Quinnovating

A ‘Field of Dreams’ Industry

8 March 2017 by Clark 3 Comments

In the movie, Field of Dreams, the character played by Kevin Costner is told “If you build it, they will come.” And I use an image from this movie to talk about learning culture, in that you can put all the elements of the performance ecosystem together, but if you work in a Miranda organization (where anything you say can and will be held against you), you won’t be able to tap into the power of the ecosystem because people won’t share. But it’s clear that the problem is worse; the evidence suggests that L&D overall is in a ‘Field of Dreams’ mentality.

A new report (in addition to the two I cited last week) documents the problems in L&D. LinkedIn has released their Workplace Learning report, and one aspect stood out: Only 8% of CEOS see biz impact of L&D, only 4% see ROI. And if you ask the top ways they evaluate their programs, the top five methods are subjective or anecdotal. Which concurs with data a few years ago from ATD that the implementation of measurement according to the Kirkpatrick model dropped off drastically: while 96% were doing level 1, only 34% were doing level 2, and it went dramatically down from there. In short, L&D isn’t measuring.

Which means that there’s a very strong belief that: if we build it, it is good. And that, to me, is a Field of Dreams mentality. It feels like the L&D industry is living in a world where they take orders and produce courses and trust that it all works. I was pleased to hear that there’s testing, but there’s far too little measurement.

And, interestingly, one other statistic struck me:”less than 1â„4 are willing to recommend their program to peers”. To put it another way, the majority of L&D are embarrassed by their outputs. This isn’t any better situation than the statistics I reported in my book calling for an L&D Revolution!

So, the complaints are predictable: too little money, too few people, and getting people to pay attention. Um, that comes when you’re demonstrably contributing to the organization. And that’s the promise I think we offer. L&D could and should be a big contributor to organizational success. If we were adequately addressing the optimizing performance side of the story, and ensuring the continual innovation part as well, our value should and would be high.

It’s past time L&D moves beyond the ‘Field of Dreams’ status, and becomes a viable, and measurable contributor to organizational success. It’s doable, under real world constraints. It needs a plan, and some knowledge, but there’s a path forward. So, are you ready to move out of the corn, and onto the road?

Learning Design Insights

7 March 2017 by Clark 4 Comments

I attended a recent Meetup of the Bay Area Learning Design & Technology, and it led to some insights. As context, this is a group that meets in the evening maybe once or every other month or so. It’s composed of students or new graduates as well as experienced-practitioners. The topic was Themes from a Hat (topics are polled and then separate discussions are held). I was tapped to host the Learning Design conversation (there were three others: LMS, Measurement, and Social Learning), and that meant that a subset of the group sat in on the discussion. We had four separate discussions for each group, so everyone had a chance to discuss every topic (except us topic hosts ;).

I’d chosen to start with 3 or four questions to prompt discussion:

What is good learning design?
Are you doing good learning design?
What are the barriers to good learning design?
What can we do to improve learning design?

In each case, we never got beyond the first question! However, in the course of the discussions, we ended up talking quite a bit about the others. I confess that I’m a just a wee bit opinionated and a stickler for conceptual clarity, so I probably spoke too much about important distinctions. Yet there were also some valuable insights from the group.

First, it was a great group: enthusiastic, with a wide range of experience and backgrounds. Folks had come into the field from different areas, everything from neuroscience to rabbinical practice! And there were new students still in a Master’s program, job seekers, and those who were active in work. Everyone contributed. While it meant missing #lrnchat, it was worthwhile to have a different experience. And everyone was kind enough to understood when I had to have my knee up as rehab (thanks!).

The responses to the first question were very interesting: what is good learning design? While most everyone talked about features of the experience, we also were talking both the outcome and the process. There even emerged a discussion about what learning was. I offered the traditional (behaviorist) description: a change in behavior in the same context, e.g. responding in a different (and presumably better) way. I also mentioned my usual: learning is action and reflection; instruction is designed action and guided reflection.

