Where phone and Skype remain the gold standard for one-to-one communication (and learning), many of us find value in conference calls, irrespective of the technology (phone, Skype, Webex, Hangouts…) used. Conference calls may seem as unimpressive or mundane as that other piece of paradigm-changing learning technology, the whiteboard - but that’s the point. They are learning technology that is already embedded into the fabric of work, and directly contribute to informal and incidental learning across time and geography. The pedagogical affordances of conference calls include structure, transparency, dialogue, and accountability. Structure "Structured agenda" "Used as a to-do list" "Ensures that I’m focusing on kind of priority one-two-three" "A very good way to stay organized when you have people traveling" Transparency "forces us to be transparent" "If there are cloudy areas, it exposes [them] and moves us forward." Dialogue "anyone can join " "a forum" "open discussion" "conversation is a much more efficient way to work than using email in a lot of cases" Accountability "So you say look: why don’t we get on the phone and talk this through. " "your peers and your colleagues are on the calls" "allows for people to say, by the way here is an issue that I am facing that I haven’t thought about." Photo: Doc Porter Museum of Telephone History,  Houston Texas, USA (Texas.713/flickr.com)

Webinars reproduce the structure and format of the formal training workshop in an online space. The sole positive distinction for participants is that they may now participate from anywhere. However, to ask questions or otherwise contribute requires one to be present at a specific time (synchronously). Recordings of webinars are usually made available, so in theory we may catch up after the event but lose the ability to connect to others… and seldom actually do. If there wasn’t time (or justification) when it happened, that is unlikely to change later. Like the face-to-face workshops they emulate, webinars require us to stop work in order to learn, which we can seldom afford or justify. They are mostly transmissive, as the available tools (Webex, for example) do not facilitate conversation. By default, most facilitators will mute everyone in a conference to avoid an unintelligible cacophony of multiple squawking voices. Despite the existence of a chat feature (a "back channel") that could be used for dialogue, most of us bring online the etiquette of face-to-face events, where chatting during a presentation is frowned upon. Yet, despite such limitations, two affordances of webinars represent a dramatic improvement over other learning technologies. First, they help to reduce the need for mission travel. Second, they allow us to display a slide deck, share a screen (making them a visual medium), or show participants (using their webcams). Where, initially, teams tend to use webinars for one-way knowledge transmission, as they gain experience they may begin to use the same technology for less formal communication, such as rapid feedback and evaluation from the field or between stakeholders who cannot gather in the same place. Photo: Empty (schnaars/flickr.com)

We are both consumers and producers of publications, whether in print or online. Publications are static containers for knowledge from the pre-Internet era. Even if they are now mostly digital, the ways in which we think about them remains tied to the past. Nevertheless, at their best, they provide a useful reference point, baseline, or benchmark to establish a high-quality standard that is easy, cheap and effective to disseminate. In the worst, they take so much time to prepare that they are out of date even before they are ready for circulation, reflect consensus that is so watered-down as to be unusable, and are expensive - especially when printed copies are needed - to produce, disseminate, stock and revise. With respect to the knowledge we consume, some of us may heretically scorn formal guidelines and other publications. Reading as an activity "remains a challenge". Others manage to set aside time to pore over new guidelines and other reference content, journals, or online sources. Yet others cannot justify such time because they prioritize their own knowledge production rather than its consumption. The development of guidelines, training manuals, and other standards- and evidence-based approaches remains an accepted formal process of knowledge development that also embeds many of the benefits of informal learning, at least for its participants. When peers gather to think and work together, to figure out what should be put into the publication-as-container and why, this is often a dynamic learning process. Dialogue as real-time peer review mixes with more formal review, editing, and revision. Serendipity and creativity are not just possible, but more likely in those spaces, especially when there is one or more layer of social interaction. So the challenge for learning strategy is to figure out how to capture not just the knowledge artefact of such a process, but also the community, affective, and other social dimensions that help build trust and relationships, to then keep this knowledge current and put it to work - for both the immediate participants and those learners who, in the past, were mere recipients or readers. Photo: Read the news (Georgie Pauwels/flickr.com)

Even as computer-mediated communication is now embedded into nearly every aspect of life, the sentiment persists that written and therefore distance communication is intrinsically inferior. Here is the very interesting introduction from Andrew Feenberg’s classic article - written in the late 1980s - calling into question the presumption of superiority in the face-to-face encounter: In our culture the face-to-face encounter is the ideal paradigm of the meeting of minds. Communication seems most complete and successful where the person is physically present ‘in’ the message. This physical presence is supposed to be the guarantor of authenticity: you can look your interlocutor in the eye and search for tacit signs of truthfulness or falsehood, where context and tone permit a subtler interpretation of the spoken word. Plato initiated our traditional negative view of the written word. He argued that writing was no more than an imitation of speech, while speech itself was an imitation of thought. Thus writing would be an imitation of an imitation and low indeed in the Platonic hierarchy of being, based on the superiority of the original over the copy. For Plato, writing detaches the message from its author and transforms it into a dead thing, a text. Such a text, however, can cross time (written records) and space (mail), acquire objectivity and permanence, even while losing authenticity (Derrida, 1972a). That we still share Plato’s thinking about writing can be shown in how differently we respond to face-to-face, written, typed and printed forms of communication. These form a continuum, ranging from the most personal to the most public. Feenberg, A. The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing. Mindweave: Communication, computers, and distance education 22-39 (1989). Photo: Marble statue of  the ancient greek philosopher Plato (Source: alienaxioms.com)

