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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Plans for 2010

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The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question of the Month is “predictions and plans for 2010“, specifically:

  • What are your biggest challenges for this upcoming year?
  • What are your major plans for the year?
  • What predictions do you have for the year?

I’ve already blogged the predictions question, so I’ll just address the first two points.

As a consultant, my big challenge is always finding more people who I can help.   With my colleagues in the Internet Time Alliance, we’re looking for organizations that know they want to leverage the power of social media to develop a collective intelligence infrastructure, but need assistance.   Through Quinnovation, I’m looking to improve organizational learning design, whether through developing immersive learning simulation capability, mobile delivery, performance solutions, adaptive systems, content models, or all of the above as a strategic lever.   I’ve helped lots of folks, and it’s clear there’s more need, so I’m just looking for more opportunities to really improve things, and ways to find those opportunities.

My plans are severalfold.   First, I’ve got to finish the manuscript for my mobile book.   I’m also committed to execute against the contracts I already have to continue to deliver great solutions.   And I intend to continue experimenting, speaking (hope to see you at the Guild’s Learning Solutions conference in March), writing, and of course, consulting.

I’m also intending to elaborate on some recent thoughts on learning experience design.   I think there’s a real opportunity to wrap some definition around the different components that helps systematize the integration of engagement and effective learning.   This is a generalization of Engaging Learning, going broader in areas of application, and across technologies.   I think there’s a need (just look at all the bad elearning still out there), and as we start delivering learning in more distributed ways and in wider contexts, we need a conceptual framework that helps us design in meaningful ways.

Naturally, I welcome your participation and assistance in any of the above!

Predictions for 2010

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eLearning Mag publishes short predictions for the year from a variety of elearning folks, and I thought I’d share and elaborate on what I put in:

I‘m hoping this will be the ‘year of the breakthrough‘.   Several technologies are poised to cross the chasm: social tools, mobile technologies, and virtual worlds.   Each has reached critical mass in being realistically deployable, and offers real benefits.   And each complements a desired organizational breakthrough, recognizing the broader role of learning not just in execution, but in problem-solving, innovation, and more.   I expect to see more inspired uses of technology to break out of the ‘course‘ mentality and start facilitating performance more broadly, as organizational structures move learning from ‘nice to have‘ to core infrastructure.

While I don’t know that these technologies will actually cross over (I’m notoriously optimistic), they’re pretty much ready to be:

  • Social I’ve mentioned plenty before, and everyone and their brother is either adding social learning capabilities to their suites, or creating a social learning tool company. And there are lots of open source solutions.
  • Mobile has similarly really hit the mainstream, with both reasonable and cheap (read: free) ways to develop mobile apps (cf Richard Clark & my presentation at the last DevLearn), and a wide variety of opportunities. The devices are out there!
  • Virtual worlds are a little bit more still in flux (while Linden Labs’ Second Life is going corporate as well, some of the other corporate-focused players are in some upheaval), but the value proposition is clear, and there are still plenty of opportunities.   The barriers are coming down rapidly.

Each has available technologies, best principles established and emerging, and real successes.   Given that there will be books on each coming this year (including mine ;), I really do think the time is nigh.   And, each is a component of a broader approach to learning, one that I’ve been advocating for organizations.

I’m hoping that organizations will start taking a more serious approach to a broad picture of learning.   The need in organizations is for learning to not be an add-on, isolated,   but instead to be part of the infrastructure.   We are at at a stage now where learning has to go faster than taking away, defining, designing, developing, and then delivering can accommodate.   The need is for learning to break out of the ‘event’ model, and start becoming more timely, more context-sensitive, and more collaborative.   Organizations will need their people to produce new answers on a continual basis.

I’m hoping that organizations will ‘get’ the necessary transition, and take the necessary steps.   As Alan Kay said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”.   I’m hoping we can invent the future, together.   We need the breakthrough, so let’s get going!

