I’ve been complaining, as part of the myths tour, that everyone wants the magic bullet. But, as I was commenting to someone, there are huge tech opportunities we’re missing. How can I have it both ways?  Well, I’m talking about two different techs (or, rather, many).  The fact is, we’re chasing the wrong technologies.

The problem with the technologies we’re chasing is that we’re chasing them from the wrong beginning. I see people chasing microlearning, adaptive learning, video, sims, and more as the answer. And of course that’s wrong. There can’t be one all-singing all-dancing solution, because the nature of learning is remarkably diverse. Sometimes we need reminders, sometimes deep practice, some times individualization makes sense, and other times it’s not ideal.

The part that’s really wrong here is that they’re doing this on top of bad design!  And, as I believe I’ve mentioned, gilded bad design is still bad design.  Moreover, if people actually spent the time and money first on investing just in improving their learning design, they’d get a far better return on investment than chasing the latest shiny object.  AND, later investments in most anything would be better poised to actually be worthwhile.

That would seem to suggest that there’s not a sensible tech to chase. After, of course, authoring tools and creating elearning. And that’s not true. Investment in, say, sims makes sense if you’re using it to implement good design (e.g. deep practice).  As part of a good learning design strategy.  But there’s something deeper I’m talking about. And I’ve talked about it before.

What I’m talking about are content systems. They may seem far down the pike, but let me (again) make the case about why they make sense now, and for the future. The thing is, being systematic about content has both short-term and long-term benefits. And you can use the short-term ones to justify the long-term ones (or vice-versa).

In the short term, thinking about content from a systems perspective offers you rigor. While that may seem off-putting, it’s actually a benefit. If you design your content model around good learning design, you are moving towards the first step, above, about good design. And, if you write good descriptions within those elements, you really provide a foundation that makes it difficult to do bad design.

My point is that we’re ignoring meaningful moves to chase chimera. There are real value steps to make, including formalizing design processes and tools about good design. And there are ways to throw your money away on the latest fad.  It’s your choice, but I hope I’ve made a case for one interpretation. So, what’s yours?

What is a learning experience platform?  Suddenly the phrase seems ubiquitous, but what does it mean?  It’s been on my mental ‘todo’ list for a while, but I finally spent some time investigating the concept. And what I found as the underlying concept mostly makes sense, but I have some challenges with the label.  So what am I talking about?

It’s ImPortal!

Some background: when I talk about the performance ecosystem, it’s not only about performance support and resources, but finding them.  Ie, it includes the need for a portal. When I ask audiences “how many of you have portals in your org”, everyone raises their hands. What also emerges is that they have bunches of them. Of course, they’re organized by the business unit offering them. HR, product, sales, they all have their own portals. Which doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is to have a place to go for thing organized by people’s roles and membership in different groups.

A user-centered way of organizing portals makes sense then. People need to be able to see relevant resources in a good default organization, have the ability to reorganize to a different default, and search.  Federate the portal and search over all the sources of resources, not some subset.  I’ve suggested that it might make sense to have a system on top of the portals that pulls them together in a user-centric way.

An additional issue is that the contents of said portal should be open, in the sense that all users should be able to contribute their curated or created resources, and the resources can be in any format: video, audio, document, even interactive. In today’s era of increasing speed of change and decreasing resources for meeting the learning needs, L&D can no longer try to own everything. If you create a good culture, the system will be self-policing.

And, of course, the resources aren’t all about learning. Performance support is perfectly acceptable. The in-the-moment video is as needed as is the course on a new skill. Anything people want, whether learning resources from a library to that quick checklist should be supported.

The Learning Experience Platform(?)

As I looked into Learning Experience Platforms (LXP), (underneath all the hype) I found that they’re really portals; ways for content to be aggregated and made available. There are other possible features – libraries, AI-assistance, paths, assessments, spaced delivery – but at core they’re portals. The general claim is that they augment an LMS, not replace it. And I buy that.

The hype is a concern: microlearning for instance (in one article that referred to the afore-mentioned in-the-moment video, glossing over that you may learn nothing from it and have to access it again). And of course exaggerated claims about who does what.  It appears several LMS companies are now calling themselves LXPs. I’ll suggest that you want such a tool designed to be a portal, not having it grafted onto to another fundamental raison-d’être. Similarly, many also claim to be social. Ratings would be a good thing, but also trying to be a social media platform would not.

Ultimately, such a capability is good. However, if I’m right, I think Learning Experience Platform isn’t the right term, really they’re portals. Both learning and experience are wrong; they can be perform in the moment, and generally they’re about access, not generating experiences. And I could be wrong.

