Learnlets

Push the envelope further

16 October 2012 by Clark 1 Comment

When I run my game design workshop, one of the things I advocate is exaggeration. And you need to take this to heart in two ways: one is why it’s important, and the other is how to get away with it. That is, if you want learning to be as effective as possible.

When individuals perform in the real world, they’re motivated. There are consequences for failure, and rewards (tangible or not) for success. Yet in the learning experience, if we try to make it as real as possible, those motivations aren’t likely to be there. We want it to be safe to fail, so there aren’t quite the same consequences. How do we make it closer to the real context, to maximize transfer? Exaggerate the circumstances:

You’re not working on a patient, you’re working to save the ambassador’s daughter
You’re not just making a deal, you’re making the deal that the business is going to need to keep from going into receivership
You’re not just designing a networking solution, you’re designing one to support the communications for the rebels overthrowing the oppressive regime

You get the idea. You have to avoid stereotypes, and it’s a delicate dance to make it something that the learners will not dismiss but buy as more interesting than if you played it straight. Still, it’s worth the effort. And testing’s a good idea ;).

You want these exaggerations not just for task-based motivation, but you also want to make it more meaningful to the learner. Tap into not only the right application of the decision in context, but also a context learners will care about.

How do you get away with this? You know that you’re going to get reined in, stakeholders are always so precious about their content (“you can’t be flip about X!”). So go further than you think you’ll get away with. You’ll get reined in, but then you’ll still end up at a reasonable place.

For example, we were doing a learning experience about using web tools, and learners were going to create a web site. If you want youth to do it, we could’ve gone in different directions: a site for some environmental need, or for a subversive organization. In this case, we decided it would be plausible (larger context was a design agency) to do a client band.

If we’d said rock band, we’d be reined back to a pop band. Instead, we chose Goth Polka (and were surprised to find that it exists), and had a band name of the Death Kloggerz (in appropriate font). The client reined us in, because Death was too far for them to countenance, so we ended up with the Dark Kloggerz. Still, we got to keep in the odd elements that we felt were appropriate to keep it from being too banal.

The stakeholders will rein you in, but fight for the extreme. Your learners will thank you.

Living on the road

15 October 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

I’ve spent a few days on the road the past few weeks, and thought I’d share my reflections on trying to survive sensibly and healthily. Kinda out of the normal line, but FWIW:

1) if you stay in a hotel that’s crazy enough to provide dinner, but also has kitchens, use the kitchens. Tried the fried rice yesterday and it was too salty. The overly sauced sesame chicken looked like it had death levels of sugar. And the fried egg rolls? Fat levels better left unmentioned. Glad I picked up food at TJ’s. Even if I have to wash the dishes (soap bars seem to work ;), it’s better than this food for a week. Today was better, the veggies looked ok, but the garlic bread looked suss and bet the chicken parmiagano was way too salty too.

2) same lesson for breakfast. The sausage and cheesy potatoes were ok yesterday, but glad I found the oatmeal today. I love biscuits and gravy, but they’d be the death of me if I ate the buffet bins everyday. Hard enough to eat well on the road.

3) increasingly, I’m finding tasty meal-scope salads when you inevitably eat out that I can really fill up on and feel good about eating: yesterday, asked for grilled chicken instead of fried on my southwest salad, today got the peanut sauce on the side for the oriental salad. Increasingly avoiding carbs, going for veggies and bits of meat.

As you get older, are on the road a fair bit, and still want to enjoy life, you need to find ways to eat more healthy when out and about. The good news is, it’s increasingly doable, but it also means some diligence. It’s hard to rein in my enthusiasm for food, but the realities of the slowing metabolism (I hate that) despite exercise mean I’ve got to find ways…

Love hearing your strategies!

Wise organizations

10 October 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

My ITA colleague Jay (always a spark igniter) has been thinking about well-being in organizations, and it activated my thinking on wisdom. My interest in wisdom continues to ferment, slowly but surely, as a personal commitment. My question was what would business wisdom look like, and what would be the benefits?

