Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Help? Two questions on mobile for you

by 4 Comments

In the process of writing a chapter on mobile for an elearning book, the editor took my suggestion for structure and then improved upon it. I’d suggested that we have two additional sections: one on hints and tips, and the others on common mistakes.  His suggestion was to crowd-source the answers.  And I think it’s a good idea, so let me ask for you help, and ask you to respond via comments or to me personally:

  1. What are the hints and tips you’ve found valuable for mlearning?
  2. What are the mlearning mistakes you’ve seen or experienced that you’d recommend others avoid?

I welcome seeing what you come up with!

Mobile Changes Everything?

by 18 Comments

As a prelude to a small webinar I’ll be doing next week (though it also serves to tee up the free Best of mLearnCon  webinar I’ll be doing for the eLearning Guild next week as well, here’re some deliberately provocative thoughts on mobile:

According to Tomi Ahonen, mobile is the fastest growing industry ever.  But just because everyone has one, what does it mean?  I think the implications are broader, but here I want to talk specifically about work and learning.  I want to suggest that it has the opportunity to totally upend the organization.  How? By broadening our understanding of how we work and learn.

The 70:20:10 framework, while not descriptive, does capture the reality that most of what we learn at work doesn’t come from courses (the ’10’).  Instead, we learn by coaching/mentoring (the ‘2o’), and ‘on the job’ (70).  Yet, by and large, the learning units in organizations are only addressing the 10 percent.  They could, and should, be looking at how to support the other 90, but haven’t seen it, yet there’re lots that can be done.

The bigger picture is that digital technology augments our brain.  Our brains are really  good at pattern-matching and extracting meaning. They’re also really  bad at doing rote things, particularly complex ones.  Fortunately, digital technology is exactly the opposite, so combined we’re far more capable.  This has been true at the desktop, with not only powerful tools, but support wrapped around tools and tasks.  Now it’s also true where- and whenever we are: we can share content, compute capabilities, and communication.  And you should  be able to see how that benefits the organization.

And more: it’s adding in something that the desktop didn’t really have: the ability to capture your current context, and to leverage that to your benefit. Your device can know when and where you are, and do things appropriately.

So why is this game-changing?  I want to suggest that the notion of a digital platform that supports us ubiquitously will be the inroad to recognize that the formal learning is not, and cannot, be separate from the work.  If we’re professionals, we’re always working and learning (as my colleague Harold Jarche extols us).  If a new platform comes out that’s ubiquitous yet relatively unsuited for courses, we have a forcing function to start thinking anew about what the role of learning and performance professionals is.  I suggest that there are rich ways we can think about coupling mobile with work.

Why do I suggest that courses on a phone isn’t the ideal solution?  You have to make some distinctions about the platform.  A tablet is just not  the same as a pocketable device. It has been hard to get a handle on how they differ, but I think you do need to recognize that they do.  For example, I’ll suggest that you’re not likely to want to take a full course on a pocketable device, however on a tablet that’d be quite feasible.

To take full advantage, you have to consider mobile as a platform, not just a device. It’s a channel for capability to reach across limitations of chronology and geography, and make us more productive. And more.  So, get on board, and get going to more and better performance.

New Mobile Report Out

by Leave a Comment

I’m happy to report that the eLearning Guild has just released this year’s mobile learning research  report I authored for them (after doing the same last year).  It’s free if you’re already a paid member of the Guild, which has other benefits (e.g. similar free access to other coming research reports, Thought Leader Webinars, etc).  Combining my summary of the ‘state of the industry’ with the results of surveys of the Guild’s membership, it’s a snapshot of the state of mobile learning.

I should admit that there’s a bias in the report, in that the membership of the Guild is largely (though not wholly) corporate, and again largely US based.  I suspect, therefore, that the global picture isn’t fully represented in the report. However, I do hope that the commentary does reflect general principles that are relevant regardless of context, though the fact of the market is that smartphones for instance are more distributed in the developed world than the developing world.

In the report, I make two points:

“What‘s clear is that it is time to move beyond the initial experimental stages and start thinking of mobile as a platform for organizational performance. … The time to get on top of mobile is now, as the market has matured to the point where we can see real benefits on a pragmatic basis.”

