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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Workplace Learning in 10 years?

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This month’s Learning Circuit’s blog Big Question is “What will workplace learning look like in 10 years”.   Triggered by Jay & Harold’s post and reactions (and ignoring my two related posts on Revisiting and Learning Design), it’s asking what the training department might look like in 10 years.   I certainly   have my desired answer.

Ideally, in 10 years the ‘training department’ will be an ‘organizational learning’ group, that’s looking across expertise levels and learning needs, and responsible for equipping people not only to come up to speed, but to work optimally, and collaborate to innovate.   That is, will be responsible for the full performance ecosystem.

So, there may still be ‘courses’, though they’ll be more interactive, more distributed across time, space, and context.   There’ll be flexible customized learning paths, that will not only skill you, but introduce you into the community of practice.

Learning/Information/Experience DesignHowever, the community of practice will be responsible for collaboratively developing the content and resources, and the training department will have morphed into learning facilitators: refining the learning, information, and experience design around the community-established content, and also facilitating the learning skills of the community and it’s members.   The learning facilitators will be monitoring the ongoing dialog and discussions, on the lookout for opportunities to help capture some outcomes, and watching the learners to look for opportunities to develop their abilities to contribute.   They’ll also be looking for opportunities to introduce new tools that can augment the community capabilities, and create new learning, communication, and collaboration channels.

Their metrics will be different, not courses or smile sheets, but value added to the community and it’s individuals, and impact on the ability of the community to be effective.   The skill sets will be different too: understanding not just instructional but information and experience design, continually experimenting with tools to look for new augmentation possibilities, and having a good ability to identify and facilitate the process of knowledge or concept work, not just the product.

10 years from now the tools will have changed, so it may be that some of the tasks can be automated, e.g. mining the nuggets from the informal channels, but design & facilitation will still be key.   We’ll distribute the roles to the tools, leaving the important pattern matching to the facilitators.

At least, that’s what I hope.

Designing Learning

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Another way to think about what I was talking about yesterday in revisiting the training department is taking a broader view.   I was thinking about it as Learning Design, a view that incorporates instructional design, information design and experience design.

leiI‘m leery of the term instructional design, as that label has been tarnished with too many cookie cutter examples and rote approaches to make me feel comfortable (see my Broken ID series).   However, real instructional design theory (particularly when it‘s cognitive-, social-, and constructivist-aware) is great stuff (e.g. Merrill, Reigeluth, Keller, et al); it‘s just that most of it‘s been neutered in interpretation.   The point being, really understanding how people learn is critical.   And that includes Cross‘ informal learning.   We need to go beyond just the formal courses, and provide ways for people to self-help, and group-help.

However, it‘s not enough.   There‘s also understanding information design.   Now, instructional designers who really know what they‘re doing will say, yes, we take a step back and look at the larger picture, and sometimes it‘s job aids, not courses.   But I mean more, here.   I‘m talking about, when you do sites, job aids, or more, including the information architecture, information mapping, visual design, and more, to really communicate, and support the need to navigate. I see reasonable instructional design undone by bad interface design (and, of course, vice-versa).

Now, how much would you pay for that? But wait, there‘s more!   A third component   is the experience design.   That is, viewing it not from a skill-transferral perspective, but instead from the emotional view.   Is the learner engaged, motivated, challenged, and left leaving fulfilled?   I reckon that‘s largely ignored, yet myriad evidence is pointing us to the realization that the emotional connection matters.

We want to integrate the above.   Putting a different spin on it, it‘s about the intersection of the cognitive, affective, conative, and social components of facilitating organizational performance.   We want the least we can to achieve that, and we want to support working alone and together.

There‘s both a top-down and bottom-up component to this.   At the bottom, we‘re analyzing how to meet learner needs, whether it‘s fully wrapped with motivation, or just the necessary information, or providing the opportunity to work with others to answer the question.   It‘s about infusing our design approaches with a richer picture, respecting our learner‘s time, interests, and needs.

