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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Layered Learning

8 November 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

Last week, I posted about a model where a system could provide a sage who looks at the events of your life and provides support.  I want to elaborate that model by looking at it in a different way.

The notion here is that you have events in your life, across the bottom. And you have some learning goals, e.g. to learn about project management, and about running meetings.  You might get some initial content about those two goals, but then let’s focus on developing that learning over time.

The events in your life give you a chance to use them as learning experiences, not just performance opportunities.  If there are not enough in your life, you might have interstitial activities (those in dashed lines), but you can be developed across learning goals abcd, and uvwxyz, both through delivered experiences, and with learning wrapped around real experiences.

Expanding an event into some actionsLet me make that latter clearer.  Say you’ve got some event like project work, and an associated learning goal (e.g. concept ‘d’ in a curricula).  A system could see the calendar entry for the project work and, through tagging or other semantic means, recognize the relationship with learning goal ‘d’.  Then, some relevant activation and concept material might precede the event, an aid could appear during, and either a self-evaluation metric or a connection to a live person could happen afterward.  Delivered, for instance, through mobile devices.

The goal is to use the events in your life as learning opportunities as much as possible (or preferable).  We can also mix in some simulated practice (e.g an alternate reality game) if it’s not occurring at a sufficient rate in real life, but the goal is to match the learning development plan to the rate at which we effectively learn.  And, to be clear, we do not  learn effectively by a one-off knowledge dump and a quiz, as much of what we do actually works out to be.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have the magic, the sufficiently advanced technology Arthur C. Clarke talked about, to hand.  We should start using it to develop us towards our goals in appropriate ways.  The opportunity is there; who’s ready to seize it?

Sage at the Side

1 November 2011 by Clark 13 Comments

A number of years ago, I wrote an article  (PDF) talking about how we might go beyond our current ‘apart’ learning experiences.  The notion is what I call ‘layered learning’, where we don’t send you away from your life to go attend a learning event, but instead layer it around the events in  your life. This is very much part of what I’ve been calling slow learning, and a recent conversation has catalyzed and crystalized that thought.

A 'personal mentor' model

Think about the sort of ideal learning experience you might have.  As you traverse the ‘rocky road’ of life, imagine having a personal coach who would observe the situation, understand the context of the task and the desired goal, and could provide some aid (from some sack of resources) that could assist you in immediate performance.  Your performance would improve.

Let’s go further. This sage, moreover, could draw from some curricula (learning trajectories) and prepare you beforehand and guide reflection afterward so that real performance event now becomes a learning opportunity as well, helping you understand why  this particular approach makes sense, how to adapt it, and more.  In this way, the sage moves from performance coach to learning mentor.

One step further would be to have learning trajectories not only about the domain (e.g. engineering) but also about quality, management, learning, and more.  So learners could be developed as learners, and as persons, not just as performers.

Now this would be ideal, but individual mentors don’t scale very well.  But here’s the twist: we can build this.  We can have curricula, learning objects, and build a sage via rules that can do this.  Imagine going through your workday with a device (e.g. an app phone or a small tablet) that knows what you’re doing (from your calendar), which triggers content to be served up before, during, and after tasks, that develops you over time.  We can build the tutor,  develop and access the curricula and content, deliver it, track it.

I hope this is clear.  There are other ways to think about this, and I’ll see if I can’t capture them in some way; stay tuned.  The limitations are no longer the technology, the limits are between our ears.  Reckon?

Book Review Pointer

21 October 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

In case you didn’t see it, eLearn Mag has posted my book review of Mark Warschauer’s insightful book, Learning in the Cloud.  To quote myself:

This is … a well-presented, concise, and documented presentation of just what is needed to make a working classroom, and how technology helps.

As one more teaser, let me provide the closing paragraph:

The ultimate message, however, is that this book is important, even crucial reading. This is a book that every player with a stake in the game needs to read: teachers, administrators, parents, and politicians. And not to put too delicate a point on it, this is what I think should be our next “man in the moon” project; implementing these ideas comprehensively, as a nation. He’s given us the vision, now it is up to us to execute.

I most strongly urge you, if you care about schooling, to read the book, and then promote the message.

Three core foundations for online learning

4 October 2011 by Clark 7 Comments

The wise Ellen Wagner has a neat post about what should be the ‘ten commandments’ of online learning.  I agree with them, and recommend them to  you.  I have thought about it in a slightly different, but similar frame.

