Better Memory

In Your Outboard Brain Knows All, Clive Thompson talks about how our need to remember is changing.

Neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.

The reality is that we were all trained in school to use metacognitive / metamemory methods and tools as a supplement to our knowledge. I'm only 43, but posts like New Work Skills are a bit of an eye opener that we were taught metacognition using note taking on paper, card catalogs, microfiche readers, rollodex, etc.



For many of us, Nick Carr's words ring true:

... the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind.

The reality is that metacognitive techniques are changing rapidly - hence so are work skills.

Better Memory Tools and Methods

If you are experience more and more of your information electronically, it stands to reason that we need to be good at effectively using this as a better memory. Most of the people who take our workshops on work skills, say that improving their ability around their ability to remember and organize information is one of the most valuable aspects.

In work literacy terms, better memory relates to keep / organize / refind /remind.

A perfect keep / organize / refind / remind system:

• Keep everything ever encountered (without effort)
  
• Organize it (with little to no effort)
• Allow you to refind something you've seen before instantly based on incomplete information
• Create lists and other reminders so that you don't have to even remember that you know it - i.e., list of people on the team, list of blog posts to go back and read, etc.

There's a lot that goes on around this and when you look at different projects and roles, this gets pretty varied, but let me explore a few different tools and methods that I apply to this that gets helps me is this area:

• Google History - saves every page I've visited without me having to do anything and allows me to search for anything I've ever viewed at a later time. I don't like to have to use it, but it's a great back-up when I've not saved something another way.
• Delicious - Use this social bookmarking tool to save pages with tags as the organizer for me to get back to at a later time. Since this is likely the one that is most new to people, I'll dive into more detail below.
• Firefox Bookmarks - For pages that I want to launch all the time. I'll get back to this below.
• Microsoft Desktop Search - Desktop search has probably had the greatest productivity improvement for me over the past few years. Google Desktop Search is also great, but I personally have had better results with Microsoft's integration with Outlook and I'm a heavy Outlook user.

Social Bookmarking



If you are not familiar with social bookmarking tools, I would start with the video above and go to the following to get yourself up to speed.

• Social Bookmarking for Learning Professionals
• Start using a Social Bookmarking tool

Then I would make sure I know the basics about using tags.

• Choose existing tags to avoid misspelt tags (e.g., libary, libray).
• Group compound terms together (e.g., personalLearning)
• Use plurals to define categories (e.g., blogs)
• Don't use symbols in tags with the exception of a tag like eLearning2.0 where the "." is okay. Don't use # or _

Social Bookmarking as Metamemory

What often gets left out of the discussion of social bookmarking is where it fits into keep / organize / refind / remind. I like to think about the main tools I use somewhat in a series:

• Bookmarks in Browser - It's things you want to launch all the time. I put links to sites that I go to all the time here.
  
• Bookmarks in Social Bookmarking Tool - This is where I proactively keep, organize (and sometimes share) things. I use tags to organize according to topic, role, project, group of people. This creates multiple lists for reminding.
• Blogging - I use a blog or note taking as an added level of processing on information that I consume. Short notes on a single resource can be added to the social bookmark. More substantial notes need to get captured somewhere.
  
• Google History - a fall back in case I didn't know at the time that I would want to get back to an item.
  

I think of the bookmarks in the browse similar to documents in recent or linked on my desktop. These are things that I want to launch often. I think of bookmarks in my social bookmarking tool as items that I want to organize into lists and be able to easily get back to later. This is similar to documents in folders. And Google History is a bit like desktop search. In case I wasn't willing to spend the time to save it, I still have a chance of finding it again.

Anticipated Need

The key term in all of this is anticipated need. You could spend all of your time keeping and organizing content. But the real goal is to spend the least amount of time to meet your future needs to refind and remind. The trick is that you often don't know what those needs will be. So, you are basing this all on your anticipated needs. This is also why spending some time on the top-down analysis is a great exercise. It will help you think through information needs today.



Three Metamemory Practices

#1 - Name Everything

Whenever you start a new project, start working with a new group, take on a new role, or start a new major concept work task, spend just a little time upfront anticipating your needs. Most importantly, at the start name everything and everyone and stick to that name. Every project gets a name. Every person gets a name. It takes a few seconds, but it saves you a lot in time spent refinding and reminding. This name then is on every folder, document, email, tag, etc.

#2 - Include Meta Information

The other practice to follow is to include enough information somewhere associated with every object (document, email, bookmark) so that you can find it again via search. Every email should have in the subject line or somewhere in the message. Even if the sender doesn't put it in there, put it in the response. I also tend to try to put in the names of participants in meetings in my notes and possibly other names like the client. All of this makes searching SO MUCH EASIER.

This is a big reason why I say that desktop search has become my biggest productivity boost.

