Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Misusing affordances?

by Leave a Comment

Affordances is a complex term. Originally coined by Gibson, and popularized by Norman, it’s been largely used in terms of designing interfaces. Yet, it’s easy to misinterpret. I may have been guilty myself! In the past, I used it as a way to characterize technologies. Which isn’t really the intent, as it’s about sensory perception and action. So maybe I should explain what I mean, so you don’t think I’m misusing affordances.

To be clear, in interface design, it’s about the affordances you can perceive. If something looks like it can slide (e.g. a scrollbar), it lets you know you might be able to move the target of a related window in a field. Similarly a button affords pushing. One of the complaints about touch screens is that as people work to overload more functions on gestures. There might be affordances you can’t perceive: does a two-fingered swipe do anything differently than a single-finger swipe?

In my case, I’m talking more about what a technology supports. In my analysis of virtual worlds and mobile devices, I was looking to see what their core capabilities are, and so what we might naturally do with them. Similarly with media, what are their core natures?

So, for instance, an LMS’s core affordance is managing courses. Video captures dynamic context.  You might be able to do course management with a spreadsheet and some elbow grease, or you can mimic video with a series of static shots (think: Ken Burns) and narration, but the purpose-designed tool is likely going to be better. There are tradeoffs. You can graft on capabilities to a core, still an LMS won’t naturally serve as a resource repository or social media platform.

It’s an analytical tool, in my mind. You should end up asking: what’s the DNA? For example, you can match the time affordance of different mobile devices to the task. You can determine whether you need a virtual world or VR based upon whether you truly need visual or sensory immersion, action, and social (versus the tradeoffs of cost and cognitive overhead).

With an affordance perspective, you can make inferences about technologies. For instance, LXPs are really (sometimes smart) portals. AI (artificial intelligence)’s best application is IA (intelligence augmentation). AR’s natural niche, like mobile, is performance support. This isn’t to say that each can’t be repurposed in useful ways. AR has the potential to annotate the world. LXPs can be learning guides for those beyond novice stage. AI can serve in particular ways like auto-content parsing (more an automation than an augmentation). Etc.

My intent is that this way of thinking helps us short-circuit that age-old problem that we use new technologies first in ways that mimic old technologies (the old cliche of tv starting out by broadcasting radio shows). It’s a way to generate your own hype curve for technologies: over-enthusiasm leading to overuse, disappointment, and rebirth leveraging the core affordances. Maybe there’s a better word, and I’ve been misusing affordances, but I think the concept is useful. I welcome your thoughts.

Prompted by prep for the advanced seminar on instructional tech for the upcoming Learning & Development Conference.

More lessons from bad design

by 2 Comments

I probably seem like a crank, given the way I take things apart. Yet, I maintain there’s a reason beyond “get off my lawn!” I point out flaws not to complain, but instead to point to how to do it better. (At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ;) Here’s another example, providing more lessons from bad design.

In this case, I’ll be attending a conference and the providers have developed an application to support attendees. In general, I look forward to these applications. They provide ways to see who’s attending, and peruse sessions to set your calendar. There are also ways to connect to people. However, two major flaws undermine this particular instance.

The first issue is speed. This application is  slow! I timed it; 4 seconds to open the list of speakers or attendees. Similarly, I clicked on a letter to jump through the list of attendees. The amount of time it takes varied from 4 to 8 seconds. Jumping to the program took 6 seconds.

While that may seem short, compare that to most response times in apps. You essentially can’t time them, they’re so fast. More than a second is an era in mobile responsiveness. I suspect that this app is written as a ‘wrapped’ website, not a dedicated app. Which works sometimes, but not when the database is too big to be responsive. Or it could just be bad coding. Regardless, this is  basically unusable. So test the responsiveness before it’s distributed to make sure it’s acceptable. (And then reengineer it when it isn’t.)

That alone would be sufficient to discount this app, but there’s a second problem. Presumably for revenue reasons, there are ads that scroll across the top. Which might make sense to keep the costs of the app down, but there’s a fundamental problem with our visual architecture.

