Improving on the Amazon.com Model to Deliver Learning Content

Today, a colleague of mine offered a suggestion that I felt worthy of blowing the dust off the blog and putting the proverbial pen to paper. Earlier this month, I attended the Innovations in E-Learning Symposium at George Mason University. On the last day of the symposium, I learned that Defense Acquisition University was actively looking to develop an Amazon.com-like learning experience for its users. This concept isn’t new, although it was nice to hear that an organization is actively trying to achieve this model. I can only presume—because you know what happens when you assume—that, like Amazon, this model would use smart technology to deliver learning content and training to users based on the user’s behavioral patterns. So, for example, if you consumed several learning resources that dealt with project management (i.e. job aids, courses, manuals), the system would then “push” additional project management learning content to you that you might also find useful, or based on what people with similar interests consumed. I presume this system would also allow users to rate the usefulness or quality of learning content that is provided, then permit users the ability to sort content by highest rating.

When I mentioned this model to a colleague today, she offered what I found was a profound addition. Rather than merely offer learning content based solely on behavioral pattern, provide relevant content that is mapped to a user’s job competencies. The reason I found this advice profound is because it attempts to address organizational performance, rather that just offer a new way of delivering learning content. In other words, rather than just offer additional learning content to users, offer the right learning content for users to perform their assigned jobs, not to say that learning content relevant to other job competencies shouldn’t be available to users.

The reason I like this suggestion is because it addresses the organizations real needs, which are better performance, and not just a better method of delivering content to users.

Polarized Professional Learning

Since starting back to school in 2000, I’ve become rather polarized about my own learning, which hasn’t been entirely bad, but I think I’ve taken it a little too far for my personal taste. Nearly every book I’ve read since that time has been something I’ve hoped would further me professionally, for example, Economics, Psychology, History, Poetry, English, and the myriad of Instructional Design books. Again, don’t get me wrong. This has gotten me a long way professionally, but at a cost. I just realized today that it’s been about four years since I read a book for pleasure. Four years? Really?

What got me thinking about this was how I spent my Christmas vacation. I had time off of work, and time off of school. No assignments to complete. No project deadlines to meet. Instead, I cleaned the house, played my guitar, and got all the computers in my house on wireless. Yet, I don’t feel like I accomplished anything. I read no “self-improvement” book, article, or research paper. In my minds eye, I learned nothing new, and that’s my point. No balance.

Well, no more. No more being polarized about learned purely for professional advancement. From today on, I’m making it a point to balance my learning activities. I don’t really know exactly what that means yet, but I’m educated, so I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

The American Education System

A few good reads over the last month got me thinking about the American Education System, particularly what’s wrong with it. Although each book had a contrasting focus, I found the overlap in education profound. The two books in question are Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, and Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. In Made to Stick, the authors attribute the gap in math proficiency by many K-12 students to teachers not using enough concrete examples. The Heath brothers, explain that concrete language is the language of novices. It’s only after people grasp basic concepts that they can begin to think about them abstractly. The reason American K-12 students lag behind other countries is because American students are introduced to considerably less concrete examples than their foreign counterparts. Of course, I’m over simplifying here, but that was the gist.

On the other hand, Malcolm Gladwell raises the point of summer vacation as a culprit for America’s education woes. Gladwell explains that summer vacation provides students with a lengthy gap in which students are often left to forget most of what they learned. When students return to school, the teacher often spends weeks reiterating what was taught during the previous year. What I found interesting about this was the gap in learning retention between the upper and lower class after students returned to school after summer. A study showed upper class children performed significantly better than lower class children when retested at the end of summer. Gladwell goes on to explain that upper class children are generally offered many more opportunities to reinforce learning during the summer than lower class children, indirectly making a case for year-round schools.

Whether either suggestion offered by the authors above is merely correlated or it’s causal, I thought the authors did a great job at peaking my interest enough to think long and hard about the education my children are getting. For that, I give a tip of the hat to the Heath brothers and Malcolm Gladwell.