I believe mobile, as a platform, will have a transformative effect on the learning and performance workplace as it will elsewhere.  As mobile delivers digital augmentation of our capabilities wherever and whenever, no longer just at the desktop, it will bring all  the resources onto the table: performance support and social as well as augmenting formal learning.  This is an opportunity for a game-change, where L&D can take responsibility for more benefits to the organization, and as a consequence be viewed more core to the business.

If you’re interested in what’s happening in mobile learning, this report is for you. If you’re active in learning & technology, I reckon eLearning Guild membership makes sense as well.

Mobile Work

by 4 Comments

I’m regularly trying to do two things: explore mobile capabilities, and get folks to think more broadly about how we can support performance in the organization.  I was asked to flesh out a proposed title for a stage at the upcoming mLearnCon, and thought about trying to map the 4C’s of mobile to the major categories of mobile work opportunities.  It’s a slightly different take than my previous meta-mobile post where I looked at performance support, formal learning, and meta-learning.

Looking at Mobile for workIn this case I’m looking at the 4 C’s by work categories.  I see augmenting formal learning as one, providing performance support as a second, social media as a 3rd area, and the unique mobile contribution of context-sensitive support as a 4th area.

I realize there are some problems in this, in that Social and Communicate are hard to discriminate (hence using the catchall phrase social network), and Capture is core to context-sensitivity. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) don’t have to be social, but can be.  And I hadn’t really thought through what context-sensitive computing and communicating might mean. Certainly you could have a focused directory that knows who knows about this context, and perhaps an app that presents different options for context-sensitive trouble-shooting or repair (e.g. knowing what device you’re liable to be working on), but I could be missing some options.  And I’m not sure I’ve seen socially edited or maintained apps as opposed to content. Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

So, as this is a first shot at this, I welcome feedback. What am I missing?

elearning versus mlearning

by 1 Comment

Mayra Aixa Avilar  (who I hope to meet someday, maybe at mLearnCon?)pointed to this post saying “mLearning is starting to diverge from eLearning not only in specific meaning, but in approach and design as well”, and I want to politely disagree.    Depends, of course, on what you mean by elearning, to start with.

The clear implication is that elearning is about courses on the desktop.  As I’ve discussed before, when I’m talking about ‘big L‘ learning, I’m covering research, performance, innovation, creativity as well as more typical execution. As a consequence, I’m talking performance support, social networks, portals, and more, as well as courses on the desktop.  The full spectrum of how digital technology, even desktop, can be supporting performance.  Of course, I acknowledge that, to most, elearning is the simple case.

Now, what’s interesting in mobile is that it’s many other things than courses on a phone.  Please.  While it might  be courses on a tablet, it’s so much more.  In my workshops, I like to ask the audience how they  use their mobile devices to make them smarter, and it ranges across info, contact, notes and calendar, snapping pictures, and more. So  not courses.

Which is one of the reasons I like  mobile learning, because it’s a real game changer.  As we look to how mobile devices can support performance, we then open the door to looking at how performance across the organization can be supported, and we start seeing how much more a learning unit could be doing besides courses (not replacing them, mind you, but stopping relying on them exclusively).

The post did mention that context-specific things could be done, and communication, but video can be captured, and software can do context-specific things at your desktop too. It’s just that we don’t tend to think about this, and we should. Yes, there is the mobility factor, and that’s a significant opportunity.  Yet this strikes me as an opportunity to redefine elearning to mean a bigger opportunity.

So I guess I’d reframe the conversation, and say that mlearning is helping us see what technology support for performance is, and that’s helping us revaluate elearning.  A good thing.

70:20:10 Tech

by 3 Comments

At the recent Up To All Of Us event (#utaou), someone asked about the 70:20:10 model.  As you might expect, I mentioned that it’s a framework for thinking about supporting people at work, but it also occurred to me that there might be a reason folks have not addressed the 90, because, in the past, there might have been little that they could do. But that’s changed.

In the past, other than courses, there was little at could be done except providing courses on how to coach, and making job aids.  The technology wasn’t advanced enough.  But that’s changed.

Tech help by 70:20:10 stageWhat has changed are several things.  One is the rise of social networking tools: blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, and more. The other is the rise of mobile.  Together, we can be supporting the 90 in fairly rich ways.

