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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

The GPS and EPSS

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It’s not unknown for me to enter my name into a drawing for something, if I don’t mind what they’re doing with it.   It’s almost unknown, however, for me to actually win, but that’s actually the case a month or so ago when I put a comment on a blog prior to the MacWorld show, and won a copy of Navigon turn-by-turn navigation software for my iPhone.   I’d thought a dedicated one might be better, though I’d have to carry two devices, but if I moved from an iPhone to Droid or Pre I’d suffer. But for free…

When I used to travel more (and that’s starting again), I’ve usually managed to get by with Google Maps: put in my desired location (so glad they finally put copy/paste in, such a no-brainer rather than have to write it elsewhere and type it on, or remember, usually imperfectly).   In general, maps are a great cognitive augment, a tool we’ve developed to be very useful.   And I’m pretty good with directions (thankfully), so when a trip went awry it wasn’t too bad.   (Though upper New Jersey…well, it can get scary.)   Still, I’d been thinking seriously about getting a GPS, and then I won one!

And I’m happy to report that Navigon is pretty darn cool.   At first the audio was too faint, but then I found out that upping the iPod volume (?) worked.   (And then it didn’t the last time, at all, with no explanation I can find.   Wish it used the darn volume buttons. We’ll see next time. ) However, it does a fabulous job of displaying where you are, what’s coming up, and recalculating if you’ve made a mistake.   It’s a battery hog, keeping the device on all the time, but that’s why we have charging holders (which I’d already acquired for long trips and music).   It also takes up memory, keeping the maps onboard the device (handy if you’re in an area with bad network coverage), but that’s not a problem for me.

However, my point here is not to extol the virtues of a GPS, but instead to use them as a model for some optimum performance support, as an EPSS (Electronic Performance Support System).   There’s a problem with maps in a real-time performance situation. This goes back to my contention that the major role of mlearning is accessorizing our brain.   Memorizing a map of a strange place is not something our brains do well.   We can point to the right address, and in familiar places choose between good roads, but the cognitive overhead is too high for a path of many turns in unfamiliar territories.   To augment the challenge, the task is ‘real time’, in that you’re driving and have to make decisions within a limited window of recognition.   Also, your attention has to be largely outside the vehicle, directed towards the environment. And to cap it all of, the conditions can be dark, and visibility obscured by inclement weather.   All told, navigation can be challenging.

While the optimal solution is a map-equipped partner sitting ‘shot-gun’, a GPS has been designed to be the next best thing (and in some ways superior).   It has the maps, knows the goal, and often more about certain peculiarities of the environment than a map-equipped but similarly novice partner.   A GPS also typically does not get it’s attention distracted when it should be navigating.   It can provide voice assistance while you’re driving, so you don’t need to look at the device when your attention needs to be on the road, but at safe moments it can display useful guidance about lanes to be in (and avoid) visually, without requiring much screen real estate.

And that’s a powerful model to generalize from: what is the task, what are our strengths and limitations, and what is the right distribution of task between device and individual?   What information can a device glean from the immediate and networked environment, from the user, and then provide the user, either onboard or networked?   How can it adapt to a changing state, and continue to guide performance?

Many years ago, Don Norman talked about how you could sit in pretty much any car and know how to drive it, since the interface had time to evolve to a standard.   The GPS has similarly evolved in capabilities to a useful standard.   However, the more we know about how our brains work, the more we can predetermine what sort of support is likely to be useful.   Which isn’t to say that we still won’t need to trial and refine, and use good principles of design across the board, interface, information architecture, minimalism, and more.   We can, and should, be thinking about meeting organizational performance, not just learning needs.   Memorizing maps isn’t necessarily going to be as useful as having a map, and knowing how to read it.   What is the right breakdown between human and tool in your world, for the individuals you want to perform to their best?   What’s their EPSS?

