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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Mind the SME (and process)

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At the recent Distance Teaching & Learning Conference I keynoted at, I met up with Jon Aleckson who, among other things, provided me a copy of his new book MindMeld. As the subtitle tells you, the book is about “micro collaboration between elearning designers and instructor experts”. To put it another way, the book is primarily about how to work successfully with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

Bsed upon Jon’s Ph.D. thesis work, this doesn’t read as an academic treatise for the simple fact that Jon’s run an elearning business for years now. While solidly grounded in good theory, the book is also focused very pragmatically on success factors. Written in a very accessible style, illuminated with case studies and hints and tips, this is a short and readable.

More importantly, the book is valuable. It talks about how to work with what the book calls instructor-experts in ways that increase the likelihood for success. Along the way, it provides useful coverage of topics like shared representations, process, and the value of project management. Along the way, the book isn’t afraid to touch upon the more intangible but real issues like culture and momentum.

The book is not without it’s flaws. Perhaps not surprisingly, situated in Madison WI, there’s a very strong emphasis on games as learning activities. Certainly I don’t disagree, but I would also emphasize collaboration equally. Also, despite not being academic, and admittedly also intended for academic designers as well as corporate, the examples appear to skew to the academic side. There also isn’t my favorite tip about where SMEs add extra value, finding their passion for the topic as a hint to designing the learning solution. These, however, are minor points.

Overall, I can strongly recommend this book to any individual or team that needs to be working to create a learning solution. The conceptual clarity around the practice of working as a team, and the practical advice, on a topic too seldom discussed, wrapped in a brief and accessible package, make this an easy recommendation.

PS: note that just because I get a copy of a book doesn’t mean I review it favorably; my integrity prohibits it (testimony in the stacks of free and unreviewed books that sit around my office).  I do not  recommend giving me a free book in any expectation of favorable consideration.

Travels, travails, & thought

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In case you’ve been wondering about my relative paucity of posting, let me confess that I’ve been on the road almost non-stop for months.  Starting with the Australasian Talent Management conference in Sydney, through the Innovations in eLearning Symposium in DC, mLearnCon in San Jose, a visit to Saudi Arabia on behalf of a client, a long-delayed and deserved European tour with the family, a trip back to Australia on behalf of another client, speaking at the Distance Teaching & Learning Conference in Wisconsin, the Southwest Learning Summit in Dallas, and then a family trip to San Diego, I haven’t slept under my own roof for more than 2-3 consecutive nights (with one exception) since mid-May.

I’m not bragging or  looking for sympathy, I’m just explaining (also mentioning that  this is not usual for me). While it’s good, it’s also exhausting, and has really hampered my ability to do other than the associated work. Finally, however, I’m at home for several weeks before beginning another batch: Chicago for Learning 3.0 (an eLearning strategy workshop), Laguna Niguel for  the CLO Symposium (with Jay and Jane from the Internet Time Alliance), both in October, and then DevLearn in Lost Wages (running a mobile strategy workshop), DC for a local ASTD Chapter event (mobile talk & social workshop), and Toronto for CSTD’s annual conference in November.  At least I’m staying on the same continent this time, so the jet lag won’t be quite so bad!  And more time at home in-between.

On the way, I lost my new leather iPad cover when I left the iPad on the plane (got the iPad back, sans the cover ?!?!? *cough* United Airlines*cough*), had the usual debilitating experience with too-expensive data (ATT’s new rates notwithstanding), and didn’t always make the best luggage choices. On the other hand, I was able to resurrect a favorite rolling briefcase, got in a few surfs (so nice to find I can still do it!), generally exercised, ate very and mostly reasonably well, met some great people and had great conversations, and felt like I really was adding value by giving talks, running workshops, doing consulting, etc.  And the time with family was fabulous.

I also had time for some reflections, which I hope to populate here (wish I’d thought to capture them as they occurred, sigh).  One of the first ones is that mobile is more than just a technology, it’s also a lever. Under the mobile banner, we can discuss the whole performance ecosystem: formal learning, performance support, social learning, games, etc.  And  we get additional opportunities with context-sensitive learning. When Google is designing for mobile first, and tablets and smart-phones are on the rise, there’s an opportunity to shake things up.   It’s like the conclusion Barbara Means made on the report from SRI on the difference to face to face and online learning: “the observed  advantage of online learning  is a product of  redesigning the learning experience,  not of the medium per se”.  I think that’s what’s on tap with mobile, and I think we should be looking to pursue those opportunities.

Digital Helplessness(?)

