Monday, March 3

Scope of Learning Responsibility

Karl Kapp helped me with the March 2008 Big Question which is:


What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?


This question comes from several recent experiences. One was a Chief Learning Officer panel discussion where it seemed that supporting informal learning or communities of practice was not something they were considering. There was also discussion on my blog around the fact that in corporations there is a limit to what we can do as a training organization (see Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis and Long Tail Learning - Size and Shape). All of this makes me wonder:

  • Do educational institutions and corporate learning & development departments have responsibility for supporting Long Tail Learning? Do they have responsibility for learning beyond what can be delivered through instruction? If so, what is their responsibility? Where is the edge of responsibility?
  • Similarly, does the instructor have a responsibility to help students make sense of or deal with content he or she did not teach the students? In other words, if a student finds information on the Internet or some other place, how much time and attention should the instructor allow for the discussion of such content? Should it be discussed at all if it is non-conventional or generally thought of as not credible or contradicts the instructor? Who determines credible research? Is all non-referred research questionable?
Karl and I feel this is an important question for all of us to think about and as a community to begin to address.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - Safety Training Design

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - Safety Training Design : eLearning Technology

Posts So Far:
The learning professional can never be 'responsible' for anyone's learning, but they help to create an environment in which learning takes place in every context.

29 comments:

Tony Karrer said...

Stephen Downes was nice enough to link to this post. His comments may be important to the discussion, but I honestly am not sure I understand them fully.

In his post, he said:

Scope of Learning Responsibility The March 'Big Question' is, "What is the scope of our responsibility as learning professionals?" One day I need to write at greater length on the subject of 'responsibilities'. Because many people suppose that they can impose 'responsibilities' on other people by virtue of their citizenship or their profession or whatever. I don't agree with this. These things that are imposed ought more properly to be called 'duties' - and the logic of duties is narrow and closely defined. One might read Kant or Ross on duties, for example. Otherwise, the only 'responsibilities' we can be held to account for are those that we freely enter into. I don't accept the dialogue of 'responsibility' - it is a substitution of obedience for freedom, without the ground of reflection or reason. Tony Karrer, The Learning Circuits Blog, March 3, 2008.

----

I responded with:

I'm not sure I get your comments here. I think I understand your demarcation between responsibility (freely enter into) and duty (put upon us). In this case, learning responsibility is what we choose to engage with? Do we have responsibility (do we engage) with things that fall outside the narrow stuff we can handle in our current publisher model? Or should we enter into how we can handle stuff outside of that scope?

I'm not sure that there is a duty here? Maybe there should be? But that's almost another level of question.

Anonymous said...

My rather scrambled 2p worth can be found here:

Karyn Romeis (Karyn's erratic learning journey) - The Big Question for March: Scope of Learning Responsibility

Clive Shepherd said...

Clive Shepherd http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/2008/03/big-question-what-is-scope-of-our.html

Clark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clark said...

I've a response at my Learnlets - Scope of Responsibility.

Bill said...

Bill Brantley - Design of Knowledge: How Responsible Are We For Learning - http://blog.designofknowledge.com/?p=143

Anonymous said...

Jacob McNulty - Scope it Out

Anonymous said...

Learning Revolution: Responsible learning

Taruna Goel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Taruna Goel said...

Taruna Goel : My views and response here -

The Role and Responsibilities of Learning Professionals

Inge (Ignatia) de Waard said...

Ignatia - Scope of Learning Responsibility: not my concern!

great Big Question, it started me thinking. Thanks.

Bill said...

Bill Brantley - More Thoughts on the Long Tail of Learning

Unknown said...

Stephen Lahanas - The Learning Enterprise is Everyone's Responsbility

Karl Kapp said...

Karl Kapp
Kapp Notes: Who's Responsible for This?

Anonymous said...

Mick Leyden -
Professional Responsibility???

Maria Hlas said...

Maria Hlas - Who's Job is it Anyway?

Shaun said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shaun said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

some quick thoughts

Tony Karrer said...

Shaun - I can't seem to see your blog - something about requiring permission. We'll only put in blogs that are open to public consumption.

Shaun said...

Let's try this again...

Shaun Bala - irresponsible

Anonymous said...

Catherine Lombardozzi - The Learning Leader's Responsibility at http://learningjournal.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/learning-environment-design-the-learning-leaders-responsibility/

Anonymous said...

Tony and Karl, thanks for this question. I got into a rant on it over on my blog you can read it here: http://wadatripp.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/thoughts-ok-rant-on-this-months-big-question/

I hear both Stephen and Clive on the notion of responsibility. But I did not get hung up in semantics. My own position is we have become too insular and if we focused on learners as clients as opposed to captives, we would help ourselves and our profession out a lot.

Anonymous said...

Here's a response from Priya Thiagarajan, one of our employees.
Chicken Soup for the Mind.

Geetha Krishnan said...

My half-a-2-cent worth here.

Scope . . . Responsibility . . . Learning Professionals

PriyatRaj said...

My response to the question is here:

Priya Thiagarajan - http://blog.tatainteractive.com/2008/03/chicken-soup-fo.html#more

Michael Hanley said...

Michael Hanley. Learning Professionals: the Economists of Knowledge http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2008/03/lcbbq-long-tail-8020-rule-and-role-of.html

Anonymous said...

Limits of Responsibility : Caddickisms

Well, it rambles, but I'm too lazy to edit it... :)

Anonymous said...

Your post have put me into thinking mode.