Effective virtual facilitation

As virtual classes rapidly become de rigueur, the need for an effective virtual facilitation framework accelerates.

I propose the 5-stage model of e-moderation developed by world-renowned networked learning guru, Gilly Salmon.

While Salmon’s model primarily supports asynchronous networked learning, I contend that it supports synchronous networked learning just as well.

The Model

Salmon’s 5-stage model of e-moderation is based on, umm, 5 stages:

All 5 stages contribute to the learning process.

Here’s my take on each one, based on my reading of E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching & Learning Online and of course my own two-cent’s worth…

Stage 1: Access & motivation

This stage is about getting your remote participants up and running.

Inform your participants very early that the virtual class will be happening, when and where. Book the time out in their calendar, and let them know that they will be receiving an email to provide them with the access details. Also let them know that they won’t need any special equipment, just a phone (or headset) and an internet connection.

Provide them with any documents they will need beforehand.

Encourage the participants to enter the virtual class 30 minutes early so they can iron out any technical glitches. It’s a good idea to provide them with the contact details of someone for troubleshooting, and to explain if it all goes belly up, it’s not a disaster: just let it go and you can work out something later. (You might consider running a trial session, but that might be overkill – afterall, virtual platforms are fairly straightforward these days.)

On the motivation side, it’s a good idea to explain to the participants up front why they should attend the class. As previously noted, adult learners are problem-oriented, so you need to explain how spending this hour or so will help them in their job. You should also explain why they should do it in virtual format (eg so they don’t waste time traveling into the office).

I’d also suggest encouraging the participants to text chat as soon as they enter the virtual space, to introduce themselves and get to know each other. Not only does this initiate socialisation (see Stage 2), but it also checks that they know how to use the technology. Of course, the facilitator should greet everyone as they enter.

Stage 2: Online socialisation

Socialising would have already gotten started on an ad hoc basis as the participants entered the virtual space and waited for official kickoff.

I’d suggest following this up with some sort of ice breaker – with a lot of people, you might want to keep it reined in. For example, it could be a simple question like Have you ever met anyone famous?

Following this, the facilitator should emphasise the collaborative nature of the session, and reinforce how it’s all about sharing ideas & experiences and learning from each other. Ask them what they personally want to achieve from the session. Cultivate a warm, friendly environment.

Stage 3: Information exchange

This is where the “serious” class begins. The facilitator should define the learning outcomes of the session (and tailor them according to the audience’s expectations), then refer to the information that was previously provided.

If there’s more information to disseminate (in instructivist format), then this is where it’s done.

Real-life examples should be used wherever possible.

Stage 4: Knowledge construction

This is arguably the most important stage for learning.

Everyone’s at the same place at the same time, the ice is broken and they’re familiar with the information that’s been provided to them. Now it’s time to figure out what it all means.

The facilitator should actively invite the participants to discuss the key concepts, raise ideas and ask questions. It’s very important to ask them to share their experiences, and to suggest how they might apply the new learnings to their own role.

At this point, the participants are actually learning from each other. The facilitator guides, prompts, prods, questions, challenges and clarifies.

Stage 5: Development

This stage is all about reflection, and it can be done after the actual session. A post-session worksheet might prove useful for this purpose.

The facilitator should also raise awareness of other resources that the participants can continue to use after the session. Perhaps other courses, websites, discussion forums, podcasts, blogs etc.

Evolving e-learning in the workplace

Using Salmon’s 5-stage model of e-moderation as a framework, SMEs can transform from sage on the stage to guide on the side.

And isn’t that what adult learning is all about?

Adult learning shminciples

In the global game of Corporate Bingo, the term “adult learning principles” must be one of the most abused.

It’s a convenient abstract that can whitewash a range of unsubstantiated claims and half-truths.

But what exactly are adult learning principles?

The theory

Malcolm Knowles is widely regarded as the father of adult learning.

Since the 1960s, he articulated a distinction between pedagogy (the teaching of children) and andragogy (the teaching of adults). In many ways, Knowles’ description of pedagogy approximates instructivism, while his description of andragogy approximates constructivism.

In a nutshell, andragogy boils down to 5 key assumptions:

1. Adult learners are self directed.
2. Adults bring experience with them to the learning environment.
3. Adults are ready to learn to perform their role in society.
4. Adults are problem oriented, and they seek immediate application of their new knowledge.
5. Adults are motivated to learn by internal factors.

The problem is, if you work in the real world, you know this is baloney.

