8. How to work virtual networks

Workshop presentation on the use of distance education at the IIIEE Alumni Network Conference (May 21st), Lund University, Sweden.


iiiee building, Lund University

Working our personal networks is something we all need to improve to create the change we want. A useful perspective in this context is to understand organisations as a social construction or a story we tell and re-tell. How we perceive an organisation and its future is actually what it becomes, like a mental film that directs our intentions and emotions.

Here, the art of formulating constructive questions is in itself an important change factor. It steers our focus when searching new information to act upon. Information that refines the story of what the organisation is all about. In turn, building and maintaining a powerful story supporting the mission of an organisation calls for more effective forms of experience sharing, using the Internet as a communication tool many-to-many, rather than just one-to-many. Framing it within a distance education course is one way of doing this.

Now, if experience sharing is important, how to promote the virtual networks supporting it? In other words, what gives life to a distance education course? The following account is based on experiences from the ICP-course presented in “5. ICP course in 52 countries”.

1) Personal motivation
Motivation fuelled by accessing a virtual arena that is global in participant outreach matching the global scope of the ICP-course. An arena that converts passion into concrete action, opens up for new forms of alliances outside the course curriculum, and is used for in-house competence development.

2) Experience sharing
Sharing ideas on-line in an electronic discussion forum or chat is more personal, constructive and democratic than most participants imagined. Personal as written text can be very personal. Constructive as questions and answers builds a common understanding through reflection. Democratic when ´one person-one voice´ is practiced in reality, as everybody is able to write comments at the same time.

3) Course administrator
The administrator’s role in distance education is to provide a functioning web-technology, web-pedagogy and web-instructions. The web-based educational platform has to be reliable, with an intuitive self-explanatory user interface. The web-pedagogy has to allow for different learning styles. The web-instructions has to be clear enough to stand alone, with all course information accessible 3-clicks away, and stress the point that the team is the participant’s greatest asset.

4) Course content
The course content is important, but not the most important driver for completing a distance education course. Presenting the content has to be done in an inspiring, practicable and chewable way. Inspiring as to provide a movement and direction when filling the gap between the present and a desired future. Practical as to answer up to the key question for the participant: what is in it for me? Chewable as to use the Internet as a communication tool rather than information dissemination device.

What does not give life to a distance education virtual network?
Naturally, this is a large question. Sticking to the four aspects presented above, I would say that lack of personal purpose, collaboration possibilities, supporting organisation and inspirational material are crucial elements to take into account and deal with.

Working virtual networks is vital for building a learning organisation. Read more in the coming follow-up article on the IST-course presented in “3. Sustainable tourism in Costa Rica”.

7. Inspired by social entrepreneurs

What can we learn from social entrepreneurs when supporting collaborative learning at a distance?


www.ashoka.org

Making a change in the world, something to be remembered for, however big or small, is an underlying driver we all share as humans. A motivator the accessible, non-hierarchical, Internet is especially well suited to serve as a mean to an end. Here we have a lot to learn from social entrepreneurs, like these people of the non-profit Ashoka organization offering “market solutions to social problems”.

Distance education from this social entrepreneur perspective is about supporting change makers to join in and share experiences with the goal of promoting social/environmental innovations for the common good. A kind of joint effort to improve our social software, just like the non-profit open source initiative improves technical software:

“The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.”

The idea of open source is similar to the idea of open innovation, where research results are licensed out to other firms who take it to the market, creating a win-win situation. In turn, the open innovation paradigm creates a new arena for social entrepreneurs, who may act as laboratories to test real services on real customers before implementing it on a larger scale in organizations and nations. Something that may be even more useful than hypothetical market research, according to Chesbrough. Some established actors may see this as a threat, others see it as an opportunity to unleash the potential of their co-workers and reach/create new markets. Here, collaborative learning at a distance can play a vital role by forging new partnerships in fluid and vibrant web-communities.

What makes these web-communities prosper, in my experience, is very similar to the mechanics behind how social entrepreneurs engage the hearts and minds of their co-workers with barely any resources but their credibility, social capital and shared commitment. If positive change is the goal, then educating new social entrepreneurs, and having more seasoned social entrepreneurs act as facilitators in distance education courses, is one inspiring road to success.

Examples of open innovation:
- ...and sustainability: DElabs.
- ...and social entrepreneurship: Promsing Practices in Afterschool (a 3 billion dollar industry in the US)

6. Learning together for a cause

On May 2-4, the yearly “Dare to Be Your Own” (Våga vara egen) event will take place at the Älvsjö trade fair in Stockholm, Sweden. High school students from all over Sweden competes for the best Young Entrepreneur company 2004-2005. The idea is to start, run and terminate a company during one year as part of their school curriculum. The energy, engagement and creativity these young people demonstrate are what entrepreneurship is all about: realize an idea to the benefit of themselves and others.

