Rex Cristosimo

What is: Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Personal Learning Networks (personal and community-

focused)

Following up on the distinction between groups and networks, Downes says,

“A group, in other words, is a school (of thought, of fish…) or a class of
some sort. Or: classes and schools are just groups. They are defined as
groups. Can we even think of schools - and of learning - without thinking at
the same time of the attributes of groups? A group is elemental, defined by
mass and sameness - like an ingot of metal. A group is a collection of
entities or members according to their nature; what defines a group is the
quality [of sameness] members possess and [their] number.”

One can certainly argue with Downes, but isn’t the slide interesting when
thinking about schools as groups and online personal learning spaces as
networks?

SOME CONTEXT
I’ve been thinking and studying a lot about personal learning networks for
quite some time, on both a personal, individual level and also a shared,
community level. The buzz words that resonate the most for me around
these topics right now seem to be personal learning networks, personal
learning environments, professional learning communities, communities of
practice, and virtual learning communities. In this consideration, I don’t
mean to leave out face-to-face communication, but am particularly
interested in how web 2.0 technologies support and enhance personal and
community-focused learning, and can even occur with great impact without
any face-to-face contact at all.

Individualized Networked Learning

The problem of the edublogasphere (and actually the whole blogasphere) in
the context of learning is that people in the sphere do not - at least often -
form any groups (an entity of individuals with an objective).

As I’m trying to think more and more deeply about what networked learning
really means in the context of how I might want my own children to apply it
their own lives, I think this quote struck me because it made me consider
how little I’ve actually engaged in group learning around a particular
objective within the network. It is, as Teemu says something that doesn’t
really appear very often. This has become, for me at least, a very
individualized experience. I’ve referred to it in the past as “nomadic
learning” because it happens in a very non-linear, concrete objective-less
way. (Technically, I think most are attaching the word nomadic to it because
of the mobility of the technology to learn, not the randomness of it.) My
learning has a general focus and direction, to be sure, but it’s trajectory is
determined by whatever is in my aggregator or on my screen at the
moment. There are no written down goals or outcomes that I am attempting
to achieve which is one of the reasons this is so different from classroom
learning.

What does learner-centric look like?

There is a paradigm shift from instructor-centric to learner-centric model of

learning. (Refer to diagram)

The priority at upper management level may well be principally around the
cost-cutting benefits of online delivery, but it is a different story for those
who have operational responsibility for the outcomes achieved by e-learning
and blended learning programmes.

There is already an 'old days' of organisational learning, looked back on by

few with nostalgia, when it was all about the 'country house' model; very
'event-driven', very 'top-down' in character. Times have definitely changed.

The most obvious difference, with the advent of the internet, is one of
location. Learning can now take place in a variety of environments, including
the workplace, a learning centre attached to the workplace, or even in the
home.

This change is not only being driven by what is happening within the training
departments, however. The way we work has been altered radically, in many
cases, by the advent of email, web access and intranets. These provide tools
for just-in-time learning, reference and knowledge management much of
which falls outside the remit of training per se, but which is nevertheless
altering attitudes to what constitutes a learning experience.

As a result, a new generation of learners is coming up that expects to access

learning in different ways.

So what is it that these new learners want, exactly, from a learning

experience?

Moving from 'training push' to 'learning pull'

When the mode of the music changes, wrote Plato, the walls of the city
shake. Since the advent of e-learning, and particularly blended learning,
there has been a definite change of tune from the training and development
function (now rebranded 'the learning community'). A chorus of voices -
heard in conference and exhibition halls across the land - urges us to 'put
the learner at the centre of the experience'. We need to move, it is
trumpeted, to learner-centric learning.

And indeed, this particular change of mode poses a palpable threat to certain
key bits of masonry within the ambit of organisational learning. We're not
talking solely metaphorically here. More than one global concern in recent
times has closed down its bricks-and-mortar training centre in favour of an
online equivalent.

Are we experiencing a paradigm shift? Or is this no more than mood music

designed to cover the sound of axes being swung? Is the real driver behind
e-learning adoption a cost-cutting agenda - which seeks merely to pare
away expensive face-to-face interventions, while leaving existing
organisational structures untouched?
What do learners want?

Clearly, not all learners want the same thing.

What they want might vary widely depending on the type of company they
are in, as we have seen. Likewise, different groups of learners within an
organisation will have different needs and priorities.

Segmentation is the art (or science) of dividing up an audience into

appropriate target groups for marketing purposes. It allows these sub-
groups to be marketed to according to needs and motivators that they share
in common. It also allows an appropriate allocation of resources among the
various groups according to the value that can be expected to be derived as
a result of marketing activity.

The learner-centric organisation will need to take this logic on board when
marketing its learning provision internally. The first step in doing so is to
establish what the various needs and motivators are.

Useful information in this line can often be derived from looking at take-up
of existing learning programmes. For instance…

Marketing water to horses

Early experiments in creating learning-centred environments, where generic

e-learning was offered without any marketing or line manager support, and
with no blending, had disappointing results. The moral of this story was that
you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

So let's take a marketing approach to this problem.

The horse needs to be thirsty (incite desire). It might need some

reassurance about the quality of the water (create a trusted brand). If it is
an extremely sceptical horse it might need to be convinced that drinking
water here will deliver health improvements (sell the benefits), and told a
little about the deleterious effects on health of not drinking water in the long
term (okay, a bit of stick). Lastly, and most importantly, it needs to be told
about these things in a language that it can understand - i.e. horse
language...