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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Contextualized Learning

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Recently, a colleague videotaped me responding to some questions about how mobile could change learning.  I find I riff a bit in such situations, and one of the ideas I had then is something I wanted to explore a little more. It had to do with context.

What we do, in so many of our formal learning designs, is create artificial contexts.  In face-to-face learning, we’ll do role-plays, and in online learning we’ll create simulations or games.  Now, this makes sense; you want to do practice away from real performance if the consequences are costly. Yet other times, e.g. after the learning experience, they end up performing (and, too often, before they’ve received sufficient practice because of time and money constraints as well as just bad habits).  A further opportunity is that out there in the real world, there may be some contexts that the learner comes across that may be relevant, and we could extend the learning experience.

Context-aware systems give us a chance to do something more here.  If you’re performing a task that’s related to some formal learning, your system could  be equipped to notice, and bring in some appropriate content.  This was the promise of electronic performance support systems, and we can now start doing it not just in custom-designed environments, but we can connect context clues to associated content with semantic rules.  So, if you’re in a coaching meeting, the system could prepare you beforehand, provide support during, and some reflective evaluation afterward.  Say, a checklist.

Similarly, we can notice the context of the learner and even if it’s not a performance situation, if there’s a meaningful connection (I didn’t want to use semantic again :), the system could provide some mention of the linkage, which reactivates and contextualizes the learning, making it more likely to be retained and transferred.

Mobile, of course, decouples this capability from the desktop, and increases the likelihood that the connection opportunities are capitalized on, and even the performance support model can be brought to bear.  The two necessary components are the context-awareness (done via GPS, calendar) and semantic linkages (done with tagging).  This is no longer rocket science, just a product of decent task analysis and content engineering.

I reckon it’s time that we can, and should, lift our game a little to start looking at more sophisticated support technologies. If improving performance matters…and it should.

Layering learning

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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.

WIIFL

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What’s In It For Learners?

In organizations, we talk about addressing WIIFM (What’s In It For Me).  As a key component of motivation, we want to connect to individuals viscerally.  With my focus on engagement in learning, I’ve felt it’s important to address the conative (anxiety, motivation, etc) of learners as well.

What I’ve meant by this has included having introductions that viscerally capture the consequences of the knowledge (positive or negative, dramatically or comically; I’ve a predilection for comically negative), help them connect the learning to the broader context of the world, help them understand why it’s important for them, remove anxiety, etc.  I believe we need to open up learners emotionally as well as the well-known benefits of activating relevant knowledge cognitively.

I was just writing up a list of what would need to change for schools to be effective, and as I was riffing on epistemology (having learners understand and take responsibility for learners), it occurred to me that we needed to address the WIIFM, and I realized it’s about WIIFL.  We need to explicitly address what makes the learning experience valuable to learners.  I’m sure we’ve all heard learners say something like “I’ll never use this”.  If it’s true, bin it.  If it’s not, then help them see it.

On a set of content I was lead on the design of (math), I created the spec for our introductions to show how the content would get used in real life, and then we worked through meaningful examples and practice items. In another set of content I created the engagement for, we used a professional cartoonist to create a comic that introduced every section.

We don’t emphasize enough helping learners understand why they should care, so is it any wonder why they question the WIIFM?  And it’s not  presenting the learning objectives that we use to design, it’s a more coherent story that uses, essentially, marketing to get them to get it.

Ask yourself, if and when you’re creating a learning experience: WIIFL.  If you do, you can either eliminate unneeded content, or help learners connect in a motivating way. If you don’t, you risk learners tuning out and staying away.  Which isn’t a worthwhile investment of time and money.

Travels, travails, & thought

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In case you’ve been wondering about my relative paucity of posting, let me confess that I’ve been on the road almost non-stop for months.  Starting with the Australasian Talent Management conference in Sydney, through the Innovations in eLearning Symposium in DC, mLearnCon in San Jose, a visit to Saudi Arabia on behalf of a client, a long-delayed and deserved European tour with the family, a trip back to Australia on behalf of another client, speaking at the Distance Teaching & Learning Conference in Wisconsin, the Southwest Learning Summit in Dallas, and then a family trip to San Diego, I haven’t slept under my own roof for more than 2-3 consecutive nights (with one exception) since mid-May.

I’m not bragging or  looking for sympathy, I’m just explaining (also mentioning that  this is not usual for me). While it’s good, it’s also exhausting, and has really hampered my ability to do other than the associated work. Finally, however, I’m at home for several weeks before beginning another batch: Chicago for Learning 3.0 (an eLearning strategy workshop), Laguna Niguel for  the CLO Symposium (with Jay and Jane from the Internet Time Alliance), both in October, and then DevLearn in Lost Wages (running a mobile strategy workshop), DC for a local ASTD Chapter event (mobile talk & social workshop), and Toronto for CSTD’s annual conference in November.  At least I’m staying on the same continent this time, so the jet lag won’t be quite so bad!  And more time at home in-between.

