Train the Trainers: When Co-Conspirators in Learning Set the Agenda

The fabulous learners in the six-part completely-online two-hours-per-session train-the-trainer series I’m currently facilitating are increasingly adapting to their roles as co-conspirators in learning. Seeing themselves as equal partners in their learning process. Interacting with each other—and with me—as partners in the training-teaching-learning process by bringing to and sharing within our virtual train-the-trainer sandbox the experiences upon which they are continuing to hone their skills as trainers and leaders within the libraries they serve here in California.

And, this week, they took another big leap (at the beginning of the fourth session) by accepting my invitation to choose key elements determining how that session would be run—including setting the agenda for that session, which the last before we move into two sessions build around opportunities for them to present sample training sessions in a master-class format which includes chances for them to critique—and learn from—each other’s work.

Several elements were in place to make that a successful endeavor for all of us. 1) All sessions are highly interactive. 2) Each session takes a different approach to using our virtual learning space within Zoom (e.g., using PowerPoint slides as a background rather than a stand-alone element; having slides on one side of our screens while participants/co-conspirators remain visible to each other in Zoom’s “gallery view” during as much of the session as possible; having an entire session with all of us visible to each other and leaving the slide deck to be used later as a hand-out that supported our activities and discussions). 3) All sessions are interwoven in ways that help learners develop a framework to deliver a five-minute training for their course colleagues before this train-the-trainer series ends and, more importantly, to create something they can immediately use in their own workplace learning and development environments. 4) There has been a formal structure to each session alongside an informal approach that allows us to take brief diversions if learners raise a question that should not be deferred. (One of the more interesting/fruitful/productive detours came during the first session, when a learner gently raised a question about the lack of diversity evident within the images used in that session’s slide deck.) 4) We are intentionally taking a variety of approaches to learning, including, for one session, a Flipped Classroom model approach that placed some of the learning outside of the two hours we had together online so we could use those two hours to practice what had been explored before the session.

With that as the background, we began the fourth session with a few questions: 1) Do you want a more-or-less formal session (more presentations interspersed with activities and discussions) or something informal (a session driven by their own questions and concerns about preparing for and facilitating the training sessions they will lead during our final two workshops together)? 2) Do you want a session that fully incorporates a slide deck into learning, a session (similar to the third) that has us “face to face online” with each other throughout the entire session, or a combination of the two? 3) Do you want to formally set the agenda for a session that prepares you for the training sessions you are designing and planning to deliver within this series?

Each answer shaped the session and led us down a series of options I had partially mapped in anticipation of the options available to them. The “formal vs. informal” choice came clearly down in favor of informal, which made me remind them that any decision like that makes us think about how best to take advantage of the decision to support the approach we are taking. So the first thing I did was step off camera briefly, while continuing to talk with them, so I could remove my tie and the dress shirt I was wearing, and come back onscreen in a much less formal outfit. I then removed the more formal background I had designed as a way of visually tying all sessions into a unified series; what replaced that background was a clear view of the room in which I was actually sitting: my own office/study, which more closely matched the backgrounds of the informal spaces in which my co-conspirators were learning.

The second set of options provided an interesting split because so few of us were together for the live session. (Others, because of scheduling conflicts, participate asynchronously be viewing the recordings we produce and contacting me outside the sessions if they need additional support.) With three co-conspirators voting, there was one vote for slides, one for discussion, and a third for a combination “based on what is most appropriate for what we’re covering”—which, of course, produced a wonderful learning moment for all of us because it reminded us that learning involves a solid pedagogical underpinnings as much as it involves our preferences. Laughing over the idea that we had arrived, through discussion, at the obvious reminder that learning goals could drive our decision, we agreed to follow whatever seemed most natural—drawing upon the deck I had prepared, if/when necessary; engaging in discussion and activities when those were likely to produce the best results; and turning toward screen-sharing for demonstrations when that best suited our learning goals.

Our final choice—the one in which we set the agenda—provided most rewarding. Two big items clearly needed to be on that agenda from the learners’ point of view: time to practice skills that would be used during the upcoming learner presentations, and time for working through the process of deciding what to include and what to exclude from a training session.

How it all played out—quite well, actually—will eventually be visible through a recording of the session (to be posted on the California Library Association’s “Developing Leaders in California Libraries” website). A short summary would include the ideas that participants shared, with each other, their own approaches to training-teaching-learning that best served them and their learners (reminding themselves that they already have developed some magnificent tools in their individual trainer’s toolkits); that they quickly thought back on all they have learned during their months of participation in leadership development work (of which the train-the-trainer series is a component); that they identified elements of that training that they would like to share with colleagues in the libraries in which they currently work; and, with only a moment or two of preparation, that they were able to give brief, focused presentations that allowed them to become more comfortable with online presentations.

All of us walked away from that final, spontaneous exercise very happy with what we discovered and accomplished. Making an in-the-moment decision to have each of the two participating learners redo their initial in-the-moment presentations after a brief co-conspirators’ debriefing produced magnificently obvious positive results: the improvement between the first and second practice presentations was noticeable and positive; it left learners with a much more positive memory of the experience than they would have had if left only with the memories of the initial stumbles and hesitations; and it produced, in each participant, a sense of confidence grounded in the realization that a series of quick practice sessions can tremendously improve any presentation we are developing for use with our own learners.

With that confidence in hand, we are poised for our next step: more fully-developed online presentations that can be adapted in our own learning landscapes.

N.B. – This is the second in a set of reflections inspired by a collaboratively run online train-the-trainer series.

Train the Trainers: On Inclusion, Trust, and Co-Conspirators in Learning

The word “co-conspirators,” as Stephen Hurley (half-jokingly) suggested during our latest “Collaborations in Learning” conversation for his VoicEd Radio “Hurley in the Morning” show this morning, conjures up images of people furtively meeting to plan some sort of insurrection. And I have to admit that it makes me smile by reminding me of those comically sinister little figures from the Spy vs. Spy series I enjoyed many years ago.

But it also, as our conversation suggests, is a wonderfully subversive and productive word to describe the relationship between learning facilitators and learners when they toss out assumptions that learning involves one person providing information and another person (passively) absorbing that information. Co-conspirators in learning, as I learned from my time with Alec Couros and others in #etmooc (the Educational Technology & Media massive open online course) several years ago, are those who see the learning space as a place where everyone learns—teachers and students alike. It’s a space where we toss out quite a few assumptions about what learning involves and place a focus on the collaborative nature of learning.

