In April 2016, we visited the Academic Enhancement Center at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. We did a keynote at their Learning and Teaching Colloquium and participated in a series of activities.

The team created a great video report of our visit, including extracts from our keynote and workshops, as well as thematic snippets from a formal interview. (You have to click on “Next page” to see the videos – took us a while to see it!)

You can see this report on their website here.

They set a high bar for the careful editing and presentation of the videos!

Last year we hosted an individual retreat for Jacquie McDonald of Southern Queensland University, Australia. She stayed with us in Grass Valley and we spent ten hours over three days, where “there was a really nice balance between the imagining and then getting down and doing it”.

Jacquie felt she got a lot out of it and we really enjoyed taking a deep dive into specific aspects of her projects, triggering new ideas, helping to consolidate dispersed ones, analyzing texts and situations, and being a critical friend to others.

It got us thinking how much we enjoy the creativity involved in customizing our frameworks and approaches to diverse situations and people. We have now widened our offerings of BEtreats (Bev Etienne retreats) to private and custom ones as well as our regular annual workshop in Grass Valley.

And let us know, if you would like to consider one for yourself or your team.

We are working with Nancy White to do a workshop about our value-creation framework on day 2 of a KM4Dev event in Seattle. Here is more information about the event and a page for registration.

Learning to make a difference: a framework

The value created by learning in communities of practice or networks is not always easy to articulate in ways that make sense to participants, sponsors, and stakeholders. Yet it is something that needs to be done, not only for monitoring and evaluation, but also for optimizing the learning of the community.

We have developed a “value-creation framework” that focuses on how social learning makes a difference in the world via its effect on practice. The framework helps structure convincing accounts of the value of social learning by framing learning in terms of different cycles of value creation and loops between them. It integrates quantitative and qualitative data and can be used by professional evaluators as well as participants.

The framework is relevant through the lifecycle of a community or network. It can be used for articulating aspirations/conditions and risk/mitigation pairs for planning purposes. Closing ongoing value-creation loops between activities and practice then helps members fine-tune their learning as they go. And combining value-creation stories with monitored indicators brings rigor to the process of showing the value to participants and stakeholders. While originally developed for social learning in communities of practice and networks, the framework has been adopted for other contexts where social learning takes place, such as projects, workshops, and conferences.

We will present the framework and then take people through each of its cycles in relation to a project they are working on (or are about to start). It will be a chance to experience the usefulness of thinking of social learning as cycles of value-creation by applying the discipline of the framework to a familiar context.

This might be what you call slow blogging!

BEtreat Slovenia was a first. It was the first time we held a BEtreat workshop in Europe. And it was the first time we did one in an institution – rather than in an informal setting. We were a little apprehensive but the CEF (Centre of Excellence in Finance in Ljubljana, Slovenia) shared everything from their office furniture to their know-how to create a fabulous environment where we could work intensively, but informally and with a lot of fun and camaraderie. Added bonus was the city, Ljubljana. Just visit it, if you haven’t already!

The workshop was a first for some people, but a second, third and even fifth for others! We did it in response to numerous requests for somewhere closer than Grass Valley, California.

If there is enough interest for another in Europe, we’ll do it. Let us know.

In September 2016, I received an honorary PhD from the Open University in the UK. In the photo above, I am standing with OU Professor Mark Fenton-O’Creevy who presented me at the ceremony.

Here is the text of my remarks:

Professor Kelley, distinguished guests, graduates, and friends of the University

It is a great honor to be here with you today to accept this honorary degree; and thank you, Mark, for your good words about my work.

And I am especially honored that this honorary degree is from the Open University, given the vision this university has of its function in the world: its commitment to offer higher education to everyone – and in many cases to teach in connection with practice.

And what a surprise! As Mark mentioned, I am mostly known for my work on social learning theory. I remember participating in an online conference and the organizers had high-school students introduce the speakers. We had a preparatory teleconference with these students and they asked me how one becomes a famous learning theorist. Well, you don’t.