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Recently, I’ve been hearing quite a bit of concern over the possibility that reliance on digital, and increasingly mobile, technology may make us stupider.  And I don’t think this is just easy to dismiss.  In a sense, it could be a case of learned helplessness, where folks find themselves helpless  because after using the tools, folks might not have the information they need when they don’t have the tools.

Recently announced research    shows that folks change what they remember when enabled with search engines: they don’t remember the data, but instead how to find it.  Which could be a problem if they needed to know the data and are not digitally enabled in some context.

As has also been conveyed to me as a concern is whether folks might not engage in learning about their environs (e.g. when traveling), and in other ways miss out on opportunities to learn when dependent on digital devices.  Certainly, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been concerned  about how disabled I feel when dissociated from my digital support (my external brain).  Yet is there a concern?

My take is that it might be a concern if people are doing it unconsciously.  I think you could miss out (as m’lady points out when I am reading instead of staring out the window every moment as we take the train through another country :) on some opportunities to learn.

On the other hand, if you are choosing consciously what you want to remember, and what you want to leave to the device, then I think you’re making a choice about how you allocate your resources (a ‘good thing’).  We do this in many ways in our lives already, for instance how much we choose to learn about cooking, and more directly related, how much to learn about how to do formatting in a word processing program.

Yes, I’ve been frustrated without my support when traveling, but that’s chosen (which does not undermine my dismay at the lack of ability to access digital data overseas).  I guess I’m arguing for chosen helplessness :).  So, what are you choosing to learn and what to devolve to resources?

Levels of analysis

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When I was a grad student, a fellow student did an interesting study.  In analogical reasoning, what helps is abstracting from the specifics to the more general (and folks are bad at generating good analogies, though okay at using them, according to my PhD and other research).  Folks had made efforts at getting abstraction, and failed. What my fellow student did was to control the abstraction, and got useful outputs.  It turns out some abstract too far, and of course in general most don’t go far enough.

From that beginning, I’ve been interested in useful mental models, and good analysis from appropriate levels of abstraction. That’s what I have tried to do in my books: abstract to useful levels, and guide application in pragmatic ways.  And that’s what I look for in other’s work as well.  My PhD advisor has served as an excellent model: Don Norman’s book Design of Everyday Things is still a must-read for anyone designing for humans, and his subsequent books have similarly provided valuable insight.

I like the thinking of a number of folks who do this well.  For instance, I’m regularly learning with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (Jay, Jane, Harold, and Charles).  Jane Bozarth, Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett, Will Thalheimer, Marcia Conner, and Donald’s Clark & Taylor are just a few of the folks who cut through the hype with incisive thinking. There are of course others I’m forgetting to mention (my apologies).  They’re looking for best principles, not best practices.

It’s a similar thinking that helps break down new technologies and finds the key affordances for learning, avoiding other intriguing but ultimately distracting features (Powerpoint presentations in Second Life, anyone?).  You need to look a bit deeper than the surface.

Interestingly, to do so really requires taking time for reflection.  Which is why it always frustrates me to hear those folks who say “I don’t have time for reflection”.  Really?  You don’t have time to do the most valuable level of thinking that will impact your effectiveness and ultimately save you time and money?

And can we please put this process into our school curriculum as well?  I benefited mightily by having a 12th grade AP English teacher (that’s you, Dick Bergeron) who modeled deeper thinking and used reciprocal teaching (without having that label) to help us develop our own abilities.  While I try to do so for my own kids, our society and world needs more folks thinking at useful levels.

So, please, take time and a step back from your day to day problem-solving and abstract across your activities and look for higher level principles, both emergent and external, that can improve what you’re doing.

 

A jot of design

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Ordinarily, I don’t even look at vendor products when offered free trials. I like to remain unbiased, and not give free advice.  I retain the right to look at what interests me, not what might be commercially expedient (a perverted legacy of my academic tenure, no doubt :).

However, two things interested me about this particular offer. First, it was an iPad app supporting design. Given that I’m very much about improving design, *and* quite into mobile, this was of interest. Second, I mistakenly thought it came from Michael Allen’s company Allen Interactions, and he’s not only been an early advocate of engaging design, but also he’s a supremely nice guy to complement his smarts. It turns out, of course, that I jumped too fast to a conclusion, and it’s really from Allen Communications.  Oh well.  I’m talking about DesignJot, btw.

Now, I’m not going to give a formal review, because instead I want to use this as an opportunity to reflect on supporting design.  Though you’ll likely get some idea of what it does and how.

