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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Slow Learning <> Lifelong Learning

4 October 2006 by Clark 2 Comments

My colleague, and Adobe’s Ambassador for eLearning, Ellen Wagner, was teasing me this morning about whether my interest in ‘slow learning’ isn’t just “lifelong learning”. Frankly, I hadn’t looked at lifelong learning, but my initial take was that it wasn’t.

So, I googled “lifelong learning” and the wikipedia entry confirmed my suspicions:

Lifelong education is a form of pedagogy often accomplished through distance learning or e-learning, continuing education, homeschooling or correspondence courses.

I realize that this is undoubtedly not all of lifelong learning, this bit elaborates a bit:

Lifelong learning sees citizens provided with learning opportunities at all ages and in numerous contexts: at work, at home and through leisure activities, not just through formal channels such as school and higher education.

Which could be what I’m talking about, but I want to be very clear about what I mean by ‘slow learning’. Not to diminish the importance of the other components, but the concept I’m talking about is not receiving sufficient attention and I want to tease it out.What I’m talking about with slow learning are little interventions dribbled out over long periods of time. The metaphor is not attending an event, but having a personal mentor guiding you throughout your life, with an intervention pattern of a small amount of content or activity at a particular moment.

While there’s a role for the course, there’re problems. Some behaviors and attitudes are not amenable to quick fixes. Other changes are really long sequences of development. We need courses, but I want to argue that a useful, perhaps necessary, adjunct is a long-term development approach.

So there, Ellen!

Organizational Consciousness

2 October 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

As I mentioned, we were meeting on Consciousness, and Jerry Talley led us to talk about organizational consciousness. He started by mentioning the film The Corporation (which I have not seen; we have children, not a life :) and how it proposes using psychiatric assessment on the behavior of organizations (self-obsessed, ruthless, etc) and concludes that on the whole organizations are psychopaths. This, naturally, is not a ‘good thing‘, and Jerry was curious how organizations could be raised in consciousness.

Jerry proposed four critical elements necessary for corporate consciousness: perception of both the external environment and of internal states and processes, ongoing memory of corporate activity, models for shared meaning (yes!), and a capacity to experiment. I‘d tease the last part out into an ability to reflect and a willingness to act up on it. There‘s certainly an analogy between individual consciousness and organizational consciousness!

Jerry argued that most organizations have none or few of these, and was eager to hear of any one who had all of them. Scary, really. Certainly we know organizations are working on beginning to capture memory (knowledge management), and increasingly we see corporations trying to track competitive intelligence in real time. We‘re using stories to create and share understanding, and companies are beginning to realize the need to make their values explicit, though we don‘t do enough about using models (but I‘ve gone off on this enough already).

The last issue is the reflection and willingness to act on it. Of course, you can‘t do the latter if you haven‘t done the former. But that reflection doesn‘t happen. We talked about a number of large well-known organizations whose culture doesn‘t let them admit failure. We all know the managers who think that time for reflection is a waste. Even if you have ideas, the ability to take a chance is fraught with risk for many. We also noted, on the positive side, Google‘s support (mandate?) for at least their folks to spend 20% of their time on their own projects.

It was clear that our societal focus on short-term shareholder returns is in contrast to the long-term success of organizations (and for society, but that‘s another story; check out David Batstone in the meantime). If you‘re looking for the greatest short-term return, your decisions can‘t focus on other important elements like impact on society and the world, or even on long-term success (I was reminded of Akio Morita‘s (chairman of Sony) analysis of Western business in The Japan That Can Say No).

The point being here that, except for a few isolated fits and starts, our organizations are not functioning optimally (and that‘s true in the moment, not just in the long term). It‘s partly an issue of organizational culture, partly a situation that technology can help. I‘m happy if we work on both together. You really have to, after all.

