The LCB Big Question Reframed: Should More Learning Professionals Be Blogging?

Out of the original October 2006: Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging?, we've seen some pretty amazing discussion. But, we've also reached an interesting point. As Peter posted (The Learning Circuits Blog: Community Net Worth):

Now that the first wave of bloggers and blog-readers have read the initial results both in the form of serious utterances, straw polls and comic reformulations (thanks, Tony for that refreshing exercise), whither go we? Do we know more about our marketplace or do we simply know more about the individuals who have so far participated?

I would claim that I know a lot more about both the individuals out there and their perspecitves and also I know something about perception of the marketplace (but its skewed because people participating obviously have a built in bias towards blogs). More on this in a second...

Separately, Dave Lee (The Learning Circuits Blog: Throwing a Big Community Net) has provided a couple of interesting follow-up opportunities including keeping track of conversations across various posts that relate to the original post and a poll.

Personally, I feel great about how this discussion so far. It's actually gone way beyond my expectations. A few of the things that have struck me:

• The speed of contribution was much faster than I expected. I thought this would take 2-3 weeks to get responses in order to have any chance of going into a "summarizing" mode.
  
• I found that by going through and creating my lists (eLearning Technology: Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog), I personally learned quite a bit about reasons on both sides. It was a fantastic exercise for my own learning.
  
• Maybe I'm deluded, but I actually think the list is a pretty good representation of some of the important issues.
  
• There were a few "aha" moments and some great ideas. Including the suggestion - blog for a month (Karl Kapp).
  
• I've also learned a bit about dynamic of blog community as compared to discussion communities. Not sure I can capture these differences effectively - it's just a "feel" right now.
  
• I also found that there was signficant Mis-Understanding Blog Reading and Blog Communities especially in the world of discussion groups.

Peter - I get the sense that you also felt you learned something by participating. Maybe not? I would assume others did. Maybe not?

One thing that appears to be different about this exercise than in a discussion group, half of the response posts to any question is a response of "Here's why you are asking the wrong question..." Now before you assume that's negative, in most cases my firm belief is that having the right question is the whole battle - eLearning Technology: Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee (at eLearningGuild’s DevLearn). On the other hand, sometimes I feel that a discussion group immediately derails the conversation by forcing you into a question you didn't want to ask.

There were many posts that did challenge the question including my own. But, I didn't feel like we arrived at the next level of questions nearly as well as a discussion group might have. Or maybe I needed to look at the posts with a different perspective.

Certainly, some of the questions raised that I remember:

• What's a learning professional? (ASTD - that's an ouch given that's how you define your audience right?) (several)
• Given limited time, how do learning professionals decide how to use their time for learning, research, etc.? Then, where does blog reading and writing fit in? (several)
• Should all learning professionals be actively engaging with the current developments in their discipline? If yes, then how? And where does blogging fit in? (Bronwyn Clarke)
• What is the role of a professional should be in a networked environment? (Stephen Downes)
• What and how should other applications be used by learning professionals to share and learn? (Dave Lee)
• When do you use blogging vs. using other tools? (Bill Bruck)
• Should all learning professionals blog at least once? (Mike Oehlert)
• Should all learning professionals be aware of the potential of blogging? (Jane)
• How can we better invite others to be part of our thinking? (Nancy White)
• Should learning professionals shift some of their time from discussion groups to blogging? (Tony Karrer)

But what I think was the most appropriate next question, and probably the reason I thought of the question in the first place:

• Should more learning professionals be blogging? (Barry Sampson)

Independently, Dave Lee suggested that question as well. It would seem obvious that the answer is "Yes" - if you answer anything else, then you would have to think that there's a few who should stop blogging.

Of course, then it raises a couple of questions:

• Which learning professionals should blog?
• When? How long?
• Should we encourage them to blog? If so, how?

In discussing this with Dave Lee, I wasn't convinced that this is very interesting ground to go over. I'm not particularly missionary here. I want people to understand the value proposition (and draw backs) of blogging (my previous post). And, they can make up their own mind. At the same time, it does seem like we've not come anywhere close to 1%.

So, back to Peter's point - where to from here? I feel like I found out some really interesting things, and I'm not sure I need anything more. At the same time, I didn't go into this from a missionary position (sorry couldn't resist) and so I'm open to whether any further discussion is useful, interesting, etc. Maybe others have a different perspective and expectation of where to go from here.

Left on its own, this discussion will die off. Is that a problem?

I feel great about this whole thing. Do people feel cheated?

Blogger Permalink - Not Really

Over at LCB we ran into an interesting problem and I've just run into it as well on my blog. The situation reminds me of one of my favorite Seinfeld scenes when he goes to get his rental car, but they are out of cars:

JERRY: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my
reservation?

RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the
reservation.

RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.

JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how
to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and
that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody
can just take them.

