Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Where’s Clark This Time?

by Leave a Comment

Already this year I’ve done, in addition to podcasts and webinars, The L&D Conference, ATD ICE, and DevLearn. What else? Coming up before the end of the year are a couple more things. So here’s “where’s Clark this time?”.

  • First up is the ATD Core 4 conference in Nashville Nov 15 & 16. There’s a real all star lineup in the concurrent sessions. I’ll be speaking on learning science, of course. This event is in person (with masks).
  • I’m also part of the Symposium on the Economics of Ignorance on 30 November. I’ll be talking about myths here with Matt Richter, but the overall premise is interesting in several ways. One is considering what ignorance costs us!  The other is the approach of interviewing experts to to generate actionable ideas. Virtual.
  • Then, on 1 Dec, I’ll be starting my ‘Make It Meaningful’ workshop with the Learning Development Accelerator. I think this is the missing element in our design, and I’ve spent the past 1.5 year getting it designed. (Or the past 40, if you consider my work understanding engagement from when my career got started by designing learning games!). Emotions matter in learning, and we can systematically take our learning from didactic to transformational. Online.
  • Finally, I’ll be the opening keynote for ATD’s Japan Summit  Dec 6-10, talking about new cognition and organizational implications. Virtual, at least for me!

Those are the biggies, there’s at least one more webinar on the calendar this year too. All but Core 4 are virtual, so it’s easy to attend (though the timing of the Japan Summit will be awkward!). If you’ll be at any of these, say ‘hi’! (I’m an introvert and a ham; I may appear social when presenting, but normally I’m not aloof, just shy. At least until I get to know you. ;) So the answer to “Where’s Clark this time” is online and in person.

Aligning and enabling transformation

by Leave a Comment

In what was my last Quinnsights column for Learning Solutions, I wrote about how the transformation wasn’t (or shouldn’t) be digital. In many ways we aren’t aligned with what’s best for our thinking. Thus,  digitizing existing approaches doesn’t make sense. Instead, we should be fixing our organizational alignment first,  then  digitizing. The opportunity is in aligning  and enabling transformation.

First, we should be looking at  all  the levels of organizational alignment. At the individual level we can be doing things like implementing federated search, to support individual learning. This should be coupled with providing development of writing good search strings and evaluating search outcomes. This also means curating a suite of resources aligned with learning directions and future opportunities. The point being that we should be supporting evidence-based methods for individual development, then supporting digitally. For instance, supporting learning-to-learn skills. Taking them for granted is a mistake! It’s also about ongoing support for development, e.g. coaching. Good practices help, and tools that document approaches and outcomes can assist.

At the group level, there are again ways in which we can be fostering effectiveness. This includes having good collaboration tools, and assisting people in using them well. It can also be about policies that make ‘show your work’ safe. Then you can augment with ‘show your work’ tool. Again, having the right practices and policies makes the digital transformation investment more valuable. You could pick the wrong tools if you’re instituting the old ways instead of doing the process work first.

This holds true at the organizational level as well, of course. The policies and practices cross the organization. Thus, what works for teams comes from an organizational focus on learning. Then, the digital investments are focused on the most optimal outcomes. The alternative, digitizing unaligned practices, can only hinder improvement to be a successful organization.

There are a lot of myths about what works. This includes learning myths, but also bad HR practices. Many stem from maintaining approaches that are carryovers from industrial age business. Instead, we should be leveraging our knowledge of thinking to be strategic. L&D can be critically contributing to organizational success! Or not. There’s a big opportunity to shift practices in a positive direction, with upsides for outcomes. However, it takes the understanding and the will. What will you do?

This is related to the talk I’ll be giving as the opening keynote for the ATD Japan Summit in December (though I’m filming it for virtual delivery). I get my thinking done here first ;).  

Tech Thoughts

by Leave a Comment

I’m late with a post this week, owing to several factors, all relating to technology. I hadn’t quite pulled together a complete lesson, but by writing down these tech thoughts, I got there. (A further argument for the benefits of reflection.)