Consciously Conscious

2 October 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

On Friday I had the pleasure of gathering with some very interesting people (including the Schuylers, Betsy Burroughs, and Jeff Saperstein) at Doug Englebart‘s house to discuss Consciousness. Yassi Mogahaddam started us off asking what consciousness is. It‘s clear that any time we‘re awake we‘re technically conscious, but there are appear to be two different types of consciousness.

To illustrate, we used the situation of driving. There are times when the driving is automatic, and our minds can wander to solve problems or listen to the radio. Then there‘s the case where someone swerves in front of us and we can no longer rely on our automatized processes and we‘re in the moment. We might even get angry. All this is ‘in the moment‘ still, or what Don Norman terms ‘active cognition.

Then there are the times when we think about what we‘re doing, observing ourselves being angry perhaps, and as someone pointed out, integrating our different modes of perception. Don called this ‘reflective cognition‘, but there‘s more. Eastern wisdom tells us about being centered, and clearly there are times when we‘re consciously reflecting on our own learning and thinking (meta-cognition and meta-learning).

Of course, consciousness means many things, and more than one attendee mentioned efforts to achieve higher consciousness. I naturally had to bring up wisdom, and we talked about how we might achieve it.

We reviewed historical notions of consciousness and the development of our intelligence and attitudes (the ability of the ancient Greeks to spend time philosophizing comes in some part from their use of slaves, despite their analyses of the importance of freedom), and of points of view.

The point I want to make is that self-improvement is not necessarily a natural state, and it takes cultivation to turn people to a path of seeking more than what‘s just best for themselves. Robert Sternberg has argued that we should explicitly teach wisdom in classes, and I think it should be made intrinsic to our curriculum. And this holds true at the organizational level as well!

Bashing Gagne’

28 September 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

Donald Clark, ex-CEO of the Epic Group in the UK, has got a great blog, where he cheerfully skewers misconceptions about learning. In a rant I was pointed to, he takes aim at Gagne’s Nine Dull Commandments. As the subsequent comments point out, the problem isn’t necessarily with Gagne’s elements as it is with their interpretation and a belief in their rigid order.

It’s not a case of “if you follow it (without insight), they will learn”. The typical interpretation of many of the elements is so rote that they counter what they’re supposed to do. I’ve tried to suggest an improved approach in my white paper about the Seven Step Program to eLearning Improvement (NB: PDF), and it’s nice to see others picking up that a mechanistic implementation of Gagne’ (or anyone else) won’t hit the mark.

UK eLearning Mission Report out

12 September 2006 by Clark 1 Comment

As I previously mentioned, I got the privilege of co-hosting a day of meetings for the UK’s visiting mission on eLearning. Sponsored by the Department of Trade & Industry, these missions send a small panel of experts from industry and academia to review and report on relevant international activity. They each have specific areas of responsibility, and are to bring back the outcomes that they determine. I have to say that the group seemed very experienced and aware, and I was eagerly awaiting the report.

The report (PDF) is now available to all. This report includes chapters on mLearning, games, performance support, and more. I haven’t yet read the whole thing, but what I have read looks suitably insightful. I recommend having a look at this critical evaluation of eLearning in the US.

Models, manuals, and more…

3 September 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

Jay Cross’ Informal Learning Blog, InformL pointed me to this blog post about the need for manuals and the problems with them. The diagram says it all, really.

My PhD work included mental models, and the research is robust: that with models, learners can forget some steps and regenerate the missing bits; that models provide the ability to predict what will happen or explain what happened; and troubleshoot. But what we get in instructions are rote procedures to do something, not oriented around our goals.

When I tried to learn Macromedia’s FreeHand, their tutorial had you build a picture. It was useless. It was only by experimentation that I discovered that what I thought were the atomic elements, shapes, were actually paths that could be manipulated, e.g. cut (see the Quinnovation logo). They didn’t provide a conceptual model that talked about paths and how everything, text, shapes, etc, could be translated to them (and had to be for real manipulation). I may still have it wrong, as it’s also known that individuals will infer models, possibly incorrectly, and without guidance can retain those models with great persistence.

