Learning

Enjoy this learning.

John

Collaboration and individual values

I agree with Tony’s views on Individual Value required.

It is easy to announce: “let’s have collaboration” in business organisations. 

Are people ready to collaborate?  How does collaboration work? 

What are the magic wands that would spark collaboration amongst the members in an organisation?

Throughout the past decades, we have been searching for tools and solutions that could satisfy organisation’s needs, team’s needs and individual’s needs.   Organisations are striving to win over the hearts and minds of their employees and all stakeholders by satisfying those overlapping needs.  This would give the organisation or network and individual the “competitive advantage” over other networks or companies.  Collaboration is the key to success and is also the strategic imperative towards the achievement of company vision and missions.

Social networking could be a starting point to re-ignite such search of solutions – creating a common goal for everyone via engagement, and collaboration.

Learning is a social currency that could add value to all employees, the organisation, and the networks.  The social capital (learning) emerged through such collaborative learning amongst employees, and their stakeholders would help the organisation to sustain its competitiveness in an ever changing market.  

What is essential in keeping such learning alive within those networks – or sections?  It’s trust, openness, a will to collaborate and cooperate, and a passion towards learning amongst the employer and employees

Without trust, and openness amongst top management, managers and rank and file, and the social capacity to engage employees, it’s easy to fall back to the command – control hierarchy structure.  Without the leadership and a passion towards learning, and some common goals, networks or community collaboration would be difficult to sustain.

Whilst urging people to work smart and collaborate in the section and organisation is a goal of “good citizenship” where we should promote, it is also important to ensure that individual’s values are respected.  This will allow  everyone to shine in an organisation.

When the employees shine and learn more skills, they would more likely be able to contribute to their teams and organisation.  That sows the seeds of collaboration. 

That’s why both the employees and their organisation must learn how to be “sociable”, in order to serve their internal and external customers, not just be another functional unit at this digital age.

Organisation which runs with an adaptive network structure would more likely be able to collaborate widely with their employees and customers. 

Individual values are also required to ensure the company could develop in the long run.  It’s people who are running the organisation, not just the system!

John

Schools where everyone becomes a learner

I resonate with ideas of this  if we could start over, what would we build where we might have schools without “teachers, learners”, but learners. The teacher will become an expert learner organizing and leading others in networked learning communities.

I have been adopting such learning pedagogy since 2000, using the on-the-job learning approach. We don’t need the classroom as such, the learning is there on the job, it is authentic.  All learning is centred around the authentic experience that is relevant to the learner. The teacher plays the role of a mentor, not a “traditional teacher”.

When it comes to school, we have also got our community on connectivism education learning where the community members are the focus of the network. Where are the teachers? Where are the learners? This is a community where every member is the teacher and learner? Every one shares and learns as they wish and as they like.

Would that be more closely aligned to the “school” we are talking about?

Without an actual model to base upon, how could we convince our educators and students that such school works?

Would expert learners be the ontological learners, not just content experts? Should “teachers” continue their learning throughout their life journey?

As highlighted in the paper, a decade has gone, nothing in those “theories” and “proposition” is “new” as such. What’s new is our conceptualisation of what works for us in our learning journey. Reform starts small, rather than through the formal system, as our current ecology clearly shows the trend.

I have composed numerous posts on schooling and higher education in my blog that echoed with the posting.