At the top, however, it‘s looking at an organizational structure that supports people and leverages technology to optimize the ability of the individuals and groups to execute against the vision and mission.   From this perspective, it‘s about learning/performance, technology, and business.

And it‘s likely not something you can, or should, do on your own.   It‘s too hard to be objective when you‘re in the middle of it, and the breadth of knowledge to be brought to bear is far-reaching.   As I said yesterday, what I reckon is needed is a major revisit of the organizational approach to learning.   With partners we‘ve been seeing it, and doing it, but we reckon there‘s more that needs to be done.   Are you ready to step up to the plate and redesign your learning?

Revisiting the Training Department

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Harold Jarche and Jay Cross have been talking about rethinking the training department, and I have to agree.   In principle, if there is a ‘training‘ department, it needs to be coupled with a ‘performance‘ department and a ‘social learning‘ department, all under an organizational learning & performance umbrella.

What‘s wrong with a training department?   Several things you‘ll probably recognize: all problems have one answer – ‘a course‘; no relationships to the groups providing the myriad of portals, no relationship to anyone doing any sort of social learning, no ‘big picture‘ comprehension of the organization‘s needs, and typically the courses aren‘t that great either!

To put it another way, it‘s not working for the organizational constituencies.   The novices aren‘t being served because the courses are too focused on knowledge and not skills, aren‘t sufficiently motivating to engage them, and use courses even when job aids would do.   The practitioners are not getting or able to find the information they need, and have trouble getting access to expert knowledge.   And experts aren‘t able to collaborate with each other, and to work effectively with practitioners to solve problems.   Epic fail, as they say.   OK, so that‘s a ‘straw man‘, but I‘ll suggest that it‘s all too frequent.

The goal is a team serving the entire learnscape: looking at it holistically, matching needs to tools, nurturing communities, leveraging content overlap, and creating a performance-focused ecosystem.   I‘ve argued before that such an approach is really the only sustainable way to support an organization.   However, that‘s typically not what we see.

Instead, we tend to see different training groups making courses in their silos, with no links between their content (despite the natural relationships), often no link to content in portals, no systematic support for collaboration, and overall no focus on long-term development of individuals and capabilities.

So, how do we get there from here?   That‘s not an easy answer, because (and this isn‘t just consultant-speak) it depends on where the particular organization is at, and what makes sense as a particular end version, and what metrics are meaningful to the organization.   There are systematic ways to assess an organization (Jay, Harold, and I‘ve drafted just such an instrument), and processes to follow to come up with recommendations for what you do tomorrow, next month, and next year.

The goal should be a plan, a strategy, to move towards the goal.   The path differs, as the starting points are organization-specific. One way to do it is DIY, if you‘ve got the time; it‘s cheaper, but more error-prone.   The fast track is to bring in assistance and take advantage of a high-value, lightweight infusion of the best thinking to set the course.   No points for guessing my recommendation.   But with the economic crisis and organizational ‘efficiencies‘, can you afford to stick to the old ineffective path?

Strategy, strategically

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In addition to working on the technology plan for my school district, I’ve also been assisting a not-for-profit trying to get strategic about technology.   The struggles are instructive, but looking across these two separate instances as well as the previous organizations I’ve assisted, I’m realizing that there are some common barriers.

The obvious one is time. The old saying about alligators and draining the swamp is too true, and it’s only getting worse.   Despite an economic stimulus package for the US and other countries, and (finally) a budget in my own state, things are not likely to get better soon.   Even if companies could hire back everyone they’ve laid off, the transition time would be significant.   It’s hard to sit back and reflect when you’re tackling more work with less resources.   Yet, we must.