You chug along, taking one step after the next, trying to pursue a question that you find important. For me, it was making sense of how we learn as human beings, given that we are fundamentally social beings. At the time, learning was mainly viewed as putting stuff in your head. But for me it was, how do we make meaning with all that.

And then you happen to do something that is just right for the time. For me it was articulating the concept of a community of practice as the keystone of a learning theory. A community of practice is any group of people who interact and negotiate an area of human competence – a group of engineers in a company, academics in an area of research, or members of a street gang. And from that perspective, you can think about the human world as a complex landscape of a myriad of different and interrelated communities of practice.

Since then, this theory has had an amazing career because it has changed the way people think about learning. Viewed this way, learning is much more than simply the acquisition of information and skills.

Let me give you an example. The age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years. For most people this is a fact. Part of the basic curriculum.

But it is a bit more complicated than that. For instance, in the southern US, there are people who claim that the universe is 6000 years old.

Why do I think that the universe is 13.8 billion years old? I know something about how each community achieves its result. And I choose to be accountable to the products of the astronomers community of practice.

I also choose not to follow my own intuition about this result, which says that it should be a lot more. 13.8 billion is not all that large. It’s about 2 years for every human on earth today. Which is not that much. Much less that the budget of the department of defense.

So according to our learning theory a fact is a lot more complicated than a fact. It is an orientation to a landscape of practice. And there it becomes part of who I am to subscribe to this notion that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.

And I hope this university experience has helped you orient yourself in this complex world. Know who you are, where you are, where you can go, what you can do. What has been put in your head that can be tested in exams, this is stuff you can find by googling. But this perspective on the world, which expands the meaning of who you are, this is something precious that can’t be achieved so easily.

Developing this kind of knowledgeability about our world is really important today – because we have important work to do, to avoid misery in this world, and to avoid a total disaster. Nothing it guaranteed. It is up to us to make sure this human experiment is not a failure. And each of us has to orient ourselves in this complex landscape of practice to figure out how to do our part.

Thank you very much.

Partly out of a sense of drama and partly to make a point I sometimes find myself being dismissive of “collaboration” and “sharing knowledge”.

This is why.

First, social learning is first and foremost about – well – learning. Learning as a social enterprise. Say, write, or even think a word that you assume makes sense to someone else and you are engaging in something social. Coming to a shared understanding of what that word represents (or not) has been a process of social learning. That process hasn’t necessarily been smooth. The word has been contested, hijacked, distorted, re-interpreted, adapted, agreed, and disagreed on. Its shared meaning right now is simply a snapshot of its unfinished journey through social learning.

That’s the same with all artifacts, reifications, and processes that make up social learning in communities of practice. The ride to where they are today has not necessarily been smooth. There may have been some collaboration along the way, but it’s unlikely to be the full story.

What’s more, collaboration can be a euphemism for papering over disagreements and politics. It can be a way to silence voices or disregard issues of power. But disagreements, contestability, and awareness of power are all opportunities to enrich and maximize a community’s learning capability. It’s not necessarily collaboration you want, it’s the maximizing of your learning potential. And doing that requires an artful mix of engaging diverse voices, stimulating people’s imagination to what’s possible, and creating horizontal alignment among them.

What about sharing knowledge, the favorite child of collaboration? Forget it. What happens if you’re in a room (or a discussion forum) and are told to share your knowledge? Nada. But what if you are in a room with someone you can relate to who shares a problem they face? The chances are you will jump in to help – with stories of what you did in similar circumstances, what worked, and what didn’t.

We meet lots of community organizers losing sleep over the question of how to get people to share knowledge. If it’s going to keep you up at night, a more fruitful question is how to help frame an inquiry about what is not known. What is an issue facing a member that most people will relate to? How do you get them to tell a story about it in a way that invites a response? What kind of activity will deepen the inquiry – a debate? case clinic? role play? And how will you track and share how this leads that person to change how they “do business” and what happens as a result?

