Jay Cross helps people work and live smarter. Jay is the Johnny Appleseed of informal learning. He wrote the book on it. He was the first person to use the term eLearning on the web. He has challenged conventional wisdom about how adults learn since designing the first business degree program offered by the University of Phoenix.
“I want your advice but I don’t have money to pay for it.”
Not a week goes by that the independent consultant doesn’t receive requests from corporations or organizations to give free advice or presentations. “Think of the exposure you’ll get,” they say.
Generally, that exposure is not worth much. Follow-up work is about as likely as getting a free car by telling the dealer, “My friends will see me in it. Maybe they’ll want to buy one.”
“But we need to understand what you can do for us.”
Organizations need to judge whether the consultant’s thinking is what they need.
At the Internet Time Alliance, that’s why we publish more than a thousand free articles and give dozens of public presentations annually. We also help numerous NGOs, universities, start-ups, and students. We write books. We are nothing if not generous with our intellectual capital.
However, if we give away all of our time, we won’t be able to pay the bills, the people who depend on us will starve, we’ll lose our houses, and that will be the end of that. Unlike the people asking for free services, we don’t receive paychecks.
“But it won’t take long.”
Pablo Picasso is enjoying an aperitif with friends at the Deux Magots. A beautiful woman approaches the great artist’s table. “Will you sketch my portrait on a napkin? I will pay you for your work, Monsieur Picasso.”
Picasso deftly draws the portrait with six rapid strokes. “That will be 4,000 francs, Madame.”
“But it only took you twenty seconds,” she protested.
“Non,” replied Picasso. “It’s taken me forty years to be able to do this.”
Many of us independents can identify.
Quality has a price
As for me, I’ll take part in Online Educa Berlin because I know that any surplus is going to fund noble causes like eLearning in Africa. I’ll attend DevLearn because I’ll learn a lot in exchange for sharing my thoughts. I’ll accept invitations to Lake Como or China or other great places in exchange for an all-expenses-paid tour accompanying my professional work there.
But when a prosperous company or other deep-pockets operation asks me to give away my thoughts, to make in-house presentations for nothing, and to cut into my time for learning & research, I’m going to point them right here. My answer will be:
Is this unreasonable?
____________
Related
I am growing weary of the shouting match termed the Great LMS Debate and don’t plan to waste any more breath on it. Others are articulating the issues well. Check these out:
In The LMS Must Die, Mark Berthelemy highlights all the learning needs that LMS don‘t deal with.
All the time we have LMS’s, organisations will feel bound to continue to put content inside it that should, instead be sitting elsewhere, in a searchable (and thus findable) state. So, my call is for organisations to think more strategically about their learning materials. Consider where they should be best placed for most effective long term gain, and perhaps even closing the LMS to new materials…
Michael Feldstein applies Clayton Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation to predict the future of the LMS market. Why buy Saba when you can get what you need from Moodle?
More and more, we’re seeing schools doing LMS evaluations concluding that the various LMS platforms are functionally equivalent. Now, it’s not literally true that these systems are functionally equivalent. There are differences. What these schools are saying, though, is that most of the differences are ones that don’t matter.
The LMS debate isn’t about whether or not we should have LMSs. Rather, the issue is whether the LMS merits the fixation of the training community. Managers of learning need to focus on all the other important apps available to them.
I have other fish to fry. So do you.
Lots of straw men live on the web.
Wikipedia: “A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To ‘attack a straw man is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet weaker proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.”
A familiar straw man misrepresents a post by reducing its argument to either/or and then slamming it by saying it’s often something in between. In the real world, things don’t come in black or white; everything is painted in shades of gray.
Most yes/no categorizations are extremist; I think of them as bipolar reasoning.
As Feed said in 2003, “As is sadly always the case in American intellectual discourse, complex social and historical issues get reduced as quickly as possible to simplistic binary oppositions which exclude by definition all the really interesting choices and developments (a good analogy here is our reduction of the categories used to analyze sexual behavior to either promiscuity or monogamy).”
The world is not binary, things exist (and persist) for a reason, and you can’t separate content from its context without losing something in the process.
In Informal Learning, I wrote that, “Formal learning and informal learning are both-and, not either-or. This book is focused on informal learning, but when you assess what will work for your organization, consider how informal learning might supplement what you are doing now rather than replace it.”
Nonetheless, I still hear from people who say it’s unreasonable for me to asset that informal learning is better than its formal cousin. I tire of being put down for something I never said.
Every business decision is a trade-off. (If there’s no trade-off, it’s a no-brainer.) I find it useful to list the pro’s of doing something and the con’s of not doing it or doing something else. Awareness of what you’re trading off when making a decision can keep the straw people out of the picture.
Every morning, my email is littered with very basic questions about informal learning. I’ve been ranting about informal and computer-supported learning in organizations for twelve years now. I’m the Johnny Appleseed of networked, social learning
I make 95% of my work available on the net at no charge. You can find it in blogs, presentations, articles, books, YouTube, free book chapters. Google “informal learning jay cross;” go to the Informal Learning Page, for an overview and links..
(20 minutes later) I just set up the Jaycross FAQ. It’s going to encourage people who want the basics to read this interview with the eLearning Coach before asking questions. It’s all in there.
The eLearning Coach interviewed me a few days ago. Fun questions. Visit her site. (Isn’t this great? It’s the Coach’s list of Stock Photo sites.
