Search Results for: engagement

Uniqueness

17 December 2024 by Clark 2 Comments

In a conversation yesterday, we were talking about what works in presenting yourself (in this case, for a job). I mentioned that in the US you have to perhaps overpromise, whereas my experience in Oz (coloured, as it is, by its Brit origins ;), was that you underpromise. The latter worked well for me, because I believe I tend to err on the side of quiet; I don’t like boasts. I was suggesting, in this case, that you needed what made one unique to a particular situation. Thinking further, I think I do value what is uniqueness. What do I mean?

So, to get a (proper?) Ph.D., you are expected make a unique contribution to understanding. Consider our knowledge as a giant ball, and what a thesis does is push out one tiny bump. The goal is something no one else has done. For instance, for my Ph.D., I broke analogy up into a different set of steps, and measured performance. My specification of steps was unique, but that wasn’t the contribution (in my mind, at least). What I also did was try training to improve those processes (four of the six, for reasons), and it did impact a couple, with good reasons not to have impacted the others. It wasn’t earth-shattering, by any means (I suspect no one cites my thesis!), but it was a contribution. (And, of course, it grounded me in the literature and practices.)

When I think of folks I respect, in many cases it’s because they have made a unique contribution. By the way, I suppose I should be clear: unique isn’t enough, it has to be a positive contribution (which can include ruling out things). It’s like innovation: not just an idea, but a good one! So, for instance, Will Thalheimer’s been a proponent of evidence-informed practices, but his unique contribution is LTEM. So too with Patti Shank and multiple choice questions, Michael Allen with SAM, Harold Jarche with PKM, etc. I’m kind of thinking right now that Julie Dirksen’s new book is what’s really new! I am inclined to think that new syntheses are also valuable.

For instance, my own books on myths and learning science are really syntheses, not new ideas. (Maybe my mobile books too?) Reflecting, I think that the three books that I wanted to publish, my first on games, my fourth on L&D strategy, and my most recent on engagement (channeling the core from the first book), are more unique contributions. Though I will self-servingly and possibly wrongly suggest my way of thinking about contexts, models, and more are innovations. Like Allen’s CCAF (Context – Challenge – Activity – Feedback), perhaps.

Which isn’t to say syntheses that organize things into new and more comprehensible ways isn’t also a contribution. In addition to (immodestly) my afore-mentioned books in that category, I think of folks like Connie Malamed, Christy Tucker, Matthew Richter, Ruth Clark, Jane Bozarth, etc. These folks do a great job of taking received wisdom and collating and organizing it so as to be comprehensible. And I could be providing too short a shrift in some cases.

My stance is that I don’t see enough ‘uniqueness’. Original ideas are few and far between. Which may be expected, but we have to be careful. There are a lot more touted ideas than there are good ones. What really is different? What’s worth paying attention to? It’s not an easy question, and I may be too harsh. There is a role for providing different perspectives on existing things, to increase the likelihood that people hear of it. But those should be new perspectives. I’m not interested in hearing the same ideas from different folks. So, does this make sense, or am I being too harsh?

By the way, I suspect that there are more ideas than we actually hear about. I know people can be hesitant about sharing them for a variety of reasons. If you’ve got an idea, share it with someone! If they get excited, it may well be new and worthwhile. Take a chance, we may all benefit.

The enemy of the good

10 December 2024 by Clark Leave a Comment

We frequently hear that ‘perfection is the enemy of the good’. And that may well be true. However, I want to suggest that there’s another enemy that plagues us as learning experience designers. We may be trying to do good, but there are barriers. These are worthy of explicit discussion.

You also hear about the holy trinity of engineering: cheap, fast, or good; pick two. We have real world pressures that want us to do things efficiently. For instance, we have lots of claims that generative AI will allow us to generate more learning faster. Thus, we can do more with less. Which isn’t a bad thing…if what we produce is good enough. If we’re doing good, I’ll suggest, then we can worry about fast and cheap. But doing bad faster and cheaper isn’t a good thing! Which brings us to the second issue.

