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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for 2010

Changing minds

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There is a lot of concern about incorporating social learning into organizations centering on the organizational and culture issues.   I gave my “Blowing up the training department” presentation last nite for Massachusetts ISPI chapter, and a number of the questions were on getting the executives to buy in to the need, and then changing the culture. My recent post on problem-solving similarly raised such questions.

As Kevin suggested, if you asked executives “Do you support problem-solving, sharing and reflection, reward diverse participation, and encourage individual initiative?”, they would answer in the affirmative.   However, if you asked below that level, you might find a different viewpoint.

This reminded me of an earlier post on attitudinal change, where the first step was to make folks aware of their own attitudes.   I think it might be similarly necessary to help make executives aware of the reality, not what they believe.   An audit might be a good tool to invoke, assessing the realities of the possibilities to contribute, the rewards, as well as the actual behaviors and beliefs of the individuals in the organization.   Eventually, you have to characterize the organization on dimensions of being a learning organization, including supportive learning environment, leadership, and processes and practice.

If you can present individuals with the reality, as the attitude change model suggests, you then have the opportunity to present alternatives, and evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For instance, changing cutlure is hard. However, the consequences of not changing may be worse!   Then, if you can get commitment to change, you have the necessary buy-in to start organizational change processes.

It seems clear to me that change can’t happen without an awareness of the real situation and it’s consequences.   Org change requires leaders to proselytize and walk the walk.   That only happens when they’re really committed, and that requires them to acknowledge the gap and the need.

I’m continually exploring the needs and solutions possible, but it’s clear we can’t avoid the tough issues and have to come up with approaches to address them.   These tactics are, I’m sure, not new, but you need the tools to move forward.   Learning culture audit anyone?

Kapp & Driscoll nail Learning in 3D

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Karl Kapp and Tony O‘Driscoll have launched the age of virtual worlds in organizational learning by providing a thorough overview in their new book Learning in 3D. This is a comprehensive and eloquent book, covering the emerging opportunity in virtual worlds.   Replete with conceptual models to provide structure to the discussion as well as pragmatic guidance to how to design and implement learning solutions, this book will help those trying to both get their minds around the possibilities and those who are ready to get their hands dirty.

Learning in 3D Blog Stop badgeTheir enthusiasm for the opportunities is palpable, and helps bolster the reader through some initial heady material. The book is eloquently written, as you‘d expect from two academics, but both also play in the real world, so it‘s not too esoteric in language or concept.   It‘s just that the concepts are complex, and they don‘t pander with overly simplistic presentations. They get it, and want you to, too.

Their opening chapters make a solid argument for social learning.   They take us through the changes society is going through and the technology transformations of the internet to help us understand why social learning, formal and informal, is a powerful case.   They point out the problems with existing formal learning, and identify how these can be addressed in virtual worlds.

What follows is a serious statement of the essential components of a virtual world for organizational learning, a series of models that attempt to capture and categorize learning in a 3D world.   They similarly develop a series of useful ‘use cases‘ (they term them “archetypes”), and place them in context.   Overall, it‘s a well thought out characterization of the space.

Coupled with the conceptual overviews are pragmatic support.   There are a number of carefully detailed examples that help learners understand the business need and the outcomes as well as the design.   There are war stories from a number of pioneers in the space.   There is a systematic guide to design that should provide valuable support to readers who are eager to experiment, and the advice on vendors, adoption, and implementation is very practical and valuable.

The book is not without flaws: they set up a ‘straw man‘ contrast to virtual world learning.   While all too representative of corporate elearning, the contrast of good pedagogy versus bad pedagogy undermines the unique affordances of the virtual world.       I note that their principles for virtual world learning design are not unique to virtual worlds, and are essentially no different (except socially) from those in Engaging Learning.     And their 7 sensibilities doesn‘t seem quite as conceptually accurate as my own take on virtual world affordances.   But these are small concerns in the larger picture of communicating the opportunities.

This is a valuable book for those who want to understand what all the excitement is about in virtual worlds.   I‘ve been watching the space for a number of years now, and as the technology has matured have moved from thinking that the overhead was too high to where I believe that it is a valuable tool in the learning arsenal and only going to be more so. This book is the guide you need to being ready to capitalize on this opportunity.   You can get a 20% discount purchasing it directly from Amazon.   Recommended.

Is it all problem-solving?

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I’ve been arguing for a while that we need to take a broader picture of learning, that the responsibility of learning units in the organization should be ensuring adequate infrastructure, skills, and culture for innovation, creativity, design, research, collaboration, etc, not just formal learning. As I look at those different components, however, I wonder if there’s an overarching, integrating viewpoint.

When people go looking for information, or colleagues, they have a problem to solve. It may be a known one with an effective solution, or it may be new. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a new service to create, a new product to design, a customer service problem, an existing bug, or what. It’s all really a situation where we need an answer and we don’t have one.

We’ll have some constraints, some information, but we’re going to have to research, hypothesize, experiment, etc. If it’s rote, we ought to have it automated, or we ought to have the solution in a performance support manner. Yes, there are times training is part of the solution. But this very much means that first, all our formal solutions (courses, job aids, etc) should be organized around problem-solving (which is another way of saying that we need the objectives to be organized around doing).

Once we go beyond that, it seems to me that there’s a plausible case to be made that all our informal learning also needs to be organized from a problem-solving perspective. What does that mean?

One of the things I know about problem-solving is that our thought processes are susceptible to certain traps that are an outcome of our cognitive architecture. Functional fixedness and set-effects are just two of the traps. Various techniques have evolved to overcome these, including problem re-representation, systematicity around brain-storming, support for thinking laterally, and more.

