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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Archives for August 2021

Making it Meaningful

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I volunteer for our local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT; and have learned lots of worthwhile things). On a call, our local organizer mentioned that she was leading a section of the train-the-trainers upcoming event, and was dreading trying to make it interesting. Of course I opened my big yap and said that’s something I’m focusing on, and offered to help. She took me up on it, and it was a nice case study in making it meaningful.

Now, I have a claim that you can’t give me a topic that I can’t create a game for. I’m now modifying that to ‘you can’t give me a topic I can’t make meaningful’.  She’d mentioned her topic was emergency preparedness, and while she thought it was a dull topic, I was convinced we could do it. I mentioned that the key was making it visceral.

I had personal experience; last summer our neighbor was spreading the rumor that we were going to have to evacuate owing to a fire over the ridge. (Turns out, my neighbor was wrong.) I started running around gathering sleeping bags, coats, dog crate, etc. Clearly, I was thinking about shelter. When I texted m’lady, she asked about passports, birth certificates, etc. Doh!

However, even without that personal example, there’s a clear hook. When I mentioned that, she mentioned that when you’re in a panic, your brain shuts down some and it’s really critical to be prepared. However, she mentioned that someone else was taking that bit, and her real topic was different types of disasters. Yet my example had already got her thinking, and she started talking about different people being familiar with an earthquake (here in California).

I thought of how when talking with scattered colleagues, they disclaim about how earthquakes are scary, and I remind them that  every place has its hazards. In the midwest it could be tornados or floods. On the east coast it’s hurricanes. Etc. The point being that everyone has some experience. Tapping into that, talking about consequences, is a great hook.

That’s the point, really. To get people willing to invest in learning, you have to help people see that they  do need it. (Also, that they don’t know it now,  and that this experience will change that.). You need to be engaged in making it meaningful!

Again, in my mind learning experience design (LXD) is about the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. You need to understand both. I’ve got a book and a workshop on learning science, and I’ve a workshop at DevLearn on the engagement side. I’ve also got a forthcoming book and an online workshop coming for more on engagement. Stay tuned!

More lessons from bad design

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I probably seem like a crank, given the way I take things apart. Yet, I maintain there’s a reason beyond “get off my lawn!” I point out flaws not to complain, but instead to point to how to do it better. (At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ;) Here’s another example, providing more lessons from bad design.

In this case, I’ll be attending a conference and the providers have developed an application to support attendees. In general, I look forward to these applications. They provide ways to see who’s attending, and peruse sessions to set your calendar. There are also ways to connect to people. However, two major flaws undermine this particular instance.

The first issue is speed. This application is  slow! I timed it; 4 seconds to open the list of speakers or attendees. Similarly, I clicked on a letter to jump through the list of attendees. The amount of time it takes varied from 4 to 8 seconds. Jumping to the program took 6 seconds.

While that may seem short, compare that to most response times in apps. You essentially can’t time them, they’re so fast. More than a second is an era in mobile responsiveness. I suspect that this app is written as a ‘wrapped’ website, not a dedicated app. Which works sometimes, but not when the database is too big to be responsive. Or it could just be bad coding. Regardless, this is  basically unusable. So test the responsiveness before it’s distributed to make sure it’s acceptable. (And then reengineer it when it isn’t.)

That alone would be sufficient to discount this app, but there’s a second problem. Presumably for revenue reasons, there are ads that scroll across the top. Which might make sense to keep the costs of the app down, but there’s a fundamental problem with our visual architecture.

Motion in the periphery of our vision is distracting. That was evolutionarily adaptive, allowing us to detect threats from places that we weren’t focusing on. Yet, when it’s not a threat, and we  are trying to focus on something, it interferes. We learned about this in the days of web pages with animated gifs: you couldn’t process what you were there to consume!

