I had a coffee with my friend Rebekah yesterday. Rebekah is an e-learning designer for veterinary educators and we met through Twitter. On the few occasions we caught up at a local cafe, our passions for social media for learning and development were evident. Our ideas tumbled out of us as we grappled with possibilities on how we could influence our own learning teams to use social media for their own professional development or even just to incorporate it into the design of programs.
Rebekah will be presenting on The Value of Twitter for Professional Development at the Australian Veterinary Conference in Perth Australia on 25-30 May so we talked about what she can do or show on stage to get the audience inspired to use Twitter but also to have a comeback for the dreaded statement she always hears…
“But I don’t have time for all this!”
I hear a lot of this too. Friends, family and colleagues think that my use of social media is a frivolous time waster and detracts from my real work. However, I believe their exclamation stems more from a fear of using social media rather than a lack of time on their part.
From my observations and experiences when talking to people in organisations, their fears relate to the following:
- A genuine lack of knowledge of how to use it to their advantage (—but being open to being coached)
- A stubborn and haughty expectation that their organisation is responsible for their development during working hours and a refusal to use it in their own time for any work related purpose
- A genuine fear of using social media especially at a time when organisations cut costs and staff and where any breach of social media policy will result in loss of a job or income
In my experience the last two are prevalent in organisations but my most rewarding experiences in helping people were from getting people from 3 to 1 and then supporting them through their journey to build their own peer networks online. Once I got them to this point, I could stand back and watch them have their own ‘a ha’ moments and leave them be to follow their own exploratory journey.
But some people need a bit of a push.
So I offered Rebekah a suggestion of what I do in this case to help others to build and create their personal learning network through Twitter Lists when “they don’t have the time!”
Why are Twitter Lists helpful?
If I told someone that, like me they used their mornings, evenings and down times to surf websites, blogs and newsfeeds, tag articles and posts, read them in bed or while munching on their Vegemite on toast or train ride into work – and then in a few years they may have a select group of special and trust peer networks, they’d say I have rocks in my head.
Their first reaction would be that it’s too hard and too much effort for little gain.
However, tell them I have a Twitter List of people whom they can follow immediately to start them on their Twitter journey, that’s an entirely different matter. The first step is already done for them!
Let’s face it. Many people want simple, quick, easy solutions. Dare I say it, some want their thinking done for them.
I’m not saying that this is the right or wrong way to gently push people to use Twitter but the solution there if they choose to use it. The benefit is that it will shorten their journey to to build their own learning network.
Of course, the challenge for them is having the motivation to stick with it and build on these Twitter lists to create their own and start connecting and learning. I don’t have all the answers for this – I’m not a miracle worker but too often many organisations expect Learning and Development teams to be just that.
So How Do I Use Twitter Lists?
Firstly, I don’t follow everyone. Sorry for those waiting for me to follow back – I don’t. Don’t take it personally. It’s not you. It’s me.
Instead, I read their Twitter profile and scan through their tweets to gauge what information, tweets and work they share. I look for good references and links – in particularly, if they share their work. I see who follows them and if they are followed by my own Personal Learning Network. I also look for robust twitter conversations and exchanges – and yes, I like a bit of personality about them too.
If I like what I see, then I add these people to the relevant list but I don’t follow them immediately. Not yet.
Who do I instantly follow?
People who have a reputation in the fields I’m interested in; or who are followed by some select members of my Personal Learning Network. If I have had a Twitter conversation and shared tips, references, work or ideas – I follow back.
What about Public and Private Lists?
My lists are a blend of Public or Private.
It’s my own choice about what constitutes a Private or Public list. Personally, I’ve decided to keep my Friends, Work Colleagues and Personal Learning Network private – but really, they don’t have to be. I’ve kept them private more as some respect to them but it is a moot point as Twitter is meant to be open anyway.
While I’m writing this post, I’m thinking that I’ll use this weekend to just open all my lists to Public.
