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By Erica, September 30, 2008 11:35 am

I liked the fact that we went over our wants for our consulting projects. It was nice to hear what others consider important and the one that really stood out for me was the want to be taken seriously. I think that will be an easy objective for my project with Mike because having Mike on the project will raise the importance of the project (Mike, no pressure). What I mean by that is if I had worked on this project alone, I have a feeling that I would have a hard time managing the clients so they didn’t assume that all my time was now their time and their problem the only objective I have at work. I think there’d also be a tendency to think the scheduling project wasn’t important to me because it was just something I had to do for school. In fact, the project is important for me for two reasons. The first, of course, is because it’s a project for class but secondly, and just as importantly, it is because I hope for good results. To borrow a phrase from Martha Stewart, it will be a good thing if we can help my place of employment. We need these sorts of morale boosters.

I think if we follow Schein and Block’s advice, especially the steps laid out in Block’s book, our contracting meeting will go well. I know the clients are already looking forward to having other eyes on the project and I hope we’re able to consult flawlessly. Being reminded of the criteria for consulting flawlessly last night was also good. I think the word flawlessly really can be a stumbling block until you remember the rules are simple:
Be authentic.
Follow the steps.

I’m ready to do both.

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By Erica, September 26, 2008 10:18 am

I’m still thinking about the Cook and Yanow article and even with our conversation in class last night; I’m having some difficulties wrapping my head around the idea of culture holding the knowledge. It’s been a long time since I was on a sports team and the teams I belonged to were like the Bad News Bears without the grumpy coach who turned things around. The idea of a sports team or an orchestra having group knowledge makes sense to me. It’s the idea of translating it to my work experience that I’m having a hard time doing.

When I came to work at my current organization, there wasn’t much in the way of orientation aside from the tour of the buildings, introduction of people, discussion of benefits and here’s a stack of courses to review so you understand what we do. I had written courses before but not within a unit that solely focused on course development. I had been a one woman band for so long that it was challenging for me to figure out how to develop courses in a pre-determined style. We use a standard course template, but that only gives form to content.

Perhaps the ideal of producing excellent courses is the group knowledge and that ideal manages to manifest itself in the work we do because we’re all committed to that goal. I think it is hard to tell who wrote a course unless you read the acknowledgment page.

Thinking about the experience of becoming part of the group and learning the group knowledge reminds me of the comments by the Powell workers, “it feels right”. Our courses all feel the same even though our topics are different, our course developers are different and our trainers are different. There’s a certain feel to our courses and the way in which they are delivered.

Mmmn, I still need to mull this over.

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By Erica, September 23, 2008 8:45 am

As I was driving home last night after class, I was thinking about the idea of working on a consulting project within my organization. I realize I’ve not painted the organization in a particularly positive light over the past year and a half. But, I remember what the organization was once like and I’d like to help it get back on track.

I think, to borrow a phrase from my hero Marvin Weisbord, it’s existentially the right and valuable thing to do. I owe it to the organization to work on improvement even if I’m not around when the ship is finally righted. I owe it to all the people who built the organization and to all the people that had to leave during our downsizing. I owe it to the clients we serve by providing them with quality training. I owe it to me.

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By Erica, September 20, 2008 4:21 pm

This is not an academic reaction to reading Schein’s Process Consultation Revised: Building the Helping Relationship but I feel as joyful reading the chapters in this book as I do when I listen to the song below:

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By Erica, September 19, 2008 9:08 am

I have to admit I’m disappointed we’re putting the wiki to the side in this class. I realize many people were feeling overwhelmed by the need to update the wiki prior to class. Since we had such a positive experience with the wiki over the summer, I feel like we’re going to miss something by not doing it. Perhaps blog entries will become the connection for us rather than the wiki. I hope so because it’s easy to feel disconnected from each other since we’re only in class once a week. I thought the blog and wiki really connected us so even though we weren’t physically together our minds were–OK, maybe I need to put down the morning cup of tea and step away from the keyboard–I’ve just gone out into lala land.

Seriously, by using technology we were connecting. A good example of that was our work on the cmap last night. I felt like most of us were engaged in the process even if we weren’t all thinking out loud. The cmap is a tangible thing we can look at by semester’s end and remember how we built it together. If you look at our class as an organization, and some of us have pointed out the similarities, we were generating organizational memory last night. And, we were demonstrating two of the essential elements of the learning organization as outlined on page 145 of the Dixon text:

1. Some level of local autonomy that is grounded in collective interpretation.
2. Local units having a financial stake in the organization’s success. 
3. Keeping the size of the local unit small enough that organizational members can be in a relationship to each other.