Motion in the periphery of our vision is distracting. That was evolutionarily adaptive, allowing us to detect threats from places that we weren’t focusing on. Yet, when it’s not a threat, and we  are trying to focus on something, it interferes. We learned about this in the days of web pages with animated gifs: you couldn’t process what you were there to consume!

In this app, the scrolling of the ads makes it more difficult to read the schedule, attendee lists, and other information. Thus, the whole purpose of the application is undermined. You could have static ads that are randomly attached to the pages you click on. The audience is likely to go to several pages, so all the ads will get seen. Having them move, however, to ensure that you see them all undermines the whole purpose of the app.

Oddly enough, there are other usability problems here. On the schedule, there’s a quick jump to times on a particular day. Though it stops at 2PM!?!? (The conference extends beyond that; my session’s at 4PM.) You’d think you could swipe to see later times on that ‘jump’ menu, but that doesn’t work. I can’t go farther, because the usability makes it too painful; we may miss more lessons from bad design.

Our cognitive architecture is powerful, but has limitations. Designing to work in alignment with our brains is a clear win; and this holds true for designing for learning as well as performance support. Heck, I’ve written a whole book  about how our minds work, just to support our ability to design better learning! Conflicting with our mental mechanisms is just bad design. My goal is that with more lessons in bad design, we can learn to do better. Here’s to good design!

Update on my workshops

by Leave a Comment

Just as I did an update on my books, it’s time to also let you know about some workshop opportunities. Together, I think they create a coherent whole. They’re scattered around a bit, so here I lay out how they fit together, how they’re run, what they cover, and how you can find them. They’re not free, but they’re reasonably priced, with reputable organizations. So here’s an update on my workshops.

First, they’re three pieces of the picture. I talk about two things, generally. It comes from my cheeky quip that L&D isn’t doing near what it could and should, and what it  is doing, it’s doing badly. So, that first part is about the larger performance ecosystem, and the second part is about learning experience design (LXD). And, that latter part actually pulls apart into two pieces.

I see LXD as the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. Thus, you need to understand learning science (and the associated elements). Then, you  also  need to understand what makes an engaging experience. So, two workshops address each of these.

The learning science workshop is being run under the auspices of HR.com (brokered through the Allen Academy). It’s under their professional education series, called Effective Learning Strategies. It’s a five week course (with a delayed sixth week). There are readings, a weekly session, and assignments. You can earn a certificate. In it I cover the basics of cognitive science, the learning outcomes, social/cultural/emotional elements, and the implications for design. It’s just what you need to know, and very much aligned with my forthcoming book!

The second part of the story is about the engagement side. While I’ve tried to boil down learning science into the necessary core, there are other resources. This isn’t well covered. And note, I’m  not talking about tarted-up drill-and-kill, gamification, ‘click to see more’, etc. Instead, I’m going deep into building, and maintaining: motivation, reducing anxiety, and more. Formally, it’s the Make It Meaningful workshop. This is a four week course, with videos to present the information, then live sessions to practice application, and takeaway assignments from the Learning Development Accelerator. It’s based upon the learnings from my book on designing learning games,  Engaging Learning,  but I’ve spent months this past summer making it more general, going deeper, validating the newest information, and making it accessible and comprehensible.

The final story is the performance ecosystem workshop. In what may seem a silly approach, it manifests as a course on mobile! However, once you recognize that mobile is about pretty much everything but courses (and can do contextual, which is an important new direction). It makes sense. When I was writing the mobile book, the intent was that it be a stealth approach to shift the L&D mindset away from just courses. Which, of course, was made more clear with my Revolutionize L&D book. So I hope you can see that this course, too, has a solid foundation. It’s about courses, performance support, informal and social learning, contextual opportunities, and strategy, in six weeks of online sessions, with a tiny bit of reading, and interim assignments. It’s by the Allen Academy directly.

Together, I think these three workshops provide the knowledge foundations you need to run a L&D operation. Two talk about what makes courses that are optimally engaging and effective, and one looks at the rest of the picture. Evidence suggests there’s a need. And I’ve worked hard to ensure that they’ve got the right stuff. So that’s an update on my workshops. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.  (And, yes, I’d like to pull them all together in one place, but I haven’t found a platform I like yet; stay tuned!)