Twitter Lists Make My Life Easier
During the day, I surf through my lists in a particular order:
- Personal Learning Network
- Instructional Design/Learning Development
- Curators
- Friends
- Work Colleagues
Yes, don’t think it strange that my friends and colleagues are further down the list as I skim through their posts to see what they’re up to. This explains why my husband becomes irate with me if I hadn’t seen or retweeted his funny cat gifs or his comments on West Ham United.
My aim in work life is to get number 5 into number 2. What was that about being a miracle worker?
Sometimes, I see great tweets or start conversations with people in these lists that warrants a Follow and a transfer to the Personal Learning Network Twitter List. If you’re in my PLN list, you’re pretty special.
You’ll notice that I have a LOT of people in my Personal Learning Network. This means it’s time for me to start culling. Every few months I go into this list and transfer people out back into other lists or entirely remove them if they have not tweeted anything using other Twitter tools such as Unfollowers.Me.
Using Lists at Conferences or Events
At conferences, I create Lists and add people who are contributing to the back channel into the relevant Conference list. I then send out a tweet inviting conference participants to subscribe.
Over time, this grows and every few months, I review the lists and invariably see the people who are quite active and share information. I then move these people to other lists and delete the Conference list (especially if there’s no one subscribed). I use Conference Lists as temporary lists to jog my memory of the people who attended and the conversations that occurred around conference topics. They have a time limit.
What about Blocking People?
I haven’t had the need to block anyone – certainly any person who is in my profession or field is not blocked because I feel it sets the wrong impression.
If I espouse sharing my work and openness then blocking goes against this ethos. Instead, I unfollow them or remove them from my list.
So How Else May We Use Twitter Lists?
I’ve been thinking that my main role in the last few years in Learning and Development has been more like a “Connector”. People come to me and ask if I can help them connect with someone of a particular expertise. I see the potential of using Twitter Lists as a “collection of global subject matter experts around a particular topic” and then providing this list to others to build their own PLN.
For example, in Rebekah’s case, she may decide to create a list of Veterinary Educators or people in the Veterinary field and then promote this to her Learning and Development team. Sure, the list may be really small to begin with but it is something that can grow over time.
Final Words
So when people say to you that they ‘don’t have time’ for using social media in their own professional development, think about the true reason behind that statement and work with them to allay their fears and support them. A simple gesture of helping them subscribe to your own lists is one way to get them comfortable and curious to learn more.
Note: At the time of writing this blog post, I’ve gone ahead and made my lists public. Hope you can do the same!
Photo Credit: Alice in Wonderland, No Time to Say Hello Goodbye from Brandon Warren
Hi Helen, great follow up to our chat. I had already decided to create a list between now and the conference. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks Rebekah! After our discussion I got to thinking that Twitter lists are a great way to curate SMEs on a topic. Of course, there are way too many subjects and experts out there but if we taught the skills of how to find people then the people we are trying to teach can build their own. That is, we can start them off by providing a short list but it’s up to them to build on it? It also got me thinking about why I had my lists made private – they should be public. Maybe private lists can be used in instances where we use Twitter as some formal learning tool within a particular course… thanks again for our discussion as it got me thinking and tidying up my lists!!!
Hi Helen
Excellent and timely post on the use of Twitter lists. Thanks.
I have phases of making lists but then neglect to use them. I never thought of doing private lists until just now. This nudge has already been very useful. I made a private “PLN hotshots” list and it’s a dream. I can now see the activity of people I like to have conversations with altogether in one stream, as opposed to looking them up individually; I can join in conversations quicker now.
Your post has also inspired me to take up with Hootesuite again.
Helen
Thanks for your feedback Helen. The truth is, I’m constantly updating my Twitter lists and I found that names were duplicated so I was getting the same information from different lists. In the end, my PLN list are people who are in my field of learning (regardless of where; and who I have learned, exchanged or collaborated). Only when I started looking at Twitter profiles of people in my PLN, did I realise that they too, didn’t use lists to their full capacity either. I wanted to be able to subscribe to the lists that they have created but there was a gap there!
Also more people were asking me, “who should I follow?” and rather than rattling off names, I just tell them to subscribe to a list on my Twitter profile to get them started.
I’m constantly updating, editing, changing, removing people in an effort to find the best, most helpful and new information of key learning and insights that I can apply to my work.
