e-learning

John Waldron: Want a Workplace Learning Culture? Create Frictionless Learning

October 23, 2018 rbudd Leave a Comment

John Waldron, MBA (FS) Class of ‘08

Within four years, 42% of your core workplace skills will be obsolete, according to the Future of Jobs Report 2018, recently published by the World Economic Forum. One way to close the skills gap is to retrain existing employees, but among the 313 organizations surveyed worldwide, that solution ranked only third behind automating work tasks and hiring new permanent staff already possessing the relevant skills. This is a wakeup call to all employees for more skills training.

It is no longer necessary to make a case for learning in the workplace. But to be certain, the report estimates that an extra 101 days of training will be required in order for employees to close the skills gap by 2022. Unless organizations begin aggressively replacing staff or fully automating workflows, employers need to support a culture of learning in the workplace. The best way to do that is to make learning frictionless.

Learning in the workplace needs to be a lot of things: relevant, contextual and purposeful; but what often gets neglected is the learning experience, which is every bit as important as the content itself.

Frictionless learning means having learning that is on-demand and available for when employees need it; having content that is quick and easy to access. A learner shouldn’t have to go through extraneous steps or spend excessive amounts of time just to reach the content. This creates an unnecessary cognitive load, which only encourages the individual to look elsewhere for a solution, or not bothering to even look.

People are busy. And there is only so much mental energy to expend on work and life demands each and every day. How can someone embrace learning that creates so much extra friction and unnecessary cognitive demand?

If, instead, workplace learning is more accessible, then it becomes more immersive. Not in the “virtual reality” sense – immersive in that employees will engage more frequently with the content. When you have an immersive learning experience, education is pulled by the employee rather than pushed onto the employee. They will learn because the want to and not because they have to. Create a culture of learning in your workplace. Make it frictionless.

John Waldron, MBA (FS) Class of 2008
Founder of Learnedly and purveyor of accessible education for financial professionals.

CEGE Connection is delighted to advise that John Waldron has graciously agreed to be a repeat contributor on CEGE Connection.

Tyler Saito: The Deeper Learning Experience

July 25, 2017 rbudd Leave a Comment

Tyler Saito MBA(FS) 2016

Tyler Saito, Regional Manager at Coast Capital Financial Management crossed the stage in 2016 to receive his MBA(FS). In a recent virtual interview with CFAME Connection, Tyler shared his thoughts on the idea of “Deeper Learning” as presented by Martine’s and Joyline’s award-winning research.

Tyler Saito:

I have discovered that learning never stops. Once I completed my MBA studies, my wife embarked on her masters. My children, who are seven and ten, are now convinced that everyone attends school for their entire lives. They have the right idea. Once we start on the learning path, the addiction to knowledge acquisition takes over. Life-long learning becomes embedded in everything we do. With the MBA(FS) program I experienced the “Deeper Learning” highlighted in Martine and Joyline’s research. I was able to implement the new learnings in my daily interactions. Everything was practical, applicable, and could be put to immediate use.

Why did I choose to enter an academically rigorous program? In 2011, my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She went through the typical treatments but declined quickly and passed away in September of 2012. Her passing made me ponder my own existence and the choices I had made to date. I have always been motivated but this was a pivotal moment. It made me reflect on what I wanted my life and legacy to be about. I wanted to ensure that my own health, within what I could control, enabled me to live a long and healthy life. I set some personal and professional goals that included getting myself into physical shape.

I dropped about 60 pounds and completed three sprint triathlons in 2012 and 2013. At the same time, I researched institutions that provided MBA programs. A colleague advised me about the MBA(FS) offered by Dalhousie. I was impressed that Dalhousie would give credit for my existing financial designations towards their MBA(FS). In a comparison with local MBA programs I valued Dalhousie’s for the flexibility of their program and the ability to work with professionals with similar experiences. The content seemed exceptionally relevant to my situation. I was accepted in the fall of 2013

What are my next steps? Reconnecting with friends and family. They were an invaluable support and encouragement all through my years of study. As well, I am committed to utilizing and mastering what I have learned in my chosen career path with Coast Capital Financial Management, an organization that reflects my values and gives a purpose to work. I enjoy engaging in community endeavours and have used my Dal experience to coach little league fast-pitch and establish a communication strategy within this dedicated organization. Acquiring knowledge is only the beginning of a journey. Sharing knowledge sustains us on the road ahead.

Next Post: Panel Discussion on Deeper Learning

The Phenomenon of Conversation

July 18, 2017 rbudd 2 Comments

Dalhousie Faculty of Management

Martine Durier-Copp and Joyline Makani along with co-researches, Deborah Kiceniuk and Alieda Blandford received the prestigious IJEDE Best Paper Award in May 2017 for “Strengthening Deeper Learning through Virtual Teams in E-learning: A Synthesis of Determinants and Best Practices”

In a follow-up post to Joyline’s overview of their research, CFAME Connection reached out to Martine and Joyline to provide a synopsis of their findings. Martine and Joyline suggest that the core phenomenon of conversation fortifies deeper learning in virtual teams and e-learning environments.

Incidentally, this interview is proof that virtual teams are global. At the time of writing this post, Martine was travelling in Spain, Joyline was in Halifax, and I was in Vancouver. We hope that you will join the discussion by sharing your e-learning experiences. As Martine noted: “our students also help to build this base of knowledge – all student projects contribute to this exercise.”