In Sweden where youth employment is soaring, where the employment rate among people capable of working is extremely worrying and a well functioning national integration policy is frightfully absent, entrepreneurship is a key area to prioritize.

Entrepreneurship, however, is not only about making money, although this is a precondition. All over the world a new civil sector is growing up between the public and the private. A sector that is driven by social entrepreneurs who are able to find new models to create wealth, social well being and safeguard the environment. Here is a possibility to work for what you care about, with what you are good at and enjoy doing, every day, and make a real difference. One example is Björn Söderberg, nominated the Best Idea Driven Entrepreneur 2004 by the Swedish Federation of Private Enterprisees for his company Watabaran in Nepal, selling designed Christmas cards made of paper wastes.



What we see emerging is something that resembles a market economy of social ideas. During the 1990s, the civil sector grew by 60% in the United States and some estimates hold that that there are 2 million citizen groups of which 70% has emerged during the last 30 years. Moreover, international civil organisations has increased from 6 000 to 26 000 during the 90s. Global initiatives created to meet social problems as environmental destruction, entrenched poverty, health catastrophes, human rights abuses, failing education systems, and escalating violence. Initiatives coordinated via Internet accessible from all over the world with people self-organising faster than companies and government traditionally serving them, as pointed out in the 95 thesis of the Cluetrain manifesto. A collaborative learning process for a cause where distance is no barrier.

Society profits from entrepreneurship. The young people who competed in last weeks Young Entrepreneurship event ”Dare to Be Your Own” should not be just a fresh wind. They should rather represent the norm in a society where building companies and entrepreneurship are seen as invaluable elements in building our common civil society.

Read more
- Ung Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurs) (In Swedish only)
- Watabaran, an ethical business in Nepal
- Bornstein, D., (2004), ”How to change the world – Social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas”, Oxford University Press

5. ICP course in 52 countries

Ensuring environmental sustainability is one of UN´s millennium development goals, which 191 UN member states have pledged to meet by year 2015. The primary agent for transformation towards this end is education, as declared in the UN Decade for Education on Sustainable Development (2005-2014). "Education not only provides scientific and technical skills, it also provides the motivation, justification, and social support for pursuing and applying them."



One example of IIIEE´s outreach activities is the distance education course “Introduction to Cleaner Production and Sustainable Development” (ICP). During the past 18 months, some 267 course participants, or change agents, from 52 countries have been registered on this 20-week part-time course qualifying, amongst other things, web-tutors for the IIIEE Young Masters Program (YMP).

The ICP-course is a living example of entirely on-line collaborative learning. These change agents learn to know more about preventive environmental strategies. They learn to live together (in a web-community) by approaching an ill-structured real-world environmental problem on sustainable tourism. They learn to apply their skills in practice by doing an initial environmental review in a small organisation of 5-50 employees, thus contributing to raised environmental awareness in the local community.

Strengthening change makers far away is made possible by a web-pedagogy that facilitates learning to know, to live together and to do. Ample evidence suggests that this strengthens the course participant’s own willingness to learn to be in conjunction with the sustainable development principles, as demonstrated in the ICP-course evaluations:

- Final evaluation (June 6th), 2004
- Final evaluation (January 12th), 2005
- Mid-term evaluation (April 19th), 2005

Read more: Eneroth, C. (2000), e-Learning for Environment, IIIEE Dissertation 2000:8

4. Electronic chat with potential

Malin Hydén & Carl Eneroth

Prejudice tells us that communication via an electronic chat is needlessly complicated, confusing and not suited for learning. In reality, however, the chat is an important tool for collaborative learning at a distance. This is a conclusion a major Swedish insurance company drew from educating web-coaches on their educational platform.

Can a web-based education portal strengthen the course participant’s personal relations? This question was presented to a number of future web-coaches at a major Swedish insurance company t42 worked with in the autumn of 2004. Most of them answered no. The general perception was that communication on the Internet brings about superficial relations or no relations at all. The question is important, as the contact between the course tutor and the participants plays an important part in motivating them for further learning, especially when it comes to distance education.

After a t42-led education at a distance, the web-coaches were asked the same question again. Now, more than 60% of them had radically changed their mind. The course participants had basically reassessed the tools for communication presented on their web-based educational platform, in particular the chat. From being considered as a complicated and unnecessary way of communication, the written chat was viewed as an important tool for personal networking. Several even saw the chat as the most important tool on their educational platform, and suggested other ways of using the chat:

- “I could be a resource person to invite to a chat and share experiences in my field of knowledge”.
- “We (course participants) could become more aware of each other and solve tasks together”.
- “It (the chat) can replace some meetings with our sales staff and thereby save travel time”.

