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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for May 2010

User-generated curriculum & competencies?

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I like jogging (ok, more like plodding), as it’s a time I can queue up some questions to think about and then take them on the road to get some insights.   In addition to some great thoughts on my presentation for the Innovations in eLearning Symposium, and my workshop at the mLearn Conference, I thought about LMS and social media.

I was reflecting on what I liked about Q2Learning’s model for system support, where a variety of things can be aggregated to achieve a competency: a course, a meeting, a project, etc.   It occurred to me to think that if someone can decide what goes together to create a course, why shouldn’t the community itself decide?

It goes further: I got to design my own undergraduate major. I took a bunch of things I’d done, and some things I thought augmented those activities to create a coherent body of study on what was then termed Computer-Based Education (UCSD didn’t have a program in it back then), and submitted it as a proposal.   The Provost vetted it, and I was on my way. Isn’t that a model that could be replicated?   Can’t we have folks propose their course of study?

I started thinking about having networks start moving to becoming communities by defining component skills and proposed paths for achieving those skills, and also supporting proposals for other paths.   Really, it’s about the community deciding how to help individuals move to the center, but with some explicit steps rather than implicit.

The learning organization role would be then one of facilitating this process of developing roles, competencies and curricula. It would certainly   be a way of addressing the decreasing half-life of knowledge, by having it continually updated by the community in which those roles and skills made sense.

In this way, a community would co-create it’s learning paths in a dynamic interchange between the goals and tasks.   And an LMS would then be a networking tool with the ability to manage the discussions, resources, and paths to competency as well as a learner’s record.   It would be more organic and coupled in a robust feedback loop, not externalized, abstracted, filtered, and returned in ways that may diminish the value.

The learning organization would be dispersed as members of the constituent communities, helping develop the components of the competency path in concert with the members, adding in their value and nurturing development.

The thinking hasn’t yet gone far beyond this yet, but I have to say that it seems to approach an appropriate blend between the value of bringing in a real understanding of knowledge (the role of a learning organization) with the dynamic co-development of understanding that characterizes a community.   Does this make sense to you?

A case for the LMS?

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My Internet Time Alliance colleagues Harold Jarche and Jane Hart have been (rightly) eviscerating the LMS.   Harold put up a post that the “LMS is no longer the centre of the universe“,   while Jane asked “what is the future of the LMS“.   Both of them are recognizing the point I make about the scope of learning in thinking about performance: it’s more than just courses, it’s the whole ecosystem.

I think that, before we completely abandon the LMS (and that’s not necessarily what they advocate), we should examine the key capabilities an LMS provides and determine whether that role can be taken up elsewhere or how it can manifest in the broader system.   I see two key functions an LMS provides.

The first role is to provide access to courses: there’s one place where learners can go to sign up for face-to-face courses, or access online courses (whether to signup and then attend a synchronous event or to complete an asynchronous one).   Providing access to courses is a good thing, as there are situations where formal learning is the appropriate approach.

A second role is to track learner usage and completion of courses. Again, ascertaining an individual’s capabilities is valuable, whether it be by programmed assessment, 360 evaluation or otherwise.   Linking these interventions back to organizational outcomes is also valuable to determine whether the original objectives were appropriate and whether the intervention needs modification.   (BTW, I’m definitely assuming for the sake of the argument that there’s an enlightened analysis focusing on meaningful workplace objectives and an enlightened design combining cognitive and emotional design into a minimal and engaging experience).

Other capabilities – authoring, communications, etc – are secondary, really.   There are other ways to get those functions, so focusing on the core affordances is the appropriate perspective.

How do you provide learners with the ability to access courses?   The LMS model is that the learner comes to the LMS.   That’s a course-centric model. In a performance ecosystem model, we should have a learner performance-centric view, where courses, communities, resources (e.g. job aids, media files), etc are aligned to their interests, roles, and tasks.   Really, performers should have custom portals!