What is our definition of ‘good’? It appears that, too often, good is if people ‘like’ it. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s even the first level in the Kirkpatrick-Katzell model: asking what people think of the experience. One small problem: the correlation between what people think of an experience, and it’s actual impact, is .09 (Salas, et al, 2012). That’s zero with a rounding error! What it means is that people’s evaluation of what they think of it, and the actual impact, isn’t correlated at all. It could be highly rated and not be effective, or highly rated and be effective. Etc. At core, you can’t tell by the rating.

What should be ‘good’? The general intent of a learning intervention (or any intervention, really) is to have an impact! If we’re providing learning, it should yield a new ability to ‘do’. There are a multitude of problems here. For one, we don’t evaluate performance, so how would we know if our intervention is having an impact? Have learners acquired new abilities that are persisting in the workplace and leading to the necessary organizational change? Who knows? For another, folks don’t have realistic expectations about what it takes to have an impact. We’ve devolved to a state where if we build it, it must be good. Which isn’t a sound basis for determining outcomes.

There is, of course, a perfectly good reason to evaluate people’s affective experience of the learning. If we’re designing experiences, having it be ‘hard fun’ means we’ve optimized the engagement. This is fine, but only after, we’ve established efficacy. If we’re not having a learning impact in terms of new abilities to perform, what people think about it isn’t of use.

Look, I’d prefer us to be in the situation where perfection to be the enemy of the good! That’d mean we’re actually doing good. Yet, in our industry, too often we don’t have any idea whether we are or not. We’re not measuring ‘good’, so we’re not designing for it. If we measured impact first, then experience, we could get overly focused on perfection. That’d be a good problem to have, I reckon. Right now, however, we’re only focused on fast and cheap. We won’t get ‘good’ until we insist upon it from and for ourselves. So, let’s shall we?

Top 10 Tools for Learning 2024

27 August 2024 by Clark 2 Comments

Once again, the inimitable Jane Hart is running her Top 10 Tools for Learning survey. The insights are valuable, not least because it points out how much of our learning comes from other than formal learning. So, here are my Top 10 Tools for Learning 2024, in no particular order:

Google Docs. I write, a lot. And, increasingly, I want others to weigh in. I am cranky that I have to choose a tool instead of just going to one place to collaborate, and I struggle with the file structure of Drive, but the feature set within Docs is good enough to support collaborative writing. And collaborative work in general is something I strongly advocate for. Collective intelligence, as Nigel Paine refers to it. For myself, however, – articles, books – I still use…

Microsoft Word. I’m not a big fan of the parent company (they have glommed on to the current plan for subscriptions, which makes financial sense but is a bad customer experience), and it’s not the writing tool that Scrivener is, but I’m so familiar with it (started using circa 1988) and the outlining is industrial strength (a feature I love and need). It’s the start of most of my writing.

Apple Freeform. I still use Omnigraffle, but I’m keen to support free tools, and this one’s proprietary format isn’t any worse than any others. I could use Google Draw, I suppose, particularly when collaborating, but somehow folks don’t seem to collaborate as much around diagrams. Hmm…

WordPress. This is the tool I use to write these blog posts. It’s a way for me to organize my thinking. Yes, it’s writing too, but it’s for different types of writing (shorter, more ‘in the moment’ thoughts). While the comments here are fewer, they still do come. Announcements get auto-posted to LinkedIn, Mastodon, & Bluesky.

LinkedIn. This is where I get more comments than, these days, I do on my blog. Plus, we use it to write and talk about the Learning Development Accelerator and Elevator 9. I follow some folks, and connect with lots. It remains my primary business networking tool. Feel free to connect with me (if you’re in L&D strategy ;).

Mastodon & Bluesky. Yes, this counts as two, but I use them very similarly. Since the demise of Twitter (eX), I’ve looked for an alternative, and regularly stay with these two. They’re (slightly) different; Mastodon seems a bit more thoughtful, Bluesky is more dynamic, but they’re both ways to stay in touch with what people are thinking, largely outside the L&D space. Still haven’t found all my peeps there, but I’m Quinnovator (of course) on both.