Experience is the best teacher, we say. This is a testament to our lack of applicable quality standards for training and its professionalization, our inability to act on what has consequently become the fairly empty mantra of 70-20-10, and the blinders that keep the economics (low-volume, high-cost face-to-face training with no measurable outcomes pays the bills of many humanitarian workers, and per diem feeds many trainees…) of humanitarian education out of the picture. We are still dropping people into the deep end of the pool (i.e., mission) and hoping that they somehow figure out how to swim. We are where the National Basketball Association in the United States was in 1976. However, if the Kermit Washingtons in our space were to call our Pete Newells (i.e., those of us who design, deliver, or manage humanitarian training), what do we have to offer? The corollary to this question is why no one seems to care? How else could an independent impact review of DFID’s five-year £1.2 billion investment in research, evaluation and personnel development conclude that the British agency for international development "does not clearly identify how its investment in learning links to its performance and delivering better impact"… with barely anybody noticing? Let us just use blended learning, we say. Yet the largest meta-analysis and review of online learning studies led by Barbara Means and her colleagues in 2010 found no positive effects associated with blended learning (other than the fact that learners typically do more work in such set-ups, once online and then again face-to-face). Rather, the call for blended learning is a symptom for two ills. First, there is our lingering skepticism about the effectiveness of online learning (of which we make demands in terms of outcomes, efficacy, and results that we almost never make for face-to-face training), magnified by fear of machines taking away our training livelihoods. Second, there is the failure of the prevailing transmissive model of e-learning which, paradoxically, is also responsible for its growing acceptance in the humanitarian sector. We have reproduced the worst kind of face-to-face training in the online space with our click-through PowerPoints that get a multiple-choice quiz tacked on at the end. This is unfair, if only because it only saves the trainer (saved from the drudgery of delivery by a machine) from boredom. So the litany about blended learning is ultimately a failure of imagination: are we really incapable of creating new ways of teaching and learning that model the ways we work in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) humanitarian contexts? We actually dialogue, try, fail, learn and iterate all the time - outside of training. How can humanitarians who share a profoundly creative problem-solving learning culture, who operate on the outer cusp of complexity and chaos… do so poorly when it comes to organizing how we teach and learn? How can organizations and donors that preach accountability and results continue to unquestioningly pour money into training with nothing but a fresh but thin coat of capacity-building paint splashed on? Transmissive learning - whatever the medium - remains the dominant mode of formal learning in the humanitarian context, even though everyone knows patently that such an approach is both ineffective and irrelevant when it comes to teaching and learning the critical thinking skills that are needed to deliver results and, even more crucially, to see around the corner of the next challenge. Such approaches do not foster collaborative leadership and team work, do not provide experience, and do not confront the learner with complexity. In other words, they fail to do anything of relevance to improved preparedness and performance. If you find yourself appalled at the polemical nature of the blanket statements above - that’s great! I believe that the sector should be ripe for such a debate. So please do share the nature of your disagreement and take me to task for getting it all wrong (here is why I don’t have a comments section). If you at least reluctantly acknowledge that there is something worryingly accurate about my observations, let’s talk. Finally, if you find this to be darkly depressing, then check back tomorrow (or subscribe) on this blog when I publish my presentation at the First International Forum on Online Humanitarian training. It is all about new learning and assessment practice that models the complexity and creativity of the work that humanitarians do in order to survive, deliver, and thrive. Painting: Peter Paul Rubens. From 1577 to 1640. Antwerp. Medusa’s head. KHM Vienna.

This is my presentation at the First International Forum on Humanitarian Online Training (IFHOLT) organized by the University of Geneva on 12 June 2015. I describe some early findings from research and practice that aim to go beyond "click-through" e-learning that stops at knowledge transmission. Such transmissive approaches replicate traditional training methods prevalent in the humanitarian context, but are both ineffective and irrelevant when it comes to teaching and learning the critical thinking skills that are needed to operate in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments faced by humanitarian teams. Nor can such approaches foster collaborative leadership and team work. Most people recognize this, but then invoke blended learning as the solution. Is it that - or is it just a cop-out to avoid deeper questioning and enquiry of our models for teaching and learning in the humanitarian (and development) space? If not, what is the alternative? This is what I explore in just under twenty minutes. This presentation was first made as a Pecha Kucha at the University of Geneva’s First International Forum on Online Humanitarian Training (IFHOLT), on 12 June 2015. Its content is based in part on LSi’s first white paper written by Katia Muck with support from Bill Cope to document the learning process and outcomes of Scholar for the humanitarian contest.  Photo: All the way down (Amancay Maahs/flickr.com)

This is my presentation at the Online Learning Summit in London on 16 June 2015. I asked participants to choose between a set of four questions: Question #1: Why are learning, education and training so impervious to change? Number two is the Extinction Event question: It’s 2025. Your organization ceased to exist in 2020.  What happened? What was your role, i.e. the role of the learning leader in what happened?  What are you doing now? Question #3 is about LSi’s capabilities: What problems can we help you solve? And, last but not least, Question #4: why does e-learning suck? I will let you guess which question(s) were chosen for the discussion and workshop… Credit where credit is due: the Then-And-Now photo series is from a brilliant presentation by Michael T. Moe at the Global Leadership Congress held in Philadelphia a long time ago where I was a featured speaker. The Ferrari pit stop crew as a model for mission performance was first shown to me by Karen E. Watkins (University of Georgia) and Maya Drobnjak (Australian Army). Kermit Washington’s story (completely unknown to the London participants) is told by James Surowiecki in his New Yorker article Better All The Time.

This should be fun (and interesting). I’ll be heading to Amsterdam on July 21st for Google EDU’s Moonshot Summit. This event aims to bring "together top innovators from around the globe to design moonshot projects that will be launched in the Fall". Attendees were selected, we are told, because of our "experience and belief that education can be improved for innovation". The moonshot co-exists with skunk works, DARPA, braintrust and many other terms that describe the conditions, process, or outcomes that foster and drive innovation. Google’s concept of a moonshot intersects innovation and scale, and posits that, in specific circumstances, scaling up can define innovation. "Instead of a mere 10% gain" Google’s Project X team explains, "a moonshot aims for a 10x improvement over what currently exists": The combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible, is the essence of a moonshot. This event in Amsterdam is led by Esther Wojcicki, whose work  around moonshots in education (and specifically blended learning in the classroom) I’ve just discovered. Photo: The last Saturn V launch carried the Skylab space station to low Earth orbit in place of the third stage (Wikipedia/public domain). #moonshotsummit Tweets