It requires tremendous levels of trust. Learning facilitators (aka “teachers” and “trainers”) must trust their learners to be willing participants in the shaping of their own learning. Learners must trust the learning facilitator’s assertion that everyone has something to bring to the table during a formal or informal learning opportunity and makes the experience stronger, more productive, more results-driven, and more transformative than learning situations where learners are an audience drawn to words of wisdom provided by the person at the front of the room. In fact, as I suggested to Stephen, there really is no “front of the room” in a learning space (onsite or online) where everyone is seen as a co-conspirator in the learning process. Every part of that learning space is a dynamic space in which trainer-teacher-learners interact with other trainer-teacher-learners to achieve the learning goals they are pursuing. Together.

But all of that is far too theoretical. Far too academic. It misses the dynamic nature of “learners as co-conspirators” that becomes obvious when we see how it plays out. As I did last week during the first of six two-hour online sessions with a group of wonderful adult learners in a train-the-trainer series I have designed and am currently facilitating.

I made it clear, during the opening session, that we would be doing far more than learning the basics of training in a way that supported course participants in their efforts to hone their own training skills. I am encouraging them, through different approaches I am taking in each of those highly-interactive learning sessions conducted within Zoom, to interact within the basic structure of each of those formats. I try to get them to help shape each of those sessions by participating in discussions and activities that give them practice at using the skills we are exploring. And I make efforts to inspire them to question and understand the approaches and techniques and skills under discussion so they can decide for themselves which were worth using with their own learners and which might not work within the specific contexts in which they foster learning.

Image by truthseeker08, from Pixabay

Which means I need to be ready for those hoped-for moments in which they take control of the learning space and ask questions I might not have anticipated so I, too, am a learner in those sessions. Like the stunningly-unexpected question that came during the second half of the first session: why are there so few people of color included in the images used in the slide deck for this session?

Understand, please, that the question was sent privately through Zoom’s chat feature so I was the only person initially aware that the question was being raised and the only person seeing the brief, very polite, almost apologetic comments surrounding the question. It was in no way confrontational, and the learner explicitly expressed the hope that I wouldn’t be offended by the question. It was clearly a difficult question posed by a wonderful learner who felt comfortable enough to raise that question in a way that had none of the public-shaming aspects that we so often see these days through social media posts and other online interactions.

It deserved an immediate and honest answer. So I took a deep breath, stopped the lesson-oriented conversation that was underway, and told all participants that I wanted to share and address a comment that had been directed at me privately—because I felt it was an issue well worth acknowledging and addressing in a virtual room with co-conspirators in learning. Without identifying the person who had raised the question, I started by saying I was appreciative that our co-conspirator had brought the thought to my attention. And, glancing quickly at the images I had been using in the PowerPoint slide deck supporting the discussions we were having, I acknowledged that I had not been as diligent as I always try to be in creating something that was visually representative of the diversity of our community of learning. I assured everyone that I would be applying a different, more critical eye to the decks for the remaining five sessions. Then, after again thanking the person for the comment, I returned us to what we had been doing. And, afterward, took the small amount of time it takes to review decks already prepared for subsequent sessions and making adjustments that were easily made.

This might seem like something that, once addressed, would be done. But the real work is to see what sort of positive impact our actions with our co-conspirators in any learning situation have. So, without doing anything to overtly continue that particular thread of conversation and learning, I worked with that same group of learners during the next session and, as always, let the learners know that I would stay for a few minutes after the formal end of that virtual session in case anyone had further questions or items to explore—the online equivalent of staying in a physical classroom for post-session conversations with interested learners. You can, of course, anticipate what happened next: The only learner to stay was the one who had raised the question about the lack of images of people of color in the first session. And the reason the person stayed was to continue a conversation springing out of the second session. Because that learner was engaged. Comfortable. Interested in gaining all that could be gained during the time we had together.

As the post-session conversation around Session Two content wound down, I couldn’t resist asking whether there had been any noticeable difference in approach to the images used for that session. “Yes,” the learner replied simply and directly. “It felt more on point.”

And those few simple words, for me, spoke volumes in terms of how much we all gain when we are co-conspirators in learning. We all learn. We all improve. We all gain. We are all transformed, long-term, by the positive nature of those all-too-brief short-term interactions. And those we serve long after our shared learning moments have ended are the real beneficiaries of what we accomplish together.

N.B. – This is the first in a set of reflections inspired by a collaboratively run online train-the-trainer series.

Promoting Intergenerational Leadership With Natalie Miller (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second part of a two-part interview conducted with Natalie Miller, a systems engineer with Booz Allen Hamilton, active member of the ShapingEDU community, and a University of Maryland graduate student. An article drawn from the interview is available on the ShapingEDU blog.

Switching gears, has broadband access been an issue for you and your colleagues in online learning environments?

In a work and personal setting, yes.

In a personal context I have mainly just had connection issues on different days that prevented me from getting work or school done online. It is amazing how much we rely on these connections and how much stops when they disappear.

The hardest situations I have heard today are the power outages in Los Angeles county. The power companies in the area keep shutting off power because of the risk of downed polls and fires, but every time there is a power outage, it sets students and teachers a day behind, keeps individuals from working, and takes away connections for everyone in those areas. At the end of the school year, students are going to be in classes much less than other areas because of this situation, meaning they may be behind other students and may not be meeting the mark as often as other districts.

Seeing how broadband can affect an individual so dramatically shows how essential it is for everyone to have equal opportunity to resources, and how stressful not having these resources could be. I actually took the train up the coast this past weekend, and I know I was stressed when my call was cut out for five minutes! With public locations including libraries and Starbucks being closed for a period of time, it was even more difficult. 

During the pandemic, having outdoor Internet cafes, or opportunities to receive more reliable, battery operated/remote access equipment are two ideas that could be helpful.

One last switch to hit a topic that clearly is of interest to you: I know you have a long-standing passion for and impressive involvement in advocating for open education resources. Care to add anything more to what you’ve already said about how you were drawn to that topic under the tutelage of your dean, and some of the work you’re doing or have done?

Open Education is the future of education, and it can teach everyone so much. In times like the pandemic, creating open materials could help to foster the communities everyone misses, and help individuals to gain development or show progress from opportunities they may have lost. Today’s emotional climate has been so unstable; by working on open publishing or assisting on making materials for students, individuals can provide the assistance and compassion that these students need in times where funds and emotions are tight.