One element that appeared in all four groups was ‘engaging’. Exactly that word. (Only once did I feel compelled to mention that Engaging Learning was the title of my first book! ;) There were other terms that encompassed it, including ‘experience’, ‘stimulating’, and ‘motivating’. I was pleased to see the recognition of the value! To define it, discussion several times ranged across things like challenging practice and making it meaningful to learners.

Another element that reoccurred was ‘memorable’. It seemed what was meant was ‘retention’ (over time until needed) rather than the learning experience was worth recalling. This did bring up a discussion of what led to retention and a discussion of spaced learning. That is, the fact that our brains can only strengthen associations so much in one day before sleep is needed. Slow learning. Reactivation.

That same discussion came up with another repeated term: micro learning. There appeared to be little differentiation between different interpretations of that term, so I made distinctions (as one does ;). People too often use the term micro learning to mean looking something up just when needed (such as a video about how to do something). And that’s valuable. Yet it can lead to successful performance in the moment without any learning (e.g. forgotten shortly thereafter). Which is fine, but it’s not learning! Microlearning might be some very small thing that can be learned right in the moment, but I reckon those are rare. What I really think micro learning could and should be is for spaced learning. I think that to do that successfully is a non-trivial exercise, by the way.

We covered other topics about design, too. In at least one group we talked about SME limitations and how to work with them. We also talked about the benefits of collaboration, and knowing your audience. And engaging the audience, making the learning meaningful to them and the organization. Minimalism came up in several different ways as well, not wasting the learner’s time.

One question had arisen in discussion with colleagues, and I took the opportunity in a couple groups to ask about their design practices. The question was how frequent was the process of giving a course demand to a designer and having them work alone from go to whoa. It varied, but it seemed like there was some of that, there was also a fair bit of both collaboration at least at certain points, and some iterative testing. This was heartening to hear! Doing performance consulting and meaningful measurement, however, did appear somewhat challenging.

Overall, there’s an opportunity for some deeper science behind elearning, yet I was very heartened by the enthusiasm and that the design processes weren’t as ‘solitary waterfall’ as I feared. So, who’s up for a deeper learning science workshop? ;)

The change is here

1 March 2017 by Clark 2 Comments

For a number of years now (at least six), I’ve been beating the drum about the need for organizations to be prepared to address change. I’ve argued that things are happening faster, and that organizations are going to have to become more agile. Now we’re seeing the evidence that the change has arrived.

Two recent reports highlight the awareness. Gallup released a report on The State of the American Workplace recently that talks about the lack of engagement at work. Deloitte also released a report, Rewriting the rules in the digital age, that documents trends shifting the office environment. With different perspectives, they both overlap in discussing the importance of culture. It’s about creating an environment where people are empowered and enabled to contribute.

The Gallup report concludes with new behaviors for leaders and managers. The first point for leaders is to use data and focus on culture. This, to me, involves leveraging technology and creating an environment. L&D could be leading using performance data captured through the ExperienceAPI, and facilitating the culture shift in courses and developing coaching. Their prescription for managers is to move to be coaches (and again, L&D should be both developing the skills and facilitating the processes). And employees need to take ownership of their own development, which means L&D should focus on both meta-learning and ensuring resources (curation and creation) as well.

The second report is the more interesting one for me, because it’s about the trends and the ways to adapt. The top two trends are the Organization of the future (c.f. The Workplace of the Future :) and Careers and learning. The former is about redesigning organizations to become agile. The latter is about a redefinition of learning. They are a wee bit old-school, however, as while they do discuss innovation throughout, it isn’t a core focus and their definition of learning doesn’t include informal learning. It’s still a top-down model. But again, clear opportunities for L&D.

The key leverage points, to me, are learning and technology. And here I mean more self-directed and collaborative learning conducted not formally, but facilitated. Social learning really can’t be top-down! Important technologies are for communicating and collaborating, as well as tools to search and find resources.

