Communities of Practice

Earlier in the week I participated in a mid-year workshop for Communities of Practice supported by Reframing the Future. It was a day of strong reflection about how the projects are progressing and one of the topics I found very rich was the translation of the concept of practice into a diagram. As the elements of a community of practice are described separately but in reality intertwine, pulling apart the notion of practice helped me see where we can really move forward. Another section was the discussion about the balance between organis ... read more

Etienne Wenger on Learning and Communities of Practice

link to website
From Knowledge Lab, Denmark, comes some streaming video interviews and a lecture by Etienne Wenger on learning, social learning theory, communities of practice and developing competence. Click on the topics listed on the page to view the video.

Etienne Wenger on Learning and Communities of Practice

link to website
From Knowledge Lab, Denmark, comes some streaming video interviews and a lecture by Etienne Wenger on learning, social learning theory, communities of practice and developing competence. Click on the topics listed on the page to view the video.

Mentoring and Coaching

OMN: Mentoring and Coaching Resources

from the edna groups - is a wiki on this topic

Dave Pollard on Dave Snowden

link to website

Dave Pollard "...began to realize that appreciating enterprises, organizations and systems as (mostly) complex rather than merely complicated is more than just a basis for re-framing business methodologies, it is a completely different way of sensing and dealing with the world. It changes everything. Here are just a few of the extraordinary paradigm shifts that this reframing provokes:

Complicated World VS
Complex World

KM in Organisations

link to website
Dave Pollard provides a summary of a presentation about organisational knowledge management in a FAQ format.

Dave Snowden - Social Complexity

link to pdf

I came across Dave Snowden at a session about education.au where his thoughts on social complexity were flagged of being of interest. Since then I have noticed his work being referred to in a couple of the business/innovation/knowledge management blogs I read on a regular basis. So this is the start of a collection of links that I will then be able to sit down with and trawl through properly.

... read more

Storytelling: Passport to the 21st Century

link to website

A website from 2003 that includes many presentations gathered under headins such as Values, Future Stories, Springboard Stories from a group of experts in the field.

Book about Mentoring

eBooks.com - The Mentor's Guide eBook

The Mentor's Guide
By: Zachary, Lois J.
Published By: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Attributes of a Tech Facilitator

link to website
"The Five Essentials of Technology Facilitators: Successful On-Site Help for Technology Integration

By Cheryl Whitfield

Many school administrators ask themselves the question, "What can I do to help my teachers integrate technology into their daily lesson plans?" Hiring the right person to assist and support the teachers is a step ... read more

Shifting Mindsets

This report by Roger Harris, Michele Simons, Berwyn Clayton is available online from NCVER.

Reading this report, many of the challenges felt familiar to comments I have heard in the VET sector. The challenges foreseen by VET practitioners who were interviewed haven't changed dramatically, but the importance of them in the 'urgency' scales has shifted. Predictions about the role of the VET practitioner in 1995 by Lepani (p12) sounded very familiar - talk of facilitation, consultant to enterprises and assessment specialists ... read more

Storytelling

From Steve Denning's website at http://www.stevedenning.com I downloaded the first chapter of an upcoming book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (pdf file ).

Having recently been in planning meetings and an initital meeting of a Community of Practice at which the need for 'new' stories was discussed, re-reading this today was timely. Denning highlights the needs for different types of stories to suit different purposes. The Springboard book mainly focusses on stories ... read more

Large Scale Change Issues

link link to website
Quote from Fullan "The answer to large-scale reform is not to try to emulate the characteristics of the minority who are getting somewhere under present condition. Rather, we must change existing conditions so that it is normal and possible for a majority of people to move forward" (Fullan, 2001, p268)
Comment by Stephen Marshall:
"I think we're so distracted by the impressive work of early adopters and the potential of new t ... read more

Creative Solutions, Critical Skills

link to website

from Dave Pollard
People change slowly. They change because they have to, more often than because they want to. And they change their behaviours before they change their beliefs.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in business. And most large organizations have a large number of people, and so, like oil tankers, they change direction the slowest of all, and are the least agile and manoeuvrable.

