INFORMAL LEARNING IN THE WORKPLACE: THE ROLE OF

UNCONFERENCES

ALISON MCNAB DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

@ALISONMCNAB #MashDMU#ILI2012 Internet Librarian International 2012 C202: Rethinking Roles: New skills, new learning

WHY INFORMAL LEARNING?

• Staff development budgets• Disruptive technologies

– Social media

• The unconference “movement”• Freedom to explore

– Training Time Entitlement

An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization. Wikipedia

Oxford Dictionaries

STAFF DEVELOPMENT

• Formal– Remember the Library “training hour”?– Internal vs external training– Organisation-led staff development

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Informal– Unconferences: MashLib, TeachMeets, Library Camp– Twitter: TweetUps, #LibChat– 23 Things– In-house library conferences

#MashDMU – MAKING IT LOCAL

• Regular meetings

• A hashtag!

• The #MashDMU blog

http://librarymashups.our.dmu.ac.uk/

#MashDMU – MAKING IT LOCAL

• Sharing good practice

• Up-skilling staff

• Service development– Enhancing the student experience

TWITTER

• #MashDMU

• Analogue Twitter

CHALLENGES

• Staff working patterns• Reticence about social media• Need to stop listening and start sharing!

• Extending the format– e-books unconference

REFERENCES

• Analogue Twitter Timothy Collinson, University of Portsmouth @timpaa

http://www.port.ac.uk/library/about/librarians/collinson/

• How to run an unconference (Lanyrd blog)http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/unconference-howto/

• Mashed Library wikihttp://www.mashedlibrary.com/

Thank you!

Any Questions?

Alison McNabamcnab@dmu.ac.uk

#AlisonMcNab

http://librarymashups.our.dmu.ac.uk/