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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Locus of learning: community, AI, or org?

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A recent article caused me to think. Always a great thing!  It led to some reflections that I want to share. The article is about a (hypothetical) learning journey, and talks about how learning objects are part of that learning process. My issue is with the locus of the curation of those objects; should it be the organization, an AI, or the community?  I think it’s worth exploring.

The first sentence that stood out for me made a strong statement. “Choice is most productive when it is scaffolded by an organizationally-curated framework.” Curation of resources for quality and relevance is a good thing, but is the organization is the best arbiter? I’ve argued that the community of practice should determine the curriculum to be a member of that community. Similarly, the resources to support progression in the community should come from the community, both within and outside the organization.

Relatedly, the sentence before this one states “learner choice can be a dangerous thing if left unchecked”.  And this really strikes me as the wrong model.  It’s inherently saying we don’t trust our learners to be good at learning.  I don’t expect learners (or SMEs for that matter) to know learning. But then, we shouldn’t leave that to chance. We should be facilitating the development of learning to learn skills explicitly, having L&D model and guide it, and more.  It’s rather an old school approach to think that the org (through the agency of L&D) needs to control the learning.

A second line that caught my eye was that the protagonist “and his colleagues create and share additional AI-curated briefings with each other.”  Is that AI curation, or community curation? And note that there’s ‘creation’, not just sharing.  I’m thinking that the human agency is more critical than the AI curation. AI curation has gotten good, but when a community is working, the collective intelligence is better. Or, if we’re talking IA (and we should be), we should explicitly looking to couple AI and community curation.

Another line is also curious.  “However, learning leaders must balance the popularity of informal learning with the formal, centralized needs of the organization. This can be achieved using AI-curated real-time briefings.” Count me skeptical. I believe that if you address the important issues – purpose via meaningful work and autonomy to pursue, communities of practice, and learning to learn skills – you can trust informal learning more than AI or a central view of what learning can and should be.

Most of the article was quite good, even if things like “psychological safety” are being attributed to McKenzie instead of Amy Edmondson.  I like folks looking to the future, and I understand that aligning with the status quo is a good business move. It’s just that when you get disconnects such as these, it’s an opportunity to reflect.  And wondering about the locus of responsibility for learning is a valuable exercise.  Can the locus be the individual and community, not the org or AI? Of course, better yet if we get the synergy between them.  But let’s think seriously about how to empower learners and community, ok?

 

Bringing Transformation to Life

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I’m going to be delivering a mobile learning course for a university this spring. Consequently, I’m currently beginning the design. I need to practice what I preach in the sense of good learning design, so I’m working through the usual decisions. The real question I have is whether I can make it transformative. There are limitations, but one of my mantras is about design having many possible development forms. So…I’ve got to make a good stab at it. Here’s my preliminary thinking on bringing the course to life.

I’ve actually been working a lot on the design of university learning experiences. There have been several instances in the past year or two that have really pushed my thinking in this space. This naturally includes application-based instruction, as well as meaningful (and minimal) content, and good assessment design. It’s been handy for this!

Naturally, Designing mLearning will be the text (The Mobile Academy is focused on formal education, and these students are focused on the workplace).  As it turns out, the book isn’t written in the order I want to deliver the course. So while I’ll have specific readings each week, I’ll instead recommend that the students read it in one go (it’s not a long book), and that two different cuts through the material will be a better learning experience.

I’m also thinking about the assignments: having them do meaningful things. E.g. designing solutions. Also, in the right order, to facilitate useful processing. I suppose I should worry about whether the workload will be too much However, as it’s a compressed course the expectations per week are higher. And I will argue that I’m having them do more than consume, so the workload’s ok.

The important thing, to me, is getting the emotional trajectory right. I reckon I need an aspirational goal up front, and then ensure I deliver.  It needs to work on a week-by-week basis and overall.  I’m making sure they’re doing the right things, and then I’ll fine-tune. I like the chance to integrate my thinking and put a stake in the ground. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

As a side note, mobile seems (to me) to be resurrecting. I would think it’s now mainstream, but some folks are still getting started. Hey, it makes sense, so better late than never! Where are you in mobile?