#3 - Visit Every Page

Theoretically you can use Google to refind whatever you found before. But I often find that doesn't seem to work in practice. Thus, I make sure that any page that I might ever want to see again, I visit. That puts it into my Google History. My chances of finding it again go up considerably. This also means that when you find a magazine article that's interesting. You should go visit it online as well. That's extra work, but it makes it refindable.

Other Posts in the Series

• Tools and Methods 2009
  
• Work Skills Keeping Up
  
• Top-Down Strategy
  
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Link Pages
• Network Learning
  
• Collaboration
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Search
• Browser Short Cuts
• Work Skills Workshop

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Work Literacy Skills - New Workshop

Harold Jarche, Michele Martin and I are pleased to announce a new workshop offering that relates to the recent posts on Tool Set 2009 and to the issues of Work Literacy.

Work Literacy Skills Workshop

Was the last formal training you had on knowledge work skills the use of a card catalog and microfiche reader? You aren't alone in that. While there has been incredible innovation in tools and methods that support personal work and learning over the past 10 years, most of us have had a hard time with our Work Skills Keeping Up. We are left trying to figure out where all these new tools fit in our day-to-day work life and our professional life.

This workshop is a hands-on, collaborative, fun experience focused on the new knowledge tools and methods that are core to effective work. It will focus on what is important to learning professionals.

The workshop puts you into small groups of fellow professionals as you work as a remote work team to experience first-hand the use of these tools in work and learning settings.

What You Get

1. Foundational methods for effective work and learning in a network
   
2. Hands-on use of various tools to give direct experience of their effectiveness
3. Job aids for after the workshop
4. Introduction to an international network of learning professionals
   

Workshop Format

We have designed this workshop for either a one-day, in-person session with an online follow-up, or an online workshop with a flexible format. The online session is designed to support small groups of learning professionals going through at the same time. Participants are partnered in small teams as they work together learning new methods and tools. The specific length of time and scheduling is flexible given the availability of the teams involved.

Participants

The workshop is designed to work well for learning professionals and delivered through:

• Learning Departments
  
• ASTD Chapters

If you are an individual or small learning department interested in participating, then please contact us, and we will see if we can have you participate in a public workshop or via an ASTD Chapter.

Topics Include

• Collaborative Work and Learning
• Top-Down Work Tools and Methods Assessment
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Networks and Communities
• Search
• Collaborative, Informal, Self-Direct Learning

Instructors

Harold Jarche has found a passion in the area of sharing, learning, reflecting, and collaborating using Web tools such as social network systems, blogs, and wikis. He constantly tries out new tools and techniques, and then uses his pragmatic business bent to recommend the right ones for clients and colleagues. Harold has been a freelance consultant for the past five years, and blogs about learning and working on the Web at jarche.com. Previously, Harold worked as a Chief Learning Officer of an e-Learning company, Project Manager at a university, and Training Development Officer with the Canadian Forces.

Michele Martin is an independent consultant who specializes in using social media tools to support learning, and career and professional development. She has worked with federal, state, and local governments, nonprofits, and corporations to design and deliver a variety of learning interventions. She used online tools such as forums, listservs, and a “virtual office” to support learning in the late 1990s, and has added tools such as blogs, wikis and social networks. She's a co-founder with Tony Karrer of Work Literacy, a network of individuals, companies, and organizations focusing on the frameworks, skills, methods, and tools of modern knowledge work. Michele blogs at The Bamboo Project.

Tony Karrer is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower, a founder of Work Literacy, and a well-known consultant, speaker, writer, and trainer on e-Learning and Performance Support. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO and leader of software development, and eleven years experience as an associate professor of Computer Science. He works as an interim CTO for many start-ups, and was the founding CTO at eHarmony. His work has won awards, and has led him into engagements at many Fortune 500 companies including Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, among others. His blog eLearning Technology won the best e-Learning Blog award the past two years.

For More Information

Contact:

Dr. Tony Karrer
akarrer@techempower.com

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How long does it take to select an LMS?

I saw a post by Bryan Chapman discussing how long it takes to select an LMS. I've known Bryan for quite a few years - more than 10. And he and I do a lot of LMS selection and implementation work. And I think we are both pretty good at it. I may even be the person he's talking about in his post as the other consultant, but I'm not quite sure.

So, the real answer to how long it takes is, of course, it depends. But to give you some better answers than that the eLearningGuild has some great survey data on it. I put out some of that data in my post - LMS Team Size and Time - Wow 23 Months!

Clearly, there is some disconnect between Bryan's timeline of

entire process from beginning to end in about 2 1/2 months

and the 23 months cited by guild members. Now he's talking only about the selection process rather than the implementation process. So the actual numbers reported by Guild members is roughly 11 months to select. So, we have a difference of 11 months vs. 2.5 months.

