Why employee development matters

Here's a link to an interesting report on the subject of employee development from Mind Leaders.

Why Employee Development Matters

There are some worthwhile conclusions drawn from the document, which come out broadly in favour of adopting a blended learning approach. There's also a useful list of elements to look for in your company which will help if you are looking to set up an employee devlelopment programme.
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Language, culture and how we think

There's a fascinating article from Lira Boraditsky titled "How does our language shape the way we think?" which looks at the ways in which the structure of different languages influences the speakers understanding of the world. Her description of how grammatical gender in language can effect our thinking is truly eye opening.

Whilst the articles main conclusions are around the way in which language effects how we think, I can't help reflecting that it also reinforces the importance of being clear in how we communicate with others, particularly if we are interacting with people from different cultures. As a trainer, how I communicate is core to everything I do, so how does the knowledge that a phrase as simple as "building bridges" potentially has a different positional context for a German speaker and a Spanish speaker. And does it have a same or similar impact on a second or third generation participant who may use both languages regularly?

To a German the word "bridge" is feminine and can be ascribed feminine terms to describe it (slender, elegant, pretty), whereas to a Spaniard it is masculine and can be ascribed masculine terms (hard, sturdy, strong). Is there a possible implication that gender bias means that they ascribe the activity ("building bridges") with a masculine (power, conflict) or feminine (consultative, caring) action bias? My instinct, if I am developing the wider implications of the article correctly, is to presume that it can.

In which case, WOW! I'm both excited and intimidated by this knowledge. Excited by the possibilities for developing ways to approach subjects using language that is more appropriate and helpful for those I'm seeing to engage, and intimidated by the implications that even a casual, unintended misuse of a word or phrase could bring to the way in which a topic is interpreted.

Also, does it have implications if you examine the cultural language of your organisation?

I've recently had experience of delivering training in my own organisation where some of the ideas I was seeking to explore with a training group were received with some hostility, now these ideas weren't controversial... in fact they were pretty mainstream from a training perspective, but the group were certainly uncomfortable with them and (my interpretation) felt that they threatened their map of the world. I'm hoping to revisit the ideas in future sessions and think this information about language will help me reflect on how I presented them and if there is a conflict between the ideas, my presentation of them and the cultural language of the organisation.
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Blog: e-Learning help

E-learning is one of the bigger topics in Training and Development circles at the moment. Some are claiming it is sounding the death knell for traditional classroom training, others are of the opinion that it's a flash in the pan that wont last the course. It can get a bit heated as this TrainingZone article demonstrates.

I"m of the opinion that e-learning is a an exciting new frontier for trainers and instructional designers. I'm only playing on the fringes at the moment (my budget wont stretch to a proper implementation) and I'm about to start some limited application with a Senior Management Development Programme that I'll be rolling out in my organisation shortly. It will increasingly play a more and more important part in blended learning programmes.

I've found the WWW incredibly useful as a starting point for researching and trialling some of the applications that are out there, and two blogs in particular are worth recommending for anyone who is dipping their toes in the e-learning river.

e4innovation is by Grainne Cronel who is Professor of e-learning at the Open University.

Jane's e-learning Tip of the Day comes from Jane Hart, a social media and learning consultant.

Both have been incredibly useful to me as I've tried to get my head around the thousands of e-learning possibilities.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Thomas Edison once said, "Genius is one-percent inspiration, ninety-nince percent perspiration", so what do you do when you're putting all the hard work in but that final 1% is eluding you? The Online College have put links to 100 inspiring videos for you to turn to when you need that final spark to bring something to fruition.

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The videos are divided in to ten categories covering areas such as, "Changing the World", "Inspirational People" and "Staying Strong". The videos include talks, movies clips, short films, performance pieces, conversation and interviews.

Althogh nominally put together for leaders, there's enough here to inspire anyone.

100 Inspiring Videos for Leaders

Disclaimer: May not result in actual genius.
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More on informal learning

Here’s a couple of articles from ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) on informal learning

Informal learning in the workplace

Informal mentoring
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How We Learn from TED 2009

TED is an annual conference, first held in 1984, which started with aim of bringing together people from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment and Design (hence TED) to share ideas. It challenges some of the finest minds in these fields to stand up and “give the talk of their lives” in just 18 minutes. Perfect for the diminishing attention spans in our ADD world.

The TED’s website, whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading”, provides access to many of these talks at no cost. At the moment there is something like 400 talks archived and accessible. You can download them and use them providing you keep within the boundaries of the Creative Commons Licence (as I have with the Seth Godin video below), and you can subscribe and get the latest videos sent straight to your inbox.

One of the categories that you can currently access is titled How We Learn and includes 42 video from speakers like Steven Pinker, Bill Strickland, Dave Eggers and Michael Merzenich.

