Results from Workplace Digital Divide and E-learning Survey!

Thanks to all who participated in this survey!
Here are the results:

30 people completed the survey (from 2 not-for-profits and 2 for-profit organizations, randomly selected

1. 96.7%  respondents identified as full-time employee, 3.3% Part-time/Casual workers
2. 40% of respondents self-identified as 20-35 years old, 33.3% as between 35-45, 23.3% as 45-60% and 3.3% as over 60.
3. 96.7% said the access a computer for workplace learning.
4. 83.3% said they are 'very comfortable' with using the internet for email and web searches, 10% said they are 'comfortable', while 3.3% said they are 'somewhat uncomfortable, willing to learn' and 3.3% said they are 'very uncomfortable, unwilling to learn.'
5. 40% said they are 'very comfortable' using Web 2.0 or social media tools, 33.3% said they are 'comfortable,' 20% are 'somewhat uncomfortable, willing to learn' and 6.7% said they are 'very uncomfortable, unwilling to learn.'
6. 43.3% said they had a 'very positive' experience with e-learning at work, 36.7% said 'somewhat positive,' 13.3% said 'somewhate negative,' and 6,7% said the question was not applicable.
7. 71% said they have taken online courses, 64.5% Webinars, 38.7% Discussion forums 61.3% Blended learning, 16.1% said other.
8. 70% said peers in their age group at work would be comfortable with workplace learning technologies/e-learning, 10% said people in their work age group are uncomfortable and 2% said 'maybe' or unsure if people are willing to learn.

Workplace Digital Divide and e-Learning -- Take the survey

As part of my paper for my University of Toronto Masters in Adult Education, Community Development and Workplace Learning, I've been polling a variety of working professionals to understand their knowledge and participation in workplace e-learning.  I'm also looking at the gaps or the digital divide between age groups.

Please click the link below to participate:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5RCV6BW

Thanks so much--looking forward to your feedback!

Older Adult Learners in an E-learning Workforce

So, in my quest to find out how many other organizations are going through the culture shift of creating a learning organization, focused on using e-learning and specifically with older adults , I began my search with thinking about what social media tools might be helpful.
First, I came across some interesting stats from Google Insights:




"E-learning" + Workplace + "older adults" are most popular in BC and Ontario, however the numbers are not too impressive.


I went on to see what others have booked marked using Delicious.com and found that I was one of the few people bookmarking information related to this search term.


Turning my search to micro-blogging, here's what I found using www.search.twitter.com ....nothing sadly...so i refined my search to just adult+e-learning and found that there were 2 posts, one from me and one from http://twitter.com/EFQUEL 


Finally, my social media search took me to www.technorati.com which brought me not much luck on the topic search either.. 


So, partly in my quest to find information, I took a social media world wind tour of venues where i could turn to for information. What a sea to swim through in terms of options for searching! I soon will return to good old Google.ca which I'm sure will yield more than a few results...quality to be determined.


My question is out of this experience--is how in the world do people keep up to date with tweeting, blogging, bookmarking, RSS-following, etc. How much time in the day should we carve out of our already busy schedules to stay on top of the latest info? Me: well I spent about an hour and a half on this experience already today.


My informal learning continues...

Clash of the Info-Sharing Titans: To go online or off

With all the buzz around the use of the social media now at conferences of various topics, sizes, and locations, what is it about the use of these tools that are appealing to conference organizers and how do they determine if this is the right fit for the conference audience, vendors, speakers, participants, etc.?  I ask this because of our recent discussions in class about how our professor Sherida Ryan will be "twittering" at an upcoming conference.  I too attended a conference recently in Toronto at the start of November where conference tweets where a large part of the supposed knowledge sharing.  The way it worked there was that designated "tweeters" had access to computers where they could tweet about happenings at the conference, whether they were attending a particular session, sitting in on a key note speaker or just networking with other conference-goers in general.

The tweets were displayed in a live broadcast using a projector and a laptop on large screens in the main dining hall. While I see the value in knowledge-sharing, what can one really get from a one to two sentence blip about a conference specific?  Well apparently quite a bit!  Little did I know that staff who organized the conference were following the tweets, local news media and even people who were unable to attend were virtually kept abreast of the insightful, well-organized sessions happening.  

Despite this knowledge transfer happening, what I found at as minority gen-X participant at this particular conference in a sea of baby-boomers and pre-baby boomers, was that I understood the concept, was familiar with using Twitter and at times found it a bit distracting to have the live tweet feed happening in the same room at a key note speaker, the other part of the audience were seemingly just uninterested all together.  The majority of the audience aged 50-70 there had never used Twitter or knew of its purpose.  As I spoke with various people at different tables I sat at, I found myself explaining what the scrolling blubs were and where they were coming from on the project screens to many. 

Looks like Twittering is not too popular with certain age groups yet

So I wondered after the whole experience--who really benefits from this online info-sharing? Was it just the in thing to do at the conference...were the conference organizers trying to pull in a new age group into the Web 2.0 scene?  Was it because of media benefits?  Perhaps all of the above, however, I still am scratching my head at what the actual in-house participants got from this social media introduction.  I'm looking forward to some insights after Sherida's Twittering experience at her conference...perhaps that will she some more light on this phenomenon...

In the meantime, feel free to follow me @ http://twitter.com/onaomi 

While some are fans of conference twittering, others are suggesting Google Wave may be the better option for knowledge-sharing to prevent less disconnect: Google Wave vs Twitter.

I think it's great to have options...but this still doesn't help with the digital divide in attendance.

