Bridging the ‘missing middle’: a design based approach to scaling

1 Bridging the ‘missing middle’: a design
based approach to scaling (005)
Holley, D., Peffer, G. Santos, P., and Cook, J. (2014). Bridging the ‘missing middle’: a
design based approach to scaling. Presented to the ALT-Conference, September 2014
A paper contributing to EU learning layers project,:Scaling up Technologies for Informal
Learning in SME Clusters
A 9.9 million EU Framework Project (2012-2016)
Abstract
Taking innovation from concept through to scalable delivery is complex, contested and an
under-theorised process. In this paper we outline approaches to scaling that have influenced
in our work in the EU Learning Layers Integrating Project, a consortium consisting of 17
institutions from 7 different countries. The two industries identified for the initial work are
the Health sector in the UK, and the Construction sector in Germany. The focus of the EU
project is scaling informal learning in the workplace through the use of technologies; the
focus of our paper, the ‘Help Seeking’ tool, an online tool developed by co-design with GP
Practice staff in the North of England. Drawing upon three Scaling taxonomies to underpin
our work, we map the complex and interrelated strands influencing scaling of the ‘Help-
Seeking’ tool, and go on to suggest that the typical measure of scaling success ‘by number’
needs a more nuanced analysis. Furthermore, we will propose that the emerging framework
enables the orchestration of team discourse about theory, the production of artefacts as tools
for design discourse, the identification of scalable systemic pain points, and is thus throwing
light on the ‘missing middle’ (where key scaling factors reside between top down strategy
and bottom up initiatives).
Keywords: Diffusion of Innovation; Scaling; Design Based Research; Learning Layers;
Agile approaches
1.1 Introduction
Taking an innovation from concept through to implementation with a high potential for
scaling is a complex, contested and under-theorised process. This paper aims to explore some
of the major themes underpinning scaling and applies these to the context of Learning Layers,
a European research and development project on informal learning in Small and Medium
sized Enterprises (SMEs) and regional clusters (Ley et al 2014). The usual approach to
scaling innovations, proposed by Everett Rogers in the 1960s is the notion of diffusion of
innovation; we argue that this is of limited use in our context of SMEs. Thus, we start out
from design-based research principles where co-design with the users and stakeholders are
producing both theories and practical educational interventions as outcomes of the process. It
is widely held that this is a robust approach suitable for addressing complex problems in

educational practice for which no clear guidelines or solutions are available (e.g McKenney
& Reeves 2012; Plomp 2009). We suggest that it is therefore also appropriate for a multi-
faceted and complex research project such as Learning Layers.
In this paper we first outline approaches to scaling and, by drawing upon taxonomies of Dede
and Coburn (2007), with their educational scaling model, plus the systematic review of
Greenhalgh et al (2004) in health services. We then propose a revised ‘Layers’ taxonomy. We
discuss the implications of our model for the design and deployment of the Help Seeking tool
in GP practices in Yorkshire; through the mapping of key concepts to the Learning Layers
project timeline (Figure 2). We pay particular attention to scaling innovations in practice and
organisational change, which are in our view enabling factors in the sustainable adoption of
learning technologies by end users in the workplace. Moreover, we clarify the role played by
semantic technologies in scaling informal learning. Finally, the research design process gives
rise to an emergent conceptual theory, ‘Hybrid Social Learning Networks’ (Cook et al., 2014)
that aims to articulate the key design elements identified by co-design.
1.1.1 The nature and importance of scaling in Learning Layers
One of the central themes – and activities – in the Learning Layers project is scaling up
innovations in learning technologies, services, and business models in the project’s pilot
regions and beyond. This requires a focused strategy to engage new stakeholders in project
activities and mobilise additional resources. But what do we understand by scaling in the
context of the project?
Scaling up in Learning Layers is about taking a successful local innovation and making it
work in different locations, settings, and contexts. Successful scaling, then, is more than just
being about the number of users we can reach. It is also about the changes in practice an
innovation can bring about and how valuable these changes are to stakeholders, whether such
changes can be sustained over time, and the extent to which users and stakeholders are
involved in co-creating the innovation. In Learning Layers we support these different facets
of scaling up in several ways. The stakeholder engagement strategy and the scaling
mechanisms that we tap into enable us to reach large numbers of users and change agents.