Welcome to readers around the planet! This is the website of Connie Malamed, an eLearning, information and visual designer with a Masters Degree in Instructional Design & Technology and 20 years of experience in the trenches. The eLearning Coach is where I share actionable strategies, practical content, personal reviews and resources to help you design, develop and understand online learning.
Connie: A funny thing happened while we were learning informally. A few astute people noticed it, wrote about it and brought it to the forefront of the learning arena. In fact, the buzz about informal learning seems to grow every day. You’ll find it discussed in training forums, featured in conferences and the subject of many presentations.
Social learning technologies, which often facilitate informal learning, seem to have paved the way for greater interest in this approach. So I think readers of The eLearning Coach would appreciate an interview with a person who wrote the book on the subject … literally. Meet Jay Cross, author of Informal Learning, speaker and consultant.
Connie: What is your definition of informal learning?
Jay: Learning is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work, and in the groups that matter to you. Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs.
Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route. The rider can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or go to the bathroom. Learning is adaptation. Taking advantage of the double meaning of the word network, to learn is to optimize the quality of one’s networks.
That said, all learning is part formal and part informal; neither exist in pure, unadulterated form. The issue we’re really addressing is whether the learning is mainly formal (imposed) or informal (sought).
Three hallmarks of formal learning are: a curriculum, a schedule and recognition upon completion (even if only a checkmark in an LMS).
Coach: What are examples of offline informal learning?
Jay: Learning to walk, talk, eat, kiss, smooch, run or ride a bicycle.
Coach: And examples of online informal learning?
Jay: Getting an answer from the Help Desk, asking Twitter friends for an answer, looking at a FAQ on a wiki.
Coach: What motivational factors underlie informal learning?
Jay: The primary motivation is needing to learn something in order to do something. There are so many forms of learning, it’s tough to generalize. I might want to learn Italian to foster my relationship with Sophia. I might learn to program Cisco routers in order to get a raise. I might seek an answer to a customer’s question.
Coach: How do you think cognitive processes differ when someone is learning informally as opposed to formally?
Jay: Generally informal learning is demand-driven. I’m more interested because I’ve chosen the subject matter and extent of the learning. It’s likely I’ll reinforce my learning almost immediately and that will make it stick. (Can anybody really remember the content of their high school coursework?)
Coach: Formal and structured learning can potentially promote efficient organization in long-term memory. Would this be an advantage of formal learning over informal?
Jay: Organization in a curriculum isn’t efficient unless it’s the right stuff. Generally, informal learning will take less time and effort to learn an equivalent amount of material.
Coach: Is there more potential for picking up incorrect information or developing inaccurate mental models when learning informally?
Jay: There’s potential for picking up incorrect information from informal learning or formal learning or newspapers or television or one’s brother. Learners need to be able to apply tests of reasonableness. Can the information be substantiated? Do others agree? Has it been vetted by thousands of others? Does it make sense to me?
Coach: Are there advantages to informal collaborative learning as compared to informal individualized learning?
Jay: Learning is social. Most learning is collaborative. Other people are providing the context and the need, even if they’re not in the room. Relative advantages would depend on the nature of what’s being learned. I don’t sense that there are absolutes.
Coach: How can organizations optimize the workplace for informal learning?
Jay: I’ve written books on this, but in short, organizations need to trust their people. People confronted by high expectations tend to live up to them. (And when confronted with low expectations, they tend to sink down to a low level.)
There are hundreds of smaller interventions that nurture informal learning. Examples might be setting up facilities to encourage conversation, providing time and encouragement of reflection, displaying graphics that explain company processes, building a social network infrastructure, setting up ways to share information, and viewing learning as part of every job.
There’s a lengthy summary of this at Internet Time Wiki. That’s the “informal learning page” I set up just for people who are curious about informal learning. You can download book chapters, watch a video, find white papers, etc.
Thanks for a great interview, Jay!
You’re quite welcome, Connie. I’m on a crusade to show businesspeople the enormous potential return on small investments in informal learning. Investments in learning return huge amounts; neglect of informal and social learning both demeans employees and leaves gobs of money on the table. Thanks for putting this together.
Not a week goes by that I don’t hear from a college student asking about informal learning. I am generous in answering thoughtful inquiries, but I do not intend to rob students of learning experiences by doing their thinking for them.
Teachers give assignments to help students learn. Cutting and pasting the results of Google searches until they resemble a paper you might have written saves you time and effort at the expense of your learning. Learning requires reflection. This takes more effort the first few times you try it but saves time in the long run. When you learn, from there on you’ll be building on what you already know instead of continually reinventing the wheel. Unless you’re preparing for a career doing simplistic searches on the net, don’t game the system.
If you are a student, study. Getting answers is easy. Asking the right questions is hard. Read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way by Eric Raymond and Rich Moen. It taught me enough social engineering to get better answers quicker and with less waste.
This arrived in my morning email:
This email is more cordial than most but I don’t know what she’s really asking for. A creative idea? How about “What have I learned outside of class and what did it get me?”
Over the weekend, I had visited the wiki for a course on informal learning that the instructor had invited me to review. Here’s the first entry on informal learning:
Having once been a wise-ass college student myself, I don’t mind the snarky attitude. I do find it troubling when a student makes specious observations that end up inhibiting learning. Hence, I responded:
Frankly, I am amazed you could visit the site and not find informal learning. Where were you looking?
Being a champion of informal learning doesn’t make me think that formal study should be lackadaisical.
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