A foolish inconsistency

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Here, a foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of my little mind. While there are some learnings in here (for me and others), it’s really just getting stuff off my chest. Feel free to move along. This is just a lack of consistency that I suggest is unnecessary and ill-conceived.

I’ve hinted at this before, but I don’t think I’ve gone into detail. I like LinkedIn. It’s a useful augment for business networking. However, what drives me nuts is the inconsistency between the device app and the web interface.  One instance is sufficient: messaging someone you’ve just connected to.

So, on the device, if you link to someone, you immediately get a notice and a link to send them a message. And I like that, since I like to send a quick followup to everyone I link to (a trick I learned from a colleague).  On the device, it goes straight to the messaging interface. Perfect. Now, from the invitations on the app that I want to query (e.g. it’s not clear why they’ve linked) or to explain why I won’t (I generally don’t link to orgs, for instance), I can’t do that, but that’s ok, it can wait ’til I’m on my laptop using the (richer) web app.

On the web version, when I accept a link, I’m also offered the chance to message them, but here’s the trick: it’s not a message, it’s an InMail!  And, of course, those are limited. I don’t want to use my InMails on messaging someone I’m already linked to.  (I don’t use them in general, but that’s a separate issue.).  WHY can’t they go to messages like the app?  That’d be consistent, and this is a worse default than using messages.  I get that the app would have more limited functionality in return for being an app (there’re benefits, like notifications), but why would the full web version do things that are contrary to your interests and intentions?!?!

Good design says consistency is a good thing, generally; certainly aligning with user expectations and best interests. It’s bad design to do something that’s unnecessarily wasteful.  There are lots of such irritations: web forms that only tell you the expected format after you get it wrong instead of making it easy to point to the answer or give you a clue and sites with mismatched security (overly complex for unessential data or vice-versa) are just two examples.  This one, however, continues to be in my face regularly.

This inconsistency is instead a hobgoblin of a sensible mind. Has this irritated you, or what other silly designs bedevil you?

 

PSA SPF

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog series for this important public service announcement:

A number of times now, I’ve discovered that there was email being sent to me that I was not getting. Fortunately, my ISP is also a colleague, mentor, and friend and a real expert in cybersecurity, so I asked him. And he explained it to me (and then again when I’d forgotten and it happened again; sorry Sky!).  So I’ll document it here so I can point to it in further instances. And it’s about domains and SPF, so it’s a wee bit geeky (and at the edge of my capability).  Yet it’s also important for reducing spam, and I’m all for that. So here we go.

This started with an organization where I had been conversing with individuals.  And eventually it became clear that they had sent me a form letter, as part of a bigger mailing, and assumed I had it while I was still asking about details in said form letter. Debugging this is how I found out what happened.

Now, when an org sends you email directly, your mail system tracks the paths it takes to get to you. If it goes back to the server for the org says the mail’s from, all’s good. For certain types of mails (e.g. event-related or service-related), however, those mails are sent via a service. A good mail server should check to see if the mail the service claims is really from the org. Otherwise, you could have a lot of people sending things pretending to be from one place but … can you say ‘spam’?  Right.

So, what the org needs to do is create a really simple one-line bit of text in something called a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record that says “they mail on my behalf”.  E.g. the record lets the org publish a list of IP addresses or subnets that are authorized to send email on their behalf.  And, seriously, this is simple enough that I can do it.

Yet somehow, some orgs don’t do this. Now, some mailers don’t check, but they should! That check to the DNS entry on behalf of the org to see if there’s an SPF covering the service will help reduce spam. So my ISP checks rigorously. And then I miss mail when people haven’t done the right thing in their tech set up. When I have this type of problem, it’s pretty much one of these.

Please, please, do check that your orgs get this right if they do use a service. That would be orgs doing mailing lists through external providers (e.g. small firms without the resources to purchase bulk mail systems). And you can ignore this if it doesn’t apply to you, but if you do have the symptoms, feel free to point people here to help them understand what to fix. I certainly will!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

The pain of learning

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My dad, in his last years, lost the use of his hands and most of his hearing. It seemed like he then gave up. I finally challenged him on it, and he said “when you’re in constant pain…”.  And I got it.