On the way, I lost my new leather iPad cover when I left the iPad on the plane (got the iPad back, sans the cover ?!?!? *cough* United Airlines*cough*), had the usual debilitating experience with too-expensive data (ATT’s new rates notwithstanding), and didn’t always make the best luggage choices. On the other hand, I was able to resurrect a favorite rolling briefcase, got in a few surfs (so nice to find I can still do it!), generally exercised, ate very and mostly reasonably well, met some great people and had great conversations, and felt like I really was adding value by giving talks, running workshops, doing consulting, etc.  And the time with family was fabulous.

I also had time for some reflections, which I hope to populate here (wish I’d thought to capture them as they occurred, sigh).  One of the first ones is that mobile is more than just a technology, it’s also a lever. Under the mobile banner, we can discuss the whole performance ecosystem: formal learning, performance support, social learning, games, etc.  And  we get additional opportunities with context-sensitive learning. When Google is designing for mobile first, and tablets and smart-phones are on the rise, there’s an opportunity to shake things up.   It’s like the conclusion Barbara Means made on the report from SRI on the difference to face to face and online learning: “the observed  advantage of online learning  is a product of  redesigning the learning experience,  not of the medium per se”.  I think that’s what’s on tap with mobile, and I think we should be looking to pursue those opportunities.

Digital Helplessness(?)

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Recently, I’ve been hearing quite a bit of concern over the possibility that reliance on digital, and increasingly mobile, technology may make us stupider.  And I don’t think this is just easy to dismiss.  In a sense, it could be a case of learned helplessness, where folks find themselves helpless  because after using the tools, folks might not have the information they need when they don’t have the tools.

Recently announced research    shows that folks change what they remember when enabled with search engines: they don’t remember the data, but instead how to find it.  Which could be a problem if they needed to know the data and are not digitally enabled in some context.

As has also been conveyed to me as a concern is whether folks might not engage in learning about their environs (e.g. when traveling), and in other ways miss out on opportunities to learn when dependent on digital devices.  Certainly, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been concerned  about how disabled I feel when dissociated from my digital support (my external brain).  Yet is there a concern?

My take is that it might be a concern if people are doing it unconsciously.  I think you could miss out (as m’lady points out when I am reading instead of staring out the window every moment as we take the train through another country :) on some opportunities to learn.

On the other hand, if you are choosing consciously what you want to remember, and what you want to leave to the device, then I think you’re making a choice about how you allocate your resources (a ‘good thing’).  We do this in many ways in our lives already, for instance how much we choose to learn about cooking, and more directly related, how much to learn about how to do formatting in a word processing program.

Yes, I’ve been frustrated without my support when traveling, but that’s chosen (which does not undermine my dismay at the lack of ability to access digital data overseas).  I guess I’m arguing for chosen helplessness :).  So, what are you choosing to learn and what to devolve to resources?

Levels of analysis

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When I was a grad student, a fellow student did an interesting study.  In analogical reasoning, what helps is abstracting from the specifics to the more general (and folks are bad at generating good analogies, though okay at using them, according to my PhD and other research).  Folks had made efforts at getting abstraction, and failed. What my fellow student did was to control the abstraction, and got useful outputs.  It turns out some abstract too far, and of course in general most don’t go far enough.

From that beginning, I’ve been interested in useful mental models, and good analysis from appropriate levels of abstraction. That’s what I have tried to do in my books: abstract to useful levels, and guide application in pragmatic ways.  And that’s what I look for in other’s work as well.  My PhD advisor has served as an excellent model: Don Norman’s book Design of Everyday Things is still a must-read for anyone designing for humans, and his subsequent books have similarly provided valuable insight.

I like the thinking of a number of folks who do this well.  For instance, I’m regularly learning with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (Jay, Jane, Harold, and Charles).  Jane Bozarth, Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett, Will Thalheimer, Marcia Conner, and Donald’s Clark & Taylor are just a few of the folks who cut through the hype with incisive thinking. There are of course others I’m forgetting to mention (my apologies).  They’re looking for best principles, not best practices.

It’s a similar thinking that helps break down new technologies and finds the key affordances for learning, avoiding other intriguing but ultimately distracting features (Powerpoint presentations in Second Life, anyone?).  You need to look a bit deeper than the surface.

