Author: Admin

Does the hero-worship approach to building an audience on the internet work like a ponzi scheme? Those at the top of the pyramid, who are really well known, get attention from those lower down, and those lower down try to get attention from those even lower down by showing connection to those higher up. Getting attention from someone further up the pyramid results in a boost in audience and rises that person up a level on the pyramid.

Invest in getting someone higher up’s attention and get paid in attention from those lower down.

I started (another) email newsletter as a means of exploring ideas and with the idea that the ‘idea’ is the fundamental unit of value for all communication, art, work, etc., etc. Ideas cross-pollinate, clash, and grow over time. I want to use the newsletter as a way of sharing some of the ideas I pick up as I read all the random things that I do.

As the office/hybrid/remote work debate rages, the online education renaissance quietly tries to figure itself out.

Everyone, from individual creators to universities to massive corporations are looking at online learning as a way to connect with a like-minded audience and increase revenue.

Interchangeable terms for online learning

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, in a systematic review of the terms used to describe online learning, points out how interchangeably we use the different terms and offered some definitions for “distance learning”, “e-learning”, “online learning”, and “virtual learning”. She explains each term by associating it to where and how the learning process happens. So, distance learning is about location, e-learning is about device, online learning is about delivery, and virtual learning is about communication. This way of looking at the definitions separates them, but Le Cunff does mention the mixing of onsite lectures and online activities to create a blended learning approach.

Dimensions of blended learning

And a while ago, some colleagues and I did some work into defining the different dimensions of ‘blended learning’. We came up with 6:

1. Delivery – Live vs. self-serve.
2. Medium – Virtual vs. in-person.
3. Availability – Wide vs. narrow.
4. Pastoral support – Team vs. partner.
5. Platform – Owned vs. third-party.
6. Content – Owned vs. partner content.

We use these dimensions to design blended learning experiences that best achieve the outcomes of the learners balanced with a pragmatic viability. So, for example, one aspect of a course could be live, virtual, tailored to a particular audience, with support provided by our colleagues, on a platform we built, using content provided by a partner. And another part of the course could be the same except for the content dimension is changed to use content we’ve created. The number of variations offers lots of flexibility for creating learning experiences and comes from the recognition that a ‘one size fits all’ approach actually means it’s unlikely to fit anyone.

What the two models have in common is the means of delivering communication. Le Cunff calls it synchronous/asynchronous and we call it live/self-serve, but essentially we’re talking about the same thing: are the teacher and the learner present at the same time. This is question for lots of course creators. Pre-recorded video courses don’t rely on the presence of the teacher and so can be available at a time that suits the learner and scale in a way that live teaching can’t. Live video sessions create social connection between teacher and learner and offer the opportunity for the learner to ask questions in real-time and so perhaps achieve a higher quality learning experience.

What type of knowledge gets transferred

The decided between these formats is in the nature of what is being taught. Back in the fifties and sixties, Michael Polyani talked about the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit, or implicit, knowledge is the things we know but can’t explain. It’s knowledge that can’t be formalised or codified to be written down. Explicit knowledge can be codified, and so transferred between people via means like pre-recorded videos quite easily. Even the medium of live video sessions struggle to convey tacit knowledge but if done well, with discussion for fast feedback, live video lessons can effectively provide the foundations for later experiential learning where tacit knowledge is built.

The difference between explicit and tacit knowledge transfer is the difference between teaching someone to fix a bike or ride a bike. How to fix a bike can be written down as a set of instructions, whereas how to ride a bike can only be taught through offering suggestions and guidance and changing that feedback based on the experience of the learner. Problems occur when there is confusion about the subject and content of the lesson, and the medium and method it is taught. Using pre-recorded videos, for example, to teach someone how to ride a bike is unlikely to reach successful outcomes for the learner. And not through any fault of their own, but because they are trying to gain tacit knowledge via explicit knowledge transfer. Getting these aligned is essential for effective online education.

The learner’s approaching to learning

Pedagogy is the method and practice of teaching, of conveying information, transmitting learning content. It’s the dominant practice in the majority of educational establishments across the world. Most of the people providing online learning, by whatever means, and whether they know it or not, are using a pedagogical approach. They have the knowledge, and their intention is to convey that knowledge to the learners. But that doesn’t mean it’s what the learner wants.

In contrast to pedagogy is andragogy, a term used to explain the differences in how adults learn compared to children. An andragogical approach to education recognises that learners have experiences that can provide useful learning content, that they want to learn things that are applicable rather than merely for the sake of learning, and that they should be self-directed in achieving their learning outcomes.

Thinking about the difference between the two approaches, it may be less useful to think of them less as what works for children and what works for adults, and more about how learners approach learning. A pedagogical approach can work well where learners don’t know what they need to learn. In order to achieve some educational outcomes they rely on an expert to define the curriculum, choose the content, and deliver it in a way that helps them engage. An andragogical approach might work better where learners have some experience of the topic and want to participate in defining what and how they learn.

Understanding the application of these different methods and practices is important for the online learning creator seeking to engage with their learners in the most appropriate and relevant way. Teaching a new technique to a group of experienced experts is going to require a very different approach to teaching an established body of knowledge to those completely unfamiliar with it.

So, when is the renaissance?

Perhaps calling this a renaissance might be over-cooking it, but the online learning space still has a great deal to think about and figure out to avoid a ‘lift and shift’ approach of just taking how education works offline and trying to make it work the same way online, it’s important to question many of the concepts and assumptions our understanding of education is built upon.

