How deeply
is technology impacting on our ability to learn as adults in organisations?
“Everything real must be experiencable
somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must be somewhere real.”
William James
How is Adult
and Corporate Learning being transformed by technology?
Having spent the best part of 25 years designing, developing
and delivering customised corporate curriculum for the Top 100 companies in
Australia and Israel, I am constantly challenged as to how to best ‘blend’ an
experiential approach within the broad
and ever expanding range of technological delivery options.
We all know that adults learn best by ‘doing’ and that focussed
experiential learning creates the space and visceral reaction for real mindset
and behaviour shifts to occur. Recent studies in neuroscience have also
revealed that the brain is ‘plastic’ and reinforced the principle of the ‘beginners
mind’. That is, to create the space, in this case, the neural pathways, for the
new, we must discard some of the old!
Translating ‘theory’ into real and
genuine practices is the most significant challenge for both the corporate
curriculum, learning program designer and the adult learner.
Imagine how easy life could be if we If we could
effectively ‘do’ everything we encounter online, without having to ever make a
mistake and encounter an uncomfortable ‘learning experience’?
So how can
we blend the best, most time effective, and valuable learning solutions?
David Kolb, the acknowledged master of Experiential Learning,
in his latest work suggests that we create a ‘deliberate experiential learning’
4 step process:
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1.
Understand the Learners Identity
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2.
Build Collaborative Learning Relationships
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3.
Create Mindful Presence
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4.
Install Deliberate Practice
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To do this effectively, and to meet the needs of our ‘time
poor’ learner, we can customise and blend a cocktail of face to face, experiential and internet
delivery mechanisms.
- Understanding the Learners Identity
The diehard ‘Needs Analysis’
process can now be done via a blend of face to face or focus group interviews
and focussed and customised and gamified online surveys. The observant and
skilled curriculum designer can then pace out the existing range of ‘fixed’ or ‘growth’
mindsets that will either support or inhibit the learning process and solve the
business issue or problem.
- Building Collaborative Learning Relationships
The overall approach includes a mix
of partnering, mentoring or coaching, can be web based via teleconferences, learning pods, gamifications,
online communities and web based journaling processes.
- Creating Mindful Presence
The ‘must have’ experiential
process to support and ‘bring to life’ the chosen theoretical framework! Whilst pre-reading
and action learning assignments will enable further tailoring to the organisations
specific business needs, they will not create the experience required for learning to occur.
Learners benefit from experiencing ‘the power of now’, retreat and reflection,
silence and deep attention. Residential retreats, with focussed emergence and
customised, memorable and challenging activities are the prerequisites for successful
and enduring ‘learning experiences’.
- Installing Deliberate Practice
The most often overlooked and most
critical success factor in the adult learning process and also easily the most easily delivered
via technology. Focussed attention, repetition, feedback, practice, goal
setting, correction, self observation and reflection processes can all be established
and tracked via online mechanisms. Gamifying the experiential activity into a
series of targeted practice building webinar based business application
sessions extends its usage, maximises the investment and establishes increased relevance.
Online communities, teleconferences, web based
journals, group learning pods further embed and integrate the learning process.
So when designing and developing your next Corporate Learning Program you
might want to consider how you can best meet your clients needs and deliver real
and enduring value by stepping back into the learning zone yourself!
“…there is only one primal stuff or material
in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed… we call that stuff ‘pure
experience.”
William James
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