Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Social Cognition

by Leave a Comment

In the two preceding posts, I discussed situated and distributed cognition. In this closing post of the series, I want to talk about social cognition. They’re related, and yet each needs explicit consideration. If we don’t know how we think, work, and learn, we can’t optimally support both performance in the moment and continual innovation over time.

The traditional definition of social cognition is how we think about social interactions.  But here I’m emphasizing instead the fact that our thinking isn’t just in our heads or our tools, but also across our partners. That’s partly distributed cognition, but I want to emphasize it.  And this is true for formal and informal learning as well as performing.

There are two ways to think about this. For one, we benefit from formal social interactions as ways to get richer interpretations. It works the same way when we are problem-solving: working together (under constraints) increases the likelihood of the best outcome. As I like to say, the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room  if you manage the process right.  The implications of this are several.

First, we need to make sure we have the right constraints. When we have people working together, it helps if it’s the right people  and the right environment.  We know that diversity helps, as long as there is overlap in values. Similarly, it needs to be psychologically safe to contribute, the environment helps to be open, and there needs to be time for reflection.

There’re also benefits to mentoring and coaching, helping people in the moment. We want to succeed, and we like to be challenged, and we learn when we are, so having scaffolding helps. Developing coaching and mentoring skills is a good investment in the workplace.

There’re also times when we want help, or someone else does and we can help. That is, we need to support serendipitous inquiry. It helps, by the way, to assist people in learning how to ask questions or answer them in useful ways. There also needs to be the channels to accomplish these goals.

Recognize that there are times when the answer can come from the network, not our own efforts. Particularly if things are changing fast, or the situation’s unique or hard to anticipate. In fact, it frees us up to do more if we take advantage of that as often as possible!  It takes nurturing the networks to become a community so that the answer’s likely to be right.

The point being, there are lots of considerations to making the ecosystem sociable as well as effectively distributed and situated.  If you want to optimize the environment, it helps to have the latest understanding of the users of that environment. Hope this makes sense, and in the spirit of social, I welcome your thoughts and comments!

Situated Cognition

by 5 Comments

In a recent article, I wrote about three types of cognition that are changing how we think about how we think (how meta!).  All are interesting, but they also have implications for understanding for supporting us in doing things.  I think it’s important to understand these cognitions, and their implications. First, I want to talk about situated cognition.

The psychological models of thinking really started with the behavioral models. The core argument was that we couldn’t look ‘inside the box’, and had to study inputs and outputs. Cognitive psychology was a rebellion from this perspective. The new frameworks started showing that we could posit quite a bit about what went on ‘in the box’. We got concepts like sensory, working, and long-term memory, and processes like attention, rehearsal, encoding, and retrieval. With most of our learning prescriptions. However, both were about the ‘the box’.

However, the observed behavior didn’t match the formal logical reasoning that underpinned the model. We needed new explanations. The computational model fell apart. And, despite rigorous attempts to create logical models that described human behavior, they were awkward at best. The shift came when Rumelhart & McClelland, in their PDP book, described what became known as neural networks. Associated with this was a new model of cognition.

What gets activated in the brain is not a reliably pure representation, and is strongly affected by the context. Thinking is ‘situated’ in the context it arises in. If our thinking is the emergent behavior of patterns across neurons, and those patterns are the result of both internal and external stimuli, then we’re very strongly influenced by what’s happening ‘in the moment’.  And that means that we can be captured (and fooled) by elements that may not even be consciously processed.

What this means in practice is that it’s harder than we think to get reliable performance across a range of conditions.  That we should ensure that patterns are generated across ‘noise’ so that they’re reliable in the face of the appropriate triggers, despite any accompanying contextual patterns. and recognize that decisions can be biased, and design scaffolding to prevent in appropriate outcomes. Developing mental models that provide reasoning abilities about causes and outcomes are useful here. This flexibility is advantageous (and why machine learning struggles outside it’s range of training), but we want to tap into it in helpful ways.

Our approaches should reflect what’s known, and therefore we need to keep up.  Situated cognition is a perspective that’s relevant to more effectively supporting individual and organizational performance and learning.  So, what is  your thinking about this?

Designing with science

by 1 Comment

How should we design? It’s all well and good to spout principles, but putting them into practice is another thing. While we always would like to follow learning science, there’re not always all the answers we need. I was thinking about this with a project I’m working on, and it occurred to me that there might be some confusion. So I thought I’d share how I like to think and go about it, and see what you think.

