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Reconciling Formal and Informal

24 May 2012 by Clark 22 Comments

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about informal learning, which ends up sounding like formal learning, and this can be confusing. So I’ve been trying to reconcile these two viewpoints, and this is how I’m seeing it.

There are really two viewpoints: that of the learning and development (L&D) professional, and that of the performer. Each of these sees the world differently, and we need to separate these out.

Let’s get formal learning out of the way first. Performers know when they’re on deck for a course. They’re even willing to take courses when they know there’s a significant skill shift they need, or when they’re novices in a new area. If you’ve addressed the emotional side – motivation and anxiety – they can be eager participants. And L&D knows formal learning (all too well), they know how to design and develop courses (or think they do; there’s a lot of bad stuff being produced under the rubric ‘course’ that’s a waste of time and money, but that’s another topic).

Now, let’s move on to informal learning, as this is where, to me, we have a conflict.

The performer is focused on the tasks they need to perform. When they’re practitioners in the area, they’re much more likely to want the resources ‘to hand’: job aids, information, wizards, etc. This also includes search engines, portals, and more. Further, they’re likely to want people when that’s relevant: coaching, mentoring, answers that aren’t yet codified, finding new ideas and solutions. The latter, resources and people, are to them informal learning. They’re answers, not courses.

Now, from the perspective of the L&D group, job aids are formal learning. They’re designed, developed, and delivered. They’ve got the ‘secret sauce’ provided by folks who understand how we perceive information, work, learn, and more. So here we have a mismatch. Now, not all L&D groups take ownership of this area, but they could and should. (While I think portals should be too, it’s less likely that the L&D group has a role here, and that too should change.)

Then we move to the social side: communication, collaboration, and more. Here, L&D and the performer are largely in agreement, this is informal learning. However, there’s really another mismatch. L&D tends to think there’s little they can do here, and that’s a mistake. They can do several things: they can make courses about how to use social media better (not everyone knows how to communicate and collaborate well), share best practices, work social media into formal learning to make it easier to facilitate the segue into the workplace. They can also provide performance support for the social media, and be facilitating it’s use. They can unearth good practices in the organization and share them, foster discussion, etc; seed, feed, weed, and breed. (And, yes, L&D interventions there will be formal in the sense that they’re applying rigor, but they’re facilitating emergent behaviors that they don’t own.)

This latter, the use of social media in the organization for work should happen, as that’s where the continual innovation happens. As I say: optimal execution is only the cost of entry; continual innovation is the necessary competitive differentiator. Formal learning helps execution, and so does performance support, but innovation comes from social interaction. And L&D groups shouldn’t leave innovation to chance. They have a role to play.

There’s one more confounding factor. Adding social into formal learning is worthwhile, but folks might get confused that doing so is also informal learning, and it’s not. Having requirements for personal reflections via a blog, discussions via forums, and collaborative assignments via wikis, and more, to facilitate learning are all good things, but certainly from the view of the performer it is not informal.

So, when you hear someone talking about informal learning and it sounds like formal learning, realize that they may be missing this final piece, the perspective of the performer. L&D can and should take on informal learning as well, but it’s not helpful if they think that just doing performance support and adding social into formal learning is all that needs to be considered as informal learning.

That’s the way I’m seeing the confusion emerge. Does it make sense to you?

Educational Game Design Q&A

4 May 2012 by Clark 2 Comments

I was contacted for a research project, and asked a series of questions. Thought I’d document the answers here, too.

Q0. How many years have you been designing educational games?

Over 30, actually, off and on. Started with my first job out of college, designing and programming educational computer games. Been a recurrent theme in my career since then.

Q1. Please walk us through your process for creating an educational game from concept to implementation. Please use one of your games as an example.

A long answer is the only option (it’s a big process). Using a design framework of Analysis, Specification, Implementation, and Evaluation:

Analysis

For any educational task, you have to start by looking at what your design objective is: you need to document what folks should be able to do that they can’t do now. I argue that this is most importantly going to manifest as an ability to make better decisions, ones that the learner doesn’t reliably make now. It’s complicated, because SMEs don’t always have access to how they do what they do, and you have to work hard. This isn’t unusual to learning design, except perhaps the focus on skills.

Then, you need to know how folks go wrong; what are the reliable misconceptions. People don’t tend to make random mistakes (though there is some randomness in our architecture), but instead make mistakes based upon some wrong models.

You also need to know the consequences of those mistakes, as well as the consequence of the right answer. Decisions tend to travel in packs, and if you make this one wrong, you’re then likely to face that other one. You need to know what these are. (And the probabilities associated with them).

