Tag Archives: Northwestern University

Also burying “the burning platform”

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Burning platform photo by Jose Mesa via Flickr

So while I am burying things, I am officially also burying the  phrase “burning platform.”

I cannot take direct create for this blinding-glimpse-of-the-obvious insight, but exactly what positive impact does this verbal imagery have on helping someone (or some organization) want to change? And if I am walking around in an organization that is consistently urging change because of yet another burning platform, wouldn’t I want to get to someplace a little safer? Smoke, fire and 20-story plunges into the sea are not part of my image of a healthy environment.

This notion actually came up during a conversation late last week with two organizations that are working with the Master’s Program in Learning  & Organizational Change at Northwestern University on re-thinking change management practices within organizations. One of the executives pointed out that our normal approach to inspiring change is to start with images inspiring fear. And how, she asked, does that put people in a good place to actually do something productive?

So: Burning platform. No longer part of my vocabulary. Burning platform.

Social media and learning: Converting the non-believers

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This is the first of two posts related to a recent presentation that Keeley Sorokti, my collaborator at Northwestern University, and I gave at the Chicago eLearning & Technology Showcase. This post is about the content of the presentation. The second post goes meta.

The presentation was a current-point-in-time case study on the work we’ve been doing at the Master’s Program in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern University (MSLOC). For the past 4 years, we’ve been continuing to experiment with using Enterprise 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, microblogging) as a key element within and across courses in the program. In the presentation we share some of our insights about one aspect: Community management of semi-closed communities focused on learning.

The title may be a bit misleading – we may have a few “non-believers” among our graduate students, but I think it is more accurate to say that they have not yet had a good opportunity to begin developing their digital literacies. Graduate students in MSLOC are experienced working professionals – average 12 years of experience – who are all truly geeked out about going deeper on organizational learning, change, strategy and knowledge sharing. They are a brilliant bunch and bring a great diversity of professional backgrounds into the program. Classes have the feeling of being part of an innovative new company where everyone is open to contribute their own personal best self.

So – “non-believers” may be too harsh. This is an open-minded group. But still, we intentionally nudge them into incorporating technology into their personal learning routine in entirely new and different ways so a) they benefit individually and b) they become more aware of the role that technology plays in learning and organizational change.

This strategy adds another layer of complexity, as well, for the instructors. And that is essentially the experience that formed the basis for the presentation: If you are in some formal role as “facilitator” of an online learning community, what do you do? How do you know if you are creating an online environment that enhances learning – and is not just a place where students politely post content because it’s an assignment?

There is a good deal of subtlety in learning how to address that issue, but here are some insights:

You need to be able to recognize the (relative) health of the network or community of interest. In my experience this means:

  • Not worrying about lurking. Just because people read but don’t contribute (especially initially) doesn’t mean they aren’t learning or thinking. And in many cases, they may just be expressing their insights or ideas outside of the community beyond your visibility.
  • Look for passion and temporary convergence. You want to see signs of participants getting passionate about something – anything. Even if it is tangential to the course topic. It brings energy to the community and starts to open things up. Temporary convergence is when divergent ideas start to come together, maybe along one little thread, and maybe only among a few participants. It’s not a full-scale routine like brainstorming – in which many many divergent ideas are whittled down to a single workable concept. But it’s got that similar kind of movement. An insight. A glimmer of an idea. It’s these little bits that likely lead to larger connections downstream.
  • Recognize signs of trust and safety. You want the environment to be one in which people can go off half-baked – that requires trust and safety. Look for signs that tell you the community is becoming more trusting.
  • Look for short-term value. Someone discovers a new resource (article, book, website) or makes a new connection that would not have occurred without the community being in place. These short-term bits are the flour in the cake.
  • Look for emergent roles. A healthy community will have participants assuming productive roles – even temporarily, and without being aware of it. Someone helps mediate a tense discussion. Someone synthesizes a big discussion into a thoughtful summary or graphic. Someone spends time to greet newcomers and help make connections for them.