It started with upgrading our phones. We needed to (I tend to hand mine down, but really we both needed an upgrade this time). Of course there are hiccups, particularly since m’lady’s was so old that it couldn’t do the amazing thing mine had done. What happened with mine was that you just put the old phone and the new phone together and the new one just sucks the data off the old one and then the old one asks if you want to wipe it clean!  That’s some serious user experience. Something we should look more to in our LXD, so that we’re doing proper backwards design and we have the right combination of tools and learning to make performance relatively effortless.

Then another thing was quite interesting. An individual linked to me on the basis of a citation in a book. I didn’t know the book, so he sent me a picture of the page. He also asked if I could read Dutch. Sadly, no. However, I had recently upgraded my OS, and when I opened the picture, I noticed I could click on the text. Of. The. Picture!  I could select all the text (my OS was doing OCR on the picture live!), and then I could paste into Google Translate (another amazing feat) and it recognized it as Dutch and translated it into English. Whoa!

On the flip side, owing to the unusually heavy rain (for California), first our internet went out, and then the power. Fortunately both were working by the next morning. However, after that my backup drives kept dismounting and I couldn’t execute a backup reliably. I thought it might be the laptop, and I did a couple of increasingly difficult remedial measures. Nope. Had the drives been damaged by the power outage? Power outages aren’t quite new around here (we’re a bit up a hillside, and squirrels regularly blow the transformer), yet it hadn’t happened before.

Then I was on a Zoom call, and I started having hiccups in the microphone and camera. Even typing. What? When I switched to the laptop camera, it was all good.  All the things, drives, microphone, external monitor, are connected by a external hub. The hub had gone wonky! Instead of having to replace drives, I picked up a new hub last nite, and all’s good now. Phew!

I guess my take home tech thoughts is that we’re making true a promise I’ve mentioned when talking mobile: we really do have magic. (Asimov famously said any truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.) We can do magical things like talk at distance, have demons do tasks on our behalf (picture text transcribing and translation), etc. On the other hand, when it doesn’t work, it can be hard to identify the problem!  Overall, it’s a win. Well, when it’s designed right! Which involves testing and tuning. As Dion Hinchcliffe put it: “Seamless #cx is now table stakes.” So let’s get designing, testing, and tuning, and make magical experiences.

Levels of Organizational Alignment

by Leave a Comment

Several years ago, I was pushing the notion of the Coherent Organization. While I still feel it’s relevant, perhaps the time wasn’t right or I wasn’t convincing enough. However, as I continue to consider the issue of alignment of what we do in L&D (and organizational) practices, I realize there’s more. One way, then, to think about the coherent organization is as achieving levels of organizational alignment.

Starting from the top, I think of the alignment with the organization and society. Normally, and probably most importantly for survival, organizations need to think about alignment with their market. (In appropriate ways; I’m reminded how the freight business got upended when companies thought they were in the train business and not the transportation business.) However, there  is a level above the market, and that is whether the org is serving the market in a society-appropriate way. For instance, if you’re helping your customers rip off their clients, it may be lucrative but it’s not a scrutable way to do business. I like the notion of benefit corporations  (though they may not go far enough). Don’t do well by doing ill.

Which is the next level of alignment, of employees with the organization’s mission. They’ll be more engaged if that mission is appropriate!  Further, I like the notion of ’employee experience’. I’ve heard it said that you can’t have a good customer experience if you don’t have a good employee experience. That’s plausible. I think Dan Pink’s  Drive says it well, you want your employees to have Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. Which means having a clear raison d’être, goals and the freedom to pursue them, and support to succeed.

Accompanying that is a workplace culture that’s supportive of success. I like Jerry Michalski’s focus on trust; start from there. Then have transparency, e.g. ‘show your work’ and ‘learn out loud‘. I’m also a fan of the Learning Organization Dimensions of Garvin, Edmondson, & Gino. I like how Amy Edmondson has gone on to advocate for including both safety and accountability as complementary components of success.