And while the focus is on HR, including recruitment and leadership, I reckon that L&D should have a key place here, as indicated. The world’s changing, and L&D needs to adapt. It’s time to innovate L&D to support organizational innovation. Are you ready?

Revisiting the Ecosystem

28 February 2017 by Clark 6 Comments

One of the keys to the L&D revolution is recognizing the full performance ecosystem and the ways technology can support performance and development. I’ve tried to represent and share my thinking via diagrams (including here, here, and here). Prompted by a recent conversation, it was time to revisit the representation.

Here, I’m layering on several different ways to think about the goals, elements, etc. (Given that this is an initial version, I’m kind of haphazard about labels like mechanisms, components, etc.) To start, as I continually argue, at the bottom it’s about coupling optimal execution with continual innovation. We need to do well those things we know we need to do, and then we need to continually improve. I think that more and more of the optimal execution is getting automated.

On top of that, we have components – content and people – and the tactics to leverage them. We create or curate content (curation over creation!), and we develop relationships through community or find appropriate expertise through recommendations or search. The goal is to have the right content and the right people ‘to hand’ to work with.

We develop content elements like performance support to support performing in the moment, and learning resources for self-directed learning over time. We also use courses, whether individual or collaborative, to develop people (particularly when they’re novices). I’d put courses to the left and performance support to the right (above content) if we were talking about developing people (as I have here). So, for novices we first use courses, then practitioners need resources and coaching, and experts need interaction. However, performance support is on one side on a continuum of mechanisms from performing, to developing, to innovation. That’s what I’ve captured here.

Similarly, we use social elements like coaching, mentoring, and informal learning to develop ourselves and our organizations over time. We use processes like consuming and completing to execute. Then we develop our ability to execute and the continue to learn through communicating and collaborating.

There are lots of ways to represent the ecosystem, and given that elaboration theory tells us multiple representations help, here’s another stab. There are lots of elements to consider and fine tune, but I like to share my thinking to help it develop! Overall, however, the opportunity is the chance to be contributing to organizational success in systematic and valuable ways. And that, I’ll suggest, is valuable. I welcome your thoughts.

Another model for support

22 February 2017 by Clark Leave a Comment

I was thinking about today’s post, wherein I was talking about a couple of packages that might help organizations move forward. I was reflecting back on some previous posts about engagement models, and was reminded of a more recent one. And I realized this has played out in a couple of ways. And these approaches did provide away to develop the organization’s abilities to develop better learning. So this is another model for support for developing at least the learning side of the equation.

In a couple of instances , I’ve worked with organizations on a specific project, but in a particular way. For each, my role was to lead the design. In one case, it was for a series of elearning modules. My role was to develop the initial template that the rest of the content fit. Note that this isn’t a template for tarting it up, but instead a template about what the necessary elements and details around them were to ensure that the elements (e.g. intro, concept, practice, etc) both fit together and reflected the best learning science. In a more recent instance, it was on a specific focus, but there were several modules that used a similar structure.

What happens, importantly, is that by working collaboratively, we learn together. Each of these organizations was in the business of developing content, but they were looking to raise their game. So, for instance, through leading the Workplace of the Future project but sharing the thinking behind it, by working out loud in that sense, it’s possible to develop a shared understanding. And in the latter case, though they’d read the Deeper eLearning series, they got a lot more out of working it through with me. (And, I’ll suggest, more than also reading the subsequent blog posts I wrote about the project.)

In each case, we created an overall template for the learning, and then detailed what the elements for the template were, and the critical components. When we applied it, usually with me doing it first, and then handing off. It’s really a Cognitive Apprenticeship approach.

So, it’s a slightly more involved approach, with a much more variable scope, but in conjunction with other approaches I’ve mentioned like critiquing content or design processes, it’s one way to get a jump on deeper learning science. Just trying to think of models that can support improvement, and that’s what I’m trying to push.

