A Compound of Alchymie

NLP and Learning Styles

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is currently big business. And it's being applied to more and more areas of our working lives - just check out the latest NLP book titles on Amazon. Some people I know swear by NLP. Consultants and coaches are particularly keen on employing NLP techniques and they are being applied in a wide range of disciplines from sales training to education. I'm not an expert on NLP - I've just read a couple of books and articles on the subject but I can see its attraction - meta models, chunking and re-framing are all so 'obvious' once you sign-up to the concept, and are great for adding to your repertoire of management speak. But the following article in a recent edition of Education Guardian sounded a note of caution:

"..proto-science of NLP. A system devised by a Californian. Learning styles are cobblers. There is no proof that children have such preferences. They are of use only in describing styles of input, not in terms of describing a child's hard wired bias for one style over the other."
Philip Beadle, Education Guardian 3 Oct 2006

The NLP entry on Wikipedia is substantial and ultimately quite complex, and peppered with warnings about lack of objectivity (and sometimes likened to astrology). So beware NLP lovers, don't overestimate the power of proto-science. Having said that, I do like the insights that NLP gives us and as a working hypothesis it appears to provide some useful tools for working with people in a variety of contexts. I'm also keen to investigate the application of NLP to learning more closely (keeping in mind of course the warning from Philip Beadle).

Talking of proto-science another really interesting take on all this pseusdo-science is at Bad Science.

Rumsfeld on Knowledge

The departure of Donald Rumsfeld after the recent Republician US election disaster led to the Guardian to review some of his 'insights' - here is my favourite:

"The message is that there are no knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

It's easy to see why KM is so hard to do - especially in the US Department of Defence!

Green Learning

Recently I was at an event going through the business case for e-learning, and comparing a typical classroom event with an online programme and the following thought struck me:

'E-learning is the greenest form of learning'.

No travelling across the country....spending time in jams....pouring more carbon monoxide into the environment. OK I know that this is pretty obvious, but with the recent Stern Report in the UK maybe it's time that we took more notice of the green credentials of e-learning.  We are all becoming more aware of the damage we are doing to our environment and it's time to make our own individual actions count - let's do a little more learning at our desks, or even better at home (so we even cut out the commute).

This ties in nicely with the cool book I bought recently: 'I Count; Your step-by-step guide to climate bliss'. Buy it and help save the planet....(and do some e-learning too).

Links:
Stern Key Points
www.icount.org.uk

IDeA sell LearningPool

Yesterday I was at an e-learning showcase event in deepest darkest Devon ( I am lucky enough to live in this beautiful part of the UK) organised by LearningPool. Until recently LearningPool were the e-learning arm of the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) but they have been cast adrift to make their own way in the world.  I think this is probably good for LearningPool but I'm not sure why IDeA gave up on e-learning (I guess because they never really got it - most of their high value stuff is face-to-face). There is an interesting quote in the press release regarding the sale however:

"The local government sector currently spends in the region of £300 million annually on training and it is estimated that by 2008 over 50 per cent of learning in the UK will be done electronically or on the internet."

That is an optimistic figure...but if it's true then LearningPool and all of us e-learning activists will be extremely busy in 2007!

Links:
IDeA Press Release
LearningPool

Wise Words and Bad Analogies

In the knowledge management field there are often interesting philosophical discussions on the connection between knowledge and wisdom. Most of these are ultimately fruitless but it's helpful to constantly re-evaluate exactly what we mean when we use the term knowledge.  That's why I thought this latest Dilbert cartoon from Scott Adams was brilliant, and sort of neatly ties together a comment on wisdom with the art of storytelling (something that is also big in KM circles).  What's your favourite overused analogy?

e-Learning Masterclass

I attended the e-Learning Network's 'The Whole Show' last week. The single day event was designed to take the participants through the complete online instructional design process from defining learning objectives to actually building an e-learning module. The first half of the day up up until lunchtime each 'team' developed a storyboard for their particular learning programme. Before lunch the designers and developers were briefed and in the following three hours they slaved away in a valiant attempt to turn the storyboard into a working programme.  Each team of developers worked with a different authoring tool - one brave lone developer worked directly in Flash. At the end of the day it was impressive to see how much had been done - but as far as the tools go my vote was with Content Point from Atlantic Link - they had achieved the most in the short amount of time available.

It became clear during the day that there are widely varying opinions on how to go about creating a storyboard framework. There was even less agreement on what tools could be used - most people seemed to be happy with Word. I'm a big fan of PowerPoint (or similar) but the I've used this tool for lots of tasks that require easy control of visuals (everything from mind maps to web site visualisations).  Since then I have been searching for a specialised storyboarding tool but have yet to find anything better than good old PowerPoint.

