How to organize for deep (not superficial) learning online?

Last week I had a great time again during the Learning and Technologies Conference in London. My third time! Like every year, we started off in the pizzeria on Brompton Road. Great to network with people who are working in the same field. I was sitting next to someone I didn't know and within 10 minutes we were discussing the difference between performance support and social learning and the presentation style of Bob Mosher.

With Joke van Alten I decided to shoot another video. It is a form to support my own learning. I start with a question I would like to learn more about, interview people and in putting it together and blogging it, it forces me to really think about it. This year my question is:

How to organize for deep learning online? 

In my definition deep learning does not have to do with artificial intelligence (which is sometimes called deep learning as well), but has to do with transformative learning, or as Argyris calls it: double loop learning. Single loop learning is learning for action: learning within the same frame of mind. Double loop learning is about change of mental models, changing the goals. (see the explanation on wikipedia). When I talk about online learning, through networks like LinkedIn, Twitter or internal Enterprise Social Networks, people think this online is perfect for quick information, like finding a tool for brainstorming, knowing how to repare your printer. You can find a video online and start the action. But does online engagement also facilitate deep learning? For many people this is not obvious and they cling to the idea that you have to meet.

Joke and I interviewed Mark Britz, James Tyer, Laura Overton, Clive Shepherd and John Stepper. They all believe in deep learning online and each has a different angle in responding to our question.



Reflect and build a good network
Many answer from the point of view of the individual professional and underscore the importance of reflection and building a network of meaningful relations online. Mark Britz highlights the fact that typing responding online and blogging in itself creates room to reflect. James Tyer also stresses that you need to consume deeply. You may use your networks to cut out the noise, so that you can focus on what matters. John Stepper also stresses the importance of building meaningful relationships by working out loud. This is a set of learnable skills. I agree that often engaging with a network/ community over a longer period of time can be really transformative. You start to share the beliefs of that particular community.

Learning how to learn (and reflect)
Laura Overton sees that in their TowardsMaturity benchmark the successful, agile organizations are the ones that involve people in reflection and make sure what is learned is applied directly at work. Learning how to learn and close the loop is hence important for deep learning. Otherwise the pitfall is remaining superficially engaged.

Online doesn't control the pedagogy
Clive Shepherd takes the angle of designing blended learning. He highlights the fact that the pedagogy comes first and the medium (online or offline) second. He recognized our question in the sense that online is often used for lower level knowledge sharing or instruction. If you aim for transformative learning you need guided discovery and reflected experiential learning. You need to design for this.

ps last year's video centered around: what is really changing in the way we learn because of social technologies?

Finding the 'elephant paths' of a community of practice

I've been facilitating a community of practice about sustainable energy in the Netherlands over the past 3 months. I had a meeting with the convener of the community before we started. When we tried to 'design' for a community we stumbled upon a lot of questions like: who are we going to invite, what roles can we distinguish, should we use online media or not? It is not easy to make all these decisions upfront. We differed on who to invite: I wanted to invite a wider group of professionals and the convener wanted to start with an old working group. The convener wanted an advice from the group in 3 months and my worry was that it would not leave enough room to discuss their own practice questions. I worried a lot when we started and finally decided to give this a try and use the 3 months to see and observe the dynamics and what emerges.

The community dynamics
What happened during the 3 months was this:

• A few people never showed up.
• The convener got ill and hence could not participate in the meetings. Two other persons with a high stake in the topic took over.
• A tied group formed of professionals who really connected based upon similar practice questions
• One person realized after the second meeting that his work practice didn't fit it with the group and sent his colleague. 
• The group was divided about the usefulness of exchanging online, so online was limited to email, but at some point one member took the initiative to create a LinkedIn group.
• It was possible to balance individual interest with the request for advice. We made an inventory during the first meeting of practice issues and used online voting to set priorities. Hence we formed 3 groups based upon their major interest in a topic. I think it was actually appreciated that there was a question from a higher level for advice. This made it possible to merge individual learning with collective learning. 
• 3 months was very short to come up with the advice but we were given the flexibility to take a little longer. 

The elephant paths

I already blogged before about the balance between design and emergence in communities. I didn't know the term elephant paths then, but I learned this term during a MOOC on change management organised by SIOO. Elephant paths are the shortcuts people take to safe time walking or cycling from A to B. Here's an interesting 14 minutes video in Dutch, showing that people are very persistent in following their own route. The 3 months has permitted me to see what the elephant paths are for the people in this community: for instance the key persons and core issues but also preferential ways to learn. 

Design upfront versus self-organization

I shifted a bit in my thinking about design of communities - I was always convinced that you should over-facilitate and allow for sufficient space for self organization. Now I believe that you can start with a clear design as long as you have eye for the 'elephant paths'.