News Apps/Sites. I’m also learning via news apps, again staying up with what’s happening in the larger world. So, I get Yahoo News because one email is there. Also, I check some sites regularly: ABC (Australia, not US), BBC, and Apple News (because it’s on my iPad). I’m counting this as one because otherwise it’d overwhelm my count.

Apple Mail. I subscribe to a few newsletters, mostly on learning science, and some blogs. They come in email (directly or via Feedblitz). This is all part of Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery elements of Seek – Sense – Share, and these are updated regularly but are part of the seek. Some of the writing I do is the sharing. Making sense is the above writing, diagramming, and…

Apple Keynote. Creating presentations for webinars, workshops, speaking engagements such as keynotes, and the like is another way I make sense of the world. So, having a good tool to create them is critical, and Keynote works more the way I think than PowerPoint does.

So that’s it, my 10. It may not work for Jane’s categorization (sorry!), but it captures the way I think about it. Please do share yours, too! (There are more ways than writing a post, so find the one that works for you.)

Emotions

30 July 2024 by Clark 2 Comments

Emotion matters. Yes, largely it’s a cultural construct, as Lisa Feldman Barrett tells us. Still, they can help or hinder learning. When designing games or creating meaningful learning, they matter. But they also affect us in our daily activities.

So, my previous post, on misinformation, is personal. I’ve frustration that family members are buying into some of it. I try to maintain a calm demeanor, but it’s challenging. Still, it’s a battle I’ve not yet given up on. Yet, I’m also not immune to the larger effects of emotion.

What we know, from the Yerkes-Dodson Curve, is that a little bit of arousal (read: emotion) can help, but too much can hurt. What isn’t clear from my conceptual rendering is what amount is the ‘right’ amount of arousal for optimal performance. I’ll suggest that for learning, it’s pretty low, as learning is stressful (another synonym for arousal). And I do suggest we manipulate emotions (which I admit is shorthand for motivation, anxiety, and confidence, which aren’t the regular definition) to successfully achieve learning outcomes.

However, even general functioning gets difficult when things are stressful. When I look at the design of casinos, for instance, (a way to cope with the too many times I have to go to Vegas for conferences), I note that they deliberately have low information, lights, no clocks, as an information-sparse environment. It is deliberate, so that you’re more focused on the enticements. They want you confused because you’re then more vulnerable to predations.

I fear that there’s a bit of this in our culture. For instance, fear sells: more alarmist headlines lead to more engagement. Which is good for the news business, but perhaps bad for us in several ways. For one, there’s a vested interest in focus on the alarming, not the bigger picture. Similarly, twisting stories to get emotional engagement isn’t unknown. That can be entertaining, but when it’s the information we depend on is manipulated, it’s problematic. Reducing support for education similarly reduces the intelligence people can apply to analysis.

I struggled to focus to find a topic this week, and I realize it’s because of the informational turmoil that’s currently in play. So, I thought I’d write about it (for better or worse ;). Exaggeration of issues for the sake of clicks and sales, I’ll suggest isn’t a good thing. I’m willing to be wrong, but I worry that we’re over-excited. Our emotions are being played on, for purposes that are not completely benign. That’s a worry. That’s what’s worrying me, what about you?

Break it down!

2 July 2024 by Clark 2 Comments

In our LDA Forum, someone posted a question asking about taking Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping for soft skills, like improving team dynamics. Now, they’re specifically asking about a) people with experience, and b) in the context of not-for-profits, so…I’m not a good candidate to respond. However, what it does raise is a more common problem: how do you train things that are more ephemeral. Like, for instance, leadership, or communication? My short answer is “break it down”. What do I mean? Here’re some thoughts, and I welcome feedback!

