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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Learning malpractice

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Richard Nantel tweeted about Chris Dede talking about Educational Malpractice. Unfortunately, while it does accurately characterize the education space, it is not inappropriate to apply to the workplace as well. I would extend that to Training Malpractice, but I want to take it further. Because organizations are committing crimes at more than just the training level.

Let’s start with formal learning, or training. Remember, our goals are retention over time until the learning is needed, and transfer to all appropriate situations, not just ones that are seen in the learning experience. Now, realize that one of the worst things you can do to lead to long term retention is to try to have all the learning condensed into one session.. Consequently, the ‘massed practice’ of the learning *event* is a broken model! Similarly, the ‘knowledge test’ as a form of assessment has essentially no transfer value to meaningful practice. Yet these are the trusted hallmarks of corporate learning.

But wait, there’s more! Beyond courses, there are performance support resources. Are they organized by need, so that each performer has a unique portal? Well, no. (“Portals? Yeah, we’ve got hundreds of them!”). Every unit has it’s own place to put things for others, and the poor worker has to search high and low to find resources. No wonder they give up. Worse, courses are designed in lieu of any cognizance of the resources.

And while informal learning, as facilitated by search and social networks, may not be actively discouraged, the lack of any cohesive effort to coordinate the network, let alone aligning with resources and formal learning, characterizes the average workplace. Sharing may not be valued or even punished!

The levels above this (systems, strategies) are even more broken. How, when companies supposedly believe that “employees are our most important asset”, can this wholesale malfeasance continue? Please, help right this wrong. If you need help, ask, but don’t continue these mistakes. For your company and your own self-respect.

Shifting perspectives

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In the Internet Time Alliance chat, yesterday, we were discussing the apparently difficultly some are seeming to have with the necessary mind shifts to comprehend the benefits of social media for organizational learning.   It seems to me that there are 3 roles and each has an associated shift.

‘Management’

The old thinking was that the thinking is done from the top and percolates down.   Whatever skills are needed are brought in or identified and the learning unit develops it.   There’s a direct relationship between the specific skills and the impact on the business.

The new thinking is that the goals are identified and made clear and then the employees are empowered to achieve the goals in the ways that seem best.   They can provide input into the goals, and adapt the skillsets as needed.

The is important because of speed, productivity, and outcomes.   First, the world is moving faster, and there is no longer time to plan, prepare and execute. It has also been demonstrated that employees are more productive when they’ve bought into the plan and have responsibility.   It’s also the case that bringing more brains ‘online’ to help achieve goals ultimately makes better decisions.

The necessary components are that workers need a context where they can contribute safely and are empowered to work.

The Learning Unit

The old thinking was that the learning unit was about ‘training’.   That the learning unit responded to identified skill needs, created training, delivered it, and then measured whether employees thought it was worthwhile.   The focus was on courses.

The new thinking is that the learning unit is about ensuring that the necessary complement of skills and resources are available.   That the responsibility is not just for formal learning, but performance support, and social interchange.   That the role is facilitation, not delivery.

This is important because the workforce needs to be focused on the task, with the tools to hand, but the nature of the important work is changing. It’s no longer about doing something known, but about dealing with the unknown.   Really, any time you’re problem-solving, research, design, creating new products and services, by definition you don’t have the answer and the skills necessary are meta-skills: how to problem-solve, get information, trial solutions, evaluate the outcomes.   It’s about working together as well as independently.

The necessary components are to define and track the new skills, to provide an infrastructure where learners can take responsibility, and to track outcomes and look for opportunities to improve the environment, whether the performer skills, the tools, or the resources.   Yes, there are still courses, but they’re only one component of a bigger picture, and they take a format that is conducive to these new skills: they’re active and exploratory.

The workforce

The old thinking was that they did what they were told, until they could do it without being told.   The strategic thinking was done elsewhere, and they took a defined role.

The new thinking is that workers are told what the goals are, and have to figure out how to accomplish it, but not just alone. It’s a collaborative effort where there are resources   and tools, and we contribute to the outcome while reviewing the work for opportunities to improve.   Workers contribute at both the execution and the innovation level.   They have to take responsibility.

This is important because, as stated above, what with automation, the work that really matters is shifting, and organizations that try to continue to sequester the important thinking to small sections of the organization will lose out to those that can muster larger brain trusts to the work.

