13 Apr Week 8 in our biome series: Lessons from the Urban Jungle
Week 7 in our biome series: Lessons from the Shoreline.
This week in our Learning Ecosystems series, at cities, how they act as ecosystems and what we can learn from this in our design and management of learning management systems.
In cities, concrete replaces soil, steel structures replace trees and traffic flows like migrating herds through narrow streets. Sometimes the traffic acts as graceful elephants, other times like stampeding buffalo!
At first glance, cities look chaotic. There’s the ever-present cacophony of sound, to some a beautiful noise and to others more of an irritation. Movement swirls in ebbs and flows, with capricious crowds competing for space and a moment of stillness.
Cities function well when there are carefully coordinated systems to guide functionality. Whether visible or not, systems drive everything in the urban jungle. Transport networks move people. Power grids distribute energy. Water systems keep things flowing and communication networks connect millions of individuals. Remove one layer and the whole system begins to struggle. (Ask anyone in Johannesburg for a first-hand account of what the removal of such systems looks like!) This highlights that urban environments survive through interdependence where every system relies on another to function optimally.
Learning ecosystems inside organisations often resemble an urban jungle. Courses sit in one corner, and talk to reporting systems that live somewhere else. HR systems appear to operate independently while trainers run programmes week in and month out but don’t know exactly how to tell HR that the training was successful … or not. Managers track performance that they can see, while staff (and learners) move between all of them.
When these systems work well, there is a particular rhythm. A dance of coordinated synchronicity. When they don’t, the cracks quickly begin to show. People can’t find what they need, and learning feels disconnected from real work. Data lives in different places and rarely tells a coherent story, while managers seem to only listen to the story that some of the data tells.
The result feels a little like rush hour traffic – the stampeding buffalo-kind! Lots of movement, but does this translate into real progress?
Healthy learning ecosystems behave more like well-designed cities. Pathways are clearly signposted and connect across spaces. Systems are interconnected, often invisible but deeply supportive of function; and movement happens smoothly between different areas.
This is the type of coordinated organisational dance that appears effortless. Staff know where to start, trainers build courses based on real needs, and managers use data to gain insight, but still make human-centred decisions.
When systems work together, complexity doesn’t disappear but becomes coordinated. A Moodle LMS is specifically designed to do just this.
The urban jungle reminds us that large systems don’t need to be simple, but they do need to be well coordinated.
In your organisation, are your systems behaving like a coordinated city… or like rush hour with no traffic lights and stampeding buffalo bearing down on you while you’re trying to avoid the sinkholes?
By Dr Isabel Tarling