Soren Kaplan gave a keynote on innovation that nicely pulled together a number of strands around how to break through some of our cognitive traps.
Serious Conversation
We’ve already received the first request for an article on the Serious eLearning Manifesto, and it sparked a realization. We (my co-conspirators are Will Thalheimer, Julie Dirksen, and Michael Allen) launched the manifesto last week, and we really hope you’ll have a serious look at them. More, we hope you’ll find a way to follow them, and join your colleagues in signing on.
What has to happen now is people need to look at them, debate the difficulties in following them, and start thinking about how to move forward. We don’t want people just to sign on, we want them to put the principles into practice. You may not be able to get to all from the beginning, but we’re hoping to drive systematic change towards good elearning.
The Manifesto, if you haven’t seen it, touts eight values of serious elearning over what we see too often, focusing on the biggest gaps. The values are backed up by 22 principles pulled from the research. And we’ve been already been called out for it perhaps being too ‘instructor’ driven, not social or constructivist enough. To be fair, we’ve also already had some strong support, and not just from our esteemed trustees, but signatories as well.
And I don’t want to address the issues (yet), what we want to have happen is to get the debate started. So I didn’t accept the opportunity to write (yet another) article, instead I said that we’d rather respond to an article talking about the challenges. We want to engage this as dialog, not a diatribe. Been there, done that, you can see it on the site ;).
So, please, have a look, think about what it would mean, consider the barriers, and let’s see if, together, we can start figuring out how to lift the floor (not close off the ceiling).
Smarts: content or system?
I wrote up my visit to the Intelligent Content conference for eLearnMag, but one topic I didn’t raise was an unanswered question I raised during the conference: should the ‘smarts’ be in the content or the system? Which is the best way to adapt?
Now the obvious answer is the system. Making content smart would require a bunch of additional elements to the content. There would have to be logic to sense conditions and make changes. Simple adaptation could be built in, but it would be hard to revise them if you had new information. Having well-defined content and letting the system use contextual information to choose the content is the typical system used in the industry.
Let’s consider the alternative for a minute, however. If the content were adaptive, it wouldn’t matter what system it was running on, it would deliver the same capability. For example you could run under SCORM and still have the smart behavior. And you can’t adapt with a system if you’ve monolithic learning objects that contain the whole experience.
And, at the time I led a team building an adaptive learning engine, we did see adaptive content. However, we chose to have more finely granulated content, down to individual practice items, separate examples, concepts, and more. Even our introductions were going to have separate elements. We believed that if we had finely articulated content models, and rich tagging, we could change the rules that were running in the system, and get new adaptive behaviors across all the content with only requiring new rules in one place.
And if new tags were needed on the content objects, we could write programs to add necessary tags rather than have to hand-address every object. In the smart content approach, if you want to change the adaptation, you’re getting into the internals of every content piece.
We thought we had it right, and I still think that, for the reasons above, smart systems are the way to go, coupled with semantically tagged and well-delineated content. Happy to hear alternate proposals!
Aligning with us
The main complaint I think I have about the things L&D does isn’t so much that it’s still mired in the industrial age of plan, prepare, and execute, but that it’s just not aligned with how we think, learn, and perform, certainly not for information age organizations. There are very interesting rethinks in all these areas, and our practices are not aligned.
So, for example, the evidence is that our thinking is not the formal logical thinking that underpins our assumptions of support. Recent work paints a very different picture of how we think. We abstract meaning but don’t handle concrete details well, have trouble doing complex thinking and focusing attention, and our thinking is very much influenced by context and the tools we use.
This suggests that we should be looking much more at contextual performance support and providing models, saving formal learning for cases when we really need a significant shift in our understanding and how that plays out in practice.
Similarly, we learn better when we’re emotionally engaged, when we’re equipped with explanatory and predictive models, and when we practice in rich contexts. We learn better when our misunderstandings are understood, when our practice adjusts for how we are performing, and feedback is individual and richly tied to conceptual models. We also learn better together, and when our learning to learn skills are also well honed.
Consequently, our learning similarly needs support in attention, rich models, emotional engagement, and deeply contextualized practice with specific feedback. Our learning isn’t a result of a knowledge dump and a test, and yet that’s most of what see.