Now having said my opinion...I Googled what others had to say about this:

http://rodeworks.com/learn/twittering-at-conferences-and-workshops/  (similar to my take)

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Paper-Highlights-ProsCons/7178 (twittering @ academic conferences)

http://commetrics.com/articles/forrester-conference-and-twitter-does-live-tweeting-help-engage-conference-delegates/  (perhaps it can be engaging)

The Changing Ideology of 'Community'

I sit somewhat perplexed as I write to my blog about the definition of community, what it has been, what it is and what it will be.  In discussions with class mates at OISE, I discovered that the term 'Community' is a place of murky waters when trying to decifer a definition, I found that 'Community' means different things to different people, depending on social context.  Just as in the readings, "The Internet & Social Life" by Bargh and McKenna ('04) discusses online community evolution in workplace, as a social support and looking at how virtual groups can actually be beneficial parts of society.  Many people see 'community' with negatives ideals, for example in the recent US elections, the Republican party's criticism of community organizing. Take a look at this YouTube video on community organizers.  Others view community with historical significance and deep roots.  This notion became a hot topic among several of us in class who struggled to reconcile the new with the old definitions.  One even suggested created a whole new name for online community that represented the times.  Eg. like the term "blog" for writing an open journal and sharing with it interactively with others online.  At first, I found it hard to agree...but the more we discussed, the more I realized that yes, perhaps an online community or virtual group should have its own special definition.  Might I propose "commonline" as a potential name.  A common place online.  Other suggestions are more than welcome.  Let's see what we can come up with and if it will catch on.

Another topic of interest for me was the discussion of "communities of practice" -- a term I'm pretty familiar with through my work (at Saint Elizabeth Health Care).  We've been using this term to bring together groups of professionals, staff with common skills to share in a particular knowledge area.  We've mostly been using Discussion Forums as the venue for this online and it has worked out quite well when facilitated.  Another way of pulling communities of practice (CoP) together is over Wikis.  I found a very interesting example of this again on YouTube:  Communities of Practice Using Wiki by Dr. Brand Niemann.  After understanding how Wikis can be used for collaboration by a group online, I'm inclined to recommend we try this out at work...stay tuned on how well this is received.  

Literacies & the Digital Divide -- what's real

Having just wrapped up another great class at OISE (Digital Literacy/Digital Divide) -- I came away with some validated thoughts and very interesting insights.
We really took a good look and the digital divide--the realities of the digital divide and discussed how to reduce it.  It's almost like talking about the gap between the rich and the poor widening--but in this case, financial status may be a part of the divide but not necessarily so.  The reality of the digital divide has truly come through my work experience.  Having worked in a not-for-profit home and community care setting--the introduction of new technology whether it be physical hardware, applications or processes can be a very very daunting situation for many.  It took me some time to understand this, having grown up (well since university) with the internet (and email) being a staple in my life.  Even things like using a bank machine, paying at the gas pump, renewing my licence plate sticker at a kiosk at the mall are all seeming easy tasks that have to do with technology.  A few years back I attempted to teach my grandmother how to use the bank machine.  I expressed the benefits, no time limits, avoiding line-ups, sometimes avoiding fees...it took about 4 sessions together at the machine to really grasp that it was safe and that her money would still be there whenever she needed.  All her questions and objections were hardly anything i thought of myself when i jumped on the band wagon--but this was one indication of a digital divide -- how technology can be a new and scary thing for some who never knew technology to play such a personal role in things.

Getting back to work...i was saying i really began to realize the divide when first trying to communicate initiatives with all staff across the organization -- well there were a couple challenges, not all staff had email, not all staff knew what email is or how to sign-up, let alone access to read company communications.  There were also the challenges of using e-learning to educate staff on new company processes, applications or clinical knowledge when some staff were not able to navigate with a mouse or type on a keyboard.  What was to be done??  Well an environmental scan/assessment had to be done to really grasp what the reality was for those staff who i now see as part of that 'divide'.  Then a strategy to improve computer literacy across the organization.  A system of hands on skills development using a train-the-trainer model at each site.  Staff were able to learn the basics and then how to access some core business applications.
It's hard to say it is well received as this strategy is still in progress and associated with our 'going green' org-wide campaign (reduce paper and transmportation and training costs)--but I'm really looking forward to some end evaluation of the value perceived before and received after.

On another note, Jesse Hirsh was our guest speaker!  Having listened to him on my morning rides into the office on CBC moring (99.1 Toronto FM) with Andy Barry--i was super excited to put a face to the voice and learn about several new tech concepts like:  'augmented reality' and 'Bright-net'.  I'm inclined now to do more research on this digital divide whether it be because of age, ethnicity, language or financial background--that these are in fact barriers to internet entry (use).  Is this gap getting smaller and for what populations?
Oh so much more to say on this.  Stay tuned for now.

Setting this blog up for class: This & That

So as part of a course I'm taking at the the University of Toronto (OISE), called Adult Education and the Internet, a blog is required as part of my mark--well lucky for me, I actually enjoy blogging, but as my husband would say--who really cares what you have to say and why would they follow you--that argument is shared by my mother.  I, on the other hand, find it handy to share thoughts and opinions or share news that others may be wondering about all in one go-to-place.  I say this based on my experience with my blog that I did over my wedding planning period until just after the wedding to keep people up-to-date and (selfishly) for me to have a log of what we went through.  Thus, it's not necessarily a matter of self-importance but for me rather a way of communication and learning (when others contribute as well).

Blogs for me have been short-lived for specific periods of time or events, but perhaps this blog will follow me past the class and continue with me over my Masters journey...I guess time will tell.

For now though, let's just jump in to blogging and to start off....blogging on readings relating so assigned readings about The Internet and Adult Education.