Support for moving forward

21 February 2017 by Clark 2 Comments

I have to admit I’ve been a bit surprised to see that movements towards improving elearning and learning strategy haven’t had more impact. On the learning design side, e.g. the Serious eLearning Manifesto and our Future of Work project, it still seems there’s a focus on content presentation. And similarly with learning strategy, so despite the Revolution, it doesn’t appear that there’s any big move in L&D to take a bigger perspective. And my question is: “why not?”

So I’ve been trying to think what might be the barriers to move forward. What could keep folks from at least taking initial steps? Maybe folks are making moves, but I haven’t seen much indication. So naturally I wondered what sort of support could be needed to move forward.

Perhaps it seems too overwhelming? In the manifesto we did say we don’t expect people taking it all on at once, but we know folks sometimes have trouble breaking it down. Similarly, there’re a lot of components to the full performance ecosystem. One possibility is that folks don’t know where to start. I wrote sometime shortly after the manifesto’s release that the best place to start was with practice. And I’ve similarly argued that perhaps the best revolution catalyst is measurement. But maybe that’s too general?

So I wondered if perhaps some specific support would assist. And so I’ve put together a package for each that’s an initial assessment to identify what’s working, what’s not, and from which to give some initial recommendations. And I’ve tried to price them so that they’re not too dear, too hard to get approval for, but provide maximum value for minimal investment. Both are based upon the structure of previous successful engagements. (The learning strategy one is a little more because it’s a wee bit more complex. ;) Both are also based upon frameworks I’ve developed for each:

elearning design is based upon deeper elearning and the leverage points in the design process

elearning strategy is based upon the performance ecosystem model and the implications for developing and delivering solutions.

In each I’m spending time beforehand reviewing materials, and then just two days on site to have some very targeted interviews and meetings. The process involves talking to representative stakeholders and then working with a core team to work through the possibilities and prioritize them. It also includes an overview of the frameworks for each as a basis for a shared understanding.

The goal is to use an intensive investigation to identify what’s the current status, and the specific leverage points for immediate improvement and longer-term shifts. The output is a recommendation document that documents what’s working and where there are opportunities for improvement and what the likely benefits and costs are.

This isn’t available directly from the Quinnovation site: I’m starting here to talk to those who’ve been tracking the arguments. Maybe that’s the wrong starting point, but I’ve got to start somewhere. I welcome feedback on what else you might expect or want or what would help.

If you’d like to check out the two packages and start moving forward, have a look here and feel free to followup through the contact link. You’ve got to have the 3 Rs: responsibility, resources, and resolve. If I can help, glad to hear it. If not, but there’s something else, let me know. But I really do want to help move this industry forward, and I’ll continue to try to find ways to make that happen. I invite you to join me!

Tackling the tough stuff

16 February 2017 by Clark Leave a Comment

I was reflecting a wee bit on my books (and writings in general), and realized that there’s somewhat of a gap when I talk about games, and mobile, and more. And it’s not unconscious, but instead principled, even if it arises somewhat implicitly. So I thought I’d talk briefly about why I tend to focus on the design, and not the practical implementations. Briefly, I think the places we fall short are not in executing, but in conceptualizing. And so I focus on tackling what I think is the tough stuff. I think we need to address the things that are more complex. My claim is that if we understand them, we have a better chance of achieving our goals and delivering the necessary outcomes.

I have stated before that I think we can implement most anything we can conceive, the problem is that our conceptions are limited. So, I talk about design based on knowing how we think, work, and learn. I think we need these foundations if we’re truly going to realign what we do to actually work. Frankly, I think we’re working under some misapprehensions (read: myths) that are limiting our ability to succeed.

When I talk about thinking, the myth is that it’s all in our head and logically principled. It turns out that, instead, our thinking is very biased by circumstance and pre-existing beliefs, and we avoid effortful work. We trust our instincts in far more circumstances than we should! Similarly, we distribute our thinking across the world: our tools and representations assist us, and yet we don’t focus enough effort on ensuing that those are effectively designed. There’s a real possibility for a valuable shift here.

