Sparked by a conversation, I generate some animation thoughts.

And, as always, a transcript.

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In a conversation the other day, my colleague mentioned how she was making a practice of creating animations. I found this interesting, because while I think animations are important, I don‘t do them all that much (or so I thought). Particularly intriguing was the notion of what principles might guide animations, including when to use them. I was prompted to reflect, and so here are some animation thoughts.

First, let‘s be clear what I mean. I‘ve argued that we don‘t use graphic novel/comic formats enough, and that likewise applies to cartoons. Which are also known as animations. Yet, that‘s not really what I‘m talking about. I think we could use them more, but that‘s another reflection.

Instead, here I‘m talking about animated diagrams. And I think there are times when these are not just engaging, but cognitively important. Diagrams map conceptual relationships to spatial ones, and can add additional coding with color and shape. Animations add the dimension of time, so these relationships can change. In my categorization, these are dynamic diagrams, useful when the conceptual relationships change in important ways depending on other factors.

Interestingly, in the conversation, it came up what one form of her animations were diagram builds.  I use diagrams a lot, not only to communicate, but as a tool for my own understanding! And, I‘d done some builds, but after Will Thalheimer‘s Presentation Science course I realized I needed to do that more systematically (and now do so).  Building diagrams is helpful. Cognitively, a diagram can be overwhelming if there are too many elements. By starting at one point, and gradually adding in other elements, you can prevent cognitive overload. And in a presentation, in particular, you want to highlight important points.  

However, I also think that there are things worth indicating how they work dynamically. Like how a content system would work, e.g. context and rules combining to pull content out by description. Or how coordinates change based upon trigonometric values. I haven‘t done much of this, for the simple reason that I don‘t have a good animation tool. And, yes, I‘m aware that you do motion in PowerPoint and/or Keynote, but I haven‘t gotten into it. Time for a skill upgrade!

There are problems with animations, and guidelines. John Sweller‘s cognitive load plays out with Dick Mayer‘s work on multimedia research (as captured in his book with Ruth Clark: eLearning and the Science of Instruction), as indicated above. Thus, you shouldn‘t try to have people read text while watching visual dynamics (use audio). Also, you should help people focus attention by removing extraneous details and/or highlighting the appropriate focus.  

The general principles of media apply as well. Accessibility suggests some alternate representations. Timing suggests having a pause ability for any animation longer than a certain time, and of course the ability to replay. Similarly, the animation design should use appropriate white space, highlighting, and other aspects that make it visually clear and appealing.  

Overall, I‘d suggest that there are times when animations are the best option for conveying dynamic conceptual information. To use them, however, you have to take into account our cognitive limitations. So, these are some of my animation thoughts. I welcome yours.  

Ok, I know I just talked about this, but something happened to sharpen my understanding. Recently, a colleague was advocating, for a product she‘s responsible for managing, that she was aware that people were “not used to reflowable text” And, frankly, that surprised me, but also explains the problems I‘ve railed about in the past. Because reflowable text thinking is a key to moving beyond hardwired formatting to separating content from description.  

As I‘ve bemoaned before, the notion of people hardcoding the way a page looks drives me nuts. If you want to change anything (and I frequently find ways to improve things), it‘s very hard to do. It takes a lot of fussing. And, yet, I have been aware of tools that are just for doing detailed page layout. This comes from the days of print, and having to handset the lead into a page to produce a newspaper and the like. But we‘re not there anymore.

Too, I‘ve had an advantage. I had the opportunity to learn to use a word processor very early on. I had vi, the Unix visual text editor to write with, allowing editing, and LaTex to specify visual details, while I was a college student (I was glad to abandon my typewriter!). Then, I got a Mac II and Microsoft Word (2.0) to write my PhD thesis. This was a boon, because I could write, and define things like margins and what headings look like. And, automagically, my paper came out from the printer (ultimately, I had to tweak a few things) ready to pass the library lady with her ruler.  