Natalie Miller

From my experience, groups like College of the Canyons Open Educational Resources and ShapingEDU have been some of the most positive and supportive communities I have been a part of, which is why I continue to come back and be a part of them. The synchronized mindset of wanting the best for others, and for the community is what drives them, and that is honestly the type of communities America and the education system need right now. Education will always be the future, and supporting the students in the system is how to support the future.

What have I not asked that you hoped to cover regarding learning, leadership, broadband access, or open education resources?

“How would you advise someone to become a leader in education?” 

One of the most unique things about education is how many different individuals are involved. In the educational community, there are almost no limits to the number of backgrounds, races, specialties, ages, genders, or any other identifiers that exist, but with all this diversity I want to remind everyone that you can be a leader, especially in education. 

“How?”

Find what you are passionate about. Surround yourself with individuals that will support you. Make a plan. Think about what you see that needs to be improved. 

When I just started school, I made the mistake of thinking I was just there for the degree and all I needed to do was show up to classes. When I started doing more than that, I became more than that. When you become passionate about something, like education, you should learn about it enough that you have no doubt in your mind that you are an advocate, and then people will listen. 

Being a leader is also listening. Once we all start listening to each other, we can all lead each other to better systems and processes that will drive us toward equality, equity, and opportunity for all. 

N.B. — Paul is one of three Storytellers in Residence for ShapingEDU (July 2020-June 2021).

Promoting Intergenerational Leadership With Natalie Miller (Part 1 of 2)

This is the first part of a two-part interview conducted with Natalie Miller, a systems engineer with Booz Allen Hamilton, active member of the ShapingEDU community, and a University of Maryland graduate student. An article drawn from the interview is available on the ShapingEDU blog.

Let’s start with an easy one: what initially drew you into ShapingEDU?

When I was doing my undergrad at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (I was a transfer student), the CSU Chief of Innovation, Michael Berman, had suggested me for this event because of my work in Open Education. Being so involved in Open Education, and just passionate about my own journey, as well as other students’ journeys, I wanted in. I wanted to make a difference in the education community, and the fact that there were others who would be willing to listen to an undergrad student is amazing. The act of listening to students alone is what brought me on board and gives me hope for an education system that listens and caters to their students more. 

You have, since that introduction, actually jumped right into a leadership position in the community as one of two “co-mayors,” with Trevor Ellis, for the “Bolster Intergenerational Leadership for Learning Futures” neighborhood. Can you describe what you and Trevor are doing there?

In the “Bolster Intergenerational Leadership for Learning Futures” neighborhood, Trevor and I are working toward creating proposals, solutions, and ideas to help integrate different levels of learning and leadership in an educational path. 

There are two ways to look at “Bolster Intergenerational Leadership for Learning Futures:

*Having different levels (i.e., elementary, high school, college) come together to support each other and learn. This could be extremely effective because less-developed-level students could learn from more developed students, and more developed students could prove their knowledge by sharing it with less-developed students. The leadership would also promote confidence.

*The second way one could look at it is simply giving more leadership to students in classrooms, which is closely related to the concept of Open Pedagogy, a close cousin of Open Education. Open Pedagogy is the idea that students should be able to create their own classroom: e.g., make their own tests, help create their materials, and even teach lessons to each other. The professors are still very much involved, but it is more [that] they are encouraging, correcting, and cultivating students minds than lecturing. Students should have more of a say in what their education path is, and by doing Open Pedagogy, they would have more control over what assignments and things they want to learn. 

Illustration by Karina Branson/ConverSketch

Trevor and I are specifically looking into what communities we could cultivate to meet goals like the ones above, as well as what materials would be helpful in guiding individuals to understand how to encourage leadership at different levels. In the end, I think a toolkit will be helpful in doing so.

Your description of Open Pedagogy very much parallels what I experienced in connectivist MOOCS [massive open online courses], where “faculty” and “learners” were co-conspirators in the learning process. What experiences have you had with that experience of being a co-conspirator in learning?

In my education path, I have had more opportunities to be a co-inspirer than most students, but I hope to not be the exception one day. 

One of the best classroom settings I was in, a professor split us into groups of three to four students to teach different lessons throughout the quarter. This was great because it made sure that the group presenting knew the material front and back, and it also gave the class a slightly different style of learning each period that would keep it interesting. The professor would look at our lesson plan ahead of time, advise us, and bring up anything that we missed, but it allowed students to control what was talked about a little more, and make it in a language that was relevant to their peers. 

Outside of classrooms, I have been so fortunate because I was pulled into Open Education by the Dean of the Library and Distance Learning at College of the Canyons in Valencia, California, James Glapa-Grossklag. When I was nineteen, James pulled me into a position where I had no idea what Open Education was, and told me to run with it. I ended up creating a full program: a workflow, marketing materials, and a website [Zero Textbook Cost] that grew so fast that five individuals had to replace me when I left the program. Seeing a previous teacher—and current Dean—give me that opportunity and responsibility so young in my educational career allowed us to be inspired by each other and opened up other opportunities like public speaking, faculty assistance, and heading grants. This allowed me to believe there is no limit to what a student can do. [Note: the website has changed, but still all work is done by other students.]

Returning to the theme of leadership: would you mind telling a story of how a leader in education or elsewhere has fostered your own interest in promoting leadership for learning futures?

Honestly, the Dean at College of the Canyons, James Glapa-Grossklag, is the individual that inspired me to want to promote leadership for learning futures. After working with him at College of the Canyons, he continued to promote me: helped me to receive the Open Education Consortium’s first global student award in 2018 for my work at College of the Canyons, continued to introduce me to individuals in education who helped me on my journey, allowed me to give advice to one of his sons and mentor him, and advocated for me to be a keynote at multiple conferences. He had so much confidence in me and spent a large amount of time mentoring me even after I left College of the Canyons, I knew I wanted to help empower and encourage others. It was all for the wellbeing of others and my peers, and he just made it look so easy. He also mentored many individuals after me which was amazing to see as well. 

At Cal Poly I also got involved in Entrepreneurship. Seeing my peers inspired me to promote leadership for learning futures because I could see how ready and eager they were to learn, and they were creating startups while in college, which is very ambitious. Seeing how my peers hadn’t had the same opportunities of having a voice in their education as I did, I knew I wanted to take on the role of raising awareness and empowering these incredible students who were already capable of so much.