In February, Daniel Seaton and his colleagues shared data about the very high level of teacher participation (28% identified as past or present teachers) and engagement (over four times more active in discussion forums than non-teachers) in a series of MITx MOOCs.  Very interesting article when thinking of teachers as multipliers, mediators and facilitators of learning (and not just transmitters). Unlike earlier MOOC research that has been criticized for being ahistorical, Seaton shares the following example of pre-MOOC massive, open online education: One of the earliest precursors to modern MOOCs targeted high school teachers in the United States. In 1958, a post-war interpretation of introductory physics called "Atomic-Age Physics" debuted at 6:30 a.m. on the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) Continental Classroom. Daily viewership was estimated at roughly 250,000 people, and over 300 institutions partnered to offer varying levels of accreditation for the course. Roughly 5,000 participants were certified in the first year. Teachers were estimated to be 1 in 8 of all certificate earners,  indicating reach beyond the target demographic of high school teachers. Through its expansion of courses between 1958 and 1963, the Continental Classroom represented a bold approach in using technology to address national needs in education reform. In contrast, the current MOOC era has largely focused on student-centric issues like democratizing access. Source: Seaton, D.T., Coleman, C., Daries, J., Chuang, I., 2015. Enrollment in MITx MOOCs: Are We Educating Educators? EduCause Review. Ho, A.D., Chuang, I., Reich, J., Coleman, C.A., Whitehill, J., Northcutt, C.G., Williams, J.J., Hansen, J.D., Lopez, G., Petersen, R., 2015. HarvardX and MITx: Two Years of Open Online Courses Fall 2012-Summer 2014. Social Science Research Network Working Paper Series. Photo: Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (1950-1951) (ORAU.com)

So I’m reading John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University, which begins by asserting that the university "is a place of teaching universal knowledge". I’m fascinated by the historical context (Catholicism in Protestant England), by the strength and substance of the ideas, and by the narrative style of carefully-constructed arguments. I’m also struck, however, by the centrality of learning as transmission, the line of demarcation between invention and teaching, and the belief that it is possible to know by disconnecting from society (although I acknowledge that concentration and flow tend to require quiet, in a pragmatic sense): To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. […] He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire new. The common sense of mankind has associated the search after truth with seclusion and quiet. […] It must be allowed on the whole that, while teaching involves external engagements, the natural home for experiment and speculation is retirement. If all three of these characteristics of institutionalized knowledge creation and production no longer align with the demands of the world we live in, what needs to change and how likely is the change to occur within organizations founded on very different ideas and assumptions? Newman’s Idea is also crystal-clear with respect to the relationship between the university and the corporation (in his context, the Catholic Church): Just as a commander wishes to have tall and well-formed and vigorous soldiers, not from any abstract devotion to the military standard of height or age, but for the purposes of war, and no one thinks it any thing but natural and praiseworthy in him to be contemplating, not abstract qualities, but his own living and breathing men; so, in like manner, when the Church founds a University, she is not cherishing talent, genius, or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the sake of her children. Through the lens of organizational learning and the need for mission-driven organizations in a knowledge economy to invest in their people, this rationale stands, in my opinion. Photo: Aerial view of Finney Chapel, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, United States (oberlin.edu)

Lockheed’s Skunk Works may be one of the earliest models for sustaining innovation inside an organization - never mind the nefarious mission of making flying machines to kill people. These are the basic operations rules enunciated by founder Kelly Johnson in 1954, as cited in his successor Ben Rich’s book: The Skunk Works program manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should have the authority to make quick decisions regarding technical, financial, or operational matters. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and the industry. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people. Very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided in order to make schedule recovery in the face of failures. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don’t have the books ninety days late and don’t surprise the customer with sudden overruns. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are often better than military ones The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and the Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push basic inspection responsibility back to the subcontractors and vendors. Don’t duplicate so much inspection. The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to in advance of contracting. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn’t have to keep running to the bank to support government projects. There must be absolute trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised. Source: Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (1994). Kelly’s 14 Rules & Practices may also be found here. Photo: Skunk Works logo on Museum’s SR-71. Photo #2005-6014 by Dane Penland, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

This is the first in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). The unprecedented complexity and scale of the current Ebola outbreak demonstrated that existing capacities of organizations with technical, normative culture, methods and approaches are not necessarily scalable or adaptable to novel or larger challenges. Large and complex public health emergencies are different each time. Each new event poses specific problems. Hence, traditional approaches to standardize "best practice" are unlikely to succeed. What are the appropriate mechanisms for learning from each of them? More broadly, how do we change the capacity of individuals and systems to learn? "Huge praise is due to those who have responded to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. At the same time, the retrospective analysis that is just beginning has already revealed several glaring lessons to be heeded next time" (Petherick 2015:591). I believe that we can and should mobilize education and the affordances of technology that support it to tackle three questions: How do we ensure that lessons learned include the experience and expertise of communities on the frontline of the crisis? How can we ensure that lessons learned are retained, adapted and used by individuals, teams, and organizations? How close to the village can an online, distance learning initiative reach? If we improve access, inclusion and retention of lessons learned, we can then help address the following questions: What humanitarian health standards and normative guidelines are needed and how can they be developed to stay relevant in the face of increasingly complex crises, when every outbreak is different? How do we foster an organizational culture of improved coordination, leadership, and preparedness in and between organizations, governments, and local communities? How do we develop a global workforce with the surge capacity to respond to crises? These questions have an educational dimension that is not being addressed by current efforts. This is compounded by the fact that current humanitarian health education is mired by transmissive approaches that cannot allow for learners as knowledge producers - and that lessons must first be generated before they can be learned. This is why we urgently need a new education paradigm, supported by affordable, practical learning technologies and pedagogies, to strengthen humanitarian health response and preparedness. Tuesday, I’ll explore why learning is the hidden key to the strategic shift - called for by the World Health Organization - in how the world manages health crises. Reference: Petherick, Anna. "Ebola in West Africa: Learning the Lessons." The Lancet 385, no. 9968 (February 2015): 591-92. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60075-7.

