Conference season has commenced. Two are already in the books. Three I know about are coming up, and I’m playing a role in two. So, what’s up, and when? Here’s what I know.

So, first, the Learning Development Accelerator (LDA) is running the Creating a Motivating Work Environment Summit. This is in conjunction with the Center for Self-Determination Theory, so it’s scrutable. I’m not part of this, except as a participant. It follows the usual LDA format: access to videos created by the presenters, followed by live sessions at two different times. The videos are already up, and the live sessions are coming soon, Nov 3 – 7!  It’s all online, which makes it easy to attend, and the live sessions will be recorded. There’s a stellar lineup of speakers, naturally! I’m increasingly finding the value in the theory, so I look forward to the session. Caveat: I’m a Co-Director of the LDA, so I have a vested interest in the success, but I still think it’s of interest (at least to me).

Then, the Learning Guild is holding the next DevLearn conference, and I’ll be doing several things. My Wed is pretty full, as I’m starting by hosting a Morning Buzz on building a learning culture. Hosting isn’t the same as presenting, but instead just facilitating the conversation.  Then I’m presenting on the spacing of learning. I’ve been actively engaged in developing a spaced learning strategy, and will be sharing the key principles from learning science research. As well as what’s not (yet) known! I’ll be signing books right after that at the event bookstore. On Thursday, I’m part of a panel on AI (which will probably be interpreted as Generative AI), and will be my usual critical self ;). Of course, I’ll also be wandering the halls and expo. If you’re there, say hello!

Finally, the LDA is also running our second Learning Science Conference. (If you attended last year, you get a big discount!). It uses the same format asa the Motivation Summit, above, that is with specifically curated content in presentations, and live sessions Dec 8 – 12. It starts 3 Nov, and I’m active in this one too. I’ll again be presenting two sections. The first will be on getting information into, and out of, long-term memory, specifically generative and retrieval practice. I talked about the latter, last year, so I’m refining that (my own understanding evolves as does the field), and adding more on generative. Similarly with social and informal learning, which I’ll be presenting again. That is, I’ll be rehashing the old, and adding a bit new.

There’re new speakers, too. We’ve the honor of having Gale Sinatra and Jim Hewitt, and Rich Mayer will be doing a special session with Ruth Clark. Other presenters include my fellow co-Director, Matt Richter, along with Stella Lee and Nidhi Sachdeva. There’ll be special sessions, such as with Will Thalheimer.  Of course, we’ll have a debate, here with me going head to head with authors Bianca Baumann and Mike Taylor on marketing and motivation.  We also will have a panel with greats Julie Dirksen, Jane Bozarth, and Koreen Pagano. And more.

Sure, there’re lots of ways to get on top of learning science and good design. There’s the Serious eLearning Manifesto, books (e.g. my recommended reading list), blogs (like this one), magazines likeTraining, eLearn, journals, and more. However, getting together with your fellow practitioners, live or online, is a real boon, and so conference season is a great opportunity. Hope to see you somewhere soon!

Ok, so I shared that I was trying to visualize the generative process. Which is, to be fair, aka elaboration. And, I did take a stab. So I thought I’d share what I’d come up with for generative visualized. Two reasons: 1) for you to quibble with what I came up with, and 2) learning out loud. I reckon if you can see my process, you may learn, you may improve it, all the good things that happen from sharing. So…

First, I was looking to do a higher build than the neural level. Yes, at the neural level we’re strengthening patterns across neural networks. We’re taking two patterns and putting them into conjunction, basically, activating both. That activating in conjunction strengthens the links between them, associating them more. (I’ve a diagram on that, actually, emphasizing that they need time to recover before the next strengthening. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll share that, too.) But the way we activate patterns is by using words or images, semantically. So, I was looking for words.