Online, Synchronous Learning with ConnectNow

Over the last year, I’ve been advocating the use of Adobe Connect as a web communication tool at work. Connect provides a platform in which to offer students live, synchronous classes online. During this time, I have been regularly asked if there are any products that are similar to Connect, but free? Well I finally found one worth noting. Over the weekend I started experimenting with ConnectNow, which is Adobe’s new suite of online tools in beta.

Like Adobe Connect, ConnectNow is a Flash-based platform that allows people to meet and collaborate online in real-time. Actually, minus a few features, I found ConnectNow to be a better product than Adobe Connect. Oh, and did I mention it's free? But, don't let my opinion sway your vote. Try the product for yourself by creating a free Adobe account and visiting Acrobat.com.

Learning the SuperCool School Way

Lately, I’ve become fascinated with learning the SuperCool School way. That is, allow participants to initiate the topics they want to learn about. Other participants interested in learning that topic too can then join the request. Once enough “seats” have been filled, the teacher position opens and anyone willing and/or able to teach does.

Obviously this is a different paradigm than the norm. Generally speaking, most models dictate what will be taught and who will teach it, then participants are granted access (or mandated) to attend. The advantage I see to using the SuperCool School method in the workplace is in situations where the department usually responsible for providing training cannot efficiently offer a training solution. For example, a relatively small group of people are interested in learning how blogging can be used on the job. If there isn’t a strong business need for a course such as this, most training departments would be unwilling to extend the effort required to offer the class. But if someone else is willing to teach, and an interest group is willing to attend, why stop them?

So, now that you’ve gotten a little context for what I’m talking about, I’ll get to the pitch. What I’ve been trying to do over the last couple weeks is figure out a way to apply what I’ve learned from researching SuperCool School to my own workplace. So at work this last week, I, and a couple other people, came up with the idea to use a hybrid approach as a means of organizing the many lunch-time brown-bag sessions. The approach we’re going to try is very much like a newspaper’s classified ads section. It offers a single place for people offering goods and a place for people seeking goods.

What we’re hoping to do is to get other people using our internal social media software to request and respond to learning opportunities in our organization. I’m not sure how realistic this is, but I’m hoping for the best. Hopefully, I'll follow this post with positive results as we move forward. Till then.

Ever wonder what kind of avatar to use for online social networking in the workplace? You remember avatars, right? These are the photos or images that appear next to a users name (see example below). I never really gave much thought to using avatars for social media until today. What triggered the thought was a story I heard from Steve Radick, a collegue of mine at work. During his presentation, Steve said he frequently ran into people that would tell him they read his blogs and that they appreciated what he was contributing. That's when the thought crossed my mind: These people would have never known what Steve looked like if he didn't have a photo of himself as his avatar.



Why should you be concerned with the avatar you use? Because, your avatar is your brand and your brand's purpose, as Tom Mochal describes it, "is to establish an identity that conjures up a positive image (2007)." In Steve's case, his brand worked exactly as intended. If your using social media tools for professional purposes, establishing a positive image is what you should be aiming for.

With that in mind, here are a couple guidelines I have found useful for using Avatars across multiple online social media tools (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, and Utterli).

1) Try to stick with using the same avatar for each tool. Again, you're trying to build a consistent message. Using the same avatar will help you accomplish this, not to mention make it easier for people following you online to find you.
2) If face recognition is important, like in the story mentioned above, consider using a photo of yourself as an avatar rather than a graphic image.

Blogging Live Events with Cover It Live

Over the weekend I tinkered with another Web 2.0 app, called Cover It Live. For you bloggers and microbloggers out there, imagine blogging a live event in which you can post your commentary for other people to follow; in a format similar to Twitter or Yammer. However, you as the host have at your disposal richer features in which you can use to engage your followers, such as polling, text, video, and images. Then, once the event is over, all content can be retrieved in one online recording, which differs greatly from other microblog apps I’ve seen. What I also found practical was the ability to easily embed the app in any website, avoiding the need for users to have an account to participate.

I can’t help but think of how many conferences we send staff to that could benefit other colleagues. This app could provide a unique opportunity for people unable to attend the conference to follow topics and gain context specific insights from other staff fortunate enough to attend in person.

Here’s a brief example of a recording I created earlier.