In my last post I shared some insights on how architects can have a serious impact on our development and how we can make parallels in how we design our learning environments. Here I’m going to continue the comparison and discover how innovative and creative design can have a positive effect.

In the previous post we discovered how workspaces in the UK have been designed to amaze, delight and wow from the outside but there has been little thought about the people and what effect poor design has on their development and productivity.

The host of the programme, Tom Dyckhoff highlighted “we in this country don’t understand how broken our work culture is… it’s only by going into other cultures, other countries, other places where there’s much more emphasis on the individual work ther and what they want…we’ve got to see other examples and by doing that we open up all our eyes to what is possible”.

This is very true.

So let’s return to the programme ‘The Secret Life of Buildings – how we work’. We reflected on three particular buildings in the UK and how although they were iconic designs from the outside, they had little going for the people on the inside. Bearing in mind it’s possible to learn from how others do things, the programme looked to Europe and in particularly BMW in Leipzig, Germany where the design of the building brought production line workers and managers together. The unusual conveyor belt design which allowed the car bodies travel above office workers’ heads and throughout the rest of the building reminded and reassured employees of their vital roles in the production process.

But it was the Dutch insurance company Interpolis in Holland that was the most enlightening example of not only efficient but effective design. It bred a feeling of purpose, value. Interpolis is a flexible workspace where the building was designed for the people by the people. That is, they were involved in the design process and actively participated in discussions around the use of flexible workspaces. The people were made responsible for what they were doing and there was a high level of trust within the organisation.

The building was designed so that there were various unique work spaces. Each was different and designed for different purposes. There was a club house which contained ten uniquely different areas. Meeting spaces blurred into social spaces. There were no institutionalised rows of desks in souless offices. The idea was based on the fact that only one third of their work time is done at a private desk so they looked to find out what was being done the during the remaining two-thirds of the time.

When asked how do people know where to go when they got to work, Erik Vedhoen, the architect, of the Interpolis building said “your day starts with asking yourself ‘what am I going to do today?’. Then you re-think ‘what’s the best place I can do that? Alone or with colleagues?’ and then you choose one of these places”.

Because there are different zones to promote different activities: relfection, discussion, focus, inspiration or stimulation. There was a definite feeling of ‘people-power’. But there was also efficiency and high levels of productivity. It then begged the question that if everything was so flexible, how did the boss keep control. Veldhoen replied “control is not an issue any more. When you do this, you manage on trust. You make a good system so they have enough accountability so they can show what they did and more than 95% of the people will do the things in the right way. In the old system you think you can control everything but that’s impossible.”

The workspace is very different from our usual ideas of working places and it looked very expensive. However, because of the clever use of space and the informal working areas, this reduced the overall size of the building by half and there was actually a 40% saving in construction costs. Veldhoen pointed out “the people are connected with each other in a natural way which made for a lot of productivity which you don’t get when you put people bound in one place.” Productivity rose by 20%. When asked if the UK would ever be able to learn from this he answered in a long slow ye-e-e-e-e-s but added “it will take a long time”.

Because learning and working are so tightly entwined, this shouldn’t be any surprise to us. We can learn from this on all sorts of levels. Not only from a L&D perspective but also how management can help increase employee engagement. Increased enagement, feeling valued, treated fairly, trusted and given more ownership of their learning and working. Enabling interaction and collaboration more easily together with providing easy access to the right tools for the job and the most appropriate environments in which to use them will reap huge rewards.

To summarise:

trust more, control less
encourage social interaction
encourage flexibility
use the most appropriate environnent or tool for the type of activity
provide a strong technical infrastructure
enable easy and quick access to performance support tools
encourage ownership by displaying confidence in others’ abilities
remove restrictions which cause stress and discomfort
provide informal working spaces which encourage conversations to happen naturally
support and cultivate
encouraging a sharing and collaborative culture

If we continue to work in silos we’re in danger of becoming blind to possibilities. This may have a serious negative impact on our creativity especially when it comes to designing appropriate and effective learning solutions. We become swallowed up by the ‘it’s the way it’s always been’ culture and politics. Sometimes it’s easier if we leave things be. It takes time and effort to change the way we do things. But if we are expecting our learners to change the way they behave perhaps we should lead by example by affording time and effort into creating environments fit for the purpose. Environments that encourage, challenge and inspire. When we take the blinkers off we can help ourselves to discover new and innovative ways to engage and inspire. We can learn from others who’ve already been down that road and learn from their experiences. Above all, remember that people are the heartbeat of our organisations. Without them there is nothing.

