Quinnovating

What I wish I’d learned in school

12 June 2013 by Clark 10 Comments

I was asked, somewhat out of the blue, what I wish I’d learned in school, and I thought it an interesting question. I also thought it worth putting out to a slightly broader audience.

So, here’re some off-the-cuff thoughts about what I wish I’d learned in school:

meta-cognitive and meta-learning skills (e.g. the SCANS competencies beyond the basic skills)

that it is ok to fail, and that persistence and effort is as much a part of learning as achievement

that your epistemological beliefs – what you believe learning is – affect your outcomes

how to work in groups on projects

about design, and the value of feedback and revision

how reflection on process is as important as reflection on product

These are just a few thoughts, but it’s a start. And let me ask what you wish you’d learned in school?

Technology Architecture

11 June 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

A few years ago, I created a diagram to capture a bit about the technology to support learning (Big ‘L’ Learning). I was revisiting that diagram for some writing I’m doing, and thought it needed updating. The point is to characterize the relationship between underpinning infrastructure and mechanisms to support availability for formal and informal learning.

Here’s the accompanying description: As a reference framework, we can think of a hierarchy of levels of tools. At the bottom is the hardware, running an operating system and connecting to networks. Above that are applications that deliver core services. We start with the content management systems, from the delivery perspective, which maintains media assets. Above that we have the aggregation of those assets into content, whether full learning consisting of introductions, concepts, examples, practice items, all the way to the summary, or user-generated content via a variety of tools. These are served up via delivery channels and managed, whether through webinars, courses, or simulations through a learning management system (LMS) on the formal learning side, or self-managed through social media and portals on the informal learning side. Ultimately, these activities can or will be tracked through standards such as SCORM for formal learning or the new experience API (xAPI) for informal learning.

I add, as a caveat: Note that this is merely indicative, and there are other approaches possible. For instance, this doesn‘t represent authoring tools for aggregating media assets into content. Similarly, individual implementations may not have differing choices, such as not utilizing an independent content management system underpinning the media asset and content development.

So, my question to you is, does this make sense? Does this diagram capture the technology infrastructure for learning you are familiar with?

Evidence-based Design

5 June 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

In my last post, I asserted that we need evidence-based design for what we do. There are a number of sources for same. Of course, you could go do a Master’s or Ph.D. in cognition and learning, but there are shorter paths.

There are several good books out (and I believer that there is at least one more on the way) that summarize the implications of research design. Ruth Clark has been a co-author on a couple, eLearning and the Science of Instruction, and the subsequent Efficiency in Learning. Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn is another good one. Michael Allen’s work on design is also recommended, e.g. Guide to eLearning.

Will Thalheimer, Ruth, and Julie regularly write and talk about these things in other forums than books. Go listen to them! I try as well, though often filtered through games, mobile, or elsewhere. There’re others, too.

A number of people run workshops on deeper design. I know I have one, and I’m sure others have them as well. Do try to make sure that it covers both cognitive and emotional elements, focusing on meaningful change.

There are gaps: there isn’t all the research we need, or at least not digested. The role of emotional engagement isn’t as well fleshed out as we’d like, and some of the research is frankly focused on studies too small to give practical guidelines (c.f. the consternation on serious game design that surrounded a recent post). Where we don’t have research, we have to make inferences from theoretical frameworks, but you should know those too. It’s better than going on ‘intuition’ or folk science.

Still, there’s no excuse to do un-engaging, over-written, and under-practiced learning. Better design doesn’t take longer (with the caveat that there’s some initial hiccup ’til we make the change). We have the knowledge, and the tools aren’t the barrier. Let’s do better, please!

No Folk Science-Based Design!

4 June 2013 by Clark 2 Comments

When we have to act in the world, make decisions, there are a lot of bases we use. Often wrongly. And we need to call it out and move on.

As I pointed out before, Kahneman tells us how we often make decisions on less than expert reflection, more so when we’re tired, and create stories about why we do it. If we’re not experts, we shouldn’t trust our ‘gut’, but we do. And we will use received wisdom, rightly or wrongly, to justify our choices. Yet sometimes the beliefs we have about how things work are wrong.

While there’s a lot of folk science around that’s detrimental to society and more, I want to focus on folk science that undermines our ability to assist people in achieving their goals, supporting learning and performance. Frankly, there are a lot of persistent myths that are used to justify design decisions that are just wrong. Dr. Will Thalheimer, for instance, has soundly disabused Dale’s Cone. Yet the claims continue. There’re more: learning styles, digital natives, I could go on. They are not sound bases for learning design!

It goes on: much of what poses under ‘brain-based’ learning, that any interaction is good, that high production values equal deep design, that knowledge dump and test equals learning. Folks, if you don’t know, don’t believe it. You have to do better!

Sure, some of it’s compelling. Yes, learners do differ. That doesn’t mean a) that there are valid instruments to assess those differences, or more importantly b) that you should teach them differently. Use the best learning principles, regardless! And using the year someone’s born to characterize them really is pretty coarse; it almost seems like discrimination.

