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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Consumed by consumption?

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I don’t listen to podcasts. Not that I have anything against them; I would if I had a driving commute where my eyes must be occupied while my mind isn’t fully. However, I don’t have such a situation, and otherwise I’d rather read (as with videos, I can generally read faster than they can talk, and I can also skim). However, pondering the increasing growth of podcasts and other media, I begin to wonder if we’re being consumed by consumption. 

To be clear, I like consuming information. I regularly am searching for information about new ideas I’ve come across, or going deeper in particular areas that have gained in importance in what I’m doing. I track Twitter and LinkedIn, and… However, I also take time for reflection. Which is important. If you look at Harold Jarche’s PKM model, you see that the middle section of ‘sense’ is where you process the information, synthesizing it. It’s an important part of learning, elaborating, experimenting, and internalizing.

Nothing wrong with consuming, but I’m suggesting it must be balanced with the synthesis, the integration, the reflection. If we only consume, I fear that we’re really not learning. We need to ponder what it means to us. Yet, in this increasingly fast-paced world, I worry that people feel they need to continually be consuming. I’m arguing that it shouldn’t be the only thing. It needs to be balanced. 

It’s not that I don’t think people reflect, I just want to make sure that they’re conscious of it, and don’t fall prey to a need to be distracted continually. We need to be present, with ourselves and our information, and process it. We need to avoid being consumed by consumption. Happy to believe that I’m wrong, but better to err on the side of over-communicating, eh?

Top 10 Learning Tools for 2022

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I continue to be a fan of Jane Hart‘s work, and her annual survey of Top 10 Learning Tools is only one of the reasons (another being her co-conspirator, along with Harold Jarche & Charles Jennings in the Internet Time Alliance). As a consequence, it’s time for my annual list, this time the Top 10 Learning Tools for 2022.

To be fair, my list could be reproduced from last year’s. However, a couple of tools have become more prevalent, and one’s slipped back, so…  I’ll rearrange my list for this year, given that I’m not writing a book right now, with an expectation that it may swing back.

Text

Writing is a primary way for me to think through things, and that’s not changing. I could say email, but that’s not where I put my most cogent thoughts.

1. WordPress. My blogging tool, is a major part of my learning process. In meeting my commitment of at least a post a week, I’m motivating myself to continue to explore new topics.

2. Google Docs. In collaborating with folks on a suite of things we’re working on, we’re learning together. We’re using a few other tools as well, one in particular, but it doesn’t allow simultaneous editing. Sorry, allowing people to work at the same time is the future.

Visuals

Tapping into our spatial processing capabilities ends up being important for me, both to personally understand things as well as communicate.

3. OmniGraffle. While I seem to have not used it as often, it’s still a major way I experiment with syntheses of ideas. Dear, and with much more capability than I need, but I haven’t found a reasonable alternative. Diagramming, mapping conceptual relationships to spatial, is a powerful way for me to make sense of things.

4. OmniOutliner. I don’t use all the features, and it’s dear, but again, haven’t found another outliner with the one key addition I need, columns. Spreadsheets don’t support outlining, as far as I’ve seen. And this is visual in that the representation of the structure is critical for me.

5. Keynote. Creating presentations is another way to think about how to share. The need to link elements together into a bigger picture is an important element of learning, to me.

Social

Interacting with others is a big part of learning, for me (despite my introversion).

6. Twitter. Following folks on twitter, even occasionally interacting with them, is a way to keep track of what’s happening, and what’s interesting.

7. LinkedIn. The posts I see on LinkedIn are often of interest, and occasionally people point me to things that are worthy of my attention (in one way or another!).

8. Discord. This one is new to me, and it’s still early on in my experience, but I’m finding it an interesting way to interact with colleagues.

9. Zoom. Like everyone else, I’m on a fair amount of Zoom calls (still my preferred environment for videoconferencing), fortunately not enough to experience fatigue yet ;).

Search

Search is a great part of my learning, looking up anything I hear about and don’t know.

10. Duck Duck Go. Duck has become my preferred search engine, because it’s claim to not track is comforting to me. I don’t use their browser, but I find their hits to be pretty spot-on.

So there, that’s my Top 10 Learning Tools for 2022. I encourage you to find a way to add yours to Jane’s list. It’s always interesting to see what emerges from the aggregate responses.

L&D Language is Limiting?

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In our most recent LDA You Oughta Know event, our guest touched on the language we use. It struck a chord for me, thinking about how we refer to things. It led me to wonder whether, in fact, we’re hampering ourselves. So here are some thoughts around the question of whether L&D language is limiting us?

