I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, and I'm a learning professional. As a result, I've been hearing about ASTD's International Conference & Expo since the beginning of this year. Because I had previously blown my big conference money earlier this calendar year, I wasn't able to attend. I wasn't worried, though - for my money, the best conference for the buck started the day that ASTD ICE ended.
Having attended last year's conference, I came to the 5th Annual Innovations in e-Learning Symposium (IEL09) this year with high expectations, and I'm happy to say that the GMU/DAU partnership did not disappoint: great keynotes, good sessions and the opportunity to get a feel for where the edges are in our field. Here are 12 things that IEL09 showed me about my colleagues, the future and the state of e-learning:
I really need to get an iPhone. Or at least an iPod Touch. Maybe some sort of Android-sporting MID, maybe? From Vint Cerf's notions of a fully connected world (and and solar system, apparently) through compatible 'clouds' to Adrian Sannier's impassioned pleas to stop fighting the devices and focus on the learning, I'm really starting to feel like i'm not spending enough time thinking about how to get in front of the impending wave of mobile internet devices and their use in creating more space for learning. Just as Will Wright's opined that we all speak a kind of complex sign language of the mous, i realized that a new vocabulary of pinch/flick/squeeze/drag is being formed without me. I need to get in the game.
To get yor money's worth, "to tweet or not to tweet?" isn't really even a question anymore. Livetweeting, if done properly, should not be a distraction. It should be both a stream of consciousness reflection on the information being presented to you and a way to include non-present participants in the open dialogue. It's also a great way to get information about the sessions that you couldn't attend since you can't yet clone yourself.
OK, so I kind of already knew this from this year's Annual Gathering, but the more intimate numbers at IEL09 really brought the open-this-up-to-the-world home to me. We are learning professionals: we learn, we process, we disseminate our experiences. Not trying our best to do so is malpractice.
(oh, and kudos to the presenters whose sessions i attended - not a one arched so much as an eyebrow at the twitterati in attendance. No hurt feelings, not a single "you're not paying attention to ME" impulse betrayed. Best move? Aaron Silvers got out ahead of his crowd by making the first slide of his deck a listing of his real name, his Twitter name and the conference hashtag. He even created a hashtag for his session so we wouldn't have to make one up)
"Learning" is wired. "Teaching" is tired. I've been trying not to read any of my colleagues post-IEL09 blog posts for fear of stealing their brilliance (which means that i still haven't read any of Wendy Wickham's posts. That woman is the fastest draw east of the Mississippi, incidentally), but Clark Quinn's recent Learnlets post reminded me of something that i thought between sessions on the first day of IEL09: we need to stop finding ways to train and start figuring our ways to make learning happen. Something I've noticed that has accompanied the downed aconomy is people looking to tighten their training departments' strangleholds on managing training in their organizations. Teachers back away from their students embrace of innovative technologies by banning their use, missing the point.
Training has a tendency to become a narrow thing; a verb, an event. Learning is a fuzzy, scary, recursive process, and to hear people talk, it's coming back. We need to get back to 'by any means necessary' and stop being afraid of disruptive technologies as they arrive; Web 2.0/social media tools are nothing more or less than attractive, multi-faceted means.
However...
Compelling, instructive case studies for the implementation of social media and Web 2.0 applications in information-secure environments are still few and far between. Yes, I said it. I went to Decision Superiority in the Information Age, A Knowledge Exchange Strategy for Enterprise Summary, Robert Scoble's Naked Conversations talk (don't get me started), The Social Web and Learning: A Case Study and A Look at Successful Implementation of Online Collaboration. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Maybe i missed it? Talk me down.
We need to find a way to stop running from failure. I've been toying for some time with the idea of creating a possibility-rich learning environment (sim? braching scenario? mini games?) that deals with failure in a detailed, high fidelity manner. Pushback sometimes boils down to the idea that exposing the learner to failure is demoralizing and therefore counter to successful learning. I don't think that this is the case, and neither does Will Wright. Rich affordances and high fidelity failurtes are both instructive and intersting - ask any gamer.
Brandishing of your Web 2.0 talisman does not make the problems of retention and motivation vanish. I had the pleasure of meeting Jason Guard at IEL09. He works with adult learners without high school diplomas trying to get their GEDs and gain literacy skills. As a result he had a few choice words to say about the real world of andragogy that he inhabits. Good to remember (also good to keep in mind Frank Anderson's bit on training, retention and jokes).
Perceiving patterns makes us good at what we do. Clark Quinn and Wendy Wickham did me the honor of engaging me in a pretty interesting lunchtime discussion which happily flitted across a few topics, including the difference between stand-up trainers and e-learning jockeys and what makes a learning professional good at their job. Something that came up in conversation is the idea that our ability to perceive patterns and make connections is crucial to our ability to facilitate learning. Like a lot of things that come up in conversation with Clark Quinn or Wendy Wickham, I'd like to think about this some more...
e-Learning does not necessarily equal reduced costs. This is something that I already knew, but it was good to hear it addressed repeatedly by DAU's Frank Anderson.
The military is not sleeping on gaming or virtual worlds. Did you know that the U.S. Army has a Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation? No? Maybe you've heard of America's Army, yes? Also, noted is DAU's move into the virtual world space (aided by Tandem Learning, evidently) and the Joint Forces Command/Department of Defense roundtable on 3D Web Opportunities and Challenges for Joint Education.
Digital immigrants vs. digital natives is not necessarily as cut and dried as they keep trying to make you think it is. Free your mind and look at the needs of Gen Y vs. those of Gen X/boomers and you'll have your answers.
Collaboration: i do not think it means what you think it means. I'll leave it at that.
Meetspace (meatspace) is still where it's at. Despite our growing prowess at digital engagement and threaded conversation, I was still a bit surprised that some of best bits of the conference for me happened when I took the time to chat up someone I didn't know or answered some questions from people who were opening up to their colleagues about problems that they were facing at work. This isn't rocket science, but it is about people, and sometimes the best way to I even managed to learn a bit more about one of my colleagues and her teaching methods as they relate to an extracurricular activity - really great to have confirmed my sense that this person just "gets it." (An interesting collary to this face-to-face-is-best talk is that a good number of people who sought me out for conversation knew me from Twitter.)
Many thanks to the twitterati in attendance for being instructive in person and online. This year's IEL will be a hard act to follow, but I look forward to June 2010. Hope to see you all there!
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