SWTng 4: Interactive Workplace Learning Article

This next article (number 4) by Armson and Whitely (2010) reports grounded theory research on "complex integrative learning", titled "Employees' and managers' accounts of interactive workplace learning" and published in the Journal of Workplace Learning. The author-supplied keywords are workplace learning, learning methods, employees, and managers. It includes 73 references and 4 appendices. Here's the abstract:

"Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate employees' and managers' accounts of interactive learning and what might encourage or inhibit emergent learning.  
Design/methodology/approach - The approach taken was a constructivist/social constructivist ontology, interpretive epistemology and qualitative methodology, using grounded theory method. Data collection included semi-structured interview, "complete this sentence" and "scenarios" from 51 respondents: 22 managers and 29 employees in four private sector organisations. As respondents' theories emerged, these informed the next round of data collection, this process named "theoretical sampling". Managers and employees were asked about perceptions of their own role and the others' roles in learning.  
Findings - Reciprocity and participative learning involving managers and employees emerged. There was dynamism to the data and evidence of both Billett's notion of affordances and Stacey's patterns of local interactions. Employees encouraged learning through peer discussions, and motivation/personal initiative. Managers encouraged learning through have a go coaching, formal training opportunities and working with company structure and resources. The data support the idea of complex and integrated learning.
Practical implications - The data informed both managers and employees in such a way as to highlight the dynamic and complex interactions around learning processes. One practical implication is employee and manager training in emergence and complexity as learning environments. Ideas of complex responses and patterns of local interaction resonated with the data more than particular typologies of learning.
Originality/value - This paper captures insights, especially from employees, into the dialogue and dynamism of their learning opportunities, whilst supporting existing theories. The need for managers to "learn" employees' local interaction patterns emerged as a future research agenda, alongside the need to penetrate the social space of employee learning more deeply."

 Let's define some terms first, starting with emergent learning. The authors state, "We conceptualized the idea of emergent learning as the capacity to act such that emergence, spontaneity and serendipity might occur." I'm still not sure what emergent learning is, but perhaps a definition from evolution will shed some light: "the appearance of new properties or species in the course of development or evolution." (retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emergence). Thus, if the connection holds, this is merely the appearance of new ideas or concepts in the course of development or use. Spontaneity, of course, means it happens on the spur of the moment. Serendipity is more than just good fortune or luck; it is also "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident." (retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/serendipity) To me, it appears this means that the learning objective is simply to learn; there is no concrete criterion that is being measured, just an increase in knowledge (perhaps) as well as comprehension. This seems to focus more on the upper levels of Bloom's (1956) Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning and probably on the upper levels of the psychomotor and affective domains as well. Learning becomes the means to its own end. The authors contrast it with "outcomes-based learning" which they say "may result in 'routine-oriented' learning where learning is repetitive and habituated and not amenable to organisational unlearning." (p. 411) Looking at the constructivist/social constructivist ontology, this means they see the learner as an agent of their own learning (self-motivated) and learning as a process and product of social interaction (peer-motivated).

The authors refer to evidence of two theories: Billet's (2004) notion of affordances and Stacey's (2005) patterns of local interactions. Affordances are defined by Billet as the "kinds of activities and interactions workplaces afford learners, on one hand, and how individuals elect to participate in workplace interactions and activities on the other." (Billett, 2004, p. 312) In Stacey's (2005) concept of local, self-organizing patterns of interactions as well as the notion of complex responses, formal and informal, predictable and unpredictable patterns of interaction may emerge at the same time, forming a paradox.

 Communication and management coaching were identified as positive contributors to emergent learning while company structure and lack of resources were identified as constraints. Peer discussions and individual motivation and initiatives were identified by employees as encouragers. Employees also identified management style and not being informed of objectives, including the "big picture," as inhibitors. Managers saw coaching, working with company structure and resources, and offering training programs as encouragers to emergent learning. Both employees and managers saw resistance to change and certain organizational elements of company structure and resources and especially managers' time (hoarding?) as inhibitors to emergent learning.

The employees saw themselves as active agents in the learning process and reflected this in their spoken desire for more interaction with their peers (and with management). While there was no report of overt conflict between the two groups, the general feeling one gets from reading the report reflects some of Seddon's (2000) position against a "command and control" view of management as opposed to a systems' view. However, if the managers can't manage because the employees are in charge, then what? How does learning occur in that scenario? Not very well, I think. The report indicates the managers in this case allowed the employees to experiment, within reason and after approval. Finally, the authors conclude that "the workplace is rich in learning activities and, within the limits of the research design, we could detect self-organising patterns of local interaction and the data strongly supported the notion of complex responses." (Armson and Whitely, 2010, p. 422)

REFERENCES

Armson, G. and Whiteley, A. (2010). Employees' and managers' accounts of interactive workplace learning.  Journal of Workplace Learning, 22(7), pp. 409-427. DOI: 10.1108/13665621011071091

Billet, S. (2004). Workplaces as learning environments. Journal of Workplace Learning, 16(6), pp. 312-324.

Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Book 1, Cognitive domain. New Yourk: Longman.

Seddon, J. (2000). The case against ISO 9000. Dublin: Oak Tree Press.

Stacey, R. (Ed.) (2005). Experiencing emergence in organizations. London: Routledge.