This is the second in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). "Whereas health is considered the sovereign responsibility of countries, the means to fulfill this responsibility are increasingly global, and require international collective action and effective and efficient governance of the global health system." (Stocking 2015:10) "Effective crisis management for health", writes the World Health Organization in its management response to the Stocking report, "requires a series of strategic shifts" (Chan 2015:5). Calls for substantial modernization of emergency management capacity and preparedness have focused on resources to ensure rapid mobilization for the provision of logistics, operational support, and community mobilization. Yet, "the primary lesson so far has not been about the need for new response methods, but about human resources and coordination", wrote Anna Petherick in The Lancet in February 2015. "Building new treatment centres," she concludes, "was an easy task [sic] next to training and supervising people to staff them" (Petherick 2015:592). In other words, how we learn is key to the strategic shift in how the world manages health crises. Learning is the implicit process required to achieve the capacities sought. In-service training, the most prevalent form of formal learning, is only the tip of the iceberg. Every time we ask "how do we change the capacity of individuals and systems?", we are asking about how we learn (pedagogy) and how we know what we know (epistemology). For example, learning, education and training (LET) are not mentioned at all in the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR). Learning is the implicit process required to achieve the capacities described by the Regulations. And yet, we leave tacit the processes (the "how") which enable the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, skills and behaviors (competencies) needed in order for the health workforce and affected communities to face a health crisis. In Wednesday’s blog post, we’ll review online learning around Ebola so far - and examine whether such initiatives can contribute to the strategic shift in human resources and coordination.   References Chan, Margaret. "WHO Secretariat Response to the Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel." Geneva: World Health Organization, August 2015. Stocking, Barbara. "Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel." Geneva: World Health Organization, July 2015. Petherick, Anna. "Ebola in West Africa: Learning the Lessons." The Lancet 385, no. 9968 (February 2015): 591-92. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60075-7.  

This is the third in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). "The responsible use of technology in humanitarian action offers concrete ways to make assistance more effective and accountable, and to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Distance learning and online education are good examples of technology supporting these goals" (World Disasters Report 2013:10). There have been a number of online courses organized by humanitarian organizations as well as by higher education institutions. International organizations have developed e-learning courses such as MSF’s Ebola ebriefing and WHO’s Health Security Learning Platform, or leveraged existing online training packages such as IFRC’s scenario-based simulation modules on public health in emergencies. Some of the transmissive online courses around Ebola American, British, Dutch, and Swiss universities are amongst those who have produced open online courses distributed on MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platforms such as Coursera (Ebola Virus Disease: An Evolving Epidemic), Futurelearn (Ebola: Essential Knowledge for Health Professionals), and France Université Numérique (Ebola: Vaincre Ensemble!). All of these have focused on the transmission of information about the Ebola virus disease for general and/or specialist audiences, including those based in the field and in affected communities. MSF’s Keri Cohn, writing from the Bo-Ebola Treatment Center in Sierra Leone, provided an account of the challenges she faced in using one such course due to access difficulties. As an expat doctor, I have found your course […] to be excellent. Our national staff, who are local Sierra Leone nurses and clinical officers, have enrolled in the course on their mobile phone. However, because Internet is poor or not available, they have been unable to attend the course or [view videos]. In turn, with the help of MSF, I have been able to download [the content] and, together, in a group of around forty people, we have completed your course. This is remarkable testimony with respect to the potential (as well as technical limitations) of online learning to disseminate reliable information to health workers, the ability of organizations to overcome technological barriers in the face of urgent need for information, and the high level of motivation of field-based health workers to acquire new knowledge. But why should learning be a one-way street? What of the knowledge developed by Sierra Leone nurses and clinical officers through collaboration and engagement with people from the affected communities, peers from neighboring countries, and international staff? There is undoubtedly a massive amount of deep, continual learning happening in such a group through practice and experience, not to mention human bonds of friendship and solidarity, forged in the face of adversity. Learning - whatever the medium - cannot be reduced to the one-way transmission of information. Many of the online learning technologies of the recent past have been modeled after top-down, legacy training systems. In their basic approach and use in practice, these are heavily weighted to the transmission of centralized knowledge from the center (headquarters, the capital city) to the periphery (the community, village, or clinic). They are frequently ineffective, as the transmitted knowledge is often abstract and decontextualized, while the value of existing local knowledge, practices and understanding is not recognized or incorporated into the learning experience. Transmissive learning Transmissive learning remains the dominant mode of formal learning in the humanitarian context, even though everyone knows that such an approach is ineffective when it comes to teaching and learning the critical thinking skills that are needed to deliver results and, even more crucially, to see around the corner of the next challenge. The moral economy of such transmissive education and training demands unquestioning compliance in the face of authority, lack of critical autonomy, and an absence of responsibility. Learners are treated as passive knowledge consumers rather than active knowledge producers, clearly out of alignment with both the spirit and practical needs of a humanitarian health crisis and processes of human capacity building in local communities and institutions. Such approaches are unlikely to foster collaborative leadership and team work, provide experience, or confront the learner with holistic complexity of specific sites and cases. In other words, they fail the crucial test of grounded relevance to improved preparedness and performance. What can education contribute? What can education contribute to the shape of future global health crisis response? What is the role of technology, beyond improving the efficiency of the transmission of information? Education research in many fields, including humanitarian work, has shown that significant learning, even transformative learning, is usually grounded in and builds upon experience. The educator’s role is to scaffold self-understanding, and to facilitate expansion of that self-understanding. In our volatile working environment, what we know (usually thought of as content-based knowledge) is replaced with how we are connected to others. That is how we stay current and informed. Learning nowadays is about navigation, discernment, induction and synthesis, more than memory and deduction. Memory has become less relevant in a world where so much knowledge is within reach within seconds. Networks are a powerful problem-solving resource that people naturally turn to when they need help. We rely on small, trusted networks to accelerate problem-solving (learning). Many new learning practices - through both formal and informal networks - develop organically, in the face of sometimes extreme circumstances. Often, it is exceptional leadership qualities in individuals (and sometimes their organizations) that make up for gaps and limitations of existing learning methods. Nevertheless, although humanitarians may initiate and lead change through their own learning, organizations must create facilitative structures to support and capture learning in order to move toward their missions (Yang 2003:154). In Thursday’s blog post, I’ll share the experience of a pilot course that sought to overcome the limitations of transmissive learning to support knowledge co-construction by people with experience in humanitarian operations.   References Stocking, Barbara. "Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel." Geneva: World Health Organization, July 2015. http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/ebola/ebola-panel-report/en/.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Sharples, Mike. "FutureLearn: Social Learning at Massive Scale." presented at the Learning With MOOCs II (LWMOOCS), Columbia Teacher’s College, October 3, 2015. http://www.slideshare.net/sharplem/social-learning-at-massive-scale-lwmoocs-2015-slideshare.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Vinck, Patrick (Ed.). World Disasters Report: Focus on Technology and the Future of Humanitarian Action. Geneva, Switzerland: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2013. Yang, Baiyin. "Identifying Valid and Reliable Measures for Dimensions of a Learning Culture." Advances in Developing Human Resources 5, no. 2 (May 1, 2003): 152-62. doi:10.1177/1523422303005002003.

