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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for 2019

Learning Tools and Uni Change

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As part of a push for Learning Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University recently released their learning design tools. I’ve been aware of CMU’s Open Learning Initiative for a suite of reasons, and their tools for separate reasons. And I think both are good. I don’t completely align with their approach, but that’s ok, and I regularly cite their lead as a person who’s provided sage advice about doing good learning design. Further, their push, based upon Herb Simon’s thoughts about improving uni education, is a good one. So what’s going on, and why?

First, let’s be fair, most uni learning design isn’t very good. It’s a lot of content dump, and a test. And, yes, I’m stereotyping.  But it’s not all that different from what we see too often in corporate elearning. Not enough practice, and too much content. And we know the reasons for this.

For one, experts largely don’t have access to what they do, consciously, owing to the nature of our cognitive architecture. We compile information away, and research from the Cognitive Technology Group at the University of Southern California has estimated that 70% of what experts do isn’t available. They literally can’t tell you what they do!  But they can tell you what they know.  University professors are not only likely to reflect this relationship, they frequently may not actually be practitioners, so they don’t really  do!  We’ve compounded the likely focus on ‘know’, not do.

And, of course, most faculty aren’t particularly rewarded for teaching. Even lower tiers on the Carnegie scale of research institutions dream and hire on the potential for research.  There may be lip service to quality of teaching but if you can publish and get grants, you’re highly unlikely to be let go without some sort of drastic misstep.

And the solution isn’t, I suggest, trying to get faculty to be expert pedagogues. I suggest that the teaching quality of an institution is perceived, except perhaps the top tier institutions, as a mark of the quality of the institution. And yet the efforts to make teaching important, supported, valued, etc, tends to still be idiosyncratic. Yes, many institutions are creating central bodies to support faculty in improving their classes, but those folks are relatively powerless to substantially change the pedagogy unless they happen to have an eager faculty member.

CMU’s tools align, largely, with doing the right thing, and this  is important. The more tools that make it easy to do the right thing, rich pedagogies, the better. It makes much more sense, for instance, to have a default be to have separate feedback for each wrong answer than the alternative. Not that we always see that…but that’s an education problem. We need faculty and support staff to ‘get’ what good learning design is.

Ultimately, this is a good push forward. Combined with greater emphasis on teaching quality, even a movement towards competencies, and rigor in assessment, there’s a hope to get meaningful outcomes from our higher education investment. What I’ve said about K12 also holds true for higher ed, it’s both a curriculum  and a pedagogy problem. But we can and should be pushing both forward. Here’s to steps in the right direction!

#LSCon 19 Reflections

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It’s hard to think of now, but last week I was at the Learning Solutions conference. And I had a really great time. I didn’t see as much as I’d like (as you ‘ll see, I was busy), but there were some really worthwhile learnings, and some fun as well. Here are my conference reflections.

For the first time, I rented a scooter. That was a learning all in itself. I’d been having pain, and walking was the  worst. The scooter was a way to address that, and it did. I scooted around and avoided much walking. Not all, but a lot. And it was fun to zoop around, but…it was hard to maneuver in small spaces. Like the necessary elevators. And my room. I tried to slow down and do it carefully, and that worked to an extent, but it wasn’t pretty.

Decorated mobility scooterThe great part was that, having heard of my plight, some friends descended upon my ride and tarted it up with glitter and dangly things. And, best of all, caution tape. Very appropriate. Very much appreciated!  And it wasn’t even too hard to take off at the end.

Thus, I was happy to zoom to my room to run my pre-conference workshop on learning experience design. It was designed as an integration of Engaging Learning and the Serious eLearning Manifesto.    I snuck a bit of ‘transformation‘ in there as well.  The evaluations aren’t back yet, but I think overall it achieved the purpose. One attendee later suggested an improvement that I’d agree on (allowing learners to choose from the topics to workshop on). Always learning!

That evening, we did something I’d never done, Presentation Roulette. The speakers (I agreed to be one, without having seen it before; I do like experimenting [read: living dangerously]) choose a random title out of a sock (well, it was clean) and are then given a deck that Bianca Woods of the Guild had developed for that title, including the silliest pictures she could find on the web. As she describes it, a mashup of presentations and improv comedy.  It was very fun, and in particular extremely funny; the other presenters did great jobs. I’ll attend again even if I don’t present!

