Sep 12 2009
Reflections for My Mirror, Organizational Learning: #2 – What the TelegRAM Taught Me
I normally don’t read the VCU TelegRAM when it pops through my email every morning. However, this past week, for some reason, I decided to open it and take a peek. My hope was to find out information on the free flu shots the university offers faculty/staff each year, but I also came across other “nuggets of goodness” (as Wendy would say) that caught my interest.
8. VCU Work/Life Seminar: “Drive Away Happy – Car Buying Decisions”
VCU Human Resources is sponsoring a brown bag seminar. Virginia Credit Union will present “Drive Away Happy- Car Buying Decisions.” 20 participants/ may bring lunch.
13. Networking with Coffee:
Off-Campus Student Services and University Student Commons & Activities invite all university department and student organizations to participate in a weekly Commuter CoffeeBRAKE – an opportunity to share information about clubs, departmental news or upcoming events. Participants can interact with 50 to 100 nonresidential students.
As we’ve been talking and learning over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to relate the concepts of Nancy Dixon and our class discussions into real-life situations. I was very impressed with VCU when I read the TelegRAM, because it seems to me that they are really trying to implement collective learning and collaboration. This week, since our reading was about the framework of organizational learning, I noticed some themes that could be related to these VCU events and ideas.
Nancy Dixon talks about generating information. She states that this is “encompassing both the collection of external data and the internal development of new ideas.” As I was reading the TelegRAM, I could see how VCU is trying to incorporate external ideas and bring them into the university. As far as the brown bag seminar goes, an outside speaker is coming in to discuss ideas and share information. Car buying decisions may not necessarily be something the participants can use in the work place, but if the speaker shares ideas on decision making processes, some of these concepts may be able to be transferred into the work setting.
I think generating information and ideas can happen in most any setting, and as we talked about last week, some of the most informal meeting places can be the best opportunities for learning. This is why the CoffeeBRAKE event stood out so much for me. I think it’s hard at any university, but especially at an urban school like VCU, to have unity between off-campus and on-campus students/events/sharing of information. Most students move off campus after their freshman year, so trying to collaborate with them and getting them back into campus life can be a challenge. The CoffeeBRAKE event, which is being hosted by the Off-Campus Student Services and University Student Commons and Activities, is trying to bring together on and off campus students to form a bond and distribute a message.
Nancy Dixon talks about the ways to distribute information through the form of a message. In this case above, through these CoffeeBRAKE’s, messages will hopefully be shared about particular student events, information on clubs to join and regular news about what’s going on around campus. This informal event will also be a great place for students to form collective ideas and learn about new ways to make the campus a more unified community.
I think the most beneficial thing I’ve learned so far about organizational learning is that it can come in a number of forms. If I had read this TelegRAM a few years ago I don’t think I would have thought so deeply into it. I would have said, “oh, that’s a good idea” but never would have looked at what the underlying message is… That we all have something to learn from one another. Our differences and how we share and learn keeps it interesting.
“Difference, as uncomfortable as it often makes us, leads to learning.” – Nancy Dixon, page 95
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Some of this information was taken from the VCU TelegRAM for Faculty and Staff: September 11, 2009.
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Jenn,
How interesting! Your blog entry is helping me see what reflection exercise is hoping to train me to do. Ponder a subject. Read about it. Think about it, and then as per the Dixon text – “dialogue” either internally with other knowledge in my head or externally with others and develop new meaning. I see your linking the VCU events to their intentional efforts at creative experiences for dialogue.
As a typical student growing up in the 70s and 80s, I believe I learned by receiving information and being able to regurgitate it. The whole transference of information from the expert to the learner. Before starting college, my professor philosopher father had wise advice I couldn’t yet then grasp – that all I needed to do in college was “learn how to learn.” It didn’t really matter what my major was – grad school could sharpen anything. But learning how to learn was what college graduates needed. It took a while, but after a decade or so I finally understood what he meant. I’m glad to see, read and hear that it’s a much wider universe than just my father preaching these ideas. I’m hoping with academic attention on active learning, texts like Dixon and last semester’s Vella, and class discussions like we’re having occurring all over, more lower school educators will [are?] incorporate broader learning strategies so that a 2010 high school graduate has more than lecture learning experiences behind them.
It brings to mind the MBA case study I mentioned in class once already, that the an Executive MBA program realized some of its most tenured professors didn’t cut the mustard and the students weren’t learning from them. They were too focused in this lecture mode and hadn’t realized the need to create dialogue among learners to discuss the new information. Their dictated expertise “removes from others the responsibility for their own actions” (p112). Dixon goes all out and says it is this discussion that is the learning – that the receiving of the information isn’t learning. I absolutely agree with her, however am curious to know who else does. I see this as an almost new-age type philosophy and wonder if/when the general public or even if academia agrees. This is Dixon’s perspective. And Vella’s for that matter. And I’ve learned it’s also Wendy’s and Dr. Carters… but hope to remember to raise the question in our next class as to if this is an overall consensus or more of a new idea just getting planted.
I love the Dixon quote you ended with! I say something similar at work a lot when I am training and that is that every tech in the lab does things a little different, they each have their own workflow and you can develop yours from watching others. But I also try and tell my employees to keep an open mind when training because the trainers may learn something from the trainees. I think the hardest part about learning is keeping an open mind. I think your blog post really demonstrates this. Learning about org learning has caused you to look at eveyday things in your own organization through a different lense, even something as small as the TelegRAM.