My focus in working is to recognize that it’s not as individual as our business processes would assume. The ‘individual innovator’ myth is busted, and the empirical results are that we get better outputs when we work together. Certainly for innovation and creative work. Yet we isolate our work, assigning individual resources. Similarly, people work best when given meaningful goals, but instead we micromanage too often. Again, there are big opportunities to improve our outcomes by reviewing our approaches.

And on learning, I’ve railed time and again about what’s not working, and been joined by colleagues in opposition. We learn through designed action and guided reflection, not information dump and knowledge test. Yet that’s not what we see. And again I suggest only small changes are needed to have a substantial impact.

So, in my books, I don’t talk about so much about how to build a game, or the ways to implement mobile learning, or social learning tools. These will change. What you want to get your mind around is about our minds. Then you can design solutions that can be implemented in any number of ways. I may not be successful at communicating the solutions, but in general when I speak, run workshops, or yes write, people seem to convey that I’ve had some effect on helping them get a handle on these new approaches. In addition, figuring out how to apply them is why I’m here.

What I’ve been able to do, successfully across years and organizations, is help align processes, products, services, and more with how our brains work. And then work within the available resources to create solutions that reflect those insights in innovative and yet practical solutions. It takes time to develop the type of thinking I want organizations to adopt, but it’s doable, and I’ve worked with a number of organizations to do just that. Taking the time to address the tough stuff is a bit of an effort. I think it’s an investment in success. It’s doable, so the only real open question is whether you’re ready to make a shift in thinking, that leads to a shift in doing, that leads to a better impact for your organization. And only you can answer that.

Meta-Learning Tools?

14 February 2017 by Clark 6 Comments

I wrote an article for Jane Hart’s Modern Workplace Learning magazine, triggered by my thought that in her tools survey, I didn’t see a lot about a certain set of reflection (c.f. last weeks posts on diagramming) and experimentation tools: meta-learning tools. In particular, for the latter, I wondered about what there was to track your own learnings. And Jane commented to me that she knew of one, and I was reminded of more.

Now, I don’t know much about any of these, but she mentioned PebblePad, and I noted that I’ve talked with Degreed before, and saw that HT2 has a tool called Red Panda. And I think this could become an interesting area. Coupled with tools that support learning streams, personal learning could be boosted.

So tools like Axonify, Anders Pink, and EdCast all have varying models about making knowledge available and streaming bits and pieces over time. They’re pull as well, but for one definition of microlearning (that of streaming small bits over time to develop, e.g. slow learning), they could be a valuable part of personal development.

If we then track our learnings (and not just what’s through the tool, but other things we do such as attending events, interviewing people, etc), we can maintain ourselves on a path to efficacy. That is, if we’ve registered goals, and broken it up into steps, and track our progress (and reward ourselves), we have a higher likelihood of continuing our improvement.

What I haven’t seen, as yet, and think could be an important part of this, is layering on additional support for learning itself, meta-learning. For each type of learning activity, there could be support for doing that well, including setting and reviewing learning paths.

There’s more pressure for individuals to take responsibility for their own learning (as well as for enlightened organizations that want to support learning). So we need to be getting systematic about not only support for the content, but also for the process. This provides the opportunity is to accelerate the process. And our success.

Diagramming

9 February 2017 by Clark Leave a Comment

So yesterday I talked about the value of diagrams, but I thought I’d add a bit about the process of actually creating diagrams. Naturally, I created a diagram about it.

I created this diagram for a session I ran on diagramming a number of years ago. In that session I talked about our cognitive architecture, why we need models, how diagrams work, properties and design issues, and more. At the end, I proposed a potential process for it. It captures an ideal picture of how diagramming could work.