And on a personal note, it’s nice to have the mobile learning manuscript draft put to bed, and be able to get back into blogging and more. A touch of the flu has delayed my ability to think again, but now I’m ready to go.   And off I go to the Learning Solutions conference in Orlando, to talk mobile, deeper learning, and more.   The conference will both interfere with blogging and provide fodder as well.   If you’re there, please do say hello.

Some accumulated thoughts…

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I have had my head down cranking out the manuscript for my mobile learning book. The deadline for the first draft is breathing down my neck, and I’ve been quite busy with some client work as well.   The proverbial one-armed paper hanger comes to mind.

However, that does not mean my mind has been idle.   Far from, actually.   It’s just not been possible   to find the time to do the thoughts justice.   I’m not really going to here, either, but I do want to toss out some recent thoughts and see what resonates with you, so these are mini-blogs (not microblogging):

A level above

I have long argued that we don’t use mental models enough in our learning, and also that we focus too much on knowledge and not enough on skills.   As I   think about developing learning, I want to equip learners to be able to regenerate the approach they should be using if they forget some part of it, and can if they have been given a conceptual model as relationships that guide the application to a problem.

I realize I want to go further, however.   Given the rate of change of things these days, and the need to empower learners to go beyond just what is presented (moving from training to education, in a sense), I think we need to go further to facilitate the transition from ‘dependent’ learning to independent and interdependent learning, as my colleague Harold Jarche so nicely puts it.

To do that, I think we need to take our presentation of the model a little bit further.   I think we need to look at, as a goal, having presented the learning in such a way that our learners understand the concept not only to regenerate, but maintain, extend, and self-improve.   Yes, it is some extra work, but I think that is going to be critical. It will not only be the role of the university (despite Father Guido), but also the workplace. It’s not quite clear what that means practically, but I definitely want to put this stake into the ground to start thinking about it.   What are your thoughts?

More on the iPad and the Publishing marketplace

I’ve already posted on the iPad, but I want to go on a little longer.   First, the good news: OmniGroup has announced that they’ll be porting OmniGraffle (and their other apps) to the iPad.   Yay!   I *really* like their diagramming tool (where do you think I come up with all those graphics?).

On the other hand, I had lunch the other day with Joe Miller, who is the VP of Tech for Linden Labs.   He recently was talking about the iPad and really sees it as a game changer in ways that are subtle and insightful.   As we talked, he really feels that the whole Flash thing is a big mistake: that one of the things you would use the iPad for is surfing the web, and that more than 75% of the web runs Flash.   It does seem like a relatively small thing to let hang up a major play.

Further, as I said earlier, I think interactivity is the   major opportunity for publishers to go beyond the textbook on eReaders, and the iPad could lead the way.   But right now, Flash is the lingua franca of interactivity on the web, and without it, there’s not an obvious fallback that won’t require rewriting across platforms instead of write-once, run anywhere.

Joe did point me to an interesting new eReader proposal, by Ray Kurzweil of all people.   Oddly, it’s Windows-only, so not quite sure the relevance to the Mac (tho’ you’d think they’d port it over with alacrity), but a free, more powerful eReader platform could have a big impact.

Lots of more interesting things on the way, after I get this draft off to the publisher and get back into the regular blogging swing. ‘Til then, take care,   and keep up the dialog!

How I became a learning experience designer

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Not meaning this to be a sudden spate of reflectiveness, given my last post on my experience with the web, but Cammy Bean has asked when folks became instructional designers, and it occurs to me to capture my rather twisted path with a hope of clarifying the filters I bring in thinking about design.

It starts as a kid; as Cammy relates, I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be a learning designer.   Besides a serious several years being enchanted with submarines (still am, in theory, but realized I probably wouldn’t get along with the Navy for my own flaws), I always wanted to have a big desk covered with cool technology, exploring new ideas.     I wasn’t a computer geek back then (the computer club in high school sent off programs to the central office to run and received the printout a day or so later), but rather a science geek, reading Popular Science and spending hours on the floor looking at the explanatory diagrams in the World Book (I’m pretty clearly a visual conceptual learner :).   And reading science fiction. I did have a bit of an applied bent, however, with a father who was an engineer and could fix anything, who helped my brother and I work on our cars and things.