It turns out that the people behind Blogger (now Google right) don't really understand the concept of a permalink.

The intent of a permalink is a permanent link (a URL) that points to that blog post. That way, anyone in the blogosphere can point to the URL.

Well Blogger seems to mysteriously add version numbers in the URL as you edit the post. Thus, we started with a URL that looks like:

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all.html

then we edited it and it became:

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all_02.html

then it became

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all_04.html

Now, it seems to have stopped changing at _04, but we aren't sure why or how it stopped or when it will change again. The same thing just happened on my own blog when I edited one of my posts.

Of course, this messes up everyone who linked to the post originally. And it messed up within the blog.

You see Blogger, you know how to make a permalink, you just don't know how to *hold* a permalink and that's really the most important part of the permalink, the holding. Anybody can just make them.

Why You Should Provide Full Feeds (especially on Blogger)

I've been talking recently about blogging for learning professionals and claiming that as a blog reader, you spend your time in the RSS reader. Someone pointed out that many bloggers use partial feeds which forces readers to their blog.

I did that for a while as well. I started with full feeds and then found myself curious about who my readers were. So, I added SiteMeter to my blog to track traffic. Then I realized that very few people who subscribe to my blog actually go to the blog - they stay in their RSS Reader. Ah, so to fix that I decided to change my feed to a partial feed so you only get the first paragraph.

What I've learned since:

• Partial feeds are annoying as a blog reader, so I was being annoying providing a partial feed.
• Google only indexes Blogger's feed (not the blog itself) - so search is terrible on blogs with partial feeds.
• And, most interesting, when I switched back to full feeds, I didn't really see much traffic change. Readers rarely click through to the blog post in either case.

Bottom line: I would highly encourage anyone with a blog to provide a full feed.

I'd be curious if I've missed something here or if anyone who's providing a partial feed can convince me why they shouldn't provide a full feed.

Later maybe I'll start naming names.

Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog

Updates recent studies show additional reasons:

• Blogging and Social Networking Boosts Your Social Life.
• Blogging -- It's Good for You.

Update on Nov 21, 2007 - There's been a lot of discussion recently around using blogs for learning and I wanted to point to a few newer thoughts on this:

• Learning and Networking with a Blog (Deleted Scenes)
• Blogging - I'm Pushing Harder Now
• New Debate on Value of Blogs and Wikis in the Enterprise
• More eLearning Bloggers

I must say that the response to The Learning Circuits Blog: The Big Question for October: Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging? has been fantastic and it's great to see such a wide variety of thoughts on the subject. I wanted to summarize, for everyone, the responses in a completely unbiased way. :)

Most everyone, who has at least half a brain, and certainly most of the responses made it over that hurdle, came back and said more or less what Mark Oehlert said “My answer is ..........yes........and no.” Even those who were pretty adamant quickly qualified their answer so that it was really a “maybe.”

The only consensus I found was that it’s a loaded, ambiguous and actually pretty lamely worded question. I wonder who came up with such a lame question. Sheesh. But, let’s try to muddle through this anyhow.

Oh, and before I offend anyone, I’ve taken a few liberties by paraphrasing what people wrote into their posts and comments and instead have included in this post what they really meant to say. However, if I used quote marks, they really said that. But I may have used them slightly out of context. :) Oh, and finally, to all of you who commented or put up blog posts already, if I didn’t happen to quote you out of context, I apologize.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Blog

10. Because you stopped learning anything new a couple years ago and it’s about time you started again.

Or as Karyn Romeis & Barry Sampson both said - I’ve learned more via blogging over the past year than I learned in the preceding several years!

9. Because it forces you to do your homework (Rodolpho Arruda)

8. Because this is how you are going to learn in the future.

“This is the difference represented in the shift from traditional classroom based learning and network learning. The idea of the latter is that learning occurs when the learner immerses him or herself in a community of practice, learning by performing authentic tasks, learning by interacting with and becoming a member of the community.” (Stephen Downes)

7. Because if you don’t we’ll think you’re lame and don’t know how to do your job.

“What can you know about a professional who doesn't blog his or her work? How do you know they are competent, that they have the respect of their peers, that they understand the issues, that they practice sound methodology, that they show consideration for their clients? You cannot know any of this without the openness blogging (or equivalent) provides. Which means, once a substantial number begin to share, there will be increasing pressure on all to share.” (Stephen Downes)

6. Because it will change your life.

“there is something that happens to a person when they hit that "publish" button - you cross a threshold - you move from consumer to producer - you put your intellectual neck on the line and I really think that you aren't the same person after that.” (Mark Oehlert)

5. Because you’ll hook up all over the place.

“all learning professionals need to exchange ideas with others, to test their ideas, to question their assumptions, to learn from each other in ways that come with dialog. Blogging is great for forming networks based on weak social ties.” (Bill Bruck)