Similarly, tracking performance should cross courses, use of resources, and community actions to look for opportunities to facilitate.   We want to find ways to assist people in using the environment successfully, to augment the elements of the ecosystem, and to align it to the performance needs.   This is a bigger problem, but an LMS isn’t going to solve it.

All this argues, as Jane suggests in a followup post on A Transition Path to the Future, that “It may be that you want to retain it in some cut-down form, or it may be that it is providing no real value at all, and it is a barrier to ‘learning'”.     Harold similarly says in his followup post on Identifying a Collaboration Platform, that you “minimize use of the LMS”.

You could make access to formal learning available through a portal, but I think there’s an argument to have a tool for those responsible for formal learning to manage it. However, it probably should not be a performer-facing interface.

The big problem I see is that it’s too easy for the learning function in an organization to take the easy path and focus on the formal learning, and an LMS may be an enabler.   If you take the Pareto rule Jay Cross (another ITA colleague) touts where we spend 80% of our money on the 20% of value people obtain in the workplace from formal learning, you may have misplaced priorities.

It is likely that the first tool you should buy is a collaboration platform, as Harold’s suggesting, and LMS capability is an afterthought or addition, rather than the core need.   Truly, once people are up and performing, they need tools for accessing resources and each other. That infrastructure, like plumbing or electricity or air, is probably the most important (and potentially the best value) investment you can make.

Yes, you need to prepare the ground to seed, feed, weed, and breed the outcome, but the benefits are not only in the output, but also the demonstrable investment in employee value and success.   Let an LMS be a functional tool, not an enabler of mis-focused energy, and certainly not the core of your learning technology investment.   Look at the bigger picture, and budget accordingly.

May Big Q: Workplace Learning Technology 2015

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The Learning Circuits Blog Big Question of the Month for May is “What will workplace learning technology look like in 2015?”   This is a tough question for me, because I tend to see what could be the workplace tech if we really took advantage of the opportunities. Consequently, my predictions tend to be optimistic, as the real world has a way of not moving near as fast as one could wish.   Still, I actually prefer to think on what could be the possibilities, as it’s more inspiring.   Maybe I’ll answer both.

The opportunities on the table are immense.   Mobile technologies are taking off, we’re getting real power in technology standards (and still some hiccups), and we’re crossing boundaries between reality and virtual worlds.

Smartphones are on the rise, and new portable devices (e.g. tablets) are expanding the possibilities.   It’s highly plausible that we’ll have expanded the performance ecosystem to be location independent, and be providing the 4C’s in ways that allow powerful access, sharing, and collaboration.

Virtual worlds provide a different approach, where instead of augmenting reality, we’re re-contextualized in an artificial but enhanced space where capabilities that don’t exist in the real world are available to us.   We can build 3D models, communicate in micro or macro spaces (within molecules or between galaxies), and open up the hidden components of real spaces.   Again, we can leverage the 4C’s to go beyond courses to a fuller definition of learning.

This can be facilitated by standards.   If HTML 5 coalesces as it should, we can and should be delivering rich interactivity, not just content delivery.   Similarly, if we can move beyond ebook standards to capture interactivity, we can make easy marketplaces to deliver capability that is available regardless of connectivity. Virtual world standards are emerging too, and hopefully some convergence will have happened by 2015!

Also, if our backend systems progress as they can (and should), we should be able to move to Web 3.0 where instead of producers or users, the systems generate content.   We can use semantic technologies to do customized delivery of information, pulling together what we know about the learner (e.g. from a competency map or learning path), about the content available (from a content model), and their tasks (from a job role) and their current context (their location and what’s on their calendar) to serve up just the right information.

This is all possible.   What’s probable?   We’ll have seen major progress in mobile tools, whether companies wake up or it’s just individual initiative to accessorize the brain.   Virtual worlds will also be more prevalent, though not ubiquitous.   Social media systems will be much more integrated into the workflow, and LMS will have become just a cog in the ecosystem, not the ecosystem. The social media will be available whether you’re in-world, in the world, or at your desk.