Many moons ago, I co-wrote a paper on evaluating social media impacts. There are the usual metrics, like ‘engagement’. That is, are people using the system? Of course, for companies charging for their platform, this could be as infrequent as a person accessing it once a month. More practically, however, it should be a person hitting it at least several times a week, or even several times a day! If you’re communicating, cooperating, and collaborating, you really should be interacting at a fair frequency.

I, on the other hand, argued for more detailed implications. If you’re putting it into a sales team, you should expect not only messages, but more success on sales, shorter sales cycles, etc. So you can get more detailed. These days, you can do even more, and have the system actually tag what the messages are about and count them. You can go deeper.

Which is what I think is the answer here. What skills do you want? For an innovation demo with Upside Learning, I argued we should break it down. That includes how to work out loud, and how to provide feedback, and how to run group meetings. (I’m just reading Alex Edman’s May Contain Lies, and it contains a lot of details about how to consider data and evidence.) We can look for more granular evidence. Even for skills like team dynamics, you should be looking at what makes good dynamics. So, things like making it safe yet accountable, providing feedback on behavior not on the person, valuing diversity, etc. There should be specific skills you want to develop, and assess. These, then, become the skills you design your learning to accomplish. You are, basically, creating a curriculum of the various skills that comprise the aggregated topic.

It may be that you assess a priori, and discover that only some are missing in your teams. That upfront analysis should happen regardless, but is too infrequent. The interlocutor here also mentioned the audience complaining about the time for analysis. Yep, that’s a problem. Reckon you have to sell the whole package: analyzing, designing, and evaluating for impact on performance, not just some improvement. Yet, compared to throwing money away? Seems like targeting intervention efforts should be a logical sell. If only we lived in a rational world, eh?

Still, overall, I think that these broad programs break down into specific skills that can be targeted and developed. And, we should. Let’s not get away with vague intentions, explanations, and consequently no outcomes. Let’s do the work, break it down, and develop actual skills. That, at least, is my take, I welcome hearing yours!

My Themes

28 May 2024 by Clark Leave a Comment

While there’s a high correspondence between my books and what I believe, it’s not one to one. While there’s overlap, there’s also unique (outsider?) perspectives. So as much for me as you, here’re my themes. It’s about applying what we know about cognition and learning. That also includes the emotional side. Moreover, we also need to apply it to the design process. That is, we, as designers, are applying, but also are subject to, what’s known about how we think, work, and learn. That’s led to a variety of things that are covered here.

It starts with a core focus on learning. Which starts with the core of cognition, the human information processing loop, but goes beyond. I think that core, by the way, is a critical thing that really everyone who designs for people (and that’s everyone) should know. (Made a video freely available to that end.) The phenomena that arise from and augment that architecture play a role here. It covers, by the way, material in two of my books: the learning science one and my myths one. It’s also the basis for my participation in the Serious eLearning Manifesto. It’s about us applying, correctly, what’s known about creating learning experiences that lead to real outcomes. I still think my focus on activity-based learning is an important way to think about creating experiences.

A complement to that is my focus on engagement in learning. Here I’m reflecting what’s been studied about making experiences engaging, across games, theatre and film, fiction, flow, and more. The first manifestation was in my book on designing serious games, but it’s morphed. My latest book is a complement to the learning science side and as a generalization of those early principles on games. I’ll be talking about this at LXDCon.

However, when we talk about performance, the picture broadens. (A topic I’ll be discussing for Upside Learning.) Marc Rosenberg talked about going beyond (e)learning, and Jay Cross wrote about informal learning. I like to think of an ecosystem approach to meeting the full suite of performance needs. This includes not just courses, but also performance support. However, it also goes further, talking about innovation as well. As I like to say, when you’re doing research, design, trouble-shooting, etc, you don’t know the answer when you begin, so it too is learning. I tried to capture this in my book on where L&D should go.