You can’t reduce complexity. All you can do is choose where to manage it.

Amazon makes buying online easier for the customers, but they haven’t removed the complexity of doing so, they’ve just hidden it from the customer. Buying online is more complex today than its ever been, and it’ll never be this simple again.

All systems tend toward chaos. As systems evolve they become increasingly complex. We’d do well to remember this when we talk of making easier in one part of a system and what effect it has on other parts of the system.

The argument against Myers-Briggs personality tests is that they aren’t based on scientific evidence and so shouldn’t be used for any kind of decision-making that requires a rational basis. Deciding someone’s suitability for a job, for example, based on their Myers-Briggs Type Indicator isn’t rational and so isn’t fair to all candidates.

The same applies to ideas like creative people are right brain dominant and analytical people use their left brain more, or that people have different learning styles. They have no scientific basis and if used as if they did, could be misleading and unhelpful at best and harmful at worst.

But the point isn’t whether these things are empirically verifiable, the point is whether they have anything interesting to contribute to how we understand ourselves and relate to each other. To suggest that personality tests have nothing to contribute to discussions about people and their preferences would be like saying that poetry has nothing to contribute to our understanding about love. As with many things, it isn’t the thing itself that is at fault but how we misuse the thing.

Should we actually want to understand personality better, we could look at the current scientific thinking around the ‘big five traits‘ and the two meta-traits of stability and plasticity. This research essentially shows that personalities change over time and are due to genetic and environmental factors, and that stability is associated with protective behaviours and plasticity is connected with exploratory behaviours. Put simply, we can say that our personalities at any given time are the result of the interplay of those two motivations; to feel safe and to explore.

So what should we do with personality tests? Consider them fun conversation starters, by all means, use them as team-building exercises, like building spaghetti towers, to prompt discussion about our preferences, but not descriptive of anyone’s fixed personality.

The roadmap isn’t the roadmap. The roadmap is the thinking behind the roadmap.

The artifact that we call ‘the roadmap’ has limited value. It can serve as a confidence-building and communication tool within organisations that recognise the usefulness of a roadmap, but in those that don’t it isn’t worth the PowerPoint it’s pasted into.

The thinking that creates the roadmap, however, that’s very valuable.

Lots of roadmaps don’t contain much thinking. They contain a diagram with boxes that aim to show a relationship between items, but not much rationale for those relationships. These roadmaps are best avoided.

The best roadmaps are those that encapsulate lots of thinking from lots of people.

The thinking is cross-functional, robustly rational, systemised and repeatable, asks and answers specific, relevant questions and format independent.

So, if you want to create good roadmaps, focus on the thinking. Get the system of thinking right, and a good roadmap will follow.

I’m not interested in strategy. Strategy is boring. There are decades worth of thinking from some of the best minds and still we don’t know how to achieve things in a coordinated fashion through top-down command and control.

Stigmergy. Now that’s interesting. Stigmergy is how ant’s nest coordinate collecting food without any means of hierarchical communication. It’s how flocks of starlings fly fast and close without crashing into each other. Stigmergy relies on few simple patterns of behaviour with changes in those behaviours communicated through signals from and to everyone.

If one starling spots a hawk and thinks the flock should fly away from it, that starling doesn’t send a message to a single leader starling who then makes a decision which is communicated through defined chains of command and communication channels. If that was how starlings did it, the one that spotted the hawk would be the hawk’s lunch while waiting for that instruction to change direction. Instead, the starling turns to fly away from the hawk but still follows the rule of not crashing into any other starling. Other nearby starlings see that starling getting too close and so change direction also. And so the change ripples through the flock and they all avoid the hawk. They each detected the signal and followed simple rules in deciding how to respond to it.

Perhaps social media provides an example of how we humans detect signals from across our complex and interconnected ecosystem. But there are three problems with using social media in this way. Firstly, signals are not treated equally. The algorithms that drive these systems are designed to maximise engagement which almost always means showcasing negative signals and downplaying positive signals. Secondly, human behaviour, although predictable, doesn’t follow simple patterns. And thirdly, because of our history of relying on the idea of strategy, the typical human response is to look to the centralised leadership for solutions and directions. So maybe that’s too big an arena for thinking about how people might use stigmergy effectively.

But I struggle to find an example of where humans have come even close to implementing stigmergy within a smaller defined group such as a business or community organisation. Even in small groups, the implicit agreement about how the group decides on actions for everyone is for someone in the group to detect the signal that prompts the need for change, communicate that to the group, the group decides as a whole on what action should be taken, and then the action is implemented. Even the smallest, and so presumably most able to communicate quickly and respond to change, groups of people would be hawk food.

We might just have to accept that when it comes to responding quickly to change, the starlings have us beat.

Working asynchronously via documents and diagrams is great for enabling people to read and input at a time that suits them but for ensuring the document communicates what it needs to often takes more than what is in the document itself.

To help get the document right I sometimes write a meta-document, a document about the document, a plan for what the document needs to achieve. It’s a bit like an agenda for a meeting. It helps keep you on track and ensure you consider more than just the contents of the document or diagram.

The meta-document might include:

• What is the purpose of the document or diagram? Is it inform, discuss, present?
• Who is it for? Is the
• What are they expecting? Is it document, diagram, presentation, video?
• What assumptions do I have about what they know?
• What visual language or tone of voice will work best?
• How much explanation or contextual information do the audience need to make sense of the document?
• And anything else that sets up the document for success.