Now read on…

If you’re not familiar with the latter two concepts here’s a little background: the idea of the strength of weak ties is a theory from sociology; according to its originator Mark Granovetter

the argument asserts that our acquaintances (weak ties) are less likely to be socially involved with one another than are our close friends (strong ties). Thus the set of people made up of any individual and his or her acquaintances comprises a low-density network (one in which many of the possible relational lines are absent) whereas the set consisting of the same individual and his or her close friends will be densely knit (many of the possible lines are present).

It follows, then, that individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will [...] insulate them from the latest ideas.

(1983, pp.201-202)

The concept of the long tail is something both Jay Cross and Tony Karrer have recently discussed and is example of how the Web (and particularly Web 2.0 technology) changes the way assets – whether physical artifacts like books, or knowledge and informational assets persist for an extended period beyond their supposed “sell-by” date:

Long tails for the enterprise occur when the power to create and publish is widely held, the content can be distributed at near-zero cost and a market exists that connects knowledge workers with a nearly infinite number of content creators.

(Kilian, D. 2007)

Here’s a pertinent example of how these ideas manifest themselves in the workplace: last week, I suffered from a niggly problem with my Outlook e-mail client – it wouldn’t poll the Exchange server and update itself every 20 minutes as it was supposed to do. So I logged a snag on the corporate Bugzilla implementation about the issue. The IT person, who I would describe as being a a journeyman level of competence (has passed their certification exams and is no longer a novice, but is not yet an expert) wen though all the things your supposed to do to resolve such issues

• ran ScanPST.exe
• checked my e-mail profile
• consulted MSDN
• looked at forums for similar issues based on the Error ID

… as well as some “beyond the call of duty” activities (a time-consuming MS Office reinstall).

All to no avail.

So I got my laptop back and had resolved myself to living with this seemingly intractable minor inconvenience, when a third contributor (a more knowledgeable IT support person), working from home, happened to encounter the issue when scanning through Bugzilla, entered the discussion with a simple “I know what this is.”

So, by accessing my laptop via a PC-sharing application, the issue was resolved in about 20 minutes, after 5 days of dead ends and frustration.

The moral of the story is: by developing a corporate culture that encourages wide-ranging participation, and by providing a corporate knowledge-sharing environment (Bugzilla in this case), you increase the chances that somebody you’re associated with, no matter how loosely, will have the appropriate knowledge and expertise to find a solution to an issue. The added learning benefit from the journeyman contributors perspective, is that they have added to their knowledge experientially, by interacting with the More Knowledgeable Other. I would suggest that the knowledge asset acquired by being involved in this problem-solving activity has been aggregated into their personal experience schema, enabling them to grow a little more knowledgeable (or even wiser).

Oh yes… the solution to the Outlook issue?

Delete and recreate your profile in Outlook.

_______________

References:

Cross, J. (2008) Strength of weak knowledge sources. [Internet] Available from: http://internettime.com/2008/04/21/strength-of-weak-knowledge-sources/ Accessed 1 July 2008

Granovetter, M. (1983) The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited. Sociological Theory, Volume 1, 201-233. State University of New York,
Stonybrook. [Internet] Available from: http://www.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/SI110/readings/In_Out_and_Beyond/Granovetter.pdf Accessed 1 July 2008

Karrer, T. (2008) Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis : eLearning Technology. [Internet] Available from: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-learning-long-tail-and.html Accessed 1 July 2008

Kilian, D. (2007) The Learning Organization Meets the Long Tail (Part 2). [Internet] Available from:
http://www.clomedia.com/guest-editorial/2007/October/1949/index.php Accessed 1 July 2008

Now read on…

If you’re not familiar with the latter two concepts here’s a little background: the idea of the strength of weak ties is a theory from sociology; according to its originator Mark Granovetter

the argument asserts that our acquaintances (weak ties) are less likely to be socially involved with one another than are our close friends (strong ties). Thus the set of people made up of any individual and his or her acquaintances comprises a low-density network (one in which many of the possible relational lines are absent) whereas the set consisting of the same individual and his or her close friends will be densely knit (many of the possible lines are present).

It follows, then, that individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will [...] insulate them from the latest ideas.