And not only do we learn better together, we work better together. The creative side of our work is enhanced significantly when we are paired with diverse others in a culture of support, and we can make experiments. And it helps if we understand how our work contributes, and we’re empowered to pursue our goals.
This isn’t a hierarchical management model, it’s about leadership, and culture, and infrastructure. We need bottom-up contributions and support, not top-down imposition of policies and rigid definitions.
Overall, the way organizations need to work requires aligning all the elements to work with us the way our minds operate. If we want to optimize outcomes, we need to align both performance and innovation. Shall we?
Manifestations
Wow, you try to do one little thing, and everyone gets all upset! Well, that’s how it feels, and it’s a real lesson. So I’ll explain, and then try to clarify.
As I posted, one of the two things I’m pushing is something that’s trying to improve elearning, and we’re having our launch on Thurs, March 13th at noon PT (3ET). To get attention, the four of us (Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, and Will Thalheimer are my con-conspirators) have been teasing the event, trying to build awareness. And this has turned out to be a problem we didn’t anticipate.
Our goal was to use our names by capitalizing on the situation what while the four of us who, while friends and colleagues, were independent of one another professionally, we had banded together on this initiative. We believed, naively, that people would infer our intentions to be benign. And many did.
Including the trustees we’re so grateful to. We briefed a handful of respected individuals around the industry (not everyone we could and should, but a representative sample across many sectors that we could work with quickly), and got them to lend their names in support.
So we started our marketing, including the site, a press release, and our social media efforts. And learned that what was obvious to us wasn’t obvious to others. There were clear concerns that the focus was on us, not on the message, and that our motives were dubious.
We received both private and publicly expressed concerns about our intentions. Maybe we were trying to promote a book, or a consultancy, or collecting email addresses. And this was an unpleasant surprise. When I have a chance to work with people like Michael, Julie, and Will that I respect for their intellect, concern, and integrity, it is painful to have our motives questioned.
Yet it was an clear miscalculation on our parts that our intentions would be obvious to all. As soon as we got wind of the concerns, we discussed how to respond, and as a consequence, we reined in the messages about us on the site. We removed our pictures from the pre-launch page, and toned down the ‘authors’ page. Hopefully that’s enough.
Because, the message is the important thing. Frankly, we’d prefer that the change happens and we get no recognition. It’s not about us; we’ve got other fish to fry. We’ve no joint book, no consultancy, and the only reason we’d do anything with any email addresses would be to tell them updates with nothing for sale. We believe that the message would be sullied with any such attempts, and we do not want to risk the chance of undermining the message, and the hoped-for change.
So, a valuable lesson learned about marketing. Trying to inspire curiosity using a launch event, and trusting to our names beforehand was, in retrospect, too self-aggrandizing. We probably needed to focus on at least the core of the message, rather than just the mystery of what we were up to. We still hope you’ll attend, and more importantly agree to try harder on the change we’re agitating for. As to the change? Well, the short answer is better elearning. For the specifics, you’ll just have to wait :). BTW, in addition to the launch, at least a subset of us will be discussing the desired change at Learning Solutions session 105 on Wednesday March 19 at 1PM, followed by a Morning Buzz on Thursday. Hope to see you at one of these!
Three by three
I’ve been thinking about what are the core elements involved in making an organization successful, and it’s beginning to sort out in a new way for me. And I wanted to run it by you and see what you thought.
The first elements to me are the holy trinity of the performance ecosystem:
- Formal Learning
- Performance Support
- Social learning
There are several things to notice here. For one, self-created performance support tools also fall under performance support. However, performance support tools created by others, and not by L&D, fall under social (yes, I’m still coming to grips with the whole informal/social distinction, shameful ain’t it!). And, social learning is the Big L version of learning, including problem-solving, research, innovation, the things that fall out from cooperation and collaboration.
Now, underpinning this trilogy is another trilogy, those factors that provide a foundation. Here I’m talking about:
- Strategy
- Culture
- Infrastructure
Strategy is systematically aligning what the L&D group is doing with the business needs, measuring what’s happening, and providing a growth path. However, strategy will get eaten by culture unless you specifically address and develop a culture where innovation can happen. And underpinning this is a technology infrastructure that complements the way we work best. This include mobile.
