Profile of a learning architect: Nick Shackleton-Jones

NickShackletonJones240x320

Throughout my new book The New Learning Architect I take time out to look at real-life examples of great learning architects in action. Some of these have very well-defined responsibilities for specific populations or projects, others a broader remit across whole corporations.

This extract shines the spotlight on a real innovator who has successfully broken free from the confines of the traditional training course and, in doing so, challenged out-dated models of learning and development.

In his profile, we will be examining two very different populations for which Nick has architected learning solutions – those responsible for production safety and all those in the BBC with a desire to contribute creatively.

Ensuring production safety

Something like 9000 employees in the BBC have a responsibility for some aspect of safety relating to the BBC’s productions. As well as permanent employees, this population includes freelance, contract and temporary staff. Every one of these is obliged to complete safety training appropriate for their role.

Initially the training effort was targeted at meeting specific knowledge objectives, but Nick soon realised that what was really needed was a change in behaviour, and that this was largely driven by underlying attitudes to safety. Instead of adopting what Nick describes as a ‘teacherly’ approach to the training, he worked with the safety team to shift the emphasis to a less patronising, more ‘grown-up’ strategy in which employees are encouraged to take responsibility for their own decisions. The underlying rationale is that employees will develop, and make use of available resources, where they feel the need to do so. This is in contrast to the prevailing approach which sees employees much like blank slates.

The starting point was a colossal 13-hour self-study course which had been in place for at least a decade, originally on laserdisc and subsequently online. Nick described the course as an institution.
Assisted by senior colleagues in Safety, Nick’s team set out to adopt a more collegiate, peer-to-peer tone, building a relationship with employees through an authoritative presenter with whom they were familiar in Matt Alright. Nick realised he had to think around the ‘emotional geography’ of the course, finding ways to hit home the points through stories and scenarios and trying to ensure that the connection with the learner was not lost at any point.

The end result was three core modules, supplemented by role-specific content. Nick soon realised that employees didn’t want to listen to trainers talking to them (or a proxy reading a script); they wanted to hear from their peers –  an experience that was authentic. In order to achieve this, Nick’s team filmed people in different parts of the organisation, asking them what they did and how they handled safety issues in real situations, then inserting this content into an interactive panorama of the production environment. The result was a much more immersive, exploratory experience in which employees could discover how productions really work, and get a sense of what their role models genuinely thought about safety.

What the BBC team accomplished was to take an informal, peer-learning approach and fold it into a formal l&d intervention.  Their current model is shifting away from courses and towards resources – pieces of content that are a few minutes long, such as a story, an interactive scenario, a short video demonstration, all backed up with a discussion forum. You look, you answer some questions, you comment on what you have seen and you see other people’s comments. Each area of the BBC decides which of these resources it needs for their particular safety curriculum. Underneath this is still compliance training – a course that simply has to be done whether you like it or not – but delivered flexibly and authentically.

The BBC’s architecture for safety training includes a sophisticated on-demand element. The main responsibility for delivering just-in-time support and identifying the correct training interventions lies with the local safety reps, and much of this is provided person to person. To assist in this process, the BBC has constructed an expert ‘safety adviser’ tool. Via a series of branching questions about what you actually do within your job, the tool suggests the most appropriate modules. A number of areas within the BBC have found this task-based approach much more flexible than one that starts with role-based competencies, because tasks regularly shift from role-to-role, rendering the competency frameworks or learning journeys out of date. By aligning the modules to tasks, this problem is avoided.

Encouraging creativity

Although there are many jobs in the BBC with specific creative responsibilities, there is a much wider population, right across the organisation, which has creative aspirations. The solution we will be reviewing here is aimed at anyone who thinks they have something creative to offer.