So, first of all, you should go with the science. There are good principles around in a variety of forms.  Some good guidance comes in books such as:

  • eLearning & the Science of Instruction (Clark & Mayer)
  • Design for How People Learn (Dirksen)
  • the Make it Learnable series (Shank)
  • and less directly but no less applicably, Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning

There’s also ATD’s Science of Learning topic (with some good and some less good stuff).  And the 3 Star Learning site. Both of these, of course, aren’t as comprehensive as a book.   And, of course, you can also go right to the pure journals, like Instructional Science, and Learning Sciences, and the like, if you are fluent in academese.  For that matter, I’ve a video course that is about Deeper Instructional Design, e.g. a design approach with learning science ‘baked in’.

But what I was thinking of what happens when they don’t address the specific concern you are wondering about. The second approach I recommend is theory. In particular,  Cognitive Apprenticeship (my favorite model; Collins & Brown), or other theories like Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth), Pebble in a Pond (Merrill), or 4 Component ID (Van Merriënboer). Or, arguably more modern, something from Jonassen on problem-based learning or other more social constructivist approaches.  They’re based on empirical data, but pulled together, and you can often make inferences in between the principles.  While the next step is arguably better, in the real world you want a scrutable approach but one that gets you moving forward the fastest.

Finally, you test. If science and theory can’t provide the answer, you either wing it, but it’s better if you set up an experiment. Ideally, with your sample population.  So, for instance, you don’t know whether to place the learner’s role in the simulation game as a consultant to many orgs or as a role in one org with many situations. There’re tradeoffs: in the former it’s easier to provide multiple contexts for practice, but the latter may be more closely aligned with job performance.   You can test it, and see what learners think about the experience. Of course, it may be that in the process of just designing both that you have some insight. And that’s ok.

And, if you’re a reflective practitioner (and we should be), you might share your findings.  What did you learn?  Learning science advances to the extent that we continue to explore and test.  Speaking of which, how does this approach match with what you do?

Silly Design

by Leave a Comment

Time for a brief rant on interface designs.  Here we’re talking about two different situations, one device, and and one interface.  And, hopefully, we can extract some lessons, because these are just silly design decisions.

OXO timerFirst up is our timer.  And it’s a good timer, and gets lots of use. Tea, rice, lots of things. And, sometimes, a few things at a time.  As you can see, there’re 3 timers. And, as far as I know, we’ve only used at most two at a time.  So what’s the problem?

Well, there’re different beeps signaling the end of different timers. And that’s a good thing. Mostly.  But there’s one very very silly design decision here. Let me tell you that one has one beep, one has two beeps, and one has three. So, guess which number of beeps goes to which timer?  You can see they’re numbered…

Got your guess? It’d be sensible, of course, if the one beep went with the first timer, and two beeps went with the second. But you  know we’re not going there!  Nope, the first timer has two beeps. The second timer has 3 beeps. And the 3rd timer, of course, has one.

It’s a principle called ‘mapping’ (see Don Norman’s essential reading for anyone who designs for people:  The Design of Everyday Things). In it, you make the mapping logical, so for instance between the number of the timer and the number of beeps.  How could you get this wrong? (Cliche cue: you had  one job…)

iTunes way 1On to our second of today’s contestants, the iTunes interface.  Now, everyone likes to bash iTunes, and either it’s a bad design for what it’s doing, or it shouldn’t be trying to do too many things. I’m not going there today, I’m going off on something else.

I’ve always managed the files on the qPad through iTunes. It used to be straightforward, but they changed it. Of course.  There’re also more ways to do it: AirDrop & iFiles being two. And, frankly, they’re both somewhat confusing.  But that’s not my concern today.  The new way I use is only a slight modification on the old way, which is  why I use it. And it works. But there’s a funny little hiccup…

So, there are two ways to bring up a list of things on your iPad.  For one, you select it from the device picture at the top (to the right of the forward/back arrows), and you see a list of things you can access/adjust: music, movies, etc. As you see to the left.

other way to access iPadOn the other hand (to the right), you select it from a list of devices, and you get the drop down you see to the right.  Note that the lists aren’t the  same.

