I like looking at what’s happening in education and thinking about what can be learned in business and vice versa. The children are our future workforce. In my view, there are gaps to close between education and business to bring the two ‘worlds’ closer together. Here’s a story to bring this to life for you.

As she bounced through the door waving a school letter in her hand I thought she’d been given golden tickets to the local chocolate factory. This eagerness to hand over a letter was unusual. As many parents will know, these ordinarily have to be rescued from the deep dark depths of school bags or pockets.

The letter described a new platform the school had started using called Class Dojo; the strapline of which is to ‘build amazing classroom communities’. It’s a simple, yet powerful concept. The kids are motivated to earn points awarded by teachers for doing good things and demonstrating the right behaviours. They can use these points to build and customise aliens. Accessible via a website it also has both an Android and IOS app. I resisted the temptation to dive straight in and instead focussed our daughter on the usual daily tasks of completing homework and reading with the reward of getting set up on Class Dojo being the carrot at the end.

Homework completed, reading done, we sat down to have a look at the site. It was really straight forward and user friendly. Once I’d signed up I was immediately placed into the class ‘community’. Straight away I could see information about our daughter and the points that she’d been awarded that day. There was a message on the ‘stories’ board from the teacher; ‘Welcome to Class Dojo, I am looking forward to sharing the super work which the class produce’. I had the ability to comment and like posts and noticed a message section where I could message the teacher directly. I’d been planning to write a thank you letter anyway for the great work they had been doing with our daughter on long division. You know teaching is great when your child comes home and excitedly teaches you stuff you didn’t know. Class Dojo made it quicker and easier to provide this feedback.

In just a short time, I was beginning to see beyond the shiny new and recognised the value the platform could bring. I think it’s really important for schools and parents to continually improve relationships, communication and flow of information between teachers and parents. It’s helpful, particularly when it comes to supporting your children with things that you haven’t done for years, have changed lots or perhaps things that if you are honest about, you were never good at in the first place! It’s great to hear about progress, what’s being learned in school and how you can support. Parents evenings are a help, but waiting for them to come around once a year I’m sure leads to many missed opportunities. I know some parents probably won’t ever engage in whatever is put in front of them; a stance that really frustrates me. But for many parents, platforms like this could be a thing and certainly help contribute to approaching education in a 21st century style.

So what can we learn from this approach in business and particularly within our roles in Learning and Development? It’s got me thinking and hopefully you too. Think about the learners we are supporting and how we communicate with their parents, aka their managers. I’m not saying that managers conduct themselves in a parent style with their team, or at least let us hope not. I am saying though they have a vested interest in the learning progress of their teams. They are stakeholders in the process, just like a parent is a stakeholder in the process of child education. So what are the considerations here?

  • How do we communicate and involve line managers in learning?
  • How do we build a community which supports them as well as those that are learning?
  • What tools do we make available to help them support learners embed learning back in their roles?
  • How can we improve those relationships, communication and the flow of information?

There is technology to support us in building these communities but we don’t have to just rely on that. Good old conversation, networking and building strong relationships with line managers is a fundamental part of our role in L&D.

I’m interested to find out more from you. How do you do these things? What best practice can you share?

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Replies

  • Very interesting article. I have two children currently in secondary school and have similar experiences in terms of software Learning platforms and tools made available by schools for better communication and information between school, students and parents.

    Such implementstions are a very good thing - if/when they generate quality outputs, BUT unfortunately not naturally structured enough. There are about three different tool pathways entering into various points of the L&D platform which to be honest with you, i sometimes get lost. To clearly see what my child is actually doing and viewing feedback has also proved to be confusing. Hence, i chosen only of 2 many available pathways and stuck to them, which also probably means that all parties concerned are missing out on a lot, especially where simplicity of accessibility is concerned and effective engagement on the part of the pupil is concerned.

    Recently, i sent an email to each of my children's tutors to agree 2 main things:

    1. Have a phone conference.
    2. Have a face-to-face conference

    Both conferences are intended to provide a walk through again of the various platforms/pathways that they adopt in school and most significantly how to better engage both parents and pupils.

    No.1 has already taken place but no.2 does not take place till mid January next year. I am hoping that things will be more positive after the meeting and maybe, just maybe, see my son grinning home with his 2nd term school assessment report.

    My undertaking with the above mentioned is also on my part personally, going to serve as a part of my business feasibility approach to implementing L&D platforms and structures with client organisations.
    • Hi Tabitha,

      Sorry I've not replied sooner. Your post got me thinking when I first saw it but only now having the chance to reply.

      You raise some really important points. Very often schools introduce technology that is very new to them and no doubt adds a bit of weight on to the already busy professional lives they lead. However, procuring and introducing technology is just the beginning as I suspect you think yourself too. There's a whole load of work beyond that point on embedding it, supporting people to use it, get the most out of it and really embed it.

      Similar can be said for the learning platforms we introduce into our organisations. I think people often underestimate the work involved in getting true momentum going. I know I've fallen over that obstacle before now. One of the best explanations of this that stuck with me was an Ignite session that Community Mike Collins did last year called 'Don't Believe the Hype'. It's only five minutes long or so and might give you some good thoughts for your business feasibility work. 

      I'd be interested to hear back from you on whether it does.

      Check it out just here (it's the first video in the post): http://community.dpgplc.co.uk/blog/sessions-from-cipdldshow-to-igni...

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