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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Guff: a conversation in 3 parts. Part 1

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A: Looking up from reading.   “Guff!”

B: Curious.   “What‘s guff”

A: “All this social learning stuff.”

B: “Really, you think so”

A: “Yeah, I mean, learning‘s learning, and who needs to make a ‘social‘ out of it?   We‘ve got courses, if they want to be social in the classroom, fine, but all this hype about social learning is just a way for consultants to try to sell old soda in new bottles.”

B: “So you think learning is about courses”

A: “Sure.   What else”

B: “Well, let me defer that answer, and ask you another question.”

A: “Oh, so you‘re one of those, eh?   Answer a question with a question?   Ha.   Go ahead, shoot.”

B: “If learning‘s not important, what is”

A: “That‘s easy, nimbleness.   We‘ve got to adapt, innovate, create, we need to be faster than the rest.   Heck, they can clone a product in months, or less. You‘ve got to be agile!”

B: “So just executing isn‘t enough”

A: “Heck no!   You‘ve got to have the ‘total customer experience‘ locked down, and that means optimal execution is just the cost of entry.   Thriving is going to require continually introducing improvements: new products, new services.”

B: “OK, let‘s get back to your question, what else learning might be.”

A: “About time.”

B: “So, think about that innovating, problem-solving, creativity, etc.   That‘s not learning”

A: “No.”

B: “Do they know the answer when they start”

A: “No, or they‘d just do it.”

B: “Right. The answer is unknown, they have to find it. When they find it, have they learned something”

A: “Alright, I see your game. Yes, they‘re learning, but it‘s not like courses, it‘s not education!”

B: “Right, courses are formal learning.   That‘s the point I want to make, using the term ‘learning‘ to just talk about courses isn‘t fair to what‘s really going on.   There are informal forms of learning that are just the aspects you need to get on top of.”

A: “Oh, okay, if you want to play semantic games.”

B: “It‘s important, because this ‘social learning‘ you call guff is the key to addressing the things you‘re worrying about!   Formal learning serves a role, but there‘s so much more that an organization should be concerned about.”

A: “So here comes the pitch.”

B: “And it‘s straightforward: do you want to leave that innovation and creativity to chance, or do your best to make sure it‘s working well?   Because the evidence is that in most organizations it‘s nowhere near what it could be, and there are systematic steps to improve it.”

A: “C‘mon.   Can you tell me someone who‘s doing it well”

B: “Sure.   Just a few small firms you might‘ve heard of.   Intel‘s used a wiki to help people share knowledge.   Sun‘s capturing top performance on video and sharing it.   SAP‘s getting customers to self-help and contribute to new product ideas.”

A: “Sure, the tech companies, but how about anyone else”

B: “Caterpillar‘s got communities of practice generating ROI, Best Buy‘s getting a lot of advantage through internal idea generation, the list goes on, and those are only the ones we‘ve found.”

A: “Ok. I suppose it makes sense, but still, that label…”

B: “I hear you.”

Creating Stellar Learning

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Getting the details right about instructional design is quite hard, or at least it appears that way, judging from how many bad examples there are.   Yet the failures are more from a lack of knowledge rather than inherent complexity.   While there are some depths to the underlying principles that aren’t sufficiently known, they can be learned.   However, a second level of embedding systematic creativity into the process is another component that’s also missed, however this time it’s from a broken process more than a lack of knowledge.

What we want are learning solutions that really shine: where the learning experience is engaging, efficient, and effective.   Whether you’re creating products for commercial sale, or solutions for internal or external partners, you want to take your learning experience design to the next level.   So, how does an organization improve their learning design process to create stellar learning?

Let’s go through this, step by step.   First, you’ve got to know what you should be doing. I’ve gone on before about what’s broken in learning design, and what needs to be done.   That can be learned, developed, practiced, and refined.   Ideally, you’d have a team with a shared understanding of what really good learning is composed of and looks like. But it’s not just the deep learning.