Wait, they’re not the same?  No, only one has “File Sharing”!  So, you have to remember which way to access the device before you can choose to add a file.  This is just silly!  Only recently have I started remembering which way works (bad design, BTW, trusting to memory), and before that I had to explore. It’s not much, just an extra click, but it’s unnecessary memory load.

The overhead isn’t much, to be clear, but it’s still irritating. Why, why would you have two different ways to access the device, and not have the same information come up?  It’s just silly!  Moreover, it violates a principle. Here, the principle is consistency (and, arguably, affordances). When you access a device, you expect to be able to manipulate the device. And you don’t expect that two different ways to get to what should be the same place would yield two different suites of information. (And don’t even get me started about the stupid inconsistencies between the mobile and web app versions of LinkedIn!)

At least if you haven’t communicated a clear model about why the one way is different than the other. But it’s  not there.  It’s a seemingly arbitrary list. We operate on models, but there’s no obvious way to discriminate between these two, so the models are random. Choosing the device, either way, is supposed to access the device.  That’s the affordance.  Unless you convey clearly  why these are different.

This holds for learning too. Interface folks argued that Gloria Gery’s Electronic Performance Support Systems were really making up for bad design. And so, too, is much training. Don argued in his  The Invisible Computer that UI should be up front in product design, because they could catch the design decisions that would make it more difficult to use. I want to argue that it’s the same with the training folks: they should be up front in product  or service design to catch decisions that will confuse the audience and require extra support costs.

Design, learning or product/service, works best when it aligns with how our brains work.  If we own that knowledge, we can then lobby to apply it, and help make our organizations more successful.  If we can make happier users, and less support costs, we should. And as Kathy Sierra suggests, really it’s  all about learning.

 

A good publisher

by Leave a Comment

I shot this short little video because, well, I have to say that my experience with ATD has been excellent. They’ve done what I’ve needed: listening when they should, arguing with me when they should, responding to my questions, and executing on their responsibilities professionally. They’ve gone above and beyond, and I’m pleased to have them as my publisher on my most recent tome.

If you’re going to complain about the bad things (or, at least, make fun of them :), I reckon you should highlight the good ones too.  They showed their capabilities while serving as co-publisher on my last book, and now they’ve demonstrated the whole deal. Thanks, team!

Game Results

by Leave a Comment

The game we designed (as I talked about yesterday), Quest for Independence, was actually a fair bit of a hit. While we couldn’t talk to kids still, anecdotally we heard that the kids were playing it.  And, as the design intended, it led them to talk to the Care counselors. That was good enough, but there was more.

First, the Aussie science program  Quantum  had a bit on it. They even interviewed me (with a big production about bringing stuff to our house), but never used the footage.  They also couldn’t talk to the kids ‘in care’, but it turns out Quest was being used by kids  not in care!  High schools were using it to explore life after school as well. That was a nice outcome.

Another occurrence brought new action. Sometime after the game launched, I became aware of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) standard for the web. What this did was allowed web pages to do backend processing based upon user actions, and then programmatically change the front end.  In short, web pages could react based upon what had happened before.

For  Quest, this meant that we could port it to the web!  That is, you started the game, the player’s actions were sent to the web, the program could calculate the outcome and render an appropriate new page, with the graphics assembled to represent the game variables, the current location, and more.  This was exciting.

Splash screenAnd, again, I had a student wanting to do a project. So the project was to take the game graphics, and the programming, and make the game web-playable. And lo, it was done; the game could be played over the web.  Most wonderfully, it  still can be!  (Yay, standards!)

Naturally, I wrote it up (with the student; a principle I always stuck to: even if I usually ended up writing it all, they got credit for their work and ideas).  And, as far as I know, it was the very first web-delivered serious game. At the least, without Flash.

The underlying principles in the game also became part of a couple of chapters, and ultimately the alignment between effective education and engaging experiences formed the core of my book on serious game design,  Engaging Learning.  

One final reflection is that working on this, on a project that really helped real kids, was still one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on.  It’s nice to help clients deliver outcomes, but saving lives that were at risk?  That’s just too good.  Anyone up for some more ‘hard fun’?

Designing a game

by Leave a Comment

When I was a young academic in Australia, a colleague asked me if I would talk to some folks about a game. He knew that I had designed games before returning to grad school, and had subsequently done one on my thesis research. This group, the Australian Children’s Welfare Agency, had an ‘After Care’ project to assist kids  who needed to live independently. They’d spent their budget on a video, comic book, and a poster, but now realized that the kids would play games at the Care centers. I had a talented student who wanted to do a meaningful honours project, and so I agreed.