Of course, this carries down to the individual level. For instance, including a focus on having performers prepared up front and developed over time. This includes a shift to coaching and mentoring, as well as learning experience design grounded in the sciences of learning and engagement.  Going further, we should havie people not just knowing their purpose but getting feedback on how they‘re doing to achieve it. Recognition matters, with positive recognition of accomplishment or support to improve. Against an objective metric, of course, not comparative to others.

There’s more, but most importantly, it’s aligning all these from bottom to top. For instance, you could be creating a great culture to serve a bad purpose. Alternatively, you could have a great purpose but use industrial era methods to get there. I have to admit that, having served in orgs of various sizes, and seen the pockets of inefficiency that can emerge, I wonder how any business makes any money! Still, there’s evidence that the better you’re aligned, the better you do. (See the Toward Maturity Top Deck results or Laurie Bassi’s work on the link between people approaches and org success.

Achieving success at all  levels of organizational alignment is a path to success. No one’s saying it’s easy, but it  is doable. Further, it’s your best investment in the future. Just as with designing learning, get the core right before you add shiny objects, the same is true for organizations. There’s a transformation in practices to be done before you then apply the digital transformation. However, once you align these, as well, you’re on an upward path. Shall we?

By the way, this is aligned :) with the theme of what I’ll be  talking about in my opening keynote for the ATD Japan Summit.  

Higher-education Myths

by 4 Comments

I’ve been in a variety of higher education roles in several ways: as a victim, er, student; as a grad student; post-doc; tenured/promoted faculty member; textbook publishing consulting;  strategic elearning consulting… Further, in general, I’m a supporter. I do have quibbles, and one is the persistence of learning myths. Trust me, I wrote a whole book on what the research says about them! In addition to having talked about org learning myths, let me explore some elements of higher-education myths.

I saw an article in the top education news source in the country, The Chronicle of Higher Education. I get their daily newsletter, just to keep my finger on the pulse. However, this article was touting issues for Gen Z students. Yet, research says that the ‘generations’ framework isn’t valid. There’s no reliable data that generations is a viable discrimination. In fact, it literally  is discrimination (in terms of using arbitrary distinctions to label people.

This is only part of the broader problem. A colleague regularly chides his alma mater for continuing to believe in learning styles. This, too, is a myth! While learners do differ, there’s no evidence we should adapt learning to learning styles, let alone can we reliably identify them. It’s appealing, but wrong. Not that it isn’t also prevalent amongst K12 teachers as well.

Which is related to another problem, business school curricula. I was surprised, and dismayed, to find that a prominent business school has personality instruments as part of it’s curricula! This includes MBTI, which is discredited both theoretically and empirically. Other such instruments, also with flaws, continue to be indicated. I’m sure there may be some financial motivation as well. (E.g. like Apple & Microsoft did offering huge discounts to schools, to get new users used to their experience.)

We should not tolerate learning myths in university. Aren’t these bastions of science? Ok, that’s another myth, that universities aren’t riven with politics, but that’s not the focus here. Still, universities should be better at rejecting myths, just as they should also be better about using the best pedagogies. Which they also aren’t doing, by and large ;).

There are more myths about universities, and issues like what their role in society  should be. That’s not what I’m talking about here, though. For all their other issues, they should  not be perpetuators of higher-education myths. (Here’s hoping they’re also not guilty of the ‘attention span of a goldfish’ myth!)

The (Post) Cognitive Perspective

by 5 Comments

I’m deeply steeped in the cognitive sciences, owing to a Ph.D. in cognitive psych. Fortuitively, this was at the time my advisor was creating the cognitive science program (and more). So I’ve a bias. Yet I also have a fair bit of empirical evidence that taking a cognitive perspective accomplishes things that are hard to do in other ways. So let me make the case that the cognitive perspective is more than just a useful one, but arguably a necessary one.

I‘ll start by reflecting back on something I wrote before, about virtual world affordances. At the time, platforms like Second Life were touting the advantages of an immersive navigable world. Of course, the promises were all-encompassing: everything would move to virtual worlds. In retrospect, it didn‘t eventuate. Why? I argue it’s because the cognitive overhead of virtual worlds means that there has to be a sustained value proposition, and that came from when you truly need 3D immersion and social.  

