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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Detailing the Coherent Organization

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As excited as I am about the Coherent Organization as a framework, it’s not done by any means.  I riffed on it for a Chief Learning Officer magazine, and my Internet Time Alliance colleagues have followed up. However, I want to take it further.  The original elements I put into the diagram were ad-hoc, though there were principles behind them.  As a start, I wanted to go back and look at these elements and see if I could be more systematic about it.

Working Collaboratively and cooperativelyI had, as Harold’s original model provided the basis for, separate groups for Work Teams, Communities of Practice, and Social Networks.  Within each were separate elements.

In Work Teams, I had included: share problems, co-coach, assist, brainstorm effectively, continuous feedback, welcome contributions, learn from mistakes, align with mission, narrate work, champion diversity, and measure improvement.

Under Communities of Practice I listed: document practice, leave tracks, workshop issues, share examples, co-mentor, discuss principles, continually refine practice, think ‘out loud’, and share concerns.

And in Social Networks I had put: share, contribute, listen, care, interact, and discuss values.  I also had connecters between the groups, each ways, so Work Teams were connected to Communities of Practice by bringing in outside ideas and sharing progress, while Communities of Practice were linked to Social Networks by tracking related areas and sharing results.

What I couldn’t claim was that this was the exhaustive list.  I’d put them in there with some thoughts of both putting in and taking out, but I wanted to go further.

What I did was separate out each of the three areas, and start grouping like terms together (I just took all the terms in the above diagram and dropped them into a new diagram, and started sorting). As I did so, some commonalities emerged. I ended up with the following diagram, which is very much a work in progress.  What I’m  trying to get to is the set of behaviors that would be essential for such an organization to succeed, ultimately coming up with a set of dimensions that might be useful as an assessment.  What emerged is a characterization of several different areas within which behaviors fall, which is useful because then I can look for missing (or redundant) elements.

Looking for emergenceIn addition to the connecting tasks, we see several overarching types of behaviors.  Besides the connection between the areas, they grouped like I show here.

Sharing is individual putting out things, which is less pro-active and interactive than actually contributing.  That distinction isn’t quite clear to me either, but sharing might be more pointers to things where contribute is a more substantial contribution.  Which means my elements may not be properly categorized.

Monitoring is both watching what’s going on and pro-actively evaluating outcomes.  Does this need to be broken out into two separate areas? Personal is where you’re working with a specific person (or recipient thereof).  And the culture dimension is where you’re actively aware of and reviewing the underlying values behind what you’re doing.

By no means do I consider this ‘done’, but I share it as part of my commitment to practicing what I preach, thinking ‘out loud’.  This will get refined.  I most certainly welcome your thoughts!

#itashare

Designing Backward and Forward

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At the recent DevLearn, several of us gathered together in a Junto  to talk about issues we felt were becoming important for our field. After a mobile learning panel I realized that, just as mlearning makes it too easy to think about ‘courses on a phone’, I worry that ‘learning experience design’ (a term I’ve championed) may keep us focused on courses rather than exploring the full range of options including performance support and eCommunity.

So I began thinking about performance experience design as a way to keep us focused on designing solutions to performance needs in the organization.  It’s not just about what’s in our heads, but as we realize that our brains are good at certain things and not others, we need to think about a distributed cognition solution, looking at how resources can be ‘in the world’ as well as in others’ heads.

The next morning in the shower (a great place for thinking :), it occurred to me that what is needed is a design process  before we start designing the solution.  To complement Kahnemann’s Thinking Fast and Slow (an inspiration for my thoughts on designing for how we really think and learn), I thought of designing backward and forward.  Let me try to make that concrete.

Designing for PerformanceWhat I’m talking about is starting with a vision of what performance would look like in an ideal world, working backward to what can be in the world, and what needs to be in the head.  We want to minimize the latter.  I want to respect our humanity in a way, allowing us to (choose to) do the things we do well, and letting technology take on the things we don’t want to do.

In my mind, the focus should be on what decisions learners should be making at this point, not what rote things we’re expecting them to do.  If it’s rote, we’re liable to be bad at it.  Give us checklists, or automate it!