SWTng Article No. 2

Here's article number two on software training. It's by S.C.J. Palvia and P.C. Palvia (2007) in the Journal of Information Systems Education titled "The effectiveness of using computers for software training: An exploratory study." Keywords are computer-based education, software training, learning methods, computer literacy, and instructional strategy. There are 42 references listed. This is the abstract:

"Both academic institutions and corporations have invested huge amounts of resources in computer-based training and education. The evidence in support of the effectiveness of computers and instructional technology in the classroom is mixed at best, and much of the practice is based on faith and ongoing trends in education. In this study, we conduct an exploratory experimental investigation into the effectiveness of four computer-based software training methods: traditional, delayed, asynchronous, and synchronous. We do not find any evidence to support the commonly held beliefs that there is an improvement in the computing literacy scores of students if the instructor has access to computers or if the students have access to computers during the software lesson. On the other hand, students find the practice of using computers both by themselves and by the instructors more satisfying than not being able to use them in the classroom. Our results have serious implications for instructors and decision-makers in both education and industry. While our results are directed at the lower levels of the Bloom's taxonomy of learning, we recommend research into higher levels in order to assess the full impact of computer-based education."

The authors begin by citing Alavi & Leidner (2001) for the "dramatic growth in computer-based teaching and learning in the last decade." (!) This article was published four years ago. The one cited was published 10 years ago. A common assumption is that knowledge is doubling in half the time. However, this may be a misstatement of a concept called the "half-life of knowledge" that is attributed to Fritz Machlup (1962). It is defined as "the amount of time that has to elapse before half of the knowledge in a particular area is superseded or shown to be untrue." (from the article "Half-life of Knowledge" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge).

Gonzalez (2004) also refers to this concept, albeit somewhat differently:

"Technology is placing unique requirements on people in the workplace, compelling a sharp focus on training and education. One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). [Note: this is actually the American Society for Training and Development, of which I am a member. The information cited is in Meister and Willyerd (2010) which is drawn from an unnamed study at the University of California at Berkeley.] To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction."

In his IDOL doctoral dissertation, Dr. Kris Jamsa (2008) notes that in that year, society would "produce an estimated 10 exabytes of information--roughly double the amount of data required to store all the words ever spoken by man. Further, the Web now consists of over 300 exabytes of information (35 times the size of the Library of Congress)." (p. i)

 The point of this little rabbit trail is that if computer-based teaching had grown in 2007, it has exploded in 2011. To use a word that has become ubiquitous, the use of computers has become ubiquitous. While there are still as yet unserved populations, e.g. the homeless and those either too rural to have service or to poor to afford it, computers have become a way of life. My cellphone has a 1-GHz, dual-core processor with 16 GB of storage onboard and another 8 GB SD card that I had laying around that I inserted inside. With bluetooth and wi-fi capabilities, it doesn't take much to get online, since even most McDonald's restaurants have free wi-fi connection to the Internet. Indeed, the latest craze is mobile learning via smart phones like mine.

So whatever their results were in 2007, when I began this doctoral excursion, the stakes have changed galactically (exponentially just doesn't cut it any more). Well, that was just the first sentence of the introduction. Let's see if I can wrap this up quickly. Their problem is that despite advances in technology, the effectiveness of computer-based learning remains a mystery. They claim research results are "mixed and conflicting" (p. 479). They recite a litany of studies that report conflicting results on the one hand and results that are contextualized an unable to be generalized on the other. Therefore, the authors decided to investigate "alternative modes of computer-based education and their effectiveness" (p. 480), focusing on the formal training and learning phase of the training/learning process.

They used a matrix to identify four different methods of training, including traditional, delayed, asynchronous, and synchronous. The topic of all four methods was the same: training in the use of  MicroSoft (T) Excel (R). The author distinguished this as computing literacy (the skills needed for using computers) as opposed to computer literacy (knowledge about computer fundamentals). The four methods were based on two main variables: whether or not the instructor had access to a computer during the instruction and whether or not the students had access to computers during the instruction. The traditional method referred to the fact that neither the instructor nor the students had access to computers during the instruction. This was identified as traditional instruction with delayed practice. In the delayed method, the instructor taught with a computer but the students did not have access to their own computers. This was characterized as computer-based instruction with delayed practice. The asynchronous method reversed these roles: the instructor taught without a computer but the students had access during the instruction. This was called traditional instruction with concurrent practice. Finally, in the synchronous method, the instructor used a computer to teach and the students also had access. This was labeled computer-based instruction with concurrent practice.

While students showed significant improvement in computing skills in all the methods, there was no significant evidence to support the hypotheses that either the students or the instructor having computers in the classroom improved their computing literacy. However, there was evidence to support both hypotheses on student satisfaction with regard to access to computers in the classroom by the instructor and/or the students.

REFERENCES

Gonzalez, C. (2004).  The role of blended learning in technology. Benchmarks Online, 7(9). Retrieved from http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/2004/september04/eis.htm

Jamsa, K. (2008). Implementing a distributed learning object registry and repository to measure Learning-Object Metadata (LOM) practices and use. (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

Machlup, F. (1962). Knowledge production and distribution in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Meister, J., and Willyerd, K. (2010). Looking ahead at social learning: 10 predictions. Learning Circuits. Retrieved from http://www.astd.org/LC/2010/0710_meister.htm

Palvia, S.C., and Palvia, P.C. (2007). The effectiveness of using computers for software training: An exploratory study. Journal of Information Systems Education, 18(4), pp. 479-489.