In developing the BBC’s internal social media platform, MOO, Nick’s team talked to commissioners and programme makers. Their provisional aim was something along the lines of a ‘dating service’, putting people who wanted ideas in front of those who had them, bypassing the conventional hierarchical process that had developed during the corporation’s long history. The team recognised the importance of senior sponsorship, which they achieved with Danny Cohen, then Head of Commissioning for BBC3, now BBC1. The result was the BBC’s first Creative Ideas competition – an opportunity for anyone employed by the BBC to upload a video pitch or example of their programme proposal. The value was twofold: a chance for the BBC to discover new talent and creative ideas; and an opportunity for BBC staff to demonstrate their creative potential. The latter is significant, since many BBC staff join with tremendous creative skills and energy. Danny agreed to judge the entries (including pitches from the five top entrants) and to make the best idea into a programme. Entrants were asked to submit their ideas in the form of a video, which more than 100 employees did. The winning entry, called Wuhow, was indeed broadcast on BBC 3.

As a platform MOO has matured, and in the process, Nick gained many insights into the use of social media in the workplace. Employees didn’t necessarily want to use the facility in the way that was originally expected; they wanted a service that could be orientated around the team in which they worked, that could be used in a way that made sense to them. In retrospect, Nick realises that it was a mistake to assume that people would engage with an internal network in the same way some would outside the firewall – blogging, cross-linking to each other’s resources and so on. Rather than asking employees to replicate the effort they put into their out-of-work network, the system now hooks into external channels like Facebook and Twitter directly.

The exchange of best practice does indeed take place on MOO, but this activity often needs some degree of support from the learning & development team, reflecting a shift of emphasis from courses to learning resources.

Experiential learning at the BBC

Although outside Nick’s remit, he is well aware of the importance of job experience to the overall learning architecture. He described two schemes operated by the BBC Academy: Stepping Stones which encourages employees to take longer term assignments, and, Hot Shoes which offers shorter placements. The latter operates on a two-way basis: managers can advertise for employees looking for assignments in their departments, and employees can market themselves as looking for a placement. In this respect, this scheme has much more of a bottom-up feel than typical programmes designed to encourage greater job experience.

What makes for a rounded learning experience

For the most part, Nick was not required to formally evaluate his learning interventions beyond completion, but decided to conduct his own research to find out from employees what had most influenced their career and their behaviour and what resources they used on a day-to-day basis. Whilst most research grapples with the possible outcomes of specific learning interventions, Nick wanted to understand those elements of the learning process most likely to be significant from the perspective of designing learning interventions. The results from this survey helped him to develop the Learning Design Toolkit, which outlines key components in a truly rounded learning experience.

Nick was able to draw a number of key conclusions from his research:

  • L&D departments and professionals often feel they are responsible for learning, but in reality it is learners who are the locus of control for learning activity. The emphasis therefore needs to shift from meeting learning objectives to one of building confidence and inspiring employees to learn, utilising the resources and opportunities to hand.
  • Resources play a far greater role in the overall learning landscape than do courses.
  • The natural process of learning is described in terms such as: inspiration and connection, challenge and confidence. Learning is hardly ever a result of a formal learning experience.
  • An employee’s line manager is often a major influence on an employee’s career, influencing their development and their attitude towards development. A central theme was the employee’s desire for a mentor-figure.
  • Often what employees really want from a learning experience is not knowledge, but to build their confidence in an environment where it’s safe to fail.
  • You build a learning culture by building an appetite to learn. This is predominantly a bottom-up, peer-to-peer, process.
  • Top-down learning interventions occupy a relatively small corner of the learning landscape, typically mandatory or compliance-related learning. This is still a vital role, however.
  • Technology is helping to transform our view of learning, as it both supports and highlights the role of informal learning.

Nick Shackleton-Jones started his career as a psychology lecturer, teaching a mix of mature and immature students and publishing psychology study guides. An interest in technology and its application to learning brought Nick into the corporate world, where he has led the development of online learning strategy, content and delivery, most recently in his role as manager of online & informal learning at the BBC. In December 2010 he joined BP as Group Head of elearning. His teams have won several awards in areas including online content development, staff development strategy, innovation, and more recently for their pioneering work in the areas of rapid development and social networks for learning. Nick is a board member of the Institute for IT Training and a regular conference speaker. Nick also founded the 5000-strong ‘e-learning professionals’ Facebook group, blogs at aconventional.com and tweets as shackletonjones.

Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

Link to original post

Leave a Reply