Take-home?

Ecosystems should be integrated from best-of-breed capabilities. One all-singing, all-dancing platform is likely to be wrong in at least one if not more of the subsidiary areas, and you’re locked in.  I think a portal is a necessary component, and the LXPs have many performance & development advantages for over generic portal tools.

So I laud their existence, but I question their branding. My recommendation is always to dig beneath the label, and find the underlying concept. For instance, each of the concepts underpinning the term microlearning is valuable, but the aggregation is problematic. Confusion is an opening for error. So too with LXP: don’t get it confused with learning or creating experiences.  But do look to the genre for advanced portals.  At least, that’s my take: what’s yours?

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was asked for my responses to questions about trends.  What emerged in the resulting article, however, was pretty much contrary to what I said. I wasn’t misquoted, as I was used to set the stage, but what followed wasn’t what I said. What I saw was what I consider somewhat superficial evaluation, and I’d like to point to new school thinking instead.

So the article went from my claim about an ecosystem approach to touting three particular trends. And yet, these trends aren’t really new and aren’t really right!  They were touting mobile, gamification, and the ‘realities. And while there’s nothing wrong with any of them, I had said that I didn’t think that they’re the leading trends.

So, first, mobile is pretty much old news. Mobile first?  Er, it’s only been 8 years or so (!) since Google declared that! What’s cool about  mobile, still, is sensors and context-awareness, which they don’t touch on.  And, in a repeated approach, they veered from the topic to quote a colleague. And my colleague was spot on, but it wasn’t in the least about mobile!  They ended this section talking about gamification and AR/VR, yet somehow implied that this was all about mobile. That would be “no”.

Then they talked about users wanting to be active.  Yay!  But, er, again they segued off-topic, taking personalization before going to microlearning and back to gamification and game-based learning(?).  Wait, what?  Microlearning is an ill-defined concept, and conflating it with game-based learning is just silly.  And games are real, but it’s still hard to do them (particularly do them right, instead of tarted up drill-and-kill).  Of course, they didn’t really stay on topic.

Finally, the realities. Here they stayed on topic, but really missed the opportunity. While AR and VR have real value, they talked about 360 photography and videography, which is about consumption, not interaction. And, that’s not where the future is.

To go back to the initial premise – the three big trends – I think they got it wrong.  AI and data are now far more of a driver than mobile. Yes, AR/VR, but interaction, not just ‘immersion’.  And probably the third driver is the ecosystem perspective, with systems integration and SaaS.

So, I have to say that the article was underwhelming in insight, confused in story, and wrong on topic. It’s like they just picked a quote and then went anywhere they wanted.   It’s old school thinking, and we’re beyond that. Again, my intention is not to continue to unpack wrong thinking (I’m assuming that’s not what you’re mostly here for, but let me know), but since this quoted me, I felt obliged.  It’s past time for new school thinking in L&D, because focusing on content is, like, so last century.

I agreed to be interviewed for an article, and was sent questions. And I wrote what I thought were cogent answers.  I even dobbed in a couple of colleagues to also be interviewed. However, the resulting article isn’t what I expected at all. Now, I don’t intend to make all my posts critiques of what’s being said, but sometimes I guess I just can’t help myself!  So first, here’re my original answers.  In my next post, I’ll document the article’s claims, and my rejoinders about what I think are the driving trends in L&D.

The original questions and responses:

How has our thinking evolved on using technology to assist in learning and development?

Thinking around technology for Learning & Development has shifted from delivering ‘courses’ to looking at the entire learning and performance ecosystem where technology can not only help us perform in the moment but also develop us over time. This adds performance support, resources and portals, and communication and collaboration tools to support learning alone and together from formal through to informal learning. We’re recognizing that to move forward, organizations that can learn fastest are the ones most likely to not just survive but thrive. However, this goes beyond the tools and the people to the structures, values, and culture that underpin practices.

Do you think the current systems in use for L&D are adequate? If not, why so?

The legacy of the training mentality is keeping us mired in the past. I think that adding portal and social media capabilities to systems with a ‘course’ DNA isn’t the path forward. Instead, we should be looking to integrate capabilities from the best instances in every area. We want flexibility to switch tools if we find better solutions to specific needs, not one overworked legacy system. An LMS (learning management system; misnamed because you don’t manage learning) may well still be of use to manage courses and signups, but it’s the wrong foundation for the more agile future we need. Supporting curation and creation, and negotiating shared understandings are the learning that’re going to be most valuable, and that requires not just different tools, but a different mindset. It’s time to shift from delivery to facilitation.