For the 20, coaching and mentoring, we can start delivering that wherever needed, via mobile.  Learners can ask for, or even be provided, support more closely tied to their performance situations regardless of location.  We can also have a richer suite of coaching and mentoring happening through Communities of Practice, where anyone can be a coach or mentor, and be developed in those roles, too.  Learner activity can be tracked, as well, leaving traces for later review.

For the 70, we can first of all start providing rich job aids wherever and whenever, including a suite of troubleshooting information and even interactive wizards.  We also can have help on tap freed of barriers of time and distance.  We can look up information as well, if our portals are well-designed.  And we can find people to help, whether information or collaboration.

The point is that we no longer have limits in the support we can provide, so we should stop having limits in the help we *do* provide.

Yes, other reasons could still also be that folks in the L&D unit know how to do courses, so that’s their hammer making everything look like a nail, or they don’t see it as their responsibility (to which I respond “Who else? Are you going to leave it to IT? Operations?”). That *has* to change. We can, and should, do more.  Are you?

At the Edge of India

by 4 Comments

A few months back, courtesy of my colleague Jay Cross, I got into discussions about the EdgeX conference, scheduled for March 12-14 in New Delhi.  Titled the “Disruptive Educational Research Conference”, it certainly has intriguing aspects.

I was asked to talk about games, the topic of my first book.  Owing to unfortunate circumstances (my friend and co-speaker on games had to change plans), it looks like I’ll also be talking about mobile (books two and three) which is exciting despite the circumstances.

However, what’s really exciting is the lineup of other people speaking. I’ve been a fan of George Siemens and Stephen Downes for years, and an eager but less focused follower of Dave Cormier and Alex Couros.  And I’ve only met Stephen once, and am eager to meet the rest.  I don’t really know the other speakers, but their positions and descriptions suggest that this is going to be a great event. Meeting new and interesting people is one of the reasons to go to a conference in the first place!  And, of course, Jay will be there too.

I’ve been to India before, as one of my partners has it’s origins there, and it’s a fascinating place.  Part of the conference is to look at how the latest concepts of learning play out in the Indian context, but given that it’s across K12, higher ed, and corporate, we’ll be talking principles that are across contexts.

Looking at disruptive concepts, with top thinkers, in an intriguing context, makes this an exciting opportunity, I reckon.  I realize it may not make sense for many readers, but I’m hoping some will be intrigued enough to check it out, and there will be a steady stream of related materials. Already there are links from many speakers, and resources about the Indian education context.  If you do go, please say hi!

Meta-mobile

by 3 Comments

As a followup to my last post, I was thinking how you would use the different modes of mobile (the Four C’s): Content, Compute, Communicate, & Capture, to support the different layers of learning.

4C's by learning modeHere I’ve made a first attempt at trying to matrix the 3 layers of learning (performance, learning, meta-learning) by the 4 C’s of mobile.  It’s indicative, not exhaustive, but it helps me to try to get concrete about what you might do.

As you can see, there’s some overlap, and one questions is are there continuums between the layers. Is performance support categorically different than formal learning, or are their bridges?  Is meta-learning categorically different?  (I’m not sure I care too much, as long as I’m considering all!)

So, in the interest of learning and thinking ‘out loud’, I invite your feedback.

Will tablets diverge?

by 2 Comments

After my post trying to characterize the differences between tablets and mobile, Amit Garg similarly  posted that tablets are different. He concludes that “a  conscious decision should be made when designing tablet learning (t-learning) solutions”, and goes further to suggest that converting elearning or mlearning directly may not make the most sense.  I agree.

As I’ve suggested, I think the tablet’s not the same as a mobile phone. It’s not always  with you, and consequently it’s not ready for any use.  A real mobile device is useful for quick information bursts, not sustained attention to the device.  (I’ll suggest that listening to audio, whether canned or a conversation, isn’t quite the same, the mobile device is a vehicle, not the main source of interaction.)  Tablets are for more sustained interactions, in general. While they can be used for quick interactions, the screen size supports more sustained interactions.

