Messy Learning OK. Messy Training Not OK.

I've been thinking about messes a lot the past few days. I've got small kids and my house is pretty messy. It turns out that life in general is pretty messy. And now it turns out that learning is messy, too.

Janet Clarey was reporting back from the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference, including experiments with un-workshops when things don't go as you planned.

She live-blogged Stephen Downes' keynote and remarked, "This is messy learning in progress and it’s good."

Slide 22 of Stephen Downes' presentation includes a diagram: Messy vs. Neat.

So I've been thinking about messes and why messy learning makes people so uncomfortable. Especially the corporate types.

Learning is messy because we get easily distracted by shiny objects -- or rather, inspired to shoot off in different directions. Because self-directed learning doesn't always have a clear or specific performance objective.

Maybe your goal is to learn how to make a bowl on a pottery wheel, but then you end up making a real cool sculpture. Or maybe you want to learn about the life of the author of that great novel, and then end up reading about Puccini. By accident. It happens. Or maybe you actually want to learn how to do your job better.

I start a book, but I don't finish it. I start researching one topic online, but start diving down a completely different path within a matter of a few clicks. Conversations can wander.

Let's say, to go out on a limb here, that people are more-or-less comfortable with the notion that LEARNING is messy. But I don't think folks are comfortable with the notion that TEACHING or TRAINING can or should be messy.

That goes against about 800 grains.

And messy e-Learning? Forget about it. e-Learning should be all neat and tied up in a nice wrapper with a Next button that moves you through a content checklist and a great assessment at the end.

A PLE can be messy. It's personal, after all. And people are messy. Should training be messy?

This may be why the concept of informal learning is such a hard sell. Formal training, is by definition, not messy. It's formal. It's neat. It's got structure and objectives. You can measure it. It's really hard to measure a mess.

As Janet wrote in the comments to her own post, attendees were saying of the un-conference format that "structure" and "objectives" were needed.

Is a messy training program just one in which the presenter is clearly not organized? The agenda not fully thought out?

What makes for messy training/teaching?

• The training doesn't teach what the participants want or need (failure to consult with actual learners while designing the program).
• The instructor doesn't really know the topic and is just completely winging it.
• Things go wrong (software fails, power goes out).
• (A whole bunch of other things, right?)
  

As Michael Allen says in Michael Allen's Guide to e-Learning, "you can teach someone, but you can't learn someone" (to echo something Mark Oehlert recently ranted about).

I admit that this post is a bit messy. But I'm learning.

Photo Credit: Audrey Johnson from stock.xchng.

Blogger's New Polling Tool

As you may know, I've been playing around with Polls on this blog.

Last week, I asked "So What Kind of Gamer Are You? and "Are You a Gamer?" (58% of the 24 respondants to date consider themselves "Gamers." Interesting....)

(If you haven't responded to those polls, please click on the links here and do so!)

Today I just noticed that Blogger has added a polling tool. Just edit your Template layout, add a New Page Element, and choose Poll. Although the poll style is sparse and not as sexy Poll Daddy's, it does the trick.

I've added a new poll to my sidebar, asking "Have you ever been in Second Life?" Come visit Learning Visions and enter your response.

My Online Visual Identity

When Michele Martin changed her profile picture the other day, I realized I was a bit disoriented. Suddenly, she didn't look like the Michele I "knew."

And I saw how one dimensional our images of our online contacts (and digital friends) can be -- typically based on the same profile picture that's used in countless places. I've had the same profile picture up for months -- on my blog, in Facebook, MyBlogLog, and now here.

Truth be told, I've gotten pretty sick of that chirpy picture of me sitting in my kitchen wearing that purple sweatshirt popping up everywhere.

I do, indeed, often look like that. But that's just one view.

So I'm going to try to mix it up a bit. I've changed my profile picture in a few of my online places. I'm still smiling. But I'm wearing a different purple shirt.

For some reason, I haven't figured out how to change my Blogger Profile Picture -- so I'll still look like a green apple.

Why does this even matter? It has something to do with creating an online identity that's well-rounded. That's not just a caricature of me.

In this TED Talks video of Mena Trott, founder of Six Apart, she talks about taking a picture of herself everyday and posting them on her (private) blog. The power of the personal; building a friendlier world through blogs...

I should also show you pictures of me where I'm not smiling. Because sometimes I don't actually feel so damn chirpy.