Master Task Lists

Working Smart: The Master Task List

The purpose of developing a Master Task List is to enable you to focus more easily on those activities that really add value to your department, your division, and your company.

Knowledge Management

linkt to website

5 key KM concepts as chosen by Denham Grey are:
Tacit Knowledge
Corporate memory
Expertise Directory
Ontologies
Personal Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Ilink to website

I Heard it through the Grapevine:
Making knowledge management work by learning to share knowledge, skills and experience

by Peter Cook

Abstract

This article explores the challenge of getting people to willingly share knowledge skills and experience, so that their organisations may gain leverage their collective intelligence. It does so by addressing links between knowledge management and organisational learning to increase the speed ... read more

Public Participation

link to website

This brief article about public participation comes to the conclusion that "it may just be that participation is peripheral to the way most people lead their lives. They/we are mostly concerned with relationships - with friends, family, workmates, interest groups and so on. Public officials, politicans and their facilitator helpers are at the edge of vision, unless there is a big threat or opportunity..... ne ... read more

The Adoption, Diffusion and Exploitation of eLearning in Europe

link to pdf

Distributed KM - Improving Knowledge Workers' Productivity and Organisational Knowledge

link to website

"Improving the productivity of knowledge workers is one of the most important challenges for companies that face the transition from the industrial economy to an economy based on information and knowledge (Drucker, 1999). However, most "knowledge management" efforts have failed to address this problem and focus ... read more

10 Principles of Change Management

link to website (print friendly version)

10 Principles of Change Management
By John Jones, DeAnne Aguirre, and Matthew Calderone

Tools and techniques to help companies transform quickly.

Broadband: A Solution for Rural e-Learning?

link to website
Robin Mason
The Open University, UK

Frank Rennie
University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute, Lews Castle College, UK
The study focuses on the potential adoption of wireless broadband in the Western Isles of Scotland, and provides a community perspective with local facilitation and training.

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
(April - 2004)
ISSN: 1492-3831
Broadband: A Solution for Rural e-Learning?

Abstract
Rural and remote learners are disadvantaged even with online provision due to poor connections. Broadband offers a potential solution. This paper looks at the initial results of a project to install broadband services in the Western Isles of Scotland. It focuses on the educational potential of broadband and the design implications for online courses. It also considers more informal kinds of learning that broadband facilitates in rural areas.

Deakin's Approach to Online

link to website

A1. Basic Online ( For all units: to be implemented by January 2004)

Each unit offered by Deakin will have:
A Deakin Studies online (DSO) site established;
The DSO site will include, where appropriate and feasible and where they exist, the Unit Guide, a ‘resources area’ where an electronic version of the Readings (whe ... read more

Best Practices and Case Studies: Be Very Afraid

Best Practices and Case Studies: Be Very Afraid

by Allen Weiss
Questions to ask about case studies and best practice examples when applying ideas to own situation.

"Do I have the same type of customers? The subject of the case study or best practice might have a very loyal group of customers, or price-insensitive customers. But do you? These customers might be in totally different industries, or have different backgrounds, that make them more ... read more

Trust and the Virtual Organisation

link to website

by Charles Handy

Excerpt "It is easy to be seduced by the technological possibilities of the virtual organization, but the managerial and personal implications may cause us to rethink what we mean by an organization.

At its simplest, the managerial dilemma comes down to the question, How do you manage people whom you do not see! The simple answer is, By trusting them, but the apparent simplicity disguises a turnaround in organiza ... read more

FlexiTrain teacher flyer

word document here

This document is a flyer for promoting the FlexiTrain centres to teachers.

The good practice database

Good practice database

FERL | UK
The good practice database contains examples of good practice found during the inspection of providers by Adult Learning Inspectorate inspection teams. Entries have media clips and links to organisations as well as how they did it type practical information.

