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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Whither the library?

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I go to libraries, and check out books.   I admit it, when there’s a lot I want to read, I’d rather read it on paper (at 1200 dpi) versus on the screen.   And some recent debates have got me thinking about libraries in general, public and university.   There’re some issues that are unresolved, but leave me curious.

As the editor on one for-profit journal (British Journal of Education Technology), and now on one ‘open access’ (Impact: Journal of Applied Research in Workplace E-learning), I’ve been thinking more about the role of the journal, and the library.   There’s certainly been a lively discussion going on about the internet and the role of for-profit publishers.

The model for decades has been that books, magazine, journals, and newspapers had material that was submitted, reviewed, edited, and published by publishers, and available for a fee.   Yes, there have been some free newspapers, paid for by advertising (e.g. San Diego’s weekly Reader was an eagerly sought resource while I was a student), but in general the costs of paper, publishing, distribution, and more meant that information had an associated overhead.

Libraries democratized access, by aggregating purchasing power.   People could come in and find material on particular subjects, read popular books, and more recently, also other materials like albums, tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc.   Public libraries provided places to read as well, and librarians were resources to find or ask about particular topics.   University libraries purchased journals, copies of textbooks, and of course the obvious reference materials, while providing places to study.

Now, of course, the internet has thrown all that on it’s head.   With some notable exceptions, people have the capability to put up information (e.g. this blog), to access information (Google becoming a verb), and the distribution is covered in the cost of internet access.   Consequently, the publishers have struggled to come to grips with this.   As have researchers and learners.   On one side, those who say what’s on the internet isn’t vetted, while others say that the proprietary information is irrelevant and the wisdom of the crowds reigns supreme.

One of the consequences has been the call for open access publishing, essentially   that articles are submitted, reviewed, and published online, with anyone being able to view the outcomes.   This is a threat to publishers, who’ve argued strongly that their processes are time-tested.   And universities (particularly for promotion and tenure) have been slow to accept online publication as an equivalent, due to the uncertainty of the rigor of the publication (clearly, it depends on the particular journal).

This isn’t restricted to journals, of course, textbooks are also under threat.   And publishers are similarly scrambling.   I’ve been advising publishers and working on projects to get them online, and more.   The ‘and more’ part is because I’ve been trying to tell them it’s not “it’s not about the book, it’s about the content:, but instead “it’s not about the content, it’s about the experience”.   Whether academic publishing will continue is an interesting issue.   Publisher’s who’ve depended on this have serious issues.   So do libraries.

Which brings me back to my library. It’s a vibrant place, by   no means dying.   While the book shelves are relatively quiet (though there are dedicated readers browsing the stacks), there are kids in the young book section, people grazing the videos and music, and a queue for access to the internet.   They’re tightly couple with other library networks, and so when a book I wanted wasn’t in our library system, they got it on loan from another library system in the state.   Easily!     They also have ways to make recommendations, even in areas they don’t read in themselves.

How about university libraries? They’re the ones I was curious about, and where I had some thoughts.   University libraries are more about research.   Popular culture will be distributed across media, and public libraries can have a role as a media access center, but university libraries are situated on internet rich campuses, where the demand for other popular media probably isn’t as strong.   Do they have a role?

I’ve argued before that the role of the university is shifting to developing 21st century skills (unfortunately in lieu of our public education systems).   The library is well-placed to accommodate this need. They may not be the technology gurus, but they are (or can be) the information gurus.     It’s a hub of information searching, evaluation, and sense-making.   The librarians may need a mind-set change to not be about finding resources, but teaching their information science skills, but no one’s untouched (teachers need to move to being learning mentors, etc).

I considered, but didn’t title this post “Wither the library”, because I think libraries have a role.   They may need to become shift their focus (and it occurs to me that we need to think about how they become more visual), but they still have a role.