The necessary components are leadership, culture, and infrastructure. Workers have to comprehend the goals, believe in the culture, and have the tools – individual and collective – to accomplish the goals.

Hopefully, the contrasts are clear, as are the opportunities.   It’s the shift from hierarchy to wirearchy.   What am I missing?

Augmenting Learning

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In looking for a title for my forthcoming book on mobile learning, Aaron Silvers took one of the key principles, augmenting performance, and, combining it with a neat complement to my previous book, Engaging Learning, came up with Augmenting Learning.   I liked it very much, as it elegantly captured several meanings I’m keen on, and I like the principle of having a title that works in a couple of ways.

Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t like it. Worse, the eminent Allison Rossett thought augmenting wasn’t a good word. C’est la vie.

So, what is the title?   Well, to hit the marketing goals of being clear to the audience, yet keeping with something I can live with (you do not want to know what other suggestions were floated), we’ve ended up with

Designing mLearning: Tapping Into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performance

I like the part before the colon, and the publishers like the part afterward.   At least the shorthand title will be Designing mLearning, which I can definitely get behind.   And I am excited about the book; I think there are a lot of useful ways to think about mLearning in it (in my completely objective and totally unbiased opinion ;).

Just briefly, however, I want to go into why I thought Augmenting Learning would be a good title.   First, it captures the notion that mLearning is not about providing a full learning experience, it’s about supporting a full learning experience: with additional resources, access to learning resources (calendar, content, etc), and a stretched out learning experience.   That is, complementing whatever formal learning resources you bring to bear with mobile-accessible components.

Moreover, it’s about augmenting formal learning with informal learning.   Performance support, personal, and social learning are all ways in which mobile delivers unique advantages. Whichever of the 4 C’s of mobile learning you bring to bear, you are increasing the ability to perform, both in the moment and overall. Of course, slow learning is a goal I’d be supportive of as well.

Regardless, all the above fall under the rubric ‘designing mlearning’ as well as ‘augmenting learning’, and it passes the sniff test with people more concerned with commercial viability than conceptual elegance. And, if I really do want to have an impact, I have to care about the former as well as the latter.   The book does accomplish the goal of providing pragmatic advice, but in a way commensurate with the goal of providing conceptual clarity, and I can live with that.

Small addition to ‘right tech for schools’

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The discussion on ITFORUM this week has been deeply about mobile learning (if you’re into mlearning, it’s worth checking in!). Based upon this week’s guest’s question about experience with devices, I opined in ways that should be familiar:

Coming out with a book on mobile learning (mostly organizationally focused), and with kids of my own, I’ve naturally thought about what I think the role of mobile devices could/should be in schools:

I like what Elliot Soloway said many years ago, that a laptop was the wrong form factor for a kid. He used PDAs, but it was more for content creation than consumption.   I actually think we want separate devices; a PDA form-factor for field work, and a tablet for in-class content creation.     I think a PDA sized device for data capture (audio and video for instance) is more plausible than a tablet, and vice versa for serious content consumption and creation.

I think Kindle’s and Nooks are great text consumption devices, but I’m thinking we want more even in the consumption mode: audio, videos, and animation for instance, but I really think the real opportunity is interactivity, and a monochrome screen just isn’t going to cut it.   Yes, the dedicated readers are better for reading, but I want a more general purpose device: simulations/games, for example.

Then there’s content creation. I want kids writing, diagramming, drawing, editing video and audio, and more.   That more would be actual model building.   I think that makes sense for a device bigger than a PDA, e.g. tablet-sized.

And I think the touchscreen approach is right for for much of what I’d like kids to do. Works for me, too ;). (Ok, a keyboard’s good for text entry, so maybe that’s ‘available’).

Those are conceptual arguments, here’s my pragmatic situation.   I never bought an e-reader; I’ve liked print just fine.   I did not intend to get an iPad; I’m ‘frugal’ (read: cheap), and I don’t spend money typically until I understand the full value proposition. However, between the announcement of the iPad and it’s actual availability, I realized that it had significant roles separate from my iPhone (which I already had).   And those were content creation, not consumption (tho’ I’ve now taken advantage of those, too).   I haven’t traveled with a laptop since I got my iPad, and am seriously glad I spent the money.