They also should be ideas that are familiar enough that I’m not requiring knowledge you don’t know. Further, I need to be making associations that you’d get. So, something familiar. In this case, animals and pets. (Perhaps that’s salient to me, for some reason.) And I needed a relationship between them. I chose, rightly or wrongly, the notion of how wild animals don’t make good pets. So, what’s this look like?

Now, I’m showing the final build, not the whole process. You start with something you’re talking about, like how there are good and bad pets (“do raccoons make good pets?”). And you ask the learners to find some personal or conceptual basis for that distinction. They can find examples, like that good pets are domesticated animals, and bad pets are wild, drawing on their previous knowledge. Or, they might talk about someone who had a bad pet (“my friend’s parents had this pet monkey, but it was always doing bad things”). Of course, pets are a subset of animals, so this becomes confusing at the top level, but that’s okay, as the structures are similar but not exactly the same.

The point is that they’re generating this information, actively connecting their own pre-existing knowledge to the information you’d like them to acquire. It’s causing them to elaborate, and so strengthening the links in their mind. Which is what we want. So, that’s my attempt to capture generative visualized. Does it work, or do you have ideas to improve or replace?

FWIW, this is part of what I’ll be presenting at the LDA’s Learning Science Conference, starting Nov 3 to review the presentations and discuss, with live sessions with the presenters Dec 8-12. Same format as last year (with recognition of that in pricing, for those that attended), but with some new content and presenters. It’s still the things we think you need to be an informed learning designer. 

As I continue exploring learning, I’m beginning to realize that the picture’s incomplete. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s a bit of a concern. Of course, I don’t have the answers, but if I point out some of the elements, maybe we’ll identify the gaps. And, I’m sure, there are likely initiatives and results I’m unaware of, and hopefully folks will help fill in the full story.

So, our endeavor is to start with people, with whatever experience and abilities they bring to the table. Then, ultimately (after our ministrations) have them capable of dealing with the situations we’ve identified are important. That includes what needs to be in long-term memory, and having responses aligned to triggers that activate the appropriate actions. Along the way, we have the analysis, the learning science, the coaching, and …?

I talked earlier about how most of our focus has been on getting folks up to some level of initial speed. But we do want folks to ultimately acquire the full range. And, I think, we too often abandon our efforts before getting the full way.

That makes sense for organizational learning, where we have to balance the costs with the value. When lives are on the line (aviation, medicine, military), we probably need to go a very long way. When it’s just inventory, we may allow some checks along the way to catch mistakes, and hope that people will eventually internalize the elements. (There are practices we spend on that are entirely worthless, of course.) For education, when we have kids in schools for years, it is clear that our pedagogy, driven by a wrong curriculum and values, falls far short of actually applying knowledge. But that’s another rant ;).

And we have pretty good guidance for many elements. We know about retrieval practice, with spacing, deliberate choices of next steps, desirable difficulty. We also know about generative activities. I’m not sure we’ve reconciled, however, how much of each. We also have cognitive load theory, which guides us in many ways, but doesn’t necessarily talk about acquisition versus application. The power law of learning suggests that we go from conscious to unconscious, but it assumes doing the right practice. The list goes on: multimedia learning, four component ID, cognitive apprenticeship, …; we have lots of pieces.

And yet, that’s still getting people up to a certain beginning level. How do we go beyond? The aforementioned is all about formal learning, and not about moving on. So we kind of have a hiccup between learning and coaching. How do they segue? We also have the issue of assessment. I have suggested that maybe we need to consider our commitment to apply as well as our ability. And that’s still before actually starting, yet we’re not done then.

Folks are talking about dispositions, I note, but when I look at it, it’s about the broader picture of persistence, etc, not specific to the particular outcome. Happy to be wrong here. But we really want to understand what we do initially, for instruction, for reactivation and continuation, to the final picture. My intuition is that there’s a more systematic structure that we’re not applying.