Incidentally, and related to yesterdays post, I found this talk from this year's TED by Seth Godin about "Tribes".

Seth Godin on "Tribes" at TED 2009

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Academic Earth

This is an interesting idea. Six of the top US colleges (Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton & Stanford) are making videos of their lectures available on the Academic Earth website. Now under normal circumstances getting access to learning material of this quality would require you to be a student at one of the colleges and all that entails, but Academic Earth have the goal to give “…everyone on Earth access to a world-class eduction.”

They state:

"We are building a user-friendly educational eco-system that will give internet users the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.”

If you search under the “Entrepreneurship” section you’ll find all sorts of lectures on subjects that are really relevant to business today. I found material on leadership, coaching, finance, marketing, negotiation…. and loads more, all delivered by some of the top business names. People like Guy Kawasaki, Jerry Kaplan, Carly Fiorina, Trip Hawkins, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page will always have something interesting to say.

Naturally they also deliver more traditional academic subjects like biology, chemistry, English, physics, mathematics, etc.

Academic Earth has an ambitious goal, but I’ve always believed that this is exactly the sort of thing the internet ought to be utilised for. The capacity to deliver the very best learning materials to anyone in the world, for free and at their convenience is well within the capability of the system. All that’s needed is the content and the will of the content owners to allow that material to be distributed. Unfortunately at the moment there are some licencing issues which can affect a particular lecture if you don’t reside in a country that has permission to view it, but as far as I can tell that is the exception rather than the rule (and you could always use an anonymizer or proxy to hide your country of origin anyway).

There’s so much potential here. I really hope it achieves its ambition.

The Go Game

There's an interview in the Guardian with Mei Lei and Chris Olson, the creators of the Go Game; an interactive, multimedia, real world adventure game.

I really, really want to find an excuse (and a budget) to use this for a learning event.

Guardian Go Game Interview

Getting Things Done (GTD) (2)

More on the Getting Things Done philosophy.

The iTunes store has a link to a useful podcast by Steve Robbins which covers a whole host of personal productivity topics. Most of the podcasts are only 5-6 minutes in length which makes them ideal for listening to during the journey to work or if you just want a quick learning hit.

Get-It-Done Guy on iTunes

Getting Things Done (GTD)

For the uninitiated, Getting Things Done (GTD) is a productivity/ time and task management methodology developed by David Allen. Advocates describe it as "a relatively simple methodology for getting stuff done in your life".

The good folk over at 43 Folders have put together a useful wiki to introduce the main concepts and provide links to some great resources.

43 Folders GTD wiki

If, like me, you find yourself constantly struggling to fit in everything that you need to do then GTD might be the answer you've been looking for. It's particularly "geek" friendly and there are loads of online tools available to support it.

Jay Cross on Informal Learning

Former CEO of the eLearning forum Jay Cross is now promoting the concept of “Informal Learning” to a wider audience. The concept itself is interesting in that is recognises that most people access learning in very informal ways, such as through conversations with friends and peers rather than through formally designed training interventions.

There seems to be a broad acknowledgement that “informal learning” does take place on an incredibly wide scale and is an important part of the process of acquiring new skills and knowledge, but what we don’t always acknowledge as learning professionals is just how important it is, perhaps this is because it lies outside our point of direct intervention and is therefore not within our control, or that it’s too difficult to apply a meaningful measure to. I know that when I need to educate myself on a new topic, whether that’s research for a new course, learning a new recipe or working out how to defeat some some alien bad guy in a video game, my first port of call will be Google followed most of the time by informal discussion with my peers. It’s interesting that this happens mostly because I want to learn these things, not because I’ve been told to learn them. When I am motivated to learn I will find a way that suits me and with an urgency that’s appropriate for the situation.

It would appear to me that the vast majority of learning takes place without any intervention from a learning professional at all, and the questions I am pondering are around:

• How do I make that process more effective?
• Would it help if I could facilitate access to these informal networks/ methods for people within my organisation, or does that intervention break it by definition?
• How do I measure the extent and effectiveness of informal learning?
• What does this mean for instructional design if anyone is allowed to create formal “informal learning” spaces?

These aren’t new questions but I do feel the direction I am approaching them from is different.

Some people have suggested that his ideas don’t take in to account the value that training professionals bring to the process of learning, but for me acknowledging the scope and importance of “informal learning” doesn’t ring the death knell for classroom training, elearning or any other form of traditional training intervention. What it does is add an interesting new dynamic to how I think about tapping the learning potential in my organisation.

Also of use are the links he provides to books and documents via the Internet Time Group. Well worth having a dig around.

Mind Apples

With all the talk about our eating habits and physical health Mind Apples wants to know if you are getting your five-a-day for your mind