When I got to UCSD (just the right distance from home, and near the beach), my ambition to be a marine biologist was extinguished as the bio courses were both rote-memorization and cut-throat pre-med, neither of which inspired me (my mom was an emergency room nurse, and I realized early on that I wasn’t cut out for blood and gore).   I took some computer science classes with a buddy and found I could do the thinking (what with, er, distractions, I wasn’t the most diligent student, but I still managed to get pretty good grades).   I also got a job tutoring calculus, physics, and chemistry with the campus office for some extra cash, and took some learning classes. I also got interested in artificial intelligence, too, and was a bit of a groupie around how we think, and really cool applications of technology.

I somehow got the job of computer support for the tutoring office, and that’s when a light went on about the possibilities of computers supporting learning.   There wasn’t a degree program in place, but I found out my college allowed you to specify your own major and I convinced Provost Stewart and two advisors (Mehan & Levin) to let me create my own program.   Fortunately, I was able to leverage the education classes I’d taken for tutoring, the computer science classes I’d also taken, and actually got out faster than any program I’d already dabbled in! (And got to do that cool ’email for classroom discussion’ project with my advisors, in 1979!)

After calling around the country trying to find someone who needed a person interesting in computers for learning, I finally got hooked up with Jim Schuyler, who had just started a company doing computer games to go along with textbook publisher’s offerings.   I eventually managed to hook DesignWare up with Spinnaker to do a couple of home games for them before Jim had DesignWare start producing it’s own home games (I got to do two cool ones, FaceMaker and Spellicopter as well as several others).

However, I had a hankering to go back to graduate school and get an advanced degree.   As I wrestled with how to design the interfaces for games, I read an article calling for a ‘cognitive engineering’, and contacted the author about where I might study this.   Donald Norman ended up letting me study with him.

The group was largely focused on human-computer interaction, but I maintained my passion for learning solutions.   I did a relatively mainstream PhD but while focusing on the general cognitive skill of analogical reasoning, I also attempted an intervention to improve the reasoning.

Though it was a cognitive group, I was eclectic, and looked at every form of learning.   In addition to the cognitive theories that were in abundance, I took and TA’d for the behavioral learning courses.   David Merrill was visiting nearby, and graciously allowed me to visit him for a discussion (as well as reading Reigeluth’s edited overview of instructional design theories).   Michael Cole was a big fan of Vygotsky, and I was steeped in the social learning theories thereby.   David Rumelhart and Jay McClelland were doing the connectionist/PDP work while I was a student, so I got that indoctrination as well.   And, as an AI groupie, I even looked at machine learning!

I subsequently did a postdoc at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center, where I was further steeped in cognitive learning theory, before heading off to UNSW to teach interaction design and start doing my own research, which ended up being very much applied, essentially an action- or design-research approach.   My subsequent activities have also been very much applications of a broad integration of learning theory into practical yet innovative design.

The point being, I never formally considered myself an instructional designer so much as a learning designer.   Having worked on non-formal education in many ways, as well as teaching in higher education, my applications have crossed formal instruction and informal learning.   As the interface design field was very much exploring   subjective experiences at the time I was a graduate student, and from my game design experience, I very naturally internalized a focus on engaging learning, believing that learning can, and should, be hard fun.

I’ve synthesized the eclectic frameworks into a coherent learning design model that I can apply across technologies, and strongly believe that a solid grounding in conceptual frameworks combined with experiences that span a range of technologies and learning outcomes is the best preparation for a flexible ability to design experiences that are effective and engaging. Passionate as I am about learning, I do think we could do a better job of providing the education that’s needed to help make that happen, and still look for ways to try to help others learn (one of my employees once said that working with me was like going to grad school, and I do try to educate clients, in addition to running workshops and continuing to speak).