So, does this make sense?
Getting Serious about eLearning
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this was a year of making trouble, and talked about my forthcoming book, but now it’s time to let you in on the second thing I’m doing. This time, I’m not doing it alone, but in concert with three of my most respected and trusted colleagues, Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, and Will Thalheimer. So what are the four of us up to?
Well, I won’t give it all away, since we’re doing an official launch next week, but in short, we’re attempting to do something about what we perceive as the sorry state of elearning. We just couldn’t stand by, so we’re standing up and saying something. It’s been a real pleasure to work with them, and we’re hoping what we’re up to might make an impact.
You’ll also find out that a number of folks have signed up to support us as trustees. Not everyone we could and should’ve gotten, but a representative sample across sectors of some of the most respected folks in the industry that we could reach out to in short order.
You can find out what we’ve done on Thurs, March 13th at noon PT (3ET). We’re holding a Google Hangout where we’ll talk about what we’re up to, and then take questions. You can sign up to attend at the associated site.
It’s an honor to be able to work with Will, Julie, & Michael on this, and if you care about good elearning (and if you’re here, I figure that’s a safe bet :), I hope you’ll attend, and join us.
Conference advice
David Kelly of the eLearning Guild has a series of interviews going on about attending conferences. The point is to help attendees get some good strategies about how to prepare beforehand and take advantage after the fact, as well as what to bring and how to get the most out of it.
Today’s interview is me, and you’re welcome to have a look at my thoughts on conferences. Feedback welcome!
A little bit better
I have never really cottoned on to the practice of photo-bombing. While it might be a fun trick to play on a friend, otherwise it seems to me to be selfish. Could there be something better?
One of the things I’ve been doing is something that I call ‘reverse photo-bombing’. When I see a picture being taken, instead of getting in it, I get behind the photographer, and at the right time, I put up bunny ears behind them (or something else silly). What happens is that the audience laughs, and they tend to get a much better picture. And then I slink off, hoping no one noticed (except the photographees, and they’re too busy). It’s hard to get the timing right, so it doesn’t always work, but when it does I think it’s a boon to the group. Though it did embarrass my daughter when I did it while out with her one time, but I think that’s in the parental job description anyway…:).
I think this is a good thing (though I’m willing to be wrong); I think that the world can use more good in it. What I am looking for is more ideas of how we can be quietly adding value to what’s going on, instead of detracting. I’ve heard of nice things like buying someone else’s coffee, or providing extra change. Are there other ideas we can be using? I welcome hearing yours!
Interface Design for Learning Review
Dorian Peters has written the first book I’ve seen on UI for learning, linking two of my favorite things. Understand that I did my Ph.D. in a research group that was hot into HCI at the time, and my first faculty position was to teach User Experience. At the time, in many ways UI was ahead of ID in terms of user-centered practices, and I made many presentations on porting UI concepts to Ed Tech audiences.
Consequently, it was a pleasant surprise to hear about this book, and more so now that I’ve had a chance to peruse it. This book is very valuable not just for interface designers doing learning solutions, but also for IDs and developers who end up having to design. The second chapter on how we learn is a great whirlwind tour of learning, well grounded in research and setting up the background for those who’s background isn’t learning. Similarly, she provides an overview of elearning in Chapter 3, and UI basic terms in Chapter 4. From there, it’s all about UI for learning.
She starts very early on in the book by showing how learning interfaces have to be different from user interfaces. If your goal is to learn, not do a task, it makes sense that the interface should and could be different. She then delivers on this and goes on to cover a suite of principles: learning is visual, learning is social, learning is emotional, and learning is mobile, in subsequent chapters (with one on multimedia and gaming interspersed). She even discusses the design of learning spaces. In each, she separates out principles and strategies.
This is a fun book, widely illustrated with examples and illustrations, quotes, and graphical highlighting to practice what she preaches. It is clear from the breadth and depth of citations that she’s done her homework, and this is a well-organized, easy to read, and useful book.
Interface Design for Learning is a book that everyone who ends up developing learning experiences, creating the interface learners interact with, needs to have to hand, on their desk ready to refer to and get the principles down on each project until they’re firmly internalized. Highly recommended.