I'm still looking for benefits to present to trainers in words they will understand.
These are two of the barriers I've seen.
1. Using scripts/frameworks that aren't supported by their IT departments. Medium size businesses don't have enough IT to go around so I initially thought open-source might be a way for the training dept to break free of that tyranny. Nope, too hard to install and maintain unless you use a hosted/ASP solution and those are one trick ponies.
2. Attitude - there seems to be an almost prideful stance in many OSS applications of being difficult to install and maintain. It puts up a big stop sign that says "only tech wonks may pass through these sacred portals" and trainers are far from being tech wonks.
Christie Mason
Discussions started by Christie Mason
I'm seeing similar concepts in several different threads.
I've learned to redefine "fun" as "F.U.N." (Focusing onUnderstanding Needs). What does the learner need to learn? What need is motivating this learner to learn? When a learner is learning what they need in an environment that motivates their learning, that's when I'm having fun because I'm successfully applied "F.U.N."
I was just looking at the Maslow Hierarchy and trying to align different levels of motivation to what that level may consider a fun way to learn. It seems to me that externally motivated people are motivated by social recognition and belonging, internally motivated people have fun controlling their own quest for knowing. This closely aligns with how different personality matrix split personalities between task driven and socially driven types.
Looking at the different ways people are motivated to learn explains a lot to me about the different reactions from different types of learners to games andother training/teaching techniques. Try a nonsense game that's not tied to the topic with a classroom of engineers, programmers or successful salespeople and feel the room go cold. Those functions tend to attract task oriented people who are internally motivated. Try that same game with trainers as a audience and you'll feel the room go warm and open. I verystrongly suspect that's why trainers view sales, engineering and IT audiencesas "the toughest audience". Trainers tend to offer training based on the Golden Rule "Do unto others the way I want to be done unto" and that doesn't match the diverse needs and motivators of their learners.
I've always found it better to apply the Platinum Rule "Do unto others the way they want to be done unto". To me, the Platinum Rule encapsulates the essence of "F.U.N." and how it can be applied to support informal learning processes that meet the needs of many different definitions of "fun". I use it daily to continuously remind me that my definition of fun isn't the same as other people's definition of fun.
Christie Mason
From: Videogames revolution and informal learning by Bronwyn Stuckey
"Can we claim to be learning because we are engaged?"
From: Debriefing "Just Three Words" Game by Ann Busby
in reply to my post questioning what was being learned from "Just ThreeWords". "I want learning to be fun, not drudgery"
From: various threads about how children learn vs adult learning I've been wondering "Doesn't it seem like kids have fun learning just about anything, any time, anywhere as long as it's not in school?" Plus, outside of structured teaching environments, I just haven't seen a significant difference between the way that kids and adults learn.
I believe that learning is fun, it's one of my strongest motivators. I also believe that most teaching and instructional methodology is designed to remove the fun I find in learning. Why? I have no idea. I know that people/rats/ etc repeat behavior that is rewarded. What the reward could be for ignoring decades of theories and observations that indicate that different people learn in different ways continues to escape my understanding. However, I have a strong suspicion that George Washingtoncan supply a piece of the puzzle.
One of the difficulties in bringing about change in an organization isthat you must do so through the persons who have been most successful in thatorganization, no matter how faulty the system or organization is. To suchpersons, you see, it is the best of all possible organizations, because lookwho was selected by it and look who succeeded most in it. Yet these are the very people through whom we must bring about improvements. GeorgeWashington
Look at what passes for "fun" in most teaching/training environments- a game such as an ice breaker or a Flash simulation. What the training community is slowly learning is that the participants deem a game that isn?t tied into learning something about the topic a waste of time. Why isn't that reaction always reflected on the smiley sheets? I've eavesdropped on many coffee break and post training informal discussions for years and noted that even when the majority is dissatisfied with the "fun" that was imposed on them, they never notate it on the evaluation. Why? The reasons that I hear again and again are variations of "didn't want to make the trainer feel bad", "other people seemed to enjoy it", or "I've just learned to deal with it because everybody does it."
I've learned to redefine "fun" as "F.U.N." (Focusing onUnderstanding Needs). What does the learner need to learn? What need is motivating this learner to learn? When a learner is learning what they need in an environment that motivates their learning, that's when I'm having fun because I'm successfully applied "F.U.N."
I was just looking at the Maslow Hierarchy and trying to align different levels of motivation to what that level may consider a fun way to learn. It seems to me that externally motivated people are motivated by social recognition and belonging, internally motivated people have fun controlling their own quest for knowing. This closely aligns with how different personality matrix split personalities between task driven and socially driven types.
Looking at the different ways people are motivated to learn explains a lot to me about the different reactions from different types of learners to games andother training/teaching techniques. Try a nonsense game that's not tied to the topic with a classroom of engineers, programmers or successful salespeople and feel the room go cold. Those functions tend to attract task oriented people who are internally motivated. Try that same game with trainers as a audience and you'll feel the room go warm and open. I verystrongly suspect that's why trainers view sales, engineering and IT audiencesas "the toughest audience". Trainers tend to offer training based on the Golden Rule "Do unto others the way I want to be done unto" and that doesn't match the diverse needs and motivators of their learners.
