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23 Jun 2007
Conference evaluation
As a final post on MicroLearning 2007 I would like to sum up some personal conclusions.
The conference was excellent. The format of small keynotes, lots of discussion space, café sessions and speedgeeking rounds involve participants heavy. Thus the chance that the content stays with participants is higher, the messages really get across. Again I met a lot of interesting, people with whom I probably will stay in contact, thanks to common interests. We experimented with Jaiku and Twitter, extending the classic conference environment.
From a content point of view, I have the impression that we are now moving up to higher levels. We are leaving discussions on MicroContent behind, although there is still no common understanding of the term. MicroContent understanding is really the infrastructure. There was still a lot of discussion on the tools, the products that are needed to work with the MicroContent. After hearing many sessions I noticed that the problems lie not with the tools, but the processes and then specifically the learning processes. These processes do not seem well understood and whether the tools can really be mapped to these processes is unclear.
I liked the discussions on the purpose on learning or better what should be learned at schools. It was noted that it is not the MicroContent itself that should be learned as this might change quickly after one leaves school. Although there are some universal truth, which might be useful to know and aware of. At school one should be learned the processes for learning and discovery of the right and required MicroContent. This can be learning the basic tools like David Smith is doing. Or helping to learning discovery processes like Teemu Leinonen showed. The focus was only on the learning process themselves. Herma Kocher however discussed the use of Web2.0 tools with companies. These tools are used for internal company processes. And she used here mainly service companies as examples. People do not seem to realise that learning institutions are service companies, i.e. they deliver services. In order deliver these services they have a lot of internal processes for which web2.0 tools could be used. I found this a bit in the talk of David Smith, but only superficially. Learning institutions should tap into the field of Service Management more. There is whole body of science available for the right management of service delivery.
The whole generational issue came up us well. David Smith had a nice sheet of the history of Internet mapped against the ages of a 16 year old. For these kids everything related to Internet always have been, the grew up with it. It is like it should be. In sense that makes them very special. I confronted my 13-year old son with this. He does not think himself as special, he is the normal one. And that is the challenge for older generations, they will become the odd one out. So meta-learning for the older generation will become much more important, than the microlearning for the younger ones, they will do it anyway.
This will also have to have impact on management culture. The new generation will grow up with openness, ubiquitous availability of information. In order for these web 2.0 tools to work well Hemma Kocher noted that the culture within a company has to change. Probably the new generation does not expect something else from an organisation and will no longer accept hierarchies. I guess you can catch this under the phrase of employee empowerment (nothing new here). And this will not be limited to knowledge intensive industries. And it is anyone guess what the impact will be on society.
The common theme of the conference was Intertwingularity, with thanks to Ajit Jaokar.