This is the fourth in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). "Continuous learning at the individual level is necessary but not sufficient to influence perceived changes in […] performance. It is argued that learning must be captured and embedded in ongoing systems, practices, and structures so that it can be shared and regularly used to intentionally improve changes in knowledge performance." (Marsick and Watkins 2003:134) Scholar is an online learning environment for collaborative learning developed through the education research and practice by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope of the University of Illinois College of Education. It is designed to produce (and not simply consume) knowledge, in order to develop higher-order thinking, analysis, reflection, evaluation, and application. It closely models forms of leadership and collaboration at the heart of how humanitarians learn and work together to solve problems. A pedagogical pattern that models how humanitarians teach and learn In November 2013, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) piloted the Scholar learning environment by offering a four-week course open to anyone with experience in at least one emergency operation. Funded by the American Red Cross, the course was supported by Emergency Response Unit (ERU) managers in National Societies and the FACT and ERU team in Geneva. The call for participants was a single-page summary of the course, linked to a simple enrollment questionnaire. This call was publicized on the IFRC’s web site and circulated by National Societies, partners and supporters. 671 people enrolled in less than two weeks, half of them from the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. Of those, 591 met the criteria for enrollment and 285 people (48%) fully engaged in the course work and community dialogue. Above all, the group was characterized by its diversity: over 100 countries (including 67 National Societies), hundreds of roles and missions were represented, with experience ranging from a single operation to over fifty. Click to view slideshow. The purpose of the course was to share and reflect on how we learn before, during, and after an emergency operation. There were no guidelines, reference materials, assigned readings, or expert lectures. Instead, learners were tasked with developing their own case study, guided by a structured evaluation rubric developed by global disaster management and learning experts. Engaged in this process, they found intrinsic motivation to contribute to the community dialogue, and soon began to share reference documents that they had found useful in their own work. It was difficult in the beginning, but as I was writing and reading the different posts in the Scholar Community, information was coming back to me. Reading and writing [is] not what I love the most in my life, but I [discovered that] once you are reading or writing about something, you like, it [becomes] a passion. I am also getting better in ENGLISH [through] writing […] and reviewing others’ case study. In addition, each week was punctuated by a "live learning moment", a synchronous session using webinar technology. In Week 1, JP Taschereau, a seasoned humanitarian and head of operations from the IFRC, described how he learned to take on completely new responsibilities and solve complex problems (that included managing air operations!) in the early days following the December 2004 Tsunami. This inspired and encouraged the community, engaged in writing their first draft during that week. In the following weeks, these live sessions were used to share insights, questions, and breakthroughs by the participants, with strong facilitation but no expert intervention. The participants engaged in the written activity (writing a case study) in three stages. First, they had to develop a short case study describing how they prepared for an operation they were in, what the gaps were in their knowledge, skills and competencies, and how they learned during the operation (Stage 1 - Writing). Second, they had to peer review the case studies of three other participants (Stage 2 - Review). Third, they had to revise their case study using the inputs and comments received from their peers (Stage 3 - Revision). "I have been writing reports and case studies", explained Sue, a learner in this course, "but this was one of its kind, as I had to assess myself and my work, my mistakes and my learning. In general […] we just pick a subject and start writing about that, but in this case study I was a subject […]. I discovered a lot of things which [I had not considered] before". In one month, 105 (37%) completed case studies, drafting, reviewing, and revising over 700 pages of new insights into the learning processes in emergency operations. Such a rapid pace (four weeks) and massive volume had never been achieved before. The IFRC Scholar pilot was then researched by the University of Illinois team. Analysis of the knowledge produced, the learning processes, and evaluation feedback from participants demonstrated that: open learning in the humanitarian context made productive use of diversity possible (across geographies, levels of experience, roles or position, organizations, etc.); intrinsic motivation was nurtured and scaffolded by the Scholar learning process, leading to a high level of engagement and commitment from learners who forged bonds that, in some cases, outlasted the course; the combination of sharing experience (community) and peer review (case study) led to collaboration and reflective learning outcomes; and the knowledge produced was of surprisingly high quality (given the open enrollment and diversity). Overall, the Scholar learning environment facilitated an economy of effort that made a strategic shift in how the pilot’s cohort learned more pragmatically realizable than in the past. To learn more about the Learning in emergency operations pilot course, download Dr Katia Muck’s white paper. In Friday’s final blog post in this series, we’ll try to determine how close to the ground a global and digital educational initiative can get. References Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. "Towards a New Learning: The Scholar Social Knowledge Workspace, in Theory and Practice." E-Learning and Digital Media 10, no. 4 (2013): 332. doi:10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.332. Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education. Second edition. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Marsick, Victoria J., and Karen E. Watkins. "Demonstrating the Value of an Organization’s Learning Culture: The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire." Advances in Developing Human Resources 5, no. 2 (May 1, 2003): 132-51. doi:10.1177/1523422303005002002. Magnifico, Alecia Marie, and Bill Cope. "New Pedagogies of Motivation: Reconstructing and Repositioning Motivational Constructs in the Design of Learning Technologies." E-Learning and Digital Media 10, no. 4 (2013): 483. doi:10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.483.

