Thank you, Elliot, for commenting and filling in some of the reasoning behind your publishing of the Social Learning Survey results. I decided to respond in a new post, since your reply deserves as much exposure as my original post, and it’s easier to manage the formatting.

You began:

Hi..

Since the post was all about our survey, thought that I might reply. It is interesting that you didn’t pick up the phone to chat, prior to doing a smear post, but that may be part of problem with the blogosphere

I don’t consider it a smear post. An obnoxious post, probably! My issue is not with you, particularly, but with a general mindset that results in false representations about what is happening in the “world”, whether there is a deliberate attempt to mislead, or most frequently, an unintentional attempt to mislead. I think that is particularly problematic when numbers are used, since they bring a veneer of objectivity and credibility to positions that often do not deserve it.

Our survey was just that. A quick pulse survey of learning colleagues around the world. In fact, we designed the questions in a seminar on Social Learning and sent it to 50,000 folks that subscribe to our newsletter. We had over 1,000 responses and it is an interesting set of patterns that popped up.

Ahh. You didn’t tell us that your response rate was 2 (two)%. You did, however, tell us, that the people surveyed were subscribers (good on you for that), but that was just about the only information you provided to allow a reader some context. For example, you didn’t provide the items that were used. Did you offer definitions of the terms in the survey so you could have greater confidence that respondents were responding with similar understandings of what you were asking?

(there’s another issue here, by the way. About why, in any course where learning is the goal, anyone would “teach” people how to do a survey that is absolutely uninterpretable. Anyway, that’s another issue. I’d be curious to know your thinking about having a learning activity undertaken that demonstrates how not to do things).

Organizations are fascinated, scared and experimenting with social media. And, it is an interesting dimension of how instructional designers are evolving their learning development.

I disagree. Very few organizations are fascinated, scared, or experimenting with social media, but by and large it’s an issue that is hard to examine because it’s not clear what is included in the category of “social media”, or for that matter, it’s current faddish partner “e-learning”.

One of the trends I have noticed is that proponents of social media seem to be including everything but the kitchen sink in the category (err. email, a social medium?, I guess you could make a case for it, plus the telephone, plus going to movies. Then we could survey people and claim 100% penetration and proclaim an new era for human civilization!

Ultimately, I believe that when you work IN a field, it’s very easy to gain an exceedingly unbalanced perspective about its popularity, applicability and value to regular, everyday people. If I walk down any street in my town, or in Montreal and Toronto, and go into the retail stores, and ask whether they are using LinkedIn, or twitter to get business, what answer do you think I’ll get? Likewise if I troll a few office buildings.

And, more interesting, what answers would I get if I gathered data on how much time key people in organizations spent per day on twitter, or other social media, for business purposes? A lot? Probably close to zero in the aggregate. (I’m sure you are aware that it appears that the number of people ACTIVELY using twitter is miniscule)

Yes, some companies have jumped on. Yes, it’s pretty cool and exciting. Is there this huge fascination? No. There is a huge fascination with staying in business these days. Twitter is hardly seen as the tool to do so, and neither is any other “social media”.

I’m willing to say that, without data, because I’m expressing it as an opinion by the way. When you use numbers to buttress your position, there’s an increased obligation to 1) explain the numbers fully 2) provide enough information so most people can make their own interpretations and 3) explain the limitations of the numbers.

Is there a lot of hype? SURE! Are there internal challengers? YES! Are IT groups struggling to see if it they should adopt a “social” platform or use ad hoc tools? Yes!

I have no problem with the above. To try to clarify my position, if you said “75% of the information about social learning is hype”, I’d REALLY have a problem. I hope I’m making myself clear.

All of our surveys are done to provide a perspective that will extend dialogue. Once again, I wonder why you didn’t reach out if you were so offended by my published results. I have 30 years of collaborative experience and would have loved to share with you more of the data and have a cool conversation.

We are, it seems, dialoging right now, yes?

As for the explanation that the survey was done to provide a perspective to extend dialogue, then why not do it properly? The survey, with an utterly biased “sample”, with a hopelessly low return rate (see below) is no better able to provide a meaningful perspective than is surveying my cats about what litter they prefer. You’ll get just about the same return rate, the results won’t be generalizable to other cats, and at the end, you’ll be left knowing less than you started.

And, if you don’t have the resources to do it properly, then why publish it?

And if you publish it, why not explain to people that it’s meaningless?

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. I DO get, however, that what you published will mislead readers. Do we not, Elliot, have some obligations to our readers, to ensure that we bring the best information possible to them? And that we have an obligation to provide a) a realistic picture and b) enough information so that readers can draw their own conclusions?

Did you do that in this case?

The Internet, and society in general seems to have less interest in accuracy than it does in what’s “trending”. If social media has a major positive impact, maybe, just maybe we’d better start paying attention to the accuracy, ethical responsibilities, and accountabilities of those playing leadership roles with it.

Robert

PS. You questioned whether I didn’t contact you before writing, and I’ll tell you why. When someone puts something on the public internet, I respond on the public internet. It’s a long standing policy of mine to do so, and except for situations that are highly personal (and probably shouldn’t be on the net anyway), I don’t plan on changing that.

If the issue is public, I’ll respond in public. I’m not interested in you and I talking in private on the phone on these issues. We have a public technology to use to debate and dialogue, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to misuse it or ignore it. What point, Mr. Maisie, is there of using “social media” (or whatever you want to call this tech. platform) if we shut out people when the going gets heated?