I came up with this as I was trying to suggest what the core value propositions (yeah, I said it, deal with it) of an online offering should be.  And I tried to frame it the way I thought Steve Jobs might:

  • An absolutely killer learning experience
  • We don’t just develop your understanding, we develop you
  • We’re your partner for your success

What I mean by a killer learning experience is one that is engaging and  effective, ie all the principles of Engaging Learning. It’s a pedagogy that’s challenging, meaningful, relevant, tightly coupled, and more. It’s also social, having you learn with others, not just on your own.

Developing the person means not only developing their knowledge of the topic, their degree, but also their success factors. That includes things like helping them develop a portfolio of work, developing skills in working with others, communicating, etc.  In essence, layered on top of the domain knowledge are 21st century skills, which are likely to be the only lasting value you can provide learners (c.f. Father Guido Sarducci’s 5 Minute University).

And finally, it’s about not just providing the content and having the learner sink or swim, but instead actively looking at the learner’s performance, finding ways to scaffold the learning and being attentive to signals of potential trouble.  It’s data-driven adaptivity to the individual learner, coupled optimally with human intervention.  And competency-based, so the learner has clear indications of what they need to do.

We can do this, on a cost-effective basis, and I reckon it’s going to be the only sustainable differentiator to be a successful provider.  The only question then becomes: who’s going to bring it all together?  The market is waiting.

Quinnovation ‘to go’

27 September 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

The travel schedule is booting up again, and I’ll be hither and yon speaking about this and that for a good part of the coming two months. More specifically:

  • From 2-3 Oct I’ll be running a two day elearning strategy  workshop at Learning 3.0 in Chicago.  If you want to get above the individual tactics and see how the pieces fit together, and work on a plan for you and your org, I hope to see you there.  Then on Tuesday the 4th, I’ll be talking about creating Engaging Learning.
  • Then, on 12 Oct in Laguna Niguel at the CLO Fall Symposium, I’ll be joining with my ITA colleagues Jay Cross and Jane Hart to talk about controversial issues for CLOs.  This will be fun and worthwhile, as we will be aiming at some sacred cows.
  • It’s off to Las Vegas at the beginning of November for DevLearn, where I’ll be running a mobile learning strategy session on the the 1st.  If you want to get beyond just designing a one-off, and look at the broader picture of how to make mobile a part of your solution, it’s the place to be.
  • That’s followed by Learning 2011 in Orlando Nov 6-9, where I’ll be hosting an author session for Designing mLearning.
  • I’m still not done, as I head later that week to DC to speak to the local ASTD chapter with a talk on mobile learning and a social learning workshop.  That latter will talk about both formal and  informal learning, as well as looking at the different tools.
  • And, to cap it off, I’ll be presenting at the Canadian Society for Training & Development’s annual conference in Toronto on Friday the 18th of November, looking forward and more broadly at the role of learning in the organization.

That may seem  like a lot (and it is), but traveling on only one continent will seem easy after this past May-August ;).  I hope to see you at one or more of these learning events!

Cognitive Task Analysis

19 September 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

While I argue strongly for stepping away more frequently from formally structured learning, not least because we overuse it, there are times when it is crucial.  As naysayers of informal learning like to point out, you wouldn’t want your pilot or heart surgeon to have picked up the task by reading a book. When performance is critical, you really want to understand what the important elements are, whether to train them or  provide support.

A technique for doing that is Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA).  This is not a shortcut, it’s deep in terms of the knowledge elicitation techniques, the analytical task, and the representation of results.  Based in decades of cognitive research, integrating work on mental models, expertise, and more, it provides a mechanism to try to unearth the tacit understanding experts hold. Because experts compile away their knowledge to the point that they no longer have access to it, it is hard to get at this knowledge, and it takes a rigorous process.

While useful for system design, CTA is also valuable for designing performance support, and training.  The deep elicitation process can derive what the task really is, and what should be in the learner’s head and what support can and should be available.  When I talk about the performance ecosystem, particularly for complex tasks, you want just this sort of support to determine what should be distributed across formal learning and performance support.

One of the problems with CTA is that there have been a number of different approaches, and they tend to be buried in academic papers or proprietary processes. The good news is that there’s now a book about CTA, Working Minds, by Beth Crandall, Gary Klein, & Robert Hoffman, academics and practitioners.  It boils down the divergence into a fairly reasonable set of steps, with techniques that can be used at each stage.  The bad news is, of course, that it still is a daunting read, with considerable depth.