In addition, you need to know the settings in which these decisions occur, as many as possible.

And you need to know what makes this task inherently interesting (it is). Here’s where the SME is your friend, because they’re so passionate about this they’ve made it the subject of their expertise, find out what makes them find it interesting.

Specification

With this information, you address those aligned elements from effective education practice and engaging experiences. You need to find a storyline that integrates what makes the task interesting with the settings in which the decisions occur. I like a heuristic I heard from Henry Jenkins: “find a role the player would like to be in”. Exaggeration is a great tool here: e.g. you’d likely rather be working on the ambassador’s daughter than just another patient.

You need to make those misconceptions seductive to get challenge. You don’t want them getting it right unless they really know their stuff.

You need to handle adjusting the difficulty level up at an appropriate rate; you might have complications that don’t start until after they’ve mastered the interface.

You need to specify characters, dialog, rules that describe the relationships, variables that code the state of the game, a visual (and auditory) look and feel. The UI expressed to the learner, and more.

You’ll need to specify what the ‘perspective’ of the player is in relation to the character.

Overall, you need to nail meaningfulness, novelty, and the cycle of action and feedback to really get this right.

Finally, you need to specify the metrics you’ll use to evaluate your creation. What will be the usability goals, educational outcomes, and engagement metrics that will define you’re done?

Implementation & Evaluation

I’m a design guy, so I don’t talk so much about implementation, and evaluation follows the above. That said…

The tools change constantly, and it will vary by size and scope. The main thing here is that you will have to tune. As Will Wright said, “tuning is 9/10ths of the work”. Now that’s for a commercially viable game, but really, that’s a substantial realization compared to how complex the programming and media production is.

Tuning requires regular evaluation. You’ll want to prototype in as low a fidelity as you can, so it’s easier to change. Prototype, test, lather, rinse, repeat. (Have ever 3 words ever sold more unnecessary product in human history?)

There’s much more, but this is a good first cut.

Q2. Describe your greatest success, challenge, failure.

My greatest success, at least the most personally rewarding in terms of feeling like making a contribution, is definitely the Quest game. When you’re making a game that can save kids’ lives, you’ve got to feel good about it. On no budget (we eventually got a little money to hire my honors student for a summer, and then some philanthropic money to do a real graphic treatment), we developed a game that helped kids who grow up without parents experience a bit of what it’s like to survive on your own (goal: talk to your counselors). Interestingly, I subsequently got it ported to the web as a student project (as soon as I heard about CGI’s, the first web standard to support maintaining ‘state’, I realized it could run as a web game), and it still runs! As far as I know, BTW, it’s the first web-based serious game ever.

My greatest challenge was another game you can still play on the web. We’d developed a ‘linear scenario’ game on project management for non-project-managers, and they liked it so much they then asked for a game to accompany it. But we’d already accomplished the learning! Still, we did it. I made the game about just managing to cope with missing data, scope creep, and other PM issues, so engineers could a) understand why they should be glad there were project managers, and b) that they shouldn’t be jerks to work with.

Biggest failure that I recollect was a team brought together by a publisher to work with the lead author on a wildly successful book series. There was a movie script writer who’d become a game designer, and me, and a very creative team. However, we had a real problem with the SME, who couldn’t get over the idea that the ‘game’ had to develop the concept without getting mired in the boring details of particular tools. We would get progress, and then generate a great concept, and we’d be reined back in to “but where’s the tool simulation”? Unfortunately, the SME had ultimate control, not the creative team, and the continuing back and forth ultimately doomed the project.

Q3. When determining game play is avoiding violence an issue? Q4. Is accounting for gender an issue when creating games?

I answered these two questions together; I don’t shy away from controversy, and believe that you use the design that works for the audience and the learning objective. I believe education trumps censorship. I argued many years ago (when Doom was the GTA of the day) that you could get meaningful learning experiences out of the worst of the shoot-em-ups. Not that I’d advocate it. Same with gender. Figure out what’s needed.

As a caveat, I don’t believe in gratuitous violence, sex, or gender issues, (Why is sex more taboo than violence? I don’t get it.) but I believe you need to address them when relevant in context. In ways that glorify people, not violence or intolerance.

Q5. How did you develop your creation process?