One preliminary issue is definitional: when I google the term, I mostly see good business practices wrapped up and trumped as business wisdom. That’s not quite what I mean. We’ve seen examples of people doing things that were smart in the moment, but not very smart over time (*cough* Enron *cough*). Yes, there are some business principles that really do stand the test of time and could be considered business wisdom, but I’m thinking more about wise decisions, not wise principles. Other folks tend to treat wisdom as ineffable or only obvious in situ, you know it when you see it but you can’t analyze it. That doesn’t leave me much traction, so I focus on frameworks that give me some possibility for doing things differently.

So the definition I like for wisdom comes from Robert Sternberg, where he talks about making decisions that are not just smart in the short term, but in the long term. Decisions that consider not just me and mine, but society in general. And decisions that are based on values that are articulated and examined, not implicit and potentially less then optimal. I suggest that this sort of approach would lead to better decisions.

One of the things would be just to get people to start making decisions with this approach. If you accept the view that for situations where we’re experts, we can trust our gut, this means more to slow down when we’re making decisions out of our comfort zone. It’s harder work, to be very conscious in our decision making process, but I hope it’s implicitly obvious that making better decisions is the best solution.

And this segues into the broader topic of the organizational culture. I’m not immune to the view that there’s a certain personal attitude to wisdom. The wisest people I know are also the most unflappable, thoughtful and warm. And I think that’s hard to accomplish in an organization where everything you say can and will be held against you. You’ve got to have the appropriate culture for such an approach to flourish. Which ties to Jay’s interest in well-being, bring me full circle.

So, I think there’s an argument to be made for consider wisdom in business, as part of a longer term shift from short term returns to a sustainable differentiator. Coupled with appropriation of collaboration and cooperation, I suggest organizations can and should be working wiser and more coherently.

Inoculating the organization

9 October 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

I was having a discussion the other day with my ITA colleague Jay Cross, and the topic wandered over to how to use the social approaches we foster under the umbrella of the Coherent Organization to help organizations become one. And I went feral.

Do we work top down, or bottom up? In the course of the conversation it occurred to me that given the model we propose, that you can’t just have the broader social network create it, and you can’t even really build a community of practice (CoP). The smallest unit is the working group; how could we use that?

The thought that struck me was creating a working group who’s goal was to create a CoP around being a Coherent Organization. That is, they’d have to understand the principles, start defining and discussing it, document the opportunities, and start disseminating the ideas through the organization. Inherently, it has to be viral, and the most effective way to introduce a virus is by inoculation.

The idea then is that the mission of the working group is to develop a community of practice around understanding and implementing developing communities of practice. It’s a bit recursive or self-referential, but it’s the seed that needs to sprout. Seeding it is the action that’s needed to get it going, and then some feeding needs to happen. While it’s possible that a self-supported initiative could survive, having some external support may make sense in making this happen.

Yes, I’m assuming that the end result is desirable and possible. The former is, I think, reasonably well accepted (short form: working effectively is a necessary survival tactic, going forward), even if the path to get there isn’t. I’m suggesting that this is a path to get there. It’s not easy; it takes persistence, support, all those things that make organizational initiatives succeed, with an understanding of the strategies, policies, and cultural adjustments needed. Yet I’ll suggest that it is doable. Now, it’s time to do it!

#itashare

Focus on ‘do’

8 October 2012 by Clark 6 Comments

I’ve been working on a project where we’re reviewing the curriculum before we design the learning outcome. The level of detail is admirable: courses are defined by objectives, which then drive learning objectives, from which are extracted key concepts to present. And I’m finding one approach that’s making this go really well.

There are problems with the existing content. Some of the learning objectives are too specific, leading to an interpretation that won’t lead to transfer beyond the classroom. Some of the coverage in objectives or concepts is biased, so some topics are not covered enough, and others too much. Some of the learning objectives are focused on tasks that were clearly designed to incite learner interest, but not in an intrinsic way. And I’m not a domain expert, but I can still apply enough real world knowledge to make this determination (and we’ll review with SMEs).