Top Posts of 2009

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Seeing all the top 10 lists, I thought I’d look at what the top 10 posts were for Learnlets (using Google Analytics), and I have to say that the responses were interesting, as some weren’t the ones I thought were most interesting. I suspect that they’re the ones that other people pointed to most for a variety of reasons (including me pointing people to the Broken ID series beginning). Here’s the list:

The ‘Least Assistance‘ Principle

Rethinking Learning Styles

Sims, Games, and Virtual Worlds

Learning Twitter Chat!

(New) Monday Broken ID Series: Objectives

Learning Styles, Brain-Based Learning, and Daniel Willingham

Learning Organization Dimensions

Predictions for 2009

The 7 c‘s of natural learning

Social Media Goals

I welcome your thoughts of what made these the most interesting posts of 2009.   And here’s hoping this new year is our best yet!

The big blindspot

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I was talking with a colleague over lunch the other day about her company, platform, and organizational learning issues.   And something occurred to me: we’re trying to merge onto a freeway right at a blindspot.

In orgs, there’s a real tendency to bucket any discussion of learning into ‘training’, and dismiss it.   You’ve heard me go off again and again about how I think learning includes innovation, creativity, problem-solving, etc, and that’s because I’m trying to make learning the umbrella term for all the good stuff & secret sauce, not automatically shunted off into the realms of cost-center and irrelevance.   And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think training has to be irrelevant (though in practice much of it is). The problem is that those same executives who identify a problem and demand a training solution for it aren’t open to a more discerning analysis of the problem, more enlightened learning practice, or more.   Regardless, it’s easy to get ignored as soon as they hear ‘learning’.

So then you can look at another channel to come in, and the obvious alternative is knowledge management (KM).   Except that, too, has a real easy knee-jerk rejection.   The initial wave of KM had so much hype it could only under-deliver on unrealistic expectations (as has happened before with AI and expert systems, as well as every new management phase).   So, KM also is a difficult sell.

The problem, then, is where do you come in?   What is the fog-penetrating terminology that will help get the C-suite to really ‘get’ that you’re talking about stuff that’s mission-critical?   That’s a big blindspot.   Collective intelligence? I just read that ‘innovation’ as a term is dead.   ‘Social   media’ can bring up bad images as well.   And anything called 2.0 is liable to be seen as hype, whether it’s Web or Enterprise.

The sad thing is, there’s some real ‘there’ there, but it’s an uphill sell.   Any bright ideas about how to market a real-game changer to people who need it, but can’t see it?

Foundations

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I love talking with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, they’re always sparking me to new thoughts.   In our chat, we were talking about learning, and I riffed off Charles’ comment about defining learning to opine that I see learning as a persistent behavior change (in the same context).   It’s very behaviorist-influenced (given that I’m a cognitive/connectionist/constructivist type), but the point is that it needs to manifest.   Otherwise, you get what we cog types call ‘inert knowledge’, you can recite it back on a test, but when it’s relevant in the world it never gets activated!

However, it got me to thinking about individual versus group behavior.   And I realize that there were some key points I take as foundational:

  • that orgs will need innovation
  • that innovation isn’t solitary
  • thus, that improving collective innovation requires collaboration
  • and that collaboration requires culture & infrastructure

I’ve argued before about how the increasing rate of change, capability, and more mean that executing against a total customer experience is only the cost of entry, and that continual innovation will be necessary. Competitors can reproduce a product or service quickly.   Technology advances provide new opportunities to improve products, processes, and services. So, you need continual innovation (which I think of as continual learning, as problem-solving, new {process|product|service} development, creativity, research, etc are all learning).

Now, Keith Sawyer has made the point that, in general, innovation isn’t individual.   In reality, individuals build upon one another’s work continually.   Sure, one person may be responsible for an innovation, but that’s not the way to bet.   Collective intelligence is the way to get the highest and continual output.

As a consequence, collaboration is needed.   The right people need to get together in the right way to address the right problem at the right time.   If you’re not collaborating, you’re suboptimal and therefore vulnerable.   Recognize the attendant issues: you have to be willing to tolerate failure, share mistakes as well as successes, and provide time for reflection!

To do that requires the double context of a supportive culture, and a facilitative infrastructure. There have to be ways to find the right collaborators, to understand the context, to share solutions, to test and evaluate, and to impact the way things are done.   And there have to be rewards for doing so.