I've always found it better to apply the Platinum Rule "Do unto others the way they want to be done unto". To me, the Platinum Rule encapsulates the essence of "F.U.N." and how it can be applied to support informal learning processes that meet the needs of many different definitions of "fun". I use it daily to continuously remind me that my definition of fun isn't the same as other people's definition of fun.
Christie Mason
There's a bit of irony in this posting because I'm usually very supportive of chaotic/informal learning processes. But, I have always had difficulty in seeing the reason to have a game just to have a game. I enjoyed the moments of fun to think of 3 words but I'm left wondering... Has anyone learned anything?
I don't think we're building community with this because no one is commenting, expanding or engaging with any other posting. There are some nested threads but only because people are replying to replies, not to the parent thread.
The best games have a reason to engage, an attraction tht promotes activity, a payback for energies invested. Perhaps it's my internal blindness but I'm missing the reasoning for this game and where it's supposed to lead.
Maybe the purpose is to point out that informal learning isn't fun and games?
Christie Mason
I don't think we're building community with this because no one is commenting, expanding or engaging with any other posting. There are some nested threads but only because people are replying to replies, not to the parent thread.
The best games have a reason to engage, an attraction tht promotes activity, a payback for energies invested. Perhaps it's my internal blindness but I'm missing the reasoning for this game and where it's supposed to lead.
Maybe the purpose is to point out that informal learning isn't fun and games?
Christie Mason
I don't know the protocol for creating a new thread from existing threads within this forum. This is a reply to Minh McCoy originally under "Welcome Informal Learners".
Minh's example of the edge of a forest as an example of the Edge of Chaos struck home. The transitional margin between 2 existing systems is the area of optimum opportunity for new growth. Within the context of this discussion, it is the area of opportunity for learning moments, not teachable moments. It is the edge between controlled, traditional training and the perceived chaos of the web.
Is eLearning the "structure" to support informal learning? It depends on how you define eLearning. eLearning is NOT putting PPT on the web and it is NOT synchronous web conferences that poorly replicate a constricted classroom event.
4 years ago I created a page called "What is eLearning?" . I was frustrated then, and still, about how eLearning had been used to replicate formal, controlled, ineffective, traditional training/teaching processes instead of expanding, extending, enhancing and evolving web supported processes that are already widely used to support informal learning.
My 3 best reference sites for what eLearning could be are Google.com (non-linear search), Amazon.com (faceted classification and collaborative knowledge sharing) and Dell.com (build to order learning components). There is a structure and control underlying each site's functions and display but each site does not enforce a linear navigation of its content.
Contrast the structure of those sites to what passes for what trainers use to create eLearning. Learning/Learner management systems that restrict access by static organizational hierarchies, content authoring programs that are usually nothing more than PPT to static HTML convertors or PPT to Flash (the garlic of the Web) convertors.
It's been my general experience that IT "gets" how to capitalize on the opportunities of the web at the edge between control and chaos - trainers don't. Both tend to have a control orientation so this has always confused me. My current theory is that it may be that IT has learned to think in terms of controlling the interaction of intangible "services" while trainers still think in terms of controlling tangible, paper based presentations.
Christie Mason
Minh's example of the edge of a forest as an example of the Edge of Chaos struck home. The transitional margin between 2 existing systems is the area of optimum opportunity for new growth. Within the context of this discussion, it is the area of opportunity for learning moments, not teachable moments. It is the edge between controlled, traditional training and the perceived chaos of the web.
Is eLearning the "structure" to support informal learning? It depends on how you define eLearning. eLearning is NOT putting PPT on the web and it is NOT synchronous web conferences that poorly replicate a constricted classroom event.
4 years ago I created a page called "What is eLearning?" . I was frustrated then, and still, about how eLearning had been used to replicate formal, controlled, ineffective, traditional training/teaching processes instead of expanding, extending, enhancing and evolving web supported processes that are already widely used to support informal learning.
My 3 best reference sites for what eLearning could be are Google.com (non-linear search), Amazon.com (faceted classification and collaborative knowledge sharing) and Dell.com (build to order learning components). There is a structure and control underlying each site's functions and display but each site does not enforce a linear navigation of its content.
Contrast the structure of those sites to what passes for what trainers use to create eLearning. Learning/Learner management systems that restrict access by static organizational hierarchies, content authoring programs that are usually nothing more than PPT to static HTML convertors or PPT to Flash (the garlic of the Web) convertors.
It's been my general experience that IT "gets" how to capitalize on the opportunities of the web at the edge between control and chaos - trainers don't. Both tend to have a control orientation so this has always confused me. My current theory is that it may be that IT has learned to think in terms of controlling the interaction of intangible "services" while trainers still think in terms of controlling tangible, paper based presentations.
Christie Mason