The point was that I was not fussing about how each page looked, I was instead specifying things like:

• that a top level header required a page break beforehand (e.g. starting a new chapter),  
• hat the next level header was left justified,  
• that a heading should always be printed with the next paragraph or line of text,  
• and so on.  

And when it was printed, it looked right. If I changed paper size, or margins, or what have you, it adapted.  

That‘s separating out what I‘m saying from how it behaves across screens, devices, printers, etc. And that was useful for the web, mobile, and more. It‘s responsive design. And, it‘s the key to moving our content and experiences forward.  

It‘s about describing behaviors, instead of hand-coding them. And having them refer to centralized descriptions. Which is a lot like coding, having new objects inherit the properties of their predecessors. And, it‘s about Web 3.0, the semantic web.  

Look, this has seemed to be something not all folks seem to be able to get their mind around. And, I hope that‘s not true, that it‘s learnable. Because we have to come to grips with this. It‘s already happening across the business in pretty much every other area. We can‘t lag; we need reflowable text thinking, because our audience needs flexible content. When we can gain considerable power at the expense of some rethinking, that‘s a fair tradeoff, in my mind. I welcome your thoughts.  

There’s a potential belief that I’m the ‘myths‘ person, and I’ve both principled and practical reasons to try to counter that. Here’s my thinking.

And, as always, the text.

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I’ve a dilemma. These days, if someone posts some learning myth, people tend to let me know. And I don‘t really mind, but I do worry that it buckets me as the ‘myths‘ person. Despite the book, that‘s not really my role. Another way to bucket me would be the learning science person (my next book). That‘s better, but maybe still not quite accurate. So what the <x> person am I?

Yes, I did write a book about myths. But the purpose there was to point out bad things we‘re doing, so we can instead do better things. In fact, that‘s included: what you should do instead. It‘s really about better design, not about myths.

Similarly, the learning science book coming out is a primer on the underlying cognitive science and the implications for learning design. With the emphasis on learning design, not learning science. It concludes with two chapters on the implications and the important bits. So it‘s not about learning science per se, but as a basis for what we do with it.

Really, what I am is a learning science translator, not a myths debunker. Practically, that‘s because there‘s essentially no money in being a myths debunker. They might hire a talk, but what‘s the business model? Are you going to hire me to come in and debunk your myths? Er, that‘d be no. But there‘s a principled reason, too.  

It‘s about redesigning your learning design processes to better incorporate learning science (and avoid myths). The evidence is that the processes aren‘t well done, because we see too much bad learning. And the rationales are myriad: lack of knowledge, focus on efficiency, tool orientations, and more. Consequently, the services are similarly varied: workshops on learning science-informed design, consulting on the minimal changes to keep impacts on budget low but increase the effectiveness of the outcomes, and of course beyond: to performance consulting, informal learning, and more.

Because, L&D should properly be aligned with learning (and cognitive) science. And there are many ways to improve. That‘s what I‘m about, and that‘s why I‘m here. You can think of it as learning engineering (applied learning science), but that‘s a term still in flux in terms of meaning, since it also can mean the folks who spin the bits on complex platforms for adaptive learning, or the folks who analyze data to improve outcomes.  

I‘ve been recently calling myself a learning experience design strategist. Which is conceptually accurate, and yet unwieldy (since no one knows what it means). Yet it‘s about being strategic in learning experience design: creating processes that successfully integrate learning science with engagement to create outcomes that are effective, even transformative.