Clearly we don’t have a financial stake in our success, but we have the autonomy to collaborate and collectively make meaning as demonstrated by our work on the cmap. Additionally our class is small enough that we can be in a relationship to each other. I hope our disregard for one of the technologies that was designed to foster that relationship, doesn’t lessen our connection.

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By Erica, September 18, 2008 2:51 pm

I was looking for something else on YouTube today and came across the GoogleTechTalks series.

The video is quite long but if you skip to around 27 minutes, the conversation turns to inquiry and empowering questions. I thought this part of the presentation tied in to our Monday night conversation in Consulting Skills.

If the video doesn’t appear below, select the link in the first paragraph.

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By Erica, September 16, 2008 11:24 am

I’ve been trying to write this entry all morning—I like to get my thoughts down about the previous night’s class before the day gets away from me. The day has gotten away from me already.

It’s hard to reflect on what I’ve learned in class the night before when it seems like nothing is working right this morning from technology failures to overcrowding in the office space. Today we have over a hundred people on our floor because of all the meetings and training sessions scheduled—the worst news we only have four stalls in the women’s room on our floor. There’s only one other bathroom in this building and it’s the same size. Now, if I had been a consultant during the time our organization decided to move to this building, I would have focused on that issue even more than I would have about parking lots, kitchen spaces, large rooms, etc.

Back to business.

I think our exercise last night on acting out the helper and client roles worked pretty well. This is the sort of role play I can get behind. As the helper I found myself searching for the right words and trying to maintain focus on my client. I liked Andrea’s idea to take notes, pause, and then ask questions. I think that process worked better for formulating questions than my extemporaneous method. I have to remember the client/helper relationship takes more care and that I need to be truly present during the information gathering portion of the process instead of thinking about what’s next.

During the technology failure episode this morning, I had to call someone at our client site to ask for help with the problem. I paid attention to clues, which I know is hard to do over the phone, but it really seemed like the person I talked to could have cared less that he was being asked for help. He got my name wrong and didn’t pay attention to other details as we were talking. As the “expert” he wasn’t really engaging with me to find a solution to the problem. It made me think back to the imbalance concept we talked about last night and I definitely felt the imbalance in my phone conversation. I know this is different than what we were trying to accomplish last night, but by the end of the phone conversation I didn’t care if my problem was resolved or not. I just wanted to get off the phone and figure out another way.

Hopefully I don’t treat people this way when they ask me for help (distracted and uncaring). I will continue to be mindful of the relationship I have with people who have asked me for help. I have to keep equilibrium in mind when interacting with clients.

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By Erica, September 14, 2008 12:32 pm

This morning after breakfast I talked to my husband about a problem and I used the inquiry steps as outlined in Schein’s book. We talked about a problem that has brought out arguments in the past, but this time we both treated the conversation as if I knew nothing of the background other than what my husband told me this morning.

Both of us were pleased with how the conversation unfolded and he feels better and clearer about what steps he’ll need to take to, hopefully, resolve this issue. I felt better about my side of the conversation because I was able to focus on his problem and not how the problem was affecting me. I know ultimately I am still part of this issue, but for this morning’s conversation I was the consultant and, therefore, the client owned the problem. As formal as this discussion was this morning, it may be a technique we’ll use in the future.

After we finished talking, my husband asked me to read the spine of the Schein book. I had never looked at the spine before and it gave me a chuckle.

(click to see enlarged version)

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By Erica, September 13, 2008 11:07 am

Yesterday I attended the ECVA conference, “New Times, New Pedagogies”. It was held in Blacksburg so I left immediately following Thursday’s class. My husband is a graduate of Virginia Tech so he went with me–to Blacksburg, not the conference. On Thursday night as we were pulling the suitcase out of the trunk of the car in the dark of the hotel parking lot, we were greeted with a lowing from an unseen cow. My husband remarked that if I wasn’t sure Tech was a cow college, there was the proof.

Friday morning proved that Tech is more than a cow college (naturally) as I slid into my seat and connected to the wireless system. There are benefits to holding a conference in a university setting and there are even more advantages to holding a conference in an electronic village. Wireless is everywhere. What a refreshing idea.