What’s providing a very useful lever in identifying these gaps, even prior to remedying them, is a rabid focus on ‘do‘. That is: “what will the learner be able to do with this after the class”. Implied are two things: 1) that the learner will care about , and 2) that will let them have an impact somewhere.

This focus is letting me see that some things are so specific that they won’t generalize anywhere interesting; to identify that some of the goals are not really relevant anywhere else (e.g. a focus on ‘celebrity’ examples). That the coverage is spotty and some topics that have applicability have been skipped.

Such a focus will, I think, help in the discussions with the SMEs, and provide a way to work with them to get good outcomes for the learning and the learners. It’s a learning-centered approach (I think that’s a better phrase than learner-centric) that helps us meet the client’s goals in ways they understand.

What do you think?

The third goal of learning

2 October 2012 by Clark 9 Comments

I’ve regularly told workshop and talk attendees that our learning goals are twofold. It may be time to amend that.

Formally, our goals for learning interventions should be retention over time until needed and transfer to all appropriate situations (and no inappropriate ones). And these are important goals. If the learning’s atrophied by the time it’s needed, it’s of no use. If we don’t activate the learning in all relevant situations, we’re missing opportunities.

But it occurred to me there may be more. I was working with a group developing a certification in a particular area, based upon their wildly successful workshops. One of the outcomes they talked about, in an endeavor that occurs with a very high amount of stress, was that one of their outcomes was confidence on the part of the attendees.

It struck me that confidence on the part of the learner is very much a desirable, maybe even necessary outcome of any really successful learning. I regularly talk about the importance of the emotional component of successful learning: supporting motivation and reducing anxiety, and working to create a trajectory of building confidence. That confidence should be an outcome as well.

Too often we practice until we get it right, instead of until we can’t get it wrong. Add to that the learner knowing they’re fully capable of performing right, and we’re there’re. We have to continue to address the emotional side of the equation as well as the cognitive. It’s part of experience design. (And, now, I’ve got to go change my presentations ;)

Beyond eBooks

1 October 2012 by Clark 5 Comments

Among the things I’ve been doing lately is talking to folks who’ve got content and are thinking about the opportunities beyond books. This is a good thing, but I think it’s time to think even further. Because, frankly, the ebook formats are still too limited.

It’s no longer about the content, it’s about the experience. Just putting your content onto the web or digital devices isn’t a learning solution, it’s an information solution. So I’m suggesting transcending putting your content online for digital, and starting to think about the opportunities to leverage what technology can do. It started with those companion sites, with digital images, videos, audios, and interactives that accompany textbooks, but the opportunities go further.

We can now embed the digital media within ebooks. Why ebooks, not on the web? I think it’s primarily about the ergonomics. I just find it challenging to read on screen. I want to curl up with a book, getting comfortable.

However, we can’t quite do what I want with ebooks. Yes, we can put in richer images, digital audio, and video. The interactives part is still a barrier, however. The ebook standards don’t yet support it, though they could. Apple’s expanded the ePub format with the ability to do quick knowledge checks (e.g. true/false or multiple choice questions). There’s nothing wrong with this, as far as it goes, but I want to go further.

I know a few, and sure that there are more than a few, organizations that are experimenting with a new specification for ePub that supports richer interaction, more specifically pretty much anything you can do with HTML 5. This is cool, and potentially really important.

Let me give you a mental vision of what could be on tap. There’s an app for iOS and Android called Imaginary Range. It’s an interesting hybrid between a graphic novel and a game. You read through several pages of story, and then there’s an embedded game you play that’s tied to, and advances, the story.

Imagine putting that into play for learning: you read a graphic novel that’s about something interesting and/or important, and then there’s a simulation game embedded where you have to practice the skills. While there’s still the problem with a limited interpretation of what’s presented (ala the non-connectionist MOOCs), in well-defined domains these could be rich. Wrapping a dialog capability around the ebook, which is another interesting opportunity, only adds to the learning opportunity.

