Let Go Of The Content... It's All About The Connections...

I've been an educator, mostly an adult educator, for over 32 years now. I hold both bachelor and masters degrees in education, with my masters specializing in adult education and training. In all of my formal training as an educators content was king - I learned a lot of content, I had to have subject matter expertise and my "job" was to ensure that my students got all of the content that they deeply deserved.

Well guess what everyone - we are not in Kansas anymore - given our new realities of education and the learning tools available to our "learners" (yes, they are no longer students), as educators we are faced with a new paradigm - content is dead - it's all about the connections made and the learning communities that count now. In fact, I have come to discover that content is actually mostly irrelevant in my role as an educator, and what my focus has become is developing learners so they can learn for themselves and find their own content through the development of communities and connections. So what does this all mean?

We are facilitating (not teaching) a new generation (actually generations, as most adult learning environments these days are multi-generational) of learners for a new generation of jobs and careers, many of which have not even been created yet. Technology has become pervasive in most learning environments, and the one technology that has had the greatest influence is the computer and its greatest learning tool, the Internet.

Learners have the Internet as their primary tool for information gathering and research - in fact the so-called Millennials or digital natives (Prensky) have even been said to be 'wired" differently as to their approach to information finding and gathering and their ability to multitask information gathering. They are exposed to an almost unlimited amount of content on any subject. What is lacking are the following skills and knowledge:

• Gathering information
• Processing knowldege
  
• Context and relevancy of information
• Sharing and using information

None of these skills are content-centric or specific to a particular subject area, but rather they should be considered as essential skills regardless of the chosen profession or academic track of the learner. It is our job as facilitators to ensure that our learners acquire these skills in order to succeed in the information age.

As facilitators of adult learning we must step away from our traditional role of content providers and move into one of facilitating connections - connections with information, connections with learners for the development of team and interpersonal skills, the connections with multiple (and massive) sources of information, the connections between raw data and the skills needed to make it useful information, and the connections that learners will need to be successful in their chosen professions, whatever those connections may be.

The most important connections that we can foster are the connections of community - learning is now a team sport - there is just too much information out there for one learner to make sense of - we need to foster and develop the creation of learning communities and environments that will assist in the success of our learners. This will become even more important as more and more learners choose to do their learning in environments outside of our traditional "brick" classrooms.

So, let go of the content and get connected. It's our future... Hmmm...

OK Sir - Just Step Away From The Content...

As adult educators, course content is always on our minds (well on my mind at least) - do we have enough content to support learning, is there enough course content to fill the classes, will learners get the content they need to be successful...it goes on and on.

My very wise friend Carolyn (Randommind), who is an instructional designer by day, and I have had the greatest conversations about the issue of content. Thanks to these conversations I have seen the light - LET GO OF THE CONTENT!

Let your learners discover and share course content - don't give it all to them. Yes, you can provide those bits and pieces that are the gems or classics, but for the most part let learners discover and create the course content - they will be more engaged in the learning process, and much more collaborative. I know that this is true because I have seen it in action and it was one of those amazing AHA!! moments where all became clear.

Now, it's not as simple as it sounds. In order for you to give up control of the content, you have to have well-defined, measurable learning outcomes that have been well-crafted in advance and are clearly understood by everyone - learners, faculty, and administration. You also have to support learning with authentic, clear, meaningful deliverables complete with rubrics so that learners and others know what needs to be learned. From this starting point they will discover the content. You may also find that as a facilitator you will spend some time providing (and reminding) learners with context for the content they discover and want to use.

It is a great thing to see learners develop the skills and experience to become discriminating discoverers and consumers of content, two "literacy" skills that will essential for all 21st century knowledge workers. It is a very cool process when it works, but it is very much front-end loaded (as most educational innovation seems to be).

Letting go of content takes a certain leap of faith on the behalf of everyone - faculty has to be confident that learners will engage in the discovery of content (I do that through the use of blogs, wikis, and RSS aggregators for the most part and to a much lesser extent textbooks), and learners have to be confident that they will be "guided" by their faculty to where they might start looking for content and for the validation of the content they find (although I have found that you can fade a bit once learners become comfortable with this process).

So go on - liberate your self and your learners - step away from the content...

(Photo - "Heroes Content Map" by Dan Taylor)