Eli Pariser gave a very thoughtful and thought-provoking talk about the ‘below the surface’ action of filters on the Internet. He made very astute points about the potential dangers of this, and opportunities to remedy these ills. Very worthwhile!
Jeremy Gutsche #DevLearn Keynote Mindmap
Jeremy Gutsche opened DevLearn with a very animated presentation about how to unlock innovation and communicate killer messages. Entertaining and informative, he made a specific point to link his messages to eLearning. A nice start to the conference.
A personal look at crowd sourcing
The last time I had a beard was right before college graduation. I was off in the wilderness, and when I came back my razor was busted. So, I grew a beard that was largely red, and in terms of being well behaved, well, it made Gabby Hayes look well-groomed. So I’ve been clean shaven since (see to the right).
Well, that’s changed. To make a long story short, I had an extended period of time away from family and razor, and grew it out. When I came back, the reviews went from mixed to positive, not a negative word. Now, of course, you seldom hear from those who don’t like a look (wonder how many people do not like Quinnovation as a company name), but the important people (my immediate family) either initially or grew to prefer the new look. (Maybe the more of my face I cover, the better ;)
Well, this creates a conundrum, because I’ve plenty of promo photos out there for various speaking engagements that now are no longer appropriate. It was time for a new official photo (it was anyways, this is close to a decade old, and I do not want to be the guy who’s photo is decades out of date).
The official way to do this is to hire someone, but I perused the local options, and either they were sidelining portraits on top of weddings, babies, etc, or they used stock backgrounds. The pre-beard shot above was taken by my friend and colleague Jay Cross, chose it out of several candidates, and liked the more natural setting. So I got my wife to take a bunch of shots, and we (with my daughter’s help) went through them. They were all flawed for various reasons (some problems she saw and I didn’t, and there begins the tale; it was a collaborative project and decision). We tried again, and finally found two we liked. How to decide?
So I went out to a small group of colleagues who I could trust would give me straight feedback, and they reliably preferred one. This was a relief. However, there was a problem: my face was kind of dark against the background. And, lo, one of them stepped up and offered to work on the photo.
She kindly took the shadow off my face, and did another lightening up the whole picture. The former was better, but I was concerned that there wasn’t sufficient contrast, so she also created one that had the background muted. Her contribution was so valuable. Now I had two more to choose from: the more natural one or the one with the muted background. How to answer this?
So I went out to four of the groups I have or was going to talk for, and asked them which they would prefer for their brochures or websites. Of the 3 that responded, they all preferred the natural background (my preference). I’d converged on a new headshot.
More importantly, I had avoided my usual blind decisions, and got contributions all along the way that made the outcome better. Throwing out ego and being willing to ask for help isn’t my natural approach, as I hate to impose, but I know I don’t mind helping colleagues and friends, so I stepped out of my comfort zone and I’m so grateful they stepped up.
The take-home lesson for me is the power of communication and collaboration: crowd sourcing works. You may not like the new look, but it’s where I’m at, and it’s a lot better picture than I’d had if I tried to do it alone.
Myths some teachers (apparently) believe
Ok, that’s an alarmist title, because it’s only a few teachers, but these are some of the ones teaching my kids, and it’s mind-numbing. These are either things I heard myself at Back to School Night, or through my kids. And they’re just crazy!
So, what am I talking about? Let me elaborate:
So, one says that the way to learn science is to learn the formulas. Um, no. If you learn the formulas doesn’t mean you actually can solve problems. You need to solve problems with them! And, frankly, I don’t care if you memorize the formulas, if you look it up it’s just fine. But this is leading to a focus on rote memorization, not meaningful learning.
The same teacher also says that learning is individual, that students shouldn’t spend their time copying off the one person who does the work. What a horrible belief in kids! Yes, they might do it, but there are plenty of ways to structure the process so that learners have to contribute. And there are substantial cognitive benefits from learners working together.
This teacher did tout the success of her students on tests. Standard, abstract, rote problems unlike kids will actually face. Yes, the system is currently structured to reward that outcome, but it’s not what I want, nor what we should value. The fact that she believes standard test results means much of anything isn’t really helpful.
A second teacher seems to believe examples aren’t useful. This teacher is presenting the concepts in class, and then assign practice at home. What’s missing are meaningful examples of applying the concepts to problems. Um, examples help. The kids aren’t seeing the concepts mapped to concepts, nor the underlying thinking that makes examples useful! And can we say ‘flipped classroom’?
To compound the problem, the kids are supposed to have access to the corrected assignments, but the answers are being posted after 9PM at nite or later, when there’s a quiz the next day! This isn’t sufficient feedback to support comprehension and performance! Apparently this teacher isn’t convinced of the value of timely feedback.