I’ll admit that I think this is not really mobile in the sense of running on a pocketable, but instead it’s a tablet proposition. Still, I think there’s real value to be found.

Transcending Experience Design

25 September 2012 by Clark 7 Comments

Last week’s #lrnchat touched on an important topic, experience design. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth taking several different cuts through it. The one I want to pursue here is the notion of transformative experience design.

A number of years ago, now, Pine & Gilmore released a book talking about an Experience Economy. In it, they posited that we’d gone from the agricultural economy, through a product and service economy, to what they termed an ‘experience economy’: where people paid for quality experiences. You can see this in themed cruises & restaurants, Apple’s product strategy, Disney, etc. I think it’s a compelling argument, but what really struck me was their next step. They argued that what was due next was a ‘transformation economy’, where people paid for experiences that change them (in ways that they desire or value).

And I argue that that’s what my book Engaging Learning was all about, how to create serious games, which really are experiences with an end in sight. The point here is not to tout the book, but instead to tout that a meld of experience design and learning design, learning experience design, is the path to this end.

There are things about experience design that instructional design largely ignores: emotion, multiple senses, extended engagement. While I feel that not enough has been written systematically about experience design (interface design yes, but not the total cross-media picture, e.g. Disney’s Imagineering), their intuitive approaches acknowledge recognizing the ebb and flow of emotions – motivation, anxiety – and beliefs about one’s role (epistemology, there I said it).

On the other hand, learning design is (properly done) grounded in cognitive science, with empirical results, but is incomplete in breadth. We know what we do, but our view is so limited!

Together, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It’s about thinking beyond content, it’s about contextualizing, designing to “bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses”. Really, it’s about creating a magic experience that transcends content and truly is transformative. Are you ready to take that next step?

Learning Design isn’t for the wimpy

24 September 2012 by Clark 4 Comments

I’ve had my head down on a major project, a bunch of upcoming speaking engagements, some writing I’ve agreed to do, and…(hence the relative paucity of blog posts). That project, however, has been interesting for a variety of reasons, and one really is worth sharing: ID isn’t easy. We’ve been given some content, and it’s not just about being good little IDs and taking what they give us and designing instruction from it. We could do it, but it would be a disaster (in this case, that’s what we’re working from, a too-rote too-knowledge-dump course). And it’s too often what I’ve seen done, and it’s wrong.

SMEs don’t know how they do what they do. Part of the process of becoming expert is compiling away the underlying thinking that goes on, so it moves from conscious to subconscious. So when the time comes to work with SMEs about what’s needed, they a) make up stories about what they do, or b) resort to what they’ve learned (e.g. knowledge). It’s up to the ID to push back and unpack the models that guide performance. Yet that’s hard, particularly when they’re not domain experts, and SMEs have issues.

It takes a fair bit of common sense (remarkable by how uncommon it is), and willingness to continually reframe what the expert says and twist it until it’s focused on how they make decisions. There’re formal processes call Cognitive Task Analysis when you need them, but a ‘discount CTA’ approach (analogous to Nielsen’s ‘discount usability‘) would be appropriate in many cases.Such an approach includes getting some really good examples of both successes and failures of the task under consideration, and working hard to extract the principles that guide success. But SMEs can’t be order takers; they have to be willing to fight to understand what decisions do learners need to make that they can’t make now, and how to make those decisions.

It really helps to either have a deep background in the field, or a broad background. You can get the former by teaching ID to a SME, or having an ID work in a particular field for a long time. The latter works if you’re more in the ‘gun for hire’ mode. You then need, however, a broad knowledge that you can draw upon to make some reasonable inferences. That’s what I typically do, as my deep expertise is in learning design, but fortunately I’m eternally curious (used to lie on the floor with a volume of the World Book spread out in front of me). Model-based and systems thinking help immensely.

You really have to work hard, use your brain, draw upon real world knowledge and go to the mat with the material. If you’re not willing to do this, you’re not cut out to be a learning designer. There’s much more, understanding the way we learn, experience design, and more, but this is part of the full picture.

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