Tuesday was a normal day (e.g. I didn’t present). As usual, I mindmapped the keynotes (several posts back), cruised the floor, and attended some sessions. The panels were good. I attended the one on the Future of ID, and the comments were insightful about how the tools and goals were changing. Similarly the one on the Future of Work had a convergent message I resonated with, that we need to focus on using tech to augment us on the stuff we’re good at, not try to fight off automation of rote tasks. I also took some time off for calls and work.

That evening, after dinner, some friends and colleagues (they’re the same folks) came over to my suite. (I have gotten lots of accommodations for my situation; and I’m  very grateful.)  Fueled by libations, we proceeded to gin up an evil plan to control the world (or at least the market).  Politically correct it wasn’t, fun it was.  Too late to bed.

The next day I was part of the Guild Master panel with about 14 participants. Too many!  Great thoughts, and I tried to stifle myself and only make the most cogent points. Apparently I still spoke a little too much. I blame it on this blogging, it gives me lots of thoughts. :) The points I wanted to make were, not surprisingly, about the need for getting back to basics in learning design, and to look beyond optimal execution to continual innovation.

I also sat in an ARK Kit presentation. It made AR seem almost within reach. At this time you still do need some coding, but if it progresses like many tools, much will soon become at a higher level of ability to describe what you want and make it so.

I still wasn’t done, as later that day I also gave my ‘professionalism and myths’ talk. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I do believe we made some converts. I added in not just debunking myths, but how to talk to folks who buy into it. There’s a little learning science in it as well. We really do need to be on a sound basis before we can have credibility.

I have to say, delightedly, that I continue to have folks say that my books have helped them. Different books for different folks, but something I love to hear. As an author, you get some idea of the sales, but none of the impact. Some of these were small effects, and some were “I’ve used this to change my/our practice.”  That’s what it’s about, after all, you write a book to effect change. I’m grateful for those who share this insight!  In particular, I hear lots of folks using the Myths book in their orgs to counter employees/customers’ misguided intentions. The Revolution book still (or, perhaps,  now) has influence. And I still hear about the Games book!

I also slipped away with some more conspirators and experienced  The Void. It  was  hard on my legs (I went with cane, not scooter), mostly because they didn’t have anywhere to sit while you waited!?!?!  (I gave them a serve in the too-long post-experience survey.) However, it’s very cool: a compelling experience and great implications for learning. Embedded performance? That would be ‘yes’.

The keynotes, by the way, were excellent  AND…  I’ve heard over the years that conference organizers say it’s hard to have diversity in speakers. All white males (e.g. me ;), or at least white.  This time, there were two women, and two blacks, out of three people. With good messages.  It was inspiring to hear and to see!  Kudos to David Kelly and the Guild for managing to debunk the barrier.

There was some discussion of whether there was a place for those who proselytize learning science or it was all going commercial and cheap. I feel like there’s a growing interest in the science, but I’m frequently a year or several ahead of the market. In this case, I want to yell “make me right!”  This is a field I care about, and we can be doing so much good. I want us to capitalize on that potential. There were new folks looking for solutions and the opportunity to grow. I hope we can make that happen in a positive direction.

Overall, it was a success. I had time with smart colleagues, saw interesting sessions, and met new folks. I presented and got feedback, which is a great cycle. And it was another chance to immerse myself in the state of the industry. Here’s to continual improvement.

 

 

Violating Expectations

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As some of you may know, last week I had a surgical procedure. I don’t want to share details, but while it was non-trivial, it went fine. (I’ve talked earlier about the situation beforehand.) What did  not go fine was the recovery. I’m good now, but there were a harrowing few days. And I think the reason is of interest, and there’s a lesson. So I thought I’d share.

Now, my only previous experience with surgery was outpatient knee surgery. And it was amazing; I went off pain killers the 2nd day, and recovery was rapid. This, too, was outpatient, and while not as ‘micro’ as the knee surgery, I had no other frame of reference. And that caused a problem.

So, the day of the surgery went about as you might expect. I went in, lay down, woke up somewhere else, and was told things went well. With the benefit of meds, I let folks know I’d lived :), and proceeded to sleep away the afternoon. Come the evening, I was more clear-headed. With good meds, I looked forward to a night’s sleep, and better in the morn.