This all sounds closely related to the ShapingEDU “Connecting Student Voices” initiative that ShapingEDU Innovator in Residence Anita Roselle is beginning to develop. Do you have any connections to that initiative?

I don’t think I have any direct connections to that initiative yet, but I can easily see how it would connect. What I love about ShapingEDU is how closely everything is connected because it has the intention to improve education for students. 

[The] “Connecting Student Voices” initiative sounds inspiring because a consistent gap in student’s education is often that there is a limited span of two to four years to accomplish things in school. If there was an opportunity to help students come together and unite their educational thoughts, their education would be improved even more!

“Coming together” has always been an issue for students, and it has become even more challenging given our current pandemic/shelter-in-place situation. How is that affecting you and your colleagues in school? 

The pandemic has been a hard time for everyone, and it I have seen individuals from my undergraduate degree, workplace, and graduate degree suffering because of the lack of social interaction. I actually signed up for online classes knowing I would be starting my graduate degree in the pandemic, and although they are not in person, I have been able to chat on the phone with many individuals, chat online, attend online classes, and still make a few friends. 

The difference between pre-pandemic classrooms and post-pandemic classrooms for me is that I was able to meet strangers just by asking for the homework, or greeting them, where now it seems more direct. I am still learning a lot, but losing the lessons of social interaction are rough because in undergrad, the social interactions are often where one learns the most. At my workplace, I have been fortunate because in all of my undergrad I was able to practice communication in person, over email, in stressful situations, and public speaking in front of others, but so much of that connection between individuals is disintegrating and it is hard to gain if one does not already have it. 

Education is so strongly based on personal connections, convincing and critically thinking together, and pushing the limits together, and online education has not pivoted to meet that fast enough. Seeing students suffering because they are limited to individual paper projects is isolating and lacks the human nature education needs. Education needs to make sure it continues to shift to bring individuals together and keep it collaborative and approachable to everyone involved. {done}

What steps would you recommend to anyone (instructor or learner) who is struggling to succeed in our current learning environment?

Disclaimer: I have become more of an extrovert over the years. 

Individuals who are currently struggling in this isolated learning environment should start with the basics of forming or assigning groups. Throughout my whole education, having individuals to talk to and ask for support on missing assignments, or not understanding topics, has been essential. Most individuals were not made to function alone, and everyone needs a support system. Plus, everyone’s learning style is different, and the kinetic and auditory learners (because they often like to have conversations and visuals to think through things) are the ones suffering the most. Being away from a traditional learning environment is most likely limiting everyone’s learning abilities. With groups, each individual could get the attention they need, collaborate, ask questions in a more private setting, and socialize virtually. Be sure to also organize meetings just for socialization because it is just as essential! 

Besides groups, I think it is essential to understand how to step away from screens. Lately, I have been finding myself on a screen for 10+ hours a day, and when things don’t make sense, it is essential to stand up, stretch, and get some fresh air. One thing many individuals who are not on computers as often may not realize is how positioning to the computer can cause pain, and to remember that humans were not built to live on a screen. Getting up from a screen and doing a little exercise is a great mental reset.

N.B. — Paul is one of three Storytellers in Residence for ShapingEDU (July 2020-June 2021).

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 5 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

The learning event has ended; the learning process continues. And, when all is said and done, one of the many important ways by which any of us can and will measure the success or failure emanating from Mount Prospect Public Library’s 2016 Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning” (the day-long exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work) will be through the transformations it actually does or does not manage to produce for those involved and for those they/we serve.

As mentioned in earlier sections of this case study of how a day-long exploration of e-learning can lead to more productive, effective, and creative use of e-learning within an overall learning landscape, we already know positive, potentially far-reaching transformations were occurring. Co-conspirators (the onsite participants in this training-teaching-learning-doing opportunity) clearly expanded their definitions and understanding of the state of contemporary e-learning and the possibilities it provides in workplace settings. Some of them posted their first tweets as part of the process of gaining a richer, more nuanced vision of how Twitter and other social media tools can be engagingly integrated into onsite as well as online learning opportunities to the benefit of everyone involved. Many of them contributed ideas face-to-face and online to expand the use of e-learning among staff members and among library users near and far. And some of them used Twitter to talk about what they hope and intend to do as a result of what they experienced.

As a co-learner as well as planning team member and presenter/facilitator in “From eLearning to Learning,” I know even I left feeling unexpectedly and significantly transformed by my involvement. I’m sure there is a wonderfully academic term to describe what I felt as the day came to an end and during the hours of reflection and conversation I’ve had with colleagues since leaving Mount Prospect, but I keep coming back to something far more basic and visceral: it blew my emotional pipes out! I was stunned. Elated. Inspired. And, at times, close to tears. Because everything was so…much…more…wonderfully and overwhelming intense and inspiring than even I expected it to be; I already carry a deep sense of gratitude to the staff members who invited me into the process and to those magnificent staff members who pushed the learning envelope so far during our onsite and online time together that day.

Among the continued-learning opportunities I already have pursued is the opportunity to expand upon and adapt in my own way a learning approach I saw Tom Haymes, a fabulous New Media Consortium (NMC) colleague, use during his own “Idea Spaces” presentation at an NMC conference a couple of years ago. His onsite Idea Spaces presentation and discussion gave all of us plenty of room to learn from him in the moment, to learn from each other in the same moment, to reflect upon what we were hearing and learning, and to see the “event” as part of a process.

More significantly, Tom created a beautifully expansive learning opportunity that helped me see how onsite and online learning could seamlessly be interwoven. His slide deck was posted and available on an Idea Spaces website (which, as I glance back at it in writing this part of the “From eLearning to Learning” case study, has expanded tremendously and magnificently since I last visited it.) The site itself was and remains a stand-alone expansion of what he was sharing with us; it was and is, at the same time, an integral part of the onsite experience. It includes a variety of resources for those of us interested in pursuing the topic in our own way. On our own time. Whenever we want to continue the training-teaching-learning-doing process. And, with that in mind, it occurred to me that what all of us designed for the onsite “From eLearning to Learning” experience easily translates into a modified version of what Tom modeled through his use of WordPress as a platform for the onsite version.

