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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for June 2007

The Latest Goldrush

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My first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games on the old Apple ][, TRS-80 Model 1 (shudder), etc (a couple of my better-known products were FaceMaker & Spellicopter). At that time, these initial PCs were new, and people were excited. A whole bunch of folks came out to ‘Silicon Valley’ (before it really had that label) and started saying that they could program applications for these machines. Some great companies were formed, including the Learning Company, and some great applications, including Visicalc. But also a whole bunch of other companies sprung up, and eventually there was a crash. Out of the ashes, some good companies survived but also some good ones failed.

The reason I tell this story is not to show how old I am (I was a child prodigy, honest ;), but because that was my first experience with a gold rush mentality. What I mean here is when something new becomes perceived as an opportunity, and a whole bunch of people jump on the bandwagon and try to make money off of it. I’ve subsequent seen the same story repeat with multimedia, the internet, and online learning.

I think I’m seeing it now in Serious Games. There’s a lot of good stuff going on, don’t get me wrong, yet I think I’m also seeing a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon who are the equivalent of the ‘snake oil’ salesman: talking a good game but not really ‘getting’ what’s important. I’m afraid that the consequence of hype and disappoints will be a backlash against this new incarnation of a great idea just as there was against the previous version, ‘edutainment’. I do see a lot of good things happening, and for once I hope I’m just being an alarmist.

There’s nothing wrong with a company with game experience looking to this new area as a potential business opportunity, but I hope they do so with more than just a token nod to the learning side. I don’t believe you can put game designers and instructional designers in a room together and get an optimal outcome. I think you need to have a language to do so (hence Engaging Learning). So, I’ve a clear interest and bias, but I truly believe what I say. And it’s my blog anyway…

Moving forward…

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A colleague’s question about the need for ecommunity caused me to react thusly:

The success factor going forward will be new ideas: to innovate, design, problem-solve, and learn from mistakes in ways that are more effective and actionable. It will also require efficiency in execution, but the advantages will be to the knowledge creators. It’s about experimenting more effectively: creating new understandings, testing them, refining them, and documenting the outcomes for others to avoid replication.

First and foremost it’s about smart sharing, both in who and how. Tools for sharing are critical.

Secondarily, it’s about developing learners who can play like this. You need to make the tools natural extensions. It takes a culture.

It’s about creating an environment for knowledge worker success, and that’s scaffolding both the resources we develop and provide, and access to the resources of others. It’s about the development of novices, support of practitioners, and collaboration of experts negotiating new understandings.

United we learn or divided we fail.

Thoughts? My own reaction is to be smart in sharing: who, how, and what.

Political Systems

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I‘ve been talking about thinking systemically, and I‘m quite interested in politics (mostly in changing it in a positive direction), and a recent editorial in USAToday (of all places) really put something together for me. Robert Kegan, Meehan Professor of Adult Learning at Harvard University, has a piece titled: Wanted: A president with a complex mind.

His point is that, as we‘re shopping for a new president (and we are), we should be looking not just for policies, but a defined ability to think about complex situations and create and adapt appropriate policies. In short, he wants a president who can think systemically about the issues.

He also makes it clear that being smart or intelligent isn‘t enough, but instead that the world is now to a state that we can‘t have simple answers and we need a president, going forward, who can think about alternate viewpoints, who can have a reflective conversation. And he is aware that the ability to think complexly is not enough; it is necessary but not sufficient.

I‘ve argued that our curriculum needs to teach people to deal with an increasingly challenging world, and I think this is only more evidence for the point. However, Robert‘s wake-up call is that our nation can‘t wait until the new generation is developed along those lines (and I’ll suggest we‘re not doing it yet), and that we need to be searching for that capability now. I couldn‘t agree more. I hope we can bring into our discussions and choices, for the next election, the criteria of a president who is capable of coming up with policies that reflect the real world‘s complexities, and adapting to the resulting consequences.