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E-learning design and development process @ Brightwave

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 24 May 2012, 12:49

Brightwave%2520E-Learning%2520Process%2520SNIP.JPG

Brightwave's e-learning production process

 

Great to have a few months between modules as it gives me the opportunity to look beyond the MAODE modules at what interests me most: learnign and development in a corporate setting, the practicalities of enhancing the skills and building on the motivations and interests of people in their daily working lives.

The above chart adds detail to a familiar productoin process.

The benefit of turning to an outside supplier for such services (and for the the supplier to call upon the specialist skills of freelancers), is the accountability, the clarity of the stages, the parameters set by budgets and schedules and the lack of politics, as well as the engagement with a diversity of cultures, experiences and background which you simply do no get when everything is carried out in-house, the biggest bugbear of most providers in the the tertiary sector who insist on doing it all themselves.

Watch some of their videos

Particularly impressed with Laura Overton who I have heard speak at Learning Technologies in the past.

Laura%2520Overton%2520%2540%2520Brightwave.JPG

Laura Overton

Brightwave, quite rightly, include a transcript with these face paced, tightly edited, packed interviews.

This doesn't preclude the benefit of taking notes. I also cut and paste the transcript then go through highlighting, re-arranging the text and doing what Jakob Neilsen would call making it 'web friendly'.

Even if I don't share this online, the act of doing this is a vital way to engage and memorise the information.

I've come to understand in the last few days (B822 End of Module Exam) that a 'mnemonic' is any devise or technique that aids memory, so reading this start the mylenations process, comment and those tracks become established. Cut and paste, doing something of your own with the content, go follow the links, add links of your own, cut and paste into a blog (here or externally), then share it into Facebook or Twitter and pick up others who know more or less and can contribute.

All of this is a very human way og aggregating and securing knowledge.

Ideally everyone would be milling around my garden right now, we'd pick up the conversation, then drift away to other things.

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B822 Techniques Library: Keeping a Dream Diary & Working with Dreams

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 5 Jun 2014, 05:25

The lack of control over where your head goes and what it reveals should understandably go with a note of considerable caution. There often is no such thing as an innocent dream. It sometimes throws me when what is apparent in the dream: its people, actions and events can once analysed tell you something you can't accept or dislike about yourself or others.

Context is everything.

What bothers you as you fall asleep?

What's on your mind?

A film you have just watched could very well fill your head; I'm still enjoying the afterglow of '500 days of summer': troubled because its truth but delighted in the outcome.

It is less the dream diary, but a diary that can help you put your subconscious to work.

Should you write up your troubled day, and should you care not only to bring work home with you but also take it to bed, then indeed, the issue that is strangling your budget, or losing you business friends could be resolved in a dream. Once you have that dream in the conscious arena you can even rework it like a TV producer changing the protagonists and outcomes.

I dreamt I was in a court of sorts (I can see it in my mind's eye but will neither describe it or attempt to draw it unless some detail needs bringing out).

I presume I was a prosecuting solicitor.

Two trials cut together one after the other (have dreams always been film literate?). The second case is a rape; he is 'cock sure' thankfully there is no murder involved. He deserves to receive the severest punishment. The previous case with a different barrister had gone off like a damp squib; perhaps it wasn't as serious a case but I felt the person had got off lightly and I blamed the barrister for not following my instructions suitably closely. In this second trial I have a word perfect summing up which I might expect this new barrister to follow. On the contrary, I find this person launch in more like a hack journalist/columnist than a prosecuting lawyer. I worry that the defendant will get off lightly; however, it soon dawns on me that this person is using my argument but not the script and like a stand-up comic (though with professionalism and the hint of a smile of confidence) they will deliver a knock-out blow: they have taken what I can provide and made it better.

Does this solve my problem?

It doesn't answer something specific. If the photocopier is broken and never gets fixed I don't think I'd turn to my 'dream spirits' for the answer.

Does it even suggest to you that this approach has legs?

Me, I'm the defence solicitor, not the barrister. I may not solve the 'problem' the defendant, though I make my contribution.

Nor have I had to resort to a set of 27 questions to reach this point (see below).

I do not imagine sitting with a bunch of colleagues interpreting their dreams would be appropriate or suitable; they ate too random, and so are we. But I do recommend this approach for personal problem resolution, but be warned, you may try to get your dreams to set out your next career move only to discover that in your heart you hate your job and sector and wish instead to teach English to Japanese school-girls.

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B822 Bk1 C4 Analogical Thinking in Business, Organisations and Mangement Styles

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 21 Feb 2014, 18:17

 

Analogical thinking, from Churchill's 'iron curtain' to the invention of Velcro.

(Indeed neurologists believe there is a gene that causes human beings to think in metaphors and that it is exactly this that allows us to invent, in fact  creativity in the face of adversity still rings true today, though we are not  facing a Sabre-toothed tiger at the entrance to the cave, or changing climate  with the onset of the ice age.)