Semantics, however, are likely to still be nebulous. People are beginning to take advantage of powerful content systems leveraging tagging and flexible delivery, but it’s still embryonic.   There’ll be more pockets, but it won’t be a groundswell yet.

I’m probably still be optimistic, but a guy can hope, and of course strive to make it so.   This is what I do and where I like to play. I welcome more playmates in this great playground of opportunity.

Reflections on Web 2.0 Expo

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Last October I toured the expo associated with O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Conference, and had the chance again this week. Somehow, it didn’t feel as vibrant. Still, there were some interesting developments.

A couple of companies were there who I talked about last time, including Blue Kiwi (who I didn’t visit this time) and Vignette (who I did visit, unintentionally). I was talking to OpenText for quite awhile before it came up that they’d acquired Vignette! Naturally, their DNA is content management, but user- generated content is content, after all. I also talked to Social Text, seeing if they supported user-generation of video (no).

Also, I’d been pinged by the CEO of MangoSpring via the social software for the conference (which didn’t obviously give me a way of pinging back!?!?), so I stopped by the booth for their product, Engage. Which has the predictable mix of capabilities and is (at least initially) totally internally focused.

The internal focus was refreshing, because much of the expo felt marketing focused, without much focus on the ClueTrain of a two-way authentic discussion.

I also was intrigued to see Microsoft showing the Fuse team rather then SharePoint. Fuse seemed to be largely developing internal social media capabilities (enhancing Outlook) and some developer interfaces, but apparently also do some customer work. They were also touting a beta of accessing Microsoft Office docs collaboratively through FaceBook. Trying to counter Google Docs, I reckon, but will FaceBook appeal to the biz crowd?

One of the questions I was asking was about tracking the potential benefits of social media in the enterprise, particularly the outcomes of informal learning: rate of problem solving, products and services generated, etc. Engage has, like Spigit, an idea tool, but no one had a clear answer. Likely it will have to be developed for the group being supported (tho’ I’d like a more generic one if I could).

Nothing earth-shattering, some maturation, still a bit of hype but some more reasoned approaches overall.

The Mobile Design Workshop!

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Mobile is coming at us hard and fast. Announcements of changes in the marketplace (HP acquiring Palm in just the past week), and new devices (Google passing on the Nexus One to tout the next gen system), are coming fast and furious. The devices are out there (mobile is outselling the desktop) and the workforce is increasingly mobile (72%, according to IDC!). The question is, how do you get on top of taking advantage of mobile devices for organizational (and personal) learning?

I confess, I’m a design guy. I like to look at problems and create solutions. And I like to think that 30-odd years of practice and reflection on learning design (investigating myriad design practices, looking at design models, etc) provides some reason to think I’ve developed a wee bit of expertise on the topic.

I’m also a geek and I love tech toys. I’ve also been extremely enamored of the potential for mobile learning since Marcia Conner asked me to write a little screed on the topic 10 years ago now. It got me thinking in ways that haven’t stopped, so that I’ve been thinking and doing mobile for the past decade, and am awaiting feedback on the draft of a book on the topic for Pfeiffer.

Mobile is the killer app for deep reasons, and not surprisingly, my focus is on mobile design. As I say “if you get the design right, there are lots of ways to implement it; if you don’t get the design right it doesn’t matter how you implement it!” Design is the key. There are two things I’ve found out about mobile design:

  • you really need to think differently. It’s not about courses, it’s about augmenting (accessorizing) our capabilities, both learning and performance
  • there are some really useful models that give you a handle on thinking different.

You’ve heard me talk here before about some, e.g. the 4 C’s.

Naturally, it’s best if you work with these models a bit to really internalize them and see how they guide new opportunities to meet learning and performance needs for your folks. That’s why I’m pleased that I have the chance to offer a mobile design workshop at the eLearning Guild’s mobile learning conference, mLearnCon.