There are lots of things I do:  

• Improve learning design processes to make learning more engaging and effective
• Architect design approaches to address learning needs
• Understand new technologies’ ability to enhance   learning experiences
• Educate clients, audiences, and employees about the nuances of learning design
• Review designs to improve effectiveness and engagement  
• Convince clients (internal and/or external) and audiences about the value of learning science-based approaches
• Interpret learning science and engagement research into practical guidelines

All of these are focused on being strategic about learning design. And I struggle to find another term: learning architect, learning strategist, and more. Still, there are several colleagues who are myths debunkers and learning science translators, and I‘ll suggest that you should follow, listen to, and most importantly, hire us. So, I’m not the myths person, but we do need more people applying learning science appropriately, and getting help to do so well. So whatever you want to term my role (suggestions welcome ;), do apply what we‘re talking about. Here‘s to better learning design!

In this fourth, and final, post about making it meaningful, I talk about process. You need to systematically acquire the necessary additional information to make learning experiences work. And, of course, to then use them. All explored more in the workshop.

And, as always, the text.

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This is the fourth (and final) post about how to ‘make it meaningful‘. I‘ve talked about the key principle, some of the tips and tricks, explored how to tweak some of the elements, and here I want to talk a bit about the necessary process in creating experiences that matter. Here, I‘ll talk about analysis, brainstorming, and tuning.

In most respects, when we do analysis, we‘re largely focusing on the necessary cognitive elements. That is, what the learner needs to do, what the learner already knows. And the associated models, and examples. If we‘re really being good, we collect misconceptions as well. However, we need to go further for experience design. Yet, we have an advantage.

Usually, we see subject matter experts as ‘the enemy‘. They can be hard to get sufficient time with, they can be somewhat condescending, and they too often focus on knowledge. But for our purposes, they have an important advantage: they‘ve found this stuff (whatever it is) fascinating enough to spend the necessary time to become an expert in it!   That‘s valuable, because it gives us a handle on intrinsic interest.

If we can find what makes a domain interesting to one person, we can tap into that. We should be making it manifest in the learning experience. Then, if it‘s not of interest to the learner, maybe they‘re not the right person for this topic. If it‘s generic enough, the problem may be on our side!

We also want to find out what interests our learners. This forms the basis upon which we build worlds in which our stories occur. We want to wrap interesting contexts around the goals we‘re giving learners, but we can‘t do that without knowing what‘s ‘interesting‘!

Once we‘ve gathered the necessary information, then we need to start mapping out the elements of learning. And we should start with practice. There‘s the necessity of being creative around the design process. And this is where what‘s known about creativity matters.

I‘ve written before about brainstorming, and in brief, there are things that work and things that don‘t. We want to diverge and converge, exploring ideas broadly before evaluating them. And we need individuals to think on their own before sharing those ideas.  

Note that while we might have to do it alone, the best outcomes will come with a diverse team sharing the goal of creating a great learning experience. I‘d even suggest that teams where mostly you work alone carrying a design forward make a habit of connecting at certain points in the design process, and particularly at the space of getting creative around practice and the overall story settings.

Of course, that doesn‘t mean what you come up with will be right. Tuning should be built into your process. That is, prototyping, testing, and refining should be expected. Humans are a funny lot, and recognizing that our expectations and what actually happens won‘t necessarily converge.  

And you want to use the lowest fidelity prototype you can. You want to minimize investment in making ideas concrete early on, so that you‘ve less sunk costs to fret over. Look to be agile early one, trying things out and iteratively refining rather than coming up with an overarching plan and then implementing the whole thing.  

There‘s more, of course, but these are some of the areas where we need to modify what we do. There‘s more detail to this, of course, and if you‘re interested in the more, I‘ll encourage you to sign up for the workshop. This is the topic of the fourth and final week!   Of course, it‘s a full workshop, so in addition to the content, we‘ll have live sessions to workshop some ideas and discuss what we‘ve done, and assignments with personal feedback.   Hope to see you there!

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All posts in the Make It Meaningful series:

First: Hook

Second: Tips’n’Tricks

Third: Elements

Four Process

This is the third of four posts about making learning meaningful. Here, I talk about the implications for some key learning elements.

And, as always, the text.