Following best principles, we talked not only to the project leaders, and the counselors, but more. We weren’t allowed to talk to youth ‘in care’ (for obvious reasons), but they did get us access to some recent graduates. They gave us great insights, and later they playtested the prototype for fine-tuning.

One of the lessons from this was important. The counselors told us that what these kids needed were to learn to shop and cook. While I  could have made a game for that, when we talked to the kids we learned that there was more.  (My claim: you can’t give me a learning objective I can’t make a game for, though I reserve the right to raise the objective in a taxonomic sense.)   They said what was important were the chains. That is, you could get money while you looked for a job, but… They wouldn’t give you money, however, they’d deposit in a bank account. BUT, to get that, you needed ID.  To get that, however, you needed references. And so on. So that was the critical focus.

I taught my interface design students HyperCard, to have a simple language to prototype in. This meant that we had an environment that we knew games could be built in.  My student did most of the programming, under my direction.  When that wasn’t quite sufficient to finish the development, I used some grant money to hire her for the summer to finish it.

early screenThe resulting play was good, but the design was lacking (neither my student nor I were graphic designers). I ended up going with the project team leaders to get philanthropic funding to add graphics. (Which introduced bugs I had to fix.)  They also had it ported to the PC, which ended up being a mistake.Their hired gun used a platform with an entirely different underlying model and wasn’t able to translate it appropriately. Ouch.

Later street

The resulting game, had some specific design features:

  • It was exploratory, in that the player had to wander around and try to survive.
  • It was built upon a simple simulation engine, which supported replay.
  • There were variables, like health and hunger and sleep that would get worse over time, driving action.
  • The audience was low literacy, so we used graphics to convey variable states, interface elements, and location.
  • Success was difficult. Jobs were difficult to obtain, and better jobs were even harder. And, of course, you had to discover the chains.
  • There was coaching: if you were struggling, the game would offer you the opportunity for a hint. If you continued to struggle, eventually you’d get the hint anyway.
  • There was also a help system, where the basics were laid out.
  • There were random events, like getting (or losing) money, or having drugs or sex. (We were trying to save lives, and didn’t worry about upsetting the wowsers.)

There was more, but this characterized some of the important elements.  In reflecting upon the experience, I realized the alignment between effective education and engaging experiences that means you can, and should, make learning  hard fun.  I wrote a journal article (with my student) that captured what I will  suggest are critical realizations (still!).

They held an event to launch the entire project, including the game (and they gave me a really nice sweater, and Dana something too ;).  Tomorrow, I’ll pass on some of the subsequent outcomes.

Services

by Leave a Comment

From time to time, it’s worth a reminder that Quinnovation (the firm behind the blog) is available to help you.  Here are the services you can look to from me, in case you want to accelerate your success.

And a wee bit of self-promotion: if expertise comes from years of practice, how about 3+ decades of investigating the breadth and depth of learning & performance, and exploration of technology support?  Why not get assistance from where the thinking originates, not the several-steps away diluted version?

Consulting:

Learning Design: are your design processes yielding the outcomes they should and need to? I have worked with many organizations to generate or tighten learning design processes to reflect learning science (not myths). I recognize that most organizations can’t completely revamp their approaches, so I look to the small changes with the biggest impact. A white paper talks about this.

Performance Ecosystem Strategy: are you leading your organization forward in learning (read: innovation) or are you still taking orders for courses?  Based on the book, I’ve helped a number of organizations understand the full spectrum of possibilities, evaluate their situation, and prioritize short-, medium-, and long-term steps.  Another white paper talks about this.

Games & Mobile: I’ve helped a number of organizations get their minds, strategies, and design processes around mobile and/or games, based upon  those  books.

Workshops

Want to get your team up to speed on learning science, strategy, games, mobile, or more?  I have workshops on each that are interactive, engaging, and effective. Preferably, they’re coupled with followup to extend the learning (applying the learning science), and that can be done in a variety of ways.

Presentations

A number of organizations around the world have booked me to speak to their audiences. They have been about the subjects of my books, or the future of learning technology in general. And have indicated they were quite satisfied with the result ;). If you want a credible, engaging presenter around intelligence augmentation, I’m a candidate.