 

Thinking Transformation

by Leave a Comment

This pandemic has led to everyone scrambling to work digitally. And it‘s not really a transformation (which shouldn‘t be ‘digital first‘), but rather just ‘move what we do online‘. And that‘s understandable. Over time, however, I think we want to shift our mindset. And, I think a previous exercise in thinking transformation is valuable here. I‘m talking mobile.

When I originally was talking about mobile, I was doing so from a perspective of augmenting our brains. The 4C‘s framework was a way to think about core mobile affordance from a point of view of what mobile offers. Then I moved on to the role the devices play in our (working) life. It‘s about not just courses on a phone, but:

  • Augmenting formal learning: extending it
  • Performance support: cognitive augmentation
  • Social: tapping into the power of social and informal learning
  • Contextual: mobile‘s unique opportunity

And, I suggest, these are valuable ways to think about using technology in general to support us. On principle, I like to think about how technology supports our thinking (not the other way around ;). To future-proof what I propose is one driver, so tech changes don’t undermine relevance. Further, since mobile is a platform – a strategy not just a tactic – focusing on fundamentals makes sense.

For instance, elearning shouldn‘t look like just a classroom online. That can and arguably should be part of it, but there‘s more. It‘s about extending formal learning, not just delivering it. And aligning with how we really learn, because it really does have to be effective.

Similarly, with folks working from wherever, thinking about the support they need is important. What tools, aids, guides, etc., will help them work more effectively without their prior context? Let’s change workflows to align better with what‘s known about how we work.

And making people available in useful ways for communication and collaboration is important. The demands of online meetings are becoming more prevalent and onerous. Zoom fatigue is a thing!   How can we optimize the experience?

Contextual is more uniquely mobile, taking advantage of where and when you are (and other contextual factors), but we probably do need to account for them more astutely. If your kids are in the other room, what does that do to your ability to work? Here, of course, is the greatest difference from mobile, but the mindset is still relevant.

So, for instance, when I ran a mobile course for the Allen Academy, we had a week dedicated to each of these elements (as well as kicking off a mobile mindset and closing on strategy). Given that it was still early in this new world, I didn‘t really push the thought of how this is a more general tactic. Of course, I now would.

And, given that I‘ll be running the course again, I definitely will! Look, mobile hasn‘t gone away, and we‘re possibly using mobile tools more now even though we‘re not on the road! So mobile‘s still relevant, and the mindset behind ‘thinking mobile‘ is even more relevant. I’ll be talking with Christopher Allen of Allen Interactions about it tomorrow (12 Aug) at 11AM PT, 2 Eastern (see below). And, if you‘re interested in the course, check it out!

A mlearning course?

by Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in my last post, yes, I’ll be running a course on mobile learning (starts next week! 😱). And I can understand if you’re thinking “a mlearning course?”   So I thought I’d lay out the thinking a bit, and see if I can help you see why I’m doing this.

So, I don’t usually do things just for money. I’ve turned down things I thought were inappropriate in the past. (Which is amongst the reasons I’m not rich! ;) I try to do things that I think are needed.

And that’s part of the reason I’m doing it the way I am: the folks I’m doing it with. Michael Allen’s established a reputation for quality in learning, advocating for good design in print and talks, and living it in his work. We’ve had a good relationship, endorsing each other’s books ;), but working with him on the Serious eLearning Manifesto reinforced that not is he smart and committed, but just a great guy. So doing the course with the Allen Academy ensured that I could trust the integrity of what we’d do.

So isn’t mobile learning already in place? You’d think so, since my book on the topic came out nine years ago, and is already out of print! (And it was a good book  and  since I based it on the cognitive principles, it’s still relevant. It’s also now available again (at a much improved price).   However, I was recently asked to give a mobile talk by the local chapter. When I opined that mobile is old, the organizer let me know “it may be old for you, but not for everybody!”   So there’s still a need!