And, I’ve ended up, as I dreamed of, with a desk covered with cool technology and I get to explore new ideas: designing solutions that integrate the cutting edge of devices, tools, models, frameworks, all to help people achieve their goals.   I continue to think ahead about what new possibilities are out there, and work to improve what’s happening.     I love learning experience design (and the associated strategic thinking to make it work), believe there’s at least some evidence that I do it pretty well, and hope to keep doing it myself and helping others do it better.   Who’s up for some hard fun?

Microcourses?

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In the conversation with Kris Rockwell of Hybrid Learning I mentioned previously, we talked about the definition of mobile learning.   We both agreed that it wasn’t about loading your average asynchronous elearning course onto the phone, and that it was more about performance support.   Brevity is the soul of mobile, as well as wit.   And I also am happy to think of mobile as an augment to formal learning: reactivating knowledge, distributing practice, contextualizing learning, and even performance capture.   But then we came to the ‘grey’ area of so-called microcourses.

I have mentioned the possibility in the past, sort of on faith rather than having thought through the actual design.   Kris mentioned cited a colleague who talks about “2 minute courses” (which I can’t find on the interweb), but I really have to wonder what it might really mean.   What learning objectives could we meet that way?   I can see small chunks of content delivery, but that’s more learning augment than course.

To me, a full course has to have an introduction to reactivate relevant knowledge, a model presented to guide performance, an example that shows how the concept gets applied in context, and a chance to practice applying the concept to another context.   Finally, some post-practice reflection and   closing of the learning experience should occur.

If it’s less than that, e.g. the learner’s primed because it’s in the moment, the information is pared down to the minimum to successfully get the learner past the immediate point, it’s performance support.   Or, if the learner’s motivated and receptive already, and it’s just an information update, not a new skill, then again I don’t think of it as a course.

On the other hand, it may be that just a rethink of something they’ve been doing, a ‘tuning’ of an approach, could make sense.   Or, perhaps, regular mini-presentations and small practices of a different way to look at the same thing.   Though that might be distributed learning, not a mini-course, which would be OK.

So I’m okay if it’s just a semantic thing, and we’re talking learning augment or performance support.   And, I’m willing to think there might be limited learning topics that a quick cartoon, a simple model, an illustrated example (comic strip, brief animation), and a single practice (read: multiple choice question) with feedback that’s also a summary might work.   But none are springing to mind.

So, are there cases you can think of that would qualify?   Is microlearning for real?

The Great eLearning Garbage Vortex

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Norbert Hockenberry here, reporting on a giant floating patch of elearning that has recently been discovered.  Like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this has been created by discarded material being gathered by oceanic currents into a giant mess.

Unlike the Pacific patch, this isn’t an environmental disaster so much as a economic and social catastrophe.  The waste of organizational resources, and learner time, is tragic.  Seldom has so much been done, for so many, for so little gain.

What is the cause of this mess?  Two main things: bad design, and mismanagement.

Bad Design

First, bad design means that the content has no actual impact on performance.  Typically, it’s delivered too far away from the time of need, and not reinforced, so it’s liable to have been forgotten when needed.

Even if it is available, it probably won’t get activated.  The content is usually developed as a knowledge dump and recitation, which is well-known to lead to ‘inert knowledge’.  Truly, a pathetic misuse of resources.

Mismanagement

Good content development practices also imply content management and governance.  Too often we see neither.

Content isn’t well articulated, starting from the objectives, and the development isn’t carefully articulated within a curriculum let alone across the curriculum, so consequently the content is limited in reuse and repurposing. Often, it can’t even be found for updating!  So, when information changes, the content is tossed away.

The flip-side is similar: content that has reached it’s ‘use by’ date isn’t culled from the available contents, and hangs around, making it hard for more useful content to live a full life.  Without content management and governance, content lies around in limbo, rather than be properly recycled or composted.

What can be done?

The clear implication is to start with proper content management up front, following good design principles, and establishing governance across the policy.  Content shouldn’t be developed without a clear view of it’s lifecycle and planned processes for getting maximum advantage and then disposing of it in appropriate ways.