Martine: Recently, there has been an increased focus on deeper learning in higher educational settings. And by deeper learning, we mean delivering robust course content in ways that engage students to study, integrate and apply what they have learned. Deeper learning fosters competencies required to participate within our social milieu: critical thinking, collaborative and communication skills, for example. Our objective was to identify the core skills and knowledge from research that reinforce each other and together promote deeper learning, specifically within the context of e-learning

Joyline: Virtual teams have become ubiquitous. However, they have not been empirically studied in the academic sphere, and little is known about their effectiveness as a learning mechanism in e-learning. Martine and I were eager to pursue this area of investigation. There is growing practical evidence that one of the key factors for e-learning success is an understanding of the social component of learning, i.e., the importance of person-to-person, and group/team interactions within the e-learning framework.

Martine: Our experience and research found that most workplace training and graduate teaching in e-learning environments utilize group work. Group or team work, according to precepts of adult education, nurtures deeper learning. Team work provides skills that professional programme students require in the workplace, where teams are the norm today and team work a required skill set. When there is a collaborative environment for learning, more experiences are shared and knowledge can be processed from different perspectives. Moreover, concepts learned by examining them from a number of different perspectives can enhance learning.

Joyline: Our research demonstrated that the core phenomenon of conversation fortified virtual teams and e-learning environments. Conversation is the all-embracing term that describes socialization as well as communication processes within the learning environment. Conversation is identified as allowing learners to experience social presence and develop a feeling of belonging and psychological closeness, which is crucial to the development of deeper learning. Within the e-learning literature concepts such as collaboration, community and connectedness dominated the results pointing to student satisfaction and success.

Martine: Learning is about conversations. It is our conversations that allow us to experience social presence and develop a feeling of trust. When we work within a compassionate and supportive team, our learning potential is enhanced. Conversations encourage deeper learning.

Joyline: Martine and I believe that our study findings will strengthen e-learning program planning and delivery within educational centres that are already engaged in e-learning, as well as convey important best practices for learning centres at the beginning stages of e-learning development.

Martine: Adding to Joyline’s comment, we believe our study also has broad societal implications. It has the potential to fuel social and economic development and innovation, and to inspire lifelong learning in our society.

Joyline Makani: Strengthening Deeper Learning

July 11, 2017 rbudd 2 Comments

Joyline Makani

“We are so excited and the award was very unexpected. It has been a great month for research. Martine Durier-Copp and I have been celebrating along with our co-researches, Deborah Kiceniuk and Alieda Blandford. Our paper “Strengthening Deeper Learning through Virtual Teams in E-learning: A Synthesis of Determinants and Best Practices” which appeared in Vol. 32, No. 2, 2016 received the IJEDE Best Paper award for 2016 that was announced at the CNIE conference May 18, 2017 in Banff, Canada.

Joyline Makani

After several years of e-mail exchanges, Joyline Makani and I met for our first face-to-face conversation during my brief visit to Halifax in May. It was a celebration meeting. The prestigious IJEDE Best Paper Award seeks out cutting-edge research that responds to current realities. “Strengthening Deeper Learning…” offers an e-learning framework, one that could serve as the foundation of future empirical studies in e-learning. This is indeed exciting news!

Joyline explains:

Martine and I are passionate about e-learning. We see this as a global movement. E-learning is gaining popularity. Everyone recognizes the potential contributions to economic and social development offered via this delivery system. But we have yet to fully realize e-learning’s possibilities. Here is the main issue: most e-learning practices merely replicate traditional existing teaching methods and have not fully exploited the interactive and social components of peer learning.

The objective of our study was to identify the core skills and knowledge from research that reinforce each other and together promote deeper learning. We believe that the results from this study will strengthen e-learning program planning and delivery within higher education centres that are already engaged in e-learning, as well as convey important best practices for learning centres at the beginning stages of e-learning development.

Why is this important? Our research revealed that in 2012, an estimated 875,000 and 950,000 registered online students at colleges and universities in Canada take a purely online course at any one time (Contact North 2012 Report). In the same year, the U.S. had over 6.7 million students taking at least one online course, an increase of 570,000 students over the number reported in the previous year (Allen & Seaman, 2013). These are significant numbers. Martine and I believe there is a growing need for a stronger understanding of e-learning that encompasses the examination of ways in which e-learning promotes deeper learning. We need to uncover and pursue fresh e-learning strategies.

Next post: The Phenomenon of Conversation

Martine Durier-Copp: Management is an Art

July 4, 2017 rbudd Leave a Comment

Dalhousie University: Ralph M. Medjuck Building, Faculty of Architecture & Planning (5410 Spring Garden Road)

Since 2009, Martine Durier-Copp has been the Director for the Centre for Advanced Management Education in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University, where she continues to engage in her passion of continuous learning and capacity development.

In a recent interview with CFAME Connection, Martine shared her insights into the art of management.

Management is an art, but also a science, and as any science, it is informed by knowledge. Knowledge develops and grows, as we conduct more research.

The way we teach management also evolves, and is based on current best practices, as informed by ongoing research.

Researchers at Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management study and investigate all facets of management – from finance, operations management, strategy, marketing, etc. Our students also help to build this base of knowledge – all student projects contribute to this exercise.

At CFAME, we are particularly interested in e-learning – that means, how students learn on line, and how that is different from how they learn in traditional classrooms. That knowledge helps to inform the way we teach on line. So, how do we conduct research?

One always begins with an analysis or review of the literature. What have other researchers found? We examine their studies for relevance, context, and of course, methodological rigour. From there, we can move on to extract important themes and issues, which can help us to develop a research framework – the lens or perspective from which we shall conduct our own analysis.

We then frame our research question, being a precise as possible; select our research method – and justify that method.

Without doubt, research in academia is demanding. A great deal of reading, synthesizing, reviewing, checking and rechecking goes into a research project. This becomes clear to all who enter an MBA program. In business, strategy is based on documented research that flows from academic efforts. This is the critical link between the two entities. And who best to facilitate that link – graduates of CFAME’s MBA programs.

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