When Social Cues are absent

The background reading on Social Cues in H807 week 6 has made me think about what has happened in a volutary activity in which I am involved. The service is one that befriends people in emotionally difficult situations and continues to be telephone and/or face to face based, but over the past 10 years, we have begun to offer the option of email contact, for those who prefer the option. The email service has seen exponential growth in popularity since it was launched, and many users tell us it is extremely helpful.

The remote contact can be welcome because the person is not located in the UK, and therefore would find telephone contact impractical or too expensive. But probably more importantly, some people find themselves in a situation which they cannot bring themselves to talk ahout -  perhaps because of embarrassment, fear or just pain. Being able to write about these feelings is often the first step for these people in dealing with the difficult situation.

I had a difficult email encounter yesterday which has given me pause for thought about the emotional dimension of virtual communication. It would be quite improper for me to disclose anything about the situation, but suffice to say the person concerned had an emotionally charged situation which they had not shared with anyone. There had been 45 emails sent to us and replied to over the past month or so. Every email they had sent had only short statements, or just a word, and the person at first would disclose nothing at all about their situation. But gradually, as my fellow volunteers gently supported and questioned this person, the story began to unfold.

Although we cannot see this person, or hear their voice, the words on the page and the way they are written have many clues about their emotions. And the fact that we can read all the emails sent and all the replies that volunteers have given lets us build up a much better picture of the situation than would be possible in other than a regular one to one relationship. At one point we manage to persuade this person to write two or maybe three short sentences. The next response is short and sharp - pushing back on the quesion or comment made. Or even worse - capital letter shouting!

Several of my fellow volunteers refuse or are reluctant to engage in email befriending, as they think it is too impersonal, but my view is that this is their chosen medium, and we should respect that. What I have to do is to create a mental picture of the person, and to use every word they write to imagine their situation and to try and put myself in their shoes. I then have to do exactly the same with every word I write. Could that word be misconstrued? Have I been too sharp or direct? Could I inadvertantly push them in a direction that might not be natural for them?

The experience of email befriending has definitely made me much more sensitive when I write any email personal or business - and ironically, I think it has also made me a much more sensitive listener.

The other phenomenon that I think makes this kind of communication easier is that these days people are much more used to texting each other and the idea of written communication is getting more acceptable.

So I am wondering whether this point of view that face to face is the only way to pick up emotional cues will in time become irrelevant?

Affordances and Communication Technologies: H807 Week 5.1

Using the affordances cited in Conole et al, I have considered the extent to which email and blogs are technologies which afford the characteristics listed.

I have added a couple of characteristics, which I have found to be important in my practice; Stimulate Action and Reward Action

I have made a spreadsheet on Google docs to record my conclusions.

Although several of the characteristics listed are afforded through email and blog, there are a few that seem particularly well served.

Email, because of its instantaneous capability and its ubiquitousness is good at Accessibility, Speed of Change, Communication, Immediacy, Stimulate Response/Action and Incentivise Action.

Blogging on the other hand is good for Reflection and Collaboration. The technology also enables users to be rewarded for participation when commenters post replies. The use of RSS feeds on blogs also means they can enable speed of change and immediacy.

Darwin and the Demon: Connections with H807

Moore, Geoffrey A, (2004), Darwin and the Demon: Innovating Within Established Enterprises, Harvard Business Review; Jul/Aug 2004, VOl 82, Issue 7/8, p86-92, 7P, 1


This article was recommended background reading during week 3 of H807, where we were looking at who innovates and who follows. I have written some notes on the article on Google Docs.The author is a managing director of TCG Advisors, a strategy consultancy based in San Mateo California. The company declares; We specialize in a set of challenges common to technology companies and technology-related sectors, where rapid changes in market dynamics force frequent adjustments in corporate strategy.


The technology and consumer market focus of the article means that its relevance in the world of education is not wholesale. In educational circles, we are offering a professional service, and I question whether the consumer product model fits precisely. However, I can see that the article has a number of aspects that can be applied in H807 assignments, as well as in my own work.

1. The different types of innovation are a useful structure for reviewing the various case studies we are asked to study and report on in TMA1
2. When interviewing my innovator for TMA2, the innovation types and the market life cycle might offer a good basis on which to analyse the innovation, the innovator and the market life cycle position her company is in.
3. The 'overcoming inertia' guidelines will have relevance for educational organisations that are having difficulty in getting existing staff involved in adopting innovations. To some extent that is true in my own organisation where experienced staff are proving somewhat reluctant to participate in elearning
4. Deciding what type of innovation the redesign of our current elearning programme is will help me focus on the right activity for my H807 ECA.
5. The section on 'overcoming inertia' resonates with the change management work that my company undertakes

Doug Hall's criteria for judging innovation

Quick reminder to myself, on the subject of successful innovation:
Doug Hall, who is an engineer by profession, and began career in product development in Procter and Gamble, has devoted himself since leaving P&G to the study of innovation. He works with many of the most innovative companies, such as Disney and Nike and has developed a methodology around innovation. One of his discoveries has been the features that are common to successful innovative products.