Similarly, when I wrote my books on games and mobile, I focused on the cognitive impacts. The first reason was because technology was changing so fast that anything hardware-specific would be out of date before the book was published. The second is because our brains don‘t change that fast, so what works will work regardless of the technology .  

Note that our understanding of cognition has changed. We‘re now in a ‘post-cognitive‘ era, where the notion that all our formal, logical thinking is done in our heads is wrong. Research is showing that we‘re far more ‘situated‘ than we think, and distributed as well. That includes distributed across external representations and other people! It’s very contextual, and it’s not all in our heads!

So these days, when I look at things, I try to look with a cognitive (ok, post-cognitive) perspective. I look to see how things align, or not, with how our brains work. When I evaluate learning technologies, for instance, I look to see how well they do things like provide meaningful practice: active and contextualized. You can also see when particular technologies (e.g. VR/AR/AI) will be valuable, and not. Similarly, when I look at workplace change proposals, I look at how well they reflect our mechanisms for adapting to change.  

I‘ll argue that these perspectives are valuable. You can quickly see why most training doesn‘t work, cut through hype from vendors, create explanations about why myths are mythtaken, etc. You can save money, be more effective, etc when you align with how our brains work. I‘ve talked before about how there are gaps. This is the flip side, how to avoid those gaps, and do better.   In short, you‘re better able to assist your organization in being more effective (and efficient).  

That‘s why I‘m pleased that I am able to put these basics into the learning science book, and workshops. It‘s possible to get better at this sort of perspective. It‘s also possible to get it on tap as needed. However, it does take both the cognitive understanding and the experience in applying it. So, how‘s your cognitive perspective?

On a side note, I want to encourage you to consider my workshop at DevLearn on Make It Meaningful, a full day exploring how we make learning experiences deeply engaging (adding to effectiveness). This is also the topic of my online workshop through the Learning Development Accelerator. This is, to me, the most important topic to  complement  learning science. (Available as a book and workshop. ;) In both cases, I’m trying  to help us  stop making boring courses that people want to avoid, and suggest that this  can be done for most any topic. It also leads to more effective learning outcomes! Hope to see you at one! (Of course, if your organization would like your own private version, let me know!)

Meta-ethics of learning design

by 1 Comment

I‘ve addressed ethics elsewhere, but I‘m looking at it a different way now. I’m thinking from the perspective of situated cognition, and recognizing that there are certain things we can do. For better or worse. Further, these choices have ramifications beyond the initial impact. I think we need to be aware of the possibilities, and then consider the meta-ethics of learning design.

My particular concern sparks from the notion of how we are contextually sensitive. To make this concrete, think of the research by Beth Loftus. I”ll characterize a whole suite of research with a simply paraphrased experiment. So, she had folks watch a video of an accident. Then, she prompted recall of the amount of damage they witnessed. For one, she just asked them. For another group, the recall was prompted by “Besides the broken glass,…”. The latter group recalled worse damage. And. There. Was. No. Broken. Glass!  

The point here is that context can influence our thinking and memory. Which is what I see worry about with videos. They can take a statement as if it‘s fact, and then continue on with that as received wisdom. It‘s a classic cognitive approach, making a statement as if it‘s assumed.The bad part is that there‘s a narrative flow, and it‘s hard to stop and reflect. Versus, say, reading.  

On the other hand, of course, we can build in reflection time. Sure, learners can use the pause button, but there are times they may not. For instance, if the learner is following confirmation bias, that is looking at things that align with what you believe.  

We have the option to use coercive techniques for good, of course. However, we can also choose to use legitimate presentation techniques. I believe we should. Part of the development of metacognition is to see the pedagogy being used and internalizing it. If our pedagogy is visible (as it should be), it needs to be scrutable if we want our learners to adopt appropriate skills.  

Our designs, and our meta-designs, need to be ethically designed, both to effectively achieve our ends, and to develop our learners. We need to support the meta-ethics of learning design, as well as the ethics themselves.  

