Learning Circuits Big Question -- follow-up

The big question follow-up: So what can we do about it?

Here is the new question:

If you think it's important that everyone be blogging, how do we get there? If you agree the goals that I've just listed are important, but blogs aren't the answer. What is?

As I noted in my previous post on this subject, I don’t think it’s important that everyone be blogging. In fact, the longer I think about this, the less I like the idea. Here is what I keep coming back to – what does it mean to be a professional? And what does it means to be a typical elearning professional in a corporate setting?

It seems to me that the average elearning professional in the US is likely working for a corporation, and their primary mandate is to meet the business needs and goals of whoever is paying their salaries. Their primary goal is not career development or professional development, it’s business impact. Insofar as blogging helps us achieve the latter, I think it’s great. Insofar as it achieves the former at the expense of the latter, I think we need to question our priorities.

The mere fact of being a knowledge worker doesn’t entitle us to prioritize our time to the benefit of our own professional growth at the expense of company goals. If my primary job is administering an LMS or delivering instructor-led training or developing PSS, then how would blogging factor-in exactly? I don’t mean “what might they blog about?” – that would be self-evident. What I mean is “how would blogging help them perform their core jobs more effectively or efficiently?” How would blogging help them deliver greater business value? I’m pretty sure that these elearning professionals wouldn’t be allowed to surf Fark all day at work, and by the same logic, they shouldn’t be blogging all day at work either. While one certainly has more value than the other (and I’ll let you decide which : ), if neither contributes to some sort of bottom-line business impact, they are equally a waste of time as far as the business is concerned.

Different rules apply of course if you are a consultant or a vendor or if you are willing to contribute on your own dime and on your own time. And maybe different rules apply outside the US. I agree with most of Tony’s points about the value of blogging to the individual, I’m just not sure I agree with its value to the business, particularly when it’s phrased as “everyone.” Organizations will not benefit if every one of their learning professionals is spending 2 hours per week blogging. In some large organizations, this may mean 600 hours per week spent blogging or some 30,000 hours per year. I think it’s safe to say that with 30,000 hours, an organization could design a learning or performance initiative that might have more impact than the results associated with blogging.

As to how else to achieve and practice the professional characteristics Tony mentioned:

• being self-reflective,
• being collaborative,
• being rigorous in supporting our positions,
• open to feedback,
• understanding our point of view and learning to share it,
• working knowledge of new technologies

there are lots of ways. But first, it’s worth noting that blogging will not magically endow you with these characteristics. In many ways, I think a desire to blog about elearning probably means you already possess many of these traits, which is really sort of a wish-list of elearning professionalism. If you are doctor, you probably already have an interest in helping people and in exploring and learning about complex subjects and maybe a fair degree of detective-like, analytical thinking skills. You get the idea. In other words, you possess the professional traits one would expect of someone in the “doctoring” profession.

The folks who have self-selected blogging likely possess the traits that would lead them to blogging. Just as the universe happens to have favorable physical laws that lead to the formation of people who then marvel at how weird it is that the universe happens to favor the formation of people, we now have bloggers who believe that people should blog so that they will possess the traits of bloggers which is what led them to blogging in the first place. Do we blog so we can be blogger-like or are we blogger-like and therefore blog? Ok, I’m clearly having too much fun with this.

As to other ways to achieve this sort of Zen-like self-reflection in collaborative openness and communal sharing of future technologies? How about talking with colleagues within your organization over lunch? Better yet, during the design of the next learning initiative. Or maybe during an elearning conference? Or by commenting on other people’s blogs or through listservs or bulletin board style interactions?

Is there something about authoring a blog which imbues it with more importance or significance than a verbal dialog with peers? I suppose there is the permanence factor and the ability for a larger, wider debate. Of course, with this, you also lose intimacy. Do I learn more from strangers who tell me my design “sucks” or do I learn more from peers who tell me my design “could use some work”? I don’t know. What is unique about blogs is the idea of “putting yourself out there” – “these are my words and thoughts for good or for ill. This is what I believe at this moment.” And in that sense, a blog requires more rigor perhaps than a discussion, more clarity of mind and more internal self-reflection about what “what I really think” on a particular subject. But I’m not sure that this is an artifact of my writing a “blog” or just the fact that I’m writing. I suppose either way, the impact is the same. To derive the same unique benefits of blogging, there may be no choice but to publish and distill the cacophony of everyday thinking into the coherency of the written word.