The second part is more problematic.   Strategic thinking isn’t easy or obvious, at least to all.   For some it’s probably in their nature, but I reckon for most it takes a breadth of experience and an ability to abstract from that experience to take a broader perspective.   Abstraction, I know from my PhD research on analogy, isn’t well done without support.   Aligning that perspective with organizational goals simultaneously adds to the task.   Doing it keeping both short- and long-term values, for several different layers of stakeholders, and you’re talking some serious cognitive overhead.

We do need to take the time to be strategic.   As I was just explaining on a call, you don’t want to be taking small steps that aren’t working together towards a longer-term goal.   If you’re investing in X, and Y, and Z, and each one doesn’t build on each other, you’re missing an opportunity. If you’ve alternatives A & B, and A seems more expedient, if you haven’t looked to the future you might miss that B is a better long term investment.   If you don’t evaluate what else is going on, and leverage those initiatives because you’re just meeting your immediate needs, you’re not making the best investment for the organization, and putting yourself at risk.   You need to find a way to address the strategic position, at least for a percentage of your time (and that percentage goes up with your level in the organization).

To cope, we use frameworks and tools to help reduce the load, and follow processes to support systematicity and thoroughness. The performance ecosystem framework is one specific to use of technology to improve organizational learning, innovation, and problem-solving, but there are others.   Sometimes we bring in outside expertise to help, as we may be too tightly bound to the context and an external perspective can be more objective.

You can totally outsource it, to a big consulting company, but I reckon that the principle of ‘least assistance‘ holds here too.     You want to bring in top thinking in a lightweight way, rather than ending up with a bunch of interns trying to tie themselves to you at the wrist and ankles.   What can you do that will provide just the amount of help you need to make progress?   I have found that a lightweight approach can work in engagements with clients, so I know it can be done.   Regardless, however of wWhether you do it yourself, with partners, or bring in outside help, don’t abandon the forest for the trees, do take the time.   You need to be strategic, so be strategic about it!

Measuring the right things

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For sins in my past, I’ve been invited on to our school district’s technology committee.   So, yesterday evening I was there as we were reviewing and rewriting the technology plan (being new to the committee, I wasn’t there when the existing one was drafted).   Broken up into five parts, including curriculum, infrastructure, funding, I was on the professional development section, with a teacher and a library media specialist.   Bear with me, as the principles here are broader than schools.

The good news: they’d broken up goals into two categories, the teacher’s tech skills, and the integration of tech into the curriculum. And they were measuring the tech skills.

The bad news: they were measuring things like percentage of teachers who’d put up a web page (using the district’s licensed software), and the use of the district’s electronic grading system. And their professional development didn’t include support for revising lesson plans.

Houston, we have some disconnects!

So, let’s take a step back.   What matters?   What are we trying to achieve?   It’s that kids learn to use technology as a tool in achieving their goals: research, problem-solving, communication.   That means, their lessons need to naturally include technology use.   You don’t teach the tool, except as ancillary to doing things with it!

What would indicate we were achieving that goal?   An increase in the use of lesson plans that incorporate technology into non-technology topics would be the most direct indicator.   Systematically, across the grade levels.   One of the problems I’ve seen is that some teachers don’t feel comfortable with the technology, and then for a year their students don’t get that repeated exposure.   That’s a real handicap.

However, teacher’s lesson plans aren’t evaluated (!).   They range from systematic to adhoc.   The way teachers are evaluated is that they have to set two action research plans for the year, and they take steps and assess the outcomes (and are observed twice), and that constitutes their development and evaluation.   So, we determined that we could make one of those action research projects focus on incorporating technology (if, as the teacher in our group suggested, we can get the union to agree).

Then we needed to figure out how to get teachers the skills they need.   They were assessed on their computer skills once a year, and courses were available.   However, there was no link between the assessment and courses.   A teacher complained that the test was a waste of time, and then revealed that it’s 15-30 minutes once a year.   The issue wasn’t really the time, it’s that the assessment wasn’t used for the teachers.

