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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for July 2008

Ain’t it Tweet?

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OK, so my colleague/mentor/friend Sky finally got me on Twitter.   If you don’t know twitter, it’s a microblog, where you post the equivalent of a SMS (text message), maximum 160 characters.   People I respect are into it, but I’d wondered the advantages.   Sky told me he was using TwitterFox which lets you put it in your Firefox browser.   So I installed it, and managed to get it running (tho’ I may still be mucking a few things up).   And finding out that people will ‘follow’ you in the hopes you’ll visit and see their ads, e.g. weightloss; there’s spam everywhere; something I’m doing wrong?

So far, I’ve been on it a few days (@Quinnovator), and find it easy to update what I’m doing, harder to use it as a reflective tool.   I’m also only following a couple of folks I know, as I haven’t found an easy way to find folks I know who might be tweeting.   So far, some interesting things are coming through and I’ve answered a couple of questions.

One of the few folks I am following, however, pointed me to this site, recommendations of how to use Twitter as a college student.   I like where someone looks to a technology and finds the learning affordances (what I try to do myself).   I’ve not the experience with Twitter, let alone the additional apps people are building (e.g. retweetme, a twitter reminder system), as yet, so it’s nice to see someone else doing it.

I’m not going to be SMSing my tweets (I’ve a limit on SMS messages, and like that I never come near the limit), but I will be giving it a spin through the browser interface.   Any recommendations?

Am I deluded?

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As you should know, my book Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games was published back in 2005.   I was just talking to them about some other possible projects, and the question arose about why it hadn’t been more successful.   I had my story, but I’d welcome your feedback.

I’m quite proud of the book, I have to say; I believe it accomplished what I intended it to, which was to lay out a principled framework about why games are effective for learning, and then give you a systematic process to go about designing them, along with some hints and tips.   It came out at a time when interest was peaking about using games to meet learning needs.   So, why didn’t it fly off the shelves?   My answer is severalfold:

  • It wasn’t marketed well.   My publisher basically sent a few copies to reviewers, and then did little.   I may have not been proactive enough in letting them know my speaking engagements, but I did do a lot of speaking and writing.   That may not have been leveraged sufficiently.
  • The unique contribution, that this book is about how to design learning games, wasn’t really communicated.   That is, while some books tell you about why it’s important, this was the only one that really gives you a design process.   (And still is, as far as I can tell.)
  • At the same time, lots of other books came out that were about games for learning, authors including Johnson, Gee, Shaffer, Aldrich, Koster, and more. They had a different proposition, but some were higher profile for a variety of reasons, and the sheer quantity created confusion.

Now, there are other possible reasons, including most obviously that the book isn’t any good.   I’ve received very nice comments from people who’ve read it, but one of the few Amazon reviews isn’t very nice (I noticed only recently).   So, I could be self-deluded.   Also, I’m not a great self-promoter (that is, while I’m convinced that I’m quite good at what I do, I’m not very active in going out and selling that idea to people).     I probably should’ve been more forward in getting those who told me they liked it to write Amazon reviews (please, feel free!).

I’d really welcome feedback on this, as I did try to make a unique and valuable contribution, and still expect that the book could have ‘legs’ if I can figure out where I might refocus some of my or my publisher’s efforts.   They did mention that they’ve reorganized their marketing department ;).   Comments?   Honest and constructive encouraged as well as supportive.

Mathematics or mathematician, reconsidered

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“Don’t teach kids mathematics, teach them to be mathematicians.” (I believe it was Seymour Papert)

It was in the scoping phase of a new project where this came to mind, and I realized that, depending on your definition of ‘mathematician’, I don’t want them to be mathematicians either, but I want them to be mathematical problem solvers.   That is, I don’t necessarily want them to be able to create mathematical theories any more than I want them to be able to recite math formulas; I want them to be able to solve problems with mathematics.   And, as Jonassen tells us, the problems we give kids to solve in schools bear little resemblance to those they need to face in the real world.