The conference started with one of the hosts reading a poem by Billy Collins. For those of you who don’t know, I was an English major in undergraduate. Starting a conference about technology by reading a poem instantly connected with me. It was the perfect blending of things I love most–the written word (read beautifully) and technology. It made me want to figure out a way to stay in the university setting…these are my people!

Michael Wesch began his portion of the presentation by telling us some statistics about the room if we pretended the 100 of us represented the Earth. Many of us were in poverty, some were dying, some were pregnant and overwhelmingly we weren’t Americans. You may know Dr. Wesch from his work at Kansas State University. He’s a cultural anthropologist who has done some amazing things by embracing technologies and letting his students collaborate and create their own learning (seriously go back and check out those links–powerful stuff).

Some key points that I gleaned from his presentation:

• we need to acknowledge that sometimes learning is created by losing control of the classroom
• the way communication changes so rapidly we need a new literacy (how to read and write online)
• soul murder is what happens when we regiment how students are to behave (sit in lecture halls with 200 other people, face forward, listen to the professor as the sage on the stage, and figure out how to skate through the assignments and still obtain a good grade)
• is content king or is the ability to gather and make meaning what’s important
• learning is an ongoing process–there is no end to it
• what are the best ways to create significant and meaningful connections
• embrace the new digital media, there are no natives in this environment at the college level–all of these technologies have been created in the last ten years
• let students control the wiki: his students created very detailed lecture notes and study guides on their own
• manage relationships and cultivate participation; enable but not control students
• think of the use of technology as a way to facilitate conversation–no one wants to be distracted from an engaging conversation but who hasn’t been distracted during a lecture

We broke for a short lunch and then Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins spoke. She started off by throwing the goat. Mmmn, the whole conference started with poetry and then she threw the goat. I may have actually been experiencing a dream come true yesterday.

In addition to her other fabulous roles at Ball State University, Intellagirl teaches freshman composition. The class everyone has to take and the one no one wants to take. I bet that has changed as Intellagirl uses Second Life to teach. She wanted a way to really connect with her students and build a sense of community. Second Life allows her students to do that. Her students use Second Life to complete ethnographic research and to hang out and collaborate. She asked us how many of our students go to Blackboard to chat on Friday nights. The group laughed. Yeah, who would want to do that? Go into a virtual environment and chat? Oh yeah, that sounds like fun.

Fun is a part of learning and Intellagirl said she doesn’t understand why learning isn’t thought of as fun.  I don’t think her students mistake the virtual world as a place to goof off. They are there to complete research but they are also there for a connection they may not get by sitting in rows in a classroom. Community bonding is facilitated by technology. As we know from our readings and discussions, learning is embedded in a social context.

Intellagirl’s talk centered around the use of technology and the bargain we should make with our learners when we decide to incorporate it with our teachings. One of her main points was that using technology for technology sake isn’t the right idea. It’s important to find the tool that helps you solve a problem. Tied to that idea is the idea of if we’re going to use the tool we need to know the tool. We don’t have to be experts but we have to know the basics. We have to make students feel safe so they’ll commit to the tool/environment/learning and an easy way to do that is to have a level of competence that shows students this new thing they have to learn how to use is worthwhile.

Since this post is getting long enough to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, I’ll wrap up with a bulleted list of what I found to be most fascinating:

• her slides were awesome and I need to figure out how to use that technique–simple pictures, some text, organic feel
• don’t let the tool overcome the content and context
• students have to let go of self-limitations (give up notes, books, student thinking–how can I skate and still get an A)
• instructors need to let go of control and change their role in the classroom
• there are two ways to think about the online community: escapist vs. extender (escapists create new identities/personas and extenders are those that just extend their authenticity to the web)
• reflection is a tremendous portion of learning
• using a virtual space equalizes the playing field-the instructor is a faciliatator and a learner
• we’re not covering up the past, we’re moving forward and bringing some of the past with us–the world is changing and we’re helping to move it forward

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By Erica, September 12, 2008 1:50 pm

I’m at a conference on web2.0 and how new technology impacts learning. We’re about to be kicked out of the space so here are some quick notes. I’ve been pleased to hear some of the basic tenets we hold dear in our program:

• collaboration is of utmost importance
• instructors are learners
• reflection is valuable especially in processing what’s being learned
• meaning making is essential
• building a sense of community
• technology shouldn’t take over the content or context
• give up control and self-limitations

More to follow after I’ve had some time to reflect and tie what I’ve heard to my personal frameworks.