There’s more: the team needs to develop both the understanding of the learning principles, and a creative approach that encourages striking a balance between pragmatic constraints and a compelling experience.   Note that creating a compelling experience isn’t about wildly expensive productive values, but instead about ensuring meaningfulness, both of the content, and the context (read: examples and practice). The learners have to be engaged cognitively and emotionally, challenged to work through and apply the material, to really develop the skills. If not, why bother?   Again, it’s not about expensive media; it can be done in text, for crying out loud! (Not that I’m advocating that, but just to emphasize it’s about design, not media.)

I find that it’s not that designer’s aren’t creative, however, but that there’s just no tolerance in the system for taking that creative step.   Yes, it can be hard to break out of old approaches, but there has to be an appreciation for the value of creating engaging experiences.   I will admit that initially the process may take a bit longer, but with practice the design doesn’t take longer, yet the results are far better.   It does, however, take a shared understanding of what an engaging experience is just as it takes the understanding of the nuances of creating meaningful learning.

And that level of understanding about both deep learning and creative experience design can be developed as a shared understanding among your team in very pragmatic ways (applying those principles to the design of that learning, too).     It’s just not conscionable anymore to be doing just mediocre design.   It won’t lead to learning and is a waste of money, as well as a waste of learner’s time.

That covers the design, and even a bit of the process, but what’s needed is a look at your design tools and processes. And I’m not talking about whether you use Flash or not, what I’m talking about is your templates.   They can, and should, be structured to support the design I’m talking about.   Too often, the constraints in existence stifle the very depth and creativity needed, saddling them with unnecessary components and not requiring the appropriate ones.   Factors that can be improved include templates for design, tools for creation, and even underlying content models!   They all have to strike the balance between supportive structure and lack of confinement.

Look, I’ve worked numerous times on projects where I’ve helped teams understand the principles, refine their processes, and yielded far better outcomes than you usually get.   It’s doable!   Yes, it takes some time and work, but the outcome is far better. On the flip side, I’ve reliably gone through and eviscerated mediocre design, systematically.   The point is not to make others look bad, but instead to point out where and how to improve product.   Those flaws from the teams that developed it can be remedied.   Teams can learn good design.   My goal, after all, is better learning!

A caveat: to the untrained eye, the nuances are subtle.   That’s why it’s easy to slide by mediocre design that looks good to the undiscerning stakeholder.   Stellar design doesn’t seem that much better, until you ascertain the learner’s subjective experience, and look at the outcomes as well.   In fact, I recall one situation where there was a complaint from a manager about why the outcome didn’t look that different.   I walked that manager through the design, and the complaints changed to accolades.

You should do it because it’s the right thing to do, but you can justify it as well (and when you do walk folks through the nuances, they’ll learn that you really do know what you’re talking about).   There’s just no excuse for any more bad learning, so please, please, let’s start creating good learning experiences.

Standards and success

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Apparently, Google has recently opined that the future of mobile is web standards.   While this is wonderfully vindicating, I think there’s something more important going on here, as it plays out for a broader spectrum than just mobile.

I’ve been reflecting on the benefits that standards have provided.   What worked for networks was the standardization on TCP/IP as a protocol for packet transmission.   What worked for email was standardization on the SMTP protocol.   HTTP standardization has been good for the web, where it’s been implemented properly! What’s been a barrier are inconsistent implementations of web standards, like Microsoft’s non-standard versions of HTML for browsers and Java.

The source of the standard may be by committee, or by the originator.   Microsoft’s done well for itself with the Office suite of applications, and by opening up the XML version, they’re benefiting while not doing harm.   They own the space, and everyone has to at least read and write their format to have any credibility. While IMS & IEEE held meetings to get learning content standards nailed down, ADL just put their foot down with SCORM (and US Defense is a big foot), and it pretty much got everyone’s attention.   But it’s having standards that matters.   The fact that Blu-ray finally won the battle has really opened up the market for high definition video!

