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Tagoras

Continuing Education Strategy, Marketing, Technology Blog

Celisa Steele

A Why-To and How-To on Hot Seats, AKA Collaborative CoachingTM

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Collaborative Coaching (hot-seat)
Collaborative CoachingTM at the 2015 Leading Learning Symposium

Here at Tagoras we help organizations in the businesses of lifelong learning, and we’re in that business ourselves. This is the final post in a three-part series that unpacks a few of the ways we’ve rethought typical learning formats at Tagoras events. (Read the first post, about Curated Connections TM, and the second post, about Dynamic PanelsTM, on the Tagoras blog.)

In each post, I share why we used the approach and explain the how of the approach, to make it as easy as possible for you to try it out, whether as is or with tweaks.

The focus in this post is on a format we’ve heard referred to as a “hot seat.” In fact, we used the term “hot seat” at our two-day placed based 2015 Leading Learning Symposium. But we’re rebranding the format for Learning • Technology • Design 2018, an extended virtual conference held throughout February, as Collaborative CoachingTM (sounds less intimidating while still being descriptive, we think).

As with Curated Connections and Dynamic Panels, we see potential for all these formats in different contexts—online and off, with smaller and larger groups, and so on. If your organization offers learning events (or wants to start), read on to find out more about Collaborative Coaching and whether it might be a fit for your organization.

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A Why-To and How-To on Rethinking Panels: Dynamic PanelsTM

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Dynamic Panel with Intentionally Empty Stool
A Dynamic PanelTM at Learning • Technology • Design 2016 (with a fourth stool empty by design)

Tagoras exists to help organizations in the businesses of lifelong learning and is in the lifelong learning business itself. So,  we’re running a three-part series that unpacks a few of the ways we’ve rethought typical learning formats at Tagoras events. (Read the first post, about Curated Connections TM, on the Tagoras blog.)

In each part of the series, I share why we used the approach and explain the how of each, to make it as easy as possible for you to try them out, whether as is or with some tweaks of your own.

The focus of this post is a format that plays with the traditional panel, and we used the format at the Learning • Technology • Design (LTD) conference in the spring of 2016. That inaugural LTD was a two-day, placed-based event with around 100 attendees, but this panel approach could be modified to work in different contexts—online, with fewer or more attendees, etc. (We converted Learning • Technology • Design to an online experience, and we’ll next hold LTD in February 2018, as an extended virtual conference, with sessions spread throughout the month.)

If your organization offers learning events (or wants to start), read on for the second of three ideas to try: Dynamic PanelsTM.

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A Why-To and How-To on a Structured Approach to Networking: Curated ConnectionsTM

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Curated Connections
Curated ConnectionsTM at the 2015 Leading Learning Symposium

Tagoras exists to help organizations in the businesses of lifelong learning—and we’re in that business too. This post is the first in a three-part series that unpacks a few of the ways we’ve rethought typical learning formats at our Leading Learning Symposium and Learning • Technology • Design (which will next be held in February 2018 as an extended virtual conference).

In each part of the series, I’ll share why we used the approach and explain the how of each, to facilitate you experimenting with them (nothing like a little hands-on learning!).

While we used all three formats at two-day, place-based learning conferences with 100 or fewer attendees, they could be modified to work in the context of other learning events—ones that happen online, last longer or shorter, or are bigger or smaller. So if your organization offers learning events, and you want to refresh and, more importantly, improve how you connect with learners, read on for the first of three ideas to try: Curated ConnectionsTM.

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Capacity and Leadership: How Does Your Organization Stack Up?

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Leadership, Capacity

Capacity and leadership are two of the five domains around which we built the Learning Business Maturity Model.

In our experience, capacity—the human resources and technology that can be put against devising and executing a strategy—is an area critical to the success of a learning and education business. In our experience too, capacity is an area where what’s available often isn’t sufficient to the tasks at hand. Too many associations say too often that they’re strapped for money and staff to devote to key tasks—they don’t have the capacity to address current needs, much less to support innovation and growth.

Leadership is essential for prioritizing and building capacity as well as for the overall success of a learning and education business. And, again, it can be an area of weakness for many organizations—the leaders are overworked or feel compelled to give their time and attention to other aspects of the organization, leaving the learning business to run itself (often without sufficient capacity), which—spoiler alert—doesn’t usually end well.

Here, drawing on information from our Association Learning + Technology 2017 report, I want to look at three data points that tie to the capacity and leadership domains—the size of educational staff at associations, the use of professional instructional designers, and the prevalence of chief learning officers—as well as the implications and opportunities for buried in the numbers.

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The Maturity Gap: What’s Holding Many Learning Businesses Back

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Photo of child's mouth with missing front teeth

What do you get when you cross a lack of strategy with an absence of process and a failure to use data for decision-making? It’s no joke that what you get is a maturity gap—and the findings reported in Association Learning + Technology 2017 make it clear that just such a maturity gap exists for many membership organizations. [Read more…] about The Maturity Gap: What’s Holding Many Learning Businesses Back

Learning Business Manifesto

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Image of work "Manifesto" for Learning Business Manifesto

Lifelong learning is the imperative of our age, and those who lead learning in their fields will lead their fields.

That’s the Learning Business Manifesto in short form, and it underpins our thinking in general and has influenced much of our work, including the Learning Business Maturity Model.

In today’s world where change happens more rapidly than ever, where people change jobs more frequently than before, and where people live longer, learning is not a nice to have or something that you can check off your list as completed when you leave high school or college or even grad school. Lifelong learning is imperative. [Read more…] about Learning Business Manifesto