That night’s sleep was  not good. I couldn’t get comfortable, and so couldn’t sleep. Specifically, my left (not bad) side was uncomfortable and so was my right side  that was supposedly fixed. I was awake all but maybe 2 hours. Yet, I’d gotten used to sleep deprivation.

I was bothered that the side that had had the surgery, that was now supposed to be free of the cause, still hurt. Differently, perhaps, but still hurt. This was dismaying (to put it mildly). I called Saturday night, and was told that the right side could still hurt for some days. Er, okay…

Saturday night wasn’t really better. I slept maybe 3-4 hours, but lack of comfort meant I was still worried and in addition now sleep-deprived. This wasn’t all, but worth recounting is by Sunday, my whole right leg wasn’t working. Any sort of moving but standing hurt.  Not good.

This continued into Monday. Little and bad sleep meant I was going into a mentally challenging state of sleep-deprivation. The lack of right leg action began to make me feel like the whole experiment had failed, and I was going to have to face this again. I put in a call, but my doctor was in surgery. You can imagine I was discouraged and distressed. I was headed to bed when my doctor finally called. They’d scheduled me to see him the next day, and I hung on to that.

When I got to see him on Tuesday morning, I was a wreck. Spaced out from lack of sleep, distressed about my leg, and so on. I first talked to the PA, and then the doc came in. And, I found out a lot more. They’d completely removed the material pressing on the disk, but in so doing they’d likely irritated the nerve. And there could be some bleeding doing that, too. So, my leg hurting was explained. When we talked about meds, they were reminded what I  had  been on, and how the sudden cessation of that could be problematic. With explanations, and revised recommendations for medications going forward, it seemed promising.

Low and behold, after the visit, things began to fall into place. The medication revisions kicked in, and I felt a  lot better. Not good, mind you, but many times better. Finally, I could see how this was all working, and I  was progressing!

I awoke this morning and verified that yesterday wasn’t a fluke; I’m on a path to recovery. I still have a backlog of things to deal with, but I can get on that now.  And I still hurt in various places. But it’s the right hurt, I now know.

The short version of all this is that expectations matter. Stephanie Burns did her Ph.D. research on the people who succeeded with their goals (vs those who don’t), and found it was the ones who managed their expectations appropriately. Set goals, rewarded them, realized it was a long haul, etc. Similarly for learning; you want expectations to match experience. A mismatch can induce barriers to successful learning. If the experience will be typical, it may not matter so much, but you want to be wary of any ways in which people can find their expectations mismatched. Yes, you want some surprise, but you don’t want people to lose their comprehension of who they are and where they’re going.

I don’t actually blame the doctor. I think they could’ve set my expectations better, but I fear I come across as someone who has an idea of what’s going on. And I should’ve asked more questions. Further, I think there weren’t any flags that I needed such support. Still, it perhaps ought to be automatic. So consider setting expectations. Deliberately. Systematically. You can let them know there might be some surprise, without giving it away. Don’t leave people open to making inappropriate expectations, or you might be unpleasantly surprised.

Sarah Prevette #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

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Sarah Prevette closed the Learning Solutions conference with a rapid fire overview of Design Thinking and a passionate case for making the success skills of the future to be entrepreneurship. Starting with her experiences, she laid out success factors, and suggested that these skills were learnable and should be the curriculum.

Sarah Lewis #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

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In a thoughtful presentation, Sarah Lewis kicked off the second day of the Learning Solutions conference. She used compelling stories of innovations to paint a picture of mastery, failure, and grit, the elements of success.

Better Benchmarking

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I was on a phone conversation and was asked whether I compared my clients against others in the business to help them figure out where they’re at. E.g. do I offer my partners the chance to benchmark. And after a bit of thought, I said that no, I didn’t, and explained why. Moreover, they found my answer intriguing, so I thought I’d share it with you.

So, as I’ve said before, I don’t like best practices. In fact, as I’ve written before, I think we shouldn’t benchmark ourselves against others. That’s a bad practice. Why? Because then we’re comparing ourselves against a relative measure. And I think we should be comparing ourselves to a principled metric about where we could and should be.