(1983, pp.201-202)

The concept of the long tail is something both Jay Cross and Tony Karrer have recently discussed and is example of how the Web (and particularly Web 2.0 technology) changes the way assets – whether physical artifacts like books, or knowledge and informational assets persist for an extended period beyond their supposed “sell-by” date:

Long tails for the enterprise occur when the power to create and publish is widely held, the content can be distributed at near-zero cost and a market exists that connects knowledge workers with a nearly infinite number of content creators.

(Kilian, D. 2007)

Here’s a pertinent example of how these ideas manifest themselves in the workplace: last week, I suffered from a niggly problem with my Outlook e-mail client – it wouldn’t poll the Exchange server and update itself every 20 minutes as it was supposed to do. So I logged a snag on the corporate Bugzilla implementation about the issue. The IT person, who I would describe as being a a journeyman level of competence (has passed their certification exams and is no longer a novice, but is not yet an expert) wen though all the things your supposed to do to resolve such issues

• ran ScanPST.exe
• checked my e-mail profile
• consulted MSDN
• looked at forums for similar issues based on the Error ID

… as well as some “beyond the call of duty” activities (a time-consuming MS Office reinstall).

All to no avail.

So I got my laptop back and had resolved myself to living with this seemingly intractable minor inconvenience, when a third contributor (a more knowledgeable IT support person), working from home, happened to encounter the issue when scanning through Bugzilla, entered the discussion with a simple “I know what this is.”

So, by accessing my laptop via a PC-sharing application, the issue was resolved in about 20 minutes, after 5 days of dead ends and frustration.

The moral of the story is: by developing a corporate culture that encourages wide-ranging participation, and by providing a corporate knowledge-sharing environment (Bugzilla in this case), you increase the chances that somebody you’re associated with, no matter how loosely, will have the appropriate knowledge and expertise to find a solution to an issue. The added learning benefit from the journeyman contributors perspective, is that they have added to their knowledge experientially, by interacting with the More Knowledgeable Other. I would suggest that the knowledge asset acquired by being involved in this problem-solving activity has been aggregated into their personal experience schema, enabling them to grow a little more knowledgeable (or even wiser).

Oh yes… the solution?

Delte and recreate your profile in Outlook.

_______________

References:

Cross, J. (2008) Strength of weak knowledge sources. [Internet] Available from: http://internettime.com/2008/04/21/strength-of-weak-knowledge-sources/ Accessed 1 July 2008

Granovetter, M. (1983) The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited. Sociological Theory, Volume 1, 201-233. State University of New York,
Stonybrook. [Internet] Available from: http://www.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/SI110/readings/In_Out_and_Beyond/Granovetter.pdf Accessed 1 July 2008

Karrer, T. (2008) Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis : eLearning Technology. [Internet] Available from: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-learning-long-tail-and.html Accessed 1 July 2008

Kilian, D. (2007) The Learning Organization Meets the Long Tail (Part 2). [Internet] Available from:
http://www.clomedia.com/guest-editorial/2007/October/1949/index.php Accessed 1 July 2008

Table 1 Guidelines for evaluating learning

References:

Bjornavold, J. (2004) Making Learning Visible: Validation of Formal, Non-Formal and Informal Learning: policy and practices in EU Member States1. European Journal of Education [Internet] 39 (1), 69–89. Available from: http://www.acc.eu.org/uploads/
Makinglearningvisible_1.pdf [Accessed 21st February 2007]

Kirkpatrick, J. & Kirkpatrick, P. (2006) Evaluating Training Programs. 3rd ed. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

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Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of the retrospective pre-test model

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Table 1 Retrospective Pre-test Design

However, participants (N) report on their knowledge, understanding or skills (Observation O1) after the intervention (X), and then also reflect and answer (O2) what they believe their understanding or skill was before the intervention. Rockwell & Kohn (1989) applied this method to testing the effectiveness of achieving program outcomes when interventions such as training programs are implemented and concluded that “using a post-then-pre design [retrospective pre-test] to identify self-reported behavioural changes can provide substantial evidence for program impact”. The retrospective pre-test enables researchers to reduce the response shift bias – defined by Klatt & Taylor-Powell in their 2005 paper Synthesis of Literature relative to Retrospective Pretest Design as

the change in the participant’s metric for answering questions from the pre-test to the post-test due to a new understanding of a concept being taught

– because the participants are able to give pre-test responses which are based on a post-intervention frame of reference.