Hi Helen – so useful information and tips. thanks. I struggle with keeping lists up-to-date too but it IS worth spending a bit of time on this. Your vision about helping other to curate for themselves resonates so much with me and what I am trying to do at the moment at work. I wish I could gather the groups of SME’s I work with in the same room and go with them through some concrete cases and examples… but they are all over the world and I still haven’t found the way to get their interests around these new ways of curation for professional and business development. I might have to spoon-feed and start curating content and create lists in their own areas…do you think its good idea ?
Many thanks
Cedric
Hello Cedric and thanks for your reply. I have the same issues too when it comes to my work but there’s only so much you can do as the interests are many and varied. I think the value is if you’re working with them, start a list for them (eg if it’s part of a learning program for theirs but then coach, guide, help them develop it further). For example, I’m not an expert in “Australian Legal System” (if I was working with a group of lawyers) but I can help them start a Twitter list of their own because they’d be best to be able to critique who they’d want to follow and why. It’s the “teach a man to fish” concept but you bring along the fishing line, the rod, the bait and you catch the first fish but the rest is up to him.
In my experience, I try and get people to an ‘a ha’ point when they do something on Twitter that makes the jigsaw puzzle fit into place but also give them pointers on how to make it seamless for them – ie it’s not an onerous task but it can be done when they’re waiting for the bus, at lunch time or in some ‘down time’. People get frightened that it will suck up more time but it doesn’t have to be that way.I hope that answers the question in some way….
Yes thanks again Helen its a good place to start indeed. SMEs I have identified and work with them already, following the good old methods of conf calls emails and sharepoint…need to find the right moment to introduce some of them to twitter lists then see how they bite to it and provide support.
Good luck with it all Cedric! 🙂
Helen! I’ve been meaning to respond to this since I stumbled upon it a few days ago (still not getting email alerts?! Actually I think I got one, but then they stopped…I’ll try re-subscribing…).
Anyway, was going to say – good post on lists. I definitely don’t make the best use of them, and I know I could use them better (don’t really use them at all anymore…). However, what I was thinking as I was reading this post is that although having a list of people to get you started is probably helpful, ultimately just passively following people (regardless of how awesome they are, and how great the content they post is) isn’t necessarily going to lead to long term, sustained engagement with twitter. Referencing my own personal experience: I had a twitter a/c for about 6 years and was following a few well known people (Jane Bozarth, Clark Quinn, etc…) but didn’t really ‘get it’ – I rarely logged in, never tweeted, and basically got overwhelmed whenever I tried looking at the stream. I didn’t really understand the point of it, or how it worked. And, wasn’t really intrinsically motivated enough to put the time and effort into trying to understand it.
This changed last year when I decided I needed to learn more about using social media for learning, and was aware that twitter was used a bit in the education arena. Around the same time, I was looking into cMOOCs and open online learning experiences and came across DS106, which I decided to look into. Twitter was a tool they used so I decided to make a concerted effort to start using it. I started following people and finding people to follow and found rabbit holes into amazing worlds of interesting content, people and communities. But the things that had the biggest impact on getting me to realise the value of twitter – and get value from using it – was not merely following, but:
– getting into a habit of checking it regularly. This is a major and essential part of sustaining engagement. Because of the volume of data and content shared on twitter, you HAVE to check it regularly to get any value out of it. Checking your stream needs to become habitual. It’s not hard to sustain once you get into the habit, but it can be hard to start, and once you get out of the habit you have to motivate yourself to get back into it again.
– actively sharing interesting links / content – and getting followers. The realisation that mentioning authors or people connected with the content being shared provides an opportunity for follows and interaction – essentially a form of feedback which created intrinsic motivation to keep engaging and sharing on twitter. Likewise with using hashtags, which provide the opportunity for content shares to be picked up by curators.
