Maps as Training Tools

[caption id="attachment_574" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="By Kenbethea (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)"][/caption]Do you recall learning instructional design models by studying maps or flow charts such as this one?

How about your e-learning storyboards, do you map them out? How about mapping out branching scenarios to better communicate the learning path and different role play or e-learning scenarios for your client prior to commencing to develop a course?

Just last week, I met a law professor who maps legal concepts and processes in order to teach from them in his college courses. And, I've been working with a client for the past eight months who uses maps to teach electronic discovery to attorneys, records, managers, IT professionals, and others with some very detailed maps. We’ve developed some pretty neat instructional strategies for his maps in the online training courses I’ve built for him.

Back in college, I began mapping learning systems using an application called Inspiration that was readily available in the computer lab at Florida State University. Today's mind mapping software can do so much more; I'm surprised more instructional designers and OD practitioners don't share more of their "maps" with each other. The latest version of Mind Manager by Mindjet allows you to assign resources and deadlines to topics on your map- and then generates a GAANT chart view for you on-the-fly. Your client doesn't have a copy of the software you say? No problem, Mind Manager can publish an interactive mind map in .pdf format that includes an Adobe Flash player that allows anyone with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader to interact with your mind map without the ability to change the map.

In my consulting role, one of the more promising tools I’ve been working with during the last year is iThoughtsHD by CMS on the iPad (works on the iPhone as well, if your vision is better than mine). This $9.99 app available from the iTunes store should be a must carry for any pro working in-the-field conducting a needs analysis. You can map out a business process or performance bottleneck in a matter of minutes, and without skipping a beat email the .pdf to your client in order to confirm your analysis. I feel so strongly about this app, that if it were up to me I would hand this app out to new instructional designers as they were being conferred their degrees.

Maps have some amazing qualities that should be more readily exploited in both the classroom and out in the field by trainers, instructional designers, organizational development professionals, and even human resources leaders. When dealing with complex procedures or processes or trying to get everyone on the same page-they can be a vital communication tool for use with your clients. Maps bring people around them and are great for building consensus around best practices or performance interventions. Their visual appeal for teaching is well documented, and according to the law professor I met last week one of the best ways to communicate complex legal structures and processes. They are one of the best tools for leaders to “show the way forward” for any number of initiatives; one of the best examples of this was Churchill’s famous “Map Room” meetings with his troops as depicted in this video courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.

Are you using mind-mapping in your instructional design or organizational development practice? And, if so, how are you using them?

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Are learning coaches roaming your company's halls?

In reading this article aptly titled “Schools’ instructional coaches change the game”, I was struck by the following observation:

“… instructional coaches were originally launched to help school districts strengthen professional development to meet the needs of all learners.”

The schools are getting in on the learning coach action, and as we noted in a previous blog- we feel instructional designers must do the same. Today’s workforce, with its five generations collaborating physically and virtually to accomplish the mission, has needs that cannot be efficiently met by bottlenecking “training” within the confines of human resources.

Similarly to the classroom in the article, some of these needs include:

1. Guidance in interpreting performance data for their team and identifying knowledge/ skills gaps,
2. Working collaboratively to spread best practices across job functions and roles,
3. Disseminating instructional methods, design principles, and adult learning theories, and
4. Establishing communities of practice and learning networks within the enterprise.

This learning coach strategy shifts the onus for learning to everyone’s shoulders in the organization. Learning should be a competency in everybody’s job description―and everyone should be measured on how well they learned and applied their new knowledge, skills and abilities to execute their jobs. It should be the learning coaches leading this charge, and stepping outside of their traditional classroom or design roles and weaving learning into the work flows of their organizations.

Much as improvements are being witnessed during early test of this tactic in school settings, organizations and in particular human resources executives should be experimenting with roving learning coaches as well.

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Is HR Failing to Lead the Social Revolution at Work?

Do companies need social media? Ever notice HR leaders shying away from this question, typically being led by the Marketing or IT group? Why is that? Why do our HR leaders focus more on the risks vs. the potential rewards of implementing this technology within the enterprise? And when HR leaders DO chime in, the conversation is shifted to the organization’s social media policy or lack thereof, the HR handbook, or some other compliance topic of little strategic benefit to the company. It’s almost like HR dumbs down the conversation or ignores it altogether.

