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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Beyond Execution

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In a recent post, Harold Jarche talks eloquently about moving into the networked era, and practices of workscaping.  He points to this insightful model by Jane Hart, showing the bigger picture supporting performance in the workplace, or what I like to call Big L learning.

What occurs to me, however, is that there are two separate places you’ll get to.  If you master formal learning and performance support (and while that’s the only thing many L&D groups do, there’re far  fewer that do it well), you’re only going to support execution.  While that used to be ok for a time when we could plan in advance, the increasing turbulence in markets – product cloning happening in weeks, information tsunamis, etc – means that even optimal execution alone isn’t going to be a differentiator.

What’s going to be needed is continual innovation, and that simply won’t, can’t, come from formal learning.  It’s not even going to come from performance support, which while not full courses, is still designed.   What you need to do to get continual innovation going is communication and collaboration. The myth of individual innovation is busted, and it’s talking together, and more importantly working together, that is going to lead to the new ideas, better processes, optimized systems, and more.  Creativity, research, problem-solving are at the core, and those don’t come from formal learning.

You do need to have formal learning, don’t get me wrong, but that’s just the ante.  The real game is going to come from tapping into the power of your people. You’ll have to create the right culture, get a shared vision, and empower your people with the resources to do the job.  It includes the right mindset, skills, and tools.  When things are aligned, you’re going to have the important outcomes: problems solved faster, shorter times to new product and service ideas, better customer relationships, and more.

You can figure it out on your own, but if you want to get there faster, you may want to get some help in accelerating your path to this new way of working, the sustainable path to success.

 

Scaling

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A couple of weeks ago, I was in India for the #EDGEX2012 conference, an adjunct to an existing series of conferences that focus on improving educational opportunities in India.  Speakers included George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, Jay Cross, Gráinne Conole, Les Foltos, and Martin Weller, as well as a host of Indian experts.

They introduced us to the context the night before the conference, with a series of presentations indicating the scope of the issue.  One fact kept recurring; the scope was trying to raise 350-500 million learners.  That is, the 150 million discrepancy between those two is just a rounding error – we’re talking hundreds of millions of learners!  Of course, this is in a country where power outages are common if you are lucky to have electricity at all, internet access can be dodgy at best, and smartphones are not ubiquitous.

Not surprisingly, the MOOC  models that Siemens et al use, as well as the Stanford model, are of interest, seeing as how they are designed to be open to large numbers of learners.  Downes reviewed the potential problems of their model of MOOCs in his presentation  including the issues I had raised.

However, there are ways to address my concerns.  Inge de Waard, in a MOOC presentation at the just completed Learning Solutions conference, indicated how she boosted success by supporting learning in such environments with some rubrics about how to deal with the information quantity, which addresses one of my concerns.

She also did have give them an (optional) activity, which I think is also important.  This, I think, is the strong point of the Stanford model.  I think a collaborative activity-focused, and well-facilitated discussion augmented MOOC could be a viable learning experience even for those not possessed of well-developed self-learning skills.  I also think it could help develop those learning skills.

However, as one of the attendees asked me, how do you scale it?  We are talking a lot  of mentors.  What occurred to me as a model was the notion of viral propagation.  The way things go big fast is to spread to others who spread to others.  It seems to me that a big opportunity is to not just train the trainer, but train the trainer’s trainer.

I would think that you could select some elite facilitators, and start a viral MOOC on discussion facilitation (noting the problem that such a topic needs a topic).  Then those facilitators would be trained to develop other facilitators to develop other facilitators.  Lots of other things would have to be put in place: jobs, for one, and some infrastructure, as at least some of these facilitators would need to be dispersed locally.  But as de Waard noted, her course (on mobile learning) was able to be participated in via a wide mechanism of means, including cell phones.

And it seemed to many of us that the focus could be not just on meeting the job categories that are estimated to be needed, but also on employability and creativity, meta-learning as a layer on top.  Others were concerned that learning to learn doesn’t mean much until you have a job (what’s more important, entrepreneurial spirit or a toilet?), but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

There are big challenges ahead for India, but as was pointed out, the country is in the midst of a shift in many ways, not least spirit.  Many inspiring entrepreneurs showed amazing energy and ability, and while there was still extreme poverty on display, the opportunities are also immense.  Here’s to lifting the human spirit, and the conditions for a better life for all.