And instead of just tech courses, I want them to be working on lesson plans, and, ideally, using the tools to do so.   So instead of courses on software, I suggested that they need to get together regularly (they already meet by grade level, so all fifth grade teachers at a school meet together once a week) and work together on new lesson plans.   Actually, I think they need to dissect some good examples, then take an existing lesson plan and work to infuse it with appropriate technology, and then move towards creating new lesson plans.   To do so, of course, they’ll need to de-emphasize something.

Naturally, I suggested that they use wikis to share the efforts across the schools in the district, but that’s probably a faint hope.   We need to drive them into using the tools, so it would be a great requirement, but the level of technology skills is woefully behind the times.   That may need to be a later step.

One of the realizations is that, on maybe a ten-year window, this problem may disappear: those who can’t or won’t use tech will retire, and the new teachers will have it by nature of the culture.   So it may be a short-term need, but it is critical.   I can’t help feeling sorry for those students who miss a year or more owing to one teacher’s inability to make a transition.

At the end, we presented our results to the group.   We’ll see what happens, but we’ve a new coordinator who seems enthusiastic and yet realistic, so we’ll see what happens.   Fingers crossed! But at least we’ve tried to show how you could go towards important goals within the constraints of the system.   What ends up in the plan remains to be seen, but it’s just a school-level model of the process I advocate at the organizational level.   Identify what the important changes are, and align the elements to achieve it (a bit like ID, really).   If you’re going to bother, do it right, no?

On the road again

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Well, this spring is shaping up differently than I expected. Instead of the doing the familiar talks or workshops in the usual places: Training’s Conference, eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering, and ASTD’s TechKnowledge and International Conference, I’m doing new things in old and new places.   Not that I don’t like those conferences, in fact I recommend them, it’s just that life takes funny turns (and I like challenging myself). Which isn’t to say I won’t be at those conferences again (I hope and intend to).

So, where will I be showing up?   At VizThink, for one.   A conference I’ve been very interested in, and managed to get a chance to present at.   That’s really just in a few days (Feb 22-25), and I’ll be talking about the cognitive underpinnings behind diagrams (and more).   As well as soaking up some great thoughts from others!

I’ll also be talking at the 5th Annual Innovations in eLearning Conference, hosted by the Defense Acquisition and George Mason Universities in the beginning of June.   My topic is myths about new learners, and I intend to debunk much of the hype just as I like to do around learning styles (which will probably show it’s head in the talk), as well as provide practical guidelines.   Folks like Will Wright and Vint Cerf are keynoting, so this is bound to be special.

Finally, assuming there are enough registrations, I will be at ASTD’s ICE (end of May), not speaking but running a pre-conference workshop on elearning strategy.   This is based upon my chapter in the forthcoming Michael Allen’s eLearning Annual 2009 about both the important principles of elearning tactics like mobile, portals, social learning, and more, and tying those tactics together into a strategy.   The focus is on an integrated ‘performance ecosystem‘, and I reckon it’s the most useful thing I can offer in this economic uncertainty.   I’ve given it as a talk before, but not as a workshop, and this is for managers and executives to take the next step in improving their organizational learning infrastructure.   It’s time to work smarter, folks!

One of the ways I work smarter and keep learning is to push myself into new areas that are beyond my comfort zone but that are within my reach (e.g. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development).   I recommend it to you too.   It’s a way to keep learning, and expanding.   I welcome new challenges, got any handy?

Jumpstarting

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I’m on the Board of Directors for an educational not-for-profit that has had almost 30 years of successful work with programs in classrooms, nationally and internationally.   However, 5 years ago or so when I joined, they were doing almost nothing with technology.   Since then I’ve been working systematically to get them to the stage where they’re leveraging technology not just for education, but for the organization.

It’s been a slow road. There were several false starts along the way, with two separate groups within the organization having a go, but each withered.   I wrote a vision document, laying out the opportunities, but they just weren’t getting the message; they were already successful.   Several things have helped: the economic uncertainties of funding for the past few years,   an external group that looked to partner for online delivery (which went awry, sadly), and the growing use of technology by their ever-younger employees (and their audience!).

