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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

480 x 320 is the new 1024 x 768

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How do we achieve a balanced solution for mobile content and applications? The iPhone has really raised the bar for mobile web browsing, and most mobile devices will soon have high quality browsing even if the screen remains small. Similarly, the growth area in handhelds are so-called ‘converged‘ devices: smartphones or wireless-enabled PDAs. Consequently, I propose it will be a plausible approach to start thinking of web apps as a delivery vehicle for mLearning.

Web standards for screen size started at 640 x 480, and have ranged through 800 x 600, to 1024 x 768. The iPhone has established a significant enough market presence to drive a variety of sites to create a version that accommodates the iPhone‘s resolution of 480 x 320. Phones can go down to as low as 160 x 160, so that might be your lowest common denominator, but I believe a safe bet could be 320 x 240 which is fairly common on a variety of devices. The new 800 x 600?

The point being, that thinking about small web apps may be the cost-effective and logical approach to provide mobile access, content. 160 x 160 is the new 640 x 480, etc. Already there are blogging tools for phones/mobile devices, and wikis are just web pages, etc. Web 1.0 is likely to be a viable solution, and the convergence of Web 2.0 and mobile is a promising place to play. Anyone game?

TechKnowledge 2008 kickoff

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TK08 kicked off on a fine note when NYTimes tech columnist David Pogue opened the conference. With humor and music (great takeoffs of famous songs to bemoan technologies problems, e.g. I Got an iPhone to the tune of I Did It My Way), he talked about several megatrends, which while not really new were well presented.

I was least impressed with Phone & Internet (VoIP), though I hadn’t known of Google Info (you can send text message to Google – 46645 – and get a google answer). He had a unique take on ubiquitous WiFi (e.g. we’ll be telling our kids “when we were kids we had to drive to the coffee shop to get to the internet”), and he ‘got’ the user-generated content movement that’s a significant part of Web 2.0. I was more impressed with the intersection of on-demand TV and movies (I think that while the MacBook Air is quite the coolest laptop out there, the more game-changing announcement at the MacWorld expo was iTunes movies via AppleTV).

Actually, the conference started for me the day before as I ran my simulation game design workshop, and then took off with some elearning gurus including Lance Dublin, Bob Mosher, Jim Javenkoski, and Michelle Lentz (who I hadn’t met before, though had read some of her writing; now in my blogroll) for some Unibroue tasting (yum!). Also in the ‘meeting folks’ section, today I met Karl Kapp, the author of Gadgets, Games, & Gizmos. I’d heard good things about him, and he’s weighed in insightfully on the previous learning theory for ID discussion (hey, he likes my post ;) . Also now in my blogroll.

A quick side note: at the Flying Saucer (venue) for the beer tasting, they have a local club for fans of their massive beer list.   There’s a computer and printer in a cabinet that people queue up to, enter a beer (or several) identifier, and take away a printed list of tasting notes to match with the beer they order.   A whole different form of eLearning, but valuable!

All in all, a good start to what’s looking to be a good conference. Looking forward to Joe Miller‘s presentation tomorrow!

MMORPGs as Learning Environments

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I was recently part of a PhD thesis project that asked some folks to do a Delphi process about the educational use of MMORPGs. It was interesting, and of course thought-provoking, and now it‘s done I can talk about it.

Beyond the obvious benefits of a potentially motivating context for learners, and commitment by the learner to the extent they‘ve customized the experience, there were some deeper issues. However, there appeared to be assumptions that it had to be massively multiplayer, and that existing such games would be used, as opposed to designing ones with specific characteristics to work with a selected cohort of learners. So we can first talk about those assumptions, and then move beyond.

One obvious concern is that in an existing environment, there are no specific learning affordances other than the game mechanics (which may not have much social benefit: there are little benefits to beating up kobolds outside the game environment). Now, some of the game mechanics may have transfer, particularly social ones, c.f. the leadership skills purportedly developed in World of Warcraft, so there are reasons. And, of course, you can always talk about learning in such environments.