I went from ad h0c at the start to trying to find the best grounding for process possible. Even as an undergrad I had received a background in learning, but as a grad student I pursued it with a vengeance (I looked at cognitive, behavioral, constructivist, ID, social, even machine learning looking for insight). At the time, the HCI field was also looking at what made engaging experiences, and I pursued that too. The real integration happened when I looked systematically at design and creative processes: what worked and what didn’t. Using the learning design process as a framework (since folks don’t tend to adopt new processes whole-cloth, but tend to modify their existing ones), I worked out what specifically was needed in addition to make the process work for (learning) game design.

Q6. How do you work? Individually? As a team? If so, how do you develop a team?

Euphemistically, I work however anyone wants. I seldom really do individual, however, because I have no graphic design skills to speak of (much to my dismay, but a person’s got to know their limitations, to paraphrase the great sage Harry Calahan). Also, I strongly believe you should source the full suite of talent a game design needs: writing, audio, graphic, programming, UI, learning design, etc. Naturally, in the real world, you do the best you can (“oh, I can do a good enough job of writing, and you can probably do a good enough job of audio as well as the programming”).

Q7. Is there a recipe for success in this industry? If so what is it and what would you say your biggest lesson has been so far?

My short answer is two-fold. I immodestly think that you really have to understand the alignment between effective practice and engaging experience (there’re lots of bad examples that show why you can’t just shove game and instructional designers into a room and expect anything good). Second, you have to know how to work and play well with others. Game design is a team sport.

And finally, you really, really, have to develop your creative side. As I tell my workshop attendees: I’ve got bad news, you have a big job ahead of you; if you’re going to do good serious game design, you’re going to have to play more games, go to more amusement parks, read more novels, watch more movies. It’s a big ask, I know, an onerous task, but hey, you’re professionals. But you also have to be willing to take risks. Much to m’lady’s dismay, I argue that I continue to have to crack bad jokes as practice to find out what works (that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it).

If you can get a handle on these three elements: understanding the alignment, able to convince people to work with you on it, and push the envelope, I reckon you can succeed. What do you reckon?

Kapp’s Gamification for Learning and Instruction

23 April 2012 by Clark 11 Comments

Karl Kapp’s written another book, this time on gamification, and I certainly liked his previous book with Tony O’Driscoll on Virtual Worlds. This one’s got some great stuff in it too, and some other ideas that raise some hackles.

Let me get one of the quibbles out of the way at the start: I hate the title “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction” (to the point I previously wrote a post arguing instead for ‘engagification‘). Karl makes it clear that he’s not on the trivial notion of gamification: “Gamification is not Badges, Points, and Rewards”. My problem is that by just having the title, folks who don’t read the book will still point to it to justify doing the trivial stuff. I’d much rather he’d titled it something like “Beyond Gamification” or “Engagification” or “Serious Gamification” or something. He can’t be blamed for people misusing the term, and even his book, but I still fret about the possible consequences.

With that caveat, I think there is a lot to like here. Karl’s got the right perspective: “Serious games and gamification are both trying to solve a problem, motivate people, and promote learning using game-based thinking and techniques.” He does a good job of laying out the core ideas, such as:

“Games based on this complex subject matter work, not because they include all the complexities, but precisely because they reduce the complexity and use broad generalizations to represent reality. The player is involved in an abstraction of events, ideas, and reality.”

I liked his chapter 2, as it does a good job of exploring the elements of games (though it’s not quite as categorical as I’d like ;). He’s got pragmatic advices there, and lots of examples to help illustrate the possibilities. He goes beyond serious games in a number of ways, talking about adding motivation factors for other things than making good decisions. I worry somewhat that folks might (and do) use the same things to get people to do things that they might not otherwise believe are good to do, and the ethical issues aren’t addressed too much, but again that’s not Karl’s point, as his many examples clearly show.

Chapters 7-9 are, to me, the most valuable from my point of view; how do you do game design (the focus of Engaging Learning). Chapter 7 talks about Applying Gamification to Problem Solving and helps explain how serious games provide deep practice. Chapter 8 maps gamification on to different learning domains such as declarative, procedural, affective, and more. There are valuable hints and tips here for other areas as well as the ones I think are most important. And Chapter 9 provides valuable guidance about the design process itself.

I wish there was more discussion of how meaningful challenges for problem-solving will make fact based learning more relevant, rather than just gamifying it, but that’s not necessarily the role of this book. I very much like this statement, however: “The gamification of learning cannot be a random afterthought. It needs to be carefully planned, well designed, and undertaken with a careful balance of game, pedagogy, and simulation.” Exactly! You can’t just put instructional designers and game designers in the room together and expect good things to happen (look at all the bad examples of edutainment out there); you have to understand the alignment.