This time, it’s personal…

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So on the way to dinner, my son told me on Friday that he’d tied a guy’s shoes together (the kid fell down when he tried to get up at the end of class, and was late to the next).   I asked, and this was a) a friend, b) a prank (the latest volley in an ongoing series),   c) the boy wasn’t hurt,   but d) was amused.   Unacceptable, still.   It was potentially dangerous, interfered with school operations, and consequently inappropriate. I chided him to that effect, and thought no more about it.   Until my wife let me know Monday night what the school administration had done as a consequence.

Three teachers, together, had reported it, not one of them talking to my son directly.   So he was called into the office, and the Vice Principal who handled it decided on lunch-time detention for two days, at a special table in the cafeteria.   We weren’t involved until afterwards, when my wife heard about it, and then talked to the VP on the second day.   OK, what he did wasn’t the smartest thing to do, and we absolutely believe that consequences are an appropriate response.   As my wife said, 95% of the time she’ll side with the teachers (her dad was one). So it’s not that there was a response, it’s just what the response was.   Our issue is with the process used, and the punishment.

Let’s start that he’s a good kid, who gets good grades because it’s expected of him, despite the fact that the current school situation is such that the content is dull, and the homework staggering (he’s opting out of sports because he doesn’t feel he has the time).   He’s bored at school, as the work’s too easy for him, and the repetitive drill is mind numbing.   However, no argument, his action wasn’t acceptable. In his case, being called to the office at all was probably enough, as the only previous time he’d been was to recognize him for something good he did.   Having a talking to,   for a first infraction, likely would weigh on him enough.   Some time for reflection and even writing an apology to the friend or the teachers   or just a treatise on the folly of the act would be rehabilitative, useful, and understandable. Instead, we have a punitive action.   “You’re bad, and we need to punish you.”

My wife talked to the VP, trying to point out that while intervention was certainly called for, public humiliation wasn’t. The VP denied that it was public, saying that the table is off to the side.   Yes, in the same room, and obviously the location of the ‘bad kids’.   As my son told us, a number of his friends walked by and commented.   I’m not buying it; it’s public humiliation, and that doesn’t make sense as a first recourse (if ever), particularly in a case of behavior that was bad judgment, not malicious.

So either I’m over-reacting, or the process they applied (the teachers not talking to him about it), and the result it came up with (public humiliation for a first offense) is broken.   While I admit it’s hard to be objective, I’m inclined to believe the latter.   Shouldn’t we be using misbehavior as opportunities to show how to respond appropriately?   We may have societally moved away from rehabilitation in our penal system, but in our education system?   What’s his lesson here?   I mean, we don’t put people in the stocks anymore!   Though I’m tempted, with a certain VP.   Of course, showing up (albeit it unnamed) in a blog post may be the same, eh?

Pacing

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We recently finished watching a video series called Kamichu (we like anime).   It‘s a remarkably cute series about a middle school girl who finds out she‘s a god (apparently the Shinto belief system). There are some subtle digs at cultural artifacts like politicians, sweet explorations of the difficulties of romance, and funny running gags.   I recommend it, but the thoughts it prompted are what I‘m talking about here.

One of the interesting things about the show is it‘s speed.   Each episode unfolds at it‘s own leisurely pace, with soft musical backgrounds, and no laugh tracks.   Our (only recently) Disney-watching kids, now experienced with laugh tracks and frantic pacing, were enchanted.   It made me think about taking time to develop an atmosphere, the time taken to really develop a mood.   Good movies do that, though less and less.

I‘d recently been reflecting on pacing in music as well, regarding Pink Floyd. They similarly take the time to build the tension to make their musical flourishes.   As did the landmark Who‘s Next Album.   (Ok, so my musical tastes indicate my age.   Still, the pacing matters.)

Serendipitously, I also just read an intriguing post about the history of addiction.   It starts off talking about how we used to listen to music, hearing our favorite pieces only infrequently, and likely badly.   Similarly, getting together for conversations and fun was time-consuming.   The post then goes on to cover the rise, and fall, of opiates (legal for many years), and finally suggests that technology is our new addiction, and that we still haven‘t figured out what‘s now appropriate with technology or not.   It‘s long, but very interesting.