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This is the third post about how to ‘make it meaningful‘. I talked about tricks and tips in the previous one, and here I want to talk about the implications for elements in creating experiences that matter. Here, I‘ll talk about Introductions, Examples, Practice, and Closings.

The introduction first, of course, hooks them in as we talked about in the first post. That might even happen before the learning experience introduction, though you will want to reiterate the WIIFM.   I like to use what I call a ‘motivating‘ example, that shows the consequences from having (or not) the skill(s) addressed. It‘s not a reference example that shows the whole process, but instead just makes clear the outcomes of this in a way the learner ‘gets‘.  

In addition to the cognitive necessity of reactivating relevant knowledge (which can be done in an engaging way), we want to also set appropriate expectations about the coming experience. A mismatch can undermine learner motivation. So, if there are things that they won‘t expect (unless that‘s deliberate), ensure that they have fair understandings.  

We also want to ensure that they understand what the outcomes will be. This does not mean sharing our design objectives, but instead the objectives that they care about. Rewrite them as (again) the WIIFM that they‘ll get out of it. The point being that basically we‘re opening the emotional as well as the cognitive story.

Examples are modeling the application of the model (which I‘m not covering here) to a context. These are important to help the learner understand how the skill gets applied to particular situations. From a cognitive standpoint, there are a number of elements such as showing the thinking and covering an appropriate suite of contexts. From an engagement perspective, however, these should be engaging stories (see the previous post). There should be a challenge, and the struggle of solving, and finally an outcome (including bad ones).  

The spread across contexts necessity plays out in practice, too. And, so too, does story. From an engagement perspective, as we discussed last week, we need appropriate challenge, and a settings that‘s both appealing to the learner and relevant to the goal. This is the biggest point at which creativity comes into play. Getting this right is key.

And, just as we opened the emotional experience with the introduction, we need to close it too. In addition to the usual ‘further directions‘ and re-contextualization of what they‘ve learned, we have some engagement aspects. We should acknowledge the learner‘s effort and accomplishments, and signify their transition to a new state of being. This could include connecting them to their new community of practice.

There‘s more, and this order is not the one you‘d use in design, but these are the critical elements. There‘re more details to this, of course And, if you‘re interested in the more, I‘ll encourage you to sign up for the workshop. This is the topic of the third week!   Of course, it‘s a full workshop, so in addition to the content, we‘ll have live sessions to workshop some ideas and discuss what we‘ve done, and assignments with personal feedback.   Hope to see you there! More in my next post.

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All posts in the Make It Meaningful series:

First: Hook

Second: Tips’n’Tricks

Third: Elements

Four Process

This is the second of four posts where I’m talking about the next step beyond trivial engagement. Here I talk about some tips ‘n’ tricks that help us take our learning designs deeper in meaning.

And, as always, the text.

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This is the second post about how to ‘make it meaningful‘. I talked about some tricks to maintain engagement in the previous one, and here I want to talk about what this means for the elements of learning. Here, I‘ll talk about story, challenge, exaggeration, and humor.  

First, a good experience has the characteristics of a lived story. To me, there are three major components: goal, role, and world. The goal is what the learner needs to achieve. (We choose this so that the learner won‘t achieve it unless or until they understand the necessary elements.) The role is the character that the learner is playing in trying to achieve this goal. They should be aligned. And the world is the context in which this is happening. The fantasy wrapping. Again, alignment.

The challenge to actually achieving the goal is important as well. This is what leads to learning and engagement. The alignment between Csikszentmihalyi‘s Flow and Vygotsky‘s Zone of Proximal Development lets us know that there‘re two extremes: ‘so difficult as to be frustrating‘ and ‘so easy as to be boring‘. In between is where learning, and engagement, happen. This increases as the learner‘s abilities do.

Another element to keep things from being boring is some exaggeration. That is, most of life is mundane, but our work is challenging. In the learning experience, however, what would seem challenging at work seems mundane because there is nothing really at stake.  