If you’re interested in finding out more how Interpolis got there, here’s a report produced in association with The British Council of Offices ‘ICT and Offices: Practised Realities and their Business Benefits‘.

The other Monday evening, I was flicking through the chanels of the hotel tiny TV looking for something easy and not too brain taxking to watch, when I landed on a programme all about the secret life of buildings and how they way they are designed can have a fundemental and often quite scary effect on our behaviour, health and wellbeing. I thought it would do until the second episode of Corrie came on (I told you I needed something inane and not too taxing to relax didn’t I?).

Here’s what the Chanel 4′s introduction for the programme says on its website ” Architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff explores the impact the design of buildings can have on us – on our identity and self-esteem, and on relationships, our chances at school, and even our weight and immune system”

Well, I was only watching a couple of minutes when I was hooked. This programme was fascinating. So much so I started writing notes (so much for relaxing then!). This was the second of three in the series. Unfortunately I’d missed the first one which was the designs of our homes. I’m going to catch that one on On-Demand.

This episode concentrated on how architecture can change the way we feel and behave. It looked at how it can even change our brains. Wow – really?

Tom Dyckhoff visited several different buildings throughout the programme. Some of these have achieved iconic status such as The Gerkin designed Norman Foster. The Gerkin, which got it’s name from the its shape which looked like a giant gerkin, is a magnificant building but when you entered inside it became bland, souless, unispiring. The only thing going for it was the view. This was very different to Foster’s other iconic building in Ipswich.

The Willis building was iconic back in 1975 because it was one of the first truely open plan office buildings in the UK. It was column-free with reflective surfaces to reflect light back into the office space and a large rooftop restaurant which catered for all staff bringing levels together. There was evern a swimming pool (later covered over to provide more offices). This structure was unique also in that it said there was more to people than work. It was very popular with the workforce.

We had a fascinating insight into how architecture can have a detrimental effect on us when Dyckhoff then took us to Deloitte’s offices in London. Apparently, when the staff moved into their current building, morale took a nose dive. Team work and productivity fell dramatically. Guy Battle, partner in Deloitte even said his “heart fell” when he walked into the building. From the organisation’s point of view, the space was very efficient but it just didn’t inspire people. It was, again, souless. When asked what she would have like to change, one member of staff said “additional facilitities for staff” and somewhere where all the other tenants could “congregate and mingle”.

It seems that because these structures were built to house many different tenants they needed to have a broader appeal and therefore a less interesting look and feel. Rab Bennett, architect of the Deloitte building acknowledged the direction office spaces need to go in should be better and “if architects were more like craftsmen again, making things properly with good responsible work” people would still buy that although still maintained that buildings would still have to have a broad appeal. Norman Foster also agreed that perhaps the internal space could be better and had even tried to influence his clients. “at some point” he said “you have to let go”.

So how did the programme prove that how our environments are designed can affect our brain development? Enter Fred Gage, Neuroscientist at San Diego’s Salk Institute. Gage had carried out experiments on mice (apparently mice have a similar brain structure to humans). It seems that, contrary to the belief that we are all born with all the brain cells we need, we can actually grow new brain cells. Our brains cells can grow and mature by as much as 15% in a month. It appears that external environments do have a significant influence on our brain development.

As long as we are continually developing and we are moving within different spaces especially when those spaces are of different qualities and stimulii, our brains will constantly change and shift. Gage stated that “architects are impacting the structure of our brains by the spaces they are making but they’re not taking into consideration how”. He advised that both neuroscientists and architects need to work together because “we shoudl be highly motivated to optimise our understanding so we can optimise our own performance and abilities”.

Remember at the beginning of this post I said I’d settled down to relax and watch some mind numming TV. This was so I could help my brain switch off. No such luck. With this fascinating programme, my brain kicked into to gear and revved right up. Now I think I may have mentioned in the past how I’m always switched on and see analogies in life with learning everywhere. Oh how I wish I could switch off sometimes. Well that’s all very interesting, you might say, but what has this got to do with learning, blended learning and e-learning? I say it has everything to do with it.

What I saw was all these wonderfully shiny new buildings, cleverly constructed and award winning in design. They were rich in texture, unusual in shape, flashy and looked very expensive. All the time and energy seemed to had been spent on how good they looked. How impressive they were on the outside. Applauded how clever and innovative the artist/designer/architect was who came up with these plans. They are, indeed, things of wonder and (not always) beauty. But the one big flaw is that they were built for efficiency. They weren’t built with the people in mind. There was little thought in how people behave. There was no thought in how people feel. We’re people, not machines. We need social interaction, we need stimulation, we need challenge, we need emotional connections, we need to feel comfortable not constrained.