The changing role of staff development for teachers and trainers in vocational education and training

link to pdf file part a

link to pdf file part b

by by Roger Harris; Michele Simons; Doug Hill; Erica Smith; Ron Pearce; John Blakeley; Sarojni Choy; David Snewin

Executive summary
"This study explored the changing role of staff development for vocational education and training (VET) teachers and trainers in Australian public and private registered training organisations. Substantial reforms in the VET sector over the ... read more

Communication - Coffee

link to full article

"...The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialised in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets ... read more

Shaping our Future 2004-2010

link to pdf file

"Shaping Our Future is government and industry's collective strategy to ensure: industry will have a highly skilled workforce to support strong performance in the global economy; employers and individuals will be at the centre of VET; communities and regions will be strengthened economically and socially through learning and employment; and that Indigenous Australians will have skills for viable jobs and their learning culture will be shared. "

The agile organisation: Case studies of the impact of flexible delivery on human resource practices in TAFE

link to pdf file

By Phoebe Palmieri

"This project set out to determine how practices have or need to be changed to accommodate
flexible delivery and the changing roles and patterns of work that are entailed for technical and further education (TAFE) staff. Key messages to emerge relate to organisational culture, job design, workload and performance management, professional development and planning of the workforce. "

Effective Change Management in Higher Education

link here

"Argues for flexible learning and online learning as solutions to the current challenges facing higher education...and then provides a comprehensive discourse on change management. "

Communities of Practice in Pictures!

Site Map

CoP Theory Overview
cute diagrams etc that pull COP theory apart. Good base level intro

KM and weblogs within organisations

52 page pdf file
Michael Angeles
Today I’m going to talk about weblogs inside my company, their use in knowledge management, and how my organization is hoping to make them
usable for enterprise knowledge work if the number of blogs in the company increases significantly.
I’ll talk briefly about our company and the types of people involved in various forms of web publishing on the intranet. Then I’ll look more closely at what we might develop information systems

Mapping tacit knowledge

link

Knowledge is paradoxical, the more we seek it, the more escapes us, the more we contain it the more it evaporates, the more we render it sophisticated, the more it simplifies itself. It's study returns us to the question of our own awareness. Baumard, 2000 (p111)
Questions to ask!
What hinders knowledge flows?
* What constraints are placed on experimentation, investigation, diffusion and reception within the group, firm and industry?.
... read more

Promises and pitfalls of technologies in learning

martymoodle: The more things change ........Promises and pitfalls of technologies in learning
Marty Cielens
A brief look at the promises of technologies in learning, and how speed humps and moonlight can help us share the forest with the technobabbling wild things.

Diffusion of Innovation

link
by Roger Clarke about EM Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Theory.

"A broad social psychological / sociological theory called Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) Theory purports to describe the patterns of adoption, explain the mechanism, and assist in predicting whether and how a new invention will be successful. It is expressed in Rogers E.M. 'Diffusion of Innovations' The Free Press, New York, originally published in 1962, 3rd Edition 1983.
The the ... read more

Organisation Entry into e-learning

NAWeb 03

So - the proposal: a multidisciplinary educational simulation archive. This would be a library of simulatioins built by a consortium of universities. They would have a common API. And they would be designed to be inserted into Word documents and other text processors. Faculty know email, they know browsers, and maybe they know Word - and that's it - we should not expect them to learn anything else.

We can and should build custom Rolls Royces. But we need a w ... read more

High Tech and High Touch

Sloan-C

Dr. Joan D. McMahon
Towson University, MD
Dr. Neil Davidson
University of Maryland, College Park, MD

"I could never teach online," Neil said. "I like being able to reach my students individually."

"I feel I can reach them and connect with them online just as well or better than F2F," I retorted.