Finally, I found out one of my kids was working this weekend on a coloring project. The teacher apparently is laboring under a delusion that in coloring in some diagram or map, the learner will internalize the spatial relationships and map those to the underlying conceptual relationships. But it’s a pretty low chance, and we have far better exercises to achieve that goal. My suspicion, of course, is that this is to have pretty room when parents visit, but if so, I think the teacher bloody well ought to buy decorations, and not keep my child from enjoying the weekend to make the teacher’s room pretty.
I really wish teachers had to read, understand, and apply cognitive apprenticeship. It, to me, is essentially the best model for guiding teaching. What I’m seeing is violating all sorts of basic learning principles.
Ok, let’s be fair, this is 3 out of 10 or so teachers, but they’re my kids, and it’s too many for any other kids, too. And I did contact the principal via email with all but the last, and he was kind enough to call me, but the end result is that nothing is going to change because there’s nothing really that can be done. There are teachers who care, and some who are doing great jobs, it’s just that for such a critical job of preparing the future, we really should be doing better. So, am I overreacting?
Being explicit about corporate learning
Brent Schlenker recently resurfaced after disappearing into a corporate learning job. One of his reflections is that there exist ‘people unwilling to learn’. Jane Hart picked up on his post, and in her reply teased apart two separate things: Whether learners were willing to learn, and whether they were capable of learning. I was inspired to think about addressing those two dimensions.
To me, the ability to be a self-directed learning is a skill issue. They myth of digital natives cloaks the reality that digital skills differ by individual, not age. Similarly, other critical thinking skills, and learning-to-learn or meta-learning skills, may or may not exist in any particular individual. These are aspects we can, and should, be explicit about and develop.
The issue of being willing to learn is a separate issue. Here, it’s whether learners are willing to take responsibility. This is more about attitude change. Which is hard, but doable. It comes from valuing learning and expecting it, then looking to see if it’s manifesting.
One of the things that’s probably important is coupling a learning environment with an empowering culture. Learning has to be explicit, safe, valued, modeled, and expected. Learners need to be empowered with tools, coached, and formatively evaluated. The environment has to depend on trust on both parts that the motives are good.
Glad to see Brent back in the fray, always a pleasure to see Jane’s thoughtful comments, and welcome your thoughts.
Meta-learning in Moscow
I was reflecting on the benefits of travel, and recalled a ‘learning’ experience I underwent involuntarily more than 20 years ago. I’d gone to Moscow to speak at a conference, and determined to venture on my own to the Kremlin for a scheduled tour of the museum. I had an underground map, and headed off to the station nearest me. The route apparently had a change of train required. The ticket seller wasn’t very friendly, but I managed to somehow meet the necessary requirement to head down underground.
The real event started when I got off the requisite number of stops along the line. It turns out that the map I had wasn’t in Cyrillic characters that the underground was labeled in, and apparently I hadn’t correctly identified the station I started from. (There was no Cyrillic – Latin mapping; it wasn’t a good guidebook.) So there I was, at some random point under Moscow, without any idea about what station I was at. Worse, no one seemed (willing) to speak English.
Somewhat concerned, I started looking for clues. This was a transfer station, in that there were two different lines coming together. I went back and forth between the two lines, looking for further clues that I could use to determine where I was. Eventually I noticed that one line had a split at the end, and there was only one on the map, so I now knew one of the two lines. I recall that I counted the number of stops to determine which station I was at, and then I was good to go, and I found my way to the station nearest the Kremlin, on my map. My adventures weren’t over, however.
From there, I surfaced, and looked for which direction to head. It was totally overcast, so there were no shadows to tell direction. And I couldn’t see any of the landmark structures from where I’d emerged. I had no idea where to go! Was I going to have to abandon my quest and quit?
Again, I got systematic: I decided to walk in each direction as far as I could and still know where the station was. It was the second path that let me finally see a landmark (St. Basil’s? I no longer remember) and I found my way. I saw the museum and met my colleagues for a safe journey back to the hotel.
This remains the most overt conscious problem-solving I ever recall (followed by the time I locked myself in a building right before the grad school entrance exam, and had just a short period of time to escape without setting off the fire alarms). It took effortful thinking, systematicity, and persistence.
It’s not often these situations occur, but it’s illuminating to explore the requirements, and think about the thinking skills required. These are perhaps the most valuable investment an organization can make, getting concrete about learning and problem-solving, instead of expecting them. Given the way our school curriculum has been structured, they’re not likely to come from formal education. So think about how folks will have to increasingly face more complicated situations, and the skills they might require. Are you and your people ready?
Peter de Jager #PSS13 Keynote Mindmap
Peter de Jager spoke eloquently and amusingly on change, addressing both our misconceptions and expectations. Fun and insightful!