I‘ve gone off before about slow learning, and I think this is another facet.   Not only are we‘re rushing too much in our performance, our development processes, and the amount of time we devote to learning, we‘re not properly setting the stage.   I‘ve been quick myself, but some of the best speakers seem to take their time getting to the point.   I think there‘s a lot to process here, and perhaps a lot to learn.   We‘ve less patience, and I think that it‘s affecting our confidence to take time to do things properly.   If we don‘t, we risk it not working. If we do take our time, we run the risk of costing a bit more money.

In business, increasingly, I think we need to slow down and think a little, and the end result will end up being at least as fast, but also better quality.   I think that‘s the wise decision, what do you think?

Disruption and Adaptation

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I was pointed by Harold Jarche to Dave Snowden talking about the coming age and the characteristics of what it will take. He documents a shift from mechanistic to systematic, and posits that the coming age is chaotic, requiring a new approach.   Dave terms this ‘praxis‘, a continual cycle of experimenting on the basis of theory and reflecting, rather than pre-determined approaches.

Harold wondered whether this counted as meta-learning, and I’d have to say yes.   You not only are looking at the outcomes of your intervention, but you’ve got to be paying attention to your process, and revising the theory and the practice as well as the problem-solving.   It may seem like an awful lot of overhead, but these skills become practiced, and the outcomes are far better in the long run.

Things aren’t slowing down.   I was reflecting earlier today on how quickly the ‘iClones‘ came after the announcement of the iPhone.   Things are moving faster, we’re being showered with more and more information, and asked to do more and more with less.   Most importantly, the fundamental game changes, where a whole industry is upended by a disruptive innovation, are getting so frequent that there is no longer a period in which to adapt to a steady state: change is the steady state.

Everything of any value at work will be adapting to change and solving problems. The processes you’d execute against will be out of date by the time they’re codified.   You’ll instead be applying frameworks, and monitoring the results while you refine the models and your approach.

At a personal level, this means meta-learning: learning on an ongoing basis, developing your learning skills and continually problem solving.   It’ll also mean collaborating, as it’s no longer sufficient to assume you can do it yourself; there’s power in numbers, when managed right.   So you’ll also have to develop and evolve not only personal learning, but learning to learn with others.   (That’s one of things Harold, Jay, Jane and I are working on via TogetherLearn.)

This naturally implies the skills of larger groups of people, and at the organizational level it means continuing to experiment as well, and providing the tools and the space to learn.   It also means being systematic and continuous about review.   (Doug Engelbart, ahead of the curve as always, has even suggested another level, where nodes of meta-learning collaborate to review the meta-learning!)

It’s attitudinal, too, as you’ve got to keep it from being scary, and let yourself remember that learning is fun.   As Raph Koster tells us, learning is fun (at least until we kill that thought with schooling).   So, let’s start having fun!

Rethinking Learning Styles

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I’ve pointed out the problems with learning styles in the past, but I want to rethink them with you, as we took quite a positive out of them in a unique way.   This was back in 99-2000, when I led a project developing an intelligently adaptive learning system (Intellectricity ™; inspired by Joe Miller‘s vision of a system that respected who you were as a learner).   The system took a unique approach, adapting on the basis of who you were as a learner instead of your demonstrated domain knowledge (though it did that, too, though not like an intelligent tutoring system).

To do this, I looked long and hard at learning styles, including Jonassen & Grabowksi’s uncritical compendium, and (the other) John Carroll’s Cognitive Factor Analysis research.   I decided then what I still do now, that essentially all of the learning style instruments are garbage.   It’s not just me saying this, but so does a commissioned study by the Learning and Skills Research Centre.   And, as I previously reported, psychologist Daniel Willingham says we shouldn’t adapt learning to styles. So, is there anything to salvage?