The intensive co-design work at application partners sites is complemented by increasing our
understanding and working with partners on creating the right organisational conditions for
adoption. The Learning Layers best practice handbooks discuss in more detail how adoption
of learning technologies needs to be supported by effective change management strategies.
The project works with three pilot regions located in Northern Europe, focusing on
healthcare, construction, and a variety of other sectors. While the project researches and
develops new technologies for informal workplace learning, we understand that successful
scaling involves more than a narrow focus on technologies. Scaling also has to support the
organisation in moving through a meaningful and effective change process. We have been
developing structured activities and workshops that support this process in our pilot regions.
Organisational networks are particularly important to us, in particular when they have well-
functioning mechanisms to spread new knowledge, practices, technologies, and so on.
1.1.2 Help Seeking Tool
Holley et al. (2014) take a contested area of UK Governmental Policy, rapid change in the
National Health Service (NHS), and documents the responses to ‘information overload’
reported by group of GP Practices in the North of England. Interviews with health
professionals identified a need for a network to overcome the limitations of increasingly

marginalized space for informal learning in their workplaces (Santos et al., 2014). Through
the health professional narratives, we captured insights into their daily life and articulate their
needs for an online ‘Help-Seeking’ tool, underpinned by their desire to consult what
Vygotsky (1930/1978) calls ‘the more capable peer’. Design research drew together
practitioners, technologists and researchers in a series of co-design activities, bridging the
boundaries of industry, education and technology. The application of the design research
methodology allowed us to frame the problem during where one of the main systemic pain
points identified was the need to provide support for improving the organizational networking
possibilities. Health Care (HC) staff do not currently have access to a strong support
networks. In particular, there exists a desire to exchange opinions and solve problems related
to informal learning at work; this has been discussed by Eraut (2004), who argues that in
exploring informal learning in workplaces, the context in which the work takes place is
significant, a group climate for learning needs to be created and sustained.
Design research approaches a problem space by taking into account what we claim are the
neglected areas of design seeking and scaling. As we point out above, design research has
been introduced as a modern approach suitable for addressing complex problems in
educational practice for which no clear guidelines or solutions are available (e.g. McKenney
& Reeves, 2012; Plomp, 2009). Design research produces both theories and practical
educational interventions as its outcomes. The interventions will include such things as
strategies, materials, products, and systems – as solutions to the problems, but which will also
advance our knowledge about the characteristics of these interventions and the processes
involved in designing and developing them. However, as McKenney and Reeves (2012) have
already pointed out, although potentially powerful, “the simultaneous pursuit of theory
building and practical innovation is extremely ambitious”. Indeed, as Tom Reeves asserts in
his keynote at the AERA Design Based Research Conference (http://www.aera.net/,
September, 2012) “in the era of iPhone we want frictionless solutions, but people and
institutions can feel messy, they introduce uncontrolled variability”.
1.1.3 The research design process of the Help Seeking tool
Feeding forward the potential ‘requirements’ from the interviews, ethical approval was
gained from the Leeds School of Medicine Ethical Committee and the National Health
Service (NHS) for a set of research co-design workshops with health professionals.
Participants were invited to attend 2 two hour workshops in the summer of 2014. The goal of
the workshops was to show social media tools (existing ones and our functional prototypes)
and discuss with the participants the potential, benefits and limitations of these systems
(LinkedIn, and Help Seeking tool v1). No patient-identifiable information was included in
the discussions on the Help Seeking tool (or other tools). Each workshop was replicated two
times during the same day (1) Practice Managers and Data Quality members, and (2) Practice
Nurses. This division was done to avoid conflicts of power between members of different
profiles.
