THE IMPORTANCE OF STORY - Lawrence Sipe

Narrative or "story" is what scholars from a variety of fields (cognitive psychology, psychotherapy, children's literature, history) call a "primary act of mind." In other words, it is basic to our experience and learning as human beings. If I ask you what you did for the weekend, you will tell me a story, with a beginning, middle and end. Indeed, there is a reason that across all the world's major religions, the lessons imparted through stories. This module will explore story telling through that which we all have experienced — children's literature. We will use children's literature, particularly picturebooks (with their combination of word and visual image), to recall the deep structures common across cultures and nations through the organizing characteristics of narrative and story. It's an important lesson to recall how powerful a well-told tale can be, one that can be applied in structuring multimedia learning activities and designing meaningful connections between word and image.

NEW DOGS OLD TRICKS, Learning Video Production in the Workplace - Amit Das

In 2010, net analysis firm Cisco VNI Forecast predicted that by 2014, 90% of all web traffic will be video. Even if one presumes a little self-interest on Cisco's part, even the most ardent critic would likely admit that this future is conceivable and perhaps inevitable. That same critic, though may point out that it may be equally likely that this future holds hours of mind-numbingly boring, tedious, poorly constructed and unwatchable video.

What about you? Are you ready for this new world of all-pervasive video? Do you know how to make videos that folks would actually watch? Can you communicate effectively, engagingly and creatively with video? Do you know how get and hold attention long enough to communicate, to teach, to motivate and, perhaps, to inspire. So what are you going to do about it? Technology alone will not be enough; everyone will have to become a filmmaker and learn how to craft a powerful story using moving images and sound! In this short workshop, you will be given a primer and introduction to storytelling through motion pictures, practicing and honing audio-visual communication skills you can use at work, at home, and for life.

EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER
Using Branching Narratives to Deploy Experience - Ken Spero

Experience is the best teacher. This age-old adage is universally accepted. Unfortunately, organizations have neither the time nor the budget to allow their people to learn through the school of hard knocks. Computer Based Simulations Branching Narratives offers a solution to this problem in that it provides organizations with an opportunity to capture the necessary experience their employees need in a very deployable format and it allows participants to gain experience in a safe environment, without the bruising. The combination of content, context and time provides an opportunity for participants to engage with the issues both intellectually and also emotionally, allowing for greater depth in the processing.

What makes this approach so compelling is that the simulations are driven by the power of the underlying narrative. The strength of the story is what grabs the student and motivates them to go through the application and gain experience with the targeted issues. The better the narrative, the more students are stimulated to use their imagination and see themselves in the experience as it unfolds — in turn making new contributions to their experience portfolios. The traditional challenge with this approach has been that simulations are too costly and time consuming to produce let alone too complicated. This workshop will introduce the participants to a framework for experience design, which combines one's work experience and expertise with the power of storytelling. Simulation is not a science; it is just a way of organizing your thinking. This workshop will help participants to organize for experience.

THE COMPUTER BOYS TAKE OVER - Nathan Ensmenger

One of the big goals of The Computer Boys book was to help shift the focus of the history of computing from hardware to software, from machines to people — and not just the usual people, the "great man" inventors that dominate most popular histories of computing, but the thousands of largely anonymous men and women who worked to construct the computerized systems that form the basic infrastructure of our modern, information-centric society. Nathan Ensmenger will provide key insights from this work, suggesting ways in which the narrative of humans collectively acting on problems have generated incredible outcomes, inspiring others to advance and build upon success.

LEARNING & CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - Nien-hê Hsieh

Corporate social responsibility is becoming a critical business concern. Research suggests that "doing the right thing" has both an impact on stock price as well as employee recruitment, engagement and retention. Most often CSR is housed with either a public affairs, marketing, or corporate foundation. Nevertheless, the organizational position of CSR does not remove it from being something CLOs should address. The challenge is whether organizations can identify ways in which learning and development can be leveraged to maximize social impact, and whether CLOs can leverage their organization's CSR strategy to further their mission to develop employees and make them more productive.

Penn, as a leading "social impact" university, will work with learning congress attendees to explore this issue. We will divide the afternoon into two parts. During the first part, we will break attendees up into teams and assign them Wharton MBA "WSI" students to facilitate the development of strategies to mutually leverage learning and social impact. This provides an opportunity for Wharton students interested in social impact to learn from learning executives, and vice versa.

Then, the groups will report out and get feedback from a leading scholar in these issues. The day will culminate with the same scholar interviewing a panel of CLOs whose organizations are doing interesting CSR work.