If you’ve got performances that absolutely have to be right, you’ll want to do the analysis ala CTA, and use it to decide what really needs to be in training, checklists, etc.  This goes deeper than HPT even, tho’ I think it’s as weak when it comes to the benefits of social learning, but I reckon it’s for expert *performance*, not innovation. That’s another layer.  Still, a valuable tool in the quiver of supporting performance.

Please at least understand what CTA is, and know when you need it. You may not need to be an expert in it, but you should at least be aware.

Meaningful processing

14 September 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

Sometimes I worry about the myths that are out there about learning.  Ok, to be honest I worry about them a lot. Learning styles, generational differences, digital natives, the list goes on. But one that has personally been surfacing a lot is the type of activity that leads to meaningful learning.  So it’s time for me to lay it out, for the record.

I’ve talked previously about social processing, so I’m going to focus specifically on individual processing.  And, realize, my goals are not the ability to recite rote knowledge, but I’ll even address that. Note, by the way, that there are really two types of knowledge (c.f. Van Merriënboer), the things you need and the complex problems you apply them to.  So, first we’ll start with the knowledge you need, and then the problems you apply them to.

To help folks get knowledge down, memorizing the core facts they’ll draw upon in solving complex problems, the main component necessary is reactivating the knowledge.  You need to match the term with the definition, the model with it’s relationships, etc.  Sheer repetition doesn’t help, even here it’s making choices and getting feedback.

So, for instance, coloring a poster with the associated words doesn’t do the necessary processing, you need to activate the necessary concepts with connections to relevant things.  You need to semantically process the terms again and again.  Elaborating them, putting them in context, applying them to simple problems is necessary.  Flash cards work because they require the association task.  Just exposure doesn’t work, even with testing, it’s discrimination from competing alternatives.

Then we get to the application. And frankly, if you’re not having folks learn things to use  them, why are you bothering? That’s why I like Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping, she works backwards from the task and then only focuses on the knowledge necessary to do  the task.  A good heuristic approach that couples elegantly to a principled foundation.  And, as converging theories suggest, you need to be applying knowledge to support the ability to transfer that skill out of the learning experience.

So, you need to be looking at the knowledge to be learned in a more discriminating fashion than just exposure, and you then need to be applying that knowledge to a suite of tasks to support making it useful. There’s more, such as the necessary spread of tasks to support appropriate decontextualization to support transfer, and sufficient and spacing of practice to support retention, but here I just want to emphasize that rote exposure to knowledge doesn’t mean it will be learned, and that learning facts without applying them doesn’t lead to any meaningful outcome.  So can we start focusing on learning activities that generate meaningful processing?  Please?

 

Ownership versus ubiquity

13 September 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

The notion that soon everything will be in the cloud, and we’ll just use an interface surface near us is not new.  The notion is that the technology will recognize you and present your environment, ready for you to accomplish your goals.  This is a nice idea, and I can see it working, but it’s not trivial.

Contrast this to the element that Judy Brown talks about as important component of mobile learning.  For her, mobile devices have to be something you’re familiar with and have with you all the time.  And that, to me, is the sticking point.

With an interface surface you come upon, would you necessarily recognize the different ways the interface would manifest?  You don’t want a big touchscreen (despite Minority Report  imaginings) for very complex work, because the research shows your arms fatigue too quickly. So you might have a keyboard on some devices.  And the variety could be high.  And, yes, it’s your interface, but with all the different possible form-factors, could you make it comprehensible?  And you’re still at the mercy of availability of surfaces (kinda like waiting in line for computers to check email at conferences has been).

Now, I can see having a mobile device and  then using an accessible interface that recognizes you by the device proximity, so you’re not stuck. And I can imagine that it would be possible to make a scalable interface (just not necessarily easy).  I do wonder, however, about some surfaces being so designed for aesthetics that the usability is compromised (c.f. The Design of Everyday Things).

And, particularly for my notion of slow learning  (which I need to augment with ubiquity and personalization – quick, I need a new phrase! :), the ability for a device to be with you may be required to do the teachable moment  thing.  That is, having a context-sensitive device right that at the appropriate place and time may be needed to really develop us in the ways we deserve.

So I don’t take that vision of ubiquitous computing surfaces at face value, I think that there are some reasons why mobile devices may still make sense.  Which isn’t to say there’s not a way, but I’m still holding out for something with  me.

Layering learning

8 September 2011 by Clark 3 Comments

Electronic Performance Support Systems are a fabulous concept, as pioneered by Gloria Gery back in the early 90’s.  The notion is that as you use a system, and have entries or decisions to make, there are tools available that can provide guidance: proactively, intelligently, and context-appropriate.  Now, as I heard the complaint at the time, this would really be just good interface design, but the fact is that many times you have to retrofit assistance on top of a bad design for sad but understandable reasons.