In this app, the scrolling of the ads makes it more difficult to read the schedule, attendee lists, and other information. Thus, the whole purpose of the application is undermined. You could have static ads that are randomly attached to the pages you click on. The audience is likely to go to several pages, so all the ads will get seen. Having them move, however, to ensure that you see them all undermines the whole purpose of the app.

Oddly enough, there are other usability problems here. On the schedule, there’s a quick jump to times on a particular day. Though it stops at 2PM!?!? (The conference extends beyond that; my session’s at 4PM.) You’d think you could swipe to see later times on that ‘jump’ menu, but that doesn’t work. I can’t go farther, because the usability makes it too painful; we may miss more lessons from bad design.

Our cognitive architecture is powerful, but has limitations. Designing to work in alignment with our brains is a clear win; and this holds true for designing for learning as well as performance support. Heck, I’ve written a whole book  about how our minds work, just to support our ability to design better learning! Conflicting with our mental mechanisms is just bad design. My goal is that with more lessons in bad design, we can learn to do better. Here’s to good design!

Caveat Malarkey

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After continuing to take down marketing blather, it’s time for a plea. Caveat Malarkey!

And, as always, the prose.

If you‘ve been paying attention, you will have seen that a number of my blog posts take down a variety of articles that are rife with malarkey. A lot of them come from connections or pointers on LinkedIn. (If you want to live in infamy, feel free to point me to your posts. ;) It‘s time to address what I‘m seeing, from two points of view. One is my advice to vendors in the L&D space. The other is advice to you who are consumers of education & technology products. The underlying theme is Caveat Malarkey!

What I‘m talking about is the large number of posts that do one of several things. First, they use myths to promote products. These are things like the attention span of a goldfish, learning styles, generations/digital natives, etc. Second, they are unclear on concepts. They toss around bizbuzz without being clear about what the terms mean, and more importantly what it takes to make it work and not! Of course, there are ones that accomplish both.  

So let‘s start with myths. Heck, I wrote a book about them, just because they won‘t go away!   For instance, while we know that learners differ, we can‘t (and shouldn‘t) address our learning to match styles. There‘s no evidence that adapting to styles helps. Worse, there is, as yet, no meaningful way to reliably characterize learners according to styles. Similarly, the claim that our attention span has dropped doesn‘t stand up to biological nor empirical scrutiny. We don‘t evolve that fast, and there‘s plenty of counter-evidence. The claim comes from a misinterpretation of an essentially irrelevant study. The notion that we can characterize people by the ‘generation‘ they‘re born in, or that people who grew up with digital phones are somehow ‘natives‘ are also both found lacking when looked at closely. There were 13 more myths in my book that can also be seen.  

Then there‘s conceptual clarity. Again, my most recent book is on learning science, trying to provide the foundation for clear understanding. Thus, when we hear terms like microlearning or workflow learning or whatever else will emerge, tread carefully! There are some powerful ideas on tap, but people who don‘t bother to unpack the terms and detail how they differ in design and use shouldn‘t be trusted.

My message is twofold. For one, as consumers, watch out for these approaches. If someone‘s being glib, be wary! First, learn about the concepts and the myths, and then dig in. If there‘s a claim, take several steps. First, give it the ‘sniff test‘. If it doesn‘t make conceptual sense, and/or isn‘t relevant to you, back away. Second, track it back. Who‘s making this claim, and what‘s their vested interest? Is anyone independently saying the same thing? Importantly, is there anyone saying to the contrary, and what‘s their interest? Eventually, you might go back to the original research, but if you haven‘t been trained, I encourage you to look to the reputable purveyors of evidence-based perspectives.  

To the vendors, please help. We need to raise our industry to a professional level. Get someone to write your articles who knows what they‘re talking about. Don‘t let social media interns (let alone the “I‘ll write articles for you” cold-mailers) write your materials. Find someone who understands learning. More importantly, get someone who understands learning to actually guide your products and/or service design, and then you can tout scrutable opportunities.

In the long term, we can lift our industry to an evidence-based, professional standard. In the short term, we need to focus on questionable claims, and shoot for real value. Caveat malarkey!  