Should we be baking this into the infrastructure? We can’t neglect skills. Assuming that individuals are effective problem-solvers is a mistake. The benefits of instruction in problem-solving skills have been demonstrated. Are we teaching folks how to find and use data, how to design useful experiments and test solutions? Do folks know what sort of resources would be useful? Do they know how to ask for help, manage a problem-solving process, and deal with organizational issues as well as conceptual ones?

Finally, if you don’t have a culture that supports problem-solving, it’s unlikely to happen. You need an environment that tolerates experimentation (and associated failure), that support sharing and reflection, that rewards diverse participation and individual initiative, you’re not going to get the type of pro-active solutions you want.

This is still embryonic, but I’m inclined to believe that there are some benefits from pushing this approach a bit. What say you?

Plans for 2010

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The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question of the Month is “predictions and plans for 2010“, specifically:

  • What are your biggest challenges for this upcoming year?
  • What are your major plans for the year?
  • What predictions do you have for the year?

I’ve already blogged the predictions question, so I’ll just address the first two points.

As a consultant, my big challenge is always finding more people who I can help.   With my colleagues in the Internet Time Alliance, we’re looking for organizations that know they want to leverage the power of social media to develop a collective intelligence infrastructure, but need assistance.   Through Quinnovation, I’m looking to improve organizational learning design, whether through developing immersive learning simulation capability, mobile delivery, performance solutions, adaptive systems, content models, or all of the above as a strategic lever.   I’ve helped lots of folks, and it’s clear there’s more need, so I’m just looking for more opportunities to really improve things, and ways to find those opportunities.

My plans are severalfold.   First, I’ve got to finish the manuscript for my mobile book.   I’m also committed to execute against the contracts I already have to continue to deliver great solutions.   And I intend to continue experimenting, speaking (hope to see you at the Guild’s Learning Solutions conference in March), writing, and of course, consulting.

I’m also intending to elaborate on some recent thoughts on learning experience design.   I think there’s a real opportunity to wrap some definition around the different components that helps systematize the integration of engagement and effective learning.   This is a generalization of Engaging Learning, going broader in areas of application, and across technologies.   I think there’s a need (just look at all the bad elearning still out there), and as we start delivering learning in more distributed ways and in wider contexts, we need a conceptual framework that helps us design in meaningful ways.

Naturally, I welcome your participation and assistance in any of the above!

Predictions for 2010

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eLearning Mag publishes short predictions for the year from a variety of elearning folks, and I thought I’d share and elaborate on what I put in:

I‘m hoping this will be the ‘year of the breakthrough‘.   Several technologies are poised to cross the chasm: social tools, mobile technologies, and virtual worlds.   Each has reached critical mass in being realistically deployable, and offers real benefits.   And each complements a desired organizational breakthrough, recognizing the broader role of learning not just in execution, but in problem-solving, innovation, and more.   I expect to see more inspired uses of technology to break out of the ‘course‘ mentality and start facilitating performance more broadly, as organizational structures move learning from ‘nice to have‘ to core infrastructure.

While I don’t know that these technologies will actually cross over (I’m notoriously optimistic), they’re pretty much ready to be:

  • Social I’ve mentioned plenty before, and everyone and their brother is either adding social learning capabilities to their suites, or creating a social learning tool company. And there are lots of open source solutions.
  • Mobile has similarly really hit the mainstream, with both reasonable and cheap (read: free) ways to develop mobile apps (cf Richard Clark & my presentation at the last DevLearn), and a wide variety of opportunities. The devices are out there!
  • Virtual worlds are a little bit more still in flux (while Linden Labs’ Second Life is going corporate as well, some of the other corporate-focused players are in some upheaval), but the value proposition is clear, and there are still plenty of opportunities.   The barriers are coming down rapidly.

Each has available technologies, best principles established and emerging, and real successes.   Given that there will be books on each coming this year (including mine ;), I really do think the time is nigh.   And, each is a component of a broader approach to learning, one that I’ve been advocating for organizations.

I’m hoping that organizations will start taking a more serious approach to a broad picture of learning.   The need in organizations is for learning to not be an add-on, isolated,   but instead to be part of the infrastructure.   We are at at a stage now where learning has to go faster than taking away, defining, designing, developing, and then delivering can accommodate.   The need is for learning to break out of the ‘event’ model, and start becoming more timely, more context-sensitive, and more collaborative.   Organizations will need their people to produce new answers on a continual basis.

I’m hoping that organizations will ‘get’ the necessary transition, and take the necessary steps.   As Alan Kay said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”.   I’m hoping we can invent the future, together.   We need the breakthrough, so let’s get going!

Top Posts of 2009

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Seeing all the top 10 lists, I thought I’d look at what the top 10 posts were for Learnlets (using Google Analytics), and I have to say that the responses were interesting, as some weren’t the ones I thought were most interesting. I suspect that they’re the ones that other people pointed to most for a variety of reasons (including me pointing people to the Broken ID series beginning). Here’s the list:

The ‘Least Assistance‘ Principle

Rethinking Learning Styles

Sims, Games, and Virtual Worlds

Learning Twitter Chat!

(New) Monday Broken ID Series: Objectives

Learning Styles, Brain-Based Learning, and Daniel Willingham

Learning Organization Dimensions

Predictions for 2009

The 7 c‘s of natural learning

Social Media Goals

I welcome your thoughts of what made these the most interesting posts of 2009.   And here’s hoping this new year is our best yet!