Cutting the pie

As a reader of this blog you are a witness if not an active participant in the dramatic changes that we have seen over the last few years as a result of web 2.0 technologies. Increasingly everyone is a teacher as well as a learner; nobody knows everything and everyone knows something. As George Siemens pointed out in Knowing Knowledge:

"Mass media and education have been largely designed on a one-way flow model (structure imposed by hierarchy). Hierarchies, unlike networks and ecologies, do not permit rapid adaptation to trends outside of established structure. Structure is created by a select few and imposed on the many: The newspaper publishes, we consume. The teacher instructs, we learn. The news is broadcast, we listen. Now we are entering a two-way flow model, where original sources receive feedback from end-users, we need to adjust our models to fit the changed nature of what it means to know. We are co-creators, not knowledge consumers. We are no longer willing to have others think for us."

And computer games have had their effect too. According to William Winn, digital natives:

"... think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It's as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential."

And, as Mark Prensky makes absolutely clear in his book Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001):

"Traditional training and schooling just doesn't engage them. It's not that they can't pay attention, they just choose not to. What today's learners really crave is interactivity - the rest basically bores them to death."

These developments have really come home to me lately as I have been participating in the design of a series of face-to-face conference events for the eLearning Network (eLN). In the past, a typical eLN event (and for that matter most other conferences in Europe as well) would be designed according to the following proportions:

By 'ideas' I mean presentations from gurus, experts and thought leaders, primarily abstract in nature. By 'examples' I mean case studies from users, sharing successes and lessons learned. By 'participation' I mean opportunities for attendees to interact with each other to explore the ideas, share their own experiences and make contacts that they can then follow-up after the event. As you can see quite clearly, the traditional pie is cut heavily in favour of ideas, with only a nominal allowance for participation.

But the days when people were content to attend a training course or a conference and just be talked at are fast disappearing. As e-learning professionals, we have always been conscious of the importance of meaningful interactivity in the content that we create, but we've not necessarily followed this through face-to-face. As Kevan Hall of Global Integration stated in the last issue of HCM magazine, "Passive consumption of information is not a good enough reason to get together these days." When so many wonderful resources are available online, you'd have to agree.

So, here's how I'd like to see the pie cut in future live events, whether that's face-to-face or online:

Ideas are important, but they need to be backed up by concrete examples; they also need to be thoroughly explored to ensure their validity and their relevance. That requires debate, discussion, reflection, experimentation and feedback. Too many ideas and all you get is cognitive overload - most likely you go away with nothing.

Of course, these proportions are as important in the design of training events as they are for conferences and webinars. Too often, there is an abundance of theory, a few quick demos and nowhere near enough time allocated to practice. The exposition of theory is best accomplished asynchronously; if you're going to get a group together live, it seems plain daft not to take advantage of the situation. People love to talk, to share experiences, to make friends and to explore ideas - all you have to do is let them.