The flip side of the social environment is the possibility for inappropriate social activities that can happen in real life, e.g. bullying, but this is not unique to the online learning environment and merely needs the same approaches of education and monitoring that you‘d want in real life.

Now, if you can design characteristics of the environment, such as the ability to build things (e.g. as in Second Life, where you can do 3D modeling, but it‘s not a game), and you can create the context and task for learners, you can embed specific learning outcomes into the environment (you know that designed learning environments is what I‘m about).

Of course, I‘ve also mostly been about individual learning experiences, and have argued that unless you‘ve social learning objectives, there‘s not a principled reason to build social games. However, that is neglecting the benefits of collaboratively problem-solving (though it can be done by post=game reflection), which often has great learning benefits (e.g. social learning theory: Bandura, Vygotsky, etc).

One of the big themes that emerged that I hadn‘t really tweaked to but now embrace is that such environments may foster 21st century skills. Such environments naturally include communication and collaboration, and could easily be augmented.

And, of course, one of the challenges even if we could develop and deploy these is ensuring that mentors or teachers are capable of scaffolding the learning from these environments. That, I think, is a 21st century skill needed now amongst educators, and it still needs to be developed (and motivated and rewarded!).

It‘s pleasing to see these explorations, and here‘s hoping there‘s more.

Context is king

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In two recent readings, I‘ve seen people miss one of the essences of mobile. In the New Media Consortium Horizon report (which has some pretty good points about collective intelligence, collaboration webs, and social operating systems), they talked about mobile broadband and how people are connecting. Which isn‘t wrong, but incomplete. In the other, the author mentioned using mobile while waiting for the bus, and further cited a work that insisted people doing mobile learning ‘on the go‘ won‘t do deep reflection.

In both instances, the authors are first making the assumption that mobile devices are about reaching out to people and content while out and about. That‘s fine; in training, huge amounts of effort is spent to reproduce a performance context so we can wrap learning around it. In mobile learning, if someone‘s performing, they can wrap information and guidance around that performance to turn it into a learning experience.

And that can be a reflective experience. Here I am on a plane, writing my blog, which is a reflective experience. The author missed that on the bus is also a mobile learning opportunity. If you can prompt, or capture, a reflective thought anytime, you can get deep reflection.

But the point I want to make is that one of the other opportunities is ‘context-sensitive‘ learning. That can be where you are, using your current location to connect you to some available resource that connects with a learning goal (Jim Schuyler at Red7 has a nice example of a puzzle hunt that leads you around the Yerba Buena Gardens outdoor sculpture collection). It can also, and this is something I‘m quite keen on and yet haven‘t seen people really take up, do something for when you are, not just where you are. For example, knowing that you‘re in a meeting with a vendor might trigger a system to deliver some negotiating tips, or refresh some negotiation content you‘ve recently viewed.

When I naively wrote about mobile learning in 2000, I admit I missed the context-sensitive opportunities (I wrote “Soon there will be essentially no distinction between mLearning and elearning”), but it is more than seven years later!   I hope you‘ll be looking at the broader mobile opportunities, rather than limiting yourself to courses on phones.

Suggestions for optimizing the conference experience?

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Being on the program committee for TechKnowledge (in San Antonio at the end of the month; hope to see you there as it should be great!), I’ve ‘volunteered’ to lead the part of the conference orientation on tips for getting the most out of the conference (among other things).

I’ve already tapped into Tony Karrer’s tips about asking good questions, and Jim Javenkoski gave me some good advice about handling the physical side (e.g. stay hydrated). I’m also thinking about the mental side e.g. attitude (positive, social). However, rather than just put up the ideas I know about and find, I’d love to tap into the wisdom of the net. So, what would you recommend as good tips and strategies for conference attendees?