Our conflicting views launched a brainstorm comparing how we "touch" our students F2F and how we can online. We hope the workshop we developed as a result of our continuing conversation is useful to you and your ... read more

Approaches to Change Management for Flexible Learning

This Guide looks at current research on change management and describes some of
the tools and models that have been developed to assist the management of change toward flexible delivery and use of online technology in vocational education and training in Australia. It focuses particularly on approaches adopted and tools developed within the Australian Flexible Learning Framework and key research conducted within VET.

The size and scope of the ‘change’ being managed can be anything from a national
fra ... read more

Deakin Uni Approach

Down the line from Deakin - smh.com.au

By Eric Wilson, Sydney Morning Herald
October 7, 2003

"The impressive thing about Deakin is its online curriculum push is not just driven by academic enthusiasts at the departmental level but through official policy. In 2000, the university decided the incorporation of e-learning components should be compulsory in all awards. Yet no course would be conducted entirely through e-learning, other than in exceptiona ... read more

Ideas as Corridors

link

October 6, 2003
George Siemens
Summary
Our reality is shaped by the ideas we hold. A model of ideas as corridors (larger structure of ideas which determins the nature of subsets of ideas) is presented. The article explores how ideas are developed, how they are challenged, and the implications in an educational and knowledge sharing context.

Mapping Tacit Knowledge

Knowledge-at-work: Mapping tacit

Summary
Mapping tacit knowledge is a paradox of sorts, it requires immersion in the workplace, raising actor awareness, careful observation, team validation and attention to subtle investigator bias and subversion. Many KM tools claim to map tacit knowledge but it seems this is one task that will always require human skills, intution and inventiveness.

e-learning: emerging issues and key trends

link

Dr John Eklund, Margaret Kay, Helen M. Lynch

Abstract
The purpose of this short paper is to provide a view of the state of e-learning, issues and implications for the use of technology mediated and delivered instruction in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in particular.
The paper was developed in a short time frame to inform the planning cycle for initiatives within the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) in June 2003. It aims to inte ... read more

Flexible Learning Statement

WestCoast College of TAFE
“The Flexible Learning option allows students:

· Flexibility to learn at your own pace, either on Campus or at home.
· Ability to enrol at any time of the year.
· Freedom to choose when you want to be assessed.
· Extended open hours.
· Support services including career information and program advising.
· Recognition of prior learning (exemptions from subjects if you can already demonstrate the knowledge and skills required in those subjects).
· Enrolment in the K ... read more

Jill Jameison FLL 2002

Jill's final report

Based at Challenger TAFE in WA, Jill's FLL program focussed on 3 questions:
Question 1: What are the features of a vocational learning environment that will develop the attitudes, values, skills and knowledge required,
currently and in the future, by learners to successfully engage in work or the community?

Question 2:What new skills and knowledge are required by VET teaching practioners to meet the needs of learners? Wha ... read more

Online Community Toolkit

Online Community Toolkit

Last edited 3/03
Thinking about building or hosting an online community? Looking for specific tips, tools and ideas? Start here. The following is a collection of articles that may help inform your work.

TAFE frontiers field guide to knowledge management

link

* updated link March 2005.

Flexible Learning RTOs: Organisational Change and Professional Development - a strategic alliance

Link
Associate Professor John Henry
Research Institute for Professional and Vocational Education & Training
Deakin University

"This paper draws on recent research and evaluation work undertaken by Associate Professor John Henry and colleagues at the Research Institute for Professional and Education & Training (RIPVET) exploring the concept of Registered Training Organisation (RTO) preparedness for flexible learning, and the dynamics between strategic change management at the o ... read more

Educational Leadership Learning Network

ELLnet - the vision

Ellnet is a collaborative e-learning initiative designed to promote leadership learning within the education sector. Partnering educational organizations and academic institutions will create micro-modules addressing specific areas of expertise and leadership competencies. Educational leaders from all facets of the education sector will access ELLnet for their professional growth and learning.