An older theme, about mobile, is in some sense no longer relevant. Mobile (for corporations and universities) has become ubiquitous and is part of the performance ecosystem. In fact, part of the recognition of the ecosystem perspective came from thinking about mobile with the recognition that it’s least about courses on a phone, and about so much more. The frameworks I created then – augmenting learning, performance support, social/informal, and context-specific – however, strike me as still worthwhile to consider. It’s really about the alignment of technology with our minds, which includes interface design and more.

Thus, implicit in the ecosystem perspective is technology. One thing we lag in is being smart about our systems. While web spinners have been using tagged content and rules, we typically still create experience hard coded in their delivery. We thus neglect content engineering, and similarly content management (e.g. the lifecycle). I was on this theme a number of years ago (content and context), but it’s sadly still relevant. I think the advent of generative AI may get folks to start thinking more about discrete content for adaptive delivery, but I’d still use a different approach to implement.

Again, it’s the application of how we think, work, and learn, to the design of solutions. In my case, for performance outcomes for individuals and organizations. Not sure what my next theme will be (or whether there’ll even be one, these are still all too relevant). I’m not sure this is comprehensive, so hopefully this first stab will give me time to think about it more!

About my books

21 May 2024 by Clark 2 Comments

So, I’ve written about writing books, what makes a good book, and updated on mine (now a bit out of date). I thought it was maybe time to lay out their gestation and raison d’être. (I was also interviewed for a podcast, vidcast really, recently on the four newest, which brought back memories.) So here’re some brief thoughts on my books.

My first book, Engaging Learning came from the fact that a) I’d designed and developed a lot of learning games, and b) had been an academic and reflected and written on the principles and process. Thus, it made sense to write it. Plus, a) I was an independent and it seemed like a good idea, and b) the publisher wanted one (the time was right). In it, I laid out some principles for learning, engagement, and the intersection. Then I laid out a systematic process, and closed with some thoughts on the future. Like all my books, I tried to focus on the cognitive principles and not the technology (which was then and continues to change rapidly). It went out of print, but I got the rights back and have rereleased it (with a new cover) for cheap on Amazon.

I wanted to write what became my fourth book as the next screed. However, my publisher wanted a book on mobile (market timing). Basically, they said I could do the next one if I did this first. I had been involved in mlearning courtesy of Judy Brown and David Metcalfe, but I thought they should write it. Judy declined, and David reminded me that he had written one. Still I and my publisher thought there was room for a different perspective, and I wrote Designing mLearning. I recognized that the way we use mobile doesn’t mesh well with ‘courses on a phone’, and instead framed several categories of how we could use them. I reckon those categories are still relevant as ways to think about technology! Again, republished by me.

Before I could get to the next book, I was asked by one of their other brands if I could write a mobile book for higher education. The original promise was that it’d be just a rewrite of the previous, and we allocated a month. Hah! I did deliver a manuscript, but asked them not to publish it. We agreed to try again, and The Mobile Academy was the result. It looks at different ways mobile can augment university actions, with supporting the classroom as only one facet. This too was out of print but I’ve republished.

Finally, I could write the book I thought the industry needed, Revolutionize Learning & Development. Inspired by Marc Rosenberg’s Beyond eLearning and Jay Cross’s Informal Learning, this book synthesizes a performance and technology-enabled push for an ecosystem perspective. It may have been ahead of its time, but it’s still in print. More importantly, I believe it’s still relevant and even more pressing! Other books have complemented the message, but I still think it’s worth a read. Ok, so I’m biased, but I still hear good feedback ;). My editor suggested ATD as a co-publisher, and I was impressed with their work on marketing (long story).

Based upon the successes of those books (I like to believe), and an obvious need in our field, ATD asked for a book on the myths that plague our industry. Here I thought Will Thalheimer, having started the Debunkers Club, would be a better choice. He, however, declined, thinking it probably wasn’t a good business decision (which is likely true; not much call for keynotes or consulting on myths). So, I researched and wrote Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions. In it, I talked about 16 myths (disproved beliefs), 5 superstitions (things folks won’t admit to but emerge anyways) and 16 misconceptions (love/hate things). For each, I tried to lay out the appeal and the reality. I suggest what to do instead, for the bad practices. For the misconceptions, I try to identify when they make sense. In all cases I didn’t put down exhaustive references, but instead the most indicative. ATD did a great job with the book design, having an artist take my intro comic ideas for each and illustrating them, and making a memorable cover. (They even submitted it to a design competition, where it came close to winning!)