Virtual World Learning

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Yesterday I had the privilege of an in-world meeting with my colleague Claudia L’Amoreaux, who’s now a major part of Linden Lab‘s education efforts with Second Life. Second Life, if you’ve been in a cave the past few years, is the first major successful virtual world. It’s a massively multi-player online environment, but it’s not a role-playing game, as there are no quests or NPC (non-player characters). In 2nd Life, you can build things, earn ‘money’ (Linden dollars; which have a cash exchange value for US$), and of course socialize. Many companies have set up places or islands in 2nd Life, and are holding learning events or creating learning places.

It was very gracious of her to give me time in her busy schedule, and I’m grateful because she refined and extended my understanding. I’ve talked before about virtual world learning affordances, so I let me focus on the new understandings.

First, I have to say that she didn’t change my fundamental take on the affordances. It is very much about spatial opportunity, both in place and in 3D representations. These are not trivial at all, but instead may have unique appeal for special needs rather than being general purpose. When those are the need, however, the virtual world is very compelling.

A second issue is one that I undervalued, and that’s the ability to represent yourself how you’d like to be seen, in more ways than one. The overhead is somewhat high, but I think I didn’t really ‘get’ how important this can be, as Tony O’Driscoll has let us know. There was another facet of this, however, which I truly missed, and that’s the ability to create a place to meet (if you own land, or you can presumably choose a meeting place that represents the ‘atmosphere’ you want to convey).

What Claudia helped me see is that the ability to create a look and environment serves as a powerful channel to communicate much information. She teleported me to a location she’s created to hold meetings with people and it’s a beautiful, comfortable place, very relaxing. She showed me Pathfinder Linden‘s in-world place which is very different, full of cool toys.

She emphasized the informal learning potential in such spaces, which can be building things to share if you’re appropriately skilled, or taking people to places with appropriate things. In formal learning, it’s more about, as said above, spatial and immersive experience. She mentioned learners making a ‘film’ of a book about a child soldier, and it did occur to me that if you have internet access, you could create a set and have actors and record it with much less overhead than a live movie. So there are some barrier-reductions involved in this world too.

So, all in all, I have to say I’ve underestimated virtual worlds. By the same token, I still think they’ve been over-hyped. Claudia’s lasting message, however, is intriguing. She said that when the world wide web was established, no one truly imagined how it would grow. Claudia sees virtual worlds as a similarly new platform with as yet unexplored potential, where we’re still repeating old activities with the new technology. Which we know is historic precedent, and gives us reason to pause in judgment.. As she said, no one she knows who’s really gotten into it has subsequently ‘got out’.

At the DevLearn conference, Paul Saffo pointed out that our technology expectations are linear, but the capabilities grow in a non-linear manner. Consequently, we’re liable to find that such innovations underperform our expectations initially, and outperform as they reach critical mass. And I know that my old boss/mentor/colleague Joe Miller and the folks within Second Life are continually driving new innovations, so we can probably expect things to get simpler, more powerful, or both. So there’re unexplored opportunities. I’ll stick with my (modified) position now, but eagerly await new understandings.

2008 Predictions

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eLearn, the online elearning magazine, has released it’s list of various folks predictions for 2008 (including yours truly). It’s a pretty stellar cast (self excluded) and there’re some really interesting thoughts, ranging from the visionary to the quite specific, and cynical to optimistic. Tony Karrer’s left a link to the Learning Circuit’s blog where the Big Question for January was also predictions, and also included is a link to Stephen Downes’ evaluations of last years predictions. Which is a daunting thought to face in writing one’s own, but what the heck, you have to take some chances!

Of course, I played it safe, with some easy guesses :). What do you think will be happening this year?

Blog stats 2007

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Tony Karrer’s called me (and others) out about our blog stats for 2007. Hey, I’m always up for an experiment, even at my own risk…:) I didn’t have my site registered with Google until April, I guess, so you’ll see an initial gap (and, presumably, somewhat reduced overall statistics):

blogstats2007.jpg

I couldn’t get it to appear the same as Tony’s (don’t know why I can’t get my Site Usage to appear as a single column, grumble, mumble). I wonder what FeedBlitz as a email version does to the stats? I read blogs in email, and make it easy to do so with mine as well. Probably counts as a search engine!

