Learning in the Corporate World

The Context

I have been stewing for a while over how to apply the use of mLearning and web2.0 in developing our staff at the university. This development context is not a teaching and learning one – that is the realm of another area of the university. The challenges I face are those of developing some 2000 staff in the areas of compliance, quality, core management systems, leadership development and soft skills such as communication, emotional intelligence, conflict management just to mention a few broad areas. I attended the mLearn 2007 conference 2 weeks ago, and this allowed me the time and reflection to pull together a number of ideas that have been solidifying in my head for a while.

The Strategic Imperative

We had a change of Vice-Chancellor 18 months ago at work. With that has come a change of direction, new strategic plan and a new ethos for going about our business at the university. While exemplary customer service has always been a hallmark of operation at ECU (embedded into the brand), the V-C has ramped this up to the point of being almost the driver behind all operations – keeping in mind students as the end point.

We have run a number of customer service offerings over the years, but all have been in a traditional face-to-face format. I have chosen to use customer service training as a pilot/case study for a more blended approach.

The Pedagogy (or Heutagogy?)

Kolb’s experiential learning theory

I intend to model the approach to this learning initiative with Kolb’s model of experiential learning. The model works like this:

1. You have a concrete experience e.g. a customer service experience goes a bit pear shaped
2. You observe the outcomes of that experience e.g. dissatisfied customer, complaints, you are upset etc
3. You reflect about the different/alternative ways in which that experience could have been handled e.g. more empathy, not have a defensive response to the situation
4. Apply the alternative ways next time a similar opportunity arises –> cycle starts again

The Model

Shifting towards a learning organisation

The concept of a learning organisation is really well defined in this paper. I found that it to be a fantastic application of a theory into reality in an Australian organisation.

There are 8 basic elements to a learning organisation – my university seems to be making shifts towards a number of these elements. The one that I find really interesting and relevant to my job context is that of the Staff Characteristics. In a learning organisation, people learn and it is understood that mistakes as part of the learning process are understood. This concept is implicit in the use of Kolb’s experiential learning theory for developing the capacity of our staff.

Engaging the line managers

It is critical that Line Managers are as involved in the process as the participants. They will need to understand that line staff will need to have maybe 30 minutes on a daily basis to blog and reflect upon the days experiences.

Learning styles

An initial f2f workshop will be run, where staff can go through a variety of instruments such as the VARK, Honey & Mumfords LSQ, and the ILS to name a few. Discussion will then be facilitated around the implications of participants learning styles and their learning in the workplace. What does this look like? Potential challenges on the project? Possibly set up a buddy support system?

Blogging

The perfect way to manage this experiential learning is through the process of blogging. Ideally I will have a number of staff from representative areas across the university participating in this pilot program. will be encouraged to reflect on all aspects of customer service as they encounter it in their lives, not just in their work context. Depending on the level of engagement, technical expertise I may even encourage some mobile logging for experiences/reflections that want to be captured on the fly.

Ning – A community of practice

I intend to pull participants together via the use of Ning (unless I find something better – maybe Vox?) This will allow staff to blog and share their reflections/learnings together. Ning will also be used as a resource repository for adding information on contemporary customer service practice, organisational customer service practice and anything else that participants feel is relevant.

Virtual Classroom – Elluminate

The use of Elluminate, currently on trial at the university will allow me to have any ‘workshops’ or ‘touching base’ sessions as required. A particularly attractive scenario as participants will be pulled from 4 campuses (3 metropolitan) and 1 regional.

Podcasting

Still trying to decide is there is any value in developing simple podcasting skills in the cohort. This may depend on the learning style preferences. Reflective learning via audio may be preferable for some staff. Will discuss this with participants maybe deeper into the program to ascertain the value.

The Evaluation

Kirkpatrick Level 3

As this is not your typical f2f lockstep development scenario, the old happy tick and flick sheet is obviously not applicable. It is possibly best ‘measured’ through a Level 3 Kirkpatrick evaluation, where by the line managers are used as measure of behavioural change in the workplace. Ideally I see this program being run over approximately 6 months to allow any deeper learning to occur and behavioural change to take place. A harder model of evaluation that will require a greater proportion of my time, however it will give a richer picture of what is actually occurring.

I intend to collect a lot of data from this pilot and write a paper and have it published in some form of educational technologies journal.

To this stage I have found it difficult to collect any form of information about the actual application of these kinds of learning technologies for staff, in any other context than teaching and learning. There will obviously need to be development around the use of the tools and technologies, but that is just a means to an end and is not the actual pedagogical approach to this scenario.

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