Writing

In addition to books, I write white papers, blog posts, and articles for others. I could do the same for you.

Coaching

If you’re a learning leader that would like assistance over time addressing your organization’s needs, it would certainly be worth a conversation. I haven’t done this formally, but it seems like a natural extension.

And, of course, there are combinations of these services as well. You can find out more at the official Quinnovation site. Next week we return you to your regularly scheduled blog at this same channel.

Context is key

by 1 Comment

Workflow learning is one of the new buzzphrases. The notion is that you deliver learning to the point of need, instead of taking people away from the workflow. And I’m a fan. But it’s not as easy as it sounds!  Context is a critical issue in making this work, and that’s non-trivial.

When we create learning experiences, typically we do (or should) create an artificial context for learners to practice in. And this makes sense when the performance has high consequences.  However, if people are in the workflow, there is a context already. Could we leverage that context for learning instead of creating one?  When would this make sense?

I’d suggest that there are two times workflow learning makes sense. For one, if the performers aren’t novices, this becomes an opportunity to provide learning at the point of need to elaborate and extend learning. Say, refining knowledge on sales, marketing, or product when touching one of them.  For another, it would make sense if the consequences aren’t high and the ease of repair is easy. So, sending on a workpiece that will get checked anyways.

Of course, we  could just do performance support, and not worry about the learning, but we can do that  and support learning as well. So, having an additional bit of learning content at the right time, whether alone or in conjunction with performance support, is a ‘good thing’.  The difficulties come when we get down to specifics.

Specifically,  how do we match the right content with the task? There are several ways. For one, it can just be pull. Here the individual asks for some additional help and/or learning. This isn’t completely trivial either, because you have to have a search mechanism that makes it easy for the performer to get the right stuff. This means federated search, vocabulary control, and more. Nothing you shouldn’t already be worrying about for pull learning anyways, but for the record.

Second, you could do push. Here it gets more dicey.  One way is to have content tied to specific instances. This can be hand done as some tools have made possible. That is, you instrument content with help where you find, or think, it could be needed. The other way is to be smart  about  the context.

And this is where it gets complicated. For such workflow learning to work, you really want to leverage the context, so you need to be able to  identify  the context.  How do you know what they’re doing? Then you need to map that context to content. You could use some signal (c.f. xAPI) that tells you when someone touches something. Then you could write rules that map that touch to the associated content. It might even by description, not hardwired, so the system’s flexible. For instance, it might change the content depending on how many times and how recently this person has done this task.  This is all just good learning engineering, but the details matter.

Making workflow learning work is a move towards a more powerful performance ecosystem and workforce, but it requires some backend effort.  Not surprising, but worth being clear on.

Sign of a change?

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been touting my recent book on debunking learning myths. Not because it’ll make me independently wealthy (if  only!), but because it’s a continuation of my campaign for more learning science in our profession. We need this change! And I wonder if something that happened is a sign of progress.

At the ATD International Conference, as my publishers, they naturally had the book in the bookstore. They told me they’d slightly over-ordered, but lo and behold,  it sold out.  What’s more, they ordered more,  and they sold out too!

Now, there’re lots of things to unpack here.  First, it’s a great design. While I did the writing and the ideas for the comics, they chose the cover and title (both over my idea, and they were right ;) and the size, paper, cover material, etc.  In short, they did the design. And people have commented on the cover graphic  and the tactile feel of the book.

And they priced it right, too. It’s under $20. Which makes it an easy purchase. (Several different folks brought multiple; I signed  six for one person!)

What’s more, it wasn’t even  my idea!  The ‘power behind the throne’ (as I call him) asked for me to address this topic. Sure, I’ve railed about the myths, but I wouldn’t have thought of actually writing a book to address it.

But, honestly, those are additional factors. I don’t want it to do well for any of those reasons. I’m hoping, seriously hoping, that the success is because finally there’s a growing awareness that our profession needs to become more, er, professional.

There’re a lot of little moves that are signaling more effort to lift our game. I and others have taken steps.   Of course, I am available to do more. For instance, I have a learning design process audit I offer that’s reasonably priced and will identify wastes  and opportunities for the smallest change in your  approach for the maximum impact. But however you do it, please do extinguish the myths and practice the known.  Please!