I want to say yes.   The obvious reason is to recognize that learners do differ, and help learning designers be mindful of that.   And there are some insights.   For example, take Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.   When I was investigating learning styles, I didn’t like having bimodal dimensions, say where you’re either an introvert or an extrovert. The problem is, those are so context-dependent that you could be an introvert in the classroom, and an extrovert in the lunchroom.   Or even topic by topic.   I liked that Gardner assesses how social (interpersonal) you are separate from how independent (intrapersonal) you are. That became one of our principles when I challenged our psychometrician and our senior cognitive scientist to argue contrary, and they agreed with me.

So we took a different approach.   Starting from a premise of how learners differ in regards to learning, we made it more a competency than a characteristic: “how good are you at learning socially” (and I’d now add Marcia Conner‘s distinction of small group versus large group) separate from “how good are you at learning on your own”.

We ended up developing 31 different characteristics to evaluate, and chose the 9 we expected to have the most leverage into the first version of the system (which we got up and running).   These were across cognitive, affective (read: personality, e.g. the big 5 psychological traits), and conative (motivation, anxiety or ‘safety’, etc).   We had the system adapt on the basis of these competencies, not in changing the media to accommodate styles, but looking at different sequencing between (what I argue are the important characteristics) of example, concept, practice, etc.

We also believed that many if not all of these learning competencies could be improved, and designed strategies to develop skills over time. The premise did require a long-term relationship with the system, but that was our goal anyway.

The point here being that if, instead of fixed characteristics, we think of a suite of malleable learning competencies as a way in which our learners can differ, we gain two things.   First, we find ways we can support learners who have weaknesses in particular learning competencies (dealing with visual data representations, for example), and second, we can develop them in those competencies as well (which goes hand in hand with Michelle Martin & Tony Karrer’s Work Literacy).

It’s also a tangible investment in organizational competency, and potentially the only real leverage an organization can have, going forward.   Think: learning skills instead of learning styles, and develop your learners accordingly!

Shopping and thinking and the holidays

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The season is well and truly kicking in.   The kids are out of school this week, and while I’ve got a little bit of work on an interesting client project, we’re also taking time to address the holiday perogatives, and to respond to the affordances of the new kitchen.   That latter is an interesting situation.

We’ve had a very good set of cookware, but it isn’t dishwasher safe. That was OK, as for 13 of the past 22 years, I haven’t had a dishwasher (well, except for yours truly).   Now we do, and I’m beginning to resonate with my Mom’s recent perspective: if it doesn’t go in the dishwasher, it goes!   So, having a new, and effective dishwasher, it’s time to consider whether we need new cookware.

What’s instructive is how we (and, in particular, m’lady) are going about it. Naturally, we checked out the Consumer Reports recommendations (hey, you’re not going to get better offerings if you don’t optimize your information and select accordingly).   It’s one source of digital data I pay for (as I paid for the print, before).   After looking at what’s on sale, asking questions in the store, doing research, we came up with a question over whether the heat transfer needs to go up the sides (3 ply cookware) versus just an even spread across the bottom (bottom inserts: whether aluminum or copper).   M’lady didn’t just take the received information, she went and boiled water for pasta in an existing stainless steel with aluminum insert pan we had, along with an anodized aluminum pan from our existing set.

There are stakes here, as one answer is essentially 300% more costly than the other.   And it’s not just about money, it’s about value for money.   There’s an old saying that you get what you pay for, but it’s also true that you can pay too much for a name.

The larger point I want to make is that there are easy ways to make decisions (what the sales person tells you, what’s cheapest), and more difficult paths (inform yourself about the alternatives). How deep you should dig depends on what matters to you, and how much it costs relative to your resources.   However, unless you do spend some time balancing investment for value, you’ll continue to get product that is the triumph of marketing over matter.

The lesson I’ve learned is pay attention to what you care for.   I don’t care whether it’s Coke ™, Pepsi ™, or generic diet cola.   Give me the cheapest non-calorific caffeine that combines with rum for my evening cuba libre.   On the other hand, I’m mighty particular about my kosher pickles: if it isn’t fully brined & garlic (e.g. Strubs, Bubbies), you’re wasting my time (your mileage is likely to vary :).

