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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.

from The Future of Work. Elizabeth Segran "For women in tech, a humanities background can be an added liability, since there is already a perception that they are less competent at science and math. Danielle Sheer says that when she joined Carbonite, her first impulse was to hide her lack of knowledge and retreat at meetings. However, she quickly changed strategy, deciding it was more important for her to ask questions to fully grasp the technology. She's spent hours tinkering with the software and working with engineering teams to learn about it. She says her colleagues are supportive, even if she sometimes slows them down. "By articulating complicated technical or strategic ideas in plain English, you'd be amazed at how much progress we've made solving problems," she says. "We've become very good at assuming that we don't have the same definition.""

blog post by Gayle Bennett, 8.3.15 on finding and asking the right questions to hire the best people for associations

14 minute video by Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner on their value creation network, April 2015. Explains the value creation network beautifully and impact of social learning from immediate value to potential value to applied value to realized value and then its strategic and enabling value.

Incredible post by Beth Kanter on integrating learning into nonprofits' work, January 2, 2014. Very grounded piece that links to excellent resources. References Charles Jennings' framework of adding learning to work, embedding learning in work, and extracting learning from work. Ends with these questions: How does your nonprofit integrate learning into your work? How do you as a nonprofit professional incorporate professional learning into your work? - See more at: http://www.bethkanter.org/learning-at-work/#sthash.CxcnOOYv.dpuf

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.

article by Thomas J. Denham in About.com Job Searching Benefits 1. Networking 2. Professional trends 3. Attending conferences 4. Publications 5. Job listings 6. Product discounts 7. Mentoring 8. Building your resume through volunteering These two speak more to what you should consider before joining an association 9. Being selective 10. Asking questions

Excellent list of questions to gain more from performance reviews (although I wonder if the supervising person will be any more informative in answering these than in giving a vague performance appraisal in the first place), by Judith Sherven, December 10, 2013, LinkedIn

" Where can you find free, good quality images that are cleared to use for your blog posts or social media content? It's a question with a lot of different answers and caveats. Nearly every image created in the last 30 years is still protected by copyright-a protection that gives virtually every author the exclusive right to use or reproduce their work. But you can find a public domain photo, use a Creative Commons image that might need attribution or even create your own image from scratch."

"Women's entrepreneurship has hit a media tipping point. The question is: Is it just a passing media fad that will soon be a blip on the radar screen, or is it actually a real, fundamental economic force that's reshaping the world? I think it's safe to say that it's the latter. Women-owned entities in the formal sector represent approximately 37% of enterprises globally - a market worthy of attention by businesses and policy makers alike. While aggregated data is often challenging to find, the recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) found 126 million women starting or running businesses, and 98 million operating established (over three and a half years) businesses. That's 224 million women impacting the global economy - and this survey counts only 67 of the 188 countries recognized by the World Bank."

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.

Good way to release survey results in "preview" fashion to collect reactions from senior L & D leaders which were then incorporated into the report for final release. Blog post by Levi Phillips on 12/5/14. "We captured some first-time responses from L&D leaders to three simple questions at the event: 1. What caught your attention from the findings presented today? 2. What actions are you taking away from today? 3. What do you think will inspire others in your sector and/or network?"

News article on shooting death of Dan Markel, a rising star in the legal world and an FSU professor, 7.26.14. They describe his desire to create dialogue and how his blog PrawfsBlawg gained national attention. (and may have led to his irritating someone who killed him) "In Tallahassee, Markel's star ascended. He launched a legal blog, a forum for law professors called PrawfsBlawg. The site gave scholars an avenue to vet ideas and listed job opportunities. PrawfsBlawg attracted a national following, propelling Markel into a network of high-profile scholars. He was invited to conferences nationwide. Markel's scholarship, which raised philosophical questions about the justice system and argued against the death penalty, also received national attention. His writing was featured in the New York Times and Slate. "He was very eager to engage other academics in dialogue," said Berman, the Ohio State professor. "He believed the more you got resistance to your idea, the more refined and sophisticated the idea would become.""

Interview with Kat Cole on leadership and becoming a leader, July 19, 2014. Like her emphasis on coachability and feedback and unrelenting curiosity to learn. Supports learning, leading, connecting online. Also like her other leadership insights and how she hires new people. Excerpt "What advice do you give your employees who are ambitious and want to move up? First, I talk about being incredibly coachable, because we all give each other feedback. If you want to move up, you've got to get as many inputs as possible to continue to develop. Second, take your development into your own hands and be curious about the entire company. If there's something you want to learn, go learn it. The structure here is like a start-up. "

Merlin Mann, March 13, 2006, on five sneaky email cheats template, the link, the question, the "I don't know", the delete key

Harold Jarche's lament, January 12, 2015. "Salaried workers and consultants use what I give away in order to earn their livelihood. For the most part, I am fine with this, as it raises my profile and the level of engagement. But it seems we are entering a time when people expect to get whatever information they need for free and feel no obligation to support the people who create it. I am beginning to question my current business model. Last week I was twice asked to work for free. In each case the person asking me to work for 'exposure' was a salaried employee. My bank has yet to accept exposure as a form of payment." Jarche goes onto say that he is changing his business model because this isn't working.

nice blog post by Sean Smith on Copyblogger for content marketing for an inground swimming pool business and an online marketing business. Explains that responding to questions in a blog post is great way to educate and engage with potential customers.

Love this post by Alli Polin, July 29, 2014. She/he? asks three questions about our personal leadership: 1. How am I showing up? 2. How am I engaging (through human connections?)? 3. How am I changing? (You can choose to stand still or bravely and boldly meet your future. It's coming either way. Leaders that not only accept change, but invite it, have vision, courage, and a commitment to growth.)

great article in the Atlantic on how employee training has evolved to include much more self-directed, outside-in kinds of learning

from InstructionalDesign.org, their page on Double Loop Learning and the theory of action outlined by Argyris and Schon. Double loop learning assumptions underlying current views are questioned and hypotheses about behavior publically tested.