. Ken Carroll in his post Constructionism works looks at learning in social networks and online communities and feel Sociology can provide insights in the way the web is creating new social structures that pertain to learning and their dynamics.
9. Clive Shepherd in his post shares we may learn to do something, whether that's proactively, because we want to develop our knowledge and skills to meet future commitments, or reactively, because we need new knowledge and skills to carry out a current task. But a great deal of learning, probably the majority, is incidental.
10. Cathy Moore resurrects an old post where she points out that elearning is more efficient and powerful if we focus on what learners need to do, not what they need to know.
11. Michele Martin provides an interesting primer on Pecha Kucha presentation style for learning.
12. Dr. Karl Kapp talks in his post about the mistake that most people make in thinking that learning should be easy, simple and straightforward when to the contrary it hard and a continuous process.
13. Janet Clarey talks about how social learning technologies are changing the way we learn at work.
14. And my own contribution talks about leadership impact on workplace learning.
15. A last minute contribution by Cammy Bean just came in. It is something I really can related to and I couldn't resist updating this blog even after it's been published. She talks about how she builds learning into work -- when you just don't feel like you have the time?

The first carnival was organized via email. For the second carnival, in addition to email, I experimented with using Facebook for organizing the event hosted on the eCube Facebook group. The group is open and is my experiment to create a collaborative learning environment, a forum to Engage people by Encouraging them to Explore new Environments and Experiment with the them.



Looking forward to the next edition of the blog carnival and seeking volunteers for the next edition of carnival...

When starting a team blog, identify the objectives and goals of the blog.

• What problem you are trying to solve and for whom?
• Who will be the content creators and who will be readers?
• What content is important for them?

• A widget to display an RSS feed about industry news provided a window to what was happening in other companies.
• In my Google Reader, I shared the posts that I felt would be relevant to the team, and then provided an RSS feed as Recommended Articles on the blog. This keeps the content on the blog updated without actually changing the blog itself.
• I added a Recent Comments widget to display recent comments in various posts on the main page. This also helps keep site updated with new content on the main page without any my intervention.
• I added Ratings widget by Outbrain and encouraged the readers to rate the posts. I always feel readers are more likely to rate posts than comment on them. The ratings widget also allows you to display the most popular post on the blog.

We have made a modest beginning to the eCube experiment. In the first month, we have had 26 posts from 10 authors besides me. Additionally, there have been 24 comments posted. So the team is participating.

As I mentioned in my previous post, eCube is an experiment in reflective learning using Web 2.0 tools. This is also an experiment to bring in a learning culture in the organization, and an attempt to solve the business need of enhancing skills of a large diverse and divergent team of instructional designers and content developers.

I started by simply creating a team blog and inviting people to start contributing to this blog. Some of the things that have worked:

• I initially invited a few people who I thought should contribute. I was also recommended some names of people who might contribute. So I quickly included them and that helped.

• I sent regular reminders to people to contribute to the blog. I created a list of potential topics that authors could write on.

• Using Google Reader, I share posts that I think might be useful to the group. I have an RSS feed of my shared items on the eCube blog.

• To initiate more participation, I have added Outbrain’s rating widget. A little widget displays the most popular posts on the blog.

• Added a link to the eCube blog on the employee portal within the firewall. This has added more traffic to the blog.

• Peer push - as authors contribute I get requests by others to be added as authors to the blog.

I am still learning to use wikis. Hopefully I will be able to integrate this experiment with the corporate wiki in the near future.

Related posts:

Michael Martin – Creating an Organizational Culture of Reflective Practice

Tony Karrer – PLE and PWLE posts

Ray Sims – Motivation for Technology Adoption by End-Users

Ray Sims recent blog post about motivation for technology adoption by end-users came in at an opportune time for me. Having blogged on my own for a while, I am now embarking on the journey of experiments. Inspired by the Bamboo Project, and challenged by the job of enhancing skills of a diverse and divergent (in more ways than one) large team of instructional designers and content developers, I have decided to experiment using Web 2.0 tools to bring in some convergence. And I need suggestions to make this succeed.

We’ve had a Web 2.0 equivalent environment “within the firewall” for many years now. Many of the tools have been available on our employee portal – discussion forums, blogs, wikis, project sites, knowledge base with new additions and frequently used tags, chat, survey questions, and even image galleries. We can argue and debate about semantics of whether these tools are indeed Web 2.0 tools, however the tools facilitated collaboration. We have had success in using these tools in pockets. Given our expectations of convergence I would say the success of this environment has been limited.

So why bother with creating a new collaborative learning environment “outside the firewall”? Well for one, the tools available outside the firewall seem to be a lot more user-friendly, and customizable. And I have more control over creating new environments without having to go to our systems and IT team. This in spite of my having significant influence over this team.

So in my current experiment, I have:
- Set up a collaborative blog on Blogger.
- Invited specific people to be authors to this blog.
- Identified a list of topics that I want the team to write on.
- Posted a few posts of my own and from a team member.
- Created a Flickr group to share photos on the blog.
- Made a very quiet launch of the blog with limited readership.
- Provided a link to the blog on our employee portal.

Issues I am still pondering over:

• While blogs provide an informal forum for the team to write about their project and issues they are facing, I am uncomfortable about the “outside the firewall” bit in this particular case. It is always more comfortable for discussions about current project and issues to be held internally, or within the firewall. I could use blogger’s administrative features to restrict access but that is an administrative nightmare for me.
• My role would require me to create guidelines/policies for professionals writing outside the firewall. I am torn between being an experimenter and being a manager. Are there pointers to create these policies and guidelines?
• Wouldn’t putting firewall around this informal learning environment itself defeat the purpose of having an informal collaborative environment? Are there case studies of implementing something like this successfully for large teams?
• Since most of the past initiatives have been pushed to the team, I want to make this one a pull initiative. What’s the best way to roll this out to get an active pull enrollment of the team?