Mainly through persistence, consistently better messaging, and a growing awareness on the part of both Board and organization, I finally managed to get the Board to push for an IT Strategy from the organization, which led to the formation of an IT Committee on the Board.   (For my sins I got to chair it.)   Since then I’ve been working with the organization to start developing a strategy, though I can only advise.

Jumpstarting may seem hardly the right phrase for a several-years long process, but actually it’s a significant shift and real progress.   They’re still having trouble getting a real strategic vision, focusing a bit too much on tactics like a killer website instead of back-end system and information architecture, but it’s within grasp now.   I likely will be going down and giving the organization’s team a more in-depth view, and the Board has asked to get an overview of the new technologies and the opportunities.   I’m even going to run a survey to see if we can move to more use of technology for the Board’s communications (the number of trees…).

Persistence pays off, even in the most hidebound environments.   Serendipity helps, but you get better at getting the message across.   And the number of examples now available makes it even easier.   Jumper cables, anyone?

Economic Impact

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The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question of the Month is “What is the impact of the economy on you and your organization? What are you doing as a result?”.   Heavy topic, but appropriate for the times.   I’ll answer two-fold: myself, and what I see for clients.

First, the impact: for some organizations it appears mostly an issue of scale, trying to do more with less, but for others it’s more cataclysmic; layoffs, no ability to secure capital for activity, no new business.   For me, it’s several projects that have gone on hold (extra capability available, call now, operators are standing by).

I’ve gone off already on the economic times and what I see are valuable steps for organizations: investing in capability.   I very much believe in walking the walk, so I’m investing in my own capability .   I’ve checked out some non-fiction books from the library that I’m reading to expand my abilities, I revamped my website (and continuing to improve it), writing a new article,   and I’ve started a new blog series on ID.

The point is to use down-time to be prepared to capitalize on the up-time.   Fingers crossed for all of us that it occurs soon.

Disruption and Adaptation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less than words

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Yesterday, while I was posting on how words could be transcended by presentation, there was an ongoing twitfest on terms that have become overused and, consequently, meaningless.   It started when Jane Bozarth asked what ‘instructionally sound’ meant, then Cammy Bean chimed in with ‘rich’, Steve Sorden added ‘robust’, and it went downhill from there.

I responded to Jane’s initial query that instructionally sound cynically meant following the ID cookie cutter, but ideally meant following what’s known about how people learn.   I similarly tried to distinguish the hyped version of engaging (gratuitous media use) from a more principled one (challenging, contextualized, meaningful, etc).   (I had to do the latter, given I’ve got the word engaging in my book title.)

Other overused terms mentioned include: adaptive, brain-based. game-like, comprehensive, interactive, compelling, & robust.   Yet, behind most of these are important concepts (ok, game-like is hype, and Daniel Willingham’s put a bucket of cold water on brain-based).   I should’ve added ‘personalized’ when a demo of an elearning authoring suite I sat through yesterday could capture the learner’s name and use it to print a ‘personalized’ certificate at the end.

And that’s the problem: important concepts are co-opted for marketing by using the most trivially qualifying meaning of the term to justify touting it as an instance.   Similarly, clicking to move on is, apparently, interactive.   Ahem.   It’s like the marketers don’t want to give us any credit for having a brain. (Though, sadly, from what I see, there does seem to be some lack of awareness of the deeper principles behind learning.)   I invoke the Cluetrain, and ask elearning vendors to get on board.

So, before you listen to the next pitch from a vendor, get your Official eLearning Buzzword Bingoâ„¢ card, make sure you know what the terms mean, and challenge them to ensure that they a) really understand the concept, and b) really have the capability.   You win when you catch them out; a smarter market is a better market. Ok, let’s play!