Learnscapes
Learning is a process, not an event. A Learnscape is where that process plays out.
Learnscapes are learning ecosystems.
Informal learning is about situated action, collaboration, coaching, and reflection -- not classes. Developing a platform to support informal learning is analogous to landscaping a garden. You don't make the platform; you make what's there better.
A major component of informal learning is natural learning, the notion of treating people as organisms in nature. Our role as learning professionals is to protect their environment, provide nutrients for growth, and let nature take its course.Self-service learners connect to one another, to ongoing flows of information and work, to their teams and organizations, to their customers and markets, not to mention their families and friends. Because the design of informal learning ecosystems is analogous to landscape design, I will call the environment of informal learning a learnscape. A landscape designer’s goal is to conceptualize a harmonious, unified, pleasing garden that makes the most of the site at hand. A learnscaper strives to create a learning environment that increases the organization’s longevity and health, and the individual learner’s happiness and well-being. Gardeners don’t control plants; managers don’t control people. Gardeners and managers have influence but not absolute authority. They can’t make a plant fit into the landscape or a person fit into a team.
A learnscape is a learning ecology. It’s learning without borders.
Jay's blogs on Learnscapes. Free-range learning. Learnscaping seven-minute overview
An early description
Learnscapes are not formal or all informal; they are always a mix of both.
Discussion became quite heated when I depicted this as an audio mixer:
Major areas of any Learnscape
Learnscape Health Checklist
| Conversations |
Relationships |
Individual skils & support |
Optimal network |
Learning Culture |
Third places
Online discussions
Un-meetings
Informal support of formal
Storytelling
Visual support |
Fast: IM
Communities
Each one/teach one Foster collaboration BBS, VoIP, discussion boards Coach |
Communications
Health
Tech savvy
Visual
Mindful Web 2.0
Refined PKM
Unlearning
Conferences & unmeetings
Meta-Learning: reflection
Performance support
Large screen
Ease of access |
Bandwidth
Connections
Right people-ONA
Internet inside
Signal/noise
Search: Findable: social search, tabs, federated search, tagging, cross-linking, V-search. Find people, too. Tag clouds. |
Bottom-up
Open/transparent
Conversational
Flexible< br/> Include customers & partners
Bus & bike
Trust |
Characteristics of successful nodes
Transparency (findable, tagged, plugged in)
Mindful, enthused, open to opportunity
Skilled at communication and pattern recognition
System-savvy, understand navigation, visualizing connections, PKM
Communication prereqs
Read, write, speak, visual
Sound mind, well body
Friendly, outgoing, receptive
Internet Culture and the Evolution of Learning
Designing a Web-based learning ecology
Dave Gray's delightful drawing addresses common Learnscape communication issues.
Teemu Arina's sketch puts informal learning in the center and formal learning around the periphery.
A sample Learnscape (Unworkshop)
Nurturing connections
beliefs and processes
1. learning is natural. get out of its way and let it happen.
2. learning is social. encourage conversation and networking.
3. learning is adapatation to one's ecosystems. it is a dynamic relationship.
4. learning involves skills one can improve.
5. authenticity trumps its facsimiles.
6. good learning comes from having good connections.
7. learning is spontaneous. so is rain. but you can seed a rain cloud…or learning
connections
to others: know who, ease of access
to info: know where, perf support
pave the cow paths, bring trails
learning is a series of relationships
receiving node
nurturing relationships
listening skills, meta-learning, search, grok, frameworks, emotion, stability
sending node
empathy,
audit, organization and individual
community, yeah, but…
strength of weak ties not just master and apprentice
seed groups
friendly nomenclature: helper nets
issue: mistakenly seeing only one connection. oversimplify. stereotype.
The rise of the individual
The increased capacity for connections and connectivity
The breaking apart of content
The creation of user-controlled space
the stocks become flows. "powerpoint = tyranny"
Web 2.0 at Motorola
Mark Oehlert on This is How It's Supposed to Work
- They have about 4,433 blogs (about 40,000 blog entries)
- 3,300 wikis (each with often many pages)
- Several thousand FAQs
- 28,000 inquiries and responses in 2,400 forums
- It was completely viral adoption internally, "without a single memo from upstairs"
- It is heavily used low down in the organization to get things done, and less used and less understood as you go up the organization.
- Three quarters of the company participates by posting to blogs, wikis, forums, and FAQs.
- They have 69,000 employees and 75,000 active users (including 8,000 in an extranet with partners, universities, etc.).
- They manage it with four people and some management.
Peter Senge, The Learning Organization
The dimension that distinguishes learning from more traditional organizations is the mastery of certain basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’. The five that Peter Senge identifies are said to be converging to innovate learning organizations. They are:
Systems thinking
Personal mastery
Mental models
Building shared vision
Team learning
He adds to this recognition that people are agents, able to act upon the structures and systems of which they are a part. All the disciplines are, in this way, ‘concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future’ (Senge 1990: 69).
Fieldbook.com
Society for Organizational Learning
We've talked before about the disintegration of the old boundaries between discipline. It's as if we've all awakened to the realization that it's all one thing.
This wonderful design romp through the renaissance of web page design applies directly to the presentation of learning content.
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