PS: just realized this is my 600th blogpost!

The shoemaker and his (own) mould

For years I have been wearing orthopedic shoes. The fun thing is that you may design your own shoes. The first pairs of shoe pairs it was quite frustrating that they do not look out exactly as you designed them... Since years I know that the final shoe will not look exactly like my design and I think it's fine. I'm going to switch from one shoemaker to another shoemaker. So I asked the shoemaker if he could send the mould (do you call it like this?) to the new shoemakers, which seemed logical and efficient. Something about not reinventing the wheel or doing double work ...

The shoemaker did not want to send his mould to his colleague He explained that every shoemaker has his own way of working, there are subtle differences in how you approach it. He would never want to work with a mould made by his colleague, but rather create a new one. His mould of the same foot will be quite different. This surprised me, it seemed so logical to share the mould as an outsider. It got me thinking again about how hard it is to share materials between professionals, and learn from each other's unique way of working. I once taught a course with the curriculum of another teacher, but found myself adjusting many things and almost wished I started from scratch. Although the practice of trainers, for example, looks alike for outsiders, there are many subtle differences that make the work of a professional unique. With a colleague we like to make prezis together and I notice that it is still hard to explain a hard made by a colleague you know really well.

This week I facilitated the third session of a community of practice. One participant told me that he had really connected with two other participants. They share a lot with each other and talk about all their projects. I strongly believe it take a sustained interaction over a longer time frame in order to be able to really learn from each other. This is the only one way to learn how another professional tackles the same challenges. Though I had the impression this shoemaker did not really want to learn something from his colleagues - he knows just how how he wants to work.

Roles in communities of practice

Does a learning community or community of practice need roles to function well? Should you officially assign these roles to people or is it best if people spontaneously fullfil certain roles? What about the self-organising power of communities? On the 29th of March we did a session (we = Sibrenne Wagenaar en Joitske Hulsebosch) about roles in networked learning. We thought it would be nice to share some of our thinking in this blogpost.


Starting with ourselves .... we have a small, starting network of people who all in some way use social media in learning processes and training. Roles are not explicitly named and assigned because it is a starting and spontaneous process. Since we have taken the initiative to invite people we feel more responsible for the ins and outs of this network, but others also take initiatives and propose activities. We talk regularly with members informally, take initiative to convene a meeting f2f, start an online brainstorming, make sure invitations are available for online webinars. But basically anyone can take the initiative to start operations and that happens.
This raises the question ... can it help to formalize roles and assign certain roles to members in a network? And when do formal roles get in the way of spontaneous self-organisation? A more formal roles gives you a certain focus and responsibility that makes it clear how you (are supposed to) contribute to a network. The art in network learning is often this can be combined with other existing work tasks and having a formalised role may help to ensure the learning community doesn't get 'off the radar'. It is crucial that the contents of the network relevant to you and in line with other work you do to prevent the network tasks from falling off the list, but having an explicit role can certainly also contribute.

In this blog post we talk about a learning network or community of practice as a group of people who interact and engage with each other to collectively learn based on a common interest or shared issue and on a fairly explicit manner form a network, offline, online or in a combination of online and offline interaction.

What roles can you distinguish?There are many different classifications of roles in learning networks. The Ruud de Moor Centrum has recently developed a great networked learning toolkit and formulated six important roles, spread over an internal and external focus. There are two more sources that we like to share with you: Eric Davidov's roles and roles described by Michael Fontaine.

Ruud de Moor Centrum (toolkit netwerkleren)	Eric Davidove (blogpost)	Michael Fontaine (online article)
Internal roles: 1. Coordinator; responsible for planning 2. Inspirator; the creative brain of the network 3. Creator; makes sure knowledge products are produced Externe rollen: 1. Coach; supports the self-organising function of the network 2. ICT-coach; supports working online 3. Ambassador is supporting and advocating the need for the learning network	1. Consumer: the person who looks for and uses content, information, and social connections. 2. Creator: The person who creates, shares, improves, and discusses content and information. 3. Connector: The person who helps others to find the content, information, and people they seek or need. 4. Carrier: The person who helps creators to transmit and promote their content and information to others. 5. Caretaker: The person who manages the learning community.	1. Subject matter expert 2. Core team member 3. Community member 4. Leader 5. Sponsor 6. Facilitator 7. Content coordinator 8. Journalist 9. Mentor 10. Events coordinator 11. Technologist

We provide these three categories not to compare them, but rather to show the variety in thinking about and defining roles. This is not the 'one right list' that will make your learning network perfect. You may develop your own list of roles for your network, inspired by these lists. It is difficult to compare them because they have been described from different perspectives. The list of Ruud de Moor Centre is based on multiple learning networks in a system in which roles are needed external support. Eric Davidov, based on a literature overview, has compiled the most common roles in a Community of Practice. Fontaine has looked at roles and their development in communities in a number of large organizations. In his view, certain roles (eg sponsor, leader, subject matter experts) are important in the early stages of a major network, and over time find it rather obvious shifts. Fascinating to read his article about it!