I’ve been trying to get most elearning to focus on the underlying models instead of rote procedures (it’s one of my seven steps to better elearning points; warning, PDF).

I also note that the claim about systems being designed to not need manuals doesn’t make sense for anything more complicated than a toaster. Unless, of course, you’re going to give me unlimited bandwidth and resources, but most people want to keep the size of their devices under control and provide the full set of features people want.

I argue that it’s not about training, it’s about supporting performance, and that includes responsibility for a broader picture. Currently too much of this is siloed off in different parts of organizations, so software engineers write help systems, a different group writes manuals, the training group prepaes training, etc., all from the same information (hence the push for ‘single-sourcing’ and content models). We can do a better job if we start from the models, and populate all these forms of information in an integrated, cross-referencing, and encompassing strategy.

If, as the experts have it, customer experience is the new differentiator, having a usable system coupled with coherent support ought to be part of the picture.

Virtual Worlds?

1 September 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

A number of years ago I was involved in James Burke’s great Knowledge Web project. In organizing it, we were using Active Worlds, a 3D virtual environment. We’d stand around in this gorgeous room, each with our avatars, and text message each other. It quickly became apparent that the virtual world added nothing.

The new virtual world buzz is around Linden Labs Second Life. I had a look, but wasn’t overwhelmed. Now several colleagues are involved in it in significant ways. Both have experience in (and passion for) learning through technology, and I may have to rethink my take on virtual worlds.

It helps to know that, based upon Marcia Conner’s book Learn More Now, I’m a solitary or, at most, small-group learner. So, as I’ve maintained in the design of games, when your learning objective is interpersonal is when it makes sense to use a social game and a social world.

Through my teaching, particularly the learning theory course I’ve taught this summer, I recognize the constructivist value of having learners negotiate a shared understanding. That hasn’t benefited from a virtual world (except for a novelty factor, a Hawthorne effect, which I suggest will wear off and a new gimmick will be needed). Up ’til now, a discussion board or chat room had all the necessary affordances.

However. A colleague just passed me a link to this video (you’ll most likely have to scroll down) about the New Media Consortium’s space in Second Life. And in it, I saw something I hadn’t really thought about. Most of it was the standard “places to meet”, events, and some nooks and crannies to explore, but…
…that’s not what interested me. What’s interesting is that it is easy (apparently, I didn’t master it in my exploration) to create new things. So you can make models or representations and share them. THIS is a major benefit. Now we can share 3D representations and discuss them.

I’ve suggested in the past that the operating system metaphor I really want is ‘magic’, where I can make things happen with spells (scripts) or buy tools if I have money rather than time. Not to go into that here, but at least in a virtual world we can now make that true. Which also makes true that we can reach a new level of collaboration. And that is interesting!

Constructivism vs Criticism

31 August 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

Bobbi Kamil, the “blushing bride” of my colleague John Ittelson (and demonstrably successful as the founder of Cable in the Classroom), is a strong believer in constructivism, and so (at least philosophically) am I. So, in teaching a summer course in Learning Theory courtesy of Professor Ittelson, I designed a rich sequence of assignments to accompany each developing chapter.

Owing to cognitive theory and wanting them to elaborate the concepts for themselves, practice elaborating them conceptually, and apply the principles, I had them write a journal, answer a discussion question, and work in groups to address a question (typically framed as an RFP), respectively. I felt strongly that this was an appropriate set of activities.

For reasons that I won’t go into here, I was prevented from doing more than provide feedback on the group assignments during the semester. Naturally, I was somewhat leery of what the outcomes were going to be (to put it mildly).

I can’t really comment on the personal journals (yet), but the group assignments led to some very insightful outcomes. Moreover, and here’s the big lesson: the responses to the discussion questions (in a bulletin board, with a requirement for commenting on someone else’s response), were quite simply awesome. The developing understanding was with few exceptions as good or better than I could have provided.
Then came Kisrshner, Sweller, & Clark’s robust (NB: a PDF) denunciation of Constructivism. The point they make (and it’s not original, but nicely documented) is that you can’t trust learners to self-direct, and you need to provide guidance. In some what’s it’s reminiscent of the furor Reder, Anderson, & Simon caused in their reaction to situated cognition and constructivism. And, I note, that KSC do admit that the older the student, the more you should expect self-determination.