Principles and Approaches for L&DIn fact, in the Revolution book, I created such a benchmark.  Using my performance ecosystem model, I took the six fundamental elements and elaborated them. The first core element I documented is a learning  culture. That’s accompanied by the approach to formal learning, looking at your instructional design and delivery. Then you move to performance focus, how you’re supporting performance in the world. We move on to social, how you’re facilitating informal learning and innovation. The next step is how you measure what you’re doing. Finally, there’s your infrastructure, how you’re creating the ecosystem environment. For each here I have a principle and an approach.

What I’ve done in the benchmarking instrument is take each of these and extend them. So, for each element broke it into two components, as there are nuances. And, for each, I proposed four levels of maturity:

  • Unaware: here you’re not thinking ecosystem
  • Initiating: now you’re beginning to establish an ecosystem approach
  • Mature: you’ve reached a working approach
  • Leading: at this level you’re setting the pace, thinking ahead

Thus, rather than benchmarking yourself against others, you have a principled approach with which to measure yourself. This instrument is fully elaborated in the Revolutionize L&D book, and goes into detail on each of the twelve rows.

And that was my response to the query. As a person, on principle you’re not supposed to compare yourself to others, but to your own progress. How to set your benchmarks? Against formal criteria. The same is true for organizations. I’ve tried to make a scrutable framework, the Revolution Field Guide, so to speak. So, please, look to best principles, not practices, and evaluate yourself similarly.

 

Chasing Technology Good and Bad

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I’ve been complaining, as part of the myths tour, that everyone wants the magic bullet. But, as I was commenting to someone, there are huge tech opportunities we’re missing. How can I have it both ways?  Well, I’m talking about two different techs (or, rather, many).  The fact is, we’re chasing the wrong technologies.

The problem with the technologies we’re chasing is that we’re chasing them from the wrong beginning. I see people chasing microlearning, adaptive learning, video, sims, and more as  the answer. And of course that’s wrong. There  can’t be one all-singing all-dancing solution, because the nature of learning is remarkably diverse. Sometimes we need reminders, sometimes deep practice, some times individualization makes sense, and other times it’s not ideal.

The part that’s really wrong here is that they’re doing this  on top of bad design!  And, as I believe I’ve mentioned, gilded bad design is still bad design.  Moreover,  if people actually spent the time and money first on investing just in improving their learning design, they’d get a far better return on investment than chasing the latest shiny object.  AND, later investments in most anything would be better poised to actually be worthwhile.

That would seem to suggest that there’s not a sensible tech to chase. After, of course, authoring tools and creating elearning. And that’s not true. Investment in, say, sims makes sense if you’re using it to implement good design (e.g. deep practice).  As part of a good learning design  strategy.  But there’s something deeper I’m talking about. And I’ve talked about it before.

What I’m talking about are content systems. They may seem far down the pike, but let me (again) make the case about why they make sense now, and for the future. The thing is, being systematic about content has both short-term  and  long-term benefits. And you can use the short-term ones to justify the long-term ones (or vice-versa).

In the short term, thinking about content from a systems perspective offers you rigor. While that may seem off-putting, it’s actually a benefit.  If you design your content model around good learning design, you are moving towards the first step, above, about good design. And, if you write good descriptions within those elements, you  really provide a foundation that makes it difficult to do bad design.

My point is that we’re ignoring meaningful moves to chase chimera. There are real value steps to make, including formalizing design processes  and  tools about good design. And there are ways to throw your money away on the latest fad.  It’s your choice, but I hope I’ve made a case for one interpretation. So, what’s yours?

Curriculum or pedagogy?

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In a conversation today, I mentioned that previously I’ve thought that perhaps the best next ‘man in the moon’ project would be to put an entire K12 curriculum up online. And, I’ve also thought that the only way to really fix things is to train trainers of teachers to learn to facilitate learning  around meaningful activity. And, of course, both are needed. What am I thinking?

So, there are huge gaps in the ways in which folks have access to learning. For example, I worked on a project that was trying to develop some K12 curricula online, to provide support for learners in HS that might not have sufficiently capable learners. The project had started with advanced learners, but recognized that wasn’t the only gap. And this is in California!  So I have argued for a massive project, but using advanced curricula and pedagogy.