It seems every day there is a new article, blog post, tweet, and other commentary questioning whether companies “need” social media. It’s akin to asking, do companies “need” a website, email, PC’s, or mobile phones? The answer is obvious. Of course no company “needs” social media, although many will likely turn to Facebook’s Marketplace when looking for a buyer for their failing business.

As Human Resources professionals (and learning coaches―a.k.a. instructional designers), one of the things we’ve learned is that the medium is not the message1. Just as we've been learning for years without all of the technology at our disposal today, companies have been conducting business for years without social media and will be conducting business for many years to come without it. So, stop fussing about whether your company needs social media- the answer is... it doesn't need it.  As a profession, we should stop obsessing over hypotheticals and focus our energies on the needs of our companies we can meet―via social media or otherwise. This is where our greatest opportunity for impacting the bottom line lies.

Here’s a list of what companies do need, and by all means feel free to add more to list with your comments below:

• a productive and engaged workforce able to compete and succeed in today’s global market,
• a means with which to attract, recruit, communicate with, and provide challenging work to the digital natives entering the workforce,
• a dynamic intranet, where employees can connect and quickly locate information, expertise, and each other to collaborate and execute the organizations plans,
• to stop mass marketing their products and services via mediums where their message is lost in a sea of useless noise, and to engage their customers in a very personal, authentic and focused manner,
• a “new and improved” vision for their learning management system, one that can accommodate learning events and opportunities not conceived of in the HR department- but born in “the field”, informal learning, and enables employees to learn from one another up, down and across the organization―geographical boundaries be damned,
• a means with which to capture some of the knowledge that’s about to walk out of their doors when baby boomers accelerate their retirement after this economic malaise we are currently in, and finally
• a good dose of leadership from their head of Human Resources to collaborate with their IT department, and educate the c-suite on how social media can and should be considered as part of their talent management strategy―and not just their marketing mix, to meet some of these needs

Social media technology has the potential to transform the enterprise and how we work, but only when implemented as part of a larger human resources strategy, with clear goals and objectives, and when applied to needs it can effectively meet. When implemented in pursuit of one of these goals above, and tracked with appropriate metrics, HR leaders will be able to demonstrate the value of implementing these systems, and not simply the risks which are so prominently written about that make the news headlines every day.

1. Clark, R. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of Educational Research 53(4), 445-59.

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Is it time you change your job title from Instructional Designer to Learning Coach?

We've been writing plenty lately on some of the amazing social technology that is evolution-izing workplace learning and performance. Yet, in speaking with fellow ID's, it's clear to me that Instructional Designer is no longer an adequate title for us in the corporate world. In the Instructional Design competencies published by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi®), one of the design and development competencies reads:

• Develop instructional materials (Essential)

Anyone else have an issue with this thinking? Here are my $.02. Is it essential for a designer to develop instructional materials that address real and identified gaps in performance, of course. But this statement limits design and development work to "push" instructional strategies. I'd like to see competencies without this limitation.

I believe a better competency for a designer to posses in this day and age is:

• Develop instructional materials, systems, and guidelines for learning to flourish formally, informally, and socially

Or something to that effect. Today's designer needs to not only be able to push learning out to the organization, but to encourage, compel, and make it possible for others to pull the learning they need in order to perform. In this regard, the role of the designer is evolving into what I feel is more of a "learning coach". At times, yes, you are developing instructional materials. But at other times, you may be moderating a product forum for your organization where learners are exchanging product questions and answers across the globe- and you are ensuring their information exchange is accurate and focused, while tagging it for future reference by others in the organization. In this scenario, you are not developing instruction, but managing a virtual environment where learners can teach and learn from each other.

I believe the role if the instructional designer is dramatically changing, and as professionals we must adapt or perish. No longer is learning hierarchically trickling down through our organizations, it is happening everywhere. As bearers of the learning and performance torch, we must enable our learners to learn what they need to perform, wherever they are, and on whatever device they prefer to access it. Our adaptation should include a revision of the competencies that encompass the skill set expected from each and every one of us.

What do you think- Has the profession and our roles changed sufficiently to warrant a revision to the competencies of every instructional designer?  How is your role changing at your organization?

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.