Reimagining Learning

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On the way to the recent Up To All Of Us unconference  (#utaou), I hadn’t planned a personal agenda.  However, I was going through the diagrams that I’d created on my iPad, and discovered one that I’d frankly forgotten. Which was nice, because it allowed me to review it with fresh eyes, and it resonated.  And I decided to put it out at the event to get feedback.  Let me talk you through it, because I welcome your feedback too.

Up front, let me state at least part of the motivation.  I’m trying to capture rethinking about education or formal learning. I’m tired of anything that allows folks to think knowledge dump and test is going to lead to meaningful change.  I’m also trying to ‘think out loud’ for myself.   And start getting more concrete about learning experience design.

Let me start with the second row from the top.  I want to start thinking about a learning experience as a series of activities, not a progression of content.  These can be a rich suite of things: engagement with a simulation, a group project, a museum visit, an interview, anything you might choose for an individual to engage in to further their learning. And, yes, it can  include traditional things: e.g. read this chapter.

This, by the way, has a direct relation to Project Tin Can, a proposal to supersede SCORM, allowing a greater variety of activities: Actor – Verb – Object, or I – did – this.  (For all I can recall, the origin of the diagram may have been an attempt to place Tin Can in a broad context!)

Around these activities, there are a couple of things. For one, content is accessed on the basis of the activities, not the other way around. Also, the activities produce products, and also reflections.

For the activities to be maximally valuable, they should produce output.  A sim use could produce a track of the learner’s exploration. A group project could provide a documented solution, or a concept-expression video or performance. An interview could produce an audio recording.  These products are portfolio items, going forward, and assessable items.  The assessment could be self, peer, or mentor.

However, in the context of ‘make your thinking visible’ (aka ‘show your  work’), there should also be reflections or cognitive annotations.  The underlying thinking needs to be visible for inspection. This is also part of your portfolio, and assessable. This is where, however, the opportunity to really recognize where the learner is, or is not, getting the content, and detect opportunities for assistance.

The learner is driven to content resources (audios, videos, documents, etc) by meaningful activity.  This in opposition to the notion that content dump happens before meaningful action. However, prior activities can ensure that learners are prepared to engage in the new activities.

The content could be pre-chosen, or the learners could be scaffolded in choosing appropriate materials. The latter is an opportunity for meta-learning.  Similarly, the choice of product could be determined, or up to learner/group choice, and again an opportunity for learning cross-project skills.  Helping learners create useful reflections is valuable (I recall guiding honours students to take credit for  the work they’d done; they were blind to much of the own hard work they had put in!).

When I presented this to the groups, there were several questions asked via post-its on the picture I hand-drew. Let me address them here:

What scale are you thinking about?

This unpacks. What goes into activity design is a whole separate area. And learning experience design may well play a role beneath this level.  However, the granularity of the activities is at issue.  I think about this at several scales, from an individual lesson plan to a full curriculum.    The choice of evaluation should be competency-based, assessed by rubrics, even jointly designed ones.  There is a lot of depth that is linked to this.

How does this differ from a traditional performance-based learning model?

I hadn’t heard of performance-based learning. Looking it up, there seems considerable overlap.  Also with outcome-based learning,  problem-based learning, or service learning, and similarly Understanding By Design.  It may not be more, I haven’t yet done the side-by-side. It’s scaling it up , and arguably a different lens, and maybe more, or not.  Still, I’m trying to carry it to more places, and help provide ways to think anew about instruction and formal education.

An interesting aside, for me, is that this does  segue to informal learning. That is, you, as an adult, choose certain activities to continue to develop your ability in certain areas.  Taking this framework provides a reference for learners to take control of their own learning, and develop their ability to be better learners.  Or so I would think, if done right.  Imagine the right side of the diagram moving from mentor to learner control.

How much is algorithmic?

That really depends.  Let me answer that in conjunction with this other comment:

Make a convert of this type of process out of a non-tech traditional process and tell that story…  

I can’t do that now, but one of the attendees suggested this sounded a lot like what she did in traditional design education. The point is that this framework is independent of technology.  You could be assigning studio and classroom and community projects, and getting back write-ups, performances, and more.  No digital tech involved.

There are definite ways in which technology can assist: providing tools for content search, and product and reflection generation, but this is not  about technology. You could be algorithmic in choosing from a suite of activities by a set of rules governing recommendations based upon learner performance, content available, etc.  You could also be algorithmic in programming some feedback around tech-traversal.  But that’s definitely not where I’m going right now.

Similarly, I’m going to answer two other questions together:

 How can I look at the path others take? and How can I see how I am doing?