This is Norbert Hockenberry, asking you to help prevent such disasters, and invest wisely in content development. Start with a focus on meaningful impacts, have a development process that supports good design, and has a clear intention about how to develop, access, and make content available for the learner.  Responsibly reuse, update, or appropriately dismiss content that is no longer functional in it’s current state.  It’s just being responsible!

Creating meaningful experiences

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What if the learner’s experience was ‘hard fun’: challenging, but engaging, yielding a desirable experience, not just an event to be tolerated, OR what is learning experience design?

Can you imagine creating a ‘course’ that wins raving fans?   It’s about designing learning that is not only effective but seriously engaging.   I believe that this is not only doable, but doable under real world constraints.

Let me start with this bit of the wikipedia definition of experience design:

the practice of designing…with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience…, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality

That is, experience design is about creating a user experience, not just focusing on their goals, but thinking about the process as well.     And that’s, to me, what is largely ignored in creating elearning is thinking about process from the learner’s perspective. There are really two components: what we need to accomplish, and what we’d like the learner to experience.

Our first goal still has to look at the learning need, and identify an objective that we’d like learners to meet, but even that we need to rethink.   We may have constraints on delivery environment, resources, and more that we have to address as well, but that’s not the barrier.   The barrier is the mistake of focusing on knowledge-level objectives, not on meaningful skill change.   Let me be very clear: one of the real components of creating a learning experience is ensuring that we develop, and communicate, a learning objective that the learner will ‘get’ is important and meaningful to them.   And we have to take on the responsibility for making that happen.

Then, we need to design an experience that accomplishes that goal, but in a way that yields a worthwhile experience.   I’ve talked before about the emotional trajectory we might want the learner to go through.   It should start with a (potentially wry) recognition that this is needed, some initial anxiety but a cautious optimism, etc.   We want the learner to gradually develop confidence in their ability, and even some excitement about the experience and the outcome.   We’d like them to leave with no anxiety about the learning, and a sense of accomplishment.   There are a lot of components I’ve talked about along the way, but at core it’s about addressing motivation, expectations, and concerns.

Actually, we might even shoot for more: a transformative experience, where the learner leaves with an awareness of a fundamental shift in their understanding of the world, with new perspectives and attitudes to accompany their changed vocabulary and capabilities.   People look for those in many ways in their life; we should deliver.

This does not come from applying traditional instructional design to an interview with a SME (or even a Subject Matter Network, as I’m increasingly hearing and inclined to agree).   As I defined it before, learning design is the intersection of learning, information, and experience design.   It takes a broad awareness of how we learn, incorporating viewpoints behavior, cognitive, constructive, connective, and more.   It takes an awareness of how we experience: media effects on cognition and emotion, and of the dramatic arts.   And most of all, it takes creativity and vision.

However, that does not mean it can’t be developed reliably and repeatably, on a pragmatic basis.     It just means you have to approach it anew.   It take expertise, and a team with the requisite complementary skill sets, and organizational support. And commitment.   What will work will depend on the context and goals (best principles, not best practices), but I will suggest that with good content development processes, a sound design approach, and a will to achieve more than the ordinary.   This is doable on a scalable basis, but we have to be willing to take the necessary steps.   Are you ready to take your learning to the next level, and create experiences?

Who authorizes the authority?

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As a reaction to my eLearnMag editorial on the changing nature of the educational publishing market, Publish or Perish, a colleague said: “There is a tremendous opportunity in the higher ed publishing market for a company that understands what it means to design and deliver engaging, valuable, and authentic customer experiences–from content to services to customer service and training.”

I agree, but it triggered a further thought. When we go beyond delivering content as a component of a learning experience, and start delivering learning experiences, are we moving from publisher to education provider?   And if so, what are the certification processes?

Currently, institutions are accredited by accrediting bodies.   Different bodies accredit different things.   There are special accrediting bodies (a.g. AACSB or ACBSP for business[2?], ABET for applied science).   In some cases, there are just regional accreditation bodies (e.g. WASC).     There’s overlap, in that a computer science school might want to align with ABET, and yet the institution has to be accredited by, say, WASC.