Look, intuition is fine in lieu of any better alternative, but when it comes to designing solutions that your organization depends on, doing anything less than science-based design is frankly fraudulent. It’s time for evidence-based design!

How I Work

31 May 2013 by Clark Leave a Comment

David Kelly posted the following:

Lifehacker has a series called “How I Work. Every Wednesday they feature a new guest and the gadgets, apps, tips, and tricks that keep them going. It‘s a very interesting series that gives you a glimpse into how different people work and solve problems.

After recently seeing Daniel Pink‘s interview some colleagues and I thought it would be interesting to answer these questions as well as a fun way to share and get to know each other better. I invite you to participate as well â€“ I‘ll link other people‘s postings at the bottom of this post.

I decided to join in:

Location

Walnut Creek, CA

Current Gig

Executive Director of Quinnovation and Senior Director of Interaction & Mobile for the Internet Time Alliance.

Current mobile device

iPhone 4 & (original) iPad

Current computer

MacBookPro 13″ (w/ Apple Monitor)

One word that best describes how you work

Interruptedly (and, yes, I made that word up)

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Looking at what’s open or has been recently: Safari, TweetDeck, Mail, Skype, Reminders, iCal, Word, Keynote, Notes, OmniGraffle, & OmniOutliner.

I keep up with what’s new with Safari and TweetDeck, maintain communication channels with Mail and Skype, keep myself organized with iCal and Reminders, write with Word and Notes, plan and present with Keynote, and think things through with OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner.

What’s your workspace like?

Somewhat compact and crowded. I moved from a bigger desk to our smallest room to accommodate the changing needs of our kids. The room also houses a couch that becomes a bed for guests, and some shelves, so there’s not a lot of space. It’s organized for efficiency and effectiveness, not aesthetics.

What’s your best time-saving trick?

To put things into my calendar or my reminder list now!

What’s your favorite to-list manager?

I struggled after losing Palm Desktop, but finally have settled on Reminders (Apple’s tool), as it synchs across devices seamlessly.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without?

Definitely my iPad. It replaces computer on many trips, and serves as a content and interactive device at times when I’m in more leisure than on the go. If that’s cheating, it’d be a pocket tool kit: usually the Coast micro-tool, or Swiss-Tech Micro-Tech when traveling (no blade). Always need a file, screwdriver, …

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I’d like to say diagramming, representing models, but I don’t know if that’s ‘everyday’. If not, I’d say taking what ever’s left over in the fridge and making a real meal out of it.

What do you listen to while you work?

Not bloody much. I can’t listen to most music while working, as the lyrics interfere with my thinking.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

I’m definitely an introvert, but I’m also a ham (a nice tension, eh?). So I don’t mind being on stage, but as soon as I’m off I go back to ‘I wonder if someone will talk to me’, and get drained when I’m around too many people. I work best in small groups.

What’s your sleep routine like?

I work hard to get a regular eight hours, having read the research. So it’s usually to bed sometime between 10 and 11, and the house wakes up around 6. Travel wreaks havoc with that, but caffeine helps.

Fill in the blank. I’d love to see _______ answer these same questions.

Alan Kay or John Seely Brown

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

To be myself.

Animations

30 May 2013 by Clark 2 Comments

I’ve been thinking more about animations of late. I am a big fan of diagrams (as you probably infer :), and animations add an important dimension. However, they’re more problematic to create. Yet I’ll argue that they can be really powerful.

As Larkin & Simon pointed out in their landmark Cognitive Science article (PDF) “Why a diagram is (sometimes) worth ten thousand words”, a mental model is composed of conceptual relationships between the elements. And a mental model provides predicative and explanatory power: you can infer from the model why something happened or how to do something. A diagram maps those conceptual relationships to spatial relationships, providing a memorable framework to both comprehend and remember that model.

Now, sometimes the relationships aren’t static, but change under different conditions. Then, we need to convey those changes, and so we need a moving diagram, an animation. An animation can convey things like the effects of introductions of various factors on related elements, such as heat in a steam system, or chemicals in an ecosystem, helping learners understand the dynamic relationships.

For instance, the diagrams I used yesterday to convey a meta-learning architecture could be animated to show the flow and aggregation of the information of competencies over time. Similarly, for those who have trouble visualizing use of the experience API, an animation could show how individual activity generates data that can be aggregated and then mined, either for specific answers or with machine learning for new insights. I think that there may be a barrier to comprehending the whole picture (more than happy to be wrong), and here an animation could help.

Animation is inherently more complex than creating diagrams, and requires additional skills than just static visualization. Consequently, I haven’t developed that particular capability, but I strongly encourage design teams to acquire that capability either internally or a strong partner.

I like the Common Craft ones, which typically include this sort of dynamic relationship exposition, but also narrative (which you also see in RSA Animate, another favorite). I remember the ones that explained reproduction that they showed us in school many years ago, stripping away the yucky bits so we could understand the underlying processes (and risks). Can you think of animations that have really helped you comprehend something?