Analogy - transfer of an idea from one domain to another.

Metaphor - resemblance or flavour. A way of making the strange familiar p.85. Or the hard to comprehend (trees, ecosystems, architecture, traffic lights).

Morgan (1986)

Kinds of metaphor:

·         Mechanistic

·         Ecological

·         Social

·         Cognitive

·         Systematic

Metaphors as labels:

Manager as captain or conductor.

Morgan (1986, 1997)

·         Machine

·         Organism

·         Culture

·         Brain

·         Political System

·         Psychic prison

·         Flux

·         Transformation

·         Instrument of domination

ACTIVITY 4.1

1) Pick three metaphors (a, b, c) for organisations, for instance the organisation as machine, organism or political system.

2) List the characteristics you associate with each.

3) Try and relate each characteristic to a feature in an organisation that you know.

4) What features of organisations do these characteristics highlight, and what do they conceal?

A) As an orchestra, ABB, 1999. A corporate cliché I have seen applied to Abbey National and others. Visually it may have resonance, though the cost of featuring musicians, let alone playing a piece where used is prohibitive to all but the largest organisations. The characteristics are of complementary divisions 'playing the same tune' with woodwind, strings and brass, for example representing the different businesses. With a single conductor it may better fit the largely privately owned enterprise, say a Richard Branson and Virgin, or a Russian Oligarch, though no longer News International and the Murdochs. The features perhaps work for News International with newspapers and TV interests, even having a go with MySpace being largely media, whilst Branson is more the empirical Napoleonic conqueror of anything going?

B) As a strawberry plant, i.e. a federal organisation that has grown organically rather than by acquisition, perhaps like a clearing bank? Perhaps like a franchise such as Kall-Kwik. Or a retail chain, appropriately, such as Body Shop. The characteristics I think of are independently managed businesses that sell the same range of products, with common branding and sales materials, though with some localisation. This works well in relation to the plant performing differently on a variety of local soils/climates i.e. the same organism but in different settings/opportunities to flourish or not.

An empire

C) As an empire, where a holding company or private equity group has gone on the acquisition trail buying up businesses for the opportunity, rather than as sets of businesses that complement each other, so take over, create economies of scale in management and Head Office functions. The characteristics here feel as if it should be military with no good outcome, ala 'Wall Street', though there are or nave been more benevolent, squid give groups or holdings companies in the past such as the long gone Ferguson Industrial Holdings PLC, or perhaps Unipart Group of Companies (UGC). This suggests a dictator at the top, though the leaders can be benevolent even if a tall pyramid is the business structure.

If the organisation doesn't fit the metaphor, it is too simplistic a metaphor!  

The metaphor can intone a favourable or negative bias. For example, if asked in research to describe the organisation you work for as a car do you want it to be a Citroen 2CV, or a VW Golf, a Rolls-Royce or Ford Escort, a 1980s Ford Cortina or a Triumph Stag?

A business that is a machine I the digital age is surely going to get left behind through its rigid bureaucracies and hierarchies, a predilection for quantitative measures (ROI and KPIs) too?

(My concpetion of the School of Communication Arts. Which one am I?)

In the past I used successfully the idea of 'nurturing' to represent first a school (Arts College) and then my own services to graduate recruiters.

In 2011 it seems archaic to think of teachers or tutors in this way, people who are moderators, coaches or facilitators. (The ecological metaphor is used with a cartoon not dissimilar to my own p.88 not shown here for copyright reasons, to represent people as seedlings or potted plants).

From Table 4.1 metaphors of businesses in relation to:

  • Character
  • Flair
  • Structure
  • Climate
  • Style
  • Authority
  •  Form
  •  Control
  • Decisions
  • Strategy
  • Adaptability
  • Orientation
  • Approach
  • Procedure
  • Attitude

ACTIVITY 4.2

Take expressions of the above for a 'Machine like business, as 0 on a scale and

'Organic' as 10, then decide where:

a) you place your own organisation and b) yourself.

ACTIVITY 4.3

I'll do this one offline.

Other metaphors might include:

  • Brain
  • Knowledge
  • Learning

Network (Morgan, 1993) business as a spider-plant.

Federal (Handy, 1989) business as shamrock

Chaos and complexity.

Brains and cities.

Supporting 'patterns of transformation that emerge spontaneously in complex adaptive systems'. (Henry 2006:95)

Complex adaptive systems: termites, flock movements,  (anecdote of the aeroplane simulator managed by parts of an audience that  collectively cancels out the oddball, incompetent, inattentive or would-be plane-crashing individuals) p96 (Berreby, 1998:45 and Clark, 1997:75).

Self-organisation

'people do not need to be told what to do: they are intelligent agents continuously learning and modifying their behaviour on the basis if feedback'. Handy (2010:97)

See DVD 2, Video 3

N.B. The metaphors chosen tend to reflect the chooser's values. (Henry 2006:98)

Activity 4.4

What metaphor would you use to describe your organisation?