Have we fallen into the same trap when designing our e-learning? Have we spent our energies on designing shiny new learning environments full of ‘bling’. On the outside they look like they will deliver. They look expensive. They look clever and flash. They mezmarise and astound us with programming panache. Do they tantalise and entice us with wonderous award winning exteriors yet lifeless and cold on the inside with unispiring information laden drudgery? Of course the look is important but once you’re through that fancy door, are they devoid of challenge, social interaction and emotional connection? Can you choose your own path or are you constrained and shackled at every step? Are they designed with people in mind? As architects for our learning environments, do we really consider our audience and their needs?

Do we really understand the serious impact we can have when we build learning environments? Fred Gage, the neuroscientist mentioned above, advised that architects and neuroscientists should work together. Very true. I say the architects of our learning environments should heed the same advice.

In my next post I’m going to explore a little more of this fascinating programme and how we can make parallels in our learning designs.

And for those of you who would like to see the programme here it is on YouTube or On-Demand on Channel 4

My vision of face to face learning events of the future is not a ‘classroom’ but more a social meeting area.  If we are going to embrace the change in learning that has to happen and soon, we should also rethink the environment our learners visit when attend a face to face learning event.

To me, the word classroom conjures up a memory of chairs all in a row.  Sometimes, these chairs may be locked together so we can’t move them.  Some of them have little tables attached.  Have you ever tried to sit at these strange contraptions?  For me they are certainly not comfortable and very restrictive not to mention difficult to adjust my seating or cross my legs.  Then there are those conference chairs.  I have short legs – not too short – I think I’m average height at 5 foot 3 inches but often find that the majority of conference / classroom / training event chairs leave me with legs a-dangle cutting off the circulation.  If I wear my killer heels this is slightly better but then by the end of the day I can’t walk!

The alternative to the rows upon rows of lecture-style layout  in corporate training rooms is the ‘horseshoe’ style with the premise of making the experience much more friendly allowing the trainer more opportunity to become more accessible to their learners and allow learners to see each other, thereby interacting more easily.  A lot better than the first option but the trainer often still stands at the front ‘in charge’.  With the barrier of tables it can be tricky to break down the walls of formality.  I’ve tried pulling a chair round and sitting at the front.  This feels odd but a little less formal.  I’ve tried sitting on the table but then I’m almost on top of some people and a little distant from others.  It’s also uncomfortable (short legs and no circulation again).

If I had my way, I would redisign the environment so it’s no longer like a classroom but an inviting area where learners feel at ease on a range of comfortable chairs and sofas, where the the trainer becomes a facilitator.  There will be coffee tables and any slides are viewed on a flat screen TV from a laptop.  Individuals will have a much more comfortable experience and a more informal approach to learning.  Where computer based activities are required, of course safe ergonomic considerations are needed but I feel this would also benefit from a more informal feel to it.

Considering that with more emphasis these days on blended learning, where we will be using face to face events more appropriately and collaboratively I think it’s time to adapt the environment accordingly.

Recent reports have brought into question the quality of L&D departments which reminded me of that phrase – and again, it sat uneasy with me. I think trainers are being given a rum deal from the anti L&D fraternity. It is clear that things need to change but is it really all the fault of L&D? Clive Shepherd, in his recent post “Rather than getting depressed, get going”, looks further than L&D at possible causes. In fact, I started penning this post before Clive’s was posted but he is so much more eloquent than I.

I know I may be biased, but I also feel the need to come to the defence of our trainers out there so I’ll continue with what I started before I read Clive’s post.

The speed of change is such that trainers do risk becoming the dinosaurs of the learning profession (see “Trainers of the Future” by Nick Shackleton Jones). If they continue to stick their heads in the sand (mixed metaphor but you get the gist) and fail to adapt their skills to become more learning facilitators rather than trainers they do themselves no favours. The future is more about helping people learn to learn and continue doing so.

I have heard first hand from trainers saying that they have been given the directive to design and deliver a training programme when they aren’t sure there is actually a training need. They try and convince the powers that be that it isn’t possible to deliver the amount of subject matter to an audience that large in such a short space of time but have no choice but to ‘work miracles’. They know they are not providing the best learning experience that they could deliver given half the chance, all too often they have their hands tied. I feel their frustration, they are full of enthusiasm to put new approaches into action only to realise that without the support of others in their organisation they will find it like swimming through treacle.

Nick Shackleton-Jones’ post also refers to trainers becoming more active in seeking out ‘the good stuff’. It is true we can’t carry on delivering the same old same old when information is at our fingertips (YouTube, Google, Twitter). I also believe that ‘learning professionals have a central role to play in the organisations of the future’.

