Thursday, February 24, 2011

The New Learning Architect

Last month at Learning Technologies UK I finally had the pleasure of meeting Clive Shepherd in real life. We vowed to read and to review each other’s new books, a promise he kept right away and on which I was delinquent. I did download The New Learning Architect to Kindle right away – it’s available solely in handy ebook form—and did finally settle down with it last weekend.

Clive does a great job articulating a problem that’s nagged at me for a long while: as one trend surfaces, separate camps emerge and the implication of a winner and loser takes over the discussion. We saw it with eLearning v. classroom learning; we’re seeing it again now with informal learning v. formal. Shepherd argues that learning occurs in several contexts, with formal learning only one card in that deck, but still a useful one. He then offers a nice tour through tools and approaches within each context.  It’s the goal of L&D, he says, to build not classes or courses but environments in which people can learn, and those environments can come in several forms.  Suggesting we are ‘architects’ raises the bar, asking us to move to a more efficacious position above the ‘order taker’ function we’ve been fulfilling for far too long (“Yes, sir! That’ll be an order of Teambuilding with a side of Conflict Resolution!”)

Novices will find this very useful—there is a lot of support here to help them step off on the right foot,and  I think it would be a fabulous resource for those coming to the field with no preconceived notions. Experienced practitioners will likely be more interested in the information around informal and social learning as well as the excellent profiles of several successful learning architects.  Another thing experienced people might need?  Perhaps some new perspective on the place of learning in the learner’s world.  Shepherd talks a great deal about the case for and ways of achieving bottom-up change.  The idea appeals to me, and I admit I’m even more interested and optimistic about it given the recent events in Egypt.  While I was reading I occasionally Tweeted quotes from the book (did you know you can post to Twitter directly from Kindle? Like this). Shepherd’s idea that, "You build a learning culture by building an appetite to learn. This is predominantly a bottom-up, peer-to-peer process” caused a good deal of bristling, mostly from people who seemed to feel this could not happen without upper management control or L&D orchestrating it.  People used words like ‘partner’,  and having upper management involved in culture change, but we’ve seen how that looks so far and, well, it mostly ain’t working.

 Shepherd offers a nice overview of the field, with useful suggestions for current practice and provocative ideas for the future. It’s available as an ebook from Amazon US  and UK . 

5 comments:

Barbara said...

Jane, I saw your Twitter posts from your Kindle earlier this week and was so excited to learn about this updated option! I went right to amazon.com and figured out that I had the capability of doing that, too with my Gen 2 Kindle. I set it up and also posted a comment in Twitter from this book. Thanks for tuning me in to this great, new feature on my Kindle.

I got Clive Shepherd’s book, The New Learning Architect, because Kristi Broom, a colleague of mine, told me about it. It grabbed my attention because some folks in my organization have been discussing ways we can help our Instructional Designers become more like Learning Architects. I believe this book is going to help us communicate what our Designers need to be doing differently. I’m only a quarter of the way into the book but I am already seeing information on the mindset shift our people need.

I think the profiles are great!

Barbara said...

Jane, I saw your Twitter posts from your Kindle earlier this week and was so excited to learn about this updated option! I went right to amazon.com and figured out that I had the capability of doing that, too with my Gen 2 Kindle. I set it up and also posted a comment in Twitter from this book. Thanks for tuning me in to this great, new feature on my Kindle.

I got Clive Shepherd’s book, The New Learning Architect, because Kristi Broom, a colleague of mine, told me about it. It grabbed my attention because some folks in my organization have been discussing ways we can help our Instructional Designers become more like Learning Architects. I believe this book is going to help us communicate what our Designers need to be doing differently. I’m only a quarter of the way into the book but I am already seeing information on the mindset shift our people need.

I think the profiles are great!

Jane Bozarth said...

MimiBarbara! How are things in Atlanta? I'm flying through in March...and again in March...and in April... and in May... and again in May...lol.

I agree about the profiles. Love seeing success stories. And I love the language of being an architect. PS: Clive is a lovely person in person. It was quite a treat to finally meet him.

Best,
Jane

Barbara said...

It's been said one has to fly through Atlanta to get anywhere in the U.S. I guess you are proof of that! Things are warming up in Atlanta so, hopefully, you will see flowering trees from your plane window.

Learning Summit said...

Yes it's not possible for everybody to create the best learning environment in which people can enjoy learning. The new learning architect is really great!