On the other hand, keeping proprietary standards has hindered development.   At the recent VW talks hosted by SRI, one of the topics was the inability to transfer a character between platforms.   That’s good for the providers, but bad for the development of the field.   Eventually, one format will emerge, but it may take committees, or it may be that someone like Linden Labs will own the space sufficiently that everyone will lock into a format they provide. Until then, any investment has trouble being leveraged in a longer term picture, as the companies you go with may not survive!   There’s an old saying about how wonderful standards are because there are so many of them.   The problem is when they’re around the same thing!   I was regaling a colleague with the time I smoked (er, caused to burn up, not lighting up!) an interface card by trying to connect two computers to exchange data. One manufacturer had, contrary to the standard, decided to put 12 volts on a particular pin!

And, unfortunately, in the mobile space, the major providers here in the US want to lock you into their walled garden, as opposed to, say, Europe, where all the phones have pretty much the same abilities to access data.   This has been a barrier to development of services.   The web is increasingly powerful, with HTML5, and so while some things won’t work, web-based applications are defaulting to the lingua franca for not just content exchange but interactive activities.   The US is embarrassingly behind, despite the leading platforms (iPhone, Pre, etc).

In one sense this is sad that we can’t do better, but at least it’s good to have the web as a fallback now.   We can make progress when it doesn’t matter what device, or OS, you’re using, as long as you can connect.   The real news is that there is a lingua franca for mobile that you can use, so really there aren’t any reasons to hold off any longer.   Ellen Wagner sees a tipping point, and I’m pleased to agree.   There may be barriers for enterprise adoption, but as I frequently say: it’s   not the technology, the barriers are between our ears (and maybe our pocketbooks :).

Update: forgot my own punchline.   Standards need to be, or at least become, open and extensible for real progress to be made.   When others can leverage, the greatest innovations can occur.

Standards are hard work, but the benefits for progress are huge.   This holds true in your organization, as well.   Are you paying attention to standards you should be using, and what you should standardize yourself?

Minimizing Transformative Disruption

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A tweet by @JoshuaKerievsky pointed me to the Satir Change Model, in the context of introducing agile programming. The model purports to capture the disruptive effects of a new idea until it’s internalized, and I find it resonates quite well.   My simplified version looks at it from the point of view of organizational change upon introduction of a new initiative, such as the organizational learning transformations I’m espousing and supporting.

OriginalSatirChangeCurve

In this simplified version, you can see that an intervention originally creates a decrement in performance, until the intervention takes hold, and then there are some hiccups incurred until the system stabilizes at a new and (hopefully) improved performance outcome.   While we want the improvement, the decrement is something we’d like to minimize.     However, how do we do that?

In researching it a little bit, I came upon a book that discussed using a stepwise approach to minimize it (also in software process improvements), and had a version of the diagram that demonstrated smaller decrements.StepwiseSatirChangeCurve By having smaller introductions that break up the intervention, you decrease the negative effects.   The point is to take small steps that make improvements instead of a monolithic change.

That’s what I’m trying to achieve is  breaking up the organizational transformation implied by the performance ecosystem, and customizing it for an organization by prioritizing steps into next week, next month, next year, etc.   Of course, the diagram is only indicative, not prescriptive, but I trust you recognize what I mean.

The overall approach is to achieve the improvement, but in a staged way customized for a particular organization and context, not a one-size-fits-all approach that really won’t fit anyone.OverlappedSatirChangeCurve The goal is to maximize improvements while minimizing disruption, and doing so in ways that capitalize on previous efforts and existing infrastructure.   To do this really requires understanding how the different components relate: how content models support mobile, how performance support articulates with formal learning and social media, and more.   And, of course, understanding the nuances of the underpinning elements and how they are optimized.

Organizations can’t continue in the status quo of only formal learning, but I reckon many folks aren’t sure where and how to start.   That’s the point of using a framework that points out how the elements interact, and coupling that with an specific organizational assessment.   From there, you can prioritize steps, come up with action plans, be prepared to choose vendors, not have the vendor sell you on what they do best, and more.   You’ve got to have a plan, or where you end up may not be the best place for your organization.