So, turns out I’ve a misbehaving disk in my back, and it started pressing on the nerve over the summer. Pain scales are 1-10; this ultimately got to an 8 when I was trying to walk or even stand (from my lower back down my leg to my toes). Tried physio, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and then a steroid pack; nope. The ‘big hammer’ option was a cortisone injection, and that happened. Better yet, it knocked it back; down to 1). Er, for some six – eight weeks, then it came back. They gave me another one sooner than they were supposed to, but it hasn’t worked (ok, it’s knocked it to a 6 on average, but…this isn’t tolerable).  And my point here isn’t that I’m looking for sympathy, but to (of course) talk about the learnings. Because, despite the physical pain, there are learnings (good and bad).

Because there’re a physiological basis (pressing on the nerve), I’ve stuck with treatments likely to minimize the inflammation. I haven’t looked at a chiropractor nor acupuncture. Given that the current approaches are failing, those may come up, though I’m expecting surgery as the nuclear option. Not that I’m eager (to the contrary!). One learning is how close minded I can be about exploring alternative solutions. On the other hand, as it shoots down the leg into my foot, I’ve learned a lot more about physiology!

In the course of navigating airports and the like while in the throws of this (long story), I also found that the milk of human kindness can be diluted by pain. When you’re muttering obscenities under your breath because of the knives that accompany every step, clueless actions on the part of others – like stopping suddenly, blocking access, or even just bad signage – can earn muffled imprecations and aspersions on parentage and intelligence.  I’ve always tried to maintain ‘situational awareness’ (and know I’ve failed at times), but I highly recommend it!

On the other hand, when sitting (the only time it settles down), I’m expanding on my growing recognition over the past years that I have no idea what anyone else may be going through.  I’m sure my limping through parking lots and stores can be perceived as congenital damage or wear and tear. There’s no real way for anyone to know how much someone else hurts. We don’t have meters over our heads or icons.

And I’m increasingly grateful!  That may sound odd, but this experience is teaching me (and I am trying to find the positive).  Finding ways to minimize it is an ongoing experimentation. The support of my family helps, and I’ve learned (some) to ask for help.  But even an involuntary and undesirably challenging experience still is an experience.

Also, as much as it may be hard to struggle to find time and motivation for exercise, you learn to miss it. It seems every time I start taking a serious stab at diet and exercise, something goes wrong!  It’s almost like I’m not supposed to; and I know that’s wrong.  (I’ve also learned to secretly suspect my pain doctor is a closet sadist, but that’s the pain talking. :)

This is definitely not ‘hard fun‘, to be clear. This is much more lemonade.  Fingers crossed that this, too, will pass. And if you do see me limping around, cut me some slack ;).  But also, please understand that it’s hard to know what other people are going through, and do your best to be sympathetic. Which seems like the right message for this time of year anyway. Wishing you and yours all the best for the holidays and the new year!

From instructor to designer & facilitator

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Someone on Quora asked me about the instructor role:
How would the role of a teacher change in this modern online learning world?
While I posted an answer there, I thought I’d post it here too:

I see two major roles in that of the ‘teacher’: the designer of learning experiences (pre), and the facilitator of same (during/post). I think the design changes by returning to natural learning approaches, an apprenticeship model (c.f. Cognitive Apprenticeship). Our wetware hasn’t changed, so we want to use technology as an augment. Tech can make it easier to follow such a design paradigm.

The in-class role moves from presentation to facilitation. Ideally we have content and check, as well as any preliminary experiences, done in a ‘flipped model’. Leveling-up learners to a baseline happens before engaging in the key learning activities. Major activities can be solo if the material is more dedicated to training, but ideally are social particularly when complex understandings are required (mostly).

The role of teacher is to check in on group discussions and projects, and bring out important lessons from the report-backs. We extend the learning with efforts to either or both of expand understandings into more contexts, or document the resulting applied understandings, to create a unified understanding.

