Reaching A New Low

We reached a new low last Friday when the high noon temperatures were an ultra cool 2 deg C, not counting in wind. Luckily, I wasn't running around too much - was just at Esplanade Laurier, another building housing some parts of the School. Was with the Best Practices shop for 2 days, to be exact. I had conversations with the researchers there - got a view of their university relations initiatives, and spent an afternoon with their KM advisor.

It was interesting, but not the most useful way to interact unfortunately. It kinda felt like a study trip rather than assignment - getting to see some breadth but little depth. There wasn't much time to ask deeper questions... but at several points the issue of translating research into practice did come up. Particularly over lunch with Peter Stoyko, whom some of us met when the Canadians visited College last March. What I gathered was that they feel more can be done to transfer research that they are doing in 'content areas' e.g. research in organisational memory, and 'process areas' e.g. visual learning methods, to effective learning interventions. With the restructuring of the School to include a Centre of Excellence in Leadership Design and Development, perhaps this will gain momentum. I think they are also hearing from senior management that they need to diversify beyond traditional research products to more innovative forms of presenting content e.g. as card games.