Framing the inquiry means tuning into the learning imperative (i.e. what we don’t yet know), doing ground work (who else shares this problem and what are the different perspectives that would be useful to bear on this?), designing a meaningful activity (one that will help push the inquiry), and keeping a record of the learning as it flows into practice and has an effect on the world (and feeding this back to the community).

So if you hear someone ask me about collaboration and knowledge sharing, be warned. I might just say boo!

Is this one more description of leadership? Or are we onto something here? Is there a new type of leadership for the 21st century?

Where are the people with the imagination to deal with the unknown, able to engage people across historic and often immutable boundaries, and with the savvy to align existing structures with new and emerging ones? Who are the people who can make a difference by fostering social learning in today’s increasingly complex and uncertain environment?

At this year’s BEtreat workshops we focused more than usual on this kind of leadership. It seemed to resonate.

In our work we have observed many people taking up social learning leadership. One key observation is that they display seemingly contradictory characteristics. To engage BEtreaters in reflections on their leadership, we have put our observations on this diagram. Its axes represent what looks like paradoxes. We’ve noticed that good social learning leaders (or leadership teams) embody both ends of each axis. They manage to live with the tension; they embody the paradox. By rating themselves on each axis, participants were able to see the shape of their profile as social learning leaders, and even to think about who else should be on their team.

For us this is a work in progress, so don’t be surprised if it looks different when we next see you. And whether it resonates or you have suggestions or a different experience, we’d be glad to hear from you.

A range of feelings as we finish two BEtreat workshops for social learning leaders at our house in California: excitement at the potential, sadness at seeing old and new friends leave, and relief that we can now put our feet up.

There is always a moment when face-to-face folk wave good-bye to those participating online. The feeling on both sides is one of friends parting. What is it that gets us to that moment?

We’ve written before about our experience of blending online and face-to-face (here and here) but I thought I’d revisit the topic with our ongoing learning about what works for us – and what we could do better.

(Main photo is a screenshot from an online participant)

The tech set-up

Wiki
As usual, we have a wiki for our online home. It’s the first meeting place for online and face-to-face folk.  We share the program and resources and each participant has their own page for reflections and for sharing the project they are working on. We start using the wiki before people arrive – for personal introductions, signing up to a leadership group, and sharing travel logistics.  Everyone is invited to connect on Skype and have each other’s contact information before the workshop begins. This makes it quicker to connect in small groups during different activities.

Devices
There were a number of innovations this year. We got rid of the big screen where we used Adobe Connect to project slides along with the online participants. A screen sends the energy to the wall rather than keeping it in the group space. This year slides were on the wiki, which people accessed on their own device. It’s easier these days because a) “everyone” has a device and b) devices and portable computers take up considerably less space than they used to, so the table doesn’t feel crammed.  Our concern that people would then have their nose in their device rather than with the group did not happen. People are so used to having their own device at meetings that it felt very natural and did not detract from conversations.

Skype
We used to use Adobe Connect for visuals and Skype for sound. But without the need to project slides, we only used Skype for the synchronous discussions. The sound and image quality in Skype is so much better. And combining Adobe and Skype occupies too much bandwidth for people who don’t have great connectivity.

Displays
Instead of the big screen, we had a high-resolution Apple Thunderbolt display for the online folks in the room. It made us feel like they were sitting with us around the table.  As before, we also connected into the Skype conversations with a phone attached to a selfie-stick so that there were close-ups of the person talking.

WhatsApp
Another innovation this year is that we used WhatsApp for side conversations rather that the chat function of Adobe or Skype. This worked really well for keeping up a social conversation that included everyone – face-to-face and online folks. And the conversation could continue on any device, whether we were on Skype or not.

 

Tech notes: The sound quality from our MXL AC404 USB conference microphone (price $83.99) is excellent, better than ones we’ve used before. (Aside: it’s also light and compact so ideal for traveling). We still use the Logitech C930e laptop webcam (price $104.28) with its wide-angle view.

