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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for September 2007

Engaging Interactions

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BJ Schone contacted me and I sent him some feedback on a document he was preparing. He’s now finished with his Engaging Interactions For eLearning, and making it freely available at the site. It’s in the form of an eBook (PDF), and he’s also promised to blog each interaction at the site, to support discussion around them.

It’s compendium of 25 activities for learning that map to various learning goals. There are the familiar things like drag-and-drop, and more complex activities as well. The activities aren’t academically categorized, but it is focused on the learning outcome, not just different interaction modality. The interactions cover a range from simple exercises such as re-ordering steps, to more complex activities like virtual labs.

It’s a useful resource, and if you’re looking for some inspiration it’s worth a look. Thanks, BJ!

Intro to eLearning

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It continues to amaze me how new eLearning can be to some folks. In June I spoke on behalf of a colleague to a group of HR managers, introducing eLearning. I also was interviewed on elearning for a small business magazine in New York in July. Now I’m opening the eLearning Guild’s September Online Forum Introduction to eLearning.

I’ll try to put eLearning into perspective, about how technology gives us new affordances to meet organizational needs, dispel some elearning myths, and of course talk about eLearning strategy. Of course I’ll briefly cover games as part of taking instructional design beyond content-and-quiz or classroom online, and mobile as part of increasing reach.

It’s sometimes hard to realize, when you’ve been using technology to support learning for 30 years, that some people are just coming up to scratch, but that’s the reality, and I do try to live in reality (guided by concept, of course ;). That’s OK, I’m certainly happy to share lessons learned rather than have folks keep making the same mistakes. Maybe we can save them some money now, so they have more for some of the fun stuff that’s just waiting to be done!

If you’re just getting up to speed, I suspect that the Online Forum will be a great way to do it. Hope to see you there!

Sometimes talking heads make sense

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(with Stop Making Sense playing in the background…)

On a discussion list, someone complained about using subject matter experts, not trained as trainers, as instructors. Well, it can be bad, but there are times it makes sense. So I replied:

When you think of the full spectrum of learning needs, and you’ve an unmotivated newbie, you need a well-done, full course. If they’re already motivated, you can make it pretty lean.

If they’re already a practitioner, motivated and with the foundations, they may just need an update, e.g. hearing someone they respect present the new thoughts, and it doesn’t have to be pretty, just meaningful content. This is when experts talking makes sense.

I did point out that this rational assessment doesn’t characterize much of corporate training. We know that there’re heaps of problems including SMEs focusing on knowledge instead of skills because they no longer have access to their expertise, evaluation by smiley faces, etc, but I also concluded “don’t assume everything’s got to be a course”.