My thoughts wandered further, however.   I wondered if we could create rubrics around what a good math problem-solver looks like, and have students evaluate each other and assist one another in becoming good problem-solvers.   Like Brown and Palincsar’s Reciprocal Teaching, they could take turns solving problems and looking at how they do it.

Of course, I want to generalize it, and find rubrics that define meaningful skills like searching, design, research, problem-solving, etc, even for adults (ala work literacy) that individual can use for self-evaluation, but also peer or guide evaluation (360; level 3, etc) and mentoring. Particularly for digital literacy.

What do you think; would you like a set of such metrics and a social support infrastructure to self-develop in the use of new technologies and skills for accomplishing your goals?

What do *you* want in a Serious Games Seminar?

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Ok, so you know I’ll be co-leading the eLearning Guild’s Summer Seminar Series on Immersive Learning Simulations with Jeff Johannigman (hope to see you there!).   We’ll be getting seriously into planning soon, and it occurred to me to find out your thoughts on what should be there.

It’ll be based at least somewhat on my tried and true workshop, but it’ll have Jeff’s expertise in game design, and a broader focus including at least separating ILS from Virtual Worlds.   So, what should absolutely be in there? What would be nice to have? What should we skip?   I’d like to have your input to make it as good as it can be!   So, your thoughts?   (And thanks in advance!)

Expert vs designer: who wins?

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We had quite the heated discussion today on a project I’m working on, and one of the emergent issues was whether ‘the expert’ dictates the objectives, or whether the developer could change them. I recognized that this is not only an issue in our process going forward (read: scalability), but it’s also a larger issue.

In this case, the design that was presented by the developer to the expert (this is a simplification, our team process is more complicated than this :) ) didn’t match the expert’s expectation. (This was an artifact of a bad choice of language at the beginning that confounded the issue.) However, the expert expected to present the objectives, and the game would be designed to achieve that objective. Which I would agree with, but with one caveat.

My caveat is two-fold. First, experts aren’t necessarily masters of learning. Second, they may not actually have access to the necessary objectives: expertise is ‘compiled’ and experts don’t necessarily know how they do what they do! (An outcome of cognitive science research, it’s something I talk about in my ‘deeper elearning’ talk and also my white paper on the topic, .pdf) In this case the experts will be instructors on the topic, so presumably they’re both aware of content and learning design, but we all know courses can be too much knowledge, not enough skill.

Now, as Sid Meier said, “a good game is a series of interesting decisions”, and my extension is that good learning practice is a series of important decisions. I claim that you can’t give me a learning objective I can’t make a game for, but I reserve the right to move the objective high enough (in a learning taxonomy sense). Similarly, I can see that an expert might bring in an objective that’s not appropriate for any number of reasons: too low a level, not something individuals would really have difficulty with, or not important in the coming years, and the developer might not recognize it as wrong from the point of view of domain expertise, but when mapping a game mechanic onto it would realize it’s wrong because it’s an uninteresting task (or they’re more closely tied to the audience, often being younger, more tech-savvy, etc).

So, I believe (and it’s been my experience) that there’s of necessity a dialog between the source of the domain knowledge, be it expert, professor, whatever, and the designer/developer/whatever. When it comes to objectives, once the expert understands the developer’s point, they do get the final say on the necessary task & skills, but they need to be open to the developer’s feedback and willing to work with them to produce a design that’s both effective and engaging. My book is all about why that’s a doable goal and how to, but in short the elements that make learning practice effective align perfectly with the elements that make an engaging interactive experience (and so say many authors, including Gee, Prensky, Aldrich, Johnson, Shaffer, the list goes on).

Similarly, the developer has to design the game experience around the objective, and while the expert may provide feedback about aesthetic preferences or information helping to establish the audience, at the end the developer has final say on the engagement. With good intentions all around, this will work (with bad intentions, it won’t work regardless :).