Application-based instruction is the focus, having learners do things with the learning, not just recite it. The design role is to create a sequence of preparation, meaningful engagement, and knowledge consolidation that’s a learning experience. The facilitation role is to help bring out misconceptions and important hints and tips to lead to learner success.

This really is true face-to-face as well, but technology offers us tools to take the drudge work out of the experience and end up having the facilitation role be focused on the most valuable aspects. That’s my take, at any rate.

And what’s your take?

(And this may be my only post this week; happy holidays everyone!)

The case for PKM

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Seek > Sense > ShareApparently, an acquaintance challenged my colleague Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) model.  He seemed to consider the possibility that it’s a fad. Well, I do argue people should be cautious about claims. So, I’ve talked about PKM before, but I want to elaborate. Here’s my take on the case for PKM.

As context, I think meta-learning, learning to learn, is an important suite of skills to master. As things change faster, with more uncertainty and ambiguity, the ability to continually learn will be a critical differentiator. And you can’t take these skills for granted; they’re not necessarily optimal, and our education systems generally aren’t doing a good job of developing them. (Most of school practices are antithetical to self learning!)

Information is key.  To learn, you need access to it, and the chance to apply. Learning on one’s own is about recognizing a knowledge gap, looking for relevant information, applying what you find to see if it works, and once it does, to consolidate the learning.

Looking at how you deal with information – how you acquire it, how you process it, and how you share your learnings – is an opportunity to reflect. Think of it as double-loop learning, applying your learning to your own learning. We’re often no so meta-reflective, yet that ends up being a critical component to improving.

Having a framework to scaffold this reflection is a great support for improving. Then the question becomes what is the right or best support?  There are lots of people who talk about bits and pieces, but what Harold’s done is synthesize them into a coherent whole (not a ‘mashup’). PKM integrates different frameworks, and creates a practical approach.  It is simple, yet unpacks elegantly.

So what’s the evidence that it’s good?  That’s hard to test.  The acquaintance was right that just university uptake wasn’t a solid basis (I found a renowned MBA program recently that was still touting MBTI!).  The hard part would be to create a systematic test. Ideally, you’d find an organization that implements it, and documents the increase in learning. However, learning in that sense is hard to measure, because it’s personal. You might look for an increase in aggregate measures (more ideas, faster trouble-shooting), but this is personal and is dependent on outside factors like the culture for learning.

When you don’t have such data, you have to look for some triangulating evidence. The fact that multiple university scholars are promoting it isn’t a bad thing. To the contrary, uptake at individual institutions without a corporate marketing program is actually quite the accolade! The fact that the workshop attendees tout it personally valuable it also a benefit. While we know that individual attendee’s reports on the outcomes of a workshop don’t highly correlate with actual impact, that’s not true for people with more expertise. And the continued reflection of value is positive.

Finally, a point I made at the end of my aforementioned previous reflection is relevant. I said: “I realize mine is done on sort of a first-principles basis from a cognitive perspective, while his is richer, being grounded in others’ frameworks.”  Plus, he’s been improving it over the years, practicing what he preaches. My point, however, is that it’s nicely aligned with what you’d come at from a cognitive perspective. Without empirical data, theoretical justification combined with scholarly recognition and personal affirmations are a pretty good foundation.

There’re meta-lessons here as well: how to evaluate programs, and the value of meta-learning. These are worth considering. Note that Harold doesn’t need my support, and he didn’t ask me to do this. As usual, my posts are triggered by what crosses my (admittedly febrile) imagination. This just seemed worth reflecting on. So, reflections on your part?

Fun, Hard Fun, & Engagement

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At Online Educa in Berlin, they apparently had a debate on fun in learning. The proposition was “all learning should be fun”.  And while the answer is obviously ‘no’, I think that it’s too simplistic of a question. So I want to dig a bit deeper into fun, engagement, and learning, how the right alignment is ‘hard fun’.