From there, we can design forward to create those resources, or make them accessible (e.g. if they’re people).  And we can design the ‘in the head’ experience as well, and now’s the time  for learning experience design, with a focus on developing our ability to make those decisions, and where to find the resources when we need them.  The goal is to end up designing a full performance solution where we think about the humans in context, not as merely a thinking box.

It naturally includes design that still reflects my view about activity-centered learning (which I’m increasingly convinced is grounded in cognitive research).  Engaging emotion, distributed across platforms and time, using a richer suite of tools than just content delivery and tests.  And it will require using something like Michael Allen’s Successive Approximation Model perhaps, recognizing the need to iterate.

I wanted to term this performance experience design, and then  as several members workshopped this with me, I thought we should  just call it performance design (at least externally, to stakeholders not in our field, we can call it performance experience design for ourselves).  And we can talk about learning experience design within this, as well as information design, and social networks, and…

It’s really not much more than what HPT would involve, e.g. the prior consideration of what the problem is, but it’s very focused on reducing what’s in the head, including emotion in the learning when it’s developed, using social resources as well as performance support, etc.  I think this has the opportunity to help us focus more broadly in our solution space, make us more relevant to the organization, and scaffold us past many of our typical limitations in approach.  What do you think?

Experience, the API

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Last week I was on a panel about the API previously known as Tin Can at #DevLearn, and some thoughts crystallized.  Touted as the successor to SCORM, it’s ridiculously simple: Subject Verb Object: e.g. “I did this”, such as ‘John Doe read Engaging Learning’ but also ‘Jane Doe took this picture’.  And this has interesting implications.

First, the API itself is very simple, and while it can be useful on it’s own, it’ll be really useful when there’re tools around it.  It’s just a foundation upon which things can be done.  There’ll need to be places to record these actions, and ones to pull together sequences of recommendations for learning paths, and more.  You’ll want to build portfolios of what you’ve done (not just what content you’ve touched).

But it’s about more than learning.  These can cross accessing performance support resources, actions in social media systems, and more. This person touched that resource. That person edited this file.  This other person commented.

One big interesting opportunity is to be able to start mining these.  We can start looking at evidence of what folks did and finding good and bad outcomes.  It’s a consistent basis for big data and analytics.  It’s also a basis to start customizing: if the people who touched this resource were better able to solve problem X, other people with that problem maybe should also touch it. If they’ve already tried X and Y, we can next recommend Z.  Personalization/customization.

An audience member asked what they should take back to their org, and who needed to know what.  My short recommendations:

Developers need to start thinking about instrumenting everything.  Everything people touch should report out on their activity.  And then start aggregating this data.  Mobile, systems, any technology touch. People can self report, but it’s better to the extent that it’s automated.

Managers need to recognize that they’re going to have very interesting opportunities to start tracking and mining information as a basis to start understanding what’s happening.  Coupled with rich other models, like of content (hence the need for a content strategy), tasks, learners, we can start doing more things by rules.

And designers need to realize, and then take advantage of, a richer suite of options for learning experiences.  Have folks take a photo of an example of X.  You can ask them to discuss Y.  Have them collaborate to develop a Z.  You could even send your learners out to do a flash mob ;).

Learning is not about content, it’s about experience, and now we have ways to talk about it and track it. It’s just a foundation, just a standard, just plumbing, just a start, but valuable as all that.

Honored

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At the recent DevLearn conference, David and Heidi (the two-cofounders of the eLearning Guild) punk’d me.  Under the pretense of having me assist the keynote speaker, they had me sit at the front of the stage with another purpose in mind.

As background, the Guild is explicitly labeled and designed to reflect the original concept of an association of  craftsmen  in a particular trade.  The notion is that elearning professionals will be members of the guild to stay abreast of new developments, and interact with their peers.  Inherent in this is the notion of participants starting as apprentices and moving gradually to the center of a community of practice.  Consequently, the Guild hosts a number of things: online conferences (forums), Learning Solutions (an online magazine), research reports, discussion forums on LinkedIn, and of course their excellent conferences.

eLearning Guild Award

Heidi and David decided, apparently, that they wanted to reward those who were contributing, who were serving as defacto ‘masters’ of the community, following the historic traditions.  Consequently, they were reviewing who did what, who was writing, researching, and presenting, and apparently one name kept appearing at the top of the lists.   Mine.