The real world

Laurie Blondy does a useful (if somewhat repetitive) job of reviewing Knowles’ 5 assumptions in the Journal of Interactive Online Learning. She also discusses their potential applications to e-learning, and responds to some of the criticisms that have been voiced over the years.

I don’t intend to regurgitate Blondy’s observations, not to I wish to echo the academic world’s arguments for or against the philosophy of andragogy.

Instead, I want to expose some of the attitudes of adult learners that I have encountered over the years…

“I haven’t got time for all this. Just tell me what I need to know and let me get on with it.”

“I don’t really want to do this course, but it’s mandatory, so I’ll do the bare minimum to pass and be done with it.”

“I’ve only been with the company for a few weeks. I don’t know what I don’t know.”

“Jim’s done this course before. I wonder if he’ll give me the answers to the quiz.”

“I need to earn more points for my continuing education program. What’s quick and easy?”

“I’ll do this training so it looks good on my resume. Then I can get that promotion I want.”

As an education professional, you’re probably cringing at these attitudes. But by the same token, you know through experience that they’re alive and well in today’s workplace.

The ideal

It’s important to remember that andragogy is founded on assumption, not empirical research.

To this day there remains an intriguing paucity of statistical evidence to support andragogy, despite the litany of arguments pitched against it.

But the science doesn’t matter because the assumptions sound right. Deep in your gut, you just know that they’re true. Just like you know only Gen-Y Americans are interested in Second Life and only spammers and corporate cowboys use Twitter.

The truth is, andragogy represents an ideal. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all adult learners were self directed and ready to learn. Wouldn’t it be heart warming if they were motivated by the joy of learning, rather than by power, prestige and the mighty dollar.

To exacerbate the problem, the vast majority of education professionals want to believe the assumptions of andragogy. Some of us can’t get our heads around the notion that many people don’t love learning as much as we do. Some of us can’t accept the fact that many people aren’t altruistic or interested in collaboration. Some of us can’t appreciate that many people prioritise education a few pegs below their daily work and family commitments.

All walks of life work in the corporate sector, and the sector is subject to business realities.

The circumstances

At this point I must stress that I believe most adults value learning. In fact, I believe Knowles’ 5 assumptions generally hold true – but not for all adults, and certainly not all of the time.

Even the most motivated of learners will one day find themselves under a mountain of paperwork. Even the most collaborative of learners will one day have a deadline screaming towards them. Even the most experienced of staff will need to learn something completely new. Even the most joyful of learners will be forced to do training that they consider bureaucratic and irrelevant.

Their attitude depends on their circumstances.

The way forward

To be fair, Knowles evolved his of views of pedagogy and andragogy. In the early days he described them in terms of a dichotomy, while later on he described them in terms of a continuum.

In other words, he realised there were times when one approach might be more appropriate than the other, in light of the circumstances and the needs of the leaner. (Incidentally, this view complements my own view of instructivism, constructivism and connectivism.)

The way forward for the education professional, then, is clear:

Know your audience.

If your learners are intellectually mature, self directed, intrinsically motivated adults with time to learn and their heads in the right space, then go ahead and incorporate the principles of andragogy into your instructional design.

If they’re not, for whatever reason, then you’ll need to modify your approach accordingly.

Business applications of Twitter

Earlier this week, I attended a Twitter Camp billed Twitter is not for dummies. I had the privilege of facilitating one of the breakout sessions, which focused on the business applications of Twitter.

We discussed a range of issues around this topic, and we generated some really bright ideas that I feel are worth pursuing in the corporate sector. Some of the ideas specifically relate to e-learning, while others may fall more comfortably into other portfolios.

In a nutshell, I see the business applications of Twitter falling into three main categories:

1. External
2. Internal
3. Personal

Allow me to elaborate…

External applications

By “external”, I mean your company playing in the real world, beyond its office walls.

Scanning

With upwards of 20 million Twitter users around the world, companies should at the very least be scanning this massive public forum to keep tabs on what people are saying about them.

I see this kind of activity falling into the Public Affairs portfolio, as it concerns brand management. They need to know if someone is bad mouthing the brand across the Twittersphere, and respond accordingly.

But of course, tweet scanning also falls into the Customer Service portfolio. Twitter is used by many as a loudspeaker to vent their displeasure at bad service. Organisations shouldn’t be scared by this; in fact, it presents you with an opportunity: Why not respond to the customer, remedy their issue and turn their loyalty back around? I can tell you that CommSec actually did this for me recently, so it sure does work.