Which of course leads to the question – what does a typical elearning professional need to think so deeply about anyway? For the typical elearning professional, are there enough, “boy I really need to think through this subject” situations on a daily or weekly basis to justify the time and energy of creating and maintaining a blog? I have no idea, but I’d be curious as to what others think.

The Big Question -- Should all learning professionals be blogging?

Should all learning professionals be blogging?

So this month’s Learning Circuits Blog is on the subject of blogging. Which I guess makes this response some sort of meta-blog. A suppose another question we could be asking is “should learning professionals who already blog comment on whether learning professionals should be blogging?” Isn’t this a bit like asking a group of Republicans whether all taxes should be lowered? And really, can there be any answer but “yes and no”?

Yes
Why? For me, it’s a simple issue of “practicing what you preach.” Blogging, wikis, podcasting, WBT’s, simulations, instructor-led delivery (live and virtual), EPSS… it all has a place and a function in helping drive to organizational performance. But when to use each requires some understanding of the pro’s and con’s, which is best developed through usage and experiment. While you can probably argue that a theoretical understanding of the relative merits of each intervention is sufficient for most learning professionals to make accurate decisions on when to use each, I’m not sure that you really “get” this stuff until you do it. And until you “get” it, how do you design your solution? The best performance centric solutions are ones that blur the traditional delivery lines: WBT with PSS with a Wiki for on-going maintenance or Virtual Classroom with Simulation and a weekly Video Podcast on the latest product news. You get the idea. Until you understand your choices as both a consumer and a producer, you are “book” smart, and you will be harder pressed to innovate in meet your organization’s unique training and performance needs.

No
Why? For me, it’s a question of “time management.” Blogging, wikis, podcasting, simulations, virtual classrooms, LMS…. all new technologies take some time to investigate. But some of these are investigations of technology and infrastructure, while others are investigations of fundamental content development models. I can investigate LMS’s without necessarily implementing one or developing courses specific to the LMS. But blogging, wikis, podcasting… these are transformations in the way we communicate – they are content-centric, and therefore, the level of investigation to have a “gut” level understanding of these technologies is non-trivial. To get a “feel” for the impact of blogs and wikis and podcasting, I should, at a minimum, participate as a learner, but ideally as a producer as well. That works for me as a consultant / vendor in this space, but I know from working with my clients, that 90% of them don’t have as much time as they would like to work on existing projects and business initiatives, let alone take on the task of investigating new technologies that will likely consume a lot of time. So “no,” there are too many other things that will help training organizations delivery real world business impact and blogging for the sake of blogging is not the best use time for most elearning professionals.

I suppose the ideal answer is “maybe” -- maybe use a blog as a kind of internal newsletter on some business relevant subject or a change management communication vehicle for an upcoming initiative? Or maybe dedicate a few key individuals to act as learning R&D to investigate new technologies and their uses. While I’m strongly in favor of all of us learning and experimenting with new techniques and delivery models, I’m also passionately committed to the notion that we should be delivering business value first and foremost.

Just as we wouldn’t want every programmer on the team to spend hours each week learning .net if we were a J2EE house, we probably don’t want every member of the elearning community writing blogs when there are still thousands of hours of classes and WBT to deliver. On the other hand, we probably would want to use .net on the first project where it made sense. And we might want a sub-set of the team to focus on investigation and R&D on emerging technologies. It seems to me that a similar model should hold for elearning. As with all forward leaning professional development in any field, the key is striking the right balance between “big picture,” strategic, “what if” activities against the need to deliver real world business value today (if for no other reason than the selfish desire to be employed long enough to get to the cool stuff… ; )