I’m reminded of the Cheshire Cat and Alice:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. ”
–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

So, do have a plan of where you want to get to, as well as an intent to start moving?

Talent Management and Opportunities

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At the recent ASTD conference, I was once again faced with the new phrase: talent management. It was being touted as the new focus in HR, was baked into LMS, etc.   So naturally I was curious how this related to the performance ecosystem, and had the temerity to call Kevin Wheeler, the guru of talent management, and ask.

Kevin expressed mixed feelings about talent management being   the new flavor of the month, given that he’s been talking about it for years!   Kevin characterized Talent Management as recruitment, development, and performance, with lots of components under each one.   All the activities that accrue around the workforce qualifies, really.

I recognized that the performance ecosystem really deals with development and performance, and hasn’t been about recruitment, though there could and should be an ongoing process identifying new competencies and new needs in professional capabilities.   Part of the knowledge work itself may be identifying needed competencies, and a management concern may well be whether to acquire that need temporarily or permanently.

I asked how his model adapted to the increasing changes in competencies with what I foresee as increasing change and decreasing stability in job roles, and he discussed how there’re really two workforces: the core who does the knowledge or concept work, and the rest still doing the mainstream work that could potentially be automated (though that’s a longer term trend, not happening as fast as could be for reasons economic and political).   He also suggested that the competencies are shifting from specific skills to more general capabilities, e.g. not knowing a particular programming language, but instead knowing software engineering and having an ability to learn new languages quickly.

Our   conversation roamed across the switch in competencies from being compliant and doing what you’re told to being able to deal with ambiguity and solving problems, even questioning authority.   Ah, meta-learning.   Too bad schools are still working on the old model!   Societally, we thought about those folks who prefer to have a simple, predictable job (the majority?) that allows them the freedom to pursue their passions, versus those (the creative class, Kevin termed them) who live to create, design, engineer, the ones who advance our understanding and our lives.   There are different roles and needs, and organizations have to adjust to that.

Kevin also proposed that the shift to small and nimble organizations is a pendulum shift that’s been seen before, and that there will be a subsequent shift back; that other paradigm shifts (e.g. agricultural to industrial) had similar dynamics.   Food for thought: will the networked era evolve to larger and relatively stable organizations, or is change and the need for nimbleness going to be persistent?

It did appear that at least for the near term, organizations have to balance their investment across maintaining the necessary administrative and support functions, but new investment really should be on those activities that enable new work.   Either society needs to slow down (which isn’t an awful thought), or companies are going to have to be able to adapt and innovate for survival, not just execute against a fixed plan.

And that’s where I think the opportunities to improve are.   We know a lot about learning and innovation, but we’re not practicing them in the organization. That’s an understanding I’m trying to help develop, and then execute against.   On that, I believe Kevin and I are in agreement.   A public thanks to him, and a reflection that great conversations are one of the best tools of learning!

Conferencing Reflections

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Last week I presented a workshop on strategic learning as an opening act to ASTD’s 2009 International Conference (ICE), which was followed by DAU/GMU’s Innovations in eLearning (IeL) conference.   It was a study in contrasts, and a great learning experience.

Obviously, the focuses (yeah, focii, bugger it) are different.   ICE is huge, and for all training and development, while the IeL conference is smaller and focused on elearning.   There’s much more to see at ICE, but it’s also appears to be run as a revenue opportunity, where as IeL is designed to provide the latest thinking to a select community (DAU & GMU stakeholders), and appears to be a cost-center.

ICE should be able to be interpreted as a ‘state of the industry’ snapshot, representing the audience’s interests and needs.   As such, there are some serious concerns.   During the keynote on Blue Ocean Strategy (greatly descriptive, less prescriptive utility), colleagues overheard audience members asking “what’s in it for me?”     I can’t think of anything more relevant to organizations than looking ahead and trying to come up with answers for the increasingly turbulent times!

There were some social media sessions, and people ‘getting’ the message, likewise some other topics, but there was similarly good attendance at pretty ordinary stuff. Sure, you do need to learn about assessment, and how to cartoon (a great session, BTW), but there wasn’t the sense of urgency I reckon should be felt.