Tom (and many others) have used WordPress as a virtual course meeting place. I’ve used my own website “Previous Presentations” page as a central virtual meeting place for ongoing use and exploration of the material we all developed through the planning process and our onsite participation, and have added links to  the content to the “Presentations/Courses” page of this WordPress Building Creative Bridges blog, which serves as a secondary website/learning resource to expand the reach of what I do and document. I’ve also made minor modification to the slide deck I posted so there are references to the other current components of the suite (including the Storify document). The Storify document ends with a note providing a link to the PowerPoint deck with extensive speaker notes. This five-part case study on my blog is becoming an integral part of the suite by including links to other components at the bottom of each of these articles, and there are references to it sprinkled among the other resources and promoted via my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. And I’m looking at fine-tuning and providing access to additional resources that came out of the planning and day-of-the-event interactions so anyone interested will have a road map they can follow in the same way that Tom’s Idea Spaces continues to serve as a virtual road map and very real, tremendous source of inspiration nearly two years after I participated in the onsite version.

So, there we have it: the current state of e-learning and a view toward pulling it into the overall world of learning rather than being something all-too-often mistakenly seen as inferior to other types of learning. We learn onsite while incorporating online learning opportunities that produce potentially long-lasting, useful resources openly shared with anyone who might benefit from them. We learn online synchronously and/or asynchronously so that learning occurs at our moment of need, when we are ready and primed for it, rather than being where we were a decade or two ago—largely dependent on the availability of teachers and trainers who stood in the front of a room and lectured at us. In the contemporary learning environment onsite and online, there often is no front of the room. The room is the entire world, the learners are fabulous, often self-motivated, inquisitive and collaborative co-conspirators in the learning process, and in the best of situations we are able synchronously or asynchronously to enter the room and work with our co-conspirators to produce positive effects that ripple out into our extended community of work, service, and play.

I look back at the annotated, lightly-edited Twitter transcript on Storify and smile as I reread a few of my favorites among the many wonderful tweets that came out of our time together:

• “Whenever @paulsignorelli says ‘co-conspirator’ can’t help but thnk of mvie ‘The Conspirator’ abt plot to assassinate Lincoln #mpplsid16”
• “Transformation today; we now recognize #elearning spaces; they’re everwhere! #mpplsid16”
• “So important to stay excited about elearning long after today #mpplside16”
• “What can we do to commit to #elearning after today? Make the time for the things we want to learn about! #mpplsid16”
• “I just got elearned #firsttweet #mpplsid16”

And as I reread and reflect upon the content and the entire experience–and feel in a very real sense that the moment has not yet ended—I respond synchronously and asynchronously, both humbly and with a tremendous sense of elation and in the spirit of moving from elearning to learning, to that learner who just “got elearned”: “I learned.”

NB: This is the fifth of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 4 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

The unexpectedly explosive and transformational decision to try using Twitter to incorporate positive onsite-online e-learning experiences into Mount Prospect Public Library’s 2016 Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning” (the day-long exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work) was almost an afterthought. It came up and was quickly adopted during a final planning meeting the day before the event, as I mentioned in the third of these five “case study” postings.

It’s not as if Twitter as part of our e-learning landscape is unfamiliar to trainer-teacher-learner-doers; we use it extensively in learning opportunities ranging from conference backchannel discussions to tweet chats along the lines of what #lrtnchat, #etmooc, and many others do. I often, through the “Rethinking Social Media” course I designed and facilitate for ALA Editions, call attention to the intriguing, cutting-edge work Rey Junco has done with Twitter and other social media tools in academic settings. And I’ve been lucky enough to experience high-end, dynamically-facilitated blended environments through participation in events creatively crafted by the New Media Consortium and other organizations.

But using it as a way of helping our “From eLearning to Learning” co-conspirators (the learners shaping and participating in the day-long event at the Library) opened doors none of us even began to imagine at the moment during which we initially discussed creating and using #mpplsid16 as a way of showing how social media tools can creatively, effectively, and easily help us redefine our learning spaces.

We primed the pump to engage in some major onsite rethinking about e-learning at the beginning of “From eLearning to Learning” by showing a few photographs taken within the Library and asking “Are These eLearning Spaces?”

E-learning space?

E-learning space?

E-learning space?

Within the first few minutes of my highly-interactive 45-minute keynote presentation/discussion, very few people responded to the question with a “yes.” By the time we finished that initial keynote/discussion period about what the term “e-learning” means in our learning environments, almost every hand in the room shot up in response to the same question asked while the same images were again on display—an acknowledgement that any space in which we have Internet access is potentially an e-learning space. (One lovely note I received at the end of the day built upon the conversation with a suggestion that made me smile: “Your Elearning spaces slide needs a picture of my Dodge Caravan.”)

More importantly, that rapid expansion of everyone’s vision of what the e-learning landscape currently encompasses provided an amazing demonstration of the way a well-designed learning opportunity, developed collaboratively with learners and their representatives, can transform learners (and learning facilitators) within a very short period of time.

Having suggested to our co-conspirators that they could use Twitter as a way to take notes to which they could later return, and as a way to extend the reach of our gathering far beyond the physical walls of the various rooms in which we were meeting, I turned my full attention to the onsite setting during my keynote presentation. I didn’t return to Twitter until we had our first break—the one between the keynote and the first of three periods set aside for breakout discussions. I was absolutely floored by the level of tweeting that was already occurring. Some people were responding (very positively) to what was taking place; others were observing what was happening around them. And a few were sharing content in those Twitteresque 140-character bursts that shot around the world. The result was that we were beginning to work onsite and online simultaneously, and a few of the tweets were being retweeted by others across the United States and in Europe (apparently attracted by my occasional use of the combined hashtags #learning and #innovation).

Seizing the opportunity during the break, I retweeted a few of the more thoughtful tweets and responded to a few of the tweeters—which, of course, set the tone for an extended onsite-online expaned-e-learning-environment conversation that was still continuing as I rode a commuter train from Mount Prospect into Chicago early that evening.

Recognizing the potential there for a stand-alone learning object that anyone could continue to draw upon as long as it remains available, I remained in my hotel room an hour longer than anticipated before heading out for dinner; I knew that if I didn’t collect and transfer those tweets into a Storify document that included light annotations to set the context for what had just occurred, I would lose the in-the-moment excitement the entire experience had generated. It was available to anyone that wanted to seek it out less than four hours after “From eLearning to Learning” had adjourned. It also has become part of an overall “From eLearning to Learning” suite of freely accessible resources for anyone interested in trying a similar experiment within their own learning environment; links are included at the bottom of this post.