Thus, we can exaggerate: let‘s not work on just a patient, but the rebel leader‘s daughter, or not just a business deal, but the one that will save the company!   And, typically, we keep this down to about one level above real life, to not violate the willingness to suspend disbelief.

Finally, we can talk about humor. It‘s challenging to do, as it can be culturally specific, but appropriately applied humor can build trust and safety, and support greater exploration. And, if we realize business is a culture, we find some universals we can leverage. Timing matters, too, not just in the ‘letting a joke land‘ sense, but where and when humor‘s appropriate.  

There‘s more, but these tips ‘n’ tricks are typically missed opportunities. There‘re more details to this, of course. And, if you‘re interested in the more, I‘ll encourage you to sign up for the workshop. This is the topic of the second week!   Of course, it‘s a full workshop, so in addition to the content, we‘ll have live sessions to workshop some ideas and discuss what we‘ve done, and assignments with personal feedback.   Hope to see you there! More in my next post.

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All posts in the Make It Meaningful series:

First: Hook

Second: Tips’n’Tricks

Third: Elements

Four Process

I believe that in addition to learning science, the other key element of Learning Experience Design is engagement. More than the trivial tarting-up, however, trying to make it meaningful. I’ve put together four posts covering some of the key elements, and this is the first. I’m talking about setting the ‘hook’ (and, really, the key element).

And, as always, the text.

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In anticipation of my upcoming ‘Make it Meaningful‘ workshop through the Learning Development Accelerator, I wanted to provide an overview of the topic. I think it‘s important to share some of the elements that are on tap. There‘re four parts: 1. The Hook, 2. Elaborations, 3. Elements, and 4. Process.  

Today, I want to talk about the core principle that makes it work. To do so, I want to start with the structure that I suggest is at core what you need to initially hook folks. And that takes 3 separate elements that the learner needs to ‘get‘:

1. You know, I do need this
2. And, I don‘t already know it
3. And, this experience will change that

That‘s it. I‘ll posit that if you can achieve this, you‘ll have a learner willing to start the learning experience. And, as a concomitant claim, that we can do this. Let me elaborate.

I think that we can get people to recognize that they need it. It‘s actually an implication from Deci & Ryan‘s Self-Determination Theory that Matt Richter of the Thiagi group helped me understand. I claim that we need learners to see the WIIFM, the What‘s In It For Me. And I‘ll suggest this comes from consequences, either the positive consequences of knowing it, or the negative ones of not knowing it. It‘s not as good, perhaps, as true intrinsic motivation, but it‘s good enough, and more reliable.

Then, you can‘t have them thinking they already know it. In general, that might not be a problem, but in certain circumstances it can be. For instance, in a truck-selling situation, the sales folks believed they already knew how. We had to make it very clear that they didn‘t before they were willing to engage. And, once they were aware, they were quite competitive in trying to rectify the situation.

Finally, learners have to believe that what you‘re doing will effectively accomplish this (in a reasonable fashion). And this may be particularly problematic, if they‘ve previously experienced engaging but not effective, or even worse, boring content.   You may have to do some extra work to convince them that you‘ve really changed!

Once you‘ve got your learners hooked, you‘ll have to deliver, but if you don‘t hook ‘em up front, it‘ll be of no avail. To paraphrase, you may be able to bring a learner to learning, but you can‘t make ‘em think. We‘ll talk about this in the next segment.  

So, get the WIIFM, and help them see that they need it. There‘re more details to this, of course. And, if you‘re interested in the more, I‘ll encourage you to sign up for the workshop. This is the topic of the first week!   Of course, it‘s a full workshop, so in addition to the content, we‘ll have live sessions to workshop some ideas and discuss what we‘ve done, and assignments with personal feedback.   Hope to see you there! More in my next post.

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All posts in the Make It Meaningful series:

First: Hook

Second: Tips’n’Tricks

Third: Elements

Four Process