The original were around desktop tasks, but the concept could easily be decoupled from the workplace via mobile devices.  One of my favorite examples is the GPS system: the device knows where you are, and where you want to go (because you told it), and it gives you step by step guidance, even recalculating if you make a change.  Everything from simple checklists to full adaptive help is possible, and I’ve led the design of such systems.

One of the ideas implicit in Gery’s vision, however, that I really don’t  see, is the possibility of having the system not only assist you in performing, but also help you learn. She talked about the idea in her book on the subject, though without elaborating how that would happen, but her examples didn’t really show it and I haven’t seen it in practice in the years since.  Yet the possibility is there.

I reckon it wouldn’t really take much. There is (or should be) a model guiding the decisions about what makes the right step, but that’s often hidden (in our learning as well).  Making that model visible, and showing how it guides the support and recommendations that are made, could be made available as a ‘veneer’ over the system. It wouldn’t have  to be visible, it could just be available at a click or as a preference for those who might want it.

Part of my vision of how to act in the world is to ‘learn out loud’. Well, I think our tools and products could be more explicit about the thinking that went into them, as well.  Many years ago, in HyperCard, you could just use buttons and field, but you could open them up and get deeper into them, going from fixed links to coded responses.  I have thought that a program or operating system could work similarly, having an initial appearance but capable of being explored and customized.  We do this in the real world, choosing how much about something we want to learn (and I still want everyone  who uses a word processor to learn about styles!) about something. Some things we pay someone else to do, other things we want to do ourselves. We learn about some parts of a program, and don’t know about others (it used to be joked that no one knows everything about Unix, I feel the same way about Microsoft Word).

We don’t do enough performance support as it is, but hopefully as we look into it, we consider the possible benefits of supporting the performance with some of the underlying thinking, and generating more comprehension with the associated benefits that brings. It’s good to reflect on learning, and seeing how thinking shapes performance both improves us and can improve our performance as well.

Checklist Manifesto

29 August 2011 by Clark 6 Comments

On the advice of Judy Brown, I picked up The Checklist Manifesto, and I have to say it’s a must-read.  This is a short, well-written, and mind-changing book.  Frankly, it ranks up there with Don Norman‘s Design of Everyday Things, and that’s saying a lot.

Atul Gawande is a medical doctor who’s also an eloquent writer.  In the course of his work he’s become interested in reducing errors, and has looked deeply into how to minimize them.  And he’s had the opportunity to put into practice and test his ideas, refining them until they work. This book documents his explorations, developing a thesis that he recognizes has applicability far beyond medicine.  And that’s important for us, if we care about improving outcomes both professional, personal, and societal.

He breaks up flaws in execution into those where we don’t have knowledge, and those where we make errors despite having the requisite knowledge.  And he explores eloquently how likely the latter are in the real world.  Demonstrably smart  and knowledgeable people, acting in complex situations, regularly make mistakes. Those who have heard me speak about how our minds work know that there’s some randomness built into our system. Frankly, we’re not really good at doing rote tasks.  He doesn’t go into the cognitive architecture, but rather documents it via stories and explanations of complexity.  And he develops a particular approach that is striking in it’s simplicity and powerful in it’s effects.

Not surprisingly, given the title, the solution are checklists.  He has two types, ones that help us execute those rote steps that are critical to success, and another that helps connect us at critical times.  He categorizes, in a way I find reminiscent of Van Merriënboer’s elegant task analysis in terms of the knowledge you need and the complex problems you apply it to, the benefits of both remembering those crucial but empirically overlooked steps and of having people build a quick rapport and share the critical information at critical times.  He illustrates with flight and large-scale architecture examples as well as medical,situations where performance literally is life-or-death.  The clear implication is that if it saves lives there, it can save dollars or more anywhere.

And, refreshingly, he admits you’re not going to get it right the first time, and you need to trial, iterate, and refine again. He recognizes that it must be quick, easy to use, and tuned for the context of use.  This is no quick fix, but it ends up providing small easy changes that actually save time as well as reduce error.  It’s really about performance support, and it’s not complex, and it can work.  It’s also a natural match to mobile delivery, which I’m sure is one of the reasons Judy pointed it out.

This short, eloquent book holds the power to make significant improvements in many fields.  I strongly recommend it.

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