Where does this come from? Well if I compare the steps in his process vs. the steps in the LMS Selection Process that I describe, there's a lot of overlap. However, a few differences jump out to me.

Learning Strategy Defined?

The first steps in my process are:

1. Form a core selection team and define stakeholders
2. Define business and learning strategy
3. Agree to process with key stakeholders

Bryan jumps by these. I'm sure that in reality Bryan includes these but is not counting them in his 2.5 months. In other words, you would need to have business and learning strategy and a core team identified before you start. What often happens when you go to select an LMS is that you realize that you don't really have the strategy defined. This is a common LMS Selection Gotcha.

Tail of Process - Demos, Hands-on Testing, Negotiation

The tail of Bryan's process is:

Week 9 - Read and Grade Proposals
Week 10 - Final meeting to pick system

(Bryan has demos in Week 5)

The tail of my process has:

8. Demos
9. Pilot or hands-on tests
10. Negotiate
11. Final selection

Bryan talks about having demos earlier in the process:

In my model, I have learned the value of moving the demo upfront, rather than waiting until after the RFP. It makes all the difference in the world.

I personally like to have demos after you've defined your differentiating use cases and know where the system is likely going to be more challenging. We don't want a standard demo, we want to see how they handle the challenges.

Similarly, if you can afford the time and effort, there is almost nothing better than using the LMS with a hands-on test or a pilot. When you look at LMS Satisfaction the people who report the lowest satisfaction are the administrators who have to work with it day-to-day. How about giving them a chance before final selection? This is likely the best way to really know what it will be like to have the LMS.

Given the generally low marks that LMS systems get (LMS Dissatisfaction on the Rise), it's best to take a bit of time and make sure that you are doing what you can to get what you need.

I also would suggest that you don't plan to rush through negotiation. Bryan and I probably both save our clients lots of money during negotiation - more than our fees for large deals. But if you are up against a spending deadline or try to finish negotiation in a week, then you put yourself in a weaker negotiating position.

I do believe that Bryan and I can greatly shorten the time and improve the resulting satisfaction. And there have been cases where selections have taken less than 2 months. For me that's been the exception - and often I'm involved when things are more complex. But I thought it would be good to have the rest of the picture.

Some other posts around LMS:

• LMS RFP
• LMS Selection Presentation Reformulated
  
• LMS Selection Team and Stakeholders
• LMS Selection Process
• LMS Satisfaction Features and Barriers
• Learning Management Systems (LMS) Gotchas
• Tracking Without an LMS
• LMS Dissatisfaction on the Rise
• Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?
• Moving from One to Many - LMS Products are Two Generations Behind
• Leading with an LMS - Harmful to Your Health (or Skipping Stages ...
• Tools for On-Demand Information - An LMS?
• Point Solutions vs. Suites and Composition
• eLearning Learning - LMS
  

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Top-Down Strategy

Most descriptions of tool sets start with the tools and proceed to describe the features of the tools. Starting with the tools is what I consider to be a bottom-up approach. It's left to the reader to interpret where they fit into their day-to-day concept work. I understand why most authors start with the tool. Trying to fit any tool into the myriad of different work lives is really hard. For example, where does blogging fit - well it depends on who you are talking to.



From the perspective of identifying a tool set for yourself, I recommend looking top-down as well.

What's a top-down strategy?

I'm sure there can be many top-down strategies, but for myself and in work literacy workshops I use a particular top-down strategy. It starts by looking at your key knowledge work:

• Roles
• Projects

For myself, these might be:

Roles

• Small Business Owner
• Manager
• Acting CTO
• Community organizer
• Expert / Speaker / Writer
• Client Advisor
• Family Vacation Planner
• Fine Dining Planner
• etc.
  

Projects

• Design and Conduct Workshops
  
• New product design
• Online workshop
• eLearning Learning product design
  
• Staying up-to-speed on eLearning 2.0
• Spring break plans
  
• etc.
  

Aside - Speaking of Spring Break plans, does someone want a workshop in an exotic location over spring break?

For each role and project, I ask myself:

• What are the key tasks?
• What methods and tools do I use for that task?
  
• What information do I regularly consume?
• What do I regularly produce?
• What sometimes goes wrong or seems harder than it should be? (Problems)
  
• Where do I believe I could have opportunity for improvement? (Opportunities)
  

I generally look back at the Knowledge Work Framework and its task categories as a trigger to remind me of these things. In other words:

• Scan - Staying up-to-speed on a topic.
• Find - Includes Evaluate, Narrow / Adjust
• Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind
  
• Leverage / Present
• Network
• Collaborate

I do all of this in a Word document - capturing it as a series of notes. I make sure to identify how my roles and projects fit with the tools and methods that I use. I look closely at my information consumption. And where I spend time. I highlight anywhere that I've identified problems or opportunities.

