Sharing Knowledge

The final step of the learning trends and roles assignment was to have a web-conference meeting with our learning partner.  As we live on opposite sides of the province, I expected we would be using online media to close our shared research loop.  It was a pleasant surprise to be able to have the meeting in person, in Golden, BC, as Ruth was travelling through to visit her family.

In this day and age of online learning, it's interesting to think that we were both motivated for and inspired by a face-to-face meeting.  We'd tried a number of times to finish the assignment with a Skype conference but failed due to family commitments and personal struggles.  So how is it that a face-to-face meeting was so much more effective and immovable?

I think that the personal commitment to an in-person meeting is higher than for the electronic equivalent because there is no electronic barrier.  It calls upon your empathy, understanding and need for personal touch.  Perhaps this is the same reason why electronic classrooms have some much more sharing, interaction and challenges to the instructor's expertise: because there is a barrier and protection for personal vulnerability.

Other than the accountability lesson noted above, I was also pleased to have Ruth remind me of the importance of summative evaluations.  While I was so focused on thinking about how teachers can learn from the students with the vast supply online information and the tribe mentality, I completely forgot about technical pursuits where there are right and wrong answers, standards and procedures.  The role of the instructor cannot completely transition to one of facilitator as there must continue to be evaluations.  

Ruth's description of her role as an instructor of nursing reminded me that while there is a place for inspirational leadership and facilitation in all fields, the role of an instructor must also maintain aspects of "being the expert."  In many fields (I can only think of accounting and medical examples right now), experiential learning must be preceded by an instructor prescribing methods and standards.  Learning from experience, while it may be transformational and possible, could also have disastrous outcomes, if undertaken to early in the educational process.  

I was very pleased with the conclusion to this learning process in that I had two important take-aways from the sharing session.  It's also interesting to think that if we'd not had our final sharing session in person, I would have only had one take-away (or so I assume).  

Social Trends in Education

After a week of tumultuous thoughts and continuing creativity about Godin's talk on tribes and the application to adult eduction, I was inspired to find this article by Mark Fidelman on social trends (right menu bar: Forbes: Social Trends in 2014).  While a bit dated in the fast changing world of technology (written December 2013), I think there are some great nuggets on trends in education.

The Forbes article outlines seven social trends in online media and business that will change the business landscape.  I identified three of those seven trends as items that would also impact education and the role of adult educators.

Social business is not just about collaboration, it's about unlocking the engines of collective knowledge, differentiated experience and rapid learning.
As Fidelman describes: "Social is no longer just about collaboration.  Social today is enabling business to break down organizational and hierarchical silos and barriers."  He cites an example of Boston Children's Hospital where doctors are sharing peer-reviewed training videos and on-demand curricula to demonstrate the latest life-saving techniques.

No longer are adults waiting to be taught knowledge.  If they are not receiving the knowledge they will find it or create it.  Social media platforms - public and private - are enabling this trend.   This is a trend that I find fascinating and closely espouse myself as I am very much an experiential learner.  In the classroom, adult instructors can encourage this culture of shared group learning by having students instruct portions of course knowledge.

Social businesses will tap behavioural data to help drive decision making.  
"In the past, business has relied on instrumental data - machine generated data - to help drive decision making.  With the emergence of social and all the activity taking place on social networks, both internal and external, we now have access to behavioural data that is allowing organizations to analyze sentiment, listen and learn from customer experiences ..." (Fidelman, 2013).

While I don't believe that instructors will have access to this detailed data in an online classroom, they can certainly use the old sledgehammer technique to analyze what they do see.  As discussions are started, encouraged and facilitated, the instructor can watch class engagement to try to understand why some discussions are more engaging than others.  Clearly the subject matter will influence participation, but so, too, will time of day, class characters and leaders, how the materials is presented, and other intangibles.

Customer activated social enterprise will drive innovations that really matter.
This harkens back to Godin's talk about tribes, in that the consumer (or student) will really drive product, service or curriculum development.  Fidelman explains: "For the past several years, social has been laser focused on internal collaboration or pushing out messages to clients and partners.  In 2014, enterprises of all types will open up to customer influence, pioneering social and digital innovation and building engaging customer experiences."  In other words, businesses will start listening to the consumers on a more individualized basis.

In the classroom this could mean tailoring a curriculum to address the needs or interests of a student or group of students in the classroom.  In the world of business education, this could mean open discussion and problem solving on how make a specific product or service appealing to a target market, if the class (or a portion of it) is interested in finding the solution.  Instructors will need to be great listeners.

The article in its entirety was pretty interesting, especially the revolutions in data collection, analysis and response on the part of big corporations.  One would think that small businesses who are closer to their customers would thrive in the new landscape, and they do, but big business continues to perform surprisingly well.  Time will tell!

The Changing Role of Adult Educators

Let's be honest.  I started out this project with some pretty big assumptions that I was hoping to prove with my research.  It was certainly easier to do than I expected: that's the beauty of the internet.

My big assumption was that adult educators are becoming facilitators and inspirational leaders and exiting their previous role of subject area experts.  This change in role is based on the advent of the internet and social media, which make finding knowledge (especially knowledge you're seeking) is so easy.

When discussing our topic choice with my learning partner, I used a medical example of the changing dynamics of knowledge and expertise.  We (the average citizen) used to go to the doctor for a diagnosis and solution for our ailments.  We now go to the doctor with a half-formed, or completely formed, hypothesis about our ailments and ask the doctor for a prescription based on our own research.  The doctor has gone from being an expert in the field of medicine to little more than a sounding board, thanks to the internet.

As the expertise of doctors is more challenged, so too is the expertise of adult educators.  Adult educators have transitioned from being subject matter experts to facilitators and sounding boards.  To prove my hypothesis, I used Google and other online resources to find articles that supported my assumptions.  It was pretty easy to do as I just had to google search the words of my hypothesis.

The article I settled upon was a TED presentation by Seth Godin on the role of tribes in marketing (link in right menu bar).  My background in business and marketing made this talk relevant to me and the subject matter allowed me to draw parallels between the worlds of business and adult education.

Godin's talk was particularly interesting and it spoke about the transition that marketers have gone through from production and proliferation of product (you're the expert because you make more), to financing and proliferation of message (you're the expert because your ad is seen by more people), to connection and identification with social groups (you're the expert because a large group of people identify with the message you're sending).    He describes this latest phase in marketing as a tribe mentality.

I drew some parallels between this transition in marketing to the changing roles of adult educators in the classroom.  I likened the production and proliferation of product phase to the times of continental discovery, where the person who travelled and shared more experiences was an expert.  The financing and proliferation of message times are clearly linked to the growth of universities and colleges as bricks and mortar institutions.  During this phase, experts are somewhat created by the number of people repeating their message; the number of students who learned a certain concept or methodology.

Finally the tribe phase to me is strongly linked to the advent of the internet, social networks and online education.  Students feel like they have more choice because the plethora of choices are so readily available.  While there are clearly institutions or courses that are more popular, there seems to be a course or field of study for everybody, no matter how niche.  This has caused a transition in teaching from the role of expert, selected by a panel, to that of a facilitator and coach, selected by "the people."  

I took my thoughts further into the marketing and business realm to conclude that adult educators, while they are evaluated by their academic institutions for compliance and success in teaching subject matter, they are mostly now evaluated and rewarded by the number of people taking their classes.  Their success as a course content creator or inspirational leader is directly correlated to the size of their tribe.

My thoughts continue to tumble down this mountain of ideas as I build upon my initial hypothesis and visualize how I can apply these guidelines to my own classroom leadership.  I am looking forward to sharing this concept and my ideas with my learning partner and see what she has learned.