And I think this is good, in that having groups working to oversee specific domains can be responsive to changing demands, and general accreditation to oversee ongoing process.   I recall in the past, this latter was largely about ensuring that there were regular reviews and specific improvement processes, almost an ISO 9001 approach. However, are they really able to keep up?   Are they in touch with new directions?   The recent scandals around business school curricula seem to indicate some flaws.

On the other hand, who needs accreditation?   We still have corporate universities, they don’t seem to need to be accredited except by their organization, though sometimes they partner with institutions to deliver accredited programs. And many people provide coaching services, and workshops.   There are even certificates for workshops which presumably depend on the quality of the presenter, and sometimes some rigor around the process to ensure that there’s feedback going on so that continuing education credits can be earned.

My point is, the standards vary considerably, but when do you cross the line? Presumably, you can’t claim outcomes that aren’t legitimate (“we’ll raise your IQ 30 points” or somesuch), but otherwise, you can sell whatever the market will bear.   And you can arrange to be vetted by an independent body, but that’s problematic from a cost and scale perspective.

Several issues arise from this for me.   Say you wanted to develop some content (e.g. deeper instructional design, if you’re concerned like me about the lack of quality in elearning).   You could just put it out there, and make it available for free, if you’ve the resources.   Otherwise, you could try to attach a pricetag, and see if anyone would pay.   However, what if you really felt it was a definitive suite of content, the equivalent of a Master’s course in Instructional Technology?   You could sell it, but you couldn’t award a degree even if you had the background and expertise to make a strong claim that it’s a more rigorous degree than some of those offered by accredited institutions, and more worthwhile.

The broader question, to me, is what is the ongoing role of accreditation?   I’ve argued that the role of universities, going forward, will likely be to develop learning to learn skills. So, post your higher ed experience (which really should be accomplished K12, but that’s another rant), you should be capable of developing your own skills.   If you’ve developed your own learning abilities, and believe you’ve mastered an area, I guess you really only need to satisfy your current or prospective employer.

On the other hand, an external validation certainly makes it easier to evaluate someone rather than the time-intensive process of evaluation by yourself.   Maybe there’s a market for much more focused evaluations, and associated content?

So, will we see broader diversity of acceptable evaluations, more evaluation of the authorial voice of any particular learning experience, a lifting of the game by educational institutions, or a growing   market of diverse accreditation (“get credit for your life experience” from the Fly By Night School of Chicanery)?

Zimmerman Keynote Mindmap DevLearn 09

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Eric Zimmerman spoke eloquently on games as the second day keynote at DevLearn.   In it, he talked about how systems thinking was important, how games are systems of rules and consequently develop systems thinking.   He talked about how our play brings meaning to the rules, and that creating spaces of possible outcomes allow us to explore.

He ended up advocating that we design for possibilities of unexpected outcomes to create meaning for our learners.   Cammy Bean has blogged the presentation too.

ZimmermanDevLearnMindMap

Engaging Learning

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How do you systematically design learning experiences that effectively engage the learner?

This was the question I set out to address more than 5 years ago.   Based upon years of deep investigation into learning & instruction theories and design processes, and practical experience in designing games, I wrote Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games.

The book was based upon work I’d published as an academic, but was focused very pragmatically.   There were already a few books out about the value of computer games to support learning, notably Marc Prensky’s prescient Digital Game-Based Learning, and Clark Aldrich’s Games and the Future of Learning was also already out.   Subsequently, books by Gee, Shaffer, and others have highlighted the opportunities.

However, I thought and think that my book had a unique contribution, being quite specific around:

  • the principles that underpin why games are the best learning
  • how to modify your design processes to successfully design games

Having looked at the books out there, I still feel it does the best job of making the case.

ElementsAt core was an alignment between what makes effective learning practice, and what makes engaging experiences.   Looking across educational theories, repeated elements emerge. Similarly with experience design.   It turns that they perfectly align.   If you recognize that, and can execute against it, your learning will be greater than the sum of the parts, and will both seriously engage and truly educate.   Learning can, and should, be hard fun!