This is the final in a series of five blog posts reflecting on what is at stake in how we learn lessons from the Ebola crisis that erupted in 2014 and continued in 2015. A new blog post will be published each morning this week (subscribe here). "Opportunities to contain the virus were lost soon after, largely because of a lack of trust between local communities and the officials and medical professionals trying to nip the epidemic in the bud." (Petherick 2015:591) Online training of humanitarian professionals is one thing, but what about community participation? "Beneficiary communications" and "listening" approaches have emerged to encourage inclusive approaches to all aspects of humanitarian work. Learning needs to include not just professionals but also volunteers and affected families, whether or not they are involved in social mobilization efforts. As the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement has taught us, volunteers are far more than part-time humanitarians. They are embedded in their communities and learn to use the cultural and tacit knowledge from belonging to empower themselves, their families, neighbors, and every member of the community - whatever their status, in a fully inclusive way. Making sense of what happens in a community (and what should be done there, as well as how to do it), more so than ever before, requires a fluid, reciprocal (two-way) connection between communities and global knowledge and practice. Recognizing this, there are three practical questions: what is the pedagogical model (and technology to deploy it) that can scaffold such an inclusive approach; to what extent can we overcome limitations and barriers such as language or uneven access to the Internet, in the divide between the capital cities and the village; and how can we capture and process learning during a crisis. By opening up an inclusive "lessons learned" process to all involved in or affected by the Ebola crisis, a new learning system may: provide a practical demonstration of the notion of "shared sovereignty" in the interest of protecting public health when health crises reach across borders; contribute to mainstreaming community engagement as a core function when managing a health emergency. Every organization has already engaged its own internal processes to monitor, evaluate, and review what went right, what went wrong, and what to do about it. Some organizations may feel that they have already completed the most thorough review and evaluation process (including public scrutiny) they have ever undertaken. Between organizations, dialog may be more difficult but is nevertheless occurring, at least between individuals who have learned to trust each other and are more keenly aware than ever that their effectiveness depends on the quality of collaboration and coordination. Lessons learned is already a major topic of scholarship referenced in the scientific literature since 2014 (2,690 articles found by Google Scholar for the search terms "Ebola" and "lessons learned", with 70% of them published in 2015). However, many if not most of these processes rely on small, closed feedback loops, inside expert circles or established organizational hierarchies, limiting the ability of such reviews to achieve double-loop learning in which the governing values as well as actions are questioned. Mainstreaming community engagement is unlikely to be taken seriously if the communities are kept outside of such efforts that declare their intention to be inclusive but lack mechanisms to do so effectively. Resolving the technical barriers to access is necessary but insufficient to ensure community engagement in lessons learned. This is why we need an initiative that provides pedagogical affordances to facilitate the balance between central (global) and devolved (community) knowledge sources, key to recognition of the complementary value of both expert technical knowledge from the global perspective and the perspectives ‘from below’ of community health workers, volunteers, and others in the field. The objective is to open access the lessons learned process, increasing the volume (scalable to accommodate hundreds or thousands of participants), diversity (any organization, country, role in the epidemic), and efficiency (faster knowledge production without sacrificing quality). Furthermore, knowledge sharing and peer review ensure that participants are learning from each other as they work, so that the lessons identified and reflect on have an immediate impact across the network of those taking part (and, by extension, their work contexts and organizations). For participants in such a system, the process of community dialogue, knowledge sharing, peer review and revision will produce deep learning outcomes. The shared experience will also forge bonds of trust between individuals who otherwise might never meet, despite their common involvement in the crisis. Together, the learners will produce new knowledge that will be analyzed by the research project so that its output may inform the initiative’s organizational partners, and be available as a citable and extensible body of work going forward. The author would like to acknowledge Bill Cope for his ceaseless guidance and boundless patience and Kátia Muck, whose research and insights nourished his own. Reference Petherick, Anna. "Ebola in West Africa: Learning the Lessons." The Lancet 385, no. 9968 (February 2015): 591-92. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60075-7.

When we upgraded from ember v1.7.0 to v1.8.1 and from ember-data v1.0.0-beta.9 to v1.0.0-beta.12 we noticed that ember became very strict in the expected json. That's why not only we had to update the sideloading in our api, but also we had to adjust our test fixtures. This became a problem since we had very long fixtures and it became hard to control the data. That's why we switch to FactoryGuy. In our old situation the fixtures were used like this: Here on the left side you see an example of the fixtures we use. The right side shows how we use Pretender to mock CRUD requests with these fixtures. With FactoryGuy we only have to define the models that we use in the appliction as factories. Factory guy let us mock the store and gives functions to make objects from the defined factories and put them in the store. On the left side you see the factory that corresponds with the fixture showed above, and on the right side is the implementation of the factory in the application. For the create, update and delete requests made in the application, we also stop using our fixtures and MockResponses. FactoryGuy uses jquery-mockjax for this and implemented it in it's library. With this we can now do: test('save chapter without confirm', function () { expect(1); var newName = 'a new name' var learningSpace = make('learningSpace') visit('/spaces/' + learningSpace.id + '/chapters/new'); fillIn('#entry-title input', newName); fillIn('.editor-markdown .ember-text-area', 'markdown text'); testHelper.handleCreate('chapter', { name: newName }); click('#entry-options .button-save'); andThen(function () { var actual = currentRouteName(); var expected = 'chapter.index'; equal(actual, expected, 'expected ' + expected + ' but got ' + actual); }); }); Notice testHelper.handleCreate('chapter', { name: newName }); which mocks the create request for a chapter. If you have any questions ask us on Twitter