Complexity in Learning Design

by Leave a Comment

a fractalI recently mentioned that one of the problems with research is that things are more interconnected than we think. This is particularly true with cognitive research. While we can make distinctions that simplify things in useful ways (e.g. the human information processing system model*), the underlying picture is of a more interactive system.  Which underpins why it makes sense to talk about Learning Experience Design (LXD) and not just instructional design. We need to accommodate complexity in learning design.  (* Which I talk about in Chapter 2 of my learning science book, and in my workshops on the same topic through the Allen Academy.)

We’re recognizing that the our cognition is more than just in our head. Marcia Conner, in her book  Learn More Now  mentioned how neuropeptides passed information around the body. Similarly, Annie Murphy Paul’s  The Extended Mind talks about moving cognition (and learning) into the world. In my Make It Meaningful workshops (online or F2F at DevLearn 19 Oct), I focus on how to address the emotional component of learning. In short, learning is about more than just information dump and knowledge test.

Scientifically, we’re finding there are lots of complex interactions between the current context, our prior experience, and our cognitive architecture. We’re much more ‘situated’ in the moment than the rational beings we want to believe. Behavioral economics and Daniel Kahneman’s research have made this abundantly clear. We try to avoid the hard mental work using shortcuts that work sometimes, but not others. (Understanding when is an important component of this).

We get good traction from learning science and instructional design approaches, for sure. There are good prescriptions (that we often ignore, for reasons above) about what to do and how. So, we should follow them. However, we need more. Which is why I tout LXD  Strategy! We need to account for complexity in learning design approaches.

For one, our design processes need to be iterative. We’ll make our best first guess, but it won’t be right, and we’ll need to tune. The incorporation of agile approaches, whether SAM or LLAMA or even just iterative ADDIE, reflects this. We need to evaluate and refine our designs to match the fact that our audience is more complex than we thought.

Our design also needs to think about the emotional experience as well as the cognitive experience. We want our design processes to systematically incorporate humor, safety, motivation, and more. Have we tuned the challenge enough, and how will we know?  Have we appropriately incorporated story? Are our graphics aligned or adding to cognitive load? There are lots of elements that factor in.

Our design process has to accommodate SMEs who literally can’t access what they do. Also learner interests, not just knowledge. We need to know what interim deliverables, processes for evaluation, times when we shouldn’t be working solo, and tools we need. Most importantly, we have to do this in a practical way, under real-world resource constraints.

Which is why we need to address this strategically. Too many design processes are carry-over from industrial approaches: one person, one tool, and a waterfall process. We need to do better. There’s complexity in learning design, both on the part of our learners, and ourselves as designers. Leveraging what we know about cognitive science can provide us with structures and approaches that accommodate these factors. That’s only true, however, if we are aware and actively address it. I’m happy to help, but can only do so if you reach out. (You know how to find me. ;) Here’s to effective and engaging  learning!

Reading Research?

by Leave a Comment

I was honored to have a colleague laud my Myths book (she was kind enough to also promote the newer learning science book), but it was something she said that I found intriguing. She suggested that one of the things in it includes “discussing how to read research”. And it occurs to me that it’s worth unpacking the situation a wee bit more. So here’s a discussion about how we (properly) develop learning science that informs us in reading research.

Caveat: I  haven’t been an active researcher for decades,  serving instead to interpret and apply the  research, but it’s easier to say ‘we’ than “scientists”, etc.  

Generally, theory drives research. You’ve created an explanation that accounts for observed phenomena better than previous approaches. What you do then is extend it to other predictions, and test them.  Occasionally, we do purely exploratory studies just to see what emerges, but mostly we generate hypotheses and test them.

We do this with some rigor. We try to ensure that the method we devise removes confounding variables, and then we use statistical analysis to remove the effects of other factors. For instance, I created a convoluted balancing approach to remove order effects in my Ph.D. research. (So complicated that I had to analyze a factor or two first, to ensure it wasn’t a factor, so I could remove it from the resulting analysis!). We also try to select relevant subjects, design uncontaminated materials, and carefully control our analysis. Understanding the ways in which we do this requires an ability to know about experiment design, which isn’t common knowledge.