There are some interesting additional chapters. Guest authors come in and write on motivations and achievements (Blair), the gamer perspective (presumably son Kapp), a case study of a serious initiative in gaming (Sanchez), and alternate reality games (Olbrish). These provide valuable depth in a variety of ways; certainly Alicia Sanchez is walking the walk, and the alternate reality games that Koreen Olbrish are talking about have struck me as a really compelling opportunity.

There are flaws. I can’t comprehend how he can go from talking about objectives straight to talking about content. Games are not about content, they’re about context; putting the player into a place where they have to make the decision that they need to be able to make as an outcome. This statement really strikes me as wrong: “The goal of gamification is to take content that is typically presented as a lecture or an e-learning course and add game-based elements…”. Given my focus on ability, not content, this predictably irks me.

Karl also misses what I would consider are some important folks who probably should be referenced. While he did get Raph Koster and Jane McGonigal, he hasn’t cited Aldrich, Gee, Shaffer, Barab, Jenkins, Squire, Steinkuehler, or even Quinn (ok, I had to say it). It seems a bit narrow-focused to miss at least (the ‘other’ Clark) Aldrich, who’s written now 4 books on the topic. I mean, being an academic and all…. :)

Overall, I know he’s fighting for the right things, and think there’s some very broad and useful information in here. If you’re looking to make your learning designs more effective, this book will show you a lot of examples, give you some valuable frameworks, and provide many hints and tips.

X-based learning: sorting out pedagogies and design

12 April 2012 by Clark 3 Comments

It’s come up in a couple of ways how my (in progress) activity-based framework for learning is related to other models, e.g. performance-based learning. And, looking around, I am reminded that there’s a plethora of models that have overlap. I’ll try to sort them out. This will undoubtedly be an ever-growing list, as there seems to be X-based learning where X = anything, and I’m sure folks supportive of their approach will let me know ;). Recognize that these are very sketchy descriptions, intended to communicate similarities, not tease apart deep nuances.

At core is the reasoning that meaningful activities have myriad benefits. Learners are engaged in working on real things, and the contextualization facilitates transfer to the extent that you’ve designed the activity to require the types of performance they’ll need in the world. There’s the opportunity to layer on multiple learning goals from different domain, and 21st century skills like media communications, and if it’s social (which is a recurring theme in these models) you get things like leadership and teamwork as well. Better engagement and learning outcomes are the big win.

First, there’s already an activity-based learning out of India! It seems to focus on having learners do meaningful things, which very much is at core here. There’s also an activity-based curriculum, by the way, which is also the way I’m thinking of it: a sequence of activities is a curriculum. This fits within active learning, arguably, in that there’s a desire for the learner to be actually doing something as the basis of learning, though the types of classroom activities of debates and discussions seem not as powerful as others cited below.

So, performance-based learning seems to be focused on assessment, having the students actively demonstrate their ability. This is, to me, an important aspect, as cognitive science recognizes that passing a knowledge test about something is not likely to transfer to the ability to do (we call it ‘inert knowledge’). That’s the point of having products of activities, at least reflection , so it sounds very much is in synergy. This also appears to be the focus of outcomes-based learning, which also emphasizes actual production, but while touting constructivism seems to end up being more a tool of the status quo. This can also be similar (and ideally should be) to competency-based learning, where there are explicit performance outcomes expected, rather than grading on the curve.

And there is problem-based learning and project-based learning. Both focus on having learners engage in meaningful activity, with the distinction between the two having to do with whether the problem is set by the instructor, or whether the project is decided is decided by the students. There are arguments for both, of course; for me, problems are easier to specify, it takes a special teacher to help shape a project and wrap the learning goals around it. I reckon serious games are problem-based learning, by the way.

Service learning is another related idea, that has learners doing meaningful projects out in the community. This is activity-based and expands upon the meaningfulness by connecting it to the community. I’ve been a fan of the Center for Civic Education’s Project Citizen as an example of this, having students try to pass legislation to improve things in their area, and consequently learning about law-making.

Inquiry-based learning shares the focus on activities of information gathering, but has primarily been based in science. It seems to not have a goal other than exploration and understanding, with an even more extreme view of learner control. This seems good with a self-motivated learner, and as long as the learner is either a self-capable learner, or there’s a facilitator, it could work. This seems very similar to the MOOC approach of Siemens & Downes. It also seems to be almost identical to the community of inquiry approach.