[Slight alteration] I’ve also blogged about how not allowing cross-platform development tools (read: Scratch, perhaps a HyperCard or clone) really is a bad move on Apple’s part for the education community.   Their recent loosening of the rules gives some hope, but the lack of ability to import code is still a problem. Maybe HTML 5 will give us a browser-delivery environment.

It’s not that new, but still I think puts a slightly different spin on the situation than my last post. I welcome any thoughts you have!

What’s the right technology for schools?

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At the end of a conversation the other day, the topic turned to technologies in schools.   I was asked what I thought about the iPad in schools, and as I thought it through, I saw both pluses and minuses.

Let me, of course, make this generic to tablets and PDAs. And not smartphones, as there are problems with phones in schools that I don’t want to get into.   Having a wifi PDA (e.g. iPod Touch) is good enough for the issues at hand.

Now, many years ago Elliott Soloway decided that the form-factor of a laptop was not appropriate for kids, and created what ended up being the GoKnow suite of PDA apps.   Back then he was working on Palm devices and then Windows PDAs.   I think he had that right.

However, now that there are tablets, I think they have advantages for schools too.   They’re not too big (by and large), and are better for both content consumption and creation than laptops or even netbooks (though an additional keyboard might be handy).

As I thought more about it, I’d like the tablet in class (and maybe at home), but I’d like a PDA when kids hit the road.   Elliot had sensor-equipped PDAs being used to collect river pH measurements. There a host of reasons to get kids out gathering data and working on projects, including problem-based and service-learning type projects.   Having the devices available for accessing answers to questions when on field trips or taking notes also makes sense.

You can have these as separate devices, synching them into a common database, but I was reminded of an early proposal for a processor ‘block’ that could plug into a variety of devices, and your files would remain on the ‘block’.   You could do it with a U3 system, I suppose, but I really want that processor with it for consistency of OS, etc.   For example, running an OS (WebOS, iOS, Android, etc) on a PDA (w/ camera, etc), and then the PDA could be plugged into a tablet and the tablet would take over as the I/O channel.   Some may not get it, but I think it’s preferable to having to sync two devices.

This, I think, would provide the portability for field moves with screen real estate for creation and communication.   Of course the device would be equipped with a camera, microphone, wifi, bluetooth, etc, and a suite of software, but I really think that one platform isn’t enough, and two is too many, and a PDA is too small for creation and consumption and a tablet too small for fieldwork, so what you want is a hybrid hardware platform. Could there be a happy medium, perhaps, but I’m not sold.   What do you think?

Enterprise Thinking, or Thinking Enterprise

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I realize, with recent releases like Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers and Marcia Conner & Tony Bingham’s The New Learning (both recommended, BTW, reviews coming soon, with standard disclaimer that I’m mentioned in both) that the message is finally getting out about new ways to facilitate not just formal learning and execution, but informal learning and innovation.   But there’s more needed. It takes new thinking at the top.   You need to think about how the enterprise is thinking.

So what do you want for your enterprise thinking?   Shows like The Office make us laugh because we identify with it. We know the officious types, the clueless, the apathetic, the malevolent, the greedy, the ones just marking time.   They’re definitely not thinking about how to make the organization more successful, they’re thinking more about what will make their life most enjoyable, and there’s little or no alignment.   That’s not what you want, I’ll suggest, but is what’s seen, in various degrees, in most places.

Instead, you (should) want folks who know what the goal is, are working towards it individually and collectively.   That are continually looking for opportunities to improve the products, processes, and themselves.   This is where organizations will derive competitive advantage.

How do you get there?   It takes coordinating several things, including the dimensions of the learning organization: leadership, culture, and practices), and the information infrastructure for working well together.   You need to have the tools, you need to understand the behaviors required, you need to know that working this way is valued, and you need to be informed as to what the goals are.

We want to be empowering people with the models that help understand the shifts that are happening and how to cope, so they’re part of the movement.   They   need to understand things like networks and complexity, so that they’re equipped to contribute at the next level.

It’s time to stop thinking patchwork (“we’ll just put in the tools”, or “we’ll move in the direction of more open leadership”), and starting thinking systemically and strategically.   Identify and acknowledge where you are now, and figure out a path to get where you need to be.   It’s not likely to be easy, but it’s clearly time to get started.

Brainstorming, Cognition, #lrnchat, and Innovative Thinking

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Two recent events converged to spark some new thinking.

First, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Dave Gray, who I’d first met in Abu Dhabi where we both were presenting at a conference. Dave’s an interesting guy; he started XPlane as a firm to deliver meaningful graphics (which was recently bought by Dachis Group, and he’s recently been lead author on the book Gamestorming.

What Gamestorming is, I found out, is a really nice way to frame some common activities that help facilitate creative thinking.   Dave’s all over creativity, and took the intersection of game rules and structured activities to facilitate innovative thinking, and came up with a model that guides thinking about social interaction to optimize useful outcomes.   The approach incorporates, on a quick survey, a lot of techniques to overcome our cognitive limitations. I really like his approach to provide an underlying rationale about why activities that follow the structure implicitly address our cognitive limitations and are highly effective at getting individuals to contribute to some emergent outcomes.

I also happened to have a conversation with a lady who has been creating some local salons, particular get-togethers that have a structured approach to interaction (I’ve attended another such).   Hers was based upon biasing the conversation to the creative side, a very intriguing approach. Not only was she thinking of leveraging this for tech topics, but she was also thinking about leveraging new technologies, e.g., a Second Life Salon.

Which got me thinking that there were some relationships between Dave’s Gamestorming approach and the salons . I wouldn’t be surprised to find salons in Dave’s book!   Moreover, however, was that there are intriguing potentials from tapping into virtual worlds to remove the geographic constraints on such social interactions.

What was also interesting to me, reflecting on an early experience with the Active Worlds virtual world, your attention eventually focused on the chat stream, because that’s where all meaningful interaction really happened.   Which is really what #lrnchat is, a chat.     One of the nice properties of a chat is that you’re not limited to turn-taking.   A problem in the real world is that the more people you add, the less time each gets to contribute in a conversation. In a simultaneous medium like #lrnchat, everyone can contribute as fast as they can, and the only limitations are on the participants ability to process the stream and contribute (which are, admittedly, finite).   Still, it’s a richer medium for contribution, as I find I can process more chats in the same time only one person would talk (of course, the 140 char limit helps too).

The important thing to me is that social media have new capabilities to enable contribution, and achieve the innovation end that Dave’s excited about in ways that maximize the outcomes based upon new technology affordances that we are just beginning to appreciate.   Can we do better than we’ve done in the past, leveraging new technologies?   I think Dave’s model can serve for virtual as well as real events, and we may be able to improve upon the activities with some technology capabilities.   To do so, however, means we really have to look at our capabilities in conjunction with new technologies.   Yeah, I think we can have some fun with that ;).

Thou Shalt Learn!

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Like that will work…not!   Seriously, there are several things that have to line up to get social media working for you (which, if you’ve been paying attention, is the new and only sustainable competitive advantage).   As I discussed a couple of days ago, your learners have to have the skills.   But there are a couple of other things you have to have in place.

First, you have to have the tools.   And, frankly, not just any tools.   There are some nuances that will likely make a difference.   Certainly usability is one. The closer the necessary usage steps are to a) familiar uses and/or b) user goals, the more likely the tools will be used. Similarly, the more they’re aligned with the user’s task flow, and tasks, the more likely they’ll be used to the benefit of the organization.   The notion is that the tools are ‘ready to hand’ as the need strikes.

You also have to have a culture where contributing is accepted: safe, even rewarded.   I previously commented on the dimensions necessary, including a supportive learning environment, leadership, and concrete processes and practices.   People won’t contribute if it’s not safe, valued, and rewarded.   As my ITA colleague Jon Husband says, wirearchy is based upon trust and credibility, as well as information and knowledge.   Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham, in their new book The New Social Learning, similarly emphasize trust.

The fact of the matter is, if you build it, they may not come.   There are lots of reasons why people may be hesitant, and really you have to actively recruit and support their participating in most cases.   They have to experience it, perceive the value, and still be supported in adopting the regular use of a social infrastructure.   It will take time, but the outcomes are powerful.   Just don’t go into it naively; either be willing to take the time to experiment and learn, or bring in the outside help to accelerate your use of social learning to accelerate learning in the big sense: problem-solving, experimentation, research, creativity, etc (all those areas that contribute to organizational innovation and success).

Social media is the key to leveraging the power of people, to learn, and you don’t want to leave it to chance.   Really, it’s learn or die.   Which are you keen on?

Learning Experience Design Strategy

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On our weekly twitter learning fest, #lrnchat, I regularly identify myself as a learning experience design strategist.   I don’t always assume people know what that means, but for that audience I figure they can infer what it means.   However, I think the idea is worth exploring, because increasingly I think that not only is that what I do, but it also is important.