Integrating Meta-learning

29 May 2013 by Clark 2 Comments

There’s much talk about 21st Century skills, and rightly so: these skills are the necessary differentiators for individuals and organizations, going forward. If they’re important, how do we incorporate them into systems, and track them? You can’t do them in a vacuum, they only can be brought out in the context of other topics. We can integrate them by hand, and individually assess them, but how do we address them in a technology-enabled world? In the context of a project, here’s where my thinking is going:

First, you have some domain activity you are having the learner engage in. It might be something in math, science, social studies, whatever (though ideally focused on applied knowledge). Then you give them an assignment, and it might have a number of characteristics: it might be social, e.g. working with others, or problem solving. You could choose many characteristics, e.g. from the SCANS competencies (using information technology, reasoning), that the task entails. That task is labeled with tags associated with the required competency, and tracked via SCORM or more appropriately with the Experience API. There may be more than two, but we’ll stick with that model here.

So, when we then look across topics that the learner is engaging in, and the characteristics of the assignments, we can look for patterns across competencies. Is there a particular competency that is troubling or excelling? It’s somewhat indirect, but it’s at least one way of systematically embedding meta-learning skills and tracking them. And that’s a lot better than we’re doing now.

Remember the old educational computer games that said ‘develops problem solving skills’? That was misleading. Most of those games ‘required’ problem-solving skills, but no real development of said skills was embedded. A skilled parent or teacher could raise discussion across the problems, but most of the games didn’t. But they could. Moreover, additional 21C resources could be made available for the assignments that required them, and there could be both programmatic or mentor intervention to develop these.

We need to specifically address meta-learning, and with technology we can get evidence. And we should. Now, my two questions are: does the concept make sense? And does the diagram communicate it?

Extending Learning

23 May 2013 by Clark 9 Comments

At the just concluded ASTD International Conference and Exhibition, on exhibit were, finally, two instances of something that should’ve been obvious. And I’m not alone in having waited.

Several years ago, Dr. Will Thalheimer was touting a ‘learning follow-on’ solution, a mechanism to continue to reactivate knowledge after a learning experience. He’s talked about the spacing effect (even providing the basis for a diagram in Designing mLearning), drawing upon his experience as one of our best proponents of evidence-based learning design. We know that reactivation leads to better outcomes, whether seeing a re-representation of the concept, a new example (ideally in another context), and most usefully, having more practice. I’m not aware of how the solution he was touting at the time, but as we really haven’t seen any significant awareness raising, I’m not optimistic.

However, at the conference were two separate examples of such systems. They worked differently, but that they exist at all is a positive outcome. Both used diagrams (e.g. Ebbinghaus forgetting curve) to show the effects of memory over time, and it’s apt that the problem is real. If we just use the traditional event model, things are likely to be gone a few days later if it’s not immediately put into action. That doesn’t characterize many of our learning outcomes.

The solutions were different, of course. One used mobile technology to provide reminders and access to content. The other used the web. Both basically provided the same opportunity. I didn’t evaluate the relative costs, ease of integration, etc, but having such capability is great. It’s something that folks could arrange for themselves, but as yet I haven’t really seen it, at least not in a systematic way.

They still separate solutions, not integrated, but it’s reason for hope. It’s surprising no one’s baked it into their LMS, but there you go. At least we’re seeing the beginning of awareness, and hopefully we’ll get more.

Contextifying

16 May 2013 by Clark 3 Comments

In creating a presentation for the Guild’s upcoming mLearnCon, I was thinking about ways we go wrong, and one is thinking that it’s just about content. Really, context is the new opportunity. So what are the opportunities? I thought of three possible ways in which we might use context: where, when, and what’s near.

Most of mobile context is about where we are. With GPS chips in many devices, and other information potentially useful (what wifi networks you’re near and their location is known), we’ve been able to do lots. Look at things like Yelp and Google Maps, which let us navigate and find things near us. We can also lay over information (c.f. augmented reality) on the world near us. We can annotate the world with information about topics related to location such as geology, architecture, politics, history, and more, as well as more pragmatic thoughts like potential clients, available resources, and locations.

A second opportunity, which is largely missed, is responding to ‘when’ we are. That is, knowing what we’re doing (e.g. through a calendar), and acting appropriately. We can prepare people before events, support them during, and provide reflection opportunities afterwards. There’s finally a prototype calendar app out that uses your calendar to bring in information about relevant emails, people, and documents associated with meetings, for example.

The third opportunity came to mind , however. It is related to the first, but somewhat different. In this situation, I’m thinking about what’s near you. It’s not based, however, so much on location as proximity: the thing that’s near you may not be there always, it may be mobile or ephemeral, but it’s an opportunity. Perhaps it’s a combination of when and where? Regardless, if you have a task that you want to accomplish now, and you need a resource, and it happens to be nearby, if you know that you have the capability to succeed.

I’m not sure this list is exhaustive, but at least it provides some structure to think about opportunities. I welcome additions, extensions, clarifications, or any other feedback! And now I need to figure out a nice visual to go with it…

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