Three networks were identified, and involved in the co-design sessions: (1) a Practice
Managers Network, a well stablished network who wants to expand the number of
participants, improve their voice and the communication with other practices. (2) A Practice
Nurses networks, a very small network with members that feel in some occasions ‘isolation’,
need to improve their contacts with similar peers and enhance communication channels with
GPs. And (3) the Data Quality members who currently don’t have any network and have the
need to build one. The goal of these co-design sessions, where staff contributes to the design
of their own Networking tool (i.e. Help Seeking) is to have an impact in the organization,

scaling the number of employees as participants in the organizational network, but also to
understand the innovation changes as a consequence of introducing an online network
especially designed to solve their informal learning needs. Currently the Help Seeking tool is
a functional prototype, the implementation of which will be improved and integrated with
more complex services such as the Learning Layers Social Semantic Server (Kowald et al
2013)
1.1.4 Help Seeking Features
The Help Seeking tool main aim is to support people in moving beyond local trusted
networks into wider professional networks so that the exchange of opinions and discussions
has the potential to be shared more widely. In this sense, the Help Seeking tool is based on a
low-barrier approach that collects Questions & Answers (Q/A) typically asked in practice.
Q/A can be discussed peer to peer in public or private groups of discussion. The tool is
designed for seeking support among similar professionals in Personal Learning Networks
(PLN) and ensures that question and answers provided are easily accessible. A PLN is a
network build, maintained and activated by the own user, this network is formed by a group
of local trusted peers. On the contrary, the Help Seeking tool also provides supports to a
wider network (which includes everyone in the organization, even external peers) called the
Shared Learning Network (SLN).
Tagging features will be provided to enrich and personalize the available learning resources
(i.e. discussions) and colleagues’ profiles. Social semantic analysis techniques will be
applied to build patterns connecting people with people, people and data and data with data
(scaling the organizational knowledge data base). The semantic data will be used to
recommend more capable peers, or similar solved questions related to the problem sought by
the user. The connection between different people with similar topics of interest will
potentially allow the user to find new trusted colleagues and groups of discussion, supporting
the building, maintenance and activation of new connections. These recommendations
mechanisms seems to be a key issue to aggregating trust among healthcare professionals (i.e.
Practice Managers, Nurses, GPs…), and scaffold help seeking learning in a networked
workplace context through the exchange of questions and answers.
In particular, nurses and healthcare assistants mainly rely on face to face support and help
seeking, meaning that they are restricted in terms of who they can ask especially as
opportunities for taking time away from the clinic to attend cross-organisational training or
networking events are limited. Ideally the Nurses and HCAs would like the opportunity to
seek and develop opinion and information from and compare practices with a wider set of
people.
1.2 Two models of scaling from education and health
services
Scaling up innovations and reforms in organisations and networks is a complex process that
is only partly understood and where a solid theoretical framework is lacking. Since scaling
new technologies and practices is a key aim of Learning Layers, the complexity of the task
raises question in regard to the motivations, goals, processes, and resources that underpin this
ambitious effort. In this section, we will review two seminal contributions to scaling research
in education and healthcare, because of their comprehensive nature and since the subject
areas are aligned with our concerns.

A dimensional model of scaling that has had some influence with educational practitioners
and policy makers was originally proposed by Cynthia Coburn (2003) and later extended by
Dede and Rockman (2007). The idea that scaling is not simply a matter of increasing the
number of people or organisation to adopt a new product or practice, but is in fact an intricate
process of multiple facets draws on prior research on school reform. This has implications not
only for the design of interventions that can be successfully brought to scale, but also for
research designs to evaluate the implementation process and outcomes.
Commissioned by the UK department of health, Greenhalgh and colleagues (2004; 2005)
produced a comprehensive, systematic review of the scaling literature in healthcare and
related fields (Greenhalgh et al., 2004; 2005) that has become an authoritative text (Bibby,
personal communication to authors, October 2014) that is widely used by health service
reformers designing and implementing improvement and change programs in the NHS. The
findings of the review are synthesised in the ‘innovation scaling’ schema (see Figure 1 below
for details). The schema – referred to as a ‘unifying conceptual model’ by the authors – is
meant as a mental scaffold to ask pertinent questions about the innovation that is being
brought to scale, the actors involved in the process, the resources that have to be mobilised,
and the role the environment plays. The schema can also help us find ways in which we can
organise and shape the process of scaling to produce the desired outcomes, although the
authors repeatedly stress that this is not a predictive model.