31 Days: Days 26, 27, 28

I'm cleaning house and trying to to finish up with the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge. Although the challenge officially ended in August, the community is alive and well and coming up with new challenges and ideas. Join us at the Building a Better Blog Ning Group.

For those of you who are new to my blog, the 31 Days Challenge was started by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. He came up with a series of challenges. Michele Martin turned that challenge into a community (and lured a certain reluctant individual into the challenge).

Here's some house cleaning:

Day 26 Link Up to a "Competitor"
In my blogging world, there are no competitors -- we're just all fellow travelers, learning from each other as we go along. I'm happy to link and do so with great gusto. Task complete.

Day 27 Get a Sponsor for Your Blog
I'm not monetizing this blog, so I'm skipping this one. Task ignored.

Day 28 Write a Mission Statement for Your Blog
Ok. This feels like a good task and one that I will have to return to when I've got more energy.

We all know what a mission statement is and have probably spent hours in group meetings crafting corporate mission and vision statements. Gosh, I remember the gusto we poured into this back in the early 90's. And then we all posted our printed missions statements on our cubical walls to keep us focused and on target and walking the talk.

The challenge is to do the same for your blog. So why do you blog? And if you don't blog, why not?

I blog because I started reading all of these other great e-Learning blogs and realized that there was something pretty cool going on and I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to jump in to the conversation; I wanted to learn from all of these really smart people. My mission statement will have to include some key words on e-Learning, instructional design, web 2.0 technology and learning from community.

If you've been following me for awhile and think my blog is about something else, please let me know.

Task in progress.

You can view all of my 31 Days activity here:

31 Days: Day 25
31 Days: Days 22, 23, & 24
31 Days: Days 17, 18, 19, 21 & 21
31 Days: Days 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16
31 Days: Days 8, 9, & 10
31 Days: Days 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 (I got my numbering off somewhere along the way)
31 Days: Days 1, 2 & 3

So What Kind of a Gamer Are You?

In yesterday's poll, I asked readers if they think of themselves as gamers. As of this post, 55% of respondents proudly say "yes, I AM a gamer." Maybe not so proudly. There is some hemming and hawing amongst folks. Read the comments and see for yourself.

At Phil Charron's suggestion, I'm taking this next poll a bit deeper.

Let's talk about your gaming habits. And I mean digital gaming habits. Not whether or not you like to play Boggle at home the old-school way and rope your significant other into it on a regular basis. (Hey, that sounds like a slice of heaven to me!)

Instead, I want to know about your regular computer/digital game playing habits. And by regular, I mean that you access and play these games at least one a week.

So answer the questions, and take some time to comment. It's fun! It's almost like a game!



And be sure to response to the first poll "Are You a Gamer?"

"Work is Going to Be a Game"

Gamasutra: The Academics Speak: Is There Life After World of Warcraft?

On page 3 of the article, there's an interview with Jeff McNeil, a PhD candidate at University of Hawaii, Manoa (Random sidenote about me: I went to highschool right down the street from UH and had daily swim practice at the UH pool).

McNeil says,

The Wall Street Journal just had a great article which said “Work is going to be a game.” Game-like features help us to manage this level of complexity that we can’t keep up with anymore. Students, right now, have more decisions, choices and control than ever before. And yet school hasn’t changed.

Pretty soon, we’re going to be saying goodbye to classrooms where students put their hand up and get a single question in an hour… It’s just not enough interactivity. And once the value of game design is discovered, well, you’re going to see changes in the way that we think about, play, and buy games – whether they’re single player, MMO, or whatever else is just around the corner.

It’s a lot of work, making curricula game-like but it’s also quite fascinating. This is how educators can become re-invigorated in their discipline. Some are seeing it. Some are doing it. Harvard’s Chris Dede is doing it, and has been extremely successful.

There is an eLearningPulse!

The e-Learning industry is alive and well.

I jumped the gun a few weeks ago and unveiled the new one-stop shop for all things e-Learning (with or without the hyphen or the capital L -- you decide).

But now it's official: there is an eLearning Pulse.

eLearningPulse is "Your daily source for all things eLearning". This site provides free resources to the eLearning development community, including news, discussion forums, job postings, and more.

Thanks to Ben Edwards of Redbird Software and B.J. Schone of eLearning Weekly for putting this together.