The portfolio is really the answer.  You should be getting feedback on your products, and seeing others’ feedback (within limits).  This is definitely not intended to be individual, but instead hopefully it could be in a group, or at least some of the activities would be (e.g. communing on blog posts, participating in a discussion forum, etc).  In a tech-mediated environment, you could see others’ (anonymized) paths, access your feedback, and see traces of other’s trajectories.

The real question is: is this formulation useful? Does it give you a new and useful way of thinking about designing learning, and supporting learning?

70:20:10 Tech

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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?

MOOC reflections

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A recent phenomena is the MOOC, Massively Open Online Courses. I see two major manifestations: the type I have participated in briefly (mea culpa) as run by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and co-conspirators, and the type being run by places like Stanford. Each share running large numbers of students, and laudable goals. Each also has flaws, in my mind, which illustrate some issues about education.

The Stanford model, as I understand it (and I haven’t taken one), features a rigorous curriculum of content and assessments, in technical fields like AI and programming. The goal is to ensure a high quality learning experience to anyone with sufficient technical ability and access to the Internet. Currently, the experience does support a discussion board, but otherwise the experience is, effectively, solo.

The connectivist MOOCs, on the other hand, are highly social. The learning comes from content presented by a lecturer, and then dialog via social media, where the contributions of the participants are shared. Assessment comes from participation and reflection, without explicit contextualized practice.

The downside of the latter is just that, with little direction, the courses really require effective self-learners. These courses assume that through the process, learners will develop learning skills, and the philosophical underpinning is that learning is about making the connections oneself.  As was pointed out by Lisa Chamberlin and Tracy Parish in an article, this can be problematic. As of yet, I don’t think that effective self-learning skills is a safe assumption (and we do need to remedy).

The problem with the former is that learners are largely dependent on the instructors, and will end up with that understanding, that learners aren’t seeing how other learners conceptualize the information and consequently developing a richer understanding.   You have to have really high quality materials, and highly targeted assessments.  The success will live and die on the quality of the assessments,  until the social aspect is engaged.

I was recently chided that the learning theories I subscribe to are somewhat dated, and guilty as charged; my grounding has taken a small hit by my not being solidly in the academic community of late. On the other hand, I have yet to see a theory that is as usefully integrative of cognitive and social learning theory as Cognitive Apprenticeship (and willing to be wrong), so I will continue to use (my somewhat adulterated version of) it until I am otherwise informed.

From the Cognitive Apprenticeship perspective, learners need motivating and meaningful tasks around which to organize their collective learning. I reckon more social interaction will be wrapped around the Stanford environment, and that either I’ve not experienced the formal version of the connectivist MOOCs, or learners will be expected to take on the responsibility to make it meaningful but will be scaffolded in that (if not already).

The upshot is that these are valuable initiatives from both pragmatic and principled perspectives, deepening our understanding while broadening educational reach. I look forward to seeing further developments.

Making it visible and viral

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On a recent client engagement, the issue was spreading an important initiative through the organization.  The challenges were numerous: getting consistent uptake across management and leadership, aligning across organizational units, and making the initiative seem important and yet also doable in a concrete way.  Pockets of success were seen, and these are of interest.

For one, the particular unit had focused on making the initiative viral, and consequently had selected and trained appropriate representatives dispersed through their organization. These individuals were supported and empowered to incite change wherever appropriate.  And they were seeing initial signs of success. The lesson here is that top down is not always sufficient, and that benevolent infiltration is a valuable addition.

The other involvement was also social, in that the approach was to make the outcomes of the initiative visible. In addition to mantras, graphs depicting status were placed in prominent places, showing current status.  Further, suggestions for improvement were not only solicited, but made visible and their status tracked.  Again, indicators were positive on these moves.

The point is that change is hard, and a variety of mechanisms may  be appropriate.  You need to understand not just what formal mechanisms you have, but also how people actually work.  I think that too often, planning fails to anticipate the effects of inertia, ambivalence, and apathy.  More emotional emphasis is needed, more direct connection to individual outcomes, and more digestion into manageable chunks. This is true for elearning, learning, and  change.

In looking at attitude change, and from experience, I recognize that even if folks are committed to change, it can be easy to fall back into old habits without ongoing support.  Confusion in message, lack of emotional appeal, and idiosyncratic leadership only reduce the likelihood.  If it’s important, get alignment and sweat the details. If it’s not, why bother?