The broader point is the matching learning investment with cost and benefit. It’s a prioritization issue that scales from personal spending up to organizational investment. I reckon the principles scale as does the need.   It’s   about being smart about how to gather information, and consequently it’s about learning to learn.   And you should know how I feel about that!

And, as the holidays   are intruding into my mindspace, I reckon I’ll have fewer posts until I get back into a working mindset sometime in the new year.   Until then, in case I don’t have another chance (as I tell my kids when I travel): Be Good, Stay Safe, & Have Fun!   Have great holidays, and here’s hoping the new year is our best yet.

Thinking & Learning

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Today I stumbled across two interesting articles.   Both talk about some relevant research on learning, and coincidentally, both are by folks I know.

An alumni bulletin mentioned research done by Hal Pashler (who was a new professor while I was a grad student; I was a teaching assistant for him, and he let me give my first lecture in his class), and talks about the intervals necessary for successful learning.   Will Thalheimer has done a great job publicizing how we need to space learning out, and this research was interesting for the the length of time recommended.

The study provided obscure information (true but unusual), with an initial study, subsequent re-study, and then a test, with varying intervals between the study periods, and between the second study and the test (up to a year).   The article implied the results for studying (no new news: cramming doesn’t work), but the implications for organizational learning.   The interesting result is the potential length of time between studying and performance.

“If you want to remember information for just a week, it is probably best if study sessions are spaced out over a day or two.   On the other hand, if you want to remember information for a year, it is best for learning to be spaced out over about a month.”

Extrapolating from the results, he added, “it seems plausible that whenever the goal is for someone to remember information over a lifetime, it is probably best for them to be re-exposed to it over a number of years.”

“The results imply,” said Pashler, “that instruction that packs a lot of learning into a short period is likely to be extremely inefficient, at least for remembering factual information.”

This latter isn’t new information, but does fly in the face of much formal training conducted on behalf of organizations.   We’ve got to stop massing our information in single event workshops, and starting preparing, reactivating, and reactivating again for anything that isn’t performed daily.

Moving from learning to thinking and doing (it’s not about learning after all), the second one concerns research done by Jonathan Schooler (who was a new faculty member where I was doing my post-doc; we published some work we did together with one of his PhD students).   Schooler’s work has been looking at day-dreaming, and found that it’s not a unitary thing, but actually has a couple of different modes, which differ in whether you’re not aware you’re daydreaming or are, instead, mindful of it.   The latter is to be preferred.

In the one where you’re aware you are daydreaming, you can mentally simulate situations and plan what might happen and how to respond, or review what did happen and consider alternatives.   This works for social situations as well as other forms of interactions.   And the results are beneficial: “people who engage in more daydreaming score higher on experimental measures of creativity, which require people to make a set of unusual connections.”

This is what I mean when I talk about reflection, and in the coming times of increasing change and decreasing knowledge half-life, the ability to be creative will increasingly be a competitive advantage.   So, as I’ve said before, do try to make time for reflection.   It works!

Organizational Learning Infrastructure

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In one of my reflection sessions (aka shower), I was thinking what it is I do.   I’ve been branding it ‘elearning strategy’, but it’s really more than that.   It’s about looking at how organizations develop competence, move to excellence, foster innovation, collaboratively problem-solve, etc.   I’ve had a tagline: “making organizations smarter”, and the inevitable (and desired) follow-up is “how do you do that?”.   However, then the easy, and uninteresting answer, is to fall into talking about elearning, performance support, mobile, portals, knowledge management, all that stuff that makes people’s eyes glaze over if they haven’t seen the light.

What I realized today was that what I’m really about is improving organizational learning infrastructure.   It’s Not About The Technology, as Jay says, though that’s a component of it.   It’s about culture, policies, processes, procedures, tools, templates, incentives, and more. It includes courses, and community, and more.   It’s about assessing the current state, identifying some long-term goals (and values), establishing metrics, prioritizing short, medium, and long term term steps, and executing against them, with regular checks.