So, Serena Gonsalves-Fersch heads talent for SoftwareONE, a global company. For her dissertation, she interviewed a number of folks about what L&D is doing. While her comments were extremely worthwhile, it was more a toss-off comment about using terms like “talent management” that got me to leave a note to riff on this topic.

So let’s start with those overarching terms. Human Capital, Human Resources, and Talent strike me as ways to dissociate from thinking of people, and instead think of using assets. You might invest in them, but are you investing in your people, or in the capability of your organization? The latter may sound sensible, but it leaves open the question “at what expense”. Do you care if they burn out from the way you use them?  Shouldn’t we talk about our people, employees, or those we’re responsible to and for? Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to the issues, but too often I see the approach being impersonal and if not inhumane.

Similarly, what about the phrase Corporate University? I am fond of the case study Mark Britz presented in Revolutionize L&D, where he said that for his organization, he recognized that what was needed was a community to share, given that they were disconnected but experts. What folks really mean by a corp uni is a training academy, but a uni isn’t a good model. Instead of deep theory with little practical application, it’s almost the reverse. Learning should be continual and ubiquitous, not sent off to separate environs. Even when you do specific formal interventions, they should be seen as integral, not isolated in an ivory tower.

Similarly, I’ve sounded off on the problems of Training & Development, or Learning & Development. Training and learning are means to an end. What we want are people performing optimally, and continually developing. It might even be Performance & Innovation (if you take the revolution seriously ;).

It’s clear language does determine the ways we think about things (is it a mishap or a catastrophe?). When we use language that characterizes activity in certain ways, we implicitly put constraints on it. This is true for every formulation, of course, but perhaps it behooves us to think consciously about the language we use. Do we know if L&D language is limiting us? Let’s make sure that we’re not prematurely handicapping ourselves by our framing.

On blogging

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A recent chain of events led to a realization, and then a recognition, and some cogitation. What am I talking about? Well, it comes down to some reflections on blogging. So here’re some thoughts.

It started when my ISP wanted to do his quinquennial (yeah, I had to look it up) OS upgrade on the servers. Ultimately, it led me to review my site, which included my blogroll. Quelle horreur, it was almost completely out of date! Some people I’ve lost touch with, most who aren’t blogging any more or even in our field! In updating it, however, I found that there are many fewer people who seemed to be blogging. Which is interesting, though there are stalwarts in my upgraded blogroll.

There are lots of places people are putting up their prose thoughts. You can sign up for newsletters (I get a few), and many posts appear on LinkedIn. There are also article sites like Learning Solutions magazine and eLearnMag, amongst others. I have avoided having a newsletter;  I don’t like the idea of collecting folks’ email addresses and using it as a communication tool. (Completely contrary to the advice I receive about marketing.) I also don’t want to post just on LinkedIn, though it’s an increasing way people interact. Instead, I will keep posting here, trying to maintain at least one post a week.

There are myriad reasons I want to continue to blog. First, it’s for me. With a commitment of one post a week, it causes me to search for things to think, and then write, about. Not that there’s a dearth (to the contrary!), but there are ups and downs, and it’s good to have a driver. Blogging has caused me to do more than skim, and actually synthesize things (it’s led me to have thoughts on just about everything!). It’s also a place to lob my other way of thinking, diagramming. The practice of writing, of course, is probably good for my books, with a caveat.

The blog allows me to be more personal, doing things like using too many italics, and use more idiosyncratic references and grammar. Of course, it’s not always perfectly reread, so sometimes I have to go edit it after it’s posted! Which isn’t good for books. It also keeps me terse (a problem I’ve had since high school, my AP English teacher was sure I wouldn’t pass the test for that reason, but it actually was a benefit). Maybe too… Which may be good for books; at least mine are mostly pretty short and to the point ;). It’s also allowed me to share interim ideas and get feedback.

So, I find blogging to be valuable. I’ll happily follow the folks that I can that way. (I use Feedblitz as an email aggregator as I prefer email rather than a dedicated reader.) Or happy to come across their posts wherever, and even some newsletters. I appreciate folks who share their thinking in many ways, though I don’t really listen to podcasts nor watch vids, as I can read faster, and I don’t have a commute. Besides, having watched people I care about get taken down the rabbit hole watching vids (my take: doesn’t give you time to pause and ponder), I think I’ll prefer prose.

So those are some thoughts on blogging. I welcome seeing your comments here, on LinkedIn, or any other way you care to share.