And, at the other end, as I spoke at a conference looking to talk about improving education in India. There, they have a much bigger need for good teachers than they can reach with their education schools. I was arguing for a viral teacher prep. The idea being not just to train teachers, but train the trainers of those teachers. Then the training could go viral, as just teaching teachers wouldn’t go fast enough.

And both are right, and not enough. In the conversation, I resurrected both points and am now reflecting how they interact. The simple fact is that we need a better curriculum and a better pedagogy. As Roger Schank rightly points out, things like the quadratic equation are nuts to keep in a K12 curricula. The fact is that our curricula came from before the  Industrial Age and is barely adequate there. Yet we’re in an Information Age. And our pedagogy is aligned to tests, not to learning nor doing. We should be equipping kids with actionable knowledge to make meaningful decisions in their lives, not with arbitrary and abstract knowledge that isn’t likely to transfer.

And, of course, even if we did have such a curriculum online, we’d need teachers who could facilitate learning in this way. And that’s a barrier not just in India. The point being that most of the world is suffering with bad curricula and pedagogy. How do we make this change.

And I don’t have an answer. I think we should put both online, and support on the ground. We need that content, available through mobile to reach beyond the developed world, and we need the facilitators. They can be online, as I think about it, but they need to understand the context on the ground if they’re not there. They are context-specific necessities. And this is a massive problem.

Principle says: start small and scale. There are institutions doing at least parts of this, but scaling is a barrier. And again, I have no immediate solution other than a national (or international) initiative. We don’t want just one without the other. I don’t want teachers facilitating the old failed curricula, and I don’t want current pedagogies working on the new curricula. (And I shudder at the thought of a pre-college test in the old style trying to assess this new model!) I welcome your thoughts!

Thoughts on strategy from Training 19

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So last week I was the strategy track coach for the Training 19 conference. An experiment! That meant that I picked the sessions from a list of those who put their session proposals up for ‘strategy’, and could choose to open and/or close the track. I chose both. And there were thoughts on strategy from the sessions and the attendees that are worth sharing.

I chose the sessions mainly on two criteria: coverage of the topics, and sessions that sounded like they’d give real value.  I was lucky, the latter happened! While I didn’t get the complete coverage I wanted, I  did get a good spread of topics. So I think the track worked. As to the coaching, there wasn’t much of that, but I’ve sent in suggestions for whoever does it next year.

I knew two of the presenters, and some were new. My goal, again, was real coverage. And they lived up to it. Friend and colleague Michael Allen practiced what he preached while talking about good learning design, as he does. He was followed by Karen Polhemus &amp Stephanie Gosteli who told a compelling tale of how they were managing a  huge initiative by combining training with change management. Next was JD Dillon, another friend, talked about his experiences building learning ecosystems that deemphasized courses based upon data and his inferences. Alwyn Klein made an enthusiastic and compelling case for doing performance consulting  before you start.  Haley Harris & Beth Wisch went deep about data in talking about how they met the needs for content by curating.  Joe Totherow talked games as a powerful learning tool. Finally, Alex Kinnebrew pushed for finding stakeholder voices as a complement to data in making strategy.

Performance EcosystemI bookended these talks. I opened by making the case for doing optimal execution right, meaning doing proper learning design and performance support. Then I talked about driving for continual innovation with social and informal.  I closed by laying out the performance ecosystem diagram (ok, so I replaced ‘elearning’ in the diagram with ‘training’, and that’s probably something I keep), and placed the coming talks on it, so that attendees would know where the talks fit. I mostly got it right ;).  However, the feedback suggested that for those who complained, it’s because  I took too long to get to the overview. Useful feedback.  

I finished with a 3 hour strategy session where I walked people through each element of the ecosystem (as I cut it), giving them examples, providing self-assessment, and items to add to their strategy for that element. I closed by suggesting that it was up to them to sequence, based upon their particular context. Apparently, people  really liked this opportunity. One challenge was the short amount of time; this is usually run as a full day workshop.

It’s clear that folks are moving to thinking ‘outside of the box’, and I’m thrilled. There were good audiences for the talks in a conference focused on doing training! It’s definitely time for thoughts on strategy. Perhaps, as has happened before, I was ahead of the time for the revolution. Here’s to a growing trend!