And, of course, the content is relevant. I derive the course form cognitive principles, so even if the tech changes (and it has) the foundations are transferrable. Whether you’re talking about tablets, phones, or watches, the implications are apt.

So what  will it cover? Here’re the topics of the six weeks:

  1. Introduction. Defining mobile, and some overarching concepts that will guide the rest: the 4Cs, and four major categories of use.
  2. Formal learning. The first of the four categories, and it’s  not about courses on a phone. We’ll look at augmenting  formal learning.
  3. Performance support. We’re looking at why it’s mobile’s natural niche, and what makes it work.
  4. Social/informal. Here we’re looking at going beyond optimizing performance and moving to continual learning and innovation. And mobile’s role.
  5. Contextual. This is mobile’s real opportunity, not just bringing things to wherever/whenever, but doing things  because of when and where we are. And more.
  6. Strategy. This is the wrap up, where we talk about what it takes to make this all work in the organization.

I’ve designed in discussions, and group assignments, so while it’s grounded in the book, it’s both updated and more interactive. I should be careful to mention that it’s not about development, using authoring tools, or more. It’s about  thinking different, which mobile requires. The mindset is performance ecosystem, and not surprisingly therefore coupled to the thinking behind the L&D revolution I continue to advocate for.

I’m not dunning for students, since we’ve already got a good number of registrations, but instead I just wanted to expose the thinking behind the choices (showing my work). That is, show you why a mlearning course. Still, I’d welcome seeing you there if you’re interested in getting your mind around some transferrable principles that enable mobile, and more!   Other than that, stay safe and take care.

Graham Roberts #Realities360 Keynote Mindmap

by Leave a Comment

Graham Roberts kicked off the 2nd day of the Realities 360 conference talking about the Future of Immersive Storytelling. He told about their experiences and lessons building an ongoing suite of experiences. From the first efforts through to the most recent it was insightful. The examples were vibrant inspirations.

Stephanie Llamas #Realities360 Keynote Mindmap

by Leave a Comment

Stephanie Llamas kicked off the Realities 360 conference by providing an overview of VR & AR industry. As a market researcher, she made the case for both VR and AR/MR. With trend data and analysis she made a case for growth and real uses. She also suggested that you need to use it correctly. (Hence my talk later this day.)

Keynote Mindmap

Learning Lessons

by 1 Comment

Designing mLearning bookSo, I just finished teaching a mobile learning course online for a university. My goal was not to ‘teach’ mobile so much as develop a mobile mindset. You have to think differently than what the phrase ‘mobile learning’ might lead you to think. And, not surprisingly, some things went well, and some thing didn’t. I thought I’d share the learning lessons, both for my own reflection, and for others.

As a fan of Nilson’s Specifications Grading, I created a plan for how the assessment would go. I want lots of practice, less content. And I do believe in checking knowledge up front, then having social learning, and a work product. Thus, each week had a repeated structure of each element. It was competency based, so you either did it or not. No aggregation of points, but instead: you get this grade if you do: this many assignments correct, and  write a substantive comment in a discussion board  and comment on someone else’s this many times,  and complete this level on this many knowledge checks. And I staggered the deadlines through the week, so there’d be reactivation. I’ve recommended this scheme on principle, and think it worked out good in practice, and I’d do it again.

In many ways it ‘teacher proofs’ the class. For one, the students are giving each other feedback in the discussion question. The choice of discussion question and assignment both were designed to elicit the necessary thinking, which makes the marking of the assignment relatively easy. And the knowledge checks set a baseline background. Designing them all as scenario challenges was critical as well.

And I was really glad I mixed things up.  In early weeks, I had them look at apps or evaluated ones that they liked. For the social week, I had them collaborate in pairs. In the contextual week, they submitted a video of themselves. They had to submit an information architecture for the design week. And for the development week, they tested it.  Thus, each assignment was tied to mobile.