However it is also the responsibility of the Company Owners, Directors, Team Leaders, Managers and Supervisors to provide the necessary support. They must empower learning professionals to create a streamlined learning culture, after all it’s their organisation that will benefit in the long run.

Let’s cut trainers some slack and give them the support they need to move forward.

Milo is the brainchild of Peter Molyneux, a UK games designer and Milo was introduced to the world at the recent TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference held in Oxford. He is Microsoft’s virtual child . He appears so realistic that player’s react to him as if he were human as he reacts to their movements and voice commands all done through an infrared sensor. This brings artificial intelligence to the gaming world as Milo has been designed for the hands-free 360 motion controller Kinect.

The story behind the invention was Peter Molyneux’s disappointment with the blandness of films, TV and books in that they were all a ‘one-way’ experience. After 45 minutes or so, Milo starts to recognise the player’s voice and will react to questions and movements and respond with his own facial expressions and emotions – even to the point of blushing with embarrassment.

Although in its early stages, this is a very exciting time for the gaming world.

As with the world of gaming and fun – the world of learning may see a use for this in the future. As with Second Life that is already being used for effective learning and collaborative activities – how interesting could this new technology be used learning. I can already imagine it being useful in child protections scenarios where a learner has to develop special interviewing skills. Once this technology has grown into a community of artificial intelligences there will be plethora of opportunities.

I acknowledge that we need to be mindful not to use technology for the sake of it but I do believe that we can no longer be stuck in the past – the future of our workforce will be switched off by those old fashioned tools we are still using. We need to think about how we can immerse our learners totally in a truly engaging learning experience. Gaming already does that for our youths – let us reach out and harness that power for learning (and our inner child).

Once upon a time (now that sounds like a good line to start a story), we would gather round a fire and learn from our elders. Children copied others and learned by making their own mistakes. They constantly asked questions (we still do).

There were town criers and professional storytellers who travelled the land spreading news by word of mouth. Then came the penny post; the telegraph; the telephone. For a long time, that was it….. then came ….. the internet and with it e-mail. Conversations were now quicker than ever and spread wider than before.

In 1985, the first online community was born. The WELL ‘Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link’ http://www.well.com/ emerged as a place for conversations and discussions. It was here that Howard Rheingold first coined the phrase “virtual community” . The following year, The Grateful Dead’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow joined this online community, which already had a large ‘Deadhead’ following. He served on the board of directors for many years and once described The WELL as a ‘parkplace for e-mail addresses’.

Early online communities were discussion boards or, now more commonly known as forums which are still popular.

Social networking has evolved at breakneck speed with the likes of:

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr; Digg; Slideshare;YouTube; WordPress; Last.FM; Google Buzz; Delicious and LinkedIn (in true BBC fashion: other networks are available – far too many to mention).

Did you know: there are currently 23,449,100 UK users on Facebook. As of 1st January 2010, our entire population was a mere 62,041,708 – that’s more than a third of the UK. In the USA, with a population of 309,352,000 in May of this year, Facebook boasts 111,212,840 users. Over a third of the population again.

And that’s only Facebook. There are many who are members of other social networking sites, either for pleasure, learning or business and who are not on Facebook. Imagine that.

Making connections is nothing new but we can no longer ignore social media – before long, people will expect to make connections through social media tools in all walks of life.

Here are some ways you can benefit from becoming members of a social network:

· From an individual point of view, you can build connections with experts and hold conversations with people you would never normally dare hope to meet

· Share best practice, ask questions and get solutions and opinions from a wider perspective

· Keep up to date as news happens both in general and in your own business area

· From a business point of view, you can keep abreast of what your customers are saying, and even what their customers are saying

· Follow insights from prominent business leaders

· Engage with your audience on a more open and transparent level and be a real person in a virtual environment

· Watch video nuggets of seminars you were unable to attend

· Listen to audio interviews with industry experts

· View presentations and share your own message in the same way

How do you currently benefit from social media?

I would say the answer is – yes. Any place where individuals can join and network can be used for collaboration. It is WHAT we use these for and learning HOW they work that will determine their success in what we want to do.
Indeed, at the moment, we see the usual suspects being used by organisations for collaboration as Valerie mentions above; and they are brilliant tools for bringing colleagues together to discuss ideas, situations and projects. However, with the emerging social learning environments such as Elgg that can be hosted within an organisations firewall or others such as Ning where organisations can create their own social platform, these are excellent tools to encourage cross-organisation collaboration to share ideas and working practices.