This is going to be an interactive and fun way to incorporate mobile learning into your repertoire of solution tools. Not to worry, we’ll contextualize design as well, talking about the devices, the market trends, the tools, and the organizational issues, but the focus is going to be, as it should, on design. It’s also in one of my favorite towns: San Diego, and of course there’s the rest of the conference to put the icing on the cake. I hope I’ll see you there, and get a chance to work with you on this exciting new area.

Situated Learning Styles

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I’ve been thrust back into learning styles, and saw an interesting relationship that bears repeating. Now you should know I’ve been highly critical of learning styles for at least a decade; not because I think there’s anything wrong with the concept, but because the instruments are flawed, and the implications for learning design are questionable.

This is not just my opinion; two separate research reports buttress these positions. A report from the UK surveyed 13 major and representative learning style instruments and found all with some psychometric questions. In the US, Hal Pashler led a team that concluded that there was no evidence that adapting instruction to learning styles made a difference.

Yet it seems obvious that learners differ, and different learning pedagogies would affect different learners differently. Regardless, using the best media for the message and an enlightened learning pedagogy seems best.

Even the simple question of whether to match learners to their style, or challenge them against their style has been unanswered. One of the issues that has been that much of the learning styles have been focused on cognitive aspects, yet cognitive science also recognizes two other areas: affective and conative, that is, who you are as a learner and your intentions to learn.

These two aspects, in particular the latter, could have an effect on learners. Affective, typically considered to be your personality, is best characterized by the Big 5 work to consolidate all the different personality characteristics into a unified set. It is easy to see that elements like openness and conscientiousness would have a positive effect on learning outcomes, and neuroticism could have a negative one.

Similarly, your intention to learn would have an impact. I typically think of this as your motivation to learn (whether from an intrinsic interest, a desire for achievement, or any other reason) moderated by any anxiety about learning (again, regardless whether from performance concerns, embarrassment, or other issue). It is this latter, in particular, that manifests in several instruments of interest.   Naturally, I’m also sympathetic to learning skills, e.g learning to learn and domain-independent skills.

In the UK study, two relatively highly regarded instruments were those coming from Entwistle’s program of research, and another by Vermunt. Both result in four characterizations of learners: roughly undirected learners, surface or reproducing learners, strategic or application learners, and meaning/deep learners.   Nicely, the work by Entwistle and Vermunt is funded research and not proprietary, and their work, instruments, and prescriptions are open.

I admit that any time I see a four element model, I’m inclined to want to put it into a quadrant model. And the emergent model from these three (each of which does include issues of motivation as well as learner skills) very much reminds me of the Situational Leadership model.

The situational leadership model talks about characterizing individual employees and adapting your leadership (really, coaching) to their stage. They have two dimensions: whether the learner needs task support and whether they need motivational support.   In short, you tell unmotivated and unskilled employees what to do, but try to motivate them to get them to the stage where they’re willing but unskilled and skill them.   When they’re still skilled but uncertain you support their confidence, and finally you just get out of their way!

This seems to me to be directly analogous to the learning models. If you chose two dimensions as needing learning skills support, and needing motivational support, you could come up with a nice two way model that provides useful prescriptions for learning. In particular, it seems to me to address the issue of when do you match a learners’ style, and when do you challenge; you match until the learner is confident, and then you challenge to both broaden their capabilities and to keep them engaged with challenge.

So, to keep with the result that the UK study found where most purveyors of instruments sell them and have no reason to work together,   I suppose what I ought to do is create an learning assessment instrument and associated prescriptions of my own, label the categories, brand it, and flog it. How about:

Buy: for those not into it, get them doing it
Try: for those willing, get them to develop their learning skills and support the value thereof
My: have them apply those learning skills to their goals and take ownership of the skills
Fly: set them free and resource them

I reckon I’ll have to call it the Quinnstrument!

Ok, I’m not serious about flogging it, but I do think that we can start looking at learning skills, and the conative/intention to learn as important components of learning.   Would you buy that?