The expo hall also was scarily populated with generic leadership training, university degrees, flashy examples of elearning that didn’t have much substance, and of course the ubiquitous   ‘styles’ assessments (of which the less said, the better).   That is, plenty of other reasons to worry about the current concerns of the average conference attendee.   Aren’t they needing something more?   Support/responsibility beyond the classroom?

Granted, these conferences are planned out close to a year in advance, so it may not reflect current concerns as much as those of half a year or more ago, but it seemed little different than one I attended several years ago.   C’mon!   There were plusses, of course, not least of which were chances to meet colleagues I’d heard of or interacted with but not had the pleasure of meeting face to face, including Rae Tanner, Dave Ferguson, Craig Wilkins, and Gina Schreck, as well as reconnecting with folks including Marcia Conner and Wendy Wickham.   And I was pleased that there was WiFi access throughout the conference!   Kudos to ASTD for getting that right.   The lack of tweets from the conf can’t be laid at ASTD’s feet.   And the team (e.g. Linda, et al), keep the sales pitches in sessions to a minimum.

The IeL conference, on the other hand, was a whole different story. Way smaller, and deliberately focused on technology-mediated learning & the cutting edge.   The keynotes by Vint Cerf and Will Wright were both awesome in scope and depth, truly visionary stuff.   The sessions were more targeted specifically at my interests, and again it was a great chance to hook up with some new colleagues, including Koreen Olbrish and Aaron Silvers, and similarly connecting with colleagues like Marks Oehlert & Friedman. And there was more tweeting of sessions in this small conference than ICE, but given the audience that wasn’t as unexpected as you’d think.

I can’t say that one conference was better than the other for me or for their audiences.   I got to present what I was really interested in at ICE, versus doing a talk for IeL that met their request rather than my passion (tho’ it was within my capability and I did my usual due diligence to make it accurate, worthwhile, and at least moderately engaging). However, the good thing at IeL is that people were really looking not just at training, but at where they really needed to be for organizational learning, and how technology could help.   And that’s the most important thing, to be looking ahead.   What I missed at ICE was people really trying to do more than just their job.   And I’m perfectly willing to be wrong about that.

It’s just that I think there’s a coming crisis in organizational learning, and the answers are not doing training better. Formal learning will be part of it, but training as it’s currently delivered will not, and there’s so much more.   Here’s hoping that message starts getting heard.

Now *that* is leadership

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In my recent workshop, an attendee shared a story that I have to pass along.   He works for a company that serves a sector of the marketplace that has been core to US business, and is now in tough times.   Naturally, the employees are concerned about the prospects.

The CEO is sharing, via a blog, his ongoing thoughts on dealing with the issue. Rather than puff pieces for external readers, written by a PR hack, he’s writing authentically for internal consumption about where his thinking is going and what he and the executive team are doing.   He’s not making false promises, and the employee was very clear that there are no clear answers yet, but they’ve insight into how deep the thought processes have been about the situation, and how earnestly (and cleverly) they’re working on solving the issue. He’s even sharing the questions he’s considering.   While all the comments aren’t visible, anyone can provide input and the CEO can react.   This is powerful.

I’ve mentioned before that providing a ‘leading out loud’ record for people to follow is a great mechanism to foster virtual mentorship and share directions, and this is a really valuable way for organizations to communicate.   As Rae Tanner discussed with me yesterday as we walked around DC before the start of the ASTD main conference, imagine an organization where everyone was onboarded with a real understanding of the business (we thought a game would be appropriate), and then were able to follow the ongoing thinking.   Do you think they’d be better equipped to execute, and, better yet, contribute to organizational success? Certainly if it was coupled with a learning culture and rewards aligned with the desired behaviors.

The worskhop attendees easily ‘got’ the value of this scenario; that CEO knows what leadership is about, and is manifesting it in a visionary way.   This is what technology can facilitate. Technology is a tool, but one that provides new affordances for communication and collaboration. The opportunities to improve things individual, organizationally, and societally are awe-inspiring. Now we need to seize the initiative and make really worthwhile things happen. Are you game?