Formal or informal roles?
There is a difference between a spontaneous role (eg. act as an inspirator and having a formalised role (eg. as the network coordinator or ICT-coach). It may be worthwhile to formalise certain roles to create clarity and to make sure that the responsibilities are anchored somewhere in the network. Playing with roles may help the development of a network. This is true for a coordinator roles, but also for less obvious roles like inspirator or monitor. For instance, Habiforum has three masterroles innovationcoach, procescoach a coach learning and development, see this article by Kranendonk en Kersten. Do you feel a network lacks innovation power? You may decide to assign an innovation coach.

We are personally convinced that a role should fit somebody's talents and preferences. Are you a person taking lots of initiatives, then the role of activator may suit you well. On the other hand it is very well possible that people play different roles in different learning networks, depending on their identification with the network. This was one of the insights that the participants of our session gained through our discussions.

Which role do you often take in communities of practice? Here is a great test to see what your preferential roles are..

Rollen as a lense to look at the functioning of a community of practice
We strongly believe in the self-organizing capacity of a learning network: people with a shared passion come together, communicate and think of organisating activities to jointly engage in. Does it still make sense to think in terms of roles in learning networks? Absolutely, because it offers a particular perspective to a analyze a network, scrutinize its functioning and think of improvements. What type of members fullfil a certain role? What are the weaknesses of the network? Do we miss a certain role? Discussing the roles thus provides a framework for a discussion on how to support the development of the learning network. Based on this discussion, you could decide to assign certain roles more explicitly to a person or a small group of persons, or to rotate roles. It is also valuable to become more aware of certain roles needed. Following a discussion of the roles within a the network, members might decide:

• to assign a role to someone (eg. form a core team);
• to stimulate network members to take up certain role more often based on talent, preferences;
• to switch roles within the network for example to start rotation for a wider variety of ideas;
• to us 'a role analysis' occasionally to reflect on the process in the network.

Roles as lense to look at organizations Finally, the conversation on that day also addressed the potential of using network roles to look at employees in an organization. Rather than thinking always in terms of strict functions, you might think of flexible roles. For instance, you might think in terms of changing, flexible topic leadership rather than thinking about management functions and fixed tasks. This might be part of the more networked organizational form of the future?

Do collective lessons learned exist?

I'm currently working in a team where we consult eachother and divide work. The team works quite well in my opinion. What we don't do is make short minutes or action notes and so it happens that we rediscuss what was already decided earlier on (everyone forgot). Or someone doesn't do what was agreed (forgot). It's interesting: isn't ending a meeting with action points and write them down and follow them up a lesson we all know? So why don't we do it in this case?

I've also worked in Kenya together with CARE-International on a credit program for female enterpreneurs in a rice area. This was in 1989 or 1990, south of Kisumu. An important principle was that NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are not good in managing credit programs because not thinking in business models and NGO workers are seen by farmers as 'friends' and 'supporters'. A different role than credit officer. So the program was sub-contracted to a credit institute. In 2007 (17 years later!) I visited an NGO in Ghana. They had learnt a lesson from their credit program: that they are not good in recollecting the loans because they are seen by the farmers as an NGO. So they thought of sub-contracting to a credit institute. But the damage was already done.

These kind of observations (I could make a much longer list!) get me thinking about collective learning processes and how difficult they are. The first example shows that there is more to the practice of working together than 'knowing' how it should be done. Probably the group is forming and trying to find a way of working together effectively with as little energy input as necessary?

The second example I think shows how difficult it is to learn collectively within a sector. And maybe that reading about something is not enough- you have to make your own mistakes first. It's like everybody is entitled to his/her own learning process. And if you've read this blog for longer you know I believe in the power of communities and networks to support collective learning. But what is then a collective lesson learned?

I really like the work of Nancy Dixon around these issues. She wrote a blogpost about the value of lessons learned not too long ago. She defines lessons learned at the individual level: "something I learned through an experience I’ve had that will cause me to act differently in the future" She explains the power of reflection in, for instance, after action review processes to stimulate learning and ends with the phrase: "The greatest value of lessons learned is for those who took the action". So should we simply lower our ambitions and talk about collective lessons learned? How easily we say, let's collect the lessons learned with the idea that it will contribute to collective learning. But for a collective learning process much more may be needed like sustained exchange of practices over a longer period of time.