I qualify that by saying that we can’t *expect* self-learning capability, we should develop it. On the other hand, this was a Master’s program. I’m mindful that Bobbi’s advice was to ‘have faith’. And while I had hoped to provide more personal feedback, the outcomes indeed showed that the learners could come to grips (by and large) with the challenges and ambiguities, and successfully grasp the concepts.

So, do ensure you match the guidance to the learner, but do have faith and take a chance on empowering learners to take ownership of their learning and wrestle with (an appropriate level of) ambiguity. They may not enjoy it, but the learning outcomes are the proof.

What you should learn

30 August 2006 by Clark 4 Comments

There’s some interesting lists going around about what you should learn. Stephen Downes has created a list (in reply to Guy Kawasaki’s list), and not surprisingly it’s really good. I was interested in how it compared to the list I created for my ‘learning wisdom‘ talk back in November. Stephen’s is more personal (ie what a learner should take ownership of), where mine was more curricular, but there are enough similarities to see why I resonated with it.

Here then, are his 10 items and their relation to the list I created:

  1. How to predict consequences – this is my ‘systems thinking’, the ability to use models to make predictions and explanations. I add in the ability to build models (even if just qualitatively), as I think it’s an important skill going forward.
  2. How to read – I didn’t have this explicitly, but he means it as more than literacy, and I lump it under ‘critical thinking’.
  3. How to distinguish between truth and fiction – this, too, fits under ‘critical thinking’ in my list.
  4. How to empathize – this would fit under my category of ‘stewardship’, a feeling of responsibility for others, but also the other denizens of our planet and the planet itself.
  5. How to be creative – I have this under ‘design’.
  6. How to communicate clearly – and I have this under communication.
  7. How to learn – I have ‘meta-learning’.
  8. How to stay healthy – this is one place where we begin to differ, I didn’t have this explicitly, and it’s a good element.
  9. How to value yourself – I think this is a good one as well. I don’t have it.
  10. How to live meaningfully – Again, one I didn’t have explicitly, I’d argue (not strongly, however) that it could fall out my element of ethics.

So, my list had 5 major categories with two elements each: I had problem-solving including research and design, systems-thinking with model-based reasoning and modeling, working with others covering leadership as well as communication, learning as an umbrella for critical thinking and meta-learning, and values covering both ethics and stewardship.

I could quibble about leadership, research, and ethics, and Stephen could quibble about health, valuing yourself, and living meaningfully, but I think both lists provide some good ideas sorely missing from our current schooling. Like David Jonassen says, the problems our kids learn to solve in schools have essentially no relation to what they have to solve in life.

Measuring interfaces

27 August 2006 by Clark Leave a Comment

In a recent Gamasutra article, Phillip Goetz analyzes strategy-based game interfaces. This wouldn’t be of interest normally, but the approach he takes, talking about metrics of number of steps to accomplish player goals is.

Goetz is talking about how you have to give orders to every ‘unit’ (a game element such as a factory or a squad), but in real life as you have greater responsibility you get greater authority and delegate on the one hand, and you have templates of behavior you can request. The point being, that our goals shift and we look for ways to automate tasks we’ve mastered and have to perform a lot.

The take home I want to suggest is that analyzing tasks and minimizing the steps to accomplish the users goals has been elegantly discussed in Don Norman’s 7 Stages of Action model (from his Design of Everyday Things), and this application is an excellent case study. He also talks about tools to measure things like learner actions so you can map what the user is trying to do to the number of steps to accomplish this.

There’s more (and it gets into the weeds a bit about objects), but this is a great start. Usability is part of learning game design (and learning technology in general), and good examples are one of the great ways to get a handle on it.

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