What has Japanese folk art got to do with learning? Cheryl Clemons, communications director at Brightwave, shares 8 things she learned this week at the Learning and Skills Group Conference 2010.
- Community rocks - regardless of what went on inside the main auditorium and the individual side sessions the LSG organisers have created a network of enthusiastic professional people keen to share. And it continues to grow.
- Twitter is still underground. A collaborative attempt to count the tweeters at the conference returned a contributor base of between 6% - 10% of the overall delegates. Virtual chat undoubtedly supports the live event and it's fun to vicariously experience parallel sessions. However, will a rise in use cause problems for the presenters wanting to do some serious ...
- Eyeballing: Award-winning trainer Julie Wedgewood invokes trainers delivering live synchronous learning to tuck vanity under their arms, stick their mugs on the web cam and make 'eye' contact to increase engagement.
- Collaborative learning/working - is for Jay Cross the final stage in the 'Five Stages for Workplace Learning'and to 'leap this chasm' requires a change in mindset. Whether you are experiencing the change as a chasm or a narrowing path, one thing's for sure, there was a significant lack of real social and collaborative learning case studies on show.
- Autonomy as super-hero. 'Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement' quoted Jane Hart from Dan Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth that Motivates Us. Allow people to participate in decisions that direct their lives and more often than not they will perform better than if their hand is forced. Witnessed. Jane Hart's and Barry Sampson's session 'How to shift your organisation towards social learning' was highly participative and (as one of the 6% - 10%) my favourite of the day.
- Compliance as villain. Surely, in a highly regulated business environment we cannot ignore compliance. And, is it unhelpfully divisive to say 'that's compliance' so we cannot possibly use the word engaging in the same sentence. Haven't we got past the stage where we consider compliance as simply a tick-in-the-box exercise. If we're trying to change behaviour for the good of the business, the employee and in some cases the customer, then we need to be even more imaginative and innovative about the way we approach the subject. I was pleased to hear Don Taylor and Laura Overton pick up this point and offer an alternative view.
- What can we learn from Japanese folk art? The goal of origami is to transform a flat sheet of material into a finished sculpture. Indeed, compliance training - take note! Thanks to John o'Hare I now know how to make a leaping origami frog. If you find yourself bored in a hotel room or simply want to impress your kids or a wide-eyed date check out: http://www.inn-genius.com/.
- IMPACT: How is e-learning and learning technologies adding value to your organisation in 2010? Towards Maturity, used LSG10, to launch their annual benchmarking survey, now in its fourth year which aims to help organisations increase efficiencies and improve business agility. By the opening address over 40 organisations had completed the survey. And let's not forget the importance of designing e-learning for impact.
Also see: E-learning IMPACT assessments
10 June 2010 | 
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