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Features

Published August 2009

Learning from the Bottom Up

  

  Jim Groff

One of the learning technology trends that is simultaneously overhyped and underhyped is the move toward bottom-up learning.

No amount of buzzwords, such as “the wisdom of crowds” and “user-generated content,” can replace the hard work of developing educational materials. Wikipedia is a special case, and reference materials are a far cry from the instructional programs that corporate education departments produce and deliver on a daily basis.

On the other hand, new technologies are democratizing learning and putting it in the hands of every member of your organization. When it’s a balance between grassroots efforts and an overall learning strategy, bottom-up learning can become a key part of overall educational efforts.

Most educators, whether in a primary, secondary or corporate setting, take their cues from traditional approaches to education. Indeed, education has one of the richest histories of any field. Oxford University, for example, was founded in the 12th century, and has been running continuously since then. Oxford’s roots go back even further, all the way to the scholastic traditions of the ancient Greeks.

This traditional approach to education should be familiar to all: Students come to be taught by older, more experienced professionals who are authorized or certified to convey their expert knowledge — largely by lecturing. For the most part, this approach to education has been copied and pasted wholesale into the corporate learning model — hence, famed educational institutions such as McDonald’s Hamburger University and General Electric’s Crotonville campus.

At my own alma mater, Harvard Business School, famed for its use of the interactive case study method of teaching, classes follow a set curriculum of cases that have been prepared and certified by Harvard Business School Publishing.

Yet, just as many traditional business models have been challenged by disruptive innovations from below, traditional education approaches are facing a similar challenge. Just as open source software represents both a threat and an opportunity for established high-tech companies, open source education will have a major impact on corporate learning strategies.

In a MacArthur Foundation report titled “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age,” Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg point out that there is a major shift from top-down to bottom-up in learning. They wrote:

“Participatory learning begins from the premise that new technologies are changing how people of all ages learn, play, socialize, exercise judgment, and engage in civic life. Learning environments — peers, family, and social institutions (such as schools, community centers, libraries, museums, even the playground, and so on) — are changing as well. The concept of participatory learning is very different from ‘IT’ (instructional technology). IT is usually a toolkit application that is predetermined and even institutionalized with little, if any, user discretion, choice, or leverage. IT tends to be top-down, designer-determined, administratively driven, commercially fashioned. In participatory learning, outcomes are typically customizable by the participants. Since the current generation of college student has no memory of the historical moment before the advent of the Internet, we are suggesting that participatory learning as a practice is no longer exotic or new but a commonplace way of socializing and learning. For many, it seems entirely unremarkable.”