It was undermined by a couple of things. First, the LMS interfered. I wrote careful feedback for each wrong answer for each question on the knowledge checks. And, it turns out, the students weren’t seeing it!  (And they didn’t let me know ’til the 2nd half of the abbreviated semester!) There’s a flag I wasn’t setting, but it wasn’t the default!  (Which was a point I then emphasized in the design week: start with good defaults!)

And, I missed making the discussions ‘gradeable’ until late because of another flag. That’s at least partly on me. Which meant again they weren’t getting feedback, and that’s not good. And, of course, it wasn’t obvious ’til I remedied it. Also, my grading scheme doesn’t fit into the default grading schema of the LMS anyways, so it wasn’t automatically doable anyways. Next time, I would investigate that and see if I could make it more obvious. And learn about the LMS earlier. (Ok, so I had some LMS anxiety and put it off…)

With 8 weeks, I broke it up like this:

  1. Overview: mobile is  not courses on a phone. The Four C’s.
  2. Formal Learning:  augmenting learning.
  3. Performance Support: mobile’s natural niche
  4. Social: connecting to people ‘on the go’
  5. Contextual: the unique mobile opportunity
  6. Design: if you get the design right…
  7. Development: practicalities and testing.
  8. Strategy: platform and policy.

And I think this was the right structure. It naturally reactivated prior concepts, and developed the thinking before elaborating.

For the content, I had a small set of readings. Because of a late start, I only found out that I couldn’t use my own mLearning book when the bookstore told me it was out of print (!). That required scrambling and getting approval to use some other writings I’d done. And the late start precluded me from organizing other writings. No worries, minimal was good.  And I wrote a script that covered the material, and filmed myself giving a lecture for each week. Then I also provided the transcript.

The university itself was pretty good. They capped the attendance at 20. This worked really well. (Anything else would’ve been a deal breaker after a disaster many years ago when an institution promised to keep it under 32 and then gave me 64 students.)  And there was good support, at least during the week, and some support was available even over the weekend.

Overall, despite some hiccups and some stress, I think it worked out (particularly under the constraints). Of course, I’ll have to see what the students say. One other thing I’d do that I didn’t do a good job of generally (I did with a few students) was  explain  the pedagogy. I’ve learned this in the past, and I should’ve done so, but in the rush to wrestle with the systems, it slipped through the cracks.

Those are my learning lessons. I welcome  your feedback and lessons!

Y A (Yet Another) Misleading Mobile Marketing Post

by Leave a Comment

talking on a mobile phoneIs this YAMMMP? I suppose I can’t address  every one, but I think picking a few here and there are perhaps instructive. And, maybe, a bit fun. So there was a post on 5 mobile learning strategies. I’m a  wee bit opinionated on mobile learning, so I thought I’d have a look. And, of course, it seems to be a random selection. I guess there’s a requirement to regularly put out stuff, but it seems they get someone to make stuff up scattershot, for the sake of marketing. And while the advice isn’t  bad, it’s just random bits of advice trying to create the appearance of expertise.  Worse, it’s really not specific to mobile, and, therefore,…misleading.

  1. The first recommendation was to do ‘microlearning‘.  The worst part was their definition: short suggest of learning and  performance support.  Let’s just throw  everything  together!  Yes, small chunks of content are good. Because they match how our minds work. But this (differentiated) is not unique to mobile, it’s good advice over all! Of course, with nuances  about the formal (e.g. not just putting your course through the shredder and stream out the bits).
  2. The next recommendation was for ‘gamification’. Er, no.  Now to be fair, they do say  “gamification for serious learning”, but how do we know whether they mean immersive learning environments, or points, badges, and leaderboards? The former’s good, the latter is, I suggest, not so valuable. But again, this is undifferentiated, so it’s not obviously good advice.
  3. On to the ubiquitous ‘video’!  Yes, video can be valuable, but not generically. It can be overdone, and can intrude in a variety of ways. For instance, the audio might be inappropriate in certain contexts, and hands-free may require a visual focus that can’t be distracted. Moreover, using video appropriately again isn’t unique to mobile.
  4. And another statement that’s not unique to mobile: look to social learning. Yes, of course, social learning’s good. And, with mobile populations equipped with devices and ‘downtime’, it can be valuable.  But it’s valuable regardless of device. When it’s possible, it can add value. The obvious rises again.
  5. And, finally, personalization. Yes, great. So personalize via the small chunks from microlearning. Again, why unique to mobile?  Love the idea, but hate that it’s presented as part of a mobile strategy instead of a learning strategy.