I don’t have an answer. Certainly not yet! I just think it’s time that we start thinking about it. Well, I guess that’s an open question: do we need an overarching approach? If so, what do we have. Can we extend something like Cognitive Apprenticeship to coaching on the job, and link to community to continue and ultimately own the final development? I welcome feedback!

In a conversation with a colleague (a few weeks ago as I write this), I had a thought. She’s contemplating an evaluation book, and I was talking about evaluating competencies. It occurred to me that there may be more than just the ability needed. Which leads me to ask, is assessment of capability enough?

So, we should be looking at competencies. Ideally, we’re stepping away from norm-referenced assessment, that is comparing to others. We should have an absolute criteria which says that they now can do this. For instance, Mager-style objectives: what they need to be able to do, in what context, and to what level of capability. This is part of the shift away from roles, since orgs break up tasks differently. That is, some orgs have folks who do analysis separate from those who do design, and those who develop. Others have people do the whole thing go to whoa.

However, is competency enough? That was the question that occurred to me. I was thinking that maybe the only thing that really mattered was that they felt confident enough to give it a go after the learning experience. That is, folks have to feel like they are ready to give it a go.

I realized, thinking more about it, that it’s not just confident. Taking Dunning-Kruger into account, we don’t want folks who are confident but aren’t really ready. That’s not a recipe for success!  So…I am thinking that it’s willing and able! So, you probably need to indicate readiness to give it a go as well as the competence. So how do we assess that? We can ask, but folks might say they’re ready, but they’re not. I’m wondering if them actually having a plan for how and when they’ll apply makes sense. As a complement to a skill demonstration as well.

I’m not fully convinced, but I do believe that just competence isn’t enough. Folks may know how to do something, but they may not intend to do it. There are lots of reasons why folks don’t actually do what they’ve learned! Of course, the best test is if they are doing it sometime later. E.g. they’ve learned, did, and persisted. But we may want a gateway test first, and I think it’s more than just competence. At any rate, that’s my answer to the question of whether assessment of capability is enough. What’s yours?

After writing this, and before it’s published, I came across IBSTPI’s Competency-Based Education webinar slides, and realized that they’re talking about dispositions in this role. Interesting…though really the proof is what happens when they can apply it, not what they say beforehand. However, if we track that, we might start getting criteria about what other clues we need.

I’m judging some submissions from the iSpring conference, and noticing a trend. And, of course, it’s not in the requirements (which focus on using all the capabilities of their tool, not surprisingly). It’s also not in the evaluation criteria. Yet, it’s something I obviously care about. (I mean, I basically wrote a book that was about it as half of the whole picture!) I’m talking about addressing the ‘what’s in it for them’ for the learners.

So, two things to start with. For one, the evaluation does ask “Does the course maintain interest throughout?”  So that’s the other half of the book, but…it doesn’t address the first half. Ok, many times you see the designers deal with it implicitly in the objectives, saying what you’ll be able to do. (Even, some times, in terms you will care about!) But that’s not enough.

What these courses seem to assume (and this is prevalent in much that I see) is that you’ve come to the course because you’ve interest in the topic. Which may be the case, if they’re already practitioners. Where it’s not appropriate is when it’s been assigned by someone else. And, overall, you probably shouldn’t assume the former. Unless you’re just hanging it out there for anyone who’s interested (and who can afford that?).

So, you should be addressing, up front, why the learner should care. What’s the context that makes this course of value and of interest? If you (as the learner) are a likely victim, er, audience for this course, what lets you know? Again, it’s not in the requirements, but I certainly wish it was pretty much habitual. There’s one case where it’s partly done, in that they start with the scenario and a question, but it takes some time to get there. This should be the very first thing learners see. Before objectives, before you say what the course will entail. Why should they pay attention to any of that? You haven’t made it visceral. And, motivation helps you learn better

So, please, make it a habit to hook your learners from the get-go. Show them the ‘what’s in it for them” up front. They’ll pay more attention to everything else you do, and that leads to better outcomes. Which is what we all want.