Facing the new learning era

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Yesterday I ran my learning technology strategy workshop as a preconference event at ASTD’s International Conference.   I had a crowd of about 16 people who represented a range of experience and responsibilities.   The organizations ranged from academic to industry to information and communication companies.   Some were just starting with elearning, and others had quite a bit under their belt.

elearningvaluenet.jpgWhen I went around the room asking what people were hoping to get out of the day, a lot of mentions of LMS and elearning made me realize that the title of “elearning strategy” had perhaps misled people into thinking this was just about courses online, whereas I was going quite a ways further through my performance ecosystem.   I took some time to explain that my vision of learning was far beyond courses, and included problem-solving, innovation, and more.

I did try to spend more time on eLearning and advanced ID than I’d originally intended, but still felt the rest were things they needed to get their minds areound.   As we got beyond the performance focus stage (after Improved ID and eLearning), it became clear we were in pretty much uncharted territory for most.   I continued on, defining each element, giving examples, and working through the costs and benefits. The attendees, perhaps loosened up by my goofy humor (no situation so bad that a bad pun can’t make it worse), were very good about asking questions and challenging me (I like that, either they or I learn something), to make sure a shared understanding developed.

While it was a lot of ‘me talking’, I did have them self-assess where they were (as one later said, he got tired of saying “no” so often) and broke down the steps into action items they could choose to pull into a plan and prioritize.

The outcome was maybe even better than I’d hoped.   As I asked for what folks might have planned for going back, the first three who shared were completely divergent. One was going to focus on performance support, one was going to review their elearning templates, and one was going to take a stab at social media.   This was just what I had hoped, that they’d take where they were and this broader perspective on what the learning function could be, and find the right next step for themselves.

I also loved reading the evaluation sheets afterwards (careful to not know who said what).   I was thrilled to see folks saying (paraphrasing a repeated sentiment): “I’m in awe of how much there is to think about, but really excited about the potential and opportunity to really have an impact”.   They really felt it was valuable, and that’s always what I hope to achieve.   There’s surely room for improvement, and extending it to put in some activities would be an option, but as it is I couldn’t be happier.

Mythconceptions

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Several things got up my nose yesterday (and I don’t mean literally :).   I listened in on the Corporate Learning Trends event in the morning, and in the evening participated in #lrnchat.   Don’t get me wrong, both events were great: great presentations organized by Tony Karrer, with examples coordinated by Judy Brown on mobile, Bob Mosher on performance support, Karl Kapp on games & simulations, and Tony on asynchronous elearning (all folks I know and respect); and a great lrnchat session as always with Marcia Conner coordinating fantastic participation by a whole host of great folks.   It’s just that several continuing beliefs surfaced that we’ve really got to address.

The first one was the notion that games and simulations are about tarted up quiz shows.   Let me be clear, these are a last resort!   When you’ve addressed the important decisions, and there’s still some knowledge that absolutely has to be memorized, not looked up, they’re ok.   But they’re not your starting point!   Games should be first thought of as your best practice environment for skills, not knowledge recitation.   What’s going to make a difference in learner (and organizational) performance is not rote knowledge, but meaningful decisions.   That is where games shine.

Ok, as Treena Grevatt pointed out, these ‘frame games’ may serve as the easiest entry point for organizational acceptance, but only if you ‘get it’ really, and are only using them as an entry point to do meaningful stuff.   Otherwise, it’s still lipstick on a pig.

The problem is, we already have a problem with our formal learning being too knowledge focused, and not skill focused, and a tool to make drill and kill easy isn’t going to help us remedy the problem.   So, please: first get that games are really deeply contextualized, immersive, challenging skill practice.   Then, when your analysis has addressed that and there still are knowledge components, bring in the quiz show games.   If you ‘get’ that, then you might use a stealth policy, but only then.