He has found three characteristics of a product that are essential for success;
1. Overt benefits of the product - what does the customer get that matters to them?
2. Reason to believe - how can you prove that your promise for the product will deliver? (guarantees, testimonials, trials periods all help here)
3. Dramatic difference - how is your product in a different league to others with which it might be compared? Better still, if it creates a new league for itself.

All thee features above aree essential for a new product to be successful, but by far the most important is number 3 - dramatic difference!

Reference
Hall, D, (2001), Jump Start Your Business Brain, Betterway Books, Cincinnati OH

The OU's learning about elearning?

Having been a participant in 2003 in what felt like a very pioneering OU MA module H802: Application of Information Technology, followed closely by H804 in 2004, I can see changes that the OU has introduced to H808 (2009) and H807 (2011) which I am sure are not an accident. When it comes to elearning design, there are undoubtedly lessons for me here. I'll think of more as H807 progresses, but here are a few to get started.

One very important difference between my latest 2 modules and my first 2 is that the integration of VLE activity is now much more important. In H802 and H804, points were awarded for levels of participation, but the percentage that was awarded was relatively insignificant - from memory on H804 the amound was around 7% (in other words, not enough to change behaviour!). In both H808 and H807, at least one TMA asks you to document an online project/activity, and both programmes require you to give account of your personal contribution to the project, or other discussions. This seems to me a very significant shift in design, to encourage active participation in at least some of the online activity.

Another noticeable, although understandable, difference is that there is less 'hand-holding' around the online organisation and interactions. I'm sure this is due to the level of sophistication around electronic communications that now exists now in comparison with 8 years ago.

Thirdly, I noticed when our H807 module was launched that we had a much larger group - 21 - than was true on either H802 or H804. These earlier courses had 12-15 students at the start. However, I notice that by the end of week three, there are 10 active participants, other than myself. I know one (Claire) dropped out very early on, but the others, so far, have not been particularly active. Learner engagement has been a difficult issue in the experiments that I have undertaken around using elearning. Maybe the OU has just concluded there will always be a level of fallout, so they take account of that from the start?!

Finally, the use of references from other participants on the module was always valued, but on H807 there are explicit demands to use comments from other students in TMAs.

All very interesting - as the module develops, I am hoping to spot other elearning design lessons. We are, after all, being trained by one of the world's most experienced Distance Learning Organisations;-)

Criteria for Deciding on which Innovation to Fund: Week 3, Activity 4

I can understand that the Kaye & Hawkridge criteria helped them to select the case studies for a book on innovative elearning examples. However, in the innovation life cycle, the end product may be a way off yet. Johnson (2010) explains that the process of innovating is a continuous process of working in the "adjacent possible" - ideas that occur to you that are stimulated by the way things are now. Later he says "we take the ideas we've inherited or that we've stumbled across and we jigger them together into some new shape" (p 30) I would therefore be most concerned to make sure that potentially significant innovations that are not developed enough yet were not rejected too early.

The three criteria I am going to nominate are from the perspective of a project manager (like myself) in a private sector training company which is looking to make elearning a channel through which to develop new routes to market. At the moment this is relatively unchartered territory,

Cost will always be an issue and if the project is too expensive, it will not be afforded. Other criteria might help us work out which cost we should do well to find ways to afford. After all if the top line revenue generated by the programme can be increased, the cost becomes less of an issue.

The three criteria I would therefore nominate are:

1. New routes to market: is the programme appealing to and accessible by a wide audience of clients that would be new to our business? This might be judged by the number of students attracted so far, and the extent to which they are a new type of customer for the business.

2. Engagement of students: Our business prides itself on the impact that its f2f training interventions has on the performance of students back in the workplace. The degree of participation and excitement which it is possible to generate on and offline should therefore be a second criterion for deciding on the most worthy programme. Online participation monitoring and feedback from the workplace about any changes in behaviour/performance of students are at least two ways in which this criterion could be measured.

3. Customer Service: being able to monitor students progress, and then to personalise the programme to meet their learning needs and the needs that their business has of them will be an important way to differentiate our service in the market place. Programmes and technology that enable us to connect intimately with the learning progress of our students will therefore, again, be a differentiator in the market for the innovative programme. Activity in a VLE, and student responsiveness to new input could be methods of measuring against this criterion.



Madeleine


Reference:
Johnson, S (2010), Where Good Ideas Come From - A Natural History of Innovation, Allen Lane, London

Innovators and the "Chasm"

Moore's chasm model highlights the gap that exists between those who invent new products and the rest. The chasm analogy that he uses paints a graphic picture of the distance.

In my experience, it is not just the gap between innovator and the rest that is the challenge in a new product introduction. It is the singlemindedness that an innovator often requires to drive his/her idea through to fruition. This determination can make the innovator resistant to input from others, and therein lies a major weakness. For ideas to be adopted by many, the reservations of others must be dealt with by reaching over the chasm and finding ways to bridge the gap.

As for whether the chasm theory that might be relevant to elearning innovation, the fact that this is a consumer marketing model is a weakness. The audience for elearning innovation is threefold; the student, the teacher and the investor/institution. I am not convinced that these three constituents all act as consumers in deciding whether to adopt an elearning innovation.

However, the notion of the need to bridge the gap between innovation and potential users is an important one, and finding sponsors/supporters is essential.