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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Plagiarism and ethics

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I recently wrote on the ethics of L&D, and I note that I  didn’t  address one issue. Yet, it’s very clear that it’s still a problem. In short, I’m talking about plagiarism and attribution.  And it needs to be said.

In that article, I  did say:

That means we practice ethically, and responsibly. We want to collectively determine what that means, and act accordingly. And we must call out bad practices or beliefs.

So let me talk about one bad practice: taking or using other people’s stuff without attribution.  Most of the speakers I know can cite instances when they’ve seen their ideas (diagrams, quotes, etc) put up by others without pointing back to them.  There’s a distinction between citing something many people are talking about (innovation, microlearning, what have you) with your own interpretation, and literally taking someone’s ideas and selling them as your own.

One of our colleagues recently let me know his tools had been used by folks to earn money without any reimbursement to him (or even attribution).  Others have had their diagrams purloined and used in presentations.  One colleague found pretty much his entire presentation used by someone else!  I myself have seen my writing appear elsewhere without a link back to me, and I’m not the only one.

Many folks bother to put copyright signs on their images, but I’ve stopped because it’s too easy to edit out if you’re halfway proficient with a decent graphics package.  And you can do all sorts of things to try to protect your decks, writing, etc, but ultimately it’s very hard to protect, let alone discover that it’s happening. Who knows how many copies of someone’s images have ended up in a business presentation inside a firm!  People have asked, from time to time, and I have pretty much always agreed (and I’m grateful when they do ask). Others, I’m sure, are doing it anyway.

This isn’t the same as asking someone to work for free, which is also pretty rude. There are folks who will work for ‘exposure’, because they’re building a brand, but it’s somewhat unfair. The worst are those who charge for things, like attendance or membership, or organizations who make money, yet expect free presentations!  “Oh, you could get some business from this.”  The operative word is ‘could’.  Yet they  are!

Attribution isn’t ‘name dropping‘. It’s showing you are paying attention, and know the giants whose shoulders you stand on.  Taking other people’s work and claiming it as your own, particularly if you profit by it, is theft. Pure and simple.  It happens, but we need to call it out.  Calling it out can even be valuable; I once complained and ended up with a good connection (and an apology).

Please, please, ask for permission, call out folks who you see  are plagiarizing, and generally act in proper ways. I’m sure  you are, but overall some awareness raising still needs to happen.  Heck, I know we see amazing instances in people’s resumes and speeches of it, but it’s still not right.  The people in L&D I’ve found to be generally warm and helpful (not surprisingly). A few bad apples isn’t surprising, but we can do better. All I can do is ask you to do the right thing yourself, and call out bad behavior when you do see it.  Thanks!

 

Tools and Design

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I’ve often complained about how the tools we have make it easy to do bad design. They make it easy to put PPTs and PDFs on the screen and add a quiz. And not that that’s not so, but I decided to look at it from the other direction, and I found that instructive. So here’re some thoughts on tools.

Authoring tools, in general, are oriented on a ‘page’ metaphor; they’re designed to provide a sequence of pages. The pages can contain a variety of media: text, audio, video.  And then there are special pages, the ones where you can interact.  And, of course, these interactions are the critical point for learning. It’s when you have to act, to  do, that you retrieve and apply knowledge, that learning really happens.

What’s critical is  what you do.  If it’s just answering knowledge questions, it’s not so good.  If it’s just ‘click to see more’, it’s pretty bad.  The critical element is being faced with a decision about an action to take, then apply the knowledge to discriminate between the alternatives, and make a decision.  The learner has to commit!  Now, if I’m complaining about the tools making it easy to do bad things, what would be good things?

That was my thinking: what would be ideal for tools to support? I reasoned that the interactions should represent things we do in the real world.  Which, of course, are things like fill in forms, write documents, fill out spreadsheets, film things, make things.  And these are all done through typical interactions like drag, drop, click, and more.

Which made me realize that the tools aren’t the problem!  Well, mostly; click to see more is still problematic.  Deciding between courses of action can be done as just a better multiple choice question, or via any common form of interaction: drag/drop, reorder, image click, etc. Of course, branching scenarios are good too, for so-called soft skills (which are increasingly the important things), but tools are supporting those as well.  The challenge  isn’t inherent in the tool design.  The challenge is in our thinking!

As someone recently commented to me, the problem isn’t the tools, it’s the mindset.  If you’re thinking about information dump and knowledge test, you can do that. If you’re thinking about putting people into place to made decisions like they’ll need to make, you can do that. And, of course, provide supporting materials to be able to make those decisions.