You’ll see I don’t compare to his usage, despite the lack of inclusion of 1/4 of my data; I’m jealous of his overall growing trend. Hopefully better this year!

2008 Predictions for Learning

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The Learning Circuit’s blog Big Question of the month is “What are your Predictions for Learning in 2008“. I note it doesn’t say eLearning. So, my predictions for Learning in 2008 are that we will continue to learn, despite the obstacles :).

Ok, enough being flip. Looking back over last year’s predictions, I thought mobile would cross the chasm. Um, er, I’m an optimist, can’t really say it’s happened yet, but I did see a lot more interest. I think it will this year for sure.

I also saw interest in looking at eLearning more strategically, and I predict this will continue to increase. Organizations are increasingly realizing that they need to move beyond courses, and even beyond content, and start looking at solutions.

Obviously, we’ll continue to sort out the new web 2.0 applications, and it’s clear there’ll be heaps more coming to be evaluated for learning opportunities. And I hope we’ll be more proactive about sorting through the hype to find the real learning affordances.

Now all this isn’t too interesting, but as I said in my reflection on last year much is incremental. My wishes for next year are that we’ll start digging a little deeper into good design, into measurement (as Will Thalheimer’s been talking about), about learning to learn, and thinking broader about our role. That’s different than my predictions, so I suppose I should go out on a limb for what will be revolutionary this year. Hmm.

Well, it’s maybe wishful thinking, but I’m predicting that we’re going to see more people taking a bigger, longer term, dare I say ‘wiser‘ approach to elearning this coming year. There’ll be a bit of a backlash against 2.0 and virtual worlds, even podcasting, and people will start getting back to “what am I trying to accomplish?” From there, enthusiasm will again run to Web 2.0, to mobile, and more, but tempered by a recognition of the real opportunities. See a theme here? Please make it so!

2007 Reflections

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It was an interesting year, starting with some sojourns in Taiwan and Norway, and ending with some time in Colombia and Denmark. That has been my most international year yet with Quinnovation, and I hope it’s a sign that a deeper approach to elearning is being recognized everywhere as the way to go.

I hoped that this past year would be the year of the model, and did my best to make it happen. Interestingly, I had lunch today with a guy who has had great success training programming and has made some initial moves to eLearning. It sounded very much like he was proving my proposed approach (providing the model, some examples, and then picking a series of disparate problems to practice that drill applying the model in different practices). This means you don’t have to train all the possible situations, just a representative-enough selection to facilitate abstraction and transfer. There’re details of course, such as ensuring that the alternatives to the right answer address the reliable misconceptions, having the feedback explicitly refer to the model, etc, but it should be a most effective way to train.

I also felt that, this year, (serious) games, aka ILS, moved firmly into the mainstream. Similarly, it’s becoming clear that mobile is how where games were a year or two ago, poised for a push into the spotlight, to be followed by mainstream in the near future. I’m hoping that a few other clear opportunities also will soon see attention, such as effective portals, structured content and single-sourcing, etc. It’s time to fully populate the performance ecosystem.

Which, of course, requires thinking broader than just training, and really just learning. It’s not about learning, after all, it’s about doing. Of course, making that transition on thinking requires some transitions in other organizational mindsets and cultures. I did see more of it this year, and really felt like the whole notion of strategic elearning was beginning to be heard. I do recommend, BTW, Marc Rosenberg’s Beyond eLearning, which does a nice job of setting up that way of thinking.

Overall, I had great conversations with my colleagues, and many of you, over Immersive Learning Simulations, Mobile Learning, and more. I also had the chance to work on some very interesting projects, continuing to push the envelope over how we use technology to support people achieving their goals. I hope that the next year continues to provide deep learning, wise use of technology, and meaningful outcomes for us all, and may it be our best year yet. Happy New Year!