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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for March 2011

Thinking Social

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In talking about the 4C’s of Mobile, the last one I usually mention is ‘communicate’.   Communicate isn’t last because it’s least, but instead because it leads us furthest afield, into the areas of social learning, which has many ramifications in many ways: organizationally, cognitively, culturally, and more.   However, it is of importance for mobile in terms of thinking about how and when to take advantage of it.   It is also something that the Internet Time Alliance is wrestling with.

We strongly believe in performance consulting, that is getting to the root cause of the organizational problem, and determining whether the problem is skill set, information, motivation, or whatever.   This is a necessary step before you decide your intervention. However, the current models of performance consulting seem to be   missing a couple of things.   For one, they are not particularly good at engagement, at least in the formal learning setting, and trying to understand the audience’s interest.   More importantly here, they also seem to lack consideration of when a social media solution might make sense.

As a preliminary step, I went back to some material I have from my workshop on mobile learning design.   One of the activities is thinking about when you might want to consider a social solution, to connect to someone to communicate, rather than have a prepared solution.   My initial thoughts were that you might want to connect when:

  • the content is highly volatile
  • the situation is likely unique
  • the cost of access is low
  • the need for personal touch or mentoring is high

These make sense to me, but I’ve no reason to believe the list is comprehensive.   However, it is a starting point for thinking about when you might want to provide access to a social resource, whether a directory of appropriate people, or consider providing communication tools.

I might extend the list with:

  • when the situation is likely new
  • when there is an expert
  • when the situation is likely to be complex.

Here’s a tougher one: when would you think the situation would likely need a collaborator, instead of an expert?   What’s the trigger?

As I said, I’m just starting to wrestle with this.   What ideas do you have?

Quip: tuning

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You can’t declare it’s a game, your learners will tell you if it is or not.

I found a game for my iPad that I really liked.   A casual gamer, so that while it has a story, I can play it without having to get too crazy about learning timing issues or complicated commands.

I played it through, and several different times again with different characters, and eagerly awaited the sequel.   Which finally occurred and I was again progressing through the game.   Er, until the end, and that’s where this story begins.

When I got to the last boss, suddenly I couldn’t finish.   I couldn’t beat the boss!   Instead of happily progressing, suddenly I was grinding to get my character to level up, and trying again, while looking for more special equipment.   It was suddenly frustrating, not fun.

Now, I’d pretty well just bashed my way through: no finesse in movement.   But that had worked.   So if I was supposed to pick up more nuanced movements and commands, there had been no incentive. Well, I finally beat the boss after numerous attempts, and then the game was over, but I hadn’t really found out what I’d done that worked.

Again, I started with a different character, and again it was fun. Up until the end, and again I was faced with the unbeatable boss. Again I ground, and again I finally succeeded, but it was still an anti-climax after so much fun prior to that point.

The point here is not to complain about this particular game, but to point out that getting the experience right matters.   When I run my game design lectures and/or workshops, I point out that as Will Wright once told me, tuning is 9/10ths of the work.   And it’s got to go all the way through, with the right audience.   It may be that they didn’t test the end with a casual gamer like me, but it was a jarring ending to what had been.

Now, in most of the formal learning situations we design for, we have sticks as well as carrots, so we aren’t expecting our learners to pay for the privilege of completing our learning experience, but it’s important to understand what learner experience we think would be reasonable and shoot for achieving that.   It’s subjective, so asking them is just fine, but you want to set metrics for the user experience (tested for after you ensure usability   isn’t a barrier and you are achieving your learning outcomes) and then tune until you get them. Or, of course, until you find out you won’t on your current budget and adjust your expectations, but doing so consciously.

As I say, you don’t turn a scenario into a game, you tune it into a game.   And even when you are not shooting for a game, this applies to learning experience design as well.   Emotions and subjective experience matters, so do consider testing and tuning until you achieve the experience you need.