I frankly want an activity-based pedagogy and curriculum to support all of these models. The benefits, and the resistance to knowledge dump and fact test forms of learning, drive this perspective. Getting there requires a different type of learning design that one focused on standards. You need to shift, focusing on what do the students need to be able to do afterwards, and working backward from there. Understanding by design is a design approach that works backwards from goals, and if you set your outcomes on performance, and then align activities to require that performance, you have a good chance of impacting pedagogy, and learning, in meaningful ways. I admit it surprises me that this needs to be pointed out, but I see the consequences of content-driven (forward) design too often to argue.

The point is to find an umbrella that holds a suite of appropriate pedagogies and makes it difficult to do inappropriate ones. As Les Foltos tweeted: “We need to fan the fires for these instructional strategies. They don’t align well with standardized tests”. Exactly.

Reimagined Learning: Content & Portfolio elaborated

10 April 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

In a previous post I laid out the initial framework for rethinking learning design, and in a subsequent post I elaborated the activity component. I want to elaborate the rest a wee bit here. Two additional components of the model around the activities were content and then products coupled with reflection.

One of the driving points behind the model was to move away from content-driven learning, and start focusing on learning experience. As a consequence, the activities were central, but content was there to be driven to from the activities. So, the activity would both motivate and contextualize the need to comprehend some concept or to access an example, and then there would be access paths to the content within the activity. Or not, in that there might be a selection of content, or even the opportunity or need for the learner to choose relevant content. As with the activity, you gradually want to release responsibility to the learner for selecting content, initially modeling and increasingly devolving the locus of control.

A second component is the output of the activity. It was suggested that activities should generate products, such as solutions to problems, proposals for action, and more. The activity would be structured to generate this product, and the product could either be a reflection itself (e.g. an event review) or tangible output. It could be a document, audio, or even video. If the product itself is not a reflection, there should be one as well, a reflection. Eventually, the product choice and reflection piece will be the responsibility of the learner, and consequently there will be a scaffolding and fading process here too.

Note that the product of learner activity could then become content for future activities. The product could similarly be the basis for a subsequent activity.

The reflection itself is a self-evaluation mechanism, that is the learner should be looking at their own work as well as sharing the underlying thinking that led to the resulting product. Peers could and should evaluate other’s products and reflections as an activity as well (getting just a wee bit recursive, but not problematically so). And, of course, the products and reflections are there for mentor evaluation. And, as activities can be social, so too can the products be, and the reflections.

While digital tools aren’t required for this to work, it would certainly make sense from a wide-variety of perspectives to take advantage of digital tools. Rich media would make sense as content, and this could include augmented reality in contexts. Further, creation tools could and should be used to create products and or reflections. Of course, activities too could be digitally based such as simulations, whether desktop or digitally delivered, e.g. simulations or alternate reality games.

The notion is to try to reframe learning as a series of designed activities with guided reflections, and a gradual segue from mentor-designed to learner-owned. Does this resonate?

Reimagined Learning: Activities elaborated

9 April 2012 by Clark 3 Comments

I’ve been reflecting on the new learning model I proposed earlier, and want to share some elaborations with you. In this case, I want to elaborate on the notion of activities, and some associated properties.

First, I think it’s important to recognize that gradually, learners will take more and more ownership of choosing activities. If you’re an adult past college, you choose (with, perhaps, some guidance and support) what professional development you do: you choose books to read, conferences to attend, even perhaps choosing mentors whether agreed upon or stealth (people you follow via their blogs or tweets). We shouldn’t assume learners will have that ability, and our curricula should make explicit what good activity criteria are, and helps learners develop those skills, gradually handing off the responsibility for choosing them, with gradually released scaffolding.

Another important property of these activities is that they embed, possibly at multiple levels. So, for instance, a project to develop a prototype might have component activities to capture and represent the results of the initial analysis, and then an initial concept, and then an initial storyboard, all before the prototype is developed. Each of those would be activities with deliverables or products, and evaluation or reflection. And the prototype might be an activity that is part of an activity to develop a full application. There are lots of ways in which activities could be related.

Finally, activities can be individual or social. They can be assigned to one person, or to teams or workgroups to accomplish. The products of activities from individuals might feed into a group project, or vice-versa as well. The products of a group activity would be a group product, though the reflections could be individual or group, and there could be subsequent individual products as well.

The point is to have as widely varying description of an activity as possible, to support flexibility in designing learning experiences.

As implied in the initial post, these activities should generate products, and reflections as well, which are important for being able to provide feedback, helping shape learners’ understanding. I suppose I should dig into that more, too?