More Marketing Malarkey

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As has become all too common, someone decided to point me to some posts for their organization. Apparently, interest was sparked by a previous post of mine where I’d complained about  microlearning. While this one  does a (slightly) better job talking about  microlearning, it is riddled with other problems. So here’s yet another post about  more marketing malarkey.

First, I don’t hate microlearning; there are legitimate reasons to keep content small. It can get rid of the bloat that comes from contentitis, for one. There are solid reasons to err on the side of performance support as well. Most importantly, perhaps, is also the benefit of spacing learning to increase the likelihood of it being available. The thing that concerns me is that all these things are different, and take different design approaches.

Others have gone beyond just the two types I mention. One of the posts  cited a colleague’s more nuanced presentation about small content, pointing out four different ways to use microlearning (though interestingly,  five were cited in the referenced presentation). My problem, in this case, wasn’t the push for microlearning (there were some meaningful distinctions, though no actual mention how they require different design). Instead, it was the presence of myths.

One of the two posts opened with this statement: “The appetite of our employees is not the same therefore, we must not provide them the same bland food (for thought).” This seems a bit of a mashup. Our employees aren’t the same, so they need different things? That’s personalization, no? However, the conversation goes on to say: “It‘s time to put together an appetizing platter and create learning opportunities that are useful and valuable.”  Which seems to argue for engagement. Thus, it seems like it’s instead arguing that people need more engaging content. Yes, that’s true too. But what’s that got to do with our employees not having the same appetite? It  seems to be swinging towards the digital native myth, that employees now need more engaging things.

This is bolstered by a later quote: “When training becomes overwhelming and creates stress, a bite-sized approach will encourage learning.” If training becomes overwhelming and stressful, it  does suggest a redesign. However, my inclination would be to suggest that ramping up the WIIFM and engagement are the solution. A bite-sized approach, by itself, isn’t a solution to engagement. Small wrong or dull content isn’t a solution for dull or wrong content.

This gets worse in the other post. There were two things wrong here. The first one is pretty blatant:

There are numerous resources that suggest our attention spans are shrinking. Some might even claim we now have an average attention span of only 8 seconds, which equals that of a goldfish.

There are, of course, no such resources pointed to. Also, the resources that proposed this have been debunked. This is actually the ‘cover story’ myth of my recent book on myths! In it, I point out that the myth about attention span came from a misinterpreted study, and that our cognitive architecture doesn’t change that fast. (With citations.) Using this ‘mythtake’ to justify microlearning is just wrong. We’re segueing into tawdry marketing malarkey here.

This isn’t the only problem with this post, however. A second one emerges when there’s an (unjustified) claim that learning should have 3E’s: Entertaining, Enlightening, and Engaging. I do agree with Engaging (per the title of my first book), however, there’s a problem with it. And the other ones. So, for Entertaining, this is the followup: “advocates the concept of learning through a sequence of smaller, focused modules.” Why is smaller inherently more entertaining? Also, in general, learning doesn’t work as well when it’s just ‘fun’, unless it’s “hard fun”.

Enlightening isn’t any better. I do believe learning should be enlightening, although particularly for organizational learning it should be transformative in terms of enhancing an individual’s ability to  perform. Just being enlightened doesn’t guarantee that. The followup says: “Repetition, practice, and reinforcement can increase knowledge.” Er, yes, but that’s just good design. There’s nothing unique to microlearning about that.

Most importantly, the definition for Engaging is “A program journey can be spaced enough that combats forgetting curve.” That is spacing! Which isn’t a bad thing (see above), but not your typical interpretation of engaging. This is really confused!

Further, I didn’t even need to fully parse these two posts. Even on a superficial examination, they fail the ‘sniff test’. In general, you should be avoiding folks that toss around this sort of fluffy biz buzz, but even more so when they totally confound a reasonable interpretation of these concepts. This is just more marketing malarkey. Caveat emptor.

