Throughout my book The New Learning Architect I take time out to look at real-life examples of great learning architects in action. In this extract, we take a look at how learning is architected within Shell, one of the world’s largest and most successful multinational corporations. Sebastian’s vision for learning covers all of the contexts that in which learning can occur at work. Like Betty, Sebastian is a champion of work-based learning, aided by technology. MORE

We have become the gate keepers of negativity. Yeah, blended learning is a better way to connect knowledge to people…but… Yeah, the path to connected learning is through mobile…but… Yeah, people should be in charge of their own learning…but… Yeah, learning does happen more outside the classroom…but… The list goes on, and on, and on. . It’s quite easy to think of reasons why a “thing” cannot work. MORE

#SoMe for Trainers: Beating the Forgetting Curve This is the 9th stop of the Blog Book Tour for Jane Bozarth's new book, S ocial Media for Trainers. Needless to say, I am extremely proud to be a part of the tour and to have been invited by Jane Bozarth to add my thoughts along with thought-leaders and stalwarts in the field. In this book, she “breaks down” the components of each SoMe tool, clarifies when these can be best used, how to use them and, most importantly, why. MORE

I’ll be leading a series of master classes on informal learning and working smarter in Europe. It’s all a matter of learning, but it’s not the sort of learning that is the province of training departments, workshops, and classrooms. Most people in training programs learn only a little of the right stuff, are fuzzy about how to apply what they’ve learned, and never address who are the right people to know. Achieving balance requires a scale of measurement. MORE

Instructors may feel more comfortable lecturing employees as they feel they are covering the ‘necessary’ course of the training material. Little acts of acknowledgement like paying attention to them or thanking them for bringing up a point can do a lot to boost their confidence and increase their participation. Social learning is more of an abstract concept. Truth is, the best organizations play lesser emphasis on documenting every form of learning. MORE

Training is out of sync with the times 11. What worked twenty years ago doesn’t work well in the social, always-on, networked world of business we now inhabit. Traditional training departments cannot build courses fast enough to keep up with the speed of change. Service industries challenge workers to acquire tacit knowledge — the kind of know-how one learns on the job, not in the classroom. The 20th Century was the great age of training. MORE

Connectbeam is just another company convinced that the activities of this new web generation will be a productive part of how we do business. Instead of having a closed committee of “experts&# sitting in a room deciding how to organize the information you rcv, YOU, and communities of practice you belong too, decide, tag, and bookmark. Techcrunch introduced me to Connectbeam. MORE

Taken together, that means you’d like a single system for storing and tracking content and learner activity, and that system should reside behind a firewall with at least one and possibly more login requirements to prevent unauthorized eyeballs on sensitive information. MORE

I discussed a bit of these issues in First Thoughts After ASTD Sessions. I'm writing this post for both attendees of the session to have some notes and for people who were not at the session to hopefully get value from the discussion that happened there. As such, I'm trying to: Report and discuss the results of an introductory survey that I conduct (thanks to the suggestion via Conference Breakout Sessions ). This was more of a prompt than it really was a true survey. MORE

Saba’s primary market is corporate learning with just more than half of all implementations installed behind-the-firewall (largest implementation 2,000,000 learners). Their total number of registered users/learners worldwide is 17,000,000 at over 1300 organizations. generation of our suite; we are now moving into the 6.x generation of the suite). I agree that one of the greatest barriers in implementation is overcoming a culture of control. MORE

At the Internet Time Alliance, we’re big fans of narrating our work. We encourage clients to get their people to narrate their work, through blogs or other sharing media, for a number of reasons. Sharing your discoveries adds to the value of the networked Commons; I think of it as a requirement of good network citizenship. We’re each teasing out the meaning of what we call the Coherent Organization with models. MORE

In an insightful piece , Harold Jarche puts together how collaboration and cooperation are needed to make organizations work ‘smarter’, integrating workgroups with the broader social network by using communities of practice as the intermediary. This makes a lot of sense to me, and I was inspired to take a look at the practices within those categories. (Jay I put reflection underpinning all of these, as a core practice. MORE

I’ll have to admit, I have mixed feelings about Twitter (and much of the other social media). On one hand, I really love to play around with all of the new social media tools and am excited about what’s going on and the potential for learning. On the other hand, much of their value is exaggerated. A lot of this social media stuff can be distracting and a waste of time. I like to focus on the more practical information that I can use. Build a Community. MORE

Following is a largely unedited version of conference notes that I have just distributed internally where I work. As a blog post it’s probably pretty crap – too long, too much scrolling, but as a record of the event, and a method for me to retain my learning, it is just dandy, thank you. Hopefully you, my brave reader, can get similar value from my scribblings, but I make no apology for the size or the content of this blog post. “4 out of 5 Doctors agree. MORE

In Australia last month, a client gave me a copy of Smart World , Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle. The author uses stories of Watson & Crick, Ruth Handler & the Barbie Doll, Picasso & cubism, and Frank Gehry to enrich his speculation on the sources of intuition and imagination. Ogle’s focus is innovation; top business leaders put innovation, well, top on their lists of priorities. MORE

It’s the biggest frame of the big picture. I don’t use the word learn with executives, who inevitably think back to the awfulness of school and close their ears. The Workscape is a systems-eye view of the workplace. In the same vein, I talk about Working Smarter instead of informal learning, social learning, and so forth. The problem is that the learning processes are haphazard, often a paving of the cow paths. Scope of the habitat. MORE

Participants share ideas for generating content, growing readership, that kind of thing. Turns out the #blogchat group decided to dedicate some of their Sunday nights to offering critiques of one another's blogs. Those who offered their blogs up for review got a good deal of feedback useful particularly for them, but also for others in the group. Collin_K: I've never been a fan of the double sidebar. Takes too much attention off of content. MORE