After the success of that tome, ATD came back and wanted a book on learning science. They’d previously asked me to edit the definitive tome, and while it was appealing, I didn’t want to herd cats. Despite their assurances, I declined. This, however, could be my own simple digest, so I agreed. Thus, Learning Science for Instructional Designers emerged. There are other books with different approaches that are good, but I do think I’ve managed to make salient the critical points from learning science that impact our designs. Frankly, I think it goes beyond instructional designers (really, parents, teachers, relatives, mentors and coaches, even yourself are designing instruction), but they convinced me to stick with the title.

Now, I view Learning Experience Design as the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. My learning science book, along with others, does a good job of laying out the first part. But I felt that, other than game design books (including mine!), there wasn’t enough on the engagement side. So, I wanted a complement to that last book (though it can augment others). I wrote Make It Meaningful as that complement. In it, I resurrected the framework from my first book, but use it to go across learning design. (Really, games are just good practice, but there are other elements). I also updated my thinking since then, talking about both the initial hook and maintaining engagement through to the end. I present both principles and practical tips, and talk about the impact on your standard learning elements. In an addition I think is important, I also talk about how to take your usual design process, and incorporate the necessary steps to create experiences, not just instruction. I do want you to create transformational experiences!

So, that’s where I’m at. You can see my recommended readings here (which likely needs an update.) Some times people ask “what’s your next book”, and my true answer at this point is “I don’t know.” Suggestions? Something that I’m qualified to write about, that there’s not already enough out about, and it’s a pressing need? I welcome your thoughts!

Engaged and/or Effective

30 April 2024 by Clark Leave a Comment

I’ve regularly talked about how learning can, and should, be ‘hard fun’. Yet, I haven’t really talked about each, effectiveness and engagement, independently. Of course, there’s a quadrant map that separately talks about engaged and/or effective. Let me remedy the lack!

The lack of either engagement or effectiveness is relatively rare, thankfully. You do see it, when under-skilled and under-resourced folks are making a course. For instance giving SMEs authoring tools or dumping a bunch of PPTs and PDFs on an inexperienced instructional designer. Or, when folks won’t spend enough to even get production values, let alone actual effectiveness. What you get is information dump (because experts don’t have access to what they actually do, research tells us), but not with professional polish. It’s ‘content’ without distinction. More importantly, if there is practice, it’s on knowledge retrieval rather than knowledge application. Which leads to what in cognitive science is called ‘inert knowledge’. It may be remembered, but it won’t be used when relevant.

We also see a lot of ‘tarted up’ information dump. Here, there are good production values. It looks nice, because it’s well-produced. However, it’s still information (usually with a quiz). Here, folks know a bit about visual design, and use tools and templates that make it look good. They may even have experienced designers on staff, but…time and cost expectations keep folks from doing the right thing. It could also be a lack of understanding of the importance of challenging contextual practice. That’s all too common, too! It’s still a trivial pursuit.

Quite simply, learning needs to be effective. If it’s not, we’re wasting money. Now, that’s been shown to be the case in many ways. Over the years, we’ve heard estimates from 10-15% of our training efforts are working. Which means we’re wasting 85-90% of our investment. Yet we know what leads to good learning (e.g. the Serious eLearning Manifesto). Learning science gives us good guidelines, but we still see too much information dump. Yet, if it’s not engaging, learners aren’t likely to commit appropriately, and we’re not optimizing the outcomes. It just seems like work.

When we understand the necessary alignment between engagement and effectiveness, however, we truly can deliver ‘hard fun’. That alignment is what my research and design efforts yielded. It was also the core of my book on serious game design and my most recent tome on making learning meaningful. (The latter is really a complement to my learning science book, and an attempt to bring both together to do learning experience design.)