A cautionary tale

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A colleague mentioned me in calling out a post that was touting a myth. Which is bad enough, but as I’ve done before, I looked deeper at the post, and found more problems. It’s worth breaking down the problems, both to sensitize you to the potential problems, and provide some guidance about what’s right. So here’s a cautionary tale.

First, the post was promoting Dale’s Cone (referred to in the post as the Learning Retention Pyramid). You’ve probably seen it, saying people retain X% if they listen to a lecture, Y% if they read, … all the way to Z% if they teach others. It’s been resoundingly debunked. It is made up, Dale never added numbers, etc. So, we’re starting off on the wrong foot.

The post points to an article by an organization. As I’m wont to do, I went to the article. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t any better. It talked about the importance of looking at retention practice. That is, designing for retention; a good thing. Along with a definition were nine strategies for promoting this desirable feature. Which is where we start to go wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with an aggregation of strategies, but it helps if there’s any reason to believe this is a full and complete list, and maybe oriented by biggest impact. No, this appeared to have no rationale other than just a collection. Please, please, provide the rationale for any such collection!

Then, the very first one immediately jumped into an example that “generation Z’ would process. Ok, we’re onto myth number 2. Generations. Isn’t. A. Thing! Sigh, can we please stop thinking in terms of limiting categories.

Moreover, much of the recommendations seemed focusing on remembering information, not on applying it. Only one, “apply learning to the real world” talked at all about actually doing things. A side note: by and large, recalling information isn’t going to lead to meaningful behavior change.

Aside from some minor grammatical errors and odd statements (what does “large muscular people are dump” mean?), this seems like a random collection. It’s not that the strategies are wrong, but they’re unjustified, badly presented, and unfocused. To me, this is a cautionary tale. I would actively steer away from an org that used such marketing to promote its understanding of learning. (For the record, there’s no attribution to authorship, and though the original poster on LinkedIn was identified, they don’t appear in the ‘About’ page of the org.) Caveat emptor.

Templates as content model extensions

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I’ve been touting content models for, well, years now. Interestingly, I’m currently doing some more concrete work on them, from the bottom-up. Instead of looking at top-down implementation of governance and structure, the focus is on guidance for creating resources at scale. Yet the two are related, and I think it’s worth looking at templates as content model extensions.

The notion of content models is that instead of creating full courses, we build content in chunks, and pull them together by rule. Or even more appropriately, deliver the appropriate chunk to the right person at the right time. It’s been happening for web design for years, but for some reason the notion of content management systems lags in L&D. Yes, there are entailments – governance, strategy, engineering – but the alternative is that lingering legacy content that’s out of date but no one can deal with.

That’s the top level focus. Underpinning this, of course, is getting the content right, and that means having some good definitions around the content. I’d done that many moons ago, and in a current engagement it’s reemerging. The situation is that there are a number of people all writing content around this particular initiative, and it’s uncoordinated (sound familiar?). The realization that clients are struggling is enough of a driver to look for a solution.

Without a content management system, as yet, it still makes sense to systematize the resources around a map of the space, ensuring they align to what we know about how people learn and perform. That latter is important, because many times they just need the answer now, not a full course.

What we’ve ended up doing is creating meta-content that tell how to develop content that meets particular needs. With entailments, such as assembling a representative team to determine what’s needed and the labels to use. It also involves drafting and testing these content guides, prior to broader use.

It’s the tactical step of a strategic goal to provide support for people to successfully meet their needs. And, to be clear, to reduce the reliance on the support staff. Leveraging the cognitive and learning sciences, we’re building templates as content model extensions. This is before there’s even the technology support available to be more proactive, but planning for the possible future is part of the strategy.

I’ll be presenting a session on this at the DevLearn conference in October. If you’re interested and going to be there, I welcome seeing you.

Emotion, or motivation, or…

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I’ve been promoting the importance of the emotional ‘hook’. Which I was called out on, rightly. I freely admit that the phrase is less than fully accurate. So let’s explore the issue of whether we’re talking emotion, or motivation, or…

As context, one perspective from cognitive science is thinking of our ourselves as comprised of three components. One is cognitive, that is what we think and know. Which is malleable, as we can learn more! A second component is termed affective, that is who we are. Which isn’t malleable; these are our fixed characteristics, certainly personality (e.g. OCEAN/HEXACO). Finally, there’s our conative component. This is our intent: to learn, to act, and arguably what we value. 

This last bit, the conative, is what I suggest we neglect in our learning design. We address the cognitive, and there’s little to do on the affective side, but we too often basically assume that the learner is ready for what we’re presenting. Which I suggest is a mistake. 

