top reason is the quality of the society or association’s research-based content, closely followed by the prestige of the organization. The membership requirement to attend the annual meeting, career certification requirements , and networking opportunities round out the top five.
Members and nonmembers alike highly value societies’ peer-reviewed journals and opportunities for continuing education. Whereas members value the peer-reviewed journal first and continuing education second, the order swaps for nonmembers.
interesting survey results on benefits valued by members of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly communities. Top two benefits were peer reviewed journal and continuing education for members and nonmembers.
91% of Blue Jeans survey respondents said they never met their colleagues in real life—Aaron says it’s important to remember to mute your line if you’re joining from your local cafe or other venue with ambient noise. It also helps to shift your screen so you don’t have glaring outside light emanating from your little virtual corner of the room.
video should keep people engaged and aware that they are visible to the rest of the group. "Treat colleagues with respect because you are there for a purpose," says Aaron, because technology makes it easy to detect if your eyes are wandering.
This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations.
"Social Media - what do you need to know?
In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working."
Another excerpt:
So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection?
A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge.
Excerpt:
Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs.
1. social media providing to time to collaborate
2. social media providing leadership support
3. social media providing information
4. social media providing access to colleagues
My Learning Springboard offers a Learning Concierge(R) which "brings together subject matter experts and curriculum specialists to develop customized programs for individuals or groups of all sizes and ages, including adult learners. Services include private tutoring, enrichment teaching, test preparation, field trips, independent study, after school programs, and summer programs in our direct service areas and beyond."
Amazing TED talk by an Italian artist who created a global community to help him cure his brain cancer. He created a web site, La Cura (the cure) and posted his brain scans online, inviting anyone to help him heal as a whole person. His site went viral and he received over 500,000 contacts. Through his site, he formed his team of neurosurgeons, oncologists, and several thousand people who were there for his cure as a person, not just for his cancer. He offers his open source model as one for anyone to do, for as he says, it is not just healing for himself, but healing for all of us that matters.
Dr. Tuajuanda C. Jordan is president of St. Mary's College of Maryland, a small liberal arts school. Jordan was trained as a biochemist, but had a liberal arts education and was exposed to natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts while attending college. This is a very articulate and clear essay on why liberal arts education matters, and how learning to question is its most valuable trait.
Wonderful blog post on social learning by Sahana Chattopadhyay, October 19, 2014. Identified by Jane Hart.
Excerpt:
"Then comes the dichotomy of having an enterprise collaboration platform where no one is sharing, where there are no conversations happening, no debates and questions. It's a ghost town. At the end of the day, the platform doesn't matter. The culture of the organization does. An organization with an essentially command and control approach, an overly competitive outlook, and a repressive environment is not yet ready for social learning."
Does this mean the employees are not engaging in "social learning"? Not at all. Learning has been social ever since human life was born on this planet and will continue to be so, with or without technology. Individuals will get their work done by talking to peers, reaching out to their network, and bringing their #pln and #pkm to work.
blog post by Vu Le, February 2, 2015--reflections on SeaHawks' loss to Patriots and tie-in to nonprofits' lessons
And I found that the greatest thing about this sport where a bunch of dudes throw an egg-shaped ball and shove each other around, is the community it builds. The last two weeks especially have been great. People were nicer to each other. Everyone seemed happier. And the ice at any meeting could be broken with a simple "Go Hawks."
Applied to nonprofits: One of the most important things that nonprofits do is that we build community. This is hard to measure and is not often funded. But we cannot take this for granted. When we do a good job, our organizations and programs instill in people-our clients, staff, board, volunteers, donors-a sense of belonging to a community that cares about them, where they are seen, where they matter. (See "An immigrant kid's reflections on community.")
I subscribe to Ramsey's Blog Tyrant blog and found this case study interesting. Although this is blog promotion, it seems as if it would be site promotion as well. Good info about Google Ads and Facebook ads and the return from them. Good information about the conversion of emails to subscribers and users, and the use of give aways. Most important - good content or no matter what you do people unsubscribe.
Excellent blog on valuable July reads by Jane Hart led me to this blog post by Thomas Handcock and Warren Howlett, July 29, 2014, CEB Blogs, a very good discussion of building productive learning cultures.
They recommend three steps:
1. Right size opportunities (which on the surface sounds fine but then they say that the "best organizations limit learning opportunities to those that are most relevant to employees and impactful for the organization but then rely on their (HR's) determination of learning needs (how do employees express their learning needs in this scenario? how does it support ownership and spontaneity beyond annual surveys? Of course they are talking about BIG corporations.) and "learning maturity" which sounds condescending to me)
2. Advance the organization's learning capability (most of this rings truer to me than #1 but it may be that my perception of what they say in #1 is slanted and hypersensitive). Here they talk about "teaching employees how to learn." "this lack of learning aptitude is primarily a capability issue, not a matter of employee motivation."
3. Foster shared ownership of the learning environment (which overcomes much of my objection to what they say in #1)
Very good, practical article by Marco Albani and Kimberly Henderson, McKinsey & Company, July 2014 on companies and social groups joining forces to protect the environment. The seven tips to make such alliances successful work for all partnerships/odd couples IMO.
1. ID clear reasons to collaborate.
"The effort needs to help each partner organization achieve something significant. Incentives such as 'we'll do this for good publicity' or 'we don't want to be left out' are not sufficient."
