Archives for May 2022

What’s In It For Them?

31 May 2022 by Clark Leave a Comment

One of the things I talk about in my most recent book, Make It Meaningful, is the importance of communicating the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). I do think it’s important, but in recent work I’ve found an interesting alternative. I’m not sure I completely have my mind around how to address it, so as I’m wont to do, here’s some ‘thinking out loud’ about What’s In It For Them (WIIFT).

To start, WIIFM is about connecting learners to a visceral understanding of the reason for the learning experience. There should be a clear value proposition, to them. It can be either having to do with either the consequences of having the resulting skill, or not. The point is that they ‘get’ that they need this (then there’s more). I believe that learners will invest in learning if they understand why.

However, in this instance, we have audiences who may or may not be interested. This is a suite of offerings, different for different potential clients. What we want here is for them to quickly determine whether there’s WIIFM. We don’t think everyone will be appropriate for every thing we’re providing. Importantly, we don’t want them to waste time on ones that aren’t relevant. So we very quickly want to establish what’s in it for the appropriate audience.

There are a number of ways to send signals. For one, the filename and the title of the resource can (and should) be clear what this particular thing about. Then, there should be a brief description of why this particular thing exists. Then, there can be a brief introduction saying what is going on. Obviously, all should align, so that folks can get in with the minimal effort to get there.

This, to me, suggests that the intro either explicitly making it clear who we think is the audience, or provides an initial statement of what the outcomes are so that individuals can self-select. I’m not sure yet which I think is better, or even whether it’s useful to do both. There’s a tradeoff, of course; brevity is useful, and so is clarity. I suppose we can always make our best guess in the instance. For sure we’ll test it.

So, I’ve been led to wonder how to communicate What’s In It For Them so that they know whether they’re ‘them’ or not! There are also probably converging influences. I reckon marketing has this issue, as does documentation? What have seen/done/found out? I welcome your input.

The ‘late adopter’ strategy

24 May 2022 by Clark 2 Comments

I was asked about the latest techno-hype, bionic reading. At the same time, there’s a discussion happening about learning affordances of the metaverse. I realize my strategy is the same, which I learned many years ago (wish I could remember from whom!). The short version is, wait until the dust settles. Why? Let’s evaluate the late adopter strategy.

So, for anything new, there all-too-frequently seems to be a lot of flash. In my experience, a lot more than substance! That is, many things rise, and most fall. When things calm down after the initial exuberance, most simply disappear. There are myriad factors: acquisition and shut down by competitors, other elements fail despite a good premise, or even unexpected factors outside of control (e.g. a pandemic!). Of course, the usual suspect is that there’s no real there there!

I remember the hype over Second Life, and recognizing that the core elements were 3D and social. Yet, what we saw were slide presentations in a virtual world. Which was nonsensical. I’ve suggested before that you can infer the properties of new technologies, in many cases, by considering their cognitive affordances. I’ll await the meta-verse manifestation, but it seems to me to be the same, just more immersion. Still, lots of technical and cognitive overhead to make it worthwhile.

Similarly with bionic reading. There’s now lots of anecdotal suggestions that it’s better. That’s not the same, however, as a true experimental study. Individual experiences don’t always correlate with actual impact. There’re myriad reasons for this too, e.g. self-fulfilling prophecy, perception vs reality, etc. Still, I really want to have some more convergent evidence. Here it’s harder to do the affordances. Yes, it might support people who have difficulty reading, but might it interfere with others? How will we know?

On the basis of the above, however, I suggest waiting until something’s been around, and then if it persists, start investigating what the affordances might be. Many things have come and gone, and I’m glad I didn’t bite. I might then be late to a platform, but that’s OK. I still tend to get opportunities to innovate around ideas of application after they’re established, because, well, that’s what I do ;). Affordances help, as does lateral thinking and having on tap lots of mental models to spark ideas.

We’re too easily enchanted with the latest shiny object. No argument it’s worth experimenting with them, but don’t swallow the hype until you’ve either had your own data, or someone else’s. I reckon rushing in has a greater opportunity for loss than gain. Let those with needs, resources, and opportunity take the first cuts. There’s no need to bleed prematurely, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to need to tune and test again even once principles emerge. So that’s my take on the value of a ‘late adopter’ strategy. What’s yours?

The cognitive basis of LXD

17 May 2022 by Clark Leave a Comment

When ATD asked me to write the learning science book, I’d already had the intention of writing a Learning Experience Design (LXD) book. I’d even begun, and the first section on learning was underway, so essentially I was partly done! I’d also realized that it was going to be monumental undertaking. This is because LXD, to me, encompasses three things, all based on cognitive science. To properly address it, I would have to be talking a master’s course, not just a book!. So here I’d like to make the case why I think that there’s a cognitive basis of LXD.

First, look at the three elements of LXD: learning, experience, and design. For experience, you can think: engagement and/or emotion. That is, ensuring that there’re explicit feelings associated, not just occurrences. Each one of those three things, then, has a cognitive underpinning.

As I’ve discussed previously, learning science was an outgrowth of cognitive science. The inter-disciplinary approach to cognition that inspired the formation of cognitive science subsequently led to learning science. Design, too, was a subject of study. I happened to be a grad student at the time that user-centered approaches, subsequently UX, were being explored. This, too, is cognitive; first because design approaches have to reflect aligning with how users brains work. Then, also, because design processes have to accommodate how designers brains work, and don’t!

