Over the past 18 months I’ve been working more and more in the learning sector, specifically with virtual learning environments (VLEs) and a number of course creation packages.  I’d say that with regards to Enterprise 2.0, the learning sector is behind the rest of the business world in terms of social software products targeted at the sector (yes, targeted at the sector).  However it seems quite advanced in the adoption of web 2.0 technologies for engaging and interacting with learners.  Some people with a lot to say on the topic include Jane Hart who maintains an excellent directory of tools and Steven Anderson whose blog and tweets are a must read for anyone in this space.

My experience with deploying, populating and delivering training via VLEs has brought me to the conclusion that the build up to actually creating a course can be greatly assisted with web 2.0 tools.  I refer to the research and gathering of course resources, as well as the annotation of the resources.  Building course content is one thing, but gathering the supporting and additional material around a course is something that has parallels in many industries such as R&D, consulting knowledge brokering etc.

For me, social bookmarking based tools have greatly assisted in this research and collation process.  Being able to collaboratively capture, annotate, organise and collate resources in the build up and subsequently follow on from a course has been of great benefit.

The diagram below (click to enlarge or download PDF) shows the process you can follow using social bookmarking based applications to package resources for course creation.  I pick on social bookmarking due to the ease at which content (websites and more) can be added and tagged inside a platform.  Social bookmarking allows the course creator to add to their course knowledge base over time, either alone or collaboratively.  It’s also easy to structure the information specific to your needs using tags, workspaces, groups or tag bundles and facets.   At the end of the content collation process you have a structured set of resources relating to and supporting course content.  Content can then be built around the resources providing additional structure, insight and assertions.

Click to Enlarge

What’s missing at the moment is the seamless link from resource collation to VLE integration, but I am sure this is not far away, especially when developers start to work against the new Moodle 2.0 API with tools like Knowledge Plaza, Twine or specialist applications.

The process I follow is;

1. capture websites, documents, references etc relating to a course I am developing (using bookmarklets and other quick ways to capture content)
2. tag and organise content
3. annotate individual resource items (descriptions, abstracts, comments, assertions and such)
4. package and annotate multiple resources against a course (in my case I use wiki style annotation against a package of resources inside the platform)
5. export package and integrate with chosen VLE (export is in the for of PDF summary of annotation and references including full resource artefacts)
6. keep content package fresh with new resources (add to the course, evolving it over time)
7. grant access to students to follow up informal, ongoing learning (RSS, email alerts or access to a social dashboard)

Click here for the PDF resource.

So how are others gathering and collating content for course creation?  I’d love to hear about your tools and best practices.

Related posts:

1. Knowledge Plaza vs. Diigo: more than social web annotation

A few weeks back at the event Solutions Intranet in Paris (France), we took part of the “CBS Pitch Minute” competition which consists in pitching your product/company in 1 minute or less. Not an easy exercise for a solution such as KP which we sometimes have a hard time explaining in 1 hour!

Quite a surprise therefore to discover this afternoon that Knowledge Plaza’s pitch (published on ZDNET.fr) was chosen out of 50+ competitors to win the third prize of 20.000€ worth of e-marketing actions. The two other creative winners were Acropolis Telecom and Veepee which we also invite you to discover.

Ha and by the way, it must be mentioned that this pitch wasn’t at all prepared as CBS had initially left us out of the competition! They basically threw us in the studio as we walked by their booth. Hence a totally free-rolling talk crowned by the friendly mention of our Belgian origins.

We’ll therefore let you discover our (totally improvised) pitch and big thanks to the friendly make-up and recording team at CBS Interactive which convinced us to participate.

Related posts:

1. Search 2010, February, 19th in Paris : Best practices in strategic information search
2. Knowledge Plaza: European Venture Contest semifinal winner

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure to have a chat over a drink with Javier Megías, GMV’s Regional Manager in Spain. Stirred by a stimulating conversation, I visited his blog where I happened to read one of the clearest posts on ‘organization 2.0′ I’ve read so far (approx reading time: 9 mins). I got his permission to translate it into English to share it here with you, so consider it a guest post by J. Megías. Do you agree with his description and is it too different in your country?