Briefly, this app takes Allen Communications analysis and design process, using the acronym ANSWER, and provides support for using it.  You initiate a new project and then get support for design by having questions and even subtopics and questions under that rubric that you fill out for analysis. That information then populates some initial parts of the design support, which then guides you to define strategies and sub-components.  There are note-taking and sketching tools too.

The notion of supporting the design process is not new, certainly it was key in the toolset used by one of the major content developers in the past, and such performance support is a good idea.  Scaffolding process is an obvious outcome of how our brains work (systematic creativity is not an oxymoron), so the question becomes one of what process you are using as your guide. Without any guidance about ANSWER, I did a spot-check for one of my heuristics and it wasn’t in there. Overall, there seem to be some good and odd things.  Using someone else’s particular process may not be your cup of tea, and while you can add your own questions, youcan’t, as far as I could tell, add to the template.

There are some hiccups, e.g. I was surprised that some of the information isn’t carried forward, and some of the interface is a bit counterintuitive (e.g. home button sort of to the right but close to the middle). On the other hand, there are handy tips for many if not all of the steps.

The choice of making it an iPad app is interesting and understandable.  It certainly makes it easy to carry around as you talk to SMEs, etc., and that makes it reason enough.  The output functions are interesting, however, seeing it produces a ‘project’ file which I *think* only works with another instance of the iPad project (e.g. sharing), or PDFs.  Which isn’t bad, as it’s not clear what else you might use, but I might prefer a more manipulable format like an Excel or HTML output that I might post-process.

I think the idea of creating performance support tools on mobile platforms makes a lot of sense.  Whether you want to trust to their choice of questions and structure is another question.  Overall, it’s an interesting business move, an interesting mobile move, and an interesting chance to reflect on the design process.

A Storied History

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Rothenburg ob der Tauber (RodT) is a charming small town that has retained it’s medieval nature through both design and chance. The story is interesting, but more interesting for my purposes here is how You can learn that story.

One of the opportunities available in Rothenburg is the Night Watchman’s Tour, where a local dressed up as a night watchman walks you through various stops around town and tells Rothenburg’s history. You pay at the end, so you could skip paying, but after the experience it is definitely worth the money.  

The story telling is interesting; it’s very personal, starting with the life and role of the night watchman, a low class (because of ignorant prejudice) but important job. Across the course of the talk, the perspective becomes one of a proprietary interest in the city itself. The events are recited with a very causal but also human level of detail (e.g. how the post-war administrator’s mother’s connection to RodT saved the town).  There is a self-deprecating humor that leavens the message.

Also interesting is the story-telling style. The character speaks with great projection, but also in an almost sing-song style. There are somewhat odd but engaging emphases. It’s hard to characterize (I couldn’t reproduce it), but it worked.

As my lad said, it’s the most interesting history he’s ever learned. And that, I think, says a lot.  Don’t neglect the power of story, as Roger Schank would have us remember. Wrap up the details in a narrative that ties it together, as our brains are optimized for understanding in this way.

Travel Tech

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I have, not surprisingly, had my eye tuned for new mobile uses, and have recently spied a couple of ones I had not noticed. These range from the predictable but cool to the novel (at least to me).

First, on a recent train trip, the conductor had an app where she could check seats. Having missed a connection, the hope was that there were seats available on the next train. Without a reservation, the procedure used to be that you’d just grab a seat and hope no one had it reserved. I this case, the seat was available after departure, but there was no way for me to know whether it would stay that way through the other stops. The conductor, however, whipped out a device, checked, and was able to confirm all the way to the destination. Very cool.

And today, in museums, I noticed tour groups that not only had the requisite signage, but were using technology in interesting ways beyond the canned audio tour.  

For one, I noticed a tour guide speaking quietly into a microphone, in a sacred place. I then noticed that there were a bunch of people with headsets coming from a device hung around their necks. They’d found a way to have the guide narrate the tour without disturbing others and without requiring the attendees to be right near by.

I noticed another group with what looked like mini-walkie-talkies hung around their necks. This would allow sending out messages but also two way communication.  

The latter two, at least, seemed to require custom hardware, but wouldn’t necessarily have to if everyone could get an app.  Regardless, however, we’re finding new ways to harness technology to allow us to Connect and Compute.  And that’s two of the four C’s of mobile.  

Rick Steves, the travel author (who we’ve found useful) has audio files you can download, as one form of Content, and you can download transportation maps for cities (as well as apps). Looking at Capture, I wonder about the ability to take pictures or thoughts and share with your tour group.  