1.2.1 The diffusion of innovation synthesis
The notion of innovation diffusion offers a potentially useful way to think about how new
ideas, products, and practices are brought to scale in a community, market, or region.
Originally proposed by Rogers (1962), it presents us with a framework to understand how
innovation and change can spread from the local domain to a broader constituency of
adopters. Early work on diffusions of innovations was greatly influenced by rural, industrial,
and medical sociology, but it was subsequently adopted by the research community to
investigate spread and adoption of innovations in the business sector, political science, public
health, communications, history, economics, technology, and education (Sahin, 2006, p. 1).
A systematic and far-reaching review of empirical literature and theory on innovation
diffusion1
was conducted in the UK for the healthcare service field and other service
organizations (Greenhalgh et al., 2004; 2005). Based on the in-depth appraisal of hundreds of
empirical studies and conceptual contributions, the authors proposed a schema – the unifying
conceptual model – that reflects the findings of the systematic review (Figure 1). The
components of this schema, as Greenhalgh and colleagues repeatedly stress, should merely be
seen as mental scaffolds that reflect the authors’ particular selection criteria and the
unavoidable judgment that colours the appraisal of the literature. The relations between these
components, as indicated by the arrows, are highly contingent on the particular case under
investigation and should in no way be understood as having causal significance.
1
The review included a wide range of research traditions so that the term ‘diffusion of innovations’ in the
study’s title can be misleading.

Figure 1: ‘innovation scaling’ schema (Greenhalgh et al., 2004)
With this health warning in mind, we briefly summarise the unifying model and exemplify
the key themes. Innovations are created by developers or providers (the resource system in
Figure 1) and consumed by the adopter organisations (user system). In a service setting, you
commonly have intermediaries and support companies that advise and assist organisations in
identifying, evaluating, selecting, and implementing innovations (the ‘knowledge purveyors’
and ‘change agency’ boxes). The innovations diffuse (passive end of the innovation spread
continuum in Figure 1) or are disseminated (active end of the continuum) to the user system
through social, technical, managerial, and other types of mechanisms, a process that is
meditated by some of the actors mentioned previously. The assimilation of the innovation in
the user system, which might be a company, educational institution, or business network,
depends on many factors such as the structural features of the adopter organisation and its
innovation capability. There are a number of organisational aspects (inner context), including
organisational structure, absorptive capacity, innovation-system fit, and advocacy that have a
positive influence on the assimilation process, while others can limit it or make it unviable
(Greenhalgh et al. 2005, pp. 6-15). Individuals within the organisations – and their attitudes,
beliefs, and habits – play an equally important role in exploring new technologies and
practices with an open mind and perceiving these as an added value in their work
environment and daily routines. The decisions by the organisations to adopt an innovation is
(though not always) followed by the implementation and evaluation of the technologies and
practices, and it eventually becomes part of the organisational routines and culture. The
innovation spreading and adoption process and the key actors driving it are embedded in a
wider environment (outer context), where the authors locate inter-organisational linkages and
collaborations, and the social, economic, and political systems.
1.2.2 The five dimensions of scaling
Traditionally scaling was first and foremost about individuals and replication through social
imitation (Fichman, 1992, p. 1). Coburn (2003), however, shows that this view is too narrow
since scaling greatly depends on “consequential change in [the organisation], endurance over
time, and a shift such that knowledge and authority for the reform is transferred from external
organization to [other sites]” (Coburn, 2003, p. 4). Concerning school reform, the author

shows that developing capacities at the different levels of the system – classroom, school, and
district in this case – is essential to achieve a meaningful depth of change and sustain it over
time. At the same time, implementing scaling initiatives along all important dimensions of
scaling – depth, sustainability, spread, ownership, and evolution – is often beyond an
innovator’s possibilities and hence trade-offs, for instance between depth and breadth of
scaling, are unavoidable.
In the context of education, several authors have argued that scaling technology-enabled
educational innovations presents unique challenges, citing key issues such as inherent
conservatism, change resistance in educational settings (Dede, 2007), difficulties of
developing a reform culture and aligning it with existing policies (McLaughlin and Mitra,
2001), measuring implementation and impact in relation to shift of knowledge and authority
to adopter organisations for instance (Coburn, 2003, p. 9).