That’s both the opportunity and the challenge on the table, and that’s why I hang w/ my posse.   We’d love to talk with you about it.

Microcourses?

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In the conversation with Kris Rockwell of Hybrid Learning I mentioned previously, we talked about the definition of mobile learning.   We both agreed that it wasn’t about loading your average asynchronous elearning course onto the phone, and that it was more about performance support.   Brevity is the soul of mobile, as well as wit.   And I also am happy to think of mobile as an augment to formal learning: reactivating knowledge, distributing practice, contextualizing learning, and even performance capture.   But then we came to the ‘grey’ area of so-called microcourses.

I have mentioned the possibility in the past, sort of on faith rather than having thought through the actual design.   Kris mentioned cited a colleague who talks about “2 minute courses” (which I can’t find on the interweb), but I really have to wonder what it might really mean.   What learning objectives could we meet that way?   I can see small chunks of content delivery, but that’s more learning augment than course.

To me, a full course has to have an introduction to reactivate relevant knowledge, a model presented to guide performance, an example that shows how the concept gets applied in context, and a chance to practice applying the concept to another context.   Finally, some post-practice reflection and   closing of the learning experience should occur.

If it’s less than that, e.g. the learner’s primed because it’s in the moment, the information is pared down to the minimum to successfully get the learner past the immediate point, it’s performance support.   Or, if the learner’s motivated and receptive already, and it’s just an information update, not a new skill, then again I don’t think of it as a course.

On the other hand, it may be that just a rethink of something they’ve been doing, a ‘tuning’ of an approach, could make sense.   Or, perhaps, regular mini-presentations and small practices of a different way to look at the same thing.   Though that might be distributed learning, not a mini-course, which would be OK.

So I’m okay if it’s just a semantic thing, and we’re talking learning augment or performance support.   And, I’m willing to think there might be limited learning topics that a quick cartoon, a simple model, an illustrated example (comic strip, brief animation), and a single practice (read: multiple choice question) with feedback that’s also a summary might work.   But none are springing to mind.

So, are there cases you can think of that would qualify?   Is microlearning for real?

Content Models and Mobile Delivery

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On Friday, I had the pleasure of a conversation of Kris Rockwell, CEO of Hybrid Learning for my in-process mobile learning book. I’d sought him out because of how he was developing mobile.   Using content models to separate out the content from how it gets rendered for display, he’s creating more flexibility across devices. This combines two of my passions, and is part of a performance ecosystem strategy.

Hybrid uses DITA, a standard for wrapping definition around content, to develop their content.   He presented powerful arguments to use this open source topic-based approach.   For one, being open source, you’re not locked in to a proprietary format, yet backed by IBM it’s well supported.   Second, it’s lightweight, compared to say S1000D (which I hadn’t heard of). And, of course, it’s portable across systems, meaning your solution doesn’t die even if your vendor does!

The use of a specification for such description around the content being developed is something I argue for regardless of mobile delivery or not.   When you wrap more rigor, and more semantic granularity around your development process, you’re well on your way to an organized content governance process.   For instance, if you design into a template even for the quick one-off requests that often come through the door in learning units, you are more likely to be able to reuse that content elsewhere, and, conversely, draw upon available content to shorten the development time. Done properly, the if you update the source one place, the changes should propagate throughout the relevant content!     There are lots of cost efficiencies being found in documentation with this approach, and it should percolate into elearning as well.

What Kris is also finding, however, is a real advantage in content portability   across mobile devices. Content so developed can easily be re-rendered for different devices, if they don’t already have the capability to hand.   He argues convincingly that designing for a device is a bad approach, and designing for device-independent delivery gives you the power not only to hit more platforms but also more flexibility for new platforms that emerge.   In short, your content development costs are amortized across more delivery options and ‘future-proofed’.

There was a lot more of interest in the conversation, including layered exploration (a “drill down” navigation style) and the potential for ordinary cell phones (dumbphones) to be viable delivers of instruction.   But that’s a topic for another day.   The take home for today, however, is think content models as well as mobile.