Using the retrospective pre-test, response shift bias can be reduced increasing the likelihood that the observable results are due to intended intervention effects (Pratt, McGuigan & Katzev, 2001). This proposition is complicated and not without its critics – Theodore Lamb (2005), an advocate of the retrospective pre-test method, describes it as “an imperfect but useful tool.” Robson (2002, p.139-141) expresses concerns that used purely as a quasi-experimental method, this strategy could lead to an internal validity threat through regression to the mean.

References:

Klatt, J. and Taylor-Powell, E. (2005) Synthesis of Literature relative to RetrospectivePretest Design. Presentation to the 2005 Joint CES/AEA Conference, Toronto [Internet] Available from: http://www.citra.org/Assets/documents/evaluation%20design.pdf [Accessed 5th August 2007]

Lamb, T. (2005) The Retrospective Pretest: An Imperfect but Useful Tool. Evaluation Exchange. [Internet] 11(2). Available from: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue30/spotlight.html [Accessed 21st March 2007]

Pratt, C.C., McGuigan, W.M., & Katzev, A.R. (2000). Measuring program outcomes: Using retrospective pretest methodology. American Journal of Evaluation, 21(3). 341-349.

Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Rockwell, S. K. & Kohn, H. (1989) Post-Then-Pre Evaluation. Journal of Extension. [Internet] 27(2). Available from: http://www.joe.org/joe/1989summer/a5.html [Accessed 21st March 2007]

–

Table 1 Retrospective Pre-test Design

However, participants (N) report on their knowledge, understanding or skills (Observation O1) after the intervention (X), and then also reflect and answer (O2) what they believe their understanding or skill was before the intervention. Rockwell & Kohn (1989) applied this method to testing the effectiveness of achieving program outcomes when interventions such as training programs are implemented and concluded that “using a post-then-pre design [retrospective pre-test] to identify self-reported behavioural changes can provide substantial evidence for program impact”. The retrospective pre-test enables researchers to reduce the response shift bias – defined by Klatt & Taylor-Powell in their 2005 paper Synthesis of Literature relative to Retrospective Pretest Design as

the change in the participant’s metric for answering questions from the pre-test to the post-test due to a new understanding of a concept being taught

– because the participants are able to give pre-test responses which are based on a post-intervention frame of reference.

Using the retrospective pre-test, response shift bias can be reduced increasing the likelihood that the observable results are due to intended intervention effects (Pratt, McGuigan & Katzev, 2001). This proposition is complicated and not without its critics – Theodore Lamb (2005), an advocate of the retrospective pre-test method, describes it as “an imperfect but useful tool.” Robson (2002, p.139-141) expresses concerns that used purely as a quasi-experimental method, this strategy could lead to an internal validity threat through regression to the mean.

References:

Klatt, J. and Taylor-Powell, E. (2005) Synthesis of Literature relative to RetrospectivePretest Design. Presentation to the 2005 Joint CES/AEA Conference, Toronto [Internet] Available from: http://www.citra.org/Assets/documents/evaluation%20design.pdf [Accessed 5th August 2007]

Lamb, T. (2005) The Retrospective Pretest: An Imperfect but Useful Tool. Evaluation Exchange. [Internet] 11(2). Available from: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue30/spotlight.html [Accessed 21st March 2007]

Pratt, C.C., McGuigan, W.M., & Katzev, A.R. (2000). Measuring program outcomes: Using retrospective pretest methodology. American Journal of Evaluation, 21(3). 341-349.

Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Rockwell, S. K. & Kohn, H. (1989) Post-Then-Pre Evaluation. Journal of Extension. [Internet] 27(2). Available from: http://www.joe.org/joe/1989summer/a5.html [Accessed 21st March 2007]

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Interestingly in discussing the flexibility of the case study design, Yin (1994, p.285) contends that in the future, researchers will focus not on the case study method, but rather on the specifi case study data collection techniques (see Table 1) and we will increasingly see these techniques used in other “non-case study” forms of research.

Table 1 Case Study Techniques

This approach of modularising (to coin a term) the methodologies used in a case study may potentially enable future researchers to generalise from results attained through a case study approach to a broader context: this concept is outside the scope of this blog, but is something in my view that would have benefits in future social sciences research and evaluation of learning initiatives.

References:

Yin, R. K. (1994). Discovering the future of the case study method in evaluation research. Evaluation Practice [Internet] 15. Available from: http://aje.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/15/3/283 [Accessed 15th January 2008 subscription required]

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