So, you need to know the elements of the model you want to relate, identify the relationships, and any dimensions that characterize differences between the elements. Then you have to choose how you’re going to represent them: shape, color, weight, font, and more.

With your elements, you can then place them, connect them, and add the visual coding. Then, of course, you tune.

This is an ideal process, but in reality it’s much more flexible, at least when I’m creating a model as a way of understanding. I typically iterate, creating placeholder elements, and moving them around until I think I have the right ones. Then I go about connecting them to make sure I have the relationships right. Then I work on adding dimensions, and colors, and aligning them, and grouping them, and… Except that I might add some elements, then group, or connect, then add more, and… it’s a very iterative process. It’s a creative process that involves lots of experimentation, revision, and more.

Sometimes, I even use a diagram and then realize it’s not working and revise it. So, for instance, I blogged about a representation of social process. I got some feedback that it wasn’t very clear. So, I made a second stab at it, and I think it worked better. Certainly, I continue to use it without complaints.

And I’m the first to admit that my diagrams may not look as good as the ones that professional graphic designers could create, but they’re good enough (and OmniGraffle does a good job of making it easy for me to make them up to a standard I think is at least acceptable and useful; it’s probably overkill but I’ve stuck with it for years now). And that’s the point. If they help you think better, it’s good enough. If it helps you communicate effectively with someone else, even better. Diagrams are cognitive tools, offloading conceptual complexity to graphic relationships and visual processing. And with the complex problems we increasingly face, I reckon the more tools the better.

Diagram!

8 February 2017 by Clark Leave a Comment

One of the things that I feel is a really useful tool in my ongoing learning, in my ‘making sense of the world’ is diagramming. I find diagrams to be a really powerful way to understand not just elements, but relationships. And yet it doesn’t feel like diagramming gets enough respect. So I want to make a case for the diagram.

Language is good. Our brains have evolved to use it. But it has trouble communicating complex relationships. For an example, once I wrote this:

They found that while subjects would rate the analogies, from best to worst, as literally similar, true analogy, mere appearance, and false analogy, their recall for stories, from best to worst, was literally similar, mere appearance, true analogy, and false analogy.

Try discerning the important difference! My PhD advisor kindly pointed out that actually parsing this was hard, and recommended a diagram instead. Here’s a rendition of what resulted:

In this case it’s much easier to see how the two differed. (If you want to find out what’s important in the diagram, I’m happy to talk about analogical reasoning for as long as you can stand it! ;)

The point I’m making is that there are times when diagrams are very useful for communicating. And, if you’ve followed this blog for a fair amount of time, you’ve seen I use diagrams a lot. I use them to think ‘out loud’, and I think it’s important. As Larkin & Simon argued in their Cognitive Science article, Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words, diagrams let us map conceptual relationships to spatial ones. And so if I want to understand the conceptual relationships, I start laying out spatially, and adjust until they make sense to me.

And my concern is that we aren’t using this powerful visual tool enough. Sketchnotes are really nice ways to capture presentations, and depending on the skill of the noter, they may communicate it all, or help recall if you’ve seen it. Similarly, my mindmaps of keynotes capture the flow of the discussion and the relationships (at least as I parsed it), but may only make sense if you heard the talk.

But representing things with diagrams is not only a personal thinking tool, it can be a powerful way to communicate concepts, and that’s an important component of a good learning experience design, providing a conceptual model to guide performance.

So I’m surprised we don’t talk about diagrams more. It may seem hard (certainly trying to create an infographic is harder than it seems, from my experience ;), but there’s some systematicity to it. There are principles, and types of diagrams, and more to explore. And tools that make it easier (though even Powerpoint or Keynote can be used to make diagrams). Diagrams aren’t the only visuals that help (c.f. graphs and tables), but they’re an important tool in your thinking toolbox. I encourage you, as part of your meta-learning toolkit, to play around and get your mind around diagrams. Your thinking, and your learning design, can be better as a consequence.

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