Interestingly, to do so really requires taking time for reflection.  Which is why it always frustrates me to hear those folks who say “I don’t have time for reflection”.  Really?  You don’t have time to do the most valuable level of thinking that will impact your effectiveness and ultimately save you time and money?

And can we please put this process into our school curriculum as well?  I benefited mightily by having a 12th grade AP English teacher (that’s you, Dick Bergeron) who modeled deeper thinking and used reciprocal teaching (without having that label) to help us develop our own abilities.  While I try to do so for my own kids, our society and world needs more folks thinking at useful levels.

So, please, take time and a step back from your day to day problem-solving and abstract across your activities and look for higher level principles, both emergent and external, that can improve what you’re doing.

 

A Storied History

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Rothenburg ob der Tauber (RodT) is a charming small town that has retained it’s medieval nature through both design and chance. The story is interesting, but more interesting for my purposes here is how You can learn that story.

One of the opportunities available in Rothenburg is the Night Watchman’s Tour, where a local dressed up as a night watchman walks you through various stops around town and tells Rothenburg’s history. You pay at the end, so you could skip paying, but after the experience it is definitely worth the money.  

The story telling is interesting; it’s very personal, starting with the life and role of the night watchman, a low class (because of ignorant prejudice) but important job. Across the course of the talk, the perspective becomes one of a proprietary interest in the city itself. The events are recited with a very causal but also human level of detail (e.g. how the post-war administrator’s mother’s connection to RodT saved the town).  There is a self-deprecating humor that leavens the message.

Also interesting is the story-telling style. The character speaks with great projection, but also in an almost sing-song style. There are somewhat odd but engaging emphases. It’s hard to characterize (I couldn’t reproduce it), but it worked.

As my lad said, it’s the most interesting history he’s ever learned. And that, I think, says a lot.  Don’t neglect the power of story, as Roger Schank would have us remember. Wrap up the details in a narrative that ties it together, as our brains are optimized for understanding in this way.

Learning History

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Traveling with Jay Cross and Ellen Wagner in Berlin last December, we hit a great museum where they had artifacts from aa major period of German dominance. It was easy to use those concrete representations of life at the times, and the annotations (as well as Jay & Ellen’s learned commentary) as a foundation to think about the historic changes.

Thinking about the way we ,as a family, like to travel – studying up beforehand, choosing places that most concisely represent and communicate the local history and culture (and dining in ways to understand the best the culture has to offer :), and reading as we go along – it seems a great way to ground learning via experience. And experiential learning is powerful learning, connecting personal experience as context to conceptual models.  

I personally like to understand the ebb and flow of civilizations. My late friend Joe Cotter was a PhD in history, and taught me a little bit about how to think like a historian (not just to know history), thinking about causal forces. I try to apply that, as well as admittedly geeking out on weapons and castles.  

I’ve always felt that the old cliche is true, that travel broadens you. If you go with your eyes open, you can see the world from a different perspective, and even look at your own country differently. I really value the time I spent living in Australia, not only because of the fabulous friends and great experiences, but the ability to look back at the US and get a valuable extension on my understanding.  

It’s one thing to read about it, but to immerse yourself in the cuture and the artifacts with an overarching narrative really helps connect the broader context to the specifics. I hope you have the chance to have a similar experience.

TravelLearning

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Travel is a great learning opportunity.  First, of course, is learning the history, geography, and culture of a place.  The cuisine of a new place is a particular personal interest. Of course, you can also learn about politics, economics, and more as well.  

A second level is looking at how these are portrayed within their own milieu; what are the stories they tell themselves and others about who and what they are.

And, of course, regardless of planning, travel ends up throwing you little challenges: changes in schedules, closures, delays, and more.  These become opportunities for meta-learning: both attitudinal (patience, tolerance, persistence, friendliness) and strategic (problem-solving, communication, etc.).

Moreso if you make a conscious effort to not just replicate the same experience everywhere you go (e.g. the generic international resort experience regardless of location), but instead work to learn what makes this particular destination unique. It’s like making content interesting; you have to find what makes the folks who live there proud. Another meta-lesson.

I was fortunate that my parents were great travelers, and instilled the love of new cultures in me, and I’m trying to do the same with my kids. I find the most interesting people are those who are interested in others. But even if you haven’t had the skills and attitude modeled, you can develop it yourself. Start small, get some wins, and expand (like all good plans :). Bon voyage!

Chris Dede Keynote Mindmap

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Chris Dede opened the Innovations in eLearning keynote with a speech that very much resonated with me and reflected things I’ve been blogging about here since Learnlets started, but has had the opportunity to build.  His closing comment is intriguing: “infrastructures shape civilization”.

He talked about teaching skills to deal with wicked problems and developing new literacies, using MultiUser Virtual Environments.