1.2.2.1 Depth
The traditional idea that scaling can be understood in terms of number of individual adopters
and replication via social imitation has been criticised for not taking into account the nature
and quality of change (Coburn, 2003, p. 4). The notion of depth tries to capture this quality,
for instance by asking whether and to what extent the adopted ideas or practices really have
won the minds of the people. Or whether organisations have adapted their work environment
and ‘the way things are done around here’ (Olson, 2013), to embrace the new practices or
technologies introduced into the work routines. Coburn (2003) refers to this as ‘deep change’,
since it involves changing people’s attitudes, beliefs, and workplace-related behaviours and
an organisation’s routines and culture.
1.2.2.2 Sustainability
How can the process of scaling be sustained in the long run, especially after the initial
funding that helped bring an innovation to a new site or organisation has dried up?
Unsurprisingly, sustainability is one of the most challenging aspects of scaling since it
requires ongoing organisation and financial support at a time when the economic
environment and public finances are in a dire state, market conditions are constantly shifting,
and people supporting the change agenda might move on (Coburn, 2003). The situation is
especially problematic if reform implementation is pushed through from top down and by
external teams or consultants. Sustainability depends on the other dimensions of scaling, on
how deep we can reach into an organisation, how far we can change people’s minds, and
whether both have the ability and capacity to drive the change process forward and maintain
its momentum.
1.2.2.3 Spread
As a result of its close relationship to depth, Coburn’s (2003) notion of the spread of an
innovation is multi-faceted. The first facet is the already mentioned numeric interpretation of
scale. A second facet of depth relates to the nature and quality of change. Where the
implementation of an innovation or improvement involves deep changes, it is insufficient that
the strategy of spreading is limited to the replication of ideas, initiatives, or practices. It must
also disseminate the attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, routines, and cultures that are necessary for
deep, consequential adoption. The third facet, which Coburn (2003) calls ‘spread within’,
relates to the normative coherence of reform ideas and beliefs within the system or site in
which reform is implemented. In contrast to spreading attitudes, beliefs, routines, and cultures
to other sites (the second facet of spread), ‘spread within’ tries to reach much deeper and
more comprehensively into the organisational and institutional setup so that practices and

strategies at all levels are aligned with the nature and spirit of reform. This alignment in turn
increases the chances that individuals and organisations will in fact help deepen and sustain
the improvements or changes.
1.2.2.4 Shift in knowledge and ownership
According to Coburn (2003), expertise and ownership of the change management process
initially sits with the pilot organisation, but has then to shift to the target SMEs, clusters, or
regions if innovations introduced there are expected to generate substantial impact and also
have to be sustained over time by those actors. What usually starts as an externally sponsored
change agenda has to be internalised over time by people and organisations that have to adopt
the changes. This requires a gradual building up of capacity and expertise in those people and
organisations so they acquire the ability to spread, deepen, and sustain the principles that
underpin the rationale and drive the motivation for adoption of the innovation. The shift in
knowledge and ownership not only of the innovations, but also of the change principles that
are responsible for a deeper and more sustained adoption creates the conditions for the whole
change process to become self-sustaining.
1.2.2.5 Evolution
Dede and Rockman (2007) draws a distinction between the ‘scaling up’ of individual
educational innovations as different from ‘systematic reform’ and add a fifth dimension
‘evolution’ to the Coburns 2003 framework on the dimensions of scale, with
recommendations on sources of leverage at the different stages of scaling up. Thus, in terms
of the stage after depth, sustainability, spread and shift, he advocates the innovation is revised
by its adapters, which in turn is influential in reshaping the thinking of its designers, and the
innovation model itself. Our design research approach, with its iterative and co-created
activities feeding forward into theoretical frameworks, reflects this new dimension. The
leverage task to be undertaken is the ‘unlearning’ of initial beliefs, values and assumptions
about the innovation, by all stakeholders. This is a particularly useful concept for addressing
the spread and ownership concepts of Coburn’s (2003), and the ways in which ‘deep change’
can be facilitated – and cherished values, attitudes and beliefs ‘unlearned’ to enable
ownership over time,
We are now in a position to draw on the knowledge and insights of both models and explore
the scope and implications of scaling for our design research work and the development of
the Help Seeking concept and tool. In particular, we can identify where the original focus on
scaling ‘by number’ fails in our case and search for the seeds of a more nuanced analysis. The
characteristics of a design research approach, involving qualitative and empirical work,
theory construction emerging from a theory check, design artefacts and prototype, scoped by
co-design activities as proposed by Bannan (2003), offers a springboard for this work.
