wisetail / learning lab

GoPro: Be a (Teaching) Hero

We spend a lot of time thinking about the characteristics of engaging employee training content because, let’s face it, 99% of all training content is torture for the learner and a pain in the ass for the teacher to produce. Inevitably, we arrive at the simple conclusion that engaging training content has a lot in common with the content we like on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc. 

The content we like on our favorite social network is timely, bite-sized, relevant to me and my interests and, in most cases, authentically delivered - or recommended - by people I know or like.  To take it a step further, the best content gives us a glimpse of the world from the perspective of the producer - or, in a Wisetail Learning Ecosystem, the teacher.

So, how might we make this type of content easy for teachers in your organization to produce, share and be recognized for? 

Here’s a wild idea. Give them a GoPro camera, have them go through the steps of how they solve a problem / interact with a customer / experience your product or service / etc, share it to your learning environment and let their peers recognize them as a “teaching hero”.  This process mimics how we all have - or want to - capture our next adventure or accomplishment so we can “be a hero” with our friends on Facebook, Google+, etc.  It’s easy for the teacher and engaging for the audience.

Perspective matters. Chances are, you are one of the 12M+ viewers that have seen this video but, watch it again and ask yourself - what’s more interesting, the view from the GoPro camera or the ground camera?

Wisetail as a Benefit of Employment

Produced in collaboration with Creative Channel Services (CCS), this short promotional video describes their Wisetail implementation - EmpowerU - for use on the Careers@CCS website. Want to apply?

Badging Dynamic Reputation

Every Thursday afternoon, members of the Wisetail Learning Lab meet at the Café Francais des Arts to discuss the intersection of learning, technology, and user engagement. Recently, three questions have dominated our conversations:

• How do we effectively encourage learning and teaching behaviors within a system?
• Reputation is contextual and dynamic.  How might we reflect that in our tools?
• How might we use badging and other visualization techniques to convey complex information more simply and compellingly?  

Embedded below is a rough cut video that illustrates some of the ideas we’ve been kicking around.  We’re excited about turning these ideas into live experiments.  Let us know what you think.

So, what’s with the name Wisetail?

It dawned on us recently that we haven’t done a wonderful job describing the origins of the name Wisetail™ in venues other then live conversations with our clients and friends.

The name Wisetail refers to a part of an organization. If you chart an organization on a bell curve, we call the far right side of that bell curve the Wisetail or, in other words, the Wisetail is the group of people that truly drive the organization performance and possess it’s accumulation of wisdom.  As you might imagine, this doesn’t always align one-to-one with the top-tiers of the organizational chart so, the people in the Wisetail are typically hard to identify unless they are given the channels - and incentives - to raise their hand and contribute what they know to the broader organization.

It’s not a secret that organizations can benefit greatly from unlocking the stories, tips and tricks, innovations, ideas and “things they learned the hard way” of their Wisetail.  The question is how?  The old way required knowledge base submissions as part of the performance review process (i.e. you have to do it because you should feel fortunate to work for this company). The problem with this approach is that it is devastating to the trust necessary for a learning ecosystem to form and evolve. In our opinion the big stick needs to be replaced with an intelligent application of big carrots within a system that encourages and socially celebrates contributing. 

The magic is at the intersection of formal learning (top-down), informal contributions from the Wisetail (bottom-up) and a social recognition system that allows employees to build micro-fame via helping each other - and their organization - get smarter.

Encouraging Active Learning

How might technology be used to encourage and enable people to take a more active role in learning? It’s a question that we at Wisetail grapple with every day.

The quickening pace of business is real.  Surely it’s true that learning is adaptation, and the need for adaptation is accelerating.  It’s not enough for our colleagues and employees to memorize facts and business rules.  In order to succeed, they must have the capacity to identify and articulate problems and opportunities. Furthermore, we need our co-workers to be able to practically apply frameworks and theory.  Effective business learning and doing are inextricably linked.

People learn the most when they are engaged.  One way to measure engagement is to observe whether or not people are asking thoughtful questions.  Good questions are evidence of perceived relevancy.  People ask good questions when they are presented with a subject that matters.  Good questions invite conversation, exploration, and discovery.  So, what can we do within the context of an e-learning system to stimulate the asking of good questions?

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