A chat can be used for formal learning, when the web-coach with different methods guides the conversation towards a specific goal, but also for informal learning where the participants are given the opportunity to more freely discuss, find solutions and in other ways share experiences. The written chat, thereby, becomes more personal than many are inclined to believe.

t42 Distance Education
TeaForTwo (t42) is a consultancy focused on distance education and collaborative learning on the Internet. T42 offers to companies to educate their educators. These web-coaches learn to support the group dynamics in a distance education course and formulate constructive assignments. Malin Hyden is a t42 partner with long experience of corporate e-learning.

Read more: Eneroth, C. & Hydén, M.
- Chatt - en outnyttjad potential i distansutbildning (April, 2005), Frukostklubben
- Innehåller är inte allt (October, 2004), Frukostklubben

3. Sustainable tourism in Costa Rica

A method well adapted to the coaching principles mentioned in "2. Coaching on the web" is problem-based learning (PBL). This is a approach to learning where the problem comes first and the knowledge is developed as a consequence of trying to solve the problem. A typical starting point for PBL is a picture, analysed in small discussion groups. For example, how would you start analysing this picture from a sustainable tourism perspective?

Kids floating in Manila Bay

A mid-term student evaluation from the CIU/IIIEE/VIDA/t42-developed distance education course: "Introduction to Sustainable Tourism", using the revealed some interesting aspects on what worked and what could be improved. The distance education course was presented in rural Costa Rica for a group of 14 Costa Rican and 14 Swedish youth and facilitated by 4 tutor using the problem-based learning method at a distance (PBLd). The purpose of the course was to help local entrepreneurs support a more sustainable tourism.

What worked

- Contributed to increased awareness of sustainable tourism, and that there are problems in the host community that really needs to be addressed.

- Contributed to increased understanding of specific focus areas in the host community, such as hotels, pineapple industry or contamination of rivers.

- Provided a tool for autodidact learning to observe and explore several aspects in the local community, in addition to creating ideas for the community to develop themselves.

- Contributed to increased awareness in the local community of how to improve their own living environment, besides promoting what is already being done.

What can be improved

- Provide more examples on sustainable tourism more directly linked to activities in the host community, in addition to clues on what kind of sustainable tourism problems to work with.

- Explain more clearly that the very idea of PBL is to both define questions and find answers, which involves time-consuming detective work and independent thinking.

- Provide more help when introducing the web-based educational platform to the students and facilitators.

- Involve more external resource persons to help with contacts and content, in addition to work more extensively with solutions to identified problems in the project work.

Projects

The group as whole worked with the following projects in Costa Rica:

- Food farms (fishery and coffee plantation)

- Natural reserve (trekking, plant-a-tree, marketing)

- Pineapple industry (river contamination)

- Hotel industry (waste management)

Concluding comment

Reoccurring problems identified are time limits, language barriers, difficult course material, lack of tourism activities in the host communities and lack of support from resource persons. On the positive side is the well-cemented belief that sustainable development is a good thing and that the course has great potential to tackle this issue if the conditions are right, such as existing tourism activity in the host community.

References:

- SanDiego State University - Problem-based learning

- CIU/IIIEE/VIDA/t42 - Introduction to Sustainable Tourism

2. A powerful new conversation

What we are seeing is a new powerful global conversation, where people are using the Internet to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. Take Kazaa, for example, the free music sharing software with some 250 million users, or Skype, the free Internet telephone software downloaded by 80 million individuals. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter than most companies, as outlined in the Cluetrain manifesto. This goes also for traditional educational institutions who increasingly have to adopt to more flexible and globally networking forms of life-long learning enabled by digital media.

Taking it one step further: coaching on the web, is that possible? Definitely. But then, it depends on how you define coaching. I share Karin Tenelius view that coaching is not good advise, pep-talk, positive thinking or providing ready-made solutions from someone who is more experienced. The purpose of all coaching is to provide the one you coach with insights that in turn generate new action, enable access to his/her own energy and will-power, and discover new possible solutions to a given problem. The job is not to convey expertise in other areas than coaching. It is about changing the perception of how the person being coached views his/her own barriers and possibilities by clarifying this viewpoint and outline its consequences.

Coaching on the web is just another way of facilitating positive change, using digital media. It is a skill to be learnt through practice, however, just as any technical devise we now take for granted, like the telephone, fax machine, mobile phone, e-mail, Internet...Technology or artifacts that are materialised forms of our language and thinking and feelings. Interactive artifacts to help us generate reflections, and work with them. Digitial media is becoming an extension of our senses. It arouses our emotions. More and more, individuals will use creative digital tools to form and shape their own experiences in a pregnant way without taking the detour via the mass media industry. People, in the end, will support what they help create.

References:
- Karin Tenelius, Sagt blir gjort: "Coaching - Konsten att väcka den osynliga kraften" (in Swedish)
- Benyamine, I (red), Share Studio Stockholm: "Reflektion och gestaltande i delade kunskapsrum" (in Swedish)
- Hargrove, R: "Masterful coaching"
- Cluetrain manifesto