So when do  you use tablets?  I believe they’re valuable for regular elearning, certainly.  While you would want to design for the touch screen interface rather than mimic a mouse-driven interaction.  Of course, I believe you also should not  replicate the standard garbage elearning, and take advantage of rethinking the learning experience, as Barbara Means suggested in the SRI report for the US Department of Education, finding that eLearning was now superior to F2F.  It’s not because of the medium itself, but because of the chance to redesign the learning.

So I think that tablets like the iPad will be great elearning platforms. Unless the task is inherently desktop, the intimacy of the touchscreen experience is likely to be superior.  (Though more than Apple’s new market  move, the books can be stunning, but they’re not a full learning experience.)  But that’s not all.

Desktops, and even laptops don’t have the portability of a tablet. I, and others, find that tablets are taken more places than laptops. Consequently, they’re available for use as performance support in more contexts than laptops (and not as many as smart or app phones).  I think there’ll be a continuum of performance support opportunities, and constraints like quantity of information (I’d rather look at a diagram on a tablet) constraints of time & space in the performance context, as well as preexisting pressures for pods (smartphone or PDA) versus tablets will determine the solution.

I do think there will be times when you can design performance support to run on both pads and pods, and times you can design elearning for both laptop and tablet (and tools will make that easier), but you’ll want to do a performance context analysis as well as your other analyses to determine what makes sense.

 

 

Performance Architecture

by 3 Comments

I’ve been using the tag ‘learning experience design strategy’ as a way to think about not taking the same old approaches of events  Ã¼ber ales.  The fact of the matter is that we’ve quite a lot of models and resources to draw upon, and we need to rethink what we’re doing.

The problem is that it goes far beyond just a more enlightened instructional design, which of course we need.  We need to think of content architectures, blends between formal and informal, contextual awareness, cross-platform delivery, and more.  It involves technology systems, design processes, organizational change, and more.  We also need to focus on the bigger picture.

Yet the vision driving this is, to me, truly inspiring: augmenting our performance in the moment and developing us over time in a seamless way, not in an idiosyncratic and unaligned way.  And it is strategic, but I’m wondering if architecture doesn’t better capture the need for systems and processes as well as revised design.

This got triggered by an exercise I’m engaging in, thinking how to convey this.  It’s something along the lines of:

The curriculum’s wrong:

  • it’s not knowledge objectives, it’s skills
  • it’s not current needs, it’s adapting to change
  • it’s not about being smart, it’s about being wise

The pedagogy’s wrong:

  • it’s not a flood, but a drip
  • it’s not knowledge dump, it’s decision-making
  • it’s not expert-mandated, instead it’s learner-engaging
  • it’s not ‘away from work’, it’s in context

The performance model is wrong:

  • it’s not all in the head, it’s distributed across tools and systems.
  • it’s not all facts and skill, it’s motivation and confidence
  • it’s not independent, it’s socially developed
  • it’s not about doing things right, it’s about doing the right thing

The evaluation is wrong:

  • it’s not seat time, it’s business outcomes
  • it’s not efficiency, at least until it’s effective
  • it’s not about normative-reference, it’s about criteria

So what does  this look like in practice?   I think it’s about a support system organized so that it recognizes what you’re trying to do, and provides possible help.  On top of that, it’s about showing where the advice comes from, developing understanding as an additional light layer.  Finally, on top of that, it’s about making performance visible and looking at the performance across the previous level, facilitating learning to learn. And, the underlying values are also made clear.

It doesn’t have to get all that right away.  It can start with just better formal learning design, and a bit of content granularity. It certainly starts with social media involvement.  And adapting the culture in the org to start developing meta-learning.  But you want to have a vision of where you’re going.

And what does it take to get here?  It needs a new design that starts from the performance gap and looks at root causes. The design process then onsiders what sort of experience would both achieve the end goal and the gaps in the performer equation (including both technology aids and knowledge and skill upgrades), and consider how that develops over time recognizing the capabilities of both humans and technology, with a value set that emphasis letting humans do the interesting work.  It’ll also take models of content, users, context, and goals, with a content architecture and a flexible delivery model with rich pictures of what a learning experience might look like and what learning resources could be.  And an implementation process that is agile, iterative, and reflective, with contextualized evaluation.  At least, that sounds right to me.

Now, what sounds right to you: learning experience design strategy, performance system design, performance architecture, <your choice here>?