Activity 4.5

Describe the process of management as you experience it.

  • Warlike
  • Sporting
  • Spiritual

Activity 4.6

A metaphor to describe my management style.

Activity 4.7

Note metaphors to describe daily management styles.

Activity 4.8

Take a current task, associate with it an appropriate metaphor then give it  another that is far removed from the first.

Organisational paradigms p.104

Functionalist paradigm - world as an objective reality.

Kolb (1984) drawing on Pepper (1942)

Four ways of thinking about the world:

  1. Mechanistic
  2. Realist
  3. Organicist
  4. Pragmatic

And thinking styles:

  • Assimilator
  • Converger
  • Diverger
  • Accommodator

Table 4.2 Organisational metaphors and paradigms

Activity 4.9 WHAT METAPHOR WOULD YOU OFFER FOR MANAGEMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY?

 I've experienced many, including from the table:

·         Chaos/postmodern/play

 I know of:

·         System/participatory/co-create

 I like the sound of:

·         Drama/interpretive/enact

For the 21st Century I like the model of the modern ideas lab in which innovative ideas are trialled, developed then kicked out with a chunk of financing to thrive however turns out best! 

This is the sink or swim analogy.  

But after suitable teaching/coaching. Or perhaps a metaphor of procreation, raising and nurturing a child then letting them go? So organic or animal (or in particular mammalian or human).

Stacy (1996) and danger of controls, procedures and Pre-specified objectives.

FURTHER READING

Morgan, G. 'Paradigms, metaphors and puzzle-solving', C9 in Henry (1999a)

FROM MY OU STUDENT BLOG

'Consider this medium as like talking with your fingers - half-way between spoken conversation and written discourse.' (Hawkridge, Morgan and Jeffs, 1997,  quoted in Salmon 2005)

Salmon, G (2005) E-moderating. The Key to teaching and learning online.

REFERENCE

Berreby, D (1998) 'Complexity theory: fact-free science or business tool?

Strategy and Business, No. 10, pp. 40-50.

Clark, A (1997) Being there. Cambridge, MA. MIT

Henry, J & the MBA Course Team (2006, 2010) B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'  Book 1 'Creativity, Cognition and Development'. The Open University Business School

Morgan, G. (1986 2nd 1997) Images of Organisation 

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B822 is the idea A,U,A?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011, 18:28

Actionable Useful Appropriate (Amabile 1998:77)

Even regarding Social Media I am asked this all the time, let alone my call for more use of video and 'user generated content'.

It being 'creative' is not enough, value must be apparent, predictable, then measured and monitored. At times processes want the Jack in the Box; while I want it 'out there' turning heads and grabbing attention.

I am taken by the diagram that puts creativity at the intersect of Expertise, Creative Thinking and Motivation, but when I read about intrinsic motivation over extrinsic I grin: this is familiar territory, personally it is what makes me tick, and appropriately in the week I am interviewed to volunteer at the Olympics and on the evening I agree to some pro bono work for my old swimming club, I am reminded of the role intrinsic motivation plays in sport.

The intrinsic motivation principle of creativity: people will be most creative when they motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction and challenge of the work itself and not by external pressures. (Amabile 1998:79)

THE CREATIVITY MAZE (Amabile 1998:80)

A mouse is extrinsically motivated to find the cheese in a maze and will in time take the direct route to the goal however many twists and turns there are.

The creative person, for the love of the maze will question every twist and turn and ultimately uncover a quicker or more direct route through, over or with the maze. 

I've found me again.

Repeatedly trying against type to be the mouse I become unstuck. I've been there, in the context of film production, I have been the producer who hires people who are motivated to achieve what they perceive as required for the project.

Money matters, but I have worked with people who do it for free and are equally if not more motivated to deliver and are prepared, as I have twice done (short films: 'Listening In' and 'Watersprites', to work through the night). (Both on YouTube under JJ27VV)

I can indeed apply what I learn today, today.

An OU motto used only the other morning by our Dean Prof. James Fleck (or in my case what I learn tonight, I can apply in a few hours time to question how creativity is facilitated or crushed by the system and little ways to feed the motivation of those around me).

Not satisfied simply to read this, take notes and screen grabs, I feel I will be sharing links or copies with close colleagues, faculty and campus colleagues as a means to seek a modus operandi that facilitates creativity.

At this point, unusually I must break off this conversation and contemplate where I place such deeper and potentially sensitive and private reflection.

Ideally this would be into the pages of a locked e-portfolio blog, or alternatively offline (initially) into a relational database such as FileMaker Pro.

Serendipitous to be on this module now and for the first article I read to be this one?

(though I should have been doing an MBA the year before this paper was published).

Reference

Amabile. T.M. (1998) pp.77-79 How to kill creativity. Harvard Business Review. October to September.

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Management is not a profession

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 17 Sep 2010, 09:44

Management is not a profession. Harvard Business Review

I came across this, read and rejoiced.

http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=51600603&site=ehost-live&scope=site

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