Goodbye 2008…Hello 2009

Farewell 2008

How was your 2008? Did you make it everything it could be? What about your 2009? What are your expectations and dreams for the upcoming year?

The end of the year always seems to automatically lead to two activities:

1. Reviewing the year gone by
2. Making predictions for the upcoming year

In keeping with tradition, this post will do a little bit of both.

Reviewing 2008 – 5 Observations

1. Twitteriffic – Twitter went from a trickle to a firehose in 2008. Early adopters were joined by more mainstream users and even those that were not initially convinced of its usefulness eventually climbed on board for the ride. From an individual perspective, I found Twitter to be extremely useful as an informal learning tool. Every day I found great tips, tricks and links from my network of experts. What about you? Did you join Twitter in 2008? What are your impressions to date? Has Twitter been a useful learning tool for you?
2. PLEs! – Puuuuulease! PLEs also gained currency, particularly in the blogosphere during the first half of the year. Nearly every blog that I follow at some time or another posted on this topic. People had a host of different tools and technologies to organize their learning, but one thing was clear in 2008 – a PLE is an indispensable part of career development and performance improvement. I organize my PLE around igoogle since it has so many different widgets and plugins. 2008 may go down as the point in time when training/learning in corporations shifted from top-down to bottom up with the arrival of the PLE. What do you think? Are PLEs here to stay? Are they impacting the traditional function of the training/learning department in companies?
3. Mmmm del.icio.us – Social bookmarking took off in 2008 as well, although at a less feverish pace than Twitter or PLEs. I am not sure why, but Delicious seems to still be largely an individual endeavor. Even though bookmarks can be shared and your network helps to aggregate interesting and informative sites, my experience with this tool was that my bookmarking remained largely a personal activity. What about your experience with Delicious in 2008? Did you find social bookmarking to be more helpful than traditional bookmarking? What changes do we need to see in 2009 to improve its usefulness?
4. Just do it – Learning by doing emerged as one of the mantra’s for 2008. Many elearning professionals sought to focus more on performance improvement through simulation. As design tools continue to become more user friendly, elearning professionals are attempting to creating more realistic and engaging training products. Problem-based learning and new methods for combining visuals and voice have led to changes in the approach from course-based learning to just-in-time problem-based techniques. This will be an interesting trend to watch in 2009. What about your training efforts? Did you move beyond the course? Are you incorporating more problem-based and activity-based learn by doing approaches in your efforts? Is this simply the latest fad or do you think these new approaches are here to stay?
5. Visually appealing - Finally, the explosion of visual learning theories and books in 2008 was certainly a noticeable trend. From Garr Reynolds in Presentation Zen to Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin and even John Medina’s Brain Rules, new research seems to confirm that we are visually-based creatures. Incorporating visual tools into our presentations, training and problem solving strategies seems to make sense and 2008 was a year in which this message went out loud and clear. What impact has this research and these new approaches had on your training and teaching? Are you incorporating more visually based materials into your learning interventions? What about your presentations? Do you see this trend continuing in 2009?

Predicting 2009 – What’s around the corner

Looking ahead to 2009 – what trends do you see continuing with respect to training, teaching, elearning and social media? Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Twitter will continue to expand and become more integrated with other online applications so that Tweets will become a click and Tweet phenomenon.
2. Facebook will become a more prominent organizing tool in 2009. More people will become members of Facebook, but it will stay largely a personal tool rather than a work tool. (Which might not be a bad thing!).
3. PLEs will become more mainstream as corporate training organizations work to support the transfer of the learning function from the Training Department to the individual.
4. Corporate training departments will continue to move away from courses in an LMS or in person as the central organizing unit of training. Just in time products will become more prominent and the Training function will turn more toward helping employees build PLEs and to integrate them both within the organization and with the world at large.

These are just a few of the thoughts that I have in mind as 2008 comes to a close. I am interested in hearing what all of you have to add as well. What do you see as the important changes in 2008? What trends do you see emerging in 2009? Please post your comments below so that we can start up and interesting conversation.

And on a final note, have a Happy and Healthy 2009! Happy New Year!

Attributed to Pieter Musterd on Flickr. Taken on December 14, 2008, uploaded December 31, 2008

The Big Question for December: What did I learn about learning in 2008?

Attributed to Tony Karrer: Big Question Logo

This is my first time answering Tony Karrer’s Big Question. The question for December 2008 is: What did I learn about learning in 2008?

Wow! What a question. I have definitely learned a lot this year, both obvious and not so obvious. Here are some of my highlights:

1. Learning to Blog: I started this blog in August. I am still VERY new to blogging, but my posts are starting to become more frequent. I definitely fell into the new blogger’s trap of posting my initial post or two and then simply falling off the map for several months. I am getting better now at blogging as a way to clarify my own thoughts and to initiate conversations. Tony Karrer has some great advice for new bloggers; namely to write for your own learning – a sort of conversation in your head. I have taken Tony’s advice to heart and it has made all the difference.