(Vendors, please please please stop with the under-informed marketing, and present helpful posts. Our industry is already suffering from too many myths. There’s possibly a short-term benefit, however the trend seems to be that people are paying more attention to learning science. Thus, in the long run I reckon it undermines your credibility. While taking them down is fun and hopefully educational, I’d rather be writing about new opportunities, not remedying the old.  If you don’t have enough learning science expertise to do so, I can help: books, workshops, and/or writing and editing services.)

 

Concept Maps and Learning

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Once again, someone notified me of something they wanted me to look at. In this case, a suite of concept maps, with a claim that this could be the future of education. And while I’m a fan of concept maps, I was suspicious of the claim, So, while I’ve written on mindmaps before, it’s time to dig into concept maps and learning.

To start, the main separation between mindmaps and concept maps is labels. Specifically, concept maps have labels that indicate the meaning of  connections between concepts. At least, that’s my distinction. So while I’ve done (a lot of) mindmaps of keynotes, they’re mostly of use to those who also saw the same presentation. Otherwise, the terms and connections don’t necessarily make sense. (Which doesn’t mean a suite of connections can’t be valuable, c.f. Jerry’s Brain, where Jerry Michalski has been tracking his explorations for over two decades!) However, a concept map does a better job of indicating the total knowledge representation.

I know a wee bit about this, because while writing up my dissertation, I had a part-time job working with Professor  Kathy Fisher and SemNet. Kathy Fisher is a biologist and teacher who worked with Joe Novak (who can be considered the originator of concept mapping). SemNet is a Macintosh concept mapping tool (Semantic Network) that Kathy created and used in teaching biology. It allows students to represent their understanding, which instructors can use to diagnose misconceptions.

I also later volunteered for a while with the K-Web project. This was a project with James Burke (of Connections fame) creating maps of the interesting historical linkages his show and books documented. Here again, navigating linkages can be used for educational purposes.

With this background, I looked at this project. The underlying notion is to create a comprehensive suite of multimedia mindmaps of history and the humanities. This, to me, isn’t a bad thing! It provides a navigable knowledge resource that could be a valuable adjunct to teaching. Students can be given tasks to find the relationships between two things, or asked to extend the concept maps, or… Several things, however, are curious at least.

The project claims to be a key to the future of global education. However, as an educational innovation, the intended pedagogical design is worrisome. The approach claims that “They have complete freedom to focus on and develop whichever interests capture their fancy.” and “…the class is exposed to a large range of topics that together provide a comprehensive and lively view of the subject…”  This is problematic for two reasons. First, there appears to be no guarantee that this indeed will provide comprehensive coverage. It’s possible, but not likely.

As a personal example, when I was in high school, our school district decided that the American Civil War would be taught as modules. Teachers chose to offer whatever facets they wanted, and students could take any two modules they wanted. Let me assure you that my knowledge of the Civil War did not include a systematic view of the causes, occurrences, and outcomes, even in ideologically distorted versions. Anything I now know about the Civil War comes from my own curiosity.

Even with the social sharing, a valuable component, there appears to be no guidance to ensure that all topics are covered. Fun, yes. Curricularly thorough, no.

Second, presenting on content doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve truly comprehended it. As my late friend, historian Joseph Cotter, once told me, history isn’t about learning facts, it’s about learning to think like a historian. You may need the cultural literacy first, but then you need to be able to use those elements to make comparisons, criticisms, and more.  Students should be able to  think with these facts.

Another concerning issue in the presentation about this initiative is this claim: “reading long passages of text no longer works very well for the present generation of learners. More than ever, learners are visual learner [sic].” This confounds two myths, the digital native myth with the learning styles myth. Both have been investigated and found to be lacking in empirical support. No one likes to read long passages of text without some intrinsic interest (but we can do that).

In short, while I laud the collection, the surrounding discussion is flawed. Once again, there’s a lack of awareness of learning science being applied. While that’s understandable, it’s not sufficient.  My $0.05.