First, I think it is important to stop thinking about content, and start thinking about learning experience.   It’s too easy, when focusing on content, to focus on knowledge, not skills, yet skills are what will make the difference – the ability to do.   Also, it helps focus on the conative side of learning, the motivation for and anxiety about learning when you think about the learner experience. And, as always, I take a broad interpretation of learning, so this holds true beyond formal learning; it applies to thinking about performer experience when you consider the tools they’ll have, and even the way that access to communities and other informal learning components will be made available in situ.

When you think about creating learning experiences, you are talking about design.   How do you create effective and engaging learning experiences?   You need a design process, tools, and good concepts around learning and engagement.   Really, both my book on designing engaging learning experiences, and my forthcoming one on mobile learning, are at core about design.   And there are levels of design, from individual experiences to the architecture and infrastructure that can support the rich suite of experiences that characterize an organization’s full needs.

Which takes us to the last part, strategy.   By and large, I don’t do the design anymore, since I can add more value at a higher level.   Increasingly, what I’m doing is helping organizations look at their needs, current state, teams, processes, and more, and helping them develop a strategic approach to delivering learning experiences.   I help design pedagogies, processes, templates, and short-, medium-, and long-term steps.   And it is in this way that I accomplish what my first real client told me I did for them, I helped them take their solutions to the ‘next level’.

I think learning experience design is important, so important that I want to not just execute against a project at a time, but find ways to develop capability so a lot more good learning experience is created.   That means working with groups and systems. More organizations need this than might be imagined: I’ve done this for for-profit education, education publishing, those servicing corporate learning needs, and of course organizations (governmental and corporate)   wanting their external or internal learning solutions to be effective and engaging.   The sad fact is, too much ‘learning design’ is content design, still.   I’m always looking for ways to help spread a better way of creating learning.

For example, I ran a ‘deeper ID’ workshop this week for a team, and presented the concepts, modeled the application to samples of their learning objectives, gave them a practice opportunity, and wrapped up, across each of the learning elements. It was a way to address learning design in a bigger way. An extension would be to then submit sample content to me to have me comment, developing their abilities over time, as I did with another client working on integrating scenarios.

There are lots of ways this plays out, not just workshops but developing content models, spreading new metaphors for mobile learning, creating pedagogy templates, and more, but I reckon it is important work, and I have the background to do it.   I’ve found it hard to describe in the past, and I do question whether the ‘learning’ label is somewhat limiting, given my engagement in social learning with ITA and more, but I reckon it’s the right way to think about it. So I’ll keep describing it this way, and doing this work, until someone gives me a better idea!

Don’t take learning skills for granted!

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In all the excitement about empowering learners by providing rich information and social environments, it’s too easy to think that “if you build it, they will learn”.   Yet the evidence is to the contrary. While there are numerous components, including a culture that tolerates diversity and doesn’t punish honest mistakes, one that is easy to neglect the actual learning skills of employees. My ITA colleague Charles Jennings made a nice first pass at a list of useful skills.

Individual learning skills include the ability to know where to look for what, and how to write good search queries and evaluate search results. While you would think that at least the so-called ‘digital natives’ (a myth) would have these skills down, a UK study   found to the contrary that they were “anything but expert searchers”. On the contrary, there was a gap between performance and self-estimates of skill (a general trend when 80% of people think they’re above average :), and little time spent evaluating the quality of the information.

Social learning skills similarly should not be assumed.   As I mentioned in my previous screed on social learning design, my experience showed that learners don’t necessarily know how to work together.   The full suite of how to: be trustworthy, be appropriate, ask for help, give help, discuss intelligently, collaborate usefully and more are all not necessarily in the competency set of your audience.

Back when Jay Cross and I were pushing Meta-Learning, we argued, and still believe, that one of the best investments you could make would be to focus on the learning skills of your team, ensuring they’re optimally capable of learning new things.   That’s certainly true for information/knowledge/concept workers.   Coupled with a similarly light and strategic investment in social learning infrastructure, it seems like the biggest bang you can get for your buck.

I suggest identifying the necessary skills, making them explicit in the organization, and even assessing and developing those skills.   In a time of increasing complexity, helping learners address complexity seems like an obviously valuable investment!