Overall, the opportunities to enhance not only our productivity, but also our leisure are being improved through mobile. What’s next?

Learning History

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Traveling with Jay Cross and Ellen Wagner in Berlin last December, we hit a great museum where they had artifacts from aa major period of German dominance. It was easy to use those concrete representations of life at the times, and the annotations (as well as Jay & Ellen’s learned commentary) as a foundation to think about the historic changes.

Thinking about the way we ,as a family, like to travel – studying up beforehand, choosing places that most concisely represent and communicate the local history and culture (and dining in ways to understand the best the culture has to offer :), and reading as we go along – it seems a great way to ground learning via experience. And experiential learning is powerful learning, connecting personal experience as context to conceptual models.  

I personally like to understand the ebb and flow of civilizations. My late friend Joe Cotter was a PhD in history, and taught me a little bit about how to think like a historian (not just to know history), thinking about causal forces. I try to apply that, as well as admittedly geeking out on weapons and castles.  

I’ve always felt that the old cliche is true, that travel broadens you. If you go with your eyes open, you can see the world from a different perspective, and even look at your own country differently. I really value the time I spent living in Australia, not only because of the fabulous friends and great experiences, but the ability to look back at the US and get a valuable extension on my understanding.  

It’s one thing to read about it, but to immerse yourself in the cuture and the artifacts with an overarching narrative really helps connect the broader context to the specifics. I hope you have the chance to have a similar experience.

TravelLearning

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Travel is a great learning opportunity.  First, of course, is learning the history, geography, and culture of a place.  The cuisine of a new place is a particular personal interest. Of course, you can also learn about politics, economics, and more as well.  

A second level is looking at how these are portrayed within their own milieu; what are the stories they tell themselves and others about who and what they are.

And, of course, regardless of planning, travel ends up throwing you little challenges: changes in schedules, closures, delays, and more.  These become opportunities for meta-learning: both attitudinal (patience, tolerance, persistence, friendliness) and strategic (problem-solving, communication, etc.).

Moreso if you make a conscious effort to not just replicate the same experience everywhere you go (e.g. the generic international resort experience regardless of location), but instead work to learn what makes this particular destination unique. It’s like making content interesting; you have to find what makes the folks who live there proud. Another meta-lesson.

I was fortunate that my parents were great travelers, and instilled the love of new cultures in me, and I’m trying to do the same with my kids. I find the most interesting people are those who are interested in others. But even if you haven’t had the skills and attitude modeled, you can develop it yourself. Start small, get some wins, and expand (like all good plans :). Bon voyage!

Quick mobile thoughts

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SIM card vending machine

It’s obvious that mobile is booming, as you can tell from this shot taken as I deplaned at Heathrow Airport on my way from  mLearnCon conference to an engagement.  It made me reflect on an interesting tension that emerged at the conference.  The resolution will happen, so it’s a question of when, not if, but it’s still a pain.

I was honored to be part of a closing panel with some very clever folks (Bill Rankin, David Metcalf, Carmen Taran, Jim Box, and Richard Culatta, to be specific) responding to crowd-sourced questions.  Paul Clothier served as ringmaster, and the highest rated questions were lobbed at us.

One of the emergent themes was considering what would be really innovative mobile learning applications.  We imagined things from individual coaches to universal teachers.  All this requiring, of course, a pretty robust infrastructure.

And of course, as I sit in an airport (awaiting the 3rd and final leg of which Heathrow was the first), and recognizing that I can’t use the data plan on my phone for fear of penury, I’m still quite frustrated with the situation.  However, there is hope.

advert for a ubiquitous data package

On the wall right next to the vending machine, which I also captured, is one solution.  Here, Vodafone is offering Brits mobile internet when they travel, at a very favorable rate. This is better than the solution I thought was possible: having a service at an airport where you hire a personal wifi device for some reasonable rate of $10 a day or something that you return when you finish your trip.

My traveling companion on the post-US legs (and Internet Time Alliance colleague), Charles Jennings, resides in the UK and said that the competition between providers supports this sort of offer.   £2 is far better than the rate I was hoping for, and way better than a $1 – $20 per MB that is my current option.

Unlike some who worry that we might lose thinking skills, I’m quite happy to devolve certain tasks to my external brain, and only retain the ones I wish to keep for myself.  And once I’ve become so enabled, it’s painful to do without.  I’m glad to see some are getting viable solutions, and hoping I’ll have one soon too.  So we can come up with even more fabulous ways to accessorize our brains. Which is what we want to do!