Based on having done this exercise formally or informally with quite a few people, I can almost guarantee that you will have a few aha moments. Many times it is simply because you force yourself to ask the question - is there a better way to handle this situation.

This also sets you up for aha moments as you encounter information along the way. Any information source that was not in your list should be questioned. If it wasn't on your list, is it just entertainment? Or is there an additional role or project that I should have thought about? Maybe I should get out of the way of this information source?
A really great exercise is to go through this with a peer or as part of a workshop ... hint :) ...

Spend some time to do this reflection, it's well worth it.

Other Posts in the Series

• Tool Set 2009
  
• Work Skills Keeping Up
  
• Top-Down Strategy
  
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Pages with Links
• Networks and Learning Communities
  
• Collaborate
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Search
• Browser Short Cuts
• Work Skills Workshop

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Co.Comments Shutting Down

In November 2008, I made my CoComment Co.mments Switch and now just received a notice that Co.mments is shutting down. Argh. Given that the reason for the switch is that I wasn't happy with CoComment, what should I use now?

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Work Skills Keeping Up?

In New Work and New Work Skills, I discuss the fact that most of us have not participated in formal learning since college on foundational knowledge work skills - especially metacognitive skills. Our last formal learning used card catalogs, microfiche readers, Xerox machines, libraries, etc.


Most of us have strong skills in some areas and are much weaker in others simply due to the fact that we acquire our skills in completely ad hoc ways.

When were you taught:

• how to take take notes on a laptop during a meeting,
  
• how to filter a flood of new content,
  
• how to reach out via networks to find expertise,
  
• how to leverage the wisdom of crowds?

Tilde Effect

What epitomizes the situation for me is the Google ~ operator. A lot of people who are concept workers use Google every day and have no idea that the ~ operator even exists. Sure they can get along without it. I only use it in about 2-3% of my searches. And folks can probably get along without using the filetype, inurl or a myriad of other search operators and techniques.

But, the fact that concept workers claim in surveys to be above average in their search skills but they don't incorporate these operators tells me that there's a gap.

Tilde Effect - gap between available tools and methods and the average capabilities of concept workers due to the ad hoc nature of work skills acquisition.

My strong belief is that the foundations of knowledge work are changing fairly quickly and most of us learn completely through ad hoc mechanisms that are not likely to yield good coverage. If you could have an expert look over your shoulder at how you do things on a day-to-day basis, you likely could find many improvements. Every one of us would be somewhat embarrassed to have that expert sitting there because we know that we could stand to do things better.

Tangible Impact

The Tilde Effect at an individual level has massive aggregate impact.

A recently released Workplace Productivity Survey, reported by MSNBC, had the following findings:

• 62 percent of professionals report that they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need;
  
• 68 percent wish they could spend less time organizing information and more time using the information that comes their way.
• 85 percent agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a huge time-waster.
• More than 40 percent of the survey participants indicate an inability to handle future increases in information flow.
• White-collar professionals spend an average of 2.3 hours daily conducting online research, with one in 10 spending four hours or more on an average day.

The figure from Basex as reported in the New York Times of $650B as the cost of interruptions and the total cost information overload is $900B (see comment).

When you couple this with the fact that we have moved to a knowledge economy where the dominant value is our concept work capabilities and where pace needs to be continually faster - we can't afford to have a workforce that lags in their concept work skills. This is a big reason behind new offerings like the work skills workshop.

Bottom Line

The bottom line for the Tilde Effect is that we live in a time of incredible innovation that directly affect the methods we use to work and learn. Our work skills cannot sit still. There's a lot of discussion about 21st century skills to be taught in schools, but what about the rest of us?



And how important is this? Let me rely on a few other people to help here:

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Roy Amara, Institute for the Future.

It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, it’s the ones most adaptable to change.

Darwin

Being adaptable in a flat world, knowing how to ‘learn how to learn,’ will be one of the most important assets any worker can have, because job churn will come faster, because innovation will happen faster.

Friedman

The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st Century is to increase the productivity of the knowledge worker.

Drucker

We are truly in a time of incredible innovation of work skills. We are struggling to keep up. And we need to collectively be focused on this issue!

Other Posts in the Series

• Tool Set 2009
  
• Work Skills Keeping Up
  
• Top-Down Strategy
  
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Pages with Links
• Networks and Learning Communities
  
• Collaborate
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Search
• Browser Short Cuts
• Work Literacy Workshop

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Error Accessing eLearning Learning?

I'm hoping you will help me ...

My blogging cohort Ken Allan - reported to me that he was having trouble access the eLearning Learning content community. Ken lives in New Zealand, but having worked on lots of international sites, I have a hard time believing that it's something to do with that.

So, can you help by clicking over to eLearning Learning and letting me know if you have any kind of problem?

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