Moreover, we then need to share this with our colleagues so that they can review what we’ve done. We need to do it in unambiguous language, using the specific vocabulary of our field. And we need to make it scrutable. Thus, we publish in peer-reviewed journals which mean others have looked at our work and deemed it acceptable. However, the language is deliberately passive, unemotional, and precise, as well as focused on a very narrow topic. Thus, it’s not a lot of fun to read unless you  really care about the topic!

There are problems with this. Increasingly, we’re finding that trying to isolate independent variables doesn’t reflect the inherent interactions. Our brains actually have a lot of complexity that hinder simple explanations. We’ve also found that it’s difficult to get representative subjects, when what’s easy to get are higher education students in the developed world. There are also politics involved, sad to say, so that it can be hard for new ideas to emerge if they challenge the entrenched views. Yet, it’s still the best approach we have. The scientific method has led to more advances in understanding than anything else!

There are things to worry about as a consumer of science. For one, there are people who fake results. They’re few, of course. There’s also research that’s kept proprietary, for financial reasons. Or is commissioned. As soon as there’s money involved, there’s the opportunity for corruption (think: tobacco, and sugar). Companies may have something that they tout as valid, but the research base isn’t publically available. Caveat emptor!

Thus, being able to successfully read research isn’t for everyone. You need to be able to comprehend the studies, and know when to be wary. The easy thing to do is to look for translations, and translators, who have demonstrated a trustworthy ability to help sort out the wheat from the chaff. They exist.

I hope this illustrates what reading research requires. You can take some preliminary steps: give it the ‘sniff’ test, see if it applies to you, and see who’s telling you this (and if anyone else is agreeing or saying to the contrary) and what their stake in the game is. If these steps don’t answer a question, however, maybe you want to look for good guidance. Make sense?

 

Coping with Change: A Book Review of Flux by April Rinne

by 1 Comment

How do we cope with change? There’s a myth that we resist change, but Peter de Jaeger busted that in a talk I heard where he pointed out that we make changes all the time. We get married, take a different job, have kids, all of which are changes. The difference is that these are changes we choose! However, in this era of increasing change, we’re likely going to face more and more changes we didn’t expect. Can we improve our ability for coping with change? Yes, says April Rinne in her book  Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.

And  here’s a caveat: I am part of a  group she put together to talk about Flux while writing the book. I’m in the acknowledgements.

April, faced with a heavy unchosen change in her teens, carried that with her. It’s driven her interest in change and how we can learn to cope.  Given that we’re in an era of increasing change, she recognized that we would benefit from having some approaches to improve our reslience.  She looked at a wide variety of inputs, and has distilled her learnings into 8 mental frameworks that assist.

The underlying focus is on a flux  mindset, that is, a stance that change is coming and to be accepting, not resisting. The eight different ways of looking at the world are deliberately provocative, but also apt:

  • Run Slower
  • See What’s Invisible
  • Get Lost
  • Start with Trust
  • Know Your ‘Enough’
  • Create Your Portfolio Career
  • Be All the More Human
  • Let Go of the Future

Each gets a chapter, with illustrations of the challenge, and practical ways to enact. You may find, like I did, that some are familiar, others are more challenging. Each comes from either or both of ancient wisdom  and practical experience. The ones that were new I find to be all the more interesting. And useful!

That’s the real key. It’s very much aligned with what we know about how our brains work (a big issue with me, as this audience has probably learned ;). Some areas I feel like I’ve a handle on (e.g. run slower), and others are things are more challenging (e.g. see what’s invisible). There are bound to be areas of work for you. The upside of that work, however, is likely to be a better ability to ‘be’.

This is a book that you’ll want your loved ones to read, because what it provides aligns with a view of the world as it could and should be. It’s a guide for coping with change that addresses not only individuals, but organizations and society as a whole.  Highly recommended.