1.3 The case of bringing Help Seeking to scale
Located within the overall ‘Learning Layers’ development of tools to support informal
learning in the workplace, this model sets out some of the key theoretical considerations to
consider for the scaling of technological innovation in different contexts. ‘Layers’ has an
aspirational goals for scaling over its lifetime, and these are represented though the Years of
the Project (Y1, 2 ,3, 4 and 5). Y1 saw health in the UK and construction in Germany being
the focus of the working contexts in which a series of online tools would be located,
evaluated and embedded (see the Layers Open Design Library (ODL) for the full range of
tools http://odl.learning-layers.eu/).

Figure 2: Model of theories underpinning the development, rollout and implementation of
the ‘Help-Seeking’ Tool.
The model shown in Figure 2 maps out the progress of, the ‘Help-Seeking’ tool. The planned
process for embedding is represented by the right hand ‘fan’ in Figure 2. ‘Help-Seeking’
starts in Y1 as a scoping exercise collecting information about informal learning in the Health
workplace.
Theories of organisational change are represented, as technological innovation does not
happen in a vacuum, but as the tools become used and shared, the organisation needs to
‘reverse engineer’ processes to enable optimal utilisation. Scaling theories inform both tool
development and organisational change, and help the participants of co-design understand
both educational and process challenges of changing practice. We argue that the ‘tool’ plus
organisational change/reverse engineering and scaling theories will challenge established
ways of implementing change in the workplace, and the ‘backchannel’ is the informal sharing
of practice, and will bypass formal, more traditional models of organisational change to
working practices. Exploring what this different type of learning may encompass (i.e.
weaving together the three strands of the fan on the right) is our emergent conceptual theory,
‘Hybrid Social Learning Networks’ (HSLN) which aims to articulate the key elements
identified by co-design whereby users and recommender systems work together to achieve a
task or solve a problem; and in so doing start to explore the balance/form of partnerships
between humans and recommender (machines). This work is central to framing how we
understand and design for mediation between people and technology, and feeds into Tim
Berners-Lee’s call to rise to the ‘untapped’ challenge of the internet (Berners-Lee and
Fischetti, 1999). The wider context for these networks is informal learning in the workplace,
and thus our work is framed within a socio-technical perspective.
As the Help Seeking tool is developed and embedded, it links with the ‘fan’ to the left in
Figure 2, and informs the empirical research of other tools, and also informs the scaling
strategy for ‘SME ‘Clusters’ hosting other tools developed by Layers partners, as well as a
potential ‘Help-Seeking’ tool for Construction sector.

Returning to the ‘base’ of the fan in Figure 2, we can see the starting point of work based
context for informal learning in ‘GP Practices’, empirical work plus the theoretical lens of
Vygotsky underpinned the co-design of the ‘Help-seeking’ Tool. An analysis of informal
learning interviews through a biographic narrative approach (Wengraf, 2001) and drawing
upon the ideas of Vygotsky and the ‘more capable peer’ enabled the informal aspects of
practices in the workplace to become visible (Holley, et al., 2014). This then enabled the
technical requirements of the ‘Help-Seeking’ tool to be categorised for the development
team. Furthermore, it informed the themes of the theoretical design research process in
year 2. During the 2nd
year (2014) the design decisions (part of design research process) plays
an important role and has informed our further work (Santos et al., 2014)
Significantly, our analysis of the Y2 workshops found that the following three design criteria
are relevant for our Hybrid Social Learning Network/Help Seeking tool:
1. Scaffolding will be required when composing
questions (support the creation an exchange of opinion between peers) and searching,
filtering or making new connections (scaling the Network)
2. Support manual and automatic Tagging of resources and people (connect people-
people, people-data, data-data)
3. Recommendations based on Key profile Factors (Aggregated Trust)
Moving to the next stage of the model in Figure 2, labelled the ‘Social Semantic Server’,
there sits a Social Semantic Network that will enable situated and contextualized
learning. This is a powerful set of algorithms to underpin the scaling of tool use, and is
designed generate meta-data to relate people and data, people and people, data and data.
