Confessions of an elearning skeptic

As promised in Ponderings Nine here is my report on day two of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) conference in Sydney.

The second day was certainly focussed more on ‘convential’ types of classroom/face-to-face learning with the key session of the day a presentation by Dr Michael Marquardt on Action Learning. With my current focus on elearning I spent a lot of time pondering the significance of Action Learning to the elearning sphere, as most information about Action Learning implied a face-to-face activity rather than something done digitally. During my trip home on the train I started to draw some threads between Action Learning and Learning Communities that I think are valuable in my study of online Learning Communities. Like Action Learning, online Learning Communities:

• Place more value on the questions than on the answers. Most threads start with a question and the better the question the better the outcome of the thread.
• Place learning as a key outcome of the process. True learning communities are not about showing-up your knowledge, but on contributing and learning from others.
• Require participants to ‘listen’ and treat each other with respect.

With this in mind I’m keen to read further about action learning and see how it can inform my study of learning communities.  I bought Dr Marquardt’s book ‘Leading with questions‘ so I will be studing that closely too to see how I can apply it to my learning and my context.

Well, the conference is over for another year and I’m keen to exploit my post-conference enthusiasm and try and implement a few of the key things I have learned. Fingers crossed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 am and is filed under Online communities, Ponderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.