I reckon the tool vendors are still focused on content and a quiz, but the support is there to do learning designs that will really have an impact.  We may have to be a bit creative, but the capability is on tap. It’s up to (all of) us to create design processes that focus on the important aspects.  As I’ve said before, if you get the design right, there are  lots of ways to implement it!

New and improved evaluation

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A few years ago, I had a ‘debate’ with Will Thalheimer about the Kirkpatrick model (you can read it here).  In short, he didn’t like it, and I did, for different reasons.  However, the situation has changed, and it’s worth revisiting the issue of evaluation.

where kirkpatrick fitsIn the debate, I was lauding how Kirkpatrick  starts with the biz problem, and works backwards. Will attacked that the model didn’t really evaluate learning. I replied that it’s role wasn’t evaluating the effectiveness of the learning design on the learning outcome, it was assessing the impact of the learning outcome on the organizational outcome.

Fortunately, this discussion is now resolved. Will, to his credit, has released his own model (while unearthing the origins of Kirkpatrick’s work in Katzell’s).  His model is more robust, with 8 levels.  This isn’t overwhelming, as you can ignore some. Fortunately, there’re indicators as to what’s useful and what’s not!

It’s not perfect. Kirkpatrick (or Katzell? :) can relatively easily be used for other interventions (incentives, job aids, … tho’ you might not tell it from the promotional material). It’s not so obvious how to do so with his new model.  However, I reckon it’s  more robust for evaluating learning interventions. (Caveat: I may be biased, as I provided feedback.) And  should he have numbered them in reverse, which Kirkpatrick admitted might’ve been a better idea?

Evaluation is critical.  We do some, but not enough. (Smile sheets, level 1, where we ask learners what they think of the experience, has essentially zero correlation with outcomes.) We need to do a better job of evaluating our impacts (not just our efficiency). This is a more targeted model.  I draw it to your attention.

 

P&D Strategies

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In an article, Jared Spool talks about the strategies he sees UX leaders using.  He lists 3 examples, and talks about how your strategies need to change depending on where you are in relation to the organization.  It made me think about what P&D strategies could and should be.signs

So, one of the ones he cited isn’t unique to UX, of course. That one is ‘continual mentoring’, always having someone shadowing the top person in a role. He suspects that it might slow things down a bit, but the upside is a continual up-skilling.  Back when I led a team, I had everyone have an area of responsibility, but someone backed them up.  Cynically, I called it the ‘bus’ strategy, e.g. in case someone was hit by a bus.  Of course, the real reason was to account for any variability  in the team, to create some collaborative work, to share awareness,  and to increase the team’s understanding..  This is an ‘internal’ strategy.

He cites another, about ‘socializing’ the vision.  In this one, you are collectively creating the five year vision of what learning (his was UX) looks like. The point is to get a shared buy-in to a vision, but also promotes the visibility of the group.  Here again, this is hardly unique to UX, with a small twist ;).  This is more an external strategy.  I suppose there could be two levels of ‘external’, outside P&D but inside the organization, and then an external one (e.g. with customers).

I’d add that ‘work out loud’ (aka Show Your Work) would be another internal strategy (at least to begin with).  Here, the P&D team starts working out loud, with the unit head leading the way. It both gets the P&D team experimenting with the new ways to do things, of course builds shared awareness,  and builds a base to start evangelizing  outside.

I’d love to hear the strategies you’ve used, seen used, or are contemplating, to continue and expand your ability to contribute to the organization.  What’s working?  And, for that matter, what’s not?

No all-singing all-dancing solution

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I was pinged on LinkedIn by someone who used the entrée of hearing me speak in next week’s Learning Solutions conference to begin discussing LMS capabilities. (Hint: they provide one.)  And I thought I’d elaborate on my response, as the discussion prompted some reflections.  In short, what are the arguments for and against having a single platform to deliver an ecosystem solution?

In Revolutionize Learning & Development, I argue for a Performance & Development ccosystem. The idea is more than courses, it’s performance support, social, informal, etc. It’s about having a performer-centric support environment that has tools and information to hand to both help you perform in the moment  and develop you over time. The goal is to support working alone and together to meet both the anticipated, and unanticipated, needs of the organization.

On principle, I tend to view an ‘all singing all dancing’ solution as likely to fail on some part of that. It’s implausible that a system would have all the capabilities needed.  First, there are  many functionalities: access to formal learning, supporting access to known or found resources, sharing, collaborating, and more.  It’s unlikely that all those can be done well in one platform. Let alone, doing them in ways that matches any one organization’s ways of working.