Making Hard or Easy
Our brains are good at certain things, and not so good at others. We’re good pattern-matchers and meaning-makers, but not so good at doing things by rote. We make mistakes, almost by necessity (evolutionary advantage: if you do something a little different by chance and it’s better, it can get rewarded and more likely). And we simplify the world, partly to save energy for what we care about, but also because complexity is taxing.
And, in general, this is good. Our simplifications help us cope, make us more effective. However, given our nature, at times this can fail us. We may think we’ve taken a necessary step when we haven’t. Henry Petroski, in To Engineer is Human, helps us understand that we continue to push boundaries and take consequent risks. Atul Gawande, in The Checklist Manifesto, helps us understand the usefulness of support if we’re not going to make mistakes.
But sometimes this expediency can mask complexities and lead us astray. For a simple example, the term ‘learning management system’ can actually lead us to believe we’re achieving learning, instead of courses. And just because you have a course doesn’t mean something was learned.
There are many ways we can mislead ourselves. We can talk about a concept that we all realize has to be true, that learners differ, and then believe we can identify how someone learns. We may eventually be able to do so, but existing instruments aren’t valid, and learners change in different contexts. Plus, if we label learners as X or Y, we may limit them. When I humorously compared the ‘generational differences’ argument to age discrimination, someone deeply involved in that field corrected me that real age discrimination is a serious problem not to be taken lightly!
It may seem like an ‘angels dancing on the head of a pin‘ type of argument, but we have to be careful of the words we use and their import. We have to carefully consider the ways in which phrases can be used, or misused, and perhaps structure our use of language appropriately. It’s branding, and perhaps we need to treat it as such. At least, be careful of what terms you use and what inferences you’re making easy and which you might be inadvertently making hard.
Supporting Cognitive Performance
It’s clear that our brains aren’t the logical problem-solvers we’d like to be. The evidence on our different thinking systems makes clear that we use intuition when we can, and hard thinking when we must. Except that we use intuition even when we shouldn’t, and hard thinking is very susceptible to problems. Yet we need to have reliably good outcomes to solving problems or accomplishing tasks. What can we do?
The answer, of course, is to use technology to fill in the gaps, when we can. We can automate it if we totally understand it, but the best solution is to let technology (and design) do what it can, and let our brains fill in what we do best. So, when there’s a problem or task that needs to be accomplished, and it requires some decision making, we should be doing several things.
To start, we should be looking at the scope of possible situations, and determine what’s required. We should then figure out what information can be in the world (whether a resource or in other’s heads), and what has to be in the performer’s repertoire. We want to design a solution system, not just a course.
Recognize that getting things into human heads reliably is problematic at best. It takes considerable work to develop that expert intuition: considerable practice at least. So the preference should be to design either a really good support system that helps in characterization of the problem, and a dialog that helps determine what of the possible solutions matches up with the situation.
It can just be information in the world, such as a job aid or checklist, or an interactive decision support tool. Or, it could be a social network of resources such as tools and videos created by others that’s usefully searchable and the ability to ask questions of the community and get responses. It’s likely a probabilistic decision here: what is the likelihood that the network has the answer, versus what’s the possibility that we can design support that will cover the range of problems to be faced?
The point is that support design is a necessary and very viable component of performance solutions, and one that isn’t being used enough. I’m looking forward to the upcoming eLearning Guild’s Performance Support Symposium in Boston as a way to learn more, and hope to see you there!
2nd Loop Learning
It used to be that the L&D model was to prepare people, then send them out to perform. There would be some data collection from the result, including debriefing perhaps, and then the training and personnel would be reviewed. In that sense, L&D was outside the performance loop, in a separate loop. And that made sense is a world where couldn’t do on the job scrutiny, and things were more predictable. We’re not in that world anymore.
The world we’re in is changing faster: we’re getting more data, companies can move faster, and customers expect more. And we now can have much more insight into what’s happening (and more’s on the way, courtesy of xAPI), and be much more closely coupled to performance. What does this mean we can and should do?
I think it means a different loop relationship with performance, where a second loop is integrated on top of the loop of performance. In this loop, L&D is more closely monitoring individual performance, looking for opportunities to support outcomes. L&D could be reviewing correlations between resource use and performance, finding those that are not performing as expected to remove or redesign, they can be looking at interactions to see how to facilitate, and they can be monitoring for emergent knowledge and skills that can be captured and possibly developed.
A concept from cybernetics is double loop learning, where you’re reviewing your goals as well as your methods, and it’s been a valuable contribution to thinking and action. Here we’re reviewing our approaches to a goal, which is a synergistic concept. And this is a role where L&D both gets more strategic in supporting business goals, more integrated into the operations by being more coupled to operations, and more facilitative in role by helping facilitate at the moment of need. This, I will suggest, is a possible and necessary shift to the ways in which organizations can start being more nimble, and the way that L&D can be directly responsible for that shift. Does this make sense to you? And is this something you think can be done?