There’s considerable evidence that we perform better when we’re engaged. When experiences are motivating, and anxiety is kept to a minimum, and our confidence is built, etc. Further, we can address these. We can help folks see the WIIFM, make it psychologically safe, and provide appropriate levels of challenge with useful feedback. (And we should!) However, too often we don’t.

So I use the shorthand term ‘emotion’ to address this.  I use the term to separate from the cognitive in a shorthand way. The problem, of course, is whether anxiety and motivation are truly ‘emotions’. Effectively, they’re not. My stance, however, is that I can’t be talking ‘conative’ to folks who aren’t aware of that concept!

I also resist just talking about motivation. Anxiety is an issue. So too is confidence. John Keller’ has his ARCS model (arguably the only ID theorist considering the conative aspect, though I don’t know if he uses that term ;). His model incorporates gaining/maintaining Attention, manifesting the Relevance of what’s being learned, building Confidence, and ensuring Satisfaction from the experience. Really, we want an umbrella term for these elements. 

There is the concept of engagement. However, it’s been trivialized. Claims that ‘click to see more’ is more engaging, that points & leaderboards are engaging, etc. have undermined the term. So I avoid it to avoid getting mired in that morass. Instead, I think talking about emotion as a shorthand way to address the non-cognitive. Yet…

I was called out for talking about an ‘emotional hook’ by a very learned client. Rightly so. The question is, do we have a better term? Is there a more appropriate and yet still accessible way ta talk about this? Obviously, I haven’t thought so as yet, but I want to keep learning. So if you’ve a better solution, please do let me know. (Feel free to also say that this approach is probably the only solution, at least for now.) Otherwise, I’ll keep looking for a better approach than emotion, or motivation, or…

I’ll be discussing ‘emotion’ in a session for the Learning Guild’s LXD conference, coming up at the beginning of next month. I’m also presenting a two half-days pre-event online workshop on LXD overall, integrating emotion with science. I’ll also explore ‘engagement’ in a full day face-to-face pre-con workshop at their DevLearn conference in October). Hope to see you at one of these!

Activities ‘beyond the course’

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wrapped presentSo, somehow I got on Myra Roldan‘s #MyraMonday question list. She asks a question every Monday, dobbing in some likely (or, in my case, gullible) victims to respond. And I do (unusually ;), because occasionally it’s good to challenge your mind. This past week, the question was particularly interesting: about what you’d do if there weren’t elearning. Of course, there were the usual answers, but several were very interesting. Here’re some of the ideas and underlying thinking about activities ‘beyond the course’.

So, I had heard about someone who was exploring ‘escape rooms’ for learning. (Spoiler: it was Myra, hence the question. ;) I was reminded, however, and added in some other ideas:

surprise box, host a murder, scavenger hunt, choose your own adventure…

My thinking is that there are lots of ways of invoking intent and action, and providing feedback. The box could contain some content and instructions, e.g. “film yourself doing…” or “do X and write it up”. Or some actual device to act upon (think of the old science kits they sent with correspondence courses). Host a murder mystery party would be some Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) activity that includes instructions, roles, and reflection guidance (a group ‘surprise box’). Scavenger hunt could have you looking for resources for new arrivals to learn their way around, or to do safety checks, or… Choose your own adventure book is basically a text-based branching scenario.

Kevin Thorn (last week’s You Oughta Know guest of the LDAccelerator) suggested comics Not surprising, since that was the topic we had him on for, and also the focus of his thesis. Comics are underused, I believe, and yet have valuable properties. Another viable way to develop learning, particularly if you can tie them to challenges.

Then, Alan Natachu weighed in with even more creative ideas:

Lots of infographics and cryptograms
Book ciphers
Red / Blue filters (look through a colored lens to reveal a hidden message)
Tune into a custom radio frequency that repeats a message
Text messages to a secret contact (a.k.a. Phone a friend)

Again, we’re looking at ways to get people to process content (and apply it). What I like is how he started tapping into alternate technologies. It’s easy to stay in our comfort zone, as I was doing. It’s useful to take some time to reflect and deliberately explore alternatives. Different questions (like Myra’s) can prompt some out of the box thinking, as can deliberate prompts to consider other things. That is, systematic creativity isn’t an oxymoron ;).

There is a followup on this: why aren’t we doing these things  already?  We should be looking at other mechanisms. Yes, there are some learnings, and some resource requirements. However, once they’re part of our repertoire, they become just another tool in our quiver.