All in all though a useful and pretty fun day excellently facilitated by  Clive Shepherd (Clive writes a great e-learning blog), Phil Green, Robin Hoyle (ebc),  Howard Hills, and Bryan Hopkins.
 

Information Strategy

Being a consultant, and working with clients on information, knowledge and learning issues  I couldn't resist this Dilbert cartoon on 'information strategy'.

Case Based Reasoning

At one of the Contacivity networking events I paired up with Ben Diamond from the West Midlands fire service - our task was to find each other three interesting contacts from all the people at Contactivity. That was an interesting exercise but I was particularly interested in some of the stuff Ben has been involved with involving decision support systems for mobile workers (actually firefighters like himself). He has been involved with an EU project (AMIRA) which is researching a variety of tools  and combinations of tools to support mobile workers:

"The technical goal of AMIRA is to develop a set of reusable components using search, reasoning, speech dialogue technology and collaborative working techniques that can be used to create a variety of applications for use by mobile workers operating in safety or business critical situations in the field."

Amongst other approaches AMIRA uses case based reasoning to present solutions to critical incidents. This is related to the AI (Artificial Intelligence) and expert system ideas that I came across years ago and all of this stuff is becoming highly relevant to knowledge management as a variety of different technologies mature and converge. I will follow-up case based reasoning is a later article but in the meantime check -out the following:

Link: Case Based Reasoning at Wikipedia
Link: Case Based Reasoning at American Association for Artificial Intelligence
Link: Kaidara Case Based Reasoning Software

The last link is to a French software company that sells case based reasoning software in support of customer service operations (including Comet in the UK). Is this KM in action or just another clever information search tool?

Real Life Knowledge Management Book

It’s not often that you get something for nothing but in this case you really can! ‘Real Life Knowledge Management – Lessons from the Field’ is a collection of 18 knowledge management case studies from across Europe and the Middle East. 

“Real-Life Knowledge Management – Lessons from the Field is about the art and practice of knowledge management in real life settings. Based on the hands-on experiences of the authors’ where knowledge was created and valuable lessons learned, this book provides the context for the sharing of this knowledge through a set of case studies spanning several domains and areas of practice.” 

The book is edited by Abdul Samad Kazi (Sami) and Patricia Wolf and is published by KnowledgeBoard. I was lucky I got a professionally printed paper copy – but you can download the entire book for free. There are some really interesting case studies and the book is beautifully illustrated by Arye and Ron Dvir. Enjoy!

Contactivity 2006

Just spent two interesting days at Contactivity at the University of Greenwich. Contactivity is a sort of fluffy people focused KM event which has grown out of KM Europe (which is considered to be too systems focused). The first Contactivity event ran alongside KCC Europe in Amsterdam last November (see previous entry). It’s supported and promoted by Knowledge Board. It was an unusual event to say the least, with lots of opportunity for participants to contribute to the agenda.

Day 1 was the most structured – I helped facilitate a Cayenne project simulation for over 60 people, we also did some structured networking (Peter Toxler) and witnessed the launch of a new free KM book  (see separate article).

Day 2 was a lot more free-form comprising three do-it-yourself sessions:

Future Forwards and Backwards - This scenario planning tool  is used a constituent of the Cynefin stuff used by Dave Snowden. It's a little confusing initially and we didn't really have time to complete the exercise properly, however I do like the approach and it would be good for a whole range of scenario planning activities (including defining your business strategy).

Open Space - An free-form collaborative experience with built-in agenda setting...the best bit is the principal of 'two feet' which allows you to circulate freely until you find something that interests you.

Knowledge Café - David Gurteen's 'conversations in a cafe style' based loosely on World Cafe.

Taking part in three such events in one day was probably a little ambitious – at times I would have loved to have had a breakout session for a couple of PowerPoint presentations – if only for the visual stimulus! One advantage of such an event is the complete lack of notes one makes – you’re so engaged in discussion you don’t have the opportunity to transfer your own ideas or reflections to paper. However your own notes are partly replaced by the flip charts that each group produces – the plan is to share this as an output online (see links below). The strength of Contactivity apparently is in the conversations and I have to agree that my lasting impression is of a bunch of slightly quirky people (me included) who have a passion for exploring issues in the domain we loosely call KM.

The next Contactivity is in Israel in September – don’t think I’ll be able to make that but I’m keen to do another one closer to home sometime. Not sure if there are any plans to run it alongside KCC Europe this year?

Photo is courtesy of Ed Mitchell at KnowledgeBoard (forgot my own camera) - lots more images at Flickr.

If you took part in Contactivity and you are reading this please leave a comment!

Link: Contactivity 2006 Wiki
Link: KnowledgeBoard Event Write-Up
Link: Contactivity Amsterdam