4. Because learning is conversation and that blogging lets you have more and better conversations (Harold Jarche)

“The lack of formality and the ease of cross-referencing other blog content or references means is great to accelerate discussion and promote broader thinking and understanding.” (David Wilson)

3. Because Professionalism is more than consumption, it is contribution. (Rovy Bronson)

2. Because it’s “a swap meet for the mind.” (Nancy White)

1. Because your job depends on it.

“If for no other reason than your job is changing, and you might want to be engaged in the process of what your new job will include.” (Brent Shlenker) and “They don't get what blogs are about and possibly never will. We just need to encourage them towards retirement.” (Barry Sampson)


Top Reasons Why You Shouldn’t or Won’t Blog

10. Because you are too lame

Dave Lee “that all learning professionals should be blogging is about as likely that your ancestors all wrote a novel when the printing press was created or wrote a tv script when the telly was introduced.”

9. Because if you live in the US you don’t know how to write (Peter Isackson)

8. Because you’re a scared little wuss - Fear of Blogging (Wendy)

7. Because you don’t have your priorities straight so you lack the time to read blogs much less write a blog. (almost everyone said this)

5. Because bloggers are narcissists (Peter Isackson) only interested in establishing a Cult of Personality (saw that in a discussion group) – and you’re so not that way.

4. Because you’ll screw up blogging just like you screwed up using PowerPoint. (Matthew N.)

Poorly implemented and/or designed learning technologies are an embarrassment to the field (think shovelware e-learning courses or boring PowerPoint lectures transformed to boring online courses). (Karl Kapp)

3. Because no one really wants to read what you have to say.

“Why should all learning professionals be blogging any more than they should all be presenting at conferences, producing papers, writing books or sharing their views, opinions and knowledge through any other medium?” (Barry Sampson)

2. Because “I know some people that would get nothing out of blogging” (Howard Cronin)

1. Because “my 9 and 11 year old sons have a deeper understanding of the tools” than you do. (Karl Kapp)

Blogs vs. Discussion Groups or Mis-Understanding Blog Reading and Blog Communities

On a new discussion group, eLearningAll, formed by disgruntled ex-Brandon Hall discussion group members, there's been an interesting discussion related to The Big Question on LCB. What's been most enlightening for me is the "bad rap" that blogging gets from people who've probably only visited a few blogs and have been inundated with a general media bias against blogging.

Below I've listed a few of the more interesting reasons that people don't like blogs:

• "you have to go there to 'pull' out information"
  
  Most people participating in blog reading and especially those participating in the blog community do so using an RSS Reader such as Bloglines. They subscribe to the blogs (and other sources) that interest them. Then you just run through the content much like you do threaded discussions. The only time I am "going there" in the world of blogs is when I want to read related links or make a comment.
  
• "A Blog often covers a wide range of topics. Some of it doesn't interest me."
  
  Yep, but again, with an RSS reader, there is little to no investment of time to ignore bad stuff. Further, people who produce bad stuff you never subscribe to or you unsubscribe. The same problem of topics that you aren't interested in happens in discussion groups.
  
• "felt so ... old white guys club"
  
  Hmmm - I'm only 41 so "old" depends on perspective. But, in defense of bloggers everywhere take a look at two of my favorites: Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra and Full Circle Online Interaction Blog by Nancy White. Now, before I get into trouble here - I would NOT say that I personally see much of a "female perspective" from Kathy or Nancy - they just say lots of really smart things and they aren't male. I'll leave it to Kathy and Nancy to defend their age status. Both are quite young at heart and both may actually qualify as not "old" ... whoops, what was I saying about not getting into trouble. Sorry.
  
• "many of these blogs are one-way discussion mechanisms"
  
  Really? Most bloggers will tell you that they want comments. They would like people to respond.
  
• "Success for blogs seems more based on ability to establish readership -a cult of personality. Why is it that the words "me" and "I" are so prevalent in blogs?"
  
  What a loaded statement. One of the things I least like about discussion groups is that you'll get those kinds of loaded terms being used - "cult" - cmon. And while all of us like to have people read our blog - better yet comment or post their thoughts on the topic - most of us will neverhave much in the way of readers. And bloggers who start out to only build readership will generally stop pretty quickly.
  
  On "I" ... Blogs are mostly written in first person because they are an opportunity to share your experience and your thoughts on the subject. Is that a bad thing? I'm not so sure. Part of the reason that I like blogs is because I get awide variety of perspectives and most people are clear that it's their perspective or their experience. See eLearning Technology: Perspective in Blogs (or how Guy Kawasaki almost ruined my blogging experience and especially look at the coments. Oh, and notice who the first person to comment was - "Guy" - that's pretty cool itself and suggests something about the world of blogs.