The workshops I’ve run based upon the book have been very well received, reinforcing the value of the book.   Similarly, the content has been solicited as a component of both Silberman’s Handbook of Experiential Learning, and the Guild’s Immersive Learning Simulation report.   I’ve now heard Tony O’Driscoll talk about the design principles for learning experiences in Virtual Worlds (in his and Karl Kapp’s coming book on the topic), and they’re the same principles!

So why hasn’t the book penetrated corporate learning more than it has?   There are several contributing factors.   First, the work I published as an academic didn’t hit the mainstream.   I was part of the international society on computers, and a member of the group specifically about learning through computers (IFIP WG 3.3). They’d just started their own journal, and I wanted to support it (and get a publication). In retrospect, it would’ve been better to publish in one of the more recognized journals on the topic.   As I was overseas, the work never hit the US academic awareness.

Second, I didn’t really understand book marketing then, and trusted that the publisher did.   At the time, they weren’t very pro-active in developing a joint understanding of responsibility (that’s changed), and my book fell through their cracks (and I’m not a marketing person).   (Still, I’m going to be a bit more proactive on the mobile learning book, and they have promised likewise.)

I still firmly believe that the book is the best guide to designing meaningful learning experiences that are centered on deep practice, and a guide for everything from better multiple choice questions to full on simulation-driven serious games.   I’ve tracked the rest of the books out there, and they do a good job of arguing why games are a powerful learning environment, why they make business sense, and more.   However, Engaging Learning is still the best book out there that tells designers how to go about making them.   Sure, I recommend having the workshop to actually get a chance to practice the skills (you know, get your whole team to lift their game), but many who have read it have told me they found value in the book on it’s own.

I don’t say this to generate sales; I get so little it’s not going to make a difference.   I say this because I really worked hard to ensure there is a lot of value in it for you.   I’m just trying to make sure there’s better learning out there, and there’s a lot more need than I can service individually.   There are other good books, Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning being one, but my book focuses specifically on helping you make more meaningful practice, and that’s a big area of needed improvement, and a major opportunity in making your learning more meaningful.

Please, wherever you draw inspiration, however you figure it out, make more engaging learning. Align the elements of effective practice and the elements of engaging experiences, and make your learning rock. For your learners’ sake, please!

Convenience vs Context

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What are the real opportunities in mobile learning?

One of the several sessions I’m doing at DevLearn next week (in addition to a pre-conference workshop with Jay Cross, a mobile development session with Richard Clark, and another session on the future of orgnanizational learning) is a mobile learning design introduction.   In thinking through it, I reflected on a distinction I make between convenience and contextualization, and as usual I got into diagramming as a way to get a handle on it.

ContextConvenienceI’ve argued before that mobile is not really about learning, but about performance support.   That said, there are roles for mobile in courses, either as a learning augment or even microcourses (but not putting a whole elearning course on a mobile device).   In talking about mobile, I distinguish between convenience and context.

Convenience is when you access content at a time that’s not at work but you have free.   So, listening to a podcast while commuting, or viewing a video while waiting in the queue at the grocery store, both would qualify. So would doing a little quiz while waiting for your flight, or reading a document on that flight.

Contextualization, on the other hand, is much more specific.   Here, you’re doing something relevant to where you are. In performance support, this is a huge opportunity: providing location specific information (about this device, or this client), or event-based support (providing a quick reference sheet for a negotiation, having a reflection session afterward).

Even for learning, however, there could be specific location information (“this is where X happened”, or “an application of Y is seen here, where…”).   That can be enacted by the device sensing location (GPS, RFID, etc), or by actively reading a location marker (cf QR code).   Similarly, event information could be provided (“for your review meeting, remember to focus on the behavior, not the individual”).

The point is that while convenience is a win, contextualized information is the big win.   It takes a bit more design, but by doing it systemically, the opportunities for really relevant learning are definitely worth considering.