Lost: We can say whatever we want about the importance of being unique, but let’s admit it is always nice to belong. Belonging to some type of people allows us to reflect on ourselves and enables our development. One morning I’ve read an article about Generation Z (Gen Z), apparently I might be a part of it (mid 90's kid). After all of this time of thinking that I am a millennial, I got lost. So who are the kids of Gen Z, how do they learn and what is so different about them? iGeneration: Some call this generation "screen addicts". Others state that these kids have an attention span of a golden fish. But I would call us an online generation with limitless options and very limited time. We are not screen addicts, we just feel the urge to sort and access enormous amounts of different information. E.g. I am not only working with LearningSpaces marketing, I am also striving to finish my International Relations bachelor. Believe me, staying on top of the game is difficult: you need to read, talk and listen about various topics constantly. Multitasking is the key! Juggling: Gen Z doesn’t have an attention span of a fish, we have a so called 8 second filter. Using tools and apps to filter trending content reduces the amount of information we need to access. It becomes easier to concentrate, stay committed and focused. Even if iGeneration seems a bit unbalanced, broad interests allows us to recharge and reposition, in this way inspiring see same things from the different perspective.  Enlightenment:  In order to provide iGeneration with the best learning experiences there is a need to implement filtering everywhere. An option to combine and mix different topics, and create learning paths would produce the best results. Variety is Gen Z’s friend!  Found: Mass production of information is exhausting but exciting at the same time. Surfing the web is not a hobby anymore, it’s a life style. Even though Gen Z is not the first one to enter the virtual reality, we are the first ones to exploit it to the fullest.

A bunch of likeminded people are uniting during The Uprise Festival. And guess what, our LearningSpaces team will be there! We can’t wait to meet some great start-ups like:  WebinarGeek: Love webinars? Well this is a tool is for you! Created by a bunch of webinar enthusiasts, which means you will have a great experience while learning with them. Learning Stone: If you are a trainer or a coach this is a must to check out! Learning Stone supports organisations in their blended training and coaching efforts.  Springest: This platform will help you to filter and compare training programmes and courses across suppliers. It also provides some articles and tests about training, career and personal development. For all of the development and learning junkies these start-ups are a must visit. LearningSpaces at the Uprise Festival: We will be showing how easy it can be to share knowledge and learn from your peers. Stop by and have a chat with us about integration of blended learning in your working environment.

We recently changed the way header images are displayed in LearningSpaces. They used to be fixed height and were clipped at the sides depending on the screen resolution (a bit like the header of this blog). This would hide parts of the image which got really annoying, especially when using text in the image that is being clipped. So what we needed was a way for the images to maintain their aspect ratio. The solution to our problem was intrinsic ratio, which is often used for creating responsive videos. This technique makes use of the unique way padding-top and padding-bottom deal with percentage values, which will be interpreted as a percentage of the width of the containing element. Aspect Ratio The recommended dimensions for header images in LearningSpaces are 1280 by 720 pixels. The aspect ratio for these dimensions is 16:9 (= 1280:720). To get the needed percentage we divide 9 by 16, which gives us 0.5625 or 56.25%. Now we can apply the Intrinsic Ratio trick: <div class="header-image"> <div class="ratio"></div> </div> .header-image { width: 100%; &.ratio { padding-bottom: 56.25%; } } demo The problem with using this aspect ratio trick is that if the element has a max-height declared, it will not be respected. To get around this, we applied this hack to a pseudo-element instead: <div class="header-image"></div> .header-image { min-height: 300px; max-height: 500px; &::before { content: ''; display: block; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } } demo Adding the image This aspect ratio hack goes really well together with background images, especially in conjunction with background-size: cover;. Scales the image as large as possible and maintains image aspect ratio (image doesn't get squished). The image "covers" the entire width or height of the container. When the image and container have different dimensions, the image is clipped either left/right or top/bottom. source So if we use a 1280x720px background image it will cover the whole available area without being clipped. This is because padding-bottom: 56.25%; makes sure it will maintain the correct aspect ratio (16:9). .header-image { background: url(header-image.png) center; background-size: cover; &::before { content: ''; display: block; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } } In the demo below I've added a CSS animation to demonstrate the effect of intrinsic ratio while resizing. See the Pen Responsive intrinsic ratio w/ background image by Matthijs Kuiper (@snap) on CodePen. That's all there is to it. With just a little CSS you can scale elements on the fly while maintaining their aspect ratio. If you have questions or cool ideas on intrinsic ratio, please let us know on twitter!

Lost: We can say whatever we want about the importance of being unique, but let’s admit it is always nice to belong. Belonging to some type of people allows us to reflect on ourselves and enables our development. One morning I’ve read an article about Generation Z (Gen Z), apparently I might be a part of it (mid 90's kid). After all of this time of thinking that I am a millennial, I got lost. So who are the kids of Gen Z, how do they learn and what is so different about them? iGeneration: Some call this generation "screen addicts". Others state that these kids have an attention span of a golden fish. But I would call us an online generation with limitless options and very limited time. We are not screen addicts, we just feel the urge to sort and access enormous amounts of different information. E.g. I am not only working with LearningSpaces marketing, I am also striving to finish my International Relations bachelor. Believe me, staying on top of the game is difficult: you need to read, talk and listen about various topics constantly. Multitasking is the key! Juggling: Gen Z doesn’t have an attention span of a fish, we have a so called 8 second filter. Using tools and apps to filter trending content reduces the amount of information we need to access. It becomes easier to concentrate, stay committed and focused. Even if iGeneration seems a bit unbalanced, broad interests allows us to recharge and reposition, in this way inspiring see same things from the different perspective. Enlightenment: In order to provide iGeneration with the best learning experiences there is a need to implement filtering everywhere. An option to combine and mix different topics, and create learning paths would produce the best results. Variety is Gen Z’s friend! Found: Mass production of information is exhausting but exciting at the same time. Surfing the web is not a hobby anymore, it’s a life style. Even though Gen Z is not the first one to enter the virtual reality, we are the first ones to exploit it to the fullest.