I was part of the first-rate Mount Prospect Public Library Staff Inservice Day planning team that designed and facilitated the process. I was the keynote presenter-facilitator, and trained the staff facilitators who led the breakout sessions. I know Twitter, I use Twitter, and I adore what is good about Twitter. But even I remain stunned by the depth of learning and the nuances contained within that particular Storify item. It has plenty of playful exchanges. It has tweets acknowledging the conversational nature of the “From eLearning to Learning” Twitter feed. It has lovely, poignant tweets about personal learning experiences—including one about how the Library director posted her first tweet as a result of what she was experiencing that day. It had some wonderful comments about how much staff enjoyed and learned from the event, and how enthusiastically they are looking forward to building upon what we built together in the best of all possible experiential-learning (hands-on) approaches—something fun, engaging, meaningful, replicable, and actionable.

But what stands out to me most as I continue rereading it, skimming it for previously-missed gems, discussing it with friends and colleagues, and learning from what all of us at Mount Prospect Public Library created out of our individual and communal learning experiences within that very attractive and dynamic community of learning, is how much it captures the wonderful results flowing from onsite-online (blended) learning opportunities that are learner-centric, goal-driven, and designed to produce results.

Next: After “From eLearning to Learning (Continuing the Training-Teaching-Learning-Doing Process)” 

NB: This is the fourth of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 3 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

There is always a moment of stunned silence when I initially tell new “co-conspirators” (i.e., prospective clients) that I want to be onsite in their city a full day before the day of an event/presentation (e.g., arriving Wednesday evening for a presentation to be held on Friday). And the silence deepens when I explain that I would prefer to fly out the morning after a day-long event rather than rushing off to an airport as soon as the final words I’m going to say have passed my lips. Parachuting in and then being quickly airlifted out, I explain, is not a great way for us to work together to produce the concrete training-teaching-learning-doing results we all hope to produce.

“We don’t have it in our budget to pay for three nights of a hotel,” they usually admit.

And that’s when the “co-conspiratating” process begins. I explain that arriving so early guarantees that they’re going to receive the best I can deliver since they won’t be facing a bleary-eyed, half-coherent presenter-facilitator exhausted from spending the night in an airport because of a delayed flight. I tell them that I want to have a leisurely tech check of the onsite facilities so we can anticipate and trouble-shoot any unexpected problems we identify during that day-before-the-event meeting. I also want to have a final face-to-face fine-tuning session with them so I can personalize the slide deck and speaker notes I’ll be using with them and the co-conspirators who are the learners. I tell them, furthermore, that I want at least a few hours on my own to explore their community, overhear conversations about what is important and happening in that particular moment in that particular community so I can more effectively work with them to deliver what they have asked me to deliver during our formal time together. And, most importantly, I tell them that I don’t want to have to rush back to an airport and, by engaging in that anxiety-producing beat-the-clock exercise which currently is even worse because of extended lines to pass through airport TSA Security checkpoints, miss the opportunity for the level of post-event discussions onsite and online that produce some of the loveliest learning moments for all of us.

We always find a way to overcome budget constraints. After all, we’re trainer-teacher-learner-doers: we know how to seek and implement solutions in the moment.

And once we have passed that hurdle, magic happens—as was the case recently during Mount Prospect Public Library’s 2016 Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning,” the day-long onsite and online exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work (which is at the heart of this case study).

Arriving in Chicago late Wednesday afternoon for the Friday event gave me time to literally become grounded and comfortable so I could be at my best for my co-conspirators. They had helped me make arrangements to stay at a place in Mount Prospect that was accessible via a free shuttle ride from O’Hare Airport, so I was completely coddled (relatively inexpensively, mind you; that’s part of the process for all of us); I arrived in their town completely relaxed and focused early Wednesday evening. (It was an added benefit to all of us that I had the opportunity to have dinner that evening with a lifelong friend who lives in the area, and we dined at a wonderful restaurant one block away from the library—which meant we had a relaxing conversation, I had an initial glimpse of the town shortly after arriving, and I was already feeling comfortable before a Library staff member picked me up Thursday morning to drive me back to the Library for our meetings and a leisurely lunch.)

The magic I have come to expect from this level of pre-session conversation and tour of the area where I will be working began almost immediately. As we returned to a theme we had been discussing from January to early May of this year, we once again talked about ways to easily take the onsite learners into online environments so they would viscerally understand the nature of our dynamic onsite-online e-learning/blended learning landscape.

“Does your staff use Twitter much?” I asked at one point, and that became a transformative moment for all of us (learners included) less than 24 hours before the highly interactive keynote address began.

Deciding upon a unique hashtag (major warning: always check those hashtags before you use them so you don’t have unexpected surprises on the day of the event), we added that information into the mix. The extended onsite-online conversations that resulted from that last-minute addition produced experiences and discussions that ended up taking the event to greater heights than any of us had been imagining, as a skim of the Storify compilation of those tweets suggests. And taking and using that “Discovery Zone” photograph (reproduced within this series of posts) onsite at Mount Prospect Public Library provided a familiar, iconic image that set a very sweet tone for our explorations during “From eLearning to Learning.”

Next: Facilitating a Transformative Onsite E-learning Experience

NB: This is the third of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 2 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

Setting the agenda (at multiple levels) is always part of a successful learning event/presentation. It’s no surprise, therefore, that my “co-conspirators” on the Mount Prospect Public Library 2016 Staff Inservice Day planning committee and I focused on this for “From eLearning to Learning,” a day-long onsite and online exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work, throughout the planning phase (from January through early May 2015).

There was the obvious, simple question we all face at the beginning of the planning process for successful learning: what will we actually do with our co-conspirators (i.e., our learners) on the day we meet as co-conspirators in learning? It didn’t take us long, during our initial telephone conference call, to settle on a structure that included a highly-interactive keynote presentation that would set the tone for the entire day of learning by trying to recreate the high levels of interactivity inherent in any great onsite or online learning experience; my own agenda here was to help staff at the Library quickly move past the idea that online learning has to be formulaic, lacking in engagement, and something done to them rather than with them. We also took little time in reaching the decision to set up a series of breakout sessions so staff members could have meaningful, productive discussions in small groups to explore a variety of interrelated themes and then, at the end of the day, come back together so we could share the wisdom of the crowd in deciding what they would do in the days, weeks, months, and years after participating in “From eLearning to Learning.”