According to Susan Hall, Dell takes tweet scanning one step further: They don’t just look for mentions of Dell, they also look for mentions of their competitors. What an opportunity to win new customers!

Active tweeting

Tweet scanning is one thing, but active tweeting is something else again.

Perhaps your company should be sharing news and conveying other key messages to the Twittersphere. NEC is very active in this space, as is Southwest Airlines in the US: Imagine a raging storm shuts down Dallas airport and all flights are diverted to New Orleans; the Southwest call centre is jammed with thousands of panicked callers. Suddenly Twitter comes into its own as an alternative communications medium.

What could your company tweet about?

Maybe:

• Its latest financial results.
• The release of a new product.
• The latest warm & fuzzy activity undertaken by its staff for the community.

But you have to be very careful to provide value. If you keep your tweets company-centric, then you won’t be very interesting and no one will want to follow you.

The trick is to keep your tweets customer-centric instead. In fact, according to Spike Jones, you probably shouldn’t even mention the company name at all.

Imagine these tweets from a boring old insurance company:

• Are you paying too much tax? Make sure you submit your Tax File Number to your financial institution.
• Did you know that the average Australian is woefully under insured? Ask your financial planner if you are adequately covered.

Saving money? Suddenly I’m interested.

It’s all about WIIFM.

A two-way street

OK, so you could send messages out to the Twittersphere, so why wouldn’t you also invite them in? Well guess what, ANZ and Telstra are doing just that.

These companies invite their customers (or prospective customers) to ask questions, submit complaints, provide compliments (Heaven forbid!), and most importantly, they have staff at the ready to respond quickly.

So maybe Twitter provides your business with an opportunity to engage with a different demographic of customer. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like robots answering my calls and putting me on hold forever, only to be transferred upteen times. But send a tweet? Yep, I can do that.  

Internal applications

The CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, actively encourages his staff to follow him on Twitter. He tweets jokes, inspirational quotes, humorous anecdotes, that kind of thing.

But what if your organisation wanted to tweet behind closed doors, out of sight of the prying public? Well, you can do that with Yammer – a Twitter-like platform that allows you to set up a “group” comprising your employees only.

Imagine interacting with your colleagues across the enterprise, asking questions, collaborating, sharing knowledge. Why spend half an hour running around trying to find someone who can help you, when you can just post it to Yammer and let the crowd post a reply.

This is a classic example of informal learning, and it’s central to the evolution and modernisation of workplace training.

Personal applications

By “personal”, I mean you using Twitter for your own professional purposes.

For example, I use Twitter as an international community of practice. I’m connected to a circle of e‑learning professionals from all over the world; I’ve chosen to follow their tweets, and some of them have chosen to follow mine. I share my knowledge, and I learn a lot more in return.

So as a technology, Twitter is really simple. It’s what you do with it that makes it powerful.

Analyse This

From the instructional designer’s point of view, the term “Analysis” fulfils the “A” in the ADDIE Model, which in turn forms the backbone of the Instructional Systems Design (ISD) process.

What is analysis?

Big Dog & Little Dog provide an excellent Instructional System Design Manual that covers analysis quite comprehensively. However the basics are really straightforward.

I like their description of analysis which they attribute to Allison Rossett:

Analysis is the study we do in order to figure out what to do.

Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s the foundation of all subsequent development activity.

There’s no point launching into a frenzy of work unless you know why you’re doing it. Otherwise your efforts are liable to go to waste, and where’s the value-add in that?

Focus on performance

When conducting a needs analysis in the workplace, it’s important to focus on performance. Not training, not learning, not development… performance.

Your red flag is the Performance Gap, which is the difference between what the level of performance is now, and what it should be.

You need to determine why the gap exists, then design a solution to fix it.

That solution may be training or learning or development, or something else altogether. It may be simple or complex, online or face-to-face, real-time or asynchronous.

It all depends on the nature of the problem.

Data

There are two major approaches to identifying performance gaps:

1. Reactive, and
2. Proactive.

The reactive approach responds to your customer (or someone else) telling you what they need. For example, a Team Leader might call you to say that her team is struggling to meet its productivity targets; or a Project Manager might inform you of the imminent rollout of a new processing system. In either case, you need to react to that information.

While the reactive approach is vitally important, the proactive approach is arguably more important in today’s environment. By adopting a proactive approach, you don’t simply wait for your customer to tell you what their needs are – you find out for yourself.