I’m a working mom with a high energy toddler, a needy cat and a busy partner. Balancing your life as a business woman, a loving mom and partner while maintaining an active social life can be pretty difficult. Sometimes it might feel like everybody is pulling you in a different direction, while you are trying to keep calm and focus. On other days you find yourself having too much time and not knowing what to do. Just joking. That never happens. But here are some tricks and apps that help me deal: Work hard play hard I never said it gonna be easy, but if you want to be a power mom/ worker/ human being, you need indeed energy and lots of it. So don’t give in to tiredness and laziness. Your little one is in bed and your partner doesn’t mind to stay at home, go for it. You can get a babysitter, go for it. You have awesome parents/parents-in-law, go for it. An hour of free time a day keeps insanity away! Its for the greater good of everybody around you ;) But of course all of this means great organizational skills. Knowing what needs to be done and when. To organize my different lives I like to use Trello. The cool thing is its super easy to use and you can have different projects with a bunch of boards to get a perfect overview of your busy life (well sort of… haha). I have a project for each aspect of my life (whether its business, social or home stuff). So one project is e.g. LearningSpaces with a bunch of boards on e.g. development, sales and marketing. Each board has cards with a bunch of ToDos or stuff you are busy with (or whatever you want to organize). So you can keep everything perfectly organized in one place! Just do it Everybody always talks about planning and making time. I say ‘just do it’. Organize your To Dos, make a list (if you don’t already have one), and then DO them. Don’t think ‘I’ll finish that tomorrow’. Finish it today. Don’t set certain things aside. DO them now. Be your own drill master. And at the end of the day you can look at your list and think ‘Yes! I did it’ (even if it was just one thing). For a quick and simple ToDo list, I recommend Wunderlist. Just write down what you have to do for the day or the week, set a deadline, and DO it. And in the end when you tick it off the ever so rewarding ‘ping’ is already enough for a good start in the evening. Done for the day ‘ping’ ‘Ping’ ‘PING’!! Don’t worry be happy Of course we all want to be perfect… It stinks if something goes wrong, but sometimes you just have to let go. The more you stress about things, the harder it gets to shut off and be in the moment you are suppose to be in. You didn’t finish writing a proposition at work, your little one was sick, your cat is not potty trained yet? There is nothing you can do about it with pure willpower. Try to leave work at work and personal stuff at home (not including chitchat with co-workers about how great your kid is doing and that she must be a genius ;) My app recommendation: don’t use them. Don’t check your social apps at work and especially don’t use your work apps at home, including your work email! And yes, that is a hard one and I’m not particularly good at it myself, but at least try to reduce it to a bare minimum and be in the moment! Location location location This one is for all the dreamers among us. If you work in a sunny country at the beach while sipping gin tonics, great, but for those of us that work at an office day in day out staring at the rain outside: Break monotony! Take the bike to work, work standing up, take a walk during lunch, change office… anything to switch it up! Ideally you have an employer that encourages that with flexible work time or special lunches. If everything else fails, at least get a new beautiful desktop wallpaper every day with Kuvva. Specially curated from some of the world’s leading photographers, designers & illustrators. If you need any help with balancing the way you learn, don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter or just head to LearningSpaces and get a free trial!

Lately I have been thinking a lot about learning in the age of the tutorial and how it compares to actually learning a craft. When I look around me, it seems like most digital natives excel at the former and have at least some trouble with the latter. I know I do. Two years ago I found myself in a position where a profound technical understanding of modern web development was greatly beneficial, if not necessary. My knowledge was extremely outdated. So in a about half a year I learned to use CSS3 and HTML5, SCSS, Media Queries and designing for mobile, how to quickly create wireframes for prototyping, the power of Git and the command line, etc. Even some basic Ruby on Rails stuff. In the year that followed, however, I hardly expanded on my new-found knowledge and skills. If anything, I lost my chops. So how was I able to acquire these skills in a short time? And why did I have so much trouble pushing the envelope after that? I think it's because we are becoming problem-driven learners. It may have something to do with the fact that we have become so much better at asking the right questions to solve our problems. A trained human + google equals an extremely efficient problem solving machine. Sometimes it seems like for every little problem, there is an amazing free tutorial out there. This is great - following a tutorial is an awesome way of learning something. For me personally, the fact that I can immediately apply what I learned speeds up the learning process and benefits retention. The downside is - at least for me, that knowledge in the age of the tutorial is not even domain specific. It's problem specific. I've regularly surprised colleagues with half-guessed solutions for complicated software issues that reveal both a general cluelessness about computer science and some weirdly specific knowledge on a fringe subject. But what if you actually want to learn a craft? What if I do want to learn about computer science? Or become an actual cook, instead of emulating Jaimie Oliver one recipe at a time? Of course you could try to discipline yourself into learning a craft. Follow some courses online, sign up for late night classes... Or you can just do what I did: Make it your problem.

Within LearningSpaces we think it’s really important for people to contact us. For a long time we’ve only used Helpful for this and we gave it a good place in our UI. Since we’ve released Helpful in our app there were a lot of messages from our customers with feature request, questions on how to use the product, and bug reports. It helped us to understand what issues were helpful for our audience and what not. After that we continued to look at how we can improve our customer support and we found Intercom. Intercom offers to help with observing costumers, acquiring, engaging, learning, and with support. Of this list we use engaging with the basic plan, support with the pro plan and observe which is still free because it arrived in beta. We only let the admins and team owners in Intercom because of the pricing (for the support with the pro plan) all other users are still served by Helpful. Why intercom next to helpful? We already had a product that helped us supporting customers, why a new one that costs money? Helpful works mostly email based, customers send us a message through the app and we respond by email. With Intercom a user sends us a message and we reply in chat with that customer, this helps to respond faster, even with just a hello and the customer knows that we are on our way to help them. Our median response time is below 4 minutes and our customers praise us for that. Intercom gives us the possibility to make announcements about what we think is important or good to know in our app. It doesn’t have to be all over the screen but there will be a little notification with our message to which the customer can respond directly. There are stats in the Intercom app that gives us a good idea of how active the customers are. Based on these stats we send mails to them for coming back to the app, to add more spaces, chapters or paths. We use it also to send mails to notify users how far they are in there trial. Auto in app messages and mails We’re really happy with Intercom but when we started we had a hard time to get going. For us the interface of the app was hard to understand in the beginning. We didn’t know how to get to our settings or to the documentation we read minutes ago. The other thing we’re not really happy about is that not all of our users are in the app because of the extra costs, and thats left for consideration for now. All in all we’re really happy with it and feel that we should have implemented it a lot sooner. It was always in the backlog to do it sometime in the future, but using it made us understand that we couldn’t have begon too early with it.