All I'm saying is sign up for an RSS Reader and give blogs a chance.

eLearning 2.0 Adoption - Early Adopters

Interesting post Adoption of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Revisited that discusses adoption of these techniques. This relates to several of my posts about eLearning 2.0:

• Adoption of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Revisited
• Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective
• Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools

As a side note - I'm very surprised that the Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools hasn't received more attention. It lays out an interesting roadmap for the practical use of Web 2.0 tools as part of Learning. And it's done in a way that is inline with how most of us learn things every day.

One of the more interesting points in the post cited above: adoption will be driven by having a group of early adopters. But even more so, he gives practical advice on how to support that.

LCB's Big Question - Should All Learning Professionals be Blogging?

Over on LCB, The Big Question for October has been posted:

Should All Learning Professionals be Blogging?

This is an interesting question and it’s quite timely given recent occurrences.

• Brandon Hall Closes Free Yahoo Discussion Groups
  
  In case you hadn't seen this, Brandon Hall has decided to stop moderating and to close their Yahoo Groups discussion groups and BH is starting an eventually paid social networking service. This sparked heated response from people who were heavier users of these groups.
  


• Corporate eLearning Professionals are Blogging More
  
  More corporate eLearning professionals are taking up blogging. A couple recent interesting blogs as examples are:
  
  In the Middle of the Curve - Good example post that I cite later: Fear of Blogging.
  
  eTraining in the Trenches - Example post - Who Spends 2 Nonstop Hours on a Single Course?
  
  Learn Me Happy - Example post - A really worrying trend....
  
  and of course,
  
  Corporate eLearning Development - Example - Is Your eLearning Broken?

Okay, so to me this is a timely question, but I want to avoid the "Should all do it?" question. "All" won’t happen anytime soon. Instead, but let me make a case for why YOU should.

Blogs are a Great Personal Learning Tool

As learning professionals, we should all be at the forefront of knowing how to learn ourselves. Writing is probably the single best way to codify personal knowledge. A blog is a fantastic way to do this and at the same time do it in a way that allows you to explore topics with others.

And as you gain experience with blogs, you can start to gain experience with other Personal Learning Tools.

Blogs are a Great New Community Mechanism

Take a look at Nancy White’s great paper - Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?

What Nancy calls a topic centric community points out that as posts occur and other people comment on those posts or put up posts on their own blog, a discussion forms. Sure, it's messier than a discussion in a forum, but it allows communities to form in a more organic way (based on common interests). It also allows more of the person to come through. Personally, I’ve connected with several bloggers and have got to know them through their blogs. Brent Schlenker - Corporate eLearning Development - I met through blogging and through that he's going to be on a panel with me at DevLearn. I don’t feel the same sense of connection from threaded discussions.

On this topic, it's worth looking at What's Better to Build Community: Blogs or Forums? What struck me was:

• In general, blogs are great at connecting and bridging to a NEW community.
  
• In general, forums are great at harnessing and growing an EXISTING community.

Put in a different way, blogs allow us to grow a community without going to a single location. A forum or mailing list is most effective if everyone agrees to go to that single location and abide by those norms. Blogs allow community to be formed based on common interests and the community grows and evolves in a very fluid manner.

So, let me end this section by saying that YOU SHOULD take up starts with greatly improving your personal learning and includes a nice benefit of blogging to join an interesting community.

Now Let’s Examine Why You Won’t Start Blogging
The 1% Rule says that in collaborative environments, e.g., discussion groups, for every 100 people who sign up, 89 will lurk, 10 will participate in a limited fashion, and 1 will regularly post content. This has been seen across a variety of collaborative environments. So, history tells us that we should expect relatively low participation levels with Blogs (maybe 1%). However, learning professionals are way below 1% levels.

So, what reasons do people give?

1. Cost or No Blog Tools Available
   
   Whoops, it’s free from a lot of places. Try http://www.blogger.com/.
   


2. Fear – Take a look at the post Fear of Blogging:
   
   

   I had to fight through ALL of these emotions when I started blogging. - Will I be accepted or rejected?- How much criticism will I get?- Will others discover
   that I am a phony and realize that I have absolutely no clue of what I am talking about?

   Note: Wendy got over her fear and does a great job raising interesting questions on her blog.
   


3. Lack of Time
   
   How much time should you spend learning on your own each month about eLearning? Do you think you would be better served rearranging the time you spend to actually codify your learning?
   


4. My Corporation Won’t Let Me
   
   Most corporations have no such restrictions. Of course, you shouldn’t come close to the line of divulging anything sensitive and should avoid calling your boss a jerk, but having a discussion around a topic like – "should we be blogging" – is a great thing to do.

My honest belief is that even if you don't post regularly on your blog, but do post around interesting challenges you are facing, you will find personal value in blogging. If you start, let bloggers know. Post a response to the LCB Big Question. Post a challenge you are facing. If you don't find value, then let me know - because I will be really surprised.

Come on in - the water's fine.