That last bit – emergent roles – is also important in that it provides insight in the same way that social modeling might in an office or group environment. As the facilitator of the community, I need to know when and how to participate. If I jump in too much, I become the focus of attention. Too little, and I may not nudge the community to life in the short term I have with it (in our case, 10 weeks). So I think of myself as being a performer of sorts (Etienne Wenger and Beverly Wenger-Trayner have coined the term social artist – which I think is appropriate here). Do I need to be a connector, and link ideas or people? Do I need to initiate a discussion? Do I need to synthesize or mediate? Many of the roles I’d like to see played by others in the community I have consciously (and carefully) modeled in my own participation.

Above all, I think, is exhibiting an attitude of authentic participation in the private community while recognizing the benefits of being more broadly digitally engaged.  The case situation I am writing about here involves 30 students in a course where students do also meet face-to-face (so there are differences from MOOCs — Massive Open Online Courses — in both theory and practice). But I know the more I engage actively in the practice of creating and developing personal learning networks, and participate in innovative events like MOOCs, the more I recognize the layers, and the tremendous learning benefits of connecting.

Photo credit: Dinner for two by T.R.G via Flickr

Brave enough to go half-baked

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Twice each year I teach a course that depends a great deal on students thinking-out-loud in blog posts and various forms of online discussions. Most of this is conducted in a private community space we use specifically for the course but at times the conversations seeps out into Twitter or Google+.

Each time the course begins there is tension. Will the community dialogue be made up of posts that read more like formal responses to a course assignment? Or will people share thoughts and engage in discussions in a way that shows some vulnerability – that they are struggling to make sense of course concepts or ideas and see the community as a place to work out their thinking?

That is the point of the course, after all; understanding the role that technology plays in our ability to share and create knowledge. I try to teach some theory and share case studies to get underneath the how and why this might be a good thing. But at the end of the day the course works best only if the students feel it, intellectually and emotionally.

The more I go through this period of community tension, the more I am beginning to believe the leading indicator of pending success is the presence of half-baked thinking.

Sometimes the clues to a blog post or discussion comment being half-baked are as obvious as the cold in Chicago in February. The authors literally say “this is half-baked thinking” or “I haven’t thought this all the way through but…” Other times it’s more subtle. Someone may post a longer, thoughtfully written piece about a particular idea but they indicate in some way (a phrase in the post, or how they respond to comments or additional discussion) that the original piece was draft thinking. They were looking for discussion to sharpen their point-of-view.

The presence of half-baked ideas isn’t the only indicator of success. You clearly want some passion and argument (dissenting points of view); some synthesizing of ideas into a current-point-of-view that aligns the community (even temporarily) around the meaning of a set of ideas or concepts; and some community members taking on informal roles to keep the community dialogue engaged and productive (mediator, synthesizer, idea-starter, protocol officer). In this point of view, I am indebted to the authors of Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities (Faraj, S., Jarvenpaa, S., Majchrzak, A. 2011). Faraj et al explore the idea of fluidity in online communities as a fundamental, positive characteristic. They describe both tensions (e.g., “passion” has both positive and negative consequences in a community and therefore creates a tension) and generative responses to those tensions (e.g., emergent community roles such as “mediator”). The work of these authors establishes a framework for understanding online communities that certainly proves useful in my own particular case.

But as a practitioner whose goal is to periodically start-up a new online community and nudge it into some valuable state, the presence of half-baked ideas is key. To me it is an indicator of trust and safety; if the majority of participants feel secure enough to think-out-loud online – brave enough to go half-baked – then the community likely has achieved some level of trust among its members. Thus begins a virtuous cycle and a real learning community comes to life.

A side note: The inspiration for the phrase “brave enough to go half-baked” came via a Twitter chat with two students (Alison Servi @alisonservi and Ashley Punzalan @ashpunz). They were also instrumental, along with my Northwestern peer Keeley Sorokti (@sorokti), in validating the idea as a useful call-to-action in new communities. Being surrounded by clever people makes life a joy.

Photo credit: “Dinner for Two” by T.R.G via Flickr