The second problem had to do with mobile learning.   There were still notions that mobile learning could be about courses on a phone   and that there’s not really an audience.   Look, depending on what metrics you pay attention to, the mobile workforce can be anywhere from 20-40% of your workforce.   Sales reps, telecommuters, field engineers, execs, the list goes on. And that doesn’t even tap into the folks who want access for convenience!

And it’s not about courses.   It has been, and can be done, but that’s not the real win.   As an adjunct to a course, absolutely.   Reactivate knowledge (developing learners), update it with podcasts (Chris von Koschembahr had a nice way to interview yourself, controlling the outcome :), review stories, solve problems, review with mentors, etc.

The real win, however (as Judy and Bob both pointed out), is performance support. This can include references, job aids, how to videos, connections to experts, and more.   This is huge, yet people don’t seem to be seeing this opportunity yet.

Mobile is ready for primetime. There are ways to deal with screen sizes, security, and cross-platform differences.   Next to social learning, I reckon it’s the greatest missed opportunity going.

Speaking of performance support, I do have to admit how surprised I was that people were thinking that single sourcing content to populate help systems, manuals, and training was a new idea.   This really isn’t a misconception, it’s just surprising.   I led a project developing such an approach years ago now, and it’s another big opportunity.   Still ahead of the curve, though, more so than the other two.

The point being, the more you tie these together, the greater the synergy: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And having been out saying these things for years, it continues to surprise me that the meme hasn’t propagated any further than it has.   And that’s my learning, that changing minds is a tough job.   But still an important one.   Evangelism, anyone?

Developing Learners

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Charles Jennings makes a brilliant observation about how Learning & Development folks are taking the wrong path in his post: When the Game’s Up. He points out that L&D practitioners are focused on Instructor Led Training, and:

ILT may be helpful for some change management and big-picture ‘concept‘ development, but it is demonstrably the least effective and certainly the least efficient approach for most learning that‘s required.

In short, we’re just not doing what we need to be doing.   I was revisting my previous thoughts on slow learning and distributed learning, and I realize we’re missing a major perspective.   We seem to have two extremes on the continuum: the ‘event’ or informal learning.   There’s more.

I had a tour of Q2Learning‘s environment today, courtesy of John Darling, and while I’m not conducting a thorough point by point evaluation, one element struck me as relevant.   Their platform’s ‘DNA’ came from social learnng, but their formal model (client driven) is based upon proficiency, and if not mandating, certainly enables what they call a ‘proficiency’ approach.

mixedassessmentlearningmapWhat I like about it is it takes a longer term view of skills. The sample he showed (and of course I realize it’s presented in the best light) was a learning map for a course, but with lots of components spread out over time (sample map shown).   There’s a priori assessment, content, activities with managers, etc.; a mix of activity, practice, reflection, just the sort of model we should be designing.   We know spaced practice matters, with reactivation, reflection, etc. It’s also valuable to go   back to the workplace, and then check-in later to see how things are going.   It’s a fuller picture of what learning’s about.

John mentioned some need formal features, such as the ability to assign journals as an activity, and similarly assign posting to a discussion board and then commenting on other posts (and tracking this!).   Given that these were two of three activities I used in my own online course (and mentioned here), I asked about the third activity: assigning group work (e.g. collaborating through a wiki) and handling the submission.   It wasn’t there, but could be added as another of their templates of ‘activities’.

The important thing, to me, is the point that a system to support formal learning should be able to link together and track a sequence of activities that develop a person over time, not just through an ‘event’ perspective.   Integrating the same social tools from the informal side also provides hope that there can be an elegant segue from the formal to the informal.

We agreed that one of the problems on the informal side is assuming that people are skilled at self-learning (or even group learning, I’ll add), and that we shouldn’t take it for granted.

All told, I think it’s an important different perspective on learning to think about developing people along a continuum, not a ‘spray and pray’ approach to learning.   Now, to only get the L&D function to start looking beyond their zone of comfort, and into the area of relevance.   Otherwise, we’d be better off, as Charles suggests, taking the training money and letting them spend it at the pub, at least reducing their stress and developing some morale!