Some practices

Here are some of the things we do that people have said work:

Gather first
We start at 8:00 a.m. with breakfast and coffee. Online folk are brought in on a device and join the breakfast conversation. I don’t think it would generate the same buzz if we got down straight away to work at the table.

Buddy up
Everyone has a turn at being a buddy with an online person. They become the eyes and ears for them in the room and make sure they don’t get left behind. There is something about caring for someone that creates quite a bond.

Switch leading
Everyone has a chance to lead a session, which means we get some people leading from a face-to-face position and some from an online position. It’s a good switch of modes. We even had one session where Etienne ended up participating online (even though he was just sitting in another room). That also helped to equalize the conversation.

Extend your “home
Every artifact that is created during the workshop goes in the wiki. It’s as if the wiki was an extension of the physical building – or the physical building is an extension of the wiki. Not only does this make everything (except food and drink) accessible, it also helps us create a good record of each workshops.

What doesn’t work

Too many people talking at once
Face-to-face folk can sit round a table and have multiple conversations going in parallel. It simply doesn’t work if you are online. Everything is going through the same microphone and it’s a noisy garbled mess.

No buddy
Sometimes we forget to assign or remind a buddy and an online person gets left on a table waiting … That doesn’t work!

Busy busy
If you participate face-to-face you tend to seal off the four days for a workshop. But if you are participating online it can be tempting to try and squeeze in some meetings. We tell people that this is a four-day experience, whether you are online or face-to-face. It’s an immersive experience and not one you can dip in and out of. You need to be locked away from your family and work colleagues.

Why participate online?

Practical reasons
People participate online for a number of reasons, including travel costs to California, visa issues to the U.S., needing to be somewhere etc.

Pacing yourself
But there are people who prefer the online experience. We’ve heard a similar line from several people who have participated in both face-to-face and online mode. They say that online participation is better for reflection. They find the face-to-face version intense and with competing calls to your attention. For example, at breaks you are drawn into yet more interesting conversations with people you want to hear from. But if you are online it’s easier to gather your thoughts, reflect, and work at your own pace.

Online charisma
We have also noticed that the people who prefer online often perform better when they are online. They have a charismatic online persona and can hold the group’s attention in ways that weren’t so noticeable in face-to-face interactions. It is a curious observation.

What we need to get better at

Leveraging online presence
What are the advantages that an online person has over a face-to-face person in a small group activity? Our activities tend to assume that an online person has to be “brought in”, but what about “flip” activities where online folks have the advantage and bring in the face-to-face folks.

Exploring vulnerability
Participating online in a face-to-face has some similarities to being in a wheelchair. People can talk over your head, or as if you weren’t there. You are dependent on someone “carrying you” (on a device) to join a conversation. You are at the mercy, to some extent, of someone who is participating face-to-face. Feeling vulnerable is an important dimension of learning. How can we turn this online experience of vulnerability by an online participant into a learning opportunity for all?

 

Is anyone else out there exploring the boundaries of blending online and face-to-face (with a budget of your average community)?

Yet again I have a client – of 5 years – who has made the technology a centre-piece of their strategy.

I cry.

It’s a technology that I suggested and helped to create. But I seem powerless to convince them that the proportion of resources they are investing in technology as opposed to building the learning network are a waste of everyone’s time.

Technology and community building are not the same thing. I get it. Funding can be easier for tech. Tech is sexy or mysterious – depending on your relationship with it. Organizations understand $$ for tech.

But it won’t build you a network. Building a network requires social artistry, persistence, understanding the community, knowledge of the domain, attention to practices, conversations, more conversations, and concern for creating value.

If your only qualifications are being a tech whizz, you are not cut out for the job.

If training people on how to use a simple technology takes up a hundred per cent of your attention, you are on the wrong track. If it takes up less than five percent of your time – in response to requests by network members – you are probably getting close.

It’s community building 101. And I have to watch as my.own.client repeats the same.old.mistake.

I cry.