Virtual Worlds Value Proposition

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In prepping for tomorrow nights #lrnchat, Marcia Conner was asking about the value proposition of virtual worlds. I ripped out a screed and lobbed it, but thought I’d share it here as well:

At core, I believe the essential affordances of the virtual world are 3D/spatial, and social.  There are lower-overhead social environments (but…which I’ll get back to).  However, many of our more challenging tasks are 3D visualization (e.g. work of Liz Tancred in medicine, Hollan & Hutchins on steamships). Also, contextualization can be really critical, and immersion may be better.  So, for formal learning in particular domains, virtual environments really make a lot of sense.  Now you still might not need a social one, so let’s get back to that.

The overhead is high with virtual worlds on the social issue, so ordinarily I’d not put much weight on value proposition for informal learning, but…  two things are swaying me.  One is the ability to represent yourself as you’d like to be perceived, not as nature has provided.  The other is the ephemeral ‘presence’ and the context.  Can we make a more ambient environment to meet virtually, and be fully present (in a sense). Somehow there’s less intermediation through a virtual world than through a social networking site (with practice).

And one more thing in the informal side:  collaborative 3D creation.  This is, to me, the real untapped opportunity, but it may require both better interfaces, and more people with more experience.

Now, there’s certainly a business case for learning in virtual worlds *where* there’s an environment that really  needs 3D or contextualization, but does it need to be massively social (versus a constrained environment just for education, built in something like ThinkingWorlds)?

And we know there’s a business case for social, but is the overhead of virtual worlds worth it?

However, when we put these two together, adding the power of social learning onto the formal 3D/spatial, and in the social adding the ephemeral ‘presence’ *and* then consider the possibility of 3D spatial collaboration (model building, not just diagram building), and amortize the overhead over a long term organizational uptake, I’m beginning to think that it may just have crossed the threshold.

That is, for formal learning, 3D and contextualization is really underestimated.  For social learning, presence and representation may be underrated.  And the combination may have emergent benefits.

In short, I think the social learning value of virtual worlds may have broader application than I’ve been giving credit for.  Which isn’t even to mention what could come from bridging the social network across virtual, desktop, and even mobile!  So, what say you?

The Great eLearning Garbage Vortex

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Norbert Hockenberry here, reporting on a giant floating patch of elearning that has recently been discovered.  Like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this has been created by discarded material being gathered by oceanic currents into a giant mess.

Unlike the Pacific patch, this isn’t an environmental disaster so much as a economic and social catastrophe.  The waste of organizational resources, and learner time, is tragic.  Seldom has so much been done, for so many, for so little gain.

What is the cause of this mess?  Two main things: bad design, and mismanagement.

Bad Design

First, bad design means that the content has no actual impact on performance.  Typically, it’s delivered too far away from the time of need, and not reinforced, so it’s liable to have been forgotten when needed.

Even if it is available, it probably won’t get activated.  The content is usually developed as a knowledge dump and recitation, which is well-known to lead to ‘inert knowledge’.  Truly, a pathetic misuse of resources.

Mismanagement

Good content development practices also imply content management and governance.  Too often we see neither.

Content isn’t well articulated, starting from the objectives, and the development isn’t carefully articulated within a curriculum let alone across the curriculum, so consequently the content is limited in reuse and repurposing. Often, it can’t even be found for updating!  So, when information changes, the content is tossed away.

The flip-side is similar: content that has reached it’s ‘use by’ date isn’t culled from the available contents, and hangs around, making it hard for more useful content to live a full life.  Without content management and governance, content lies around in limbo, rather than be properly recycled or composted.

What can be done?

The clear implication is to start with proper content management up front, following good design principles, and establishing governance across the policy.  Content shouldn’t be developed without a clear view of it’s lifecycle and planned processes for getting maximum advantage and then disposing of it in appropriate ways.

This is Norbert Hockenberry, asking you to help prevent such disasters, and invest wisely in content development. Start with a focus on meaningful impacts, have a development process that supports good design, and has a clear intention about how to develop, access, and make content available for the learner.  Responsibly reuse, update, or appropriately dismiss content that is no longer functional in it’s current state.  It’s just being responsible!