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We keep hearing and reading lately in the newspapers, on TV or during discussions over a cup of coffee that we must change the model, that Spain is not competitive and that we have one of the lowest productivity rates in the euro area…And sometimes we forget that this is not due solely to Spain’s worse or better government, or to administration’s inefficiencies. Businesses have an important part on that responsibility in changing the competitive model (not just the productive one), and to achieve this, many sacred cows have to be sacrificed, changing the way our companies operate, interact and think… because as Einstein said:

Insanity is thinking that you’ll get different results doing the same things over and over again.

The so called Organizations 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 (the term has no direct connection with technology, and I think it’s unfortunate) see their business model, their operations, hierarchy, relationship with employees and customers and their market orientation in a different way, one I am particularly fond of (this article sums up my romantic view on the topic).

Some of the main characteristics that define them:

• They adopt the openness and transparency as a leitmotif. On the one hand, at an internal level, giving visibility to employees on how things are going, what the direction of the company is, or keeping them updated with recent concerns or successes, etc. What the organization gets in exchange is commitment, realizing that “we’re all in the same boat.” On the other hand, at an external level, by opening up to the market, and explaining what things the company is doing, what new approaches or ideas have emerged on the market or why not, why problems have arisen and how they’ve been dealt with…All this humanizing the company and getting it closer to the market (to enhance both levels there are excellent tools out there, from the famous intranets to blogs).

• They foster the conciliation of the professional and personal lives of their workers. Indeed, the values of a large proportion of the population have changed, and spending time with our families and friends, or on our hobbies and sports is now very important to us. An organization that allows the happy combination of both realms will not only have happier and more motivated employees, but also more productive. As the great Scott Adams concludes, the cartoonist of Dilbert, in his book “The Dilbert Principle” (a must read): the perfect production model is F5… or “Out at 5″, if employees leave the office soon they’ll have more time to be happy, which makes them more productive.

• Flat Organization: Taylorist models (beautifully explained by my good friend Michel Heric-Coll in his interesting blog) had their peak, and were designed in an environment with completely different assumptions… and yet they are still determining how we see organizations, based merely on military models. José Cabrera introduced the successful concept of “Redarquía” (in English ‘netarchy’) as opposed to hierarchy, which not only reduces the number of intermediate levels (no need for so many “drivers”), but the workers are autonomous and responsible enough to adopt the principles of spontaneous self-organization and collaboration.

• Talent Search and Management: The talent becomes the centerpiece of a new organization where not only the “technical” skills are valued (whether accounting, industrial or technologist) but also those known as “management skills” (great error, as they deal with personal skills necessary since childhood). In an organization 2.0 it is not only important to find the best professionals -the authentic organization’s power-, but those who better “fit” into the company’s philosophy, values, ideas and aspirations. I think this is one of the most significant causes of frustration to many people, who decide to take up a job because it is well paid or because it’s a large organization… without considering whether they’ll fit or whether they’ll be happy (which, make no mistake, is the fundamental issue.)

• It’s ok to make mistakes: Another key aspect. In this Business Week study it was found that, surprisingly enough, the most innovative and successful enterprises in the market are those in which employees are allowed to be wrong. It is not that failure is good, but there are several situations where it is a necessary step integrated into the process of organizational learning and it triggers other situations (fostering innovation, facilitating creativity, etc.) that affect the organization very positively. Everyone in the organization knows that they can take chances to make things better.

• Everyone communicates: The markets are conversations. This phrase, repeated ad nauseam by hundreds of converts, and that is the basis for understanding how customers are changing, it’s still new in many offices. Customers want to talk to real people, with face and eyes that represent the organizations, instead of being bullhorned in the ears (e.g. traditional advertising). To do this, everyone from the CEO to the last support team member, must be able to talk, either with customers or among themselves. Blogs, or tools like twitter facilitate this task.

• Productivity (and not schedule) rules: This is a major paradigm shift, present in hundreds of companies, in which the employee who stays till late is better valued that the one hitting the deadlines and therefore leaving sooner, which is an aberration from the point of view of productivity, needless to say from the conciliation perspective. Although it means more work for managers, people must be oriented to targets, give them the tools to achieve them and measure them on achievement. In fact, in some areas of Spain some regional governments are considering the possibility to shorten the working schedule, something that happens in the European context since a long time ago.

• The learning organization: One of the biggest problems in organizations related to knowledge management is that knowledge resides only in people … so when one person leaves, the organization becomes a little less wise. While it is specific to the new era of labor mobility, the company should establish mechanisms so that it is the organization that maintains much of the knowledge, and I am not talking only about keeping “technical” skills, but to implement processes to make the learn and improve cycle possible.