A more subtle, nuanced approach to setting the agenda was at the level of deciding how we, as co-conspirators in the planning and facilitation process, would work together; that’s how we settled on the approach briefly described in the first of these five “case study” postings. We followed an informal “how to run a meeting” process I’ve been successfully using for years: I very much see meetings as theater, with strong elements of improvisation thrown in for good measure. Each item on a meeting agenda is meant to be part of a carefully-crafted script from which we can deviate as needed (hence, the improvisational element), and each item should produce something concrete that leads to the next item on the agenda.

Circle of learning: breakout session in a lovely setting

When this approach to setting agendas and facilitating meetings works well, it produces results that are as engaging, entertaining, and transformational as a great piece of theater is. We walk away knowing we have been involved in something significant. Something that makes us see our world at least a bit differently than we saw it before we were together. And something that makes us want to transform a potentially ephemeral moment into a very long, extended moment of process that continues to grow as long as we take the time necessary to nurture it.

The Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning” planning process became tremendously engaging for all of us when we started, during the initial planning conference call, to shine a bright spotlight on a few questions we had already been thinking about before we joined that call:

• What could we do to be sure we provided the best possible learning environment for the co-conspirators who would be the participants in “From eLearning to Learning?”
• What could we do to be sure that everything we offered created a visceral sense of understanding the power of eLearning as a component of our overall approach to learning?
• What could we do to assure that everything that happened during “From eLearning to Learning” connected back to the Library’s strategic plan in terms of incorporating eLearning into its learning offerings?

My own meeting notes—which I edited and shared with other members of the planning committee to create the same sense of blended synchronous/asynchronous conversation I often try to foster in online learning environments—show that our initial conversation produced numerous substantial elements, including a set of learning goals that helped shape the event. Participants would be told that, by actively participating in “From eLearning  to Learning “, they would be able to more effectively define e-learning; put e-learning in the larger context of learning overall; be able to explain why e-learning is positive and why they should take advantage of it; identify what e-learning provides for them; identify what e-learning provides for those they serve; and, most importantly, what they would decide to do within the next two weeks to foster more effective e-learning opportunities for themselves, their colleagues, and/or those they serve. We also threw in the additional perk of assuring them they would become aware of at least three resources they could use to improve their e-learning efforts. (These are, after all, members of library staff; we love our “see also” references.)

Keeping our focus on the learning experience, we also built plenty of reflection time and shared debriefing time so the learners would be able to absorb what they would be experiencing. We scheduled 15-minute breaks between each of our proposed chunks of learning (keynote, the three break-out sessions, lunch, and the final “bringing it all back together/next steps” session).

Subsequent meetings focused on content for the break-out sessions; discussion about developing a facilitator’s guide—the bones of that simple two-page guide came out of a 15-minute discussion during one of our telephone conference calls; a series of questions the facilitators would ask to foster lively and productive discussions during the break-out sessions; and a final structure that brought everyone back together briefly at the end of each break-out session for additional brief wisdom of the crowd moments. In this way, we made sure there were the small, very fruitful opportunities for each voice to be heard, and the larger opportunities for everyone to stay on track in terms of understanding how these small-picture sessions would contribute to a large-scale transformation of the entire staff’s approach to e-learning as part of the overall learning landscape in which we operate.

A critically-important moment occurred late in the planning process, when we decided that those who wanted to be able to step back a bit over lunch could do so, and those who wanted to engage in a mini unconference to more deeply explore topics that had come out of the morning sessions would have that opportunity in a way that put them at the center of the learning process. We’ll look more at what came out of the unconference in Part 4 of this case study; Part 3 will focus on how and why we had a pre-event onsite meeting the day before “From eLearning to Learning” was held—and the important modifications that came out of that final, lively discussion.

Next: Onsite Fine-tuning

NB: This is the second of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 1 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

“Co-conspirators” is a term I’ve loved ever since I first heard it used by colleagues in the Educational Technology & Media massive open online course (#etmooc) in 2013. Within its training-teaching-learning-doing context, it implies a sense of richly nuanced and deeply rewarding collaboration between learning facilitators and learners unlike any other I’ve experienced in our onsite and online (blended) learning environments.

So, when I was invited in essence to become a co-conspirator (we, as a group, weren’t yet using that term) with Staff Inservice Day committee members at Mount Prospect Public Library eight months ago, I eagerly jumped at the opportunity. The result was that I became part of another magnificent community of learning that has just produced a stunningly beautiful and tremendously inspiring example of all that can go right in planning and facilitating an e-learning experience—even one very-much grounded within an onsite setting.

What all of us (Library Staff Inservice Day planning committee members, as planners-learners-participants; I, as the consultant-presenter helping them shape an event that supported learning goals contained in the Library strategic plan; the learners themselves; and a few people offsite who occasionally joined us on the day of the event through a very active Twitter feed) produced looks as if it will have exactly the long-term positive impact all of us were hoping to produce for and with the library, its staff, and the members of the community it serves.

Everything about “From eLearning to Learning,” a day-long onsite and online exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work, ultimately was drawn from and became an example of the extensive e-learning environment we currently inhabit—far more, as I reminded them, than the usual module-out-of-a-box and final multiple-choice exam to mark the conclusion of a learning experience.

In our setting, there is no beginning and there is no discernible end. “From eLearning to Learning” continues a process begun long before I became involved, and the day-long “event” simply prepares them to continue their learning/e-learning process well into the foreseeable future.

This Mount Prospect Public Library “Discovery Zone” sign became an iconic image for “From eLearning to Learning”

Even the initial steps for this onsite-online exploration were grounded in e-learning. I was, for example, initially contacted by a member of the Staff Inservice Day committee who had initially met me through her participation as a learner in a four-week online “Rethinking Social Media” course I have designed and that I continue to facilitate for the American Library Association. Without that shared experience in an innovative online learning environment, my Mount Prospect colleague and I might not have made this particular connection and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be part of one of the most innovative and rewarding learning experiences I have ever helped design and facilitate.

Because the obvious distance between San Francisco and Mount Prospect (which is approximately 20 miles northwest of Chicago) is so great, all of us quickly agreed that the planning process itself would take place within a blended environment comprised of conference calls by phone and asynchronous interactions that ultimately produced our planning document and a facilitator’s guide to be used by the staff members who would foster discussion during break-out sessions we arranged throughout the day.

In a significant way, we were, as trainer-teacher-learner-doers, adapting a Flipped Classroom model approach to our meetings: at almost every stage of the process, we completed initial work on our own, had information to review before meeting by phone, and productively used our “classroom” time (the conference calls) to produce something concrete, and then repeated the process up to the day of the actual event.