The next set of labels, (centre of model in Figure 2) entitled ‘Intellectual capacity’ ‘sharing
of design process’ and ‘cross platform prototypes’ are instances of wider ‘layers’ features,
which address issues of scaling that have been addressed as the tools develop, and answering
to some extent the questions posed by Preece (2000 p388)
“when large numbers of people want to join an online community, it presents specific
scalability challenges to designers..
What type of features do they need to provide in software to support large
communities?
What kind of features would support the development of trust in such a large group?
Reputation management systems, such as those sued in eBay, are one way to
accomplish this in e-commence..
but what about supporting personal trust among people?
Or the trustworthiness of online advice and professional information of all kinds?”
(Preece op.cit)
The next label ‘Transfer to SME Clusters’ in Year 4 of the project pulls together the theory
and practical tools from across the whole project, and integrates aspects of theory and
practice from Empirical Research, Cluster research, the Work based contexts of health and
construction being leveraged into a powerful framework. This, together Hybrid Social
Learning Networks theory will offer an overarching learning model for SMEs seeking to
scale informal learning in their workplaces.

The final label, with full integration and sustainability and the question to ask with respect
to a successful integration is if tools have become ‘invisible’ in the workplace – are workers
using them as a matter of course, as part of their everyday activities?
1.4 Conclusions
We can claim limited success in our work thus far. We have developed a first iteration of a
Learning Layers model mapped onto a single prototype, the HelpSeeking Tool (Figure 2).
This has been significant in helping us with understanding the detail and complexity of both
co-design and scaling, and this will enable the initial transfer of work contexts (health-to-
construction) as required by the EU Learning Layers project. There are some ‘spin-off’
benefits from the work, the tool is available as part of the Open Design Library (ODL);
fulfilling one of conditions suggested by Preece (2000) i.e. ‘repositories develop intellectual
capital’; our co-design work highlighted the importance of access to tools via different
mediums, thus facilitating cross platform prototypes enabling easy access, and building in
‘Scalable features’ identified by Preece (op.cit).
The wider implications of this work can be seen potential of building capacity. The technical
integration with other Layers Tools such as Social Semantic Server offers powerful
algorithms to underpin the ‘Layers’ tools in general, and the HelpSeeking tool, by generating
the meta-data to relate people and data, people and people, data and data. An emergent theory
of Hybrid Social Learning Networks (Cook et al., 2014) central to the socio-technical
perspectives we draw upon, is framing how we understand and design for mediation between
the people and the technologies they increasing draw upon in the workplace.
1.5 References
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destiny of the world wide web by its inventor. Harper, San Francisco
Bannan, B. (2003). The role of Design in Research: The Integrative Learning Design
Framework. Educational Researcher. 32 (1) 21-24
Coburn, C (2003). Rethinking Scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change.
Educational Researcher 32, 6 (3-12) available online
http://vocserve.berkeley.edu/faculty/CECoburn/coburnscale.pdf
Cook, J., Santos, P., Maier, R., Trattner, C., Lex, E., Dennerlein, S., Holley, D. and Ley, T.
(2014). Designing for help seeking with Healthcare professionals in a Hybrid Social
Learning Network. D4DL / Learning Layers Research Report No. 3, October 2014, UWE
Bristol, UK.
Cook, J., Bannan, B. and Santos, P. (2013). Seeking and Scaling Model for Designing
Technology that Supports Personal and Professional Learning Networks. Workshop on
Collaborative Technologies for Working and Learning (ECSCW meets EC-TEL), 21
September, Cyprus. Available from: http://tinyurl.com/la6y927
Cook, J. and Santos, P. (accepted). Social Network Innovation in the Internet’s Global
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