– interacting with people. Interactions are essential to maintain engagement with twitter – just focusing on content can become overwhelming due to the sheer volume of it. What I like about twitter is that it’s a casual and fun type of medium – not only do you have the opportunity to interact with authors of books, blogs, practitioners you admire – there’s a pretty good chance that they will respond to a mention on a medium like twitter. Participating in tweet chats, conference backchannels and open online learning experiences and communities also offer excellent opportunities for interacting with people, and building meaningful, genuine relationships via twitter.
– having a reason to use it – i.e. something that motivates you intrinsically. Whilst the things mentioned above (sharing, followers, interaction) help develop and sustain intrinsic motivation to keep going, once you’re on it, you do need something to motivate you to get on it to begin with. My intrinsic motivators were feeling I needed to know about it for my own professional development, plus wanting to use it for DS106.
Developing a PLN is ultimately a personal task – definitely agree that a list is a good start, but unless individuals take this list, adapt it, make it their own – and – interact with the people on the list, they’re going to get limited value out of it.
Thanks for your wonderful post Tanya. As always your comments are thought provoking and frankly, I think you should blog these! I have learned so much from your comments which always make me reflect.
Having said that, I agree wholeheartedly with your reply. You do need some sort of intrinsic motivation. A push to make you reconsider what you originally thought was a frivolous tool. For me, it was when I stumbled upon a Knit Chat one Saturday afternoon. It was as if the real world twitter conversation (and the people solving my pesky knitting problems) opened my eyes. I then saw the applications for learning and how I could take this back to my own workplace. As someone in L&D, I saw the application for learning. Others may have different interests and passions.
We can only show people the way and how to use the tool but they need to come up with their own “A ha” moments. I can’t drive these because in my experience, everyone will see their applications for this tool – whether it is for professional development, for networking, for marketing, for growing a business, whatever. But that’s okay.
In my own idealistic manner, I hope that I can inspire others to try, be curious, experiment with these tools and not dispel them as time wasters.
Thanks again for your comments and sharing your experience of Twitter here.
Helen, thank YOU for YOUR posts! : ) They have inspired me to comment ; ) I always find them easy to read, love your stories, energy, integrity and genuine desire to help people understand how they can get value from online tools, tech & improve their practice.
I find it so much easier to write comments to blogs than blog posts – I think because it just seems like participating in a conversation rather than writing something from scratch, I don’t know – less pressure or something! But I have been thinking of blogging or adapting some of my comments into blog posts – this would be an efficient way to blog!
I think you’re doing an awesome job of showing / teaching tools AND inspiring people to use them / realise how they can get value from them – it’s a powerful combo.
Thanks for your kind words Tanya. I see your point with the conversation but it’s a pity that all that good thinking is ‘lost’. That is, you need to go and find it and it’s sitting on everyone else’s blogs!! I like the idea of linking it. Imagine you had a blog that linked only to your comments! Hence why I think there’s a real idea in having some tool streamlining all this because it’s evidence of your work and thinking…
Yeah I know…you’re right! Whatever happened to your collating comments idea?! Did someone say (was it Bruno Winck?) that they were already working on something like that? hmmm…but yeah I probably should start collating them – somewhere at least.
Part of the issue with converting comments to blog posts is that sometimes some of it doesn’t make sense without the context of the post – but I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to edit, or link out to it. Anyway, something to think about! (and start doing…)
Just back on forming PLNs – I didn’t actually mention it by name, but when I made a reference to ‘open online learning experiences’ as opportunities for meaningful, genuine, and sustained PLN relationships, I Was referring to the Exploring PLNs (xplrpln) seminar that Jeff Merrell and Kimberley Scott ran last year. This was my first cMOOC style experience (I know you’ve had a few!) and was probably the one experience that had the biggest impact in terms of the development of my own PLN. I think these types of deep learning experiences can be critical triggers for enhancing the quality of your PLN relationships (not just the number of your connections).
Regular interaction (e.g. through regular participation in tweet chats, discussion forums, or communities of practice) can also contribute.
I agree. I’m ranting and raving over the cMOOC experience and getting angrier when all the talk about MOOC is the xMOOC style in organisations and LMS vendors touting their products for xMOOC. I do believe they have a place in corporate learning but the challenge is getting people to be comfortable with this way of learning. They’re not all as self motivated as we are…