We can, and should, be looking at activities ‘beyond the course’. There’re the benefits of novelty, but also different affordances. Better yet, we could theme them to align with particular courses. There is a real opportunity to make our learning stick better, and that is the real bottom line. So let’s get creative  and achieve better outcomes.

 

2022 ITA Jay Cross Memorial Award: Céline Shillinger

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Harold Jarche’s elegantly crafted announcement:

The Internet Time Alliance Memorial Award, in memory of Jay Cross, is presented to a workplace learning professional who has contributed in positive ways to the field of Informal Learning and is reflective of Jay‘s lifetime of work.

Recipients champion workplace and social learning practices inside their organization and/or on the wider stage. They share their work in public and often challenge conventional wisdom. The Award is given to professionals who continuously welcome challenges at the cutting edge of their expertise and are convincing and effective advocates of a humanistic approach to workplace learning and performance.

We announce the award on 5 July, Jay‘s birthday.

Following his death in November 2015, the partners of the Internet Time Alliance — Jane Hart, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Harold Jarche — resolved to continue Jay‘s work. Jay Cross was a deep thinker and a man of many talents, never resting on his past accomplishments, and this award is one way to keep pushing our professional fields and industries to find new and better ways to learn and work.

The 7th annual Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2022 is presented to Céline Schillinger.

In her recent book, Dare to Un-lead, Céline asks, “Can there be liberty, equality, and fraternity at work” Then she shows examples of how this can be achieved. As Head of Quality Innovation & Engagement at Sanofi Pasteur Céline helped to create the ‘Break Dengue’ global community to fight dengue fever. Céline understands the power of community. She says that, “If you cannot find a community of practice for your professional development, then create one.”

Céline has often challenged the status quo, especially regarding the lack of diversity in many workplaces.

“What really matters is to mirror the diversity of the world we serve. We need more women… more humanities majors… more people of colour… more professionals coming from other jobs… in short, a much bigger diversity of viewpoints at all levels. We also need more network and co-construction across levels, as the old pyramidal system is no longer fit for purpose.”

Céline has said that companies must cultivate their rebels in order to remain relevant to their workers, while staying competitive in their arenas. These rebels can let them see beyond the organization‘s walls. We are sure that Jay Cross would agree.

Links:

https://weneedsocial.com/about-me

https://weneedsocial.com/praise-dare-to-unlead

https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/article/69269/quality-lever-transformation-sanofi/

LXD by Design

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Learning Experience Design (LXD), I argue, is the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. All well and good, of course, but how do you introduce it? Specifically, how do we engage people already actively designing? There are a number of ways to cut it. You could talk about the cognitive underpinnings, the implications for the elements of learning, or via the changes in the design process. I do the latter two, with a focus on the engagement side (which I feel is underdeveloped), in my latest book, “Make It Meaningful“. However, what if you’re trying to do both? Here’s a case to visit LXD by design.

It seems pretty safe to say that most people will resist totally throwing out their entire design process. There’s lots of investment. Further, most design processes have a useful basic structure. This suggests looking for the smallest tweaks that will yield the biggest impacts. We’re looking to incorporate the effectiveness of learning science with the emotional appropriateness of engagement. What does this require?

The first change is in the analysis. LXD simply  can’t work without performance objectives. If you’re just trying to make people aware, you’re not really on a transformative journey. You want to be focusing on equipping people so that they’re (meaningfully) changed through the process. You also need some new information: why this is necessary  for the learners, and why experts find it interesting enough to study. There’s more, but this is key.

Then, your design process differs. You are being creative,  given that you’re not just directly practicing. You’re also tuning to get the experience optimized. So, you need to build in some brainstorming, and iteration. In pragmatic ways, of course.

Implementation is also more iterative. You’ll be investing slowly, to allow pivots and to keep the overall costs contained. Postponing programming and preferring paper are components of this.

Even your evaluation is different. You are testing, now, not only effectiveness, but also the experience. Which you may have been doing (*cough* smile sheets *cough*), but you need to test both sequentially, not just one  or the other.

All along, there are small changes that will help integrate learning science elegantly with engagement. Making those critical changes will likely take a bit longer, at least at first. On the other hand, you should be getting real outcomes  and more engaged learners. Which, ultimately, is what we should be doing.

I’ll be covering this in a workshop for the Learning Guild in two half-day sessions prior to their LXD conference at the beginning of August. (Also doing a session during the conf on emotion.) I hope you’ll find LXD by Design to be a practical and useful, even  transformative, experience.