Learnlets

It’s a continuing phenomenon (and a cliche’) that we use new technologies as we used their predecessors, so the first television was people standing in front of microphones, performing. Does this have to be true? Can we, on principle, advance beyond? I’d like to suggest that the answer, at least sometimes, is yes.

I’ve previously talked about ‘affordances‘, for mobile and virtual worlds (at least implicitly, for the latter). Elliot Masie just raised the issue (strange he doesn’t provide a useful URL) for virtual worlds (only a year behind the times ;), saying we should not get carried away with hype, and I agree. The point being that technologies have certain inherent capabilities they support, though we may discover new hidden affordances. I’d like to suggest two things:

First, that we can on principle determine what learning affordances a technology has, and assess it’s utility. Sure, there might be a bit of the ‘Hawthorne effect‘ (and we should consider deliberately exploiting that), but we also should be direct.

Second, we should be looking at the capabilities we don’t have, and imagine how we might achieve them.

As I’ve mentioned before, our limits are no longer technological. So let us dream what we want, and make it so!

I’ve written in the past about Pine & Gilmore’s Experience Economy, enough so that I apparently got on their radar. As a consequence, I was contacted by Bob Dean, who’s VP of Learning & Talent Development at Heidrick & Struggles. He shares my passion for learning, with an impressive track record in industry, and was so taken with the implications of the Experience Economy for learning that he became certified in the models and principles thereof.

It’s an intriguing proposition. Certainly, I’m a fan of the role of experience in learning, because as I’ve argued, Engaging Learning is about how to design engaging and effective learning experiences. Or, rather, meaningful practice, but I’ve also argued for wrapping learning events with preparation and follow-up to make the learning experience optimally effective (which is why I’m so excited about mobile learning), and the need for using organizational change to successfully implement elearning. Among other things.

Bob pointed me to The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, and provided a synopsis. I could see why it caught his attention when the second discipline is to design the complete experience! The other disciplines are valuable too, in particular focusing on achieving real business outcomes, as well as the afore-mentioned follow-through. If I had one complaint, it might be that it appears to focus on training and not include performance support, though I haven’t read it completely. Of course, major organizational skill shifts will require more than just job aids or updates.

I’m fascinated that Bob sees experience principles as relevant for learning, and would have to agree. I think that when we hear that the total customer experience is the new business differentiator, it does make sense for our learning, too. Certainly if we want it to stick. I’m of course interested in how technology can facilitate the total experience, have lots of cognitively-based principles that we’re largely missing, and that I’d love to implement. Your thoughts?

Because my wife and kids are at day camp all week, I’ve been pitching in on cooking, and it’s reminded me of one of my favorite ‘challenges’. I prefer dealing with whatever’s left over in the fridge (make a meal out of what’s sitting around) to actually going out and shopping. Even when I have to go shopping, I prefer to pick up some things I want to figure out how to make go together rather than knowing how they’ll go together. Not always, but, in general, I don’t like measurements, and I like taking more than one recipe and picking the best parts out of each (which, BTW, did not work for Hot and Sour Soup, and is why I do not bake).

Cooking is my creative outlet, aside from my passion/work/vocation/avocation, which is learning technology. Using principles of flavor combination (as a graduate student, someone turned me on to Elisabeth Rozin’s Flavor Principle cookbook), I feel pretty comfortable taking ingredients and turning them into various cuisines such as Mexican, Cajun, Thai, etc (ok, I have a predilection for spicy food).

There’s a learning principle here, however. It’s about having models, frameworks, that you can use to guide your solution seeking. I do it in cooking, and I do it in solving interesting learning technology problems (and I enjoy both). Having a suite of useful models makes it easier to deal with uncertain situations. Which is why, I think, that I love challenges where someone says “we have this really tough problem that we can’t solve”. I’ve had a recent spate of fun challenges where I’ve come in and been able to provide useful feedback by integrating models to provide tailored solutions. Following existing processes wouldn’t work, but by taking principled approaches and adapting them to pragmatic contexts, unique and successful solutions could be found.

This drives at least one of my beliefs about curriculum goals for the new era: systems-thinking. You need to be able to reason in terms of models. And experience with more models, and deliberately trying to map them across domains, can build the sort of flexible thinking that drives innovation. When I looked at design a number of years ago, what I found were models that talked about exploring outside the normal design solution space, and ones that talked about melding two different approaches together. You do that by having a quiver of approaches to hand, and being systematically creative. And that’s not an oxymoron.

So, do, please, think in terms of models, promote model-based thinking, and have fun with thinking outside of the box.