2. Expanding Twitter Use: As with many other learning professionals, I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon this year and really tried to grow my network. Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter was very helpful in this respect. Only by building up my network of those that I follow was I able to tap into their conversations. …And what conversations these often turned out to be! I enjoyed “attending” conferences and talks on Twitter through the help of tweets from DevLearn and other events that I was not able to attend in person. I cannot tell you the number of ideas that I have been able to use in my daily work as an elearning specialist. Links and TinyURLs fly around the Twitterverse with abandon. Interestingly enough – a very large number of them are useful or lead to useful ideas. It is one of the biggest conversations I have ever been involved in! I remember the BEST times in grad school were conversations over a beer or sitting on a wall on a spring day with all my colleagues tossing around ideas. Twitter puts me in a perpetual “grad school” mode of learning and sharing.

3. Creating a PLN: As part of my work this year, I presented a number of Lunch & Learn topics to our employees. These talks introduced our employees to the ideas of a Personal Learning Network as well as social bookmarking, Twitter, Delicious, RSS feeds and many other social tools. In order to teach these topics, I had to be using them. I learned a GREAT deal the past 12 months by creating and refining my PLN. My expanded use of social bookmarking has led to a number of great finds that I have used to learn new skills and to improve how I do my job each and every week. My RSS feeds are indispensable (more on that below). My Twitter conversations engaging and enlivening. Without my PLN, I would simply be lost.

4. RSS – My lifeblood: The only more important tool in my PLN than Twitter are my RSS feeds. I absolutely love my igoogle page and the embedded Google Reader. My RSS feeds of blogposts, news stories and even Twitter feeds are my lifeblood. I cannot survive without my RSS feeds. I have learned so much from the blogs that I read on a daily basis. I am constantly picking up new tips and tricks from experts in elearning as well as social media and even the presentation masters. What has been most satisfying is how important nuggets often come from the most unexpected places. My new mission for 2009 is to get EVERYONE in the company using igoogle with the embedded Google Reader widget!

In summary, I feel that I have learned a LOT about learning this year. Our world is definitely changing with respect to how information, ideas and learning are now shared in the social space. I am convinced that these tools can help unleash the creative power of our entire company. My own personal experiences and revelations this year are evidence enough for me to keep pushing to create a culture of curiosity in my organization that is enabled and enhanced by social tools that connect people and open the doors to easy and widespread sharing and collaboration.

The fun thing is that I am looking forward to an even bigger 2009!

Crying Wolf? Changing Organizational Culture in a Downturn

Okay, these thoughts have been swirling around in my head and I can’t quite get a grip on them. I have delayed posting about them thinking that I could get a more well-thought out post on the topic, but it hasn’t happened…so, I’ll just spill it out on paper and see where it goes. Consider yourself forewarned! This is likely to be a rambling post…you know how a cat sometimes jumps up inexplicably and runs to another room – that’s what this post will resemble. (If you are a cat lover you know what I am talking about if not – go ask a cat lover and watch them smile knowingly!)

One of the challenges to any learning professional is how to build a culture of learning in an organization. As I have written previously, new technologies and the new landscape in today flat world require that learners take control of their own learning. However, not everyone sees the urgency in this imperative. In particular, C-level folks all the way down to mid-level managers have jobs to do and numbers to hit. There is no time for formal learning let alone building up a personal learning network. What’s a learning professional to do? Cry wolf? That only works for so long, particularly when you are only one that seems to see the wolf. So we are left with learning professionals using Twitter, pushing delicious, blogging and a host of other ways to learn each and every day on the job. But what about everyone else? How can we bring them along? Does anyone out there have experience with this? If the culture doesn’t value openness, connections, sharing, etc. how can we unleash the potential of EACH AND EVERY employee in the company? Anyone….Bueller?

The corollary to this problem is what happens to learning and training initiatives during a downturn. Namely – every time budgets tighten and the economy goes south, companies start cutting costs and drawing back on investments. Interestingly, during such times nearly every learning/training professional screams out: Now is the time to invest in human capital! However, here is the dilemma I see: If we talk about such investments, they look self serving, but if we don’t, the consequences could be dire. How do we engage the C-level folks to consider such investments during this time of tight budgets, let alone MAKE the investments! And another thing, where is the data to back up our claims? I must admit – I don’t have it. (And worse – I don’t know where to get it!) What evidence do we have as learning professionals that training investments during a down cycle have ever benefited a company when the cycle turned upward? Anyone….Bueller?

So you see, I have these two huge questions running around in my head and I really don’t have any answers to them. They seem to be linked in some way and both require taking a more holistic, organizational behavior approach (here’s to you Mark Oehlert!), but where to start?

I am interested to hear from others in the corporate environment out there: Have you been able to create a learning culture in your organization? If so – how? In addition, did this have a positive impact on your company – one that was measurable and would convince a C-level type to make such an investment?

To date, the silence has been deafening…I am hoping you all can change that!