• Not being afraid to change: I think we live in a time when fear and pessimism permeates all layers of society, with special virulence on businesses. As Pilar Jericho stated in her wonderful blog, fear grips managers and makes them refuge in their “winter quarters”, denying the need for change. At the rate at which things currently change, one of the few certainties in the agenda of any organization is the continuous transformation, so that we should embrace and understand change in a positive context.

• Ability to work in a distributed way: Linking with the previous point on the new organizations, a business must harness the talent wherever it is, and, in my opinion, it is myopic to be discouraged by geographical barriers. If it a collaborative culture is openly deployed, if it is planned properly and available technologies are used (which do not require investment in most cases, such as Skype etc.), complex projects can be addressed more efficiently, not only in terms of costs but also in terms of resources.

• Uncentralized and agile organizations. One of the constants that unfortunately suffer the most innovative companies is the deadly cycle of growth and centralization: they go from being nimble, little bureaucratic and innovative organizations to slow, bureaucratic and uncreative as they get bigger. There is a notable exception, those that instead of opting for the pure centralized approach allow some degree of chaos and “positive inefficiencies” (General Electric remains an amalgam of distributed companies with a surprising degree of operational freedom, what I believe must be the reason why it is one of the few companies still in the Fortune 100, regardless the passing of time.

• Collaboration … where there is no knowledge silos: Although it strikes me, there are still many people who believe they are as good as the unique knowledge that they are able to convey and who do not share it because they believe that it will downgrade its value. I had a problem with such person…until I told him one day: “Indeed you have become essential. I can not promote you until I can do without you in your current position” (it goes without saying that he changed his philosophy). The more freely knowledge circulates (which may be found in the most unexpected places), the better and more creative ideas emerge in the organization. Collaboration policies should be established, rewarding the most collaborative areas.

• Constantly seeking “the apprentice mind”: As I commented some time ago, you may deliberately cultivate a culture of mentoring in the company, where people discuss and judge the ideas as if it were the first time you listen, understanding all the possibilities. This leads to a new level of openness, creativity and transparency where, instead of sifting what we hear with our “views as experts” -thinking “I know this” and not listening to the rest-, we see everything in a new way trying to get all its consequences (the value not only resides on the idea but also on how is expressed or proposed).

• People evolve…inside or outside the company: The time when you finished your degree, worked and retired from the same company, is gone for good: The mentality of the entrepreneur who believes that the workers are theirs is more obsolete than ever. People join organizations 2.0 with an interesting opportunity, get involved in a project, learn and evolve until they consider it’s time to grow somewhere else and the company understands that this is positive (to a certain extent) although it should be aware that retaining those who have more talent is more important than ever, too.

• Periodically questions the immutable truths (and thus challenges their own status quo): On the agenda of everyone in the company, from the trainee to CEO, is to question how and why things are done, how they can innovate, how to improve the customer experience. There are no sacred cows, and the business model and business environment is periodically analyzed.

• Listen, learn and innovate: The organization listens to the market, their customers, their suppliers, wherever they are (from communities to the Web, via social networks), and attempts to understand the message, and then talk. Internally, the ideas from the latest intern are as valuable as those from the manager, because they understand the need for additional views. The innovation is open, and in the process of incorporating new ideas not only the employees are involved but customers, suppliers, associations and even competitors.

• Think long term and global: One of the hard lessons we learned from the crisis in which we are involved is that short-term thinking can help you reach your goals, but year after year you’ll be digging a hole from which it’ll be very difficult to escape. Although the company must be agile and adapt to change, it must also balance long-term strategies, discouraging those who think only on their own area, their annual objectives and problems. There is a tomorrow, and no doubt it’ll take a toll on us.

I’ve tried to collect the points that I believe are more descriptive on these organizations that represent the new change. There are many points, and possibly as a whole they’re more a wishlist than an x-ray of a specific company, but I think that if we’re not sure where we want to work we can hardly turn this utopia into reality.

Although I’m a fan of Dilbert, the world where he really lives and represents is precisely that organization 1.0 that tries to be disguised as 2.0, but what they actually do is to fool themselves. An example:

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Spanish version here.

Related posts:

1. Knowledge Plaza: European Venture Contest semifinal winner