Now, you have to understand that I have made no effort to see who was doing what; I see certain names regularly appear on their speaker lists, as well as new ones. I know a number of people have been involved in research, and they’re always getting new authors for the magazine. But I literally had no idea how much I did compared to others, so this was a complete surprise.

So they called me up on stage and bestowed upon me the honor of being the very first Guild Master, handed me this great chunk of gorgeous glass, all with me somewhat stunned and embarassed.  They have stated an intention to honor others at following conferences, which will be great.  I like how they view their role, think it’s valuable, and they strike the right balance in making a viable business that serves a community.  They continually experiment as well, and that’s a good thing.

Needless to say, I’m truly honored that they noticed and deemed me worthy.  It’s not always you get recognized for doing what you love, and when you do it’s humbling.  I’m very grateful to them, and the kind comments others have made subsequently.  And thanks to you for the feedback you’ve provided on my thoughts via this blog, helping me develop my understanding so I am better equipped for what I do. I  am passionate about helping people perform better through technology, and as I often joke “this is what I would be doing even if I were independently wealthy (and you’re welcome to make that happen :)”.

I am truly pleased if what I’ve contributed has helped, and can only hope that I can continue.

Interviewed about mobile

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Denise VanderLinde, a  student from Florida Gulf Coast University, interviewed me on mobile.  Here’s the (largely unedited) transcript she provided for me:

  1. What is your definition of mobile learning? Using a mobile device to make us more effective, either in the moment or developing us over time. A mobile device is a small portable device that is with us all the time and we are doing something with it because of where we are.
  2. Would you consider a laptop a Mobile Device? A laptop is not normally considered a mobile device and this topic has been discussed and argued at length, in fact, amongst industry leaders who concur that they are essentially ‘mobile desk tops‘. ‘Pocket-able devices‘ such as tablets and phones are considered mobile devices generally. Phones are usually used to access some information quickly and then it is put away and iPad or other tablet can be used for content creation and can be used for more long-term usage.
  3. Can you tell me about your success story of using mobile technology for learning (or training, or performance improvement)? My company doesn‘t create solutions so much as helping people come up with the strategies to do it. When I was designing solutions, though, a cell phone technology provider approached us to supplement a face to face training course on negotiation to be delivered via the phone. I designed a solution that incorporated (amongst other things) a quiz with 19 elements that were deemed important subject matter that trainees should know cold, 10 little mini scenarios trainees might be subject to, performance support for 16 stages of negotiation and the questions trainees should be asking themselves at each stage.
  4. What important development trends do you see coming down the pike in mobile learning? Context sensitive; we have the capability now but we‘re not taking advantage of it yet. The opportunity to know where people are (GPS chip) and what they are doing via their mobile calendars. That way we can tailor what we pull or push to/from individuals based on their locations and what sorts of meetings they attend and on what subjects etc. to meet individual‘s needs better.
  5. What important problems do you think still need to be resolved in mobile learning?
    1. Cross Platform issue/ lack of standards – html 5 not standard yet but if it were would be great but there will be, of course, resistance by software companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft etc.
    2. I would love to see productivity tools available to enable users to design/write their own apps that meet their needs better.
    3. Thinking that M-learning is just ‘courses on a phone‘ is a change that we‘ve got to make. It‘s much more than that. It‘s about the 4 C‘s: Content, Communicate, Capture and Compute.
  6. Does your firm work predominantly with corporations or do you also work with teachers, schools and/or school boards in improving educational technology use in the classroom setting?   I haven‘t done much mobile K-12 but have done some higher education mobile work but most work in mobile has been corporate. People have their mobile device with them all the time so it‘s a great way to distribute knowledge to the world, not just one head.
  7. Do you find corporate and/or school staff still seem reluctant to use technology or do you see that trend shifting in more recent years? I haven‘t experienced much resistance unless people are asked to use their personal device that they pay for themselves. That is not going over so well but, overall, if you have the right culture, there hasn‘t been much resistance.
  8. Is there anything else at all that you would like to share at this time regarding mobile technology? The one that starts going hand in hand with mobile is to begin to think in a deeper way about Content Systems, about Content Modeling and Content Architectures. It‘s going to support mobile initially and that personalization going forward. I wrote an article on this topic and another is coming out soon in Learning Solutions Magazine.