Beyond Execution

27 March 2012 by Clark 2 Comments

In a recent post, Harold Jarche talks eloquently about moving into the networked era, and practices of workscaping. He points to this insightful model by Jane Hart, showing the bigger picture supporting performance in the workplace, or what I like to call Big L learning.

What occurs to me, however, is that there are two separate places you’ll get to. If you master formal learning and performance support (and while that’s the only thing many L&D groups do, there’re far fewer that do it well), you’re only going to support execution. While that used to be ok for a time when we could plan in advance, the increasing turbulence in markets – product cloning happening in weeks, information tsunamis, etc – means that even optimal execution alone isn’t going to be a differentiator.

What’s going to be needed is continual innovation, and that simply won’t, can’t, come from formal learning. It’s not even going to come from performance support, which while not full courses, is still designed. What you need to do to get continual innovation going is communication and collaboration. The myth of individual innovation is busted, and it’s talking together, and more importantly working together, that is going to lead to the new ideas, better processes, optimized systems, and more. Creativity, research, problem-solving are at the core, and those don’t come from formal learning.

You do need to have formal learning, don’t get me wrong, but that’s just the ante. The real game is going to come from tapping into the power of your people. You’ll have to create the right culture, get a shared vision, and empower your people with the resources to do the job. It includes the right mindset, skills, and tools. When things are aligned, you’re going to have the important outcomes: problems solved faster, shorter times to new product and service ideas, better customer relationships, and more.

You can figure it out on your own, but if you want to get there faster, you may want to get some help in accelerating your path to this new way of working, the sustainable path to success.

Scaling

26 March 2012 by Clark 5 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was in India for the #EDGEX2012 conference, an adjunct to an existing series of conferences that focus on improving educational opportunities in India. Speakers included George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, Jay Cross, GrÃ¡inne Conole, Les Foltos, and Martin Weller, as well as a host of Indian experts.

They introduced us to the context the night before the conference, with a series of presentations indicating the scope of the issue. One fact kept recurring; the scope was trying to raise 350-500 million learners. That is, the 150 million discrepancy between those two is just a rounding error – we’re talking hundreds of millions of learners! Of course, this is in a country where power outages are common if you are lucky to have electricity at all, internet access can be dodgy at best, and smartphones are not ubiquitous.

Not surprisingly, the MOOC models that Siemens et al use, as well as the Stanford model, are of interest, seeing as how they are designed to be open to large numbers of learners. Downes reviewed the potential problems of their model of MOOCs in his presentation including the issues I had raised.

However, there are ways to address my concerns. Inge de Waard, in a MOOC presentation at the just completed Learning Solutions conference, indicated how she boosted success by supporting learning in such environments with some rubrics about how to deal with the information quantity, which addresses one of my concerns.

She also did have give them an (optional) activity, which I think is also important. This, I think, is the strong point of the Stanford model. I think a collaborative activity-focused, and well-facilitated discussion augmented MOOC could be a viable learning experience even for those not possessed of well-developed self-learning skills. I also think it could help develop those learning skills.

However, as one of the attendees asked me, how do you scale it? We are talking a lot of mentors. What occurred to me as a model was the notion of viral propagation. The way things go big fast is to spread to others who spread to others. It seems to me that a big opportunity is to not just train the trainer, but train the trainer’s trainer.

I would think that you could select some elite facilitators, and start a viral MOOC on discussion facilitation (noting the problem that such a topic needs a topic). Then those facilitators would be trained to develop other facilitators to develop other facilitators. Lots of other things would have to be put in place: jobs, for one, and some infrastructure, as at least some of these facilitators would need to be dispersed locally. But as de Waard noted, her course (on mobile learning) was able to be participated in via a wide mechanism of means, including cell phones.

And it seemed to many of us that the focus could be not just on meeting the job categories that are estimated to be needed, but also on employability and creativity, meta-learning as a layer on top. Others were concerned that learning to learn doesn’t mean much until you have a job (what’s more important, entrepreneurial spirit or a toilet?), but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

There are big challenges ahead for India, but as was pointed out, the country is in the midst of a shift in many ways, not least spirit. Many inspiring entrepreneurs showed amazing energy and ability, and while there was still extreme poverty on display, the opportunities are also immense. Here’s to lifting the human spirit, and the conditions for a better life for all.

Erik Wahl #LSCon Mindmap

22 March 2012 by Clark 1 Comment

It’s hard to capture Erik Wahl’s dynamic presentation at the Learning Solutions conference (e.g. he painted three separate artworks during the presentation as music videos played). Still…:

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