Donald Clark weighs in with a summary of the debate and the point he thought was the winner. He lauds Patti Shank, who pointed out that research talks about ‘desirable difficulty’. And I can’t argue with this (besides, Patti’s usually spot-on).  He goes on to cite how you read books that aren’t funny, and that how athletes train isn’t particularly giggle-inducing.  All of which I agree with, except this “Engagement and fun are proxies and the research shows that effort trumps fun every time.”  And I think tying engagement and fun together is a mistake.

There is the trivial notion of fun, to be fair.  The notion that it’s breezily entertaining.  But I want to make a distinction between such trivial attention and engagement.  For instance, I would argue that a movie like Schindler’s List is wholly engaging, but I’m not sure I would consider it ‘fun’.  And even ‘entertaining’ is a stretch. But I think it’s compelling. Similarly with even reading books for entertainment: many aren’t ‘fun’ in the sense of light entertainment and humor, but are hard to put down. So what’s going on here?

I think that cognitive (and emotional) immersion is also ‘engagement’.  That is, you find the story gripping, the action compelling, or the required performance to be a challenge, but you persist because you find it engaging in a deeper sense.

Raph Koster wrote A Theory of Fun about game design, but the underlying premise was that why games were ‘fun’ is that they were about learning. The continually increasing challenge, set in a world that you find compelling (we don’t all like the same games), is what makes a game fun. Similarly, I’ve written about engagement as a far more complex notion than just a trivial view of fun.

The elements of the alignment between effective education practice and engaging experiences demonstrate that learning can, and should, be hard fun. This isn’t the trivial sort of ‘fun’ that apparently is what Donald and Patti were concerned about.  It is all about ‘desirable difficulty’, having a challenge in the zone that’s Czikszentmihalyi’s Flow and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.

I agree that just making it fun (just as putting high production values on under-designed content dump) isn’t the answer. But just making it ‘work’ doesn’t help either.  You want people to see the connection between what they’re doing and their goals. Learners should have a level of challenge that helps them know that they’re working toward that goal. You want them to recognize that the tasks are for achieving that goal. It’s about integrating the cognitive elements of learning with the emotional components of engagement in a way that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The synergy is what is needed.

I think fun and engagement aren’t the same thing. So while I agree with the premise that learning shouldn’t be the trivial sense of fun, I think the more rigorous sense should be the goal of learning. We want learning to be a transformation, not just a trudge nor a treat.  I’ll argue that the athletes and the readers and the others who are learning are engaged, just not amused. And that’s the important distinction. This is, to me, what Learning Experience Design should be, designing hard fun. And I think we can do this; my upcoming workshop at Learning Solutions is about doing just that. Hope to see you there!

Thinking Strategically

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Repurposed from another use.

In today’s increasing rate of change and competition, coupled with growing ambiguity and uncertainty, L&D just can’t be about delivering courses on demand. Optimal execution, the result of formal learning, is only the cost of entry, and continual innovation will be the necessary element for organizations to thrive. Organizations have to move faster, be more agile, and adapt more effectively.  And it’s here that L&D has a true opportunity, and imperative, to contribute. It’s about thinking strategically.

That means, intrinsically, that L&D has to start thinking about how to move forward..  People are learning on their own more and more. The tools to access information are quite literally in the palm of their hands.  L&D can no longer be about controlling content.  Instead a new role is needed.

Rethinking Formal

How does L&D cope? The answer involves a couple of major shifts, from familiar to challenging. The first is that courses go from an event model to an approach that better reflects how we actually learn. We need to have spaced, distributed practice to truly master our skills.  This is harder than the ‘information dump and knowledge test’ that too often characterizes organizational learning, which brings up two issues: 1) formal learning should be reserved for when it absolutely, positively has to be in the head, and 2) putting information in the world when possible. 

That latter is referring to performance support, the first step in broadening the L&D perspective. The point is that we too often use courses when cognitive skills are not the problem. Performance consulting is a process to identify the real problem and cause, and provide appropriate solutions. Performance support is often a solution we can use instead of a course!  Note that this is a first step out of the comfort zone, as it means engaging with our stakeholders, the business units we are tasked to assist. But it’s past time!