Look, I’m a fan of mobile, obviously. But while mobile’s niche is performance support, what’s unique to mobile is context. Do something  because  of when and where you are. And this article has entirely missed it. And the other critical element  is to think of mobile as a platform. It’s not a device, it’s not an app, it’s a unique delivery channel for many possibilities. Your initial exploration can be either of the microlearning components, but recognize that as soon as you use it, you’ll be expected to do more. And thinking  platform is the key strategy here.

I understand that their intention is self-serving, these are things they can do. But pretending these are core strategies is misleading.  And that’s the problem I’d like you to learn to detect. Go to the core affordances, and then drill down. I’ve talked about my own five mobile approaches, for instance. Don’t work up from what you can do until you know what that is doing to advance your capabilities as well.  That is what’s strategic.

Mobile Malarkey

by 1 Comment

I was called out on a tweet pointing to an article on mobile. And, I have to say, I thought it was pretty underwhelming. It was the ‘old school’ view of mlearning, and I think that the post largely missed the point. So I thought it’d be valuable to walk through the claims. What I’m trying to accomplish is share how my thinking works, and perhaps contaminate you with a wee bit of it too ;). We need to get better at cutting through the hype (part of the debunking skills), and that includes microlearning and mobile malarkey as well.

The post makes four claims for why mobile is on the rise:

  • the advancements in mobile technology
  • the desire for small content
  • more engaging content
  • consumption ‘on the go’

So let’s go through these.  However, first I’m going to challenge the assumption!

Mobile is not ‘on the rise’.  That’s so 2012.  Mobile is well past the ‘new’ stage.  Heck, Google was arguing ‘mobile first’ back in 2010!  Even here in the US, it’s mainstream, and it’s been the ‘goto’ mode in other countries for much longer.

Now, the advancements in mobile technology  are continuing, and impressive.  Things like sensors for contextual information, networking for social connections, new interaction capabilities like pressure-sensitivity, and higher resolution screens and faster processors mean new capabilities.  What the article is talking about, is cutting edge content. Yes, video can be useful ‘on demand’, and interactivity can be powerful.  In context.  But they’re not picking up on that. This is still the ‘get training wherever you are’ mentality.  Mobile is really not about courses!  But maybe they’ll get better..

Next is the chunks. Ok, so I’ve already weighed in on ‘microlearning’.  Yes, small is better. It  does matter whether you’re talking performance support or spaced learning, but small is good. However, this article touts that we prefer smaller chunks (er, yes, and that’s not a good indicator).  And that we benefit from smaller. Yes, but this is still about ‘content consumption’.  Mobile can, and should be more than that.

On to engagement. Here the claim is that these small bits are more engaging, but that we can do interactive things as well. And this is good: mini-scenarios (better written multiple choice), even branching scenarios can lead to better. However, here they’re talking quizzes and infographics. Again, mostly content, and also focused on knowledge, not skills. This isn’t where the emphasis should be. Spaced learning yes, but reactivation – reconceptualization, recontextualization, and reapplication – not content dump and knowledge test.

Finally, it’s about remote workers. Yes, again, contextualization to give the right thing, to the right person, at the right time and place. But no, they’re talking about accessing training where/when/ever. Yes, that’s nice.  But not intrinsically exciting, and definitely not really capitalizing on mobile’s promise.

Look, the real mobile opportunity is about performance support and contextualized learning. Spaced learning is good (though not unique to mobile).  But to argue mobile’s on the rise, and it’s about content, is to misconstrue the state of the industry  and the opportunity. This is obviously a sales pitch for their mobile content delivery, but get clear about what you want from mobile. It’s a platform, so once you start people will expect more. It’s best if you need to think strategically about all that you can do and ensure you’ve seen the full picture before you settle on any one solution.