This kind of analysis relies heavily on data. The data may be subjective, for example:

• Consultation
• Conversation
• Qualitative survey
• Focus group

Or it may be objective, for example:

• Productivity statistics
• Quality statistics
• Complaints register
• Compliance report
• Skills matrix

The data provides the evidence to support what you’re going to do next.

It gives you the confidence that your work will hit the mark and, ultimately, improve the overall performance of the business.

Root cause analysis

When analysing the data, I recommend that you be suspicious, but fair.

For example, if a graph shows that a certain individual is struggling with his productivity score, then yes: suspect that person may be experiencing an issue that’s hindering their performance.

Bear in mind, however, that a myriad of reasons may be influencing the result. Maybe they’re new to the role; maybe they’re sick or burnt out; maybe they’re constantly bombarded all day by their peers. Always consider the conditions and the circumstances.

But at the end of the day, the numbers don’t lie, so you need to do something. Sometimes training is the answer, sometimes it isn’t. Maybe a flawed process needs to be modified; maybe a pod reshuffle is in order; maybe someone just needs a holiday.

Whatever you do, make sure you address the root of the problem, not just the symptoms.

Social networking is king

In my previous article, I explored one of the principles to emerge from the recent AMPLIFY09 festival, namely “Everything big started small”.

Another principle that resonated with me was, in my own words:

Social networking is king.

This principle featured in many of the sessions I attended, but it was showcased in no uncertain terms by two speakers in particular:

1. Spike Jones, the “Firestarter” at Brains on Fire; and

2. Kate Albright-Hanna, the Director of Video for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.

The goal posts have moved

Social networking has been around since the dawn of time. However, the exponential growth of online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has taken it to a whole new stratosphere.

Everyone knows the stats…

Facebook has more than 200 million active users, equivalent to being the 5th largest country in the world.

More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least daily.

The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.

But what do these numbers mean? They mean millions of people are connected to millions of other people via Web 2.0 technology.

It’s up to the corporate sector to either ignore this phenomenon, or harness it.

Juicing the orange

A wonderful example of the latter was provided by Spike in his session Look who’s talking! What if your customers advertised for you?

Only a few years ago, Fiskars, the manufacturer of those orange-handled scissors, was experiencing low brand loyalty. Online mentions of the brand by name was almost zero.

After all, they make scissors.

Fast forward to today, and Fisk-A-Teers has taken the US scrapbooking community by storm. Over 5000 enthusiastic members chat online, comment on the blog, post messages, upload photos, and keep track of their calendar of events.

Why is Fisk-A-Teers so successful? Simple: it’s a social network for people who are interested in scrapbooking and crafts.

The members aren’t obliged to promote the Fiskars brand or its products. Instead, they are encouraged to talk about their hobby, their passion, their work. 

This approach differs from traditional product flog marketing because it focuses on creating “fans”, not customers. As the Brains on Fire website states:

…fans embody loyalty. A fan has a vested interest. They defend passionately. A true fan loves a team, a brand or a band whether they win or lose. Fans don’t just join a movement. They help grow it. Fans have a sense of ownership and shared identity, because your success is their success. And it’s a two-way street. The question isn’t “what can we sell this person?” It’s “what can we do to keep this person and make them even happier?”

So it’s not about “selling”. It’s about building identity, igniting a movement, and generating goodwill.

Technology doesn’t drive this philosophy, but it enables it to flourish.

The priceless brand exposure and word‑of‑mouth marketing follows naturally. 

Yes we can

Kate described a similar approach in her session How was new media a game-changer in the 2008 US elections?

The Obama campaign was unique among its predecessors in its heavy use of online video via YouTube. Like Brains on Fire, Kate and her colleagues focused on igniting a movement.

Most of the video produced by the team depicted everyday Americans rather than Obama himself.

Obama’s message is clear: it’s not about me, it’s about us.

Again, technology doesn’t drive this philosophy, but it enables it to flourish.

The Obama campaigners weren’t merely courting voters, they were empowering communities.

Implications for e-learning

In terms of e-learning, the principle of “Social networking is king” has implications for pedagogy.

Whether a company sanctions it or not, employees are going to use tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – whether inside or outside of work hours.

Instead of resisting or ignoring it, why not integrate social networking into your blended learning model? I’d suggest it could support informal and JIT learning, not to mention increasing engagement.

Imagine your colleagues sharing ideas, helping each other out, making each other aware of useful resources, asking questions, exploring, contributing, discussing.

Shift learning in the workplace from a chore to a joy.

Ignite your own movement!