It’s not necessarily easy to generate ‘hard fun’, nor is it the cheapest option. However, it gets easier with practice (like most things), and it’s the most cost-effective option. That is, if you truly want results. But if you don’t, why are you bothering? There are requirements, like making sure you have a real learning need, but that should be true, regardless. You shouldn’t be asking about engaged and/or effective, you should be shooting for both. Right?

The past year

26 December 2023 by Clark 2 Comments

I note that this is my last post for the year, so I thought I’d summarize a few things. For one, so you can look for anything you’re interested in. Also, so I can recall what I’ve been up to! So here’s a brief summary of the past year.

Quinnovation

So I’ve been Quinnovation for the past couple of decades, give or take a year. Which has been my vehicle for consulting. I’ve continued to service clients, on a limited basis (owing to some other commitments, see below); I’ve had several ongoing engagements, some that were new this year, at least one which has continued on from previous years.

I don’t mention the organizations and what I’m doing for them, specifically, because that would violate confidentiality (something I care deeply about; my academic background continues to influence my thoughts on integrity). Yet, the topics that emerge can end up fueling blog posts, webinars, conference presentations, and more. While the solutions I provide are specific to their situations, the reflections and revelations are shareable (suitably anonymized).

For the record, I also had a variety of interviews for podcasts and webinars. They’re scattered hither and yon, and also talking about a variety of topics. I can’t even remember them all (mea culpa), but they all seemed to be of interest to the host and audience. More such coming in the new year.

Upside Learning

In the year before this one, I joined up with Upside Learning to serve as their Chief Learning Strategist. This has been a great opportunity to practice what I preach. I’m working with them internally to improve the learning science in their approach, and externally to evangelize and work with clients ready to take it to the next level. Their CEO, Amit Garg, is great to work with, as it’s clear he really cares about learning.

That evangelizing also requires me to be part of the marketing (hi, Isha!). The upside (heh) is getting to talk about important issues, while the downside is occasionally having to use terms like ‘microlearning‘ (though I reserve the right to be subversive about them). I also am appearing at some events on their behalf. If you’re curious, there are a fair number of articles, ebooks, white papers, videos, and more to be found on their site that I’ve had a hand in. More to come. Check it out!

Learning Development Accelerator

Matt Richter and Will Thalheimer started the Accelerator after their Covid-catalyzed conference was successful. It’s a membership society about the evidence-base for Learning & Development. I came in when Will took a job and couldn’t meet the demands. While Matt keeps the place running (even more so with the help of Esther), I get to have a hand in the topics we address. It’s small, so far, but the quality is very high (that is, the membership and the speakers for events ;).

The first year I had a series I called You Oughta Know, introducing people with models I thought members should know. This past year it’s been debates on topics (to unpack the underlying thinking). All of the past content is available to members, a growing library. I’ve also been part of the blog, with posts on informal learning (should I choose a new topic for this year?). You can access some of the events even if you’re not a member (typically for a fee), but the blog’s behind the firewall. There are some articles outside the paywall, however. This coming year, we’ll likely keep the debates, and continue to have events. We’ve (read: Matt) also resurrected the podcast, which is free to air. There’ll be more announcements, too.

I’m planning two new series for the coming year. One is YOK: Practitioners. This time it’s people you oughta know because of what they’re doing (people I admire, though I won’t be able to get them all)! Another that I’m excited about is Think Like A…! This is a series about the related fields we draw upon. As a field, we’re (rightfully) quite acquisitive: we took agile from software engineering, design thinking from UX, etc. We really should be understanding what it means to think like a practitioner in certain fields, to see what we can and should adopt. I’ve already got some people for these endeavors lined up (bwaahaha!). Consider joining if this sounds like something you’d be interested in.