Which is, of course, where the team ended up, after an hour of raised voices and frustration. All’s well that ends well, I reckon. Are your experiences or expectations different?

Mobile in perspective

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I’m not quite sure how the eLearning Guild is publishing the forthcoming articles from their research reports, but I believe it is as part of the Learning Solutions magazine, and that’s certainly the case with this first piece. Ellen Wagner, a member of the mobile research team, has a major article, with a small piece by me that’s an expansion of my earlier thoughts on mobile web. You have to be a least an associate member to download it, but associate membership is free. I’ll add that I believe the Guild is probably the best way to keep up to date on practical applications of technology for learning.

Ellen’s article is a thoughtful look at mobile learning, covering the industry trends. She points out that people are equipped with mobile devices: “the mobile workers aren’t waiting”. She says that the classic top-down doesn’t make sense, and figuring out how to make a mobile learning module does; that is, just do it. On the other hand, she also says that “to have a shot at broad adoption, mobile learning applications must be an integrated part of a larger organizational vision for building capacity”. These aren’t as incommensurate as they may seem, as those in the trenches should begin experimenting with mLearning just as they did with eLearning, and at the same time managers and executives should be looking to the broader eLearning strategy incorporating mobile (as I regularly suggest).

She points out the barriers that still exist, so that even when we’re seeing essentially ubiquitous computational and network capability, we’re seeing incompatibility across providers and platforms. There are still technology barriers to cross, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start thinking ‘mobile’. The reasons are many, including the increasingly mobile workforce. And she acknowledges the emerging consensus that mobile learning is really about performance support. That may not be the limit, but it’s certainly the low-hanging fruit.

I highly recommend her article, as Ellen’s been deeply involved in the world of content delivery through her recent stint as the eLearning guru at Adobe, and has experience and knowledge that puts her at the forefront of thinking in this space. It’s an honor to have my little piece in the same document as hers. (NB: mine is also available separately as well, PDF).   Check it out!

Lead the Charge?

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This month’s Learning Circuit’s Big Question of the Month is whether learning organizations should be leading the way in the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Or, to be more exact:

  • Should workplace learning professionals be leading the charge around these new work literacies?
  • Shouldn’t they be starting with themselves and helping to develop it throughout the organizations?
  • And then shouldn’t the learning organization become a driver for the organization?
  • And like in the world of libraries don’t we need to market ourselves in this capacity?

The short answer is yes, we (I’m assuming most of you are learning professionals) should be leading the way. It may seem like an odd locus for technology awareness, but it’s really about technology affordances for organizational effectiveness, not just new technology. That’s why it shouldn’t be IT, or operations, or engineering, because they’re focused on a task, not the meta-level look at how the task is being accomplished, can be improved, etc. And that’s the unique perspective that makes the learning organization the right instigator.

Learning folks have the perspective of looking at the performance needs of the organization, and are charged with helping people meet those needs, but that also gives the learning organization the opportunity to improve them. When it’s the product or servce, it’s the user experience group (that, ideally, gets in early in the design process), but internally, it’s the learning group.

Which means the learning organization can’t be just a training group, but that’s part of the strategic picture I’ve talked about elsewhere. The point being that to truly help an organization you have to move to a performance focus, moving people from novice, through practitioner, to expert, and giving them a coherent support environment. To do this, you need to know what’s available. And, consequently, the learning organization has to experiment with new technologies for it’s own internal workings to determine how and when to deploy them to organizational benefit.

To put it another way, if not the learning organization, then who? Of course, there’s the political perspective as well, demonstrating currency, but I’m more concerned about adding real value. Learning professionals need to know it, bring it to bear when it’s valuable (and skewer it when it’s not), and in general be seen not only knowing what’s what but also what’s hype.

Marketing is smart in general, but it’s not hype, it’s helping transition the perspective from a training group being an expendable cost-center to a learning capability that’s central to organizational effectiveness and performance. Which is where a learning organization should be, right?