Beyond Formal

Doing courses the right way, coupled with performance support, are the key to optimizing execution. But that’s just the starting point.  The key to organizational improvement will be the ability to learn. And that should be L&D’s role.  But this means we have to again step out of our comfort zone. 

We need to branch out into informal and social learning.  Employees do learn on their own, but the evidence suggests that they’re not particularly good at it. There are lots of folk stories about what works that just aren’t aligned with what science tells us!  Assisting the individuals and the organization to learn, independently and collectively, is the new opportunity. Assisting the organization to innovate means moving to the core of competitive advantage. And that’s a valuable place to be.

Wishful thinking isn’t the answer. It takes both knowing the bigger picture, the performance ecosystem, and working strategically to get from here to there. That’s what’s on the table. It might be scary, but the opportunity offers a brighter future for L&D.  I’m excited about the prospects, and hope you’ll be making the move.  I’d welcome the opportunity to assist, as well.

Learning Experience Portals?

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What is a learning experience platform?  Suddenly the phrase seems ubiquitous, but what does it mean?  It’s been on my mental ‘todo’ list for a while, but I finally spent some time investigating the concept. And what I found as the underlying concept mostly makes sense, but I have some challenges with the label.  So what am I talking about?

It’s ImPortal!

Some background: when I talk about the performance ecosystem, it’s not only about performance support and resources, but finding them.  Ie, it includes the need for a portal. When I ask audiences “how many of you have portals in your org”, everyone raises their hands. What also emerges is that they have bunches of them. Of course, they’re organized by the business unit offering them. HR, product, sales, they all have their own portals. Which doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is to have a place to go for thing organized by people’s roles and membership in different groups.

A user-centered way of organizing portals makes sense then. People need to be able to see relevant resources in a good default organization, have the ability to reorganize to a different default, and search.  Federate the portal and search over all the sources of resources, not some subset.  I’ve suggested that it might make sense to have a system on top of the portals that pulls them together in a user-centric way.

An additional issue is that the contents of said portal should be open, in the sense that all users should be able to contribute their curated or created resources, and the resources can be in any format: video, audio, document, even interactive. In today’s era of increasing speed of change and decreasing resources for meeting the learning needs, L&D can no longer try to own everything. If you create a good culture, the system will be self-policing.

And, of course, the resources aren’t all about learning. Performance support is perfectly acceptable. The in-the-moment video is as needed as is the course on a new skill. Anything people want, whether learning resources from a library to that quick checklist should be supported.

The Learning Experience Platform(?)

As I looked into Learning Experience Platforms (LXP), (underneath all the hype) I found that they’re really portals; ways for content to be aggregated and made available. There are other possible features – libraries, AI-assistance, paths, assessments, spaced delivery – but at core they’re portals. The general claim is that they augment an LMS, not replace it. And I buy that.

The hype is a concern: microlearning for instance (in one article that referred to the afore-mentioned in-the-moment video, glossing over that you may learn nothing from it and have to access it again). And of course exaggerated claims about who does what.  It appears several LMS companies are now calling themselves LXPs. I’ll suggest that you want such a tool designed to be a portal, not having it grafted onto to another fundamental raison-d’être. Similarly, many also claim to be social. Ratings would be a good thing, but also trying to be a social media platform would not.

Ultimately, such a capability is good. However, if I’m right, I think Learning Experience Platform isn’t the right term, really they’re portals. Both learning and experience are wrong; they can be perform in the moment, and generally they’re about access, not generating experiences. And I could be wrong.

Take-home?

Ecosystems should be integrated from best-of-breed capabilities. One all-singing, all-dancing platform is likely to be wrong in at least one if not more of the subsidiary areas, and you’re locked in.  I think a portal is a necessary component, and the LXPs have many performance & development advantages for over generic portal tools.

So I laud their existence, but I question their branding. My recommendation is always to dig beneath the label, and find the underlying concept. For instance, each of the concepts underpinning the term microlearning is valuable, but the aggregation is problematic. Confusion is an opening for error. So too with LXP: don’t get it confused with learning or creating experiences.  But do look to the genre for advanced portals.  At least, that’s my take: what’s yours?