What was clear from the beginning of our “conspiratating” was that we were committed to producing something that was far more than a one-day diversion that would soon be forgotten. Drawing upon the principles from the book The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results and remaining committed to producing something that was in alignment with the Library’s current strategic plan, we worked together to shape something that would be as much a process as an event. The learners/co-conspirators within the library knew well in advance what we were planning; they even provided tremendously useful information via a SurveyMonkey survey to be sure that we would be providing them what they needed (and, in that part of the process, probably became aware of how SurveyMonkey itself could be part of their efforts to effectively shape their overall e-learning landscape).

Participants in the mini unconference, held during the lunch break

Those of us on the planning committee initially created a broad subject-specific agenda. We fine-tuned it over the course of several months to be sure it would lead to fruitful discussions and positive transformation for everyone involved. We continually looked for ways to innovatively provide experiential learning opportunities the learners could immediately adapt and apply within their own workspaces. One idea, for example (a mini unconference during the lunch hour) came relatively late within the planning process; it ultimately produced ideas (including a proposal for a library-wide e-learning think tank) that participants seem eager to explore and create. And a final, unexpectedly rewarding idea—to incorporate Twitter into the event so our co-conspirators in the learning process would viscerally understand how Twitter has become an effective and dynamic part of our learning landscape—was added to the picture during the onsite meeting less than a day before “From eLearning to Learning” took place.

Next: Planning for Success

NB: This is the first of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

Rethinking Digital Literacy: Collaborating, Hyperlinking, and Owning Our Learning

With my ALA Editions “Rethinking Digital Literacy” co-conspirators (AKA learners) currently exploring the broad question of “who owns the learning” in digital environments, I saw at least one obvious answer while co-hosting and participating in a tweet chat about hyperlinked learning last night: anyone willing to be a collaborator/co-conspirator in the learning process owns the learning.

The question about ownership of learning—engagingly examined by Alan November in a book and a TEDx talk we’re exploring in Rethinking —is important and double-edged for any trainer-teacher-learner working within a digital environment. It makes us think about who retains (or should retain) access to all our discussions, learning objects, and other tangible aspects of the online-learning process that are usually lost to us once a course formally concludes and the course learning management system is closed to learners. The question also makes us think about who has responsibility for nurturing and sustaining the (lifelong) learning process that is an essential component to fostering digital literacy.

With my tweet-chat colleagues in the Educational Technology & Media massive open online course (#etmooc) community, the answer to both facets of the question is obvious and openly accessible. All of us involved in that particular community of learning retain (and openly share) access to the artifacts produced through our learning—e.g., through blog postings that occasionally connect to and interact with blog posts from other members of the community; through archived recordings of our interactions during  the course and those that continue to take place in Google Hangouts and any other accessible online tool we can find and explore as part of our continuing learning efforts on the topic of educational technology and media; and through tweets and the Storify learning objects we produce.

More importantly, we shape those discussions and artifacts collaboratively and through our own initiative—this is learner-centric, learner-driven learning at a very high and productive level. We have learned to take the responsibility for asking what we can do rather than relying solely on others to facilitate our learning process. For the tweet chat last night, a couple of us prepared the script with questions to be used during the tweet chat. We facilitated the session. I then edited and posted the Storify transcript of the event so other members of the community could be part of the effort to use and disseminate that resource. The result is that while learning, we also made—and are continuing to make—it possible for others who want to learn more about hyperlinked learning to do so while also seeing how a self-directed community of learning operates.

Owning the learning at this level always seems to produce results far beyond anything we anticipate. The hyperlinked-learning tweet chat, for example, produced numerous examples of hyperlinked learning in action. There was the magnificent “Tutor/Mentor Learning Map,” with more than 2,000 hyperlinks to other resources, prepared and shared by #etmooc community member Daniel Bassill. There were exchanges about tech tools some community members had not yet tried. There were informal attempts to define hyperlinked learning, including Daniel’s suggestion that it “is like island-hopping in a huge ocean of knowledge. You can go from place to place in any direction”; Shuana Niessen’s suggestion that it’s “non linear responsive learning”; and my own observation (based on our source material from Michael Stephens) that it’s “what we did/do in #etmooc: connecting, exploring, playing, collaborating, learning experientially” and what I’m fostering among my Rethinking Digital Literacy co-conspirators.

What made the session particularly interesting was how often the discussion about hyperlinked learning actually became an example of hyperlinked learning. There was the moment, for example, when we had a unexpected appearance from Alec Couros, who with his own original group of co-conspirators designed and facilitated that MOOC that inspired us to assume shared ownership (without in any way excluding Alec) of the #etmooc learning community. And there were plenty of other moments when learning by hyperlink drew in new colleagues as well as a few we hadn’t seen in quite a while. Nothing could speak more viscerally and meaningfully to the topic of hyperlinked learning than a community so completely hyperlinked that interactions continue to grow rhizomatically—a theme we explored during the formal course and continue to explore and nurture with every new action we take.

Rereading the Storify transcript a few times led to additional reflection—and learning—for me throughout the day today as I continued to produce this article. I repeatedly was struck by how the act of collaboratively shaping our learning experiences means that we hone other digital-literacy skills at the same time: being able to work within ever-changing online environments; being willing to contribute to our own learning and to the growth of our learning communities; and being able to capture discussions, learning objects, and other aspects of the learning process so they remain accessible rather than locked away in something akin to the storage crate housing the Lost Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

As I return to my Rethinking Digital Literacy co-conspirators—those learners who are so creatively and effectively crafting their own learning experiences—I look with admiration at the ways they are, in Week 3 of our four-week course, continuing to expand the ways they interact across as many digital platforms as possible. They—we—will leave distinct traces, if not much larger artifacts, of our time and collaborative learning efforts. It’s what was done in #etmooc; it’s what some of us have done in the Open and Connected Learning MOOC (#oclmooc) and the Connected Courses MOOC (#ccourses); and it’s what is creating the possibility that what we create during our four formal weeks of shared learning will remain accessible to current learning community members as well as to others who might want to learn from what we are accomplishing together.

In these dynamic, digitally-literate learning communities driven by hyperlinked learning, connected learning, connectivist-learning precepts, we are all co-conspirators. And we all own the learning, in every possible sense. 

N.B.: This is the fourth in a series of reflections inspired by our ALA Editions “Rethinking Digital Literacy” course.