#23 - So what does it all mean, Alfie? (or, Scott 1.25, maybe)

Before I launch into what is likely to be a lengthy missive about my thoughts on the CML Learn & Play experience, I'd like to drive home what my opinions are being measured against to formulate the information that follows. The stated goal of L&P was:

"[To] encourage staff to experiment and learn about the new and emerging
technologies that are reshaping the context of information on the Internet
today."

...with the following three objectives listed as a strategy to achieve the goal:

-encourage exploration of Web 2.0 and new technologies by CML staff;
-provide staff with new tools (that are freely available on the Internet) to better support CML’s mission: to promote reading and guide learning in the pursuit of information, knowledge, and wisdom, and;
- reward staff for taking the initiative to complete 23 self-discovery exercises.

I will also try to wrap up this post having answered the questions asked of the final entry task:

- What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
- How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
- Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
- What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
- If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

In so much as the goal was to expose staff to "new and emerging technologies", I guess that's something CML can chalk up as a "success". Staff was exposed to stuff online.

But I must be honest: I found the whole experiment largely inconsequential to the business of work. Was this fun at times? Of course, but mostly a vast use of time and energy spent with little to show for it in terms of practical application, and almost no day-to-day benefit to customers.

What sites I discovered that were new to me that I enjoyed had almost no library-related practicality. I love StumbleUpon and YouTube, but how would I apply that to what I do every day at CML? I wouldn't. At best I might help a patron navigate such sites, but in general patrons are pretty set in what they're using computers for. I found this to be true of almost every application I came into contact with, with one exception (online PC - VC - and online storage). What I know and use online on a regular basis is pretty vast, but has no CML application. I find it hard to imagine CML would spend the amount of time and work that it did so that I could Twitter every day...particularly with the amount of time most staff aren't in front of a computer.

As far as training goes, this exercise - while engaging and generating some measure of co-worker interaction (mostly centered on how to navigate exercises they didn't know and were likely to never use again) - would hardly qualify as little more than a cursory glance at what any of these applications has to offer. I've taken Excel training through CML, but I'd be lying if I said I used it with enough regularity post-training to be even mildly versed in how it works, and I certainly wouldn't suggest that what I did learn stuck. It's not training if you do it once and you never have to use it. Anyone who went through these 23 items and then turned around and said, "I have become so much better trained in how these things work" is bucking for a Section 8. We have largely been introduced to these things, but we have not been trained in them. I received more consistent and better training for Horizon - for months and with handouts and gurus and an assortment of support material and heralding, I might add - and we never even acquired it. I think I have more Horizon chops than I do Twitter chops.

Halfway through the program staff was given more time to delve into items, but that isn't what staff were largely complaining about when it came to the issue of time. They didn't want more time to delve; they wanted more time to set aside all of the things they do every day to even get to a computer and pursue this at all. To paint that dynamic as time well spent would be disingenuous at best. And most part-timers? Forget about it.

That there was so many staff members that opted not to participate at all is equally telling, but this is par for the course in large organizations given choices. With an organization this size you will always have a large contingent of people who will not participate in anything except the bare minimum of work as long as exercises and training remain optional. That is true for libraries and retail stores and garbage collectors and hospitals and universities...any industry you want to pick. If it's optional, it's going to be treated like an option...and how will staff at large benefit from that and the lessons within it? The self-access mode of training only works if people are invested in the outcome. Prizes is not an outcome.

If this or something like it were offered again I would be hesitant to participate. Half of this I know (or know enough about to know I wouldn't want to use it) and it largely left me with just enough information to be puzzled sitting next to someone else trying to figure it out. There is no substitute for bonafide training, and CML should largely shirk methods that suggest that optional time-consuming checklists are adequate replacements.

It's hard to argue with "success", but I gave it my best shot. Mind you, not because I'm a contrarian, but because I think there are useful things here that, given their proper due, might benefit staff and customers in more than an oblique way. personally, it didn't make me Scott 2.0 or anything. More like Scott 1.2 and a half maybe.