I’m not saying the LMS is a bad tool for what it does. (Note: I am not in the LMS benchmark business; there are other people that do that and it’s a full time job.) However, can an LMS be a full solution? Even if there is some capability in all the areas, what’s the likelihood that it’s best-of-breed in all? Ok, in some small orgs where you can’t have an IT group capable of integrating the necessary tools, you might settle for working around the limitations. That’s understandable. But it’s different than choosing to trust one system. It’s just having the people act as the glue instead of the system.

It’s always about tradeoffs, and so integrating best-of-breed capabilities around what’s already in place would make more sense to me.  For instance, how *could* one system integrate enterprise-wide federated search as a stand-alone platform? It’s about integrating a suite of capabilities to create a performer-centric environment. That’s pretty much beyond a solo platform, intrinsically. Am I missing something?

Nancy Giordano #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

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Nancy Giordano was the closing keynote for the Guild’s always excellent Learning Solutions conference. In a rapid (!) talk, she gave a different cut through the changes we are facing and strategies for coping. Thought-provoking!

Platon #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

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Platon, a portrait photographer extraordinaire, gave a poignant presentation about leadership. Starting with some presidential anecdotes, he weaved in celebrities on the way to world leaders. He ended with a powerful message about doing right and wrong and how leaders can tap into empathy to do the best for the people they represent.

Kai Kight #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

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Kai told stories about his experiences in music and used them to draw lessons for us. He inspired us to connect to our purpose and experiment, and demonstrated what he meant through playing.

Diagramming Microlearning

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I’ll be giving an upcoming webinar where I make my case for defining microlearning.  And, as part of my usual wrestling with clarity, I created a diagram. I thought I’d share it with you.

Microlearning

What, you want me to walk you through it? :)

Microlearning is a portmanteau (technical term:  mashup) of micro and learning. Thus, it implies small bits of learning.  Here I’m mapping it out in several ways.  I’ve previously argued that there are three main ways, but let’s map the first two out. It’s either

  • a series of objects contributing to a learning experience
  • a one-off object that creates learning

And there are problems with both. Too often, folks talk about breaking an existing course down into small chunks, and I suggest that won’t work without some significant (!) effort.  Just breaking it up means something seen earlier can be forgotten, so you need to worry about knowledge atrophy and plan reactivation. And that’s just spaced learning!

And I think it’s unlikely that you can have a single object lead to any meaningful learning. However, such an object  can serve as support to succeed in the moment.  How-to videos, job aids, and the like all can be used to achieve an outcome.  And that’s just performance support!

What I think is the real untapped opportunity that could (and I say should) capture the moniker would be contextualized learning. Layering on a bit of learning  because of when and where you are that develops you over time. It’s combining the two, potentially, so you help someone in the moment but add in the bit that also makes it a learning experience.  There’s much more to this, but that’s the core idea.

My main issue here is that people are fast and loose with the term microlearning, and I’d like to make sure people are  either talking about spaced learning  or performance support (both good). And not talking about just breaking up a course into chunks that are nice to consume but not engineered to lead to retention and transfer (not so good).  Of course, better yet if we converge on contextualized learning!

Return on Wisdom

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In the early days of the internet, I had a chance to read one of the early translations of  The Japan That Can Say No.  The point I took away was the critique of short-term decision making driven by the need for shareholder returns.  I was pondering this the other day, as I wondered how organizations can look to make longer-term investments. And it led me to ponder the question of what the return is on wisdom.

So, the book was a sensation. At the time, the rumor was that it was written by two top Japanese. It wasn’t released in English, but instead was illicitly translated because of the scandalous claims.    Still, I thought the assessment of the problems with derivative financing and efficiency approaches were apt.  Are these approaches wise?

I use the term wisdom because I think we can, and need to, go beyond ‘smart’.  I was pursuing my own quest to transcend what I do, and came upon a nice view of wisdom from Sternberg. This one argues that we should make decisions with both short-  and long-term views, for not just us and ours, but for all people, with an explicit consideration of the value that we are following. Ok, so I’m a native Californian, but I don’t see a problem with this view. Smart is ‘in the moment’, wise is looking at the bigger picture.

I ponder this in the context of organizations continually looking to reduce costs through expediency. As an alternative, they could be looking at longer term approaches that help them get their workforce more intrinsically engaged.  Does outsourcing and layoffs end up being more costly than investing in better leadership and culture?

There are some answers.  Laurie Bassie’s research found that there was a correlation between high scores on handling people and business results.  Similarly, Towards Maturity finds that companies with good L&D practices are more likely to be successful.  It’s not surprising. When you provide meaningful work with enablement to succeed, you’re aligning the elements to succeed. It’s a path to a coherent organization. And, like with light, it’s more powerful.

There are arguments to move in wise directions. It may be hard if you’re driven by the need to produce short-term returns. Still, it’s the wise thing to do.