Steps to Organisational [e]-Learning

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Steps to Organisational e-Learning
Alain Senteni lt senteni_at_uom.ac.mu gt 
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individualsteams, groups, communitiesorganisat
ions
It is not the strongest of the species that
survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones
most responsive to change. Charles Darwin
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individualsteams, non formal
groupsorganisations
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Tacit Knowledge
e-learning
Knowledge Emergence
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Knowledge Creation
Value Addition
Explicit Knowledge
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Knowledge Emergence
Knowledge creation
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Knowledge is no longer what it used to be !

• We need to go from an individualistic vision of
  knowledge to an instrument-mediated, socially
  distributed one.
• The term management implies control of processes
  that might be inherently uncontrolable. Beyond
  knowledge management, there is a need for
  knowledge enabling and knowledge creation
• Knowledge involves shared understanding, shared
  values and shared belief systems.

• Example In the process of outsourcing (e.g.
  BPO) co-configuration becomes a key issue to
  avoid being caught into rigid frameworks while an
  interaction process evolves.

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From Linger 2002 Monash (Star Group)
Personal
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Community
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Thru a thingification of processes, an ICT
platform helps tidy up the knowledge space, with
an emphasis on communities
Organisational
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A unifying platform creates a space in which the
spiraling process of conversion tacit/explicit,
private/public can occur. Th eJapanese call this
space BA
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Community (Wenger)

• Communities are collections of people that engage
  in Knowledge Management activities encompassing a
  common interest, and where there is ongoing
  learning through shared practice and shared
  knowledge
• Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)
  enable communities that span conventional
  boundaries of learning and doing, as well as
  space and time.
• Online communities must be regarded as complex
  socio-technical systems,

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Dimensions of Community

• What it is about ? joint enterprise as
  understood and continually renegotiated by its
  members
• How it functions? mutual engagement that bind
  members together into a social entity
• What capacity it produces? A shared repertoire of
  resources (routines, sensibilities, artifacts,
  vocabulary, styles, etc.), shared knowledge and
  shared practice that members develop over time.

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Attributes of Community

• The key elements of communities are practice
  (doing) and identity (belonging) development
  (growing).
• Communities are fundamentally self-organizing
  systems
• Communities structure learning in two ways
  through the knowledge they develop at their core
  and through interactions at their boundaries.
• Communities expand through the learning that
  people do together
• Lifelong learning through work
• Learning by doing, experiential learning

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Learning and Practice

• In education there is an emerging imperative for
  creating learning environments that take
  advantage of the dynamic developmental nature of
  communities relevant to the ever-changing,
  technology-enabled world in which they will live
  and be employed.
• Similarly, there is a business imperative for
  intellectual capital creation, a socially
  constructed dynamic process capable of being
  leveraged into economic and social value.

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Innovation and knowledge creation come from
teams, groups and communities of
practice/interest/learning. Working, learning
and innovating are considered complementary.
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"we say, you do" model of management

• The hierarchical corporation (1950s) operates
  through command-and-control.
• Commands from the highest-level executives is
  translated down through layers of management as
  activities for the next level below.
• Control takes place by superiors acting as
  inspectors, ensuring that results met
  specification.

The enterprise as organism
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When ineffective, Command Control
becomesCommunicate Hope
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The enterprise as social network acts
purposefully both in its parts and as a whole

• Self-Reliance to act using the resources
  available locally
• Empowerment to enable subjects to react
  immediately to changing circumstances by having
  access to decision-making.
• Interdependence to obtain resources elsewhere
  in order to act, to mutualize human resources
• Asynchrony to enable subjects to operate as
  quickly as possible, given local circumstances
• Reflexivity to enable critical thinking and
  creativity
• Commitment to regulate social interaction,
  reciprocity and collaboration

How about convergence, emergence
consistency ?
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The Pear Blossom Highway metaphor
Global vs local towards an hypertextual vision
of management and organisation
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Hypertextual management

• Flat, non hierarchical structure, team-based,
  project-oriented. Openness is essential.
• Emphasis is put on intensive sharing of Knowledge
  and mixed-mode and multi-faceted interactions
  among staff (conversations, electronic exchanges,
  etc)
• The mix of work and learning and how learning
  occurs in experiential, team-based,
  project-oriented, activity.
• Focus is on how trust is developed, how
  teambuilding occurs and the contribution of
  interaction, in particular face-to-face,
  video-conferencing and online.
• Examples KAO, SHARP ( Nonaka Takeuchi)

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Emergence produces a challenge in convergence of
purpose and consistency in response.
Co-reference remains a problem
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Community as tool-mediated activity system
conceptual models, tools and equipment they use

• the purpose to which members direct their
  activity

• the rules, culture and context that govern how
  they work, and learn through their work

• individual workers/learners, colleagues and
  co-workers/learners

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Co-configuration interacting activity systems
as minimal model for the third generation of
activity theory

• The third generation of activity theory needs to
  develop conceptual tools to understand dialogue,
  multiple perspectives and voices, and networks of
  interacting activity systems. In this mode of
  research, the basic model is expanded to include
  minimally two interacting activity systems.

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Interacting activity systems thru platform-based
transparency and exteriorisation of local
knowledge
Shared platform
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Activity at the Virtual Centre for Innovative
Learning Technologies
Pedagogies Developmental Work Visual
Communication Multimedia
Community services ICOOL Online Contents
iLearn platform Learning Object
Repository Educational Multimedia
Web Developers Analyst Programmers Instructi
onal Designers Multimedia Developers Infograp
hists Researchers
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Case Studies for co-configuration

• The Computer Proficiency programme (CPP), joint
  enterprise, co-configuration between
  Implementation Working Group (IWG), VCILT and
  NPCC.
• Using IT for TL of Science in schools,
  co-configuration between the Mauritian Research
  Council (MRC) and VCILT
• Using IT for TL of Science in schools,
  co-configuration between the Mauritian Research
  Council (MRC) and VCILT
• ITES-BPO training, co-configuration between IWG,
  IVTB and VCILT.

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Thank you for your attention