Social media budget line item?

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Where does social media fit in the organization?  In talking with a social media entrepreneur over beers the other day, he mentioned that one of his barriers in dealing with organizations was that they didn’t have a budget line for social media software.

That may sound trivial, but it’s actually a real issue in terms of freeing up the organization. In one instance, it had been the R&D organization that undertook the cost.  In another case, the cost was attributed to the overhead incurred in dealing with a merger.  These are expedient, but wrong.

It’s increasingly obvious that it’s more than just a ‘nice to have’.  As I’ve mentioned previously, innovation is the only true differentiator.  If that’s the case, then social media is critical. Why?  Because the myth of individual innovation is busted, as clearly told by folks like  Keith Sawyer  and Steven Berlin Johnson.  So, if it’s not individual, it’s social, and that means we need to facilitate conversations.

If we want people to be able to work together to create new innovations, we don’t want to leave it to chance.  In addition to useful architectural efforts that facilitate in person interactions, we want to put in place the mechanisms to interact without barriers of time or distance.  Which means, we need a social media system.

It’s pretty clear that if you align things appropriately: culture, vision, tools, that you get better outcomes.  And, of course, culture isn’t a line item, and vision’s a leadership mandate.  But tools, well, they are a product/service, and need resources.

Which brings us to the initial point: where does this responsibility lie?  Despite my desire for folks who are most likely to understand facilitating learning (though that’s sadly unlikely in too many L& D departments), it could be IT, operations, or as mentioned above, R&D.  The point is, this is arguably one of the most important investments in the organization, and typically not one of the most expensive (making it the best deal going!). Yet there’s not a unified obvious home!

There are worries if it’s IT. They are, or should be, great at maintaining network uptime, but don’t really understand learning. Nor do the other groups, and yet facilitating the discussion in the network is the most important external role.  But who funds it?

Let’s be real; no one wants  to have to own the cost when there’re other things they’re already doing. But I’d argue that it’s the best investment an L&D organization could make, as it will likely have the biggest impact on the organization. Well, if you really are looking to move needles on key business metrics.  So, where do you think it could, and should reside?

 

 

Sharing Failure

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I’ve earlier talked about the importance of failure in learning, and now it’s revealed that Apple’s leadership development program plays that up in a big way.  There are risks in sharing, and rewards. And ways to do it better and worse.

In an article  in Macrumors (obviously, an Apple info site), they detail part of Adam Lashinsky’s new Inside Apple  book that reports on Apple executive development program.  Steve Jobs hired a couple of biz school heavyweights to develop the program, and apparently “Wherever possible the cases shine a light on mishaps…”.  They use examples from other companies, and importantly, Apple’s own missteps.

Companies that can’t learn from mistakes, their own and others’, are doomed to repeat them.  In organizations where it’s not safe to share failures, where anything you say can and will be held against you, the same mistakes will keep getting made.  I’ve worked with firms that have very smart people, but their culture is so aggressive that they can’t admit errors.  As a consequence, the company continues to make them, and gets in it’s own way.  However, you don’t want to celebrate failure, but you do want to tolerate it. What can you do?

I’ve heard a great solution.  Many years ago now, at the event that led to Conner’s & Clawson’s Creating a Learning Culture, one small company shared their approach: they ring a bell not when the mistake is made, but when the lesson’s learned.  They’re celebrating – and, importantly,  sharing – the learning from the event.  This is a beautiful idea, and a powerful opportunity to use social media when the message goes beyond a proximal group.

There’s a lot that goes on behind this, particularly in terms of having a culture where it’s safe to make mistakes   Culture eats strategy for breakfast, as the saying goes..  What is  a problem is making the same mistake, or dumb mistakes.  How do you prevent the latter?  By sharing your thinking, or thinking out loud, as you develop your planned steps.

Now, just getting people sharing isn’t necessarily sufficient.  Just yesterday (as I write), Jane Bozarth pointed me towards an article in the New Yorker (at least the abstract thereof) that argues why brainstorming doesn’t work.  I’ve said many times that the old adage “the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room” needs a caveat:  if you manage the process right.  There are empirical results that guide what works from what doesn’t, such as: having everyone think on their own first; then share; focus initially on divergence before convergence; make a culture where it’s safe, even encouraged, to have a diversity of viewpoints; etc.

No one says getting a collaborating community is easy, but like anything else, there are ways to do it, and do it right.  And here too, you can learn from the mistakes of others…

Performance Architecture

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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>?