Then we come to the experience side. It turns out that understanding ‘experience’ is a cognitive exercise as well. Why are we driven by curiosity? How come we remember emotionally-charged events better? What creates positive affect? It’s an interdisciplinary approach as well, integrating research on emotion and events and more. It’s the topic of my just-released book (which includes design as well, to serve as the complement to my learning science book).

I continue to explore all three, from a professional responsibility and personal interest. I admit I nerd out about these things, and am always eager to find out more and discuss it. And I’ve do have a bias. My Ph.D. is in Cog Psych, so I do look at world with that filter. But I also see that the perspective provides some useful leverage. My current ideal is to make experiences that are transformative, in that they change people in ways that they want, or need, to change. That’s the goal.

I will continue to maintain that knowing the underpinning architecture, and then the manifestations in the three areas, are important. I believe that knowing the cognitive basis of LXD is an advantage in being able to execute against the requirements in optimal ways. So, am I missing anything?

Gamification or…

10 May 2022 by Clark 1 Comment

On my walk yesterday, I was reflecting on our You Oughta Know with Christy Tucker (a great session, as usual), who talked about scenarios. It got me pondering, in particular, about different interpretations of ‘gamification‘. As I dictated a note to myself as I walked (probably looking like one of those folks who holds phone calls on their perambulations), I found myself discussing the differences between two approaches. So here’re some thoughts on gamification or the alternative.

To start, let’s say we have a learning goal. For instance, how to deal with customers. A typical approach would be, after an initial course, to stream out questions about different aspects of the principles. For this, you might give points after correctly answering n. Once you answer n, you get X points (10, 100, 1000, whatever). 2n gets you 2X points or maybe 3X. These points may entitle you to prizes: swag, time off, office party. Pretty typical gamification stuff.

Then, consider an alternative: they do successively more challenging scenarios. That is, initially it’s an easy customer with a straightforward problem. Then, it’s a mix of more difficult customers with simple problems and easy customers with more difficult problems. Finally, you’re dealing with difficult customers and difficult problems. Along the way, you give badges for successive levels of customer difficulty, and similarly for handling increasing levels of difficulty of problems.

Which of these is easier to implement? Will one or the other lead to better handling of customers? Which will lead to long-term engagement of your employees? Of course, these are extremes. You can have the questions in the ‘prize’ situation get steadily more challenging. They can even be written as ‘mini-scenarios’. You can mix in scenarios with knowledge questions.

What I want to suggest, however, is that not doing the latter, the scenarios, is going to keep any initiative from having the biggest impact. They’re competency-based, providing explicit levels of capability. They’re also a chance to practice when it doesn’t matter, before it does.

This shouldn’t stand alone. Of course there should be coaching, and increasing responsibility, and more. It’s not about just the formal learning. Extending the learning experience should include both formal and informal mechanisms. The point I want to make, however, is that having learners perform in practice they way they’ll need to perform when it matters, is the best preparation. Yes, you need knowledge (the stuff that, increasingly, AI can handle), but then you need meaningful practice.

Of course, if it’s something you do frequently after the learning experience, coaching may be enough. However, if aspects of it are rare but important, scenarios are the important reactivation practice that will keep skills tuned. So, that’s my take on gamification or alternates. How would you fine tune my response?

Why L&D isn’t better

3 May 2022 by Clark 1 Comment

As I’ve noted before, someone on LinkedIn asked a question, and it’s prompting a reply. In this case, the question was in response to my previous post on superstitions (for new L&D practitioners). He asked “How did we even get here?” I’ve talked before about the sorry state of our industry, but haven’t really shared my thinking on why this is the case. My short response was that it’s complex. Here’s the longer response, trying to answer why L&D isn’t better.

First, I think we’re suffering from some mistaken beliefs. In particular, that presenting information will lead to behavior change. As I’ve noted before, I think this is a legacy of our beliefs that we’re formal logical reasoners. That is, if we were such beings (we’re not), this would likely be true. We’d respond to information by changing how we act. Instead, of course, we don’t change our behavior without practice, reinforcement, etc.

Another contributor, I suggest, is that a belief that if we can perform, we can teach. We can, therefore, take the best performer, and turn them into a trainer. Which is mistaken for a couple of reasons. For one, expertise is compiled away, and isn’t accessible. Estimates suggest around 70% of what experts do, they literally can’t tell us. It’s also a mistake to think that just anyone can teach. There’re specific skills that need to go into it.

Of course, we’re not aware of our flaws. We don’t measure, by and large. Even when we do, we too often measure the wrong things. So, we see the bad practice of just looking at what learners think of the experience. Which has little correlation with the actual impact. We seldom look to see if the learning has actually changed any behavior, let alone whether it’s now at an acceptable level.

I do think we also still see the effects of 9/11. When we didn’t want to travel, we went to elearning. Rapid eLearning tools emerged to make it fast to take the PPTs and PDFs from the previous courses and put them onscreen with an added quiz. This has led to expectations that courses can be churned out quickly. Indeed, except that these ‘courses’ won’t have any impact!

One other factor is that our stakeholders also don’t know nor care. They know they need to invest in learning, so they do. It’s a cost center, not a driver of business success. No one is (yet) calling us on the carpet to justify our success. That’s changing, however. I just would like for us to be proactive, not reactive. Moreover, there’s a bigger opportunity on tap, not only to help the organization execute on the things that it needs to do, but also to facilitate the new knowledge the org will need.

In short, we don’t seem know what learning is, and we’re blind to the fact that our approaches aren’t useful. These, of course, are all premises I’ve addressed in my call to Revolutionize L&D. I still think there’s a meaningful role for L&D to play, but we have to lift our game. That’s my explanation of why L&D isn’t better, what’s yours?