-Nigel Twose, director of the Development Impact Department, International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group
2. Find a fairy godmother
"It is important to have a core of totally committed, knowledgeable people who would die in a ditch for what the organization is trying to achieve."
-Environmental NGO campaign head
3. Set simple, credible goals
4. Get professional help
"It is very important to have an honest broker. The facilitator must be neutral and very structured and keep people moving along at a brutal pace. You need someone who can bring things to a close."
-Darrel Webber, secretary general, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
5. Dedicate good people to the cause
"If a company like ours believes something is strategic, then we resource it like it is strategic."
-Neil Hawkins, corporate vice president of sustainability, Dow Chemical
LOVE #5--HAVE SEEN "COLLABORATIONS" FAIL IN STATE GOVT. BECAUSE GOOD PEOPLE AND SENIOR LEADERSHIP WERE NOT BEHIND IT.
6. Be flexible in defining success
"Partners think that collaboration will change the world. Then it doesn't, and they think that it failed. But often the collaboration changed something-the way some part of the system works and delivers outcomes. It is a matter of understanding the nature of change itself."
-Simon Zadek, visiting fellow, Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Beijing
7. Prepare to let go
"I've been absent from the FSC since 1997.
blog by George Siemens reflecting on his first week of a dual-layer MOOC, October 28, 2014.
"I'm biased toward learners owning their own content and owning the spaces where they learn. My reason is simple: knowledge institutions mirror the architecture of knowledge in the era in which they exist. Today, knowledge is diverse, messy, partial, complex, and rapidly changing. What learners need today is not instructivism but rather a process of personal sensemaking and wayfinding where they learn to identify what is important, what matters, and what can be ignored. Most courses assume that the instructor and designer should sensemake for learners. The instructor chooses the important pieces, sets it in a structured path, and feeds content to learners. Essentially, in this model, we take away the sweet spot of learning. Making sense of topic areas through social and exploratory processes is the heart of learning needs in complex knowledge environments. "
Though I am biased toward learner-in-control, I do recognize the value of formal instruction, particularly when the topic area is new to a learner. Even then, I would like to see rapid transitions from content provision to having learners create artifacts that reflect their understanding. These artifacts can be images, audio, video, simulations, blog posts, or any other resource that can be created and shared with other learners. Learning transparently is an act of teaching.
Great courage to live your life out loud where things that feel shallow sink and things that feel true float upon the surface as they give voice to all those inner frailties that makes us human.
Look, all I’m saying is that as we get closer to our number being called, and we’re still upright, let’s “grab the bull by the horns.”
Remember those moments when you just don’t feel like doing a task, but you know you have to?
Starting is actually the secret to accomplishing a lot of things. Just by starting, somehow you are compelled to continue on.
As psychologist Roy Baumeister and science writer John Tierney pointed out in their Willpower book, it works a lot like a muscle. Like a muscle, it can get tired and need recovery.
It also needs to be nourished. It is affected by a lot of factors such as stress, physical health, and nutrition. In other words, your “spirit can be willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised.”
1.) DEFINING WHAT MOTIVATES YOU
f there is no underlying passion and serious motivation behind a goal, temptations can easily power their way against you.
.) DIVIDING YOUR GOALS INTO SMALLER PIECES
Contrary to many Vince Lombardi-type motivations, willpower is more like an energy that can be depleted. Willpower is a finite resource. It works in cycles; it is something that you build on and know when to maximize.
3.) GRADUAL PROGRESSION & ACCUMULATING POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
4.) YOUR HEALTH MATTERS
5.) WORK ON YOUR EMOTIONAL BLOCKAGES
Find that breakthrough and learn why, at times, you may feel like it doesn’t matter.
blog post from ProjectManBeyond, Self-Evolution for Men, posted 2/26/2016 with excellent ideas for growing willpower to do the things important to you. each essay offers a read time, ex. 7 minutes. By Mac Rivera, founder of a site for advanced self-development
Very wonderful blog post by Nancy Dixon, KM and social learning maven/professor/writer, on how talking with each other produces learning as we try to articulate what we know and what we might need help with, March 9, 2009.
In thinking about the role of creativity in the aging process, how does your art affect your feelings about growing older?
I know that it’s vital, because any creative project can take you out of being preoccupied with being sick or getting old, or whatever bothers you. You’re totally immersing yourself in creating. It’s one of the highs in life for me.
If there’s a message to share, as an older person take a passion you have and work on it, let it carry you through the years of losing memory, hearing, sight. Finding something you can do, that you can endure, no matter what your health is, is so important.
Networking will matter even more for job hunters. Employee referrals, job search engines and company career sites have caught up with job boards as employer's top picks for interviewing and hiring new workers. That means job hunters are better off working their online or real-life connections to find an in at a company they want to work for rather than scouring job board listings. When you apply or submit a résumé, include all the keywords that describe your skills and experiences, since companies that use applicant-tracking software match them against job descriptions.
The popularity of online video has led to companies switching how they offer training and career development, replacing in-person classes with on-demand curriculum that people can tune in when it suits their schedules, including on their phones.
Accenture is one company that has reconfigured learning and development to lean less on campus-based classes and more on on-demand, customized training on topics employees can choose based on their interests, not necessarily something their boss wants them to learn. I