With culture, it’s about willingness to share, trust, take considered risks, or developing that ability.   It’s about knowledge and skills how to learn alone and together, using the infrastructure.   It’s about populating the performance ecosystem with support.     It’s about identifying competencies in learning through tools and collaboration.   It’s about providing the technology infrastructure that supports finding or making answers. It’s about experimenting, looking for feedback, and iterating (perpetual beta).   It’s at the individual, team, unit, and organizational level.   It’s about being strategic first, then tactical.

There are frameworks, instruments, best practices, and more to move, but it’s definitely time to move.   I think a survival strategy right now is to invest in capability to you’re poised to move once opportunity comes around again.   So, my answer to the question “how do you make organizations smarter?” and new meme is: improving organizational learning infrastructure.   Are you improving?

What did I learn about learning in 2008?

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The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question for December is “What did you learn about learning in 2008?”   It’s good to reflect, and using the end of the calendar year is a traditional time.   Consequently, I trolled back through a year of blog posts.   Whew!

I saw several recurrent threads, but the strongest one is on learning to learn.   I think we’ve seen more focus on that this year, particularly with Tony Karrer & Michelle Martin’s Work Literacy effort, and a lot of the discussion at the Corporate Learning Trends conference (most recently). It’s a theme that appeared in Marcia Conner‘s presentation, in looking at what to do in tough times.   What impressed me is how much it’s been taken on in many places and in many forms, after Jay & I were pushing it several years ago (circa 2003-2004). I’m thrilled, of course.

It’s also a theme that characterizes the TogetherLearn thinking, where it’s about helping people help themselves, but not taking the self-directed and learn-together skills for granted.   Which segues nicely into my second learning, which was about social learning.   I knew about the importance (having been steeped in Vygotsky in grad school), but it hadn’t hit home quite as viscerally as this year, and I’ve become more than a convert, in fact an evangelist, about the opportunities, both formal and informal.

Interestingly, I’m also beginning to see the emergence of mobile social, and I see that mobile was another recurrent theme in what I talked about this year.   I see more opportunities, and convergences, particularly my revelation about mobile web. Twitter, for instance, is social, can be mobile, and can be a powerful learning experience.

So, my personal learning was getting more deeply into the whole elearning 2.0 area, and it’s impact back on strategy, mobile, and even games.   And the clear implications that we’ve got to focus on learning to learn skills.   There’re some new thoughts brewing, of course, and maybe that’ll play a role in my predictions for next year.   But that’s another month’s big question.

Does Education Need to Change?

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George Siemens asks in his blog:

1. Does education need to change?
2. Why or why not?
3. If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future?

I can’t resist not answering.   1. ABSOLUTELY!   Let me count the ways…

K12 Education is broken in so many ways. We’re not engaging our students in why this is important, we’re not giving them problems to solve that resemble the ones that they’ll face outside, we’re focusing on the wrong skills, we don’t value teachers, we’ve crumbling infrastructure, we’ve beggared the budgets, the list goes on.

We need new curricula and new pedagogy at least. We should be focusing on 21st century skills (not knowledge): systems thinking, design, problem-solving, research, learning to learn, multimedia literacy, teamwork and leadership, ethics, etc; my wisdom curriculum.   We need pedagogies that engage, spiral the learning around meaningful tasks, that develop multiple skills.

We need this at K12, at higher education, and in the workplace.   We need technology skills infused into the curriculum as tools, not as ends in themselves.   We need teachers capable of managing these learning experiences, parents engaged in the process and outcomes, and administrations educational and political that ‘get’ this.   We need learners who can successfully segue into taking control of their learning and destiny.

Yes, a tall order.   But if we don’t, we basically are hobbling our best chances for a better world.   Look, the only way to have functioning societies is to have an educated populace, because you just can’t trust governments to do well in lieu of scrutiny. So, let’s get it started!