Elevator 9

A last formal role (I have some informal ones too) is as the science advisor to Elevator 9. This is a company founded on the idea of spacing learning out (a worthwhile endeavor). The founder took my learning science class and then asked me to assist. They’re still getting going, though already with clients, but have made some new moves to kick in next year.

In addition to advising them on design behind the scenes, I’ve scripted, and the CEO David Grad has recorded, a series of short videos about learning. While I’ve suggested that they host them on the Elevator 9 site, that hasn’t happened yet (running on the smell of the proverbial oily rag). I think the best way to find them is to search LinkedIn for “Liftology” and then look at all the ‘post’ results. Hopefully, we’ll make that easier early next year (hint hint, nudge nudge).

And that’s more than enough, I reckon. That’s some of what I’ve been up to in the past year. What’s coming? Well, I’ve given away some of it. There’ll be more from all of the above, of course. Stay tuned! I hope you’ve had a great year, and that the next is your best yet. Happy Holidays!

DnD n LnD

31 October 2023 by Clark 2 Comments

Last Friday, I joined in on a Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) campaign. This wasn’t just gratuitous fun, however, but was explicitly run to connect to Learning & Development folks (LnD). Organized by the Training, Learning, and Development Community (a competitor to LDA? I have bias. ;), there was both some preliminary guidance, and outcomes. I was privileged to play a role, and while not an official part of the followup (happening this week), I thought I’d share my reflections.

So, first, my DnD history. I played a few times while in college, but… I gave it up when a favorite character of mine was killed by an evil trap (that was really too advanced for our party). I’ve played a lot of RPGs since then, with a lot of similarities to the formal DnD games (tho’ the actual ones are too complex). Recently, with guidance from offspring two, our family is getting back into it (with a prompt from a Shakespeare and DnD skit at the local Renaissance Faire).

Then, I’ve been into games for learning since my first job out of college, programming educational computer games. It also became the catalyst for my ongoing exploration of engagement to accompany my interest in cognition/learning, design, and technology. The intersection of which is where I’ve pretty much stayed (in a variety of roles), since then! (And, led to my first book on how to do same.)

Also, about DnD. It’s a game where you create a character. There are lots of details. For one, your characteristics: strength, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, and more. Those combine with lots of attributes (such race & role). Then, there’s lots of elaboration: backstory, equipment, and more. This can alter during the game, where your abilities also rise. This adds complexity to support ongoing engagement. (I heard one team has been going for over 40 years!)

Characters created by the players are then set loose in a campaign (a setting, precipitating story, and potential details). A Dungeon Master runs the game, Keegan Long-Wheeler in our case, writing it and managing the details. Outcomes happen probabilistically by rolling dice. Computers can play a role. For one, through apps that handle details like rolling the dice. Then folks create games that reflect pre-written campaigns.

One important thing, to me, is that the players organize and make decisions together. We were a group who didn’t necessarily know each other, and we were playing under time constraints. This meant we didn’t have the dialog and choices that might typically emerge in such playing. Yet, we managed a successful engagement in the hour+ we were playing. And had fun!

I was an early advocate of games for learning. To be clear, not the tarted up drill and kill we were mostly doing, but inspired by adventure games. John Carroll had written about this back in the day, I found out. However, I’d already seen adventure games having the potential to be a basis for learning. Adventure games naturally require exploring. In them, you’re putting clues together to choose actions to overcome obstacles. Which, really, is good learning practice! That is, making decisions in context in games is good practice for making decisions in performance situations. Okay, with the caveat that you should design the game so that decisions have a natural embed.

The complexity of DnD is a bit much, in my mind, for LnD, but…the design! The underlying principles of designing campaigns bears some relation to designing learning experiences. I believe designing engaging learning may be harder than designing learning or games, but we do have good principles. I do believe learning can, and should, be ‘hard fun‘. Heck, it’s the topic of my most recent tome! (I believe learning should be the elegant integration of learning science with engagement.)

This has been an opportunity to reflect a bit on the underlying structure of games, and what makes them work. That’s always a happy time for me. So, I’m curious what you see about the links between games and learning!

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