What technology-assisted learning tools do you think hold the most potential?

Collaborative tools are the most important tools: the ability to collectively generate and manipulate representations that document how our thinking evolves are important. Such tools that support simultaneous and asynchronous work and communication will be key to the ongoing learnings that will propel organizations forward. New tools like VR can lead to deeper formal learnings, and AR will help both as performance support and annotating the world, but collaborative immersion and annotation fit into that first category. When we’re developing an understanding together, we’re creating the richest outcome. There are nuances in doing that right, and that’s part of L&D’s role too, but it’s about tapping into the power of people. Technology that facilitates learning together is what will have the biggest impact.

What do you think is next for learning tech? Is there a huge shift coming?

I think the biggest thing coming for learning tech isn’t the tech. The ICICLE initiative from IEEE that is defining ‘learning engineering’ is a big move to start getting smarter about integrating the two components: learning science and technology design and development. Too often learning science is ignored (c.f. ‘rapid elearning’) or the technical sophistication is missing (e.g. tracking done only at the ‘course’ level). I think that once we get our minds around the importance of the integration, we’ll be far better positioned to tap into the advancements we’re seeing. While I think the hype about Artificial Intelligence is overblown, ultimately I believe that we’ll have more powerful tools to automate what doesn’t require the sophisticated capabilities of our brains, freeing us up to do the important work. And that work will be collaborating to generate new understandings. I do think there’ll be a big shift, but it’ll be coming along slowly. I hope this shift happens, but I think it’s evolutionary, as change is hard.

Ok, so that’s what I said about the trends in L&D. What you will see is that what they presented is somewhat contrary to what I said here!

In the past couple of days, I’ve come across two different initiatives to improve education. And certainly our education system can stand improvement. However, each one had the same major flaw, and leaves open an opportunity for improvement not to occur. Over a number of engagements I’ve developed the basis of what I think is a necessary foundation for a viable education platform. It’s time to toss it out and see what you all think.

So, one initiative had a proposal of 10 different areas they wanted people to contribute in. This included AI, and personalization, and ‘out of class’ credit, and more. Which is all good, make no mistake! However, nowhere was there the option of ‘a deeper pedagogy’. And that’s a problem. It’s all too easy to chase after the latest shiny object. It makes us feel like we’re both doing something constructive and keeping up with developments. (Not to mention how much fun it is to play with the latest things.) However, gilding bad design is still bad design! We need to make sure the foundation is strong before we go further.

The other initiative has three ways to contribute: lifelong learning, a marketplace, and emerging technology. And, again, the big gap is talking about the pedagogy to begin with.  With a marketplace, you might get some Darwinian selection process, but why not put it out there from the get-go? Otherwise, it’s just cool tinkering around a broken core.

So here’s where I pitch my 3 part story. Note that curriculum is broken too (I’m channeling Roger Schank: ‘Only two things wrong with education, what we teach and how we teach it’), and yet I’m not addressing that. Well, only a second layer of curriculum (see below ;). I think the choice of the first level curriculum is a big issue, but that changes depending on level, goals, etc. Here I’m talking about a platform for delivering the necessary elements of a supportable approach:

1. The first element is a killer learning experience. What do I mean here? I mean an application-based learning approach. Even for so-called theory classes (e.g. typical higher ed), you do something with this. And the experience is based upon minimal content, appropriate challenge, intrinsic motivation, and more. My claim: this is doable, even when you want to auto-mark as much as possible. Of course, there are still people in the loop.
2. Which leads to the second element, we as the provider are a partner in your success. It’s not ‘sink or swim’, but instead we’re tracking your progress, intervening when it looks like you’re struggling, and accessible at your time and place. We’re also providing the necessary resources to succeed. And we’re not interested in a curve, we’re competency-based and want everyone to get where they can be. We’re also making sure you’re getting what you need.
3. And that’s the third element, we develop you. That is, we’re not just developing your knowledge of the field, we’re also developing key success skills. That means we’re giving you chances to practice those skills as well, and tracking them and developing them as well. This includes things like communication, collaboration, design research, and more. So-called 21C skills.

I suggest that with such an approach, and the right curriculum, you’re providing a full suite of what education should be about. And, I suggest, we can do this now, affordably. Technology is part of the picture, learning science is part of the picture, and the commitment to do the right thing is part of the picture. Also, I think this is viable at all levels. K12, higher ed, and workplace.

And, I’ll suggest, anything less really isn’t defensible. We have the know-how, we have the tools, all we need is the will. Yet, despite some notable steps in the right direction, we’re really not there. It’s time to put a stake in the ground. Who’s up for it?