Areas can be set up to discuss ‘hot’ topics and they can also be restricted to particular members.
Facebook, on the other hand, initially seems like a fun place just to hang out, play silly games and ‘throw cows’ at each other. On first glance, it may seem there is little it can be used for seriously. However, if you look a little closer, there are many worthwhile groups already using Facebook to collaborate.

Take a look at Count Me In – a Facebook group set up campaigning against knife crime, or Centre for Learning and Performance Technology and, just one more for now – eLearning Professionals.

So, for instance, an account could be created whereby different conversations can be started up, ideas collated, awareness heightened and changes happening. Remember that security settings on these tools are there to help and members (or friends) may only join if the account holder approves.

Twitter is anther underestimated social tool that is increasingly being used for learning collaboration. If not in the formal sense, certainly for informal learning and there are plenty of experts out there with whom collaboration proves invaluable in persuing a goal or interest.

As for LinkedIn – well, are they doing there, if not collaborating. A topic is posted and ideas, opinions and expertise shared.

If this was a collaborative exercise with a specific outcome, then I would expect to see an objective set for the exercise, a time limit, some ground rules / guidelines and a summary giving the findings of the exercise at the end. All of that should be set for any collaborative exercise for any collaborative tool chosen, whether it is in a more controlled situation like WebEx, within an organisations intranet form or a more open platform such as Twitter or Facebook. Therefore, it is the ground rules and activities set that dictate these tools’ use.

Of course, you will have to decide which would be most appropriate for your situation but beware of dismissing them out of hand. Research them, and think creatively. After all, I’m sure there were plenty of sceptics who couldn’t see how this new-fangled gadget could at all be useful in sharing ideas without having to meet in little groups. Now we can’t live without them and even take to carrying them around in our pockets so we’re always connected. What’s that you say ….. the telephone!

Well that was my response to the post in LinkedIn but I would also be interested in what creative ideas others may have in how these social tools have been used by you for learning and collaboration and how you might have overcome the ‘security’ barriers that are often associated with them.

Value their leisure time more than their older colleagues do
Desire an easy pace with lots of holidays
See work as less central to their lives but as a means of just making a living

Research by The Association of Graduate Recruiters also echoed this and identified young graduates seemed to expect everything to fall into their laps. The situation has resulted in a good number of firms employing those with a stronger work ethic through overseas recruitment.

If this is what we can expect from the Generation Y born c1980, what can we expect from the even younger generation leaving school now? Well, also reported in an adjacent article in The Daily Mail, employers are experiencing young workers regularly turning up late for work and interviews and a seemingly lack of respect in their dress and working relationships.

What implications does this have for the L&D profession ? How can we encourage more enthusiasm for hard work and a little humility to succeed in business?

Although the report was less about pride and more about self-belief, the experiment that followed was an interesting one. A presenter gave a problem solving task to a group of people. The instructions were to spend a specific amount of time thinking about the problem to make plans and he left with the words ; “it should only take you a couple of minutes”. There were 5 people in this group and immediately, 2 of the group took the lead making decisions and, essentially, resolving the problems. Here comes the second part of the experiment. The group was then tasked with counting dots on a screen in a very short period of time. To cut it short… the presenter returned and asked two of the group to leave.

The remaining 3 were praised for their exceptional results and that, in fact, they had scored higher than he did earlier. Their reaction was superb. They all expressed surprise and, I guess, just a little pride in their results. Impressive – how good must they have felt?

Wait – there was a third task. This time the group reconvened and was given another problem to solve. Guess who were the three who improved the most? Yes … it was the three people praised in the second task. In fact, they hadn’t scored that exceptionally, and the presenter hadn’t done the task himself at all so there was nothing to compare. However, the three who were given such positive praise were the three who naturally took a back seat in the first task while the other two quickly took the lead and made the decisions.

What was the result? The three who took a back seat in the first task, gained confidence and became more involved this time round. Now why does that surprise everyone? This is the power of positive feedback and what effect it has on our performance and motivation. This can be linked to all aspects of our lives:

Children whose parents praise them when they do well rather than scold them when they do not will find their behaviour improve and grow;

Employers who especially give recognition for work well done and hard work reaching goals will likely see an improvement in their workers’ and motivation and performance;

L&D professionals who build their learners’ confidence by boosting their confidence with positive phrases and
encouragement will result in more motivated learners, better quality work and improved rates of application back in the workplace.

None of the above need cost a thing – the right words are often enough. It’s amazing what effect positivity has on our whole world.

Let’s make a better start to 2010 with a pledge to have a more positive affect on those around us.