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What’s New at Quinnovation

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Time for an update, as things have been happening, Some over the past year, some more recently. So here’s what’s new at Quinnovation.

So, as I’ve already noted, I was asked to join the Learning Development Accelerator last fall as Editor in Chief of the new LDA Press. That means, practically, serving as both acquisition and development editor. So far, I’m better in the latter than the former. We did publish our first, book, er, mine ;). I’ve also joined as co-0rganizer.

We’re doing some fun things with that. The first is the You Oughta Know series of Wed webinars, introducing people, well, that you oughta know. We’ve had an amazing run of guests. I’ll also be starting up a series of Very Opinionated Tech Takes. Yeah, it’s me going off on various techs, but I will be unpacking my thinking behind the takes. And I have had a number of decades of experience at it… Finally, there’s the forthcoming Learning & Development Conference, where we’re looking to do what we think should be done. That is, a focus on important specifics; we’ve two tracks, one more for beginners and one more advanced. Attendees can choose. We’ve got a good tight faculty, and are expecting a great development experience.

In addition to my LDA duties, I’m still continuing on with Quinovation, of course. That has meant some steady client work since the beginning of the year; including two projects on learning and performance strategy. One is likely to be continuing at least a little while longer. From that one is a topic I’ll be discussing as part of at DevLearn. I’ll also be running a ‘Make It Meaningful workshop there; a full day digging into the principles and tricks of making experiences emotionally engaging. (I’ll also be part of a panel of the Guild Masters.)

I’ve also taken on some other roles via Quinnovation. For one, I’ve been working with an initiative attempting to take K12 STEM into the 21st Century. Yes, there are plenty of efforts in this area, I just happen to be involved in this one that has an approach I’m getting to shape aligned with my perspectives. I’m also now on the advisory board of a startup with a platform for augmenting formal learning programs. Finally, I’ve signed on to assist an established elearning firm improve their approach as part of a growth initiative. All are focusing on applying learning science to make bigger and better impacts. Those are the types of things I can comfortably get behind.

So that’s what’s new at Quinnovation. Reckon I’ll be busier than the proverbial beaver, but that’s preferable to the alternative. Stay tuned!

Templates as content model extensions

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I’ve been touting content models for, well, years now. Interestingly, I’m currently doing some more concrete work on them, from the bottom-up. Instead of looking at top-down implementation of governance and structure, the focus is on guidance for creating resources at scale. Yet the two are related, and I think it’s worth looking at templates as content model extensions.

The notion of content models is that instead of creating full courses, we build content in chunks, and pull them together by rule. Or even more appropriately, deliver the appropriate chunk to the right person at the right time. It’s been happening for web design for years, but for some reason the notion of content management systems lags in L&D. Yes, there are entailments – governance, strategy, engineering – but the alternative is that lingering legacy content that’s out of date but no one can deal with.

That’s the top level focus. Underpinning this, of course, is getting the content right, and that means having some good definitions around the content. I’d done that many moons ago, and in a current engagement it’s reemerging. The situation is that there are a number of people all writing content around this particular initiative, and it’s uncoordinated (sound familiar?). The realization that clients are struggling is enough of a driver to look for a solution.

Without a content management system, as yet, it still makes sense to systematize the resources around a map of the space, ensuring they align to what we know about how people learn and perform. That latter is important, because many times they just need the answer now, not a full course.

What we’ve ended up doing is creating meta-content that tell how to develop content that meets particular needs. With entailments, such as assembling a representative team to determine what’s needed and the labels to use. It also involves drafting and testing these content guides, prior to broader use.

It’s the tactical step of a strategic goal to provide support for people to successfully meet their needs. And, to be clear, to reduce the reliance on the support staff. Leveraging the cognitive and learning sciences, we’re building templates as content model extensions. This is before there’s even the technology support available to be more proactive, but planning for the possible future is part of the strategy.

I’ll be presenting a session on this at the DevLearn conference in October. If you’re interested and going to be there, I welcome seeing you.

Emotion, or motivation, or…

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I’ve been promoting the importance of the emotional ‘hook’. Which I was called out on, rightly. I freely admit that the phrase is less than fully accurate. So let’s explore the issue of whether we’re talking emotion, or motivation, or…

As context, one perspective from cognitive science is thinking of our ourselves as comprised of three components. One is cognitive, that is what we think and know. Which is malleable, as we can learn more! A second component is termed affective, that is who we are. Which isn’t malleable; these are our fixed characteristics, certainly personality (e.g. OCEAN/HEXACO). Finally, there’s our conative component. This is our intent: to learn, to act, and arguably what we value. 

This last bit, the conative, is what I suggest we neglect in our learning design. We address the cognitive, and there’s little to do on the affective side, but we too often basically assume that the learner is ready for what we’re presenting. Which I suggest is a mistake. 

There’s considerable evidence that we perform better when we’re engaged. When experiences are motivating, and anxiety is kept to a minimum, and our confidence is built, etc. Further, we can address these. We can help folks see the WIIFM, make it psychologically safe, and provide appropriate levels of challenge with useful feedback. (And we should!) However, too often we don’t.

So I use the shorthand term ‘emotion’ to address this.  I use the term to separate from the cognitive in a shorthand way. The problem, of course, is whether anxiety and motivation are truly ‘emotions’. Effectively, they’re not. My stance, however, is that I can’t be talking ‘conative’ to folks who aren’t aware of that concept!

I also resist just talking about motivation. Anxiety is an issue. So too is confidence. John Keller’ has his ARCS model (arguably the only ID theorist considering the conative aspect, though I don’t know if he uses that term ;). His model incorporates gaining/maintaining Attention, manifesting the Relevance of what’s being learned, building Confidence, and ensuring Satisfaction from the experience. Really, we want an umbrella term for these elements. 

There is the concept of engagement. However, it’s been trivialized. Claims that ‘click to see more’ is more engaging, that points & leaderboards are engaging, etc. have undermined the term. So I avoid it to avoid getting mired in that morass. Instead, I think talking about emotion as a shorthand way to address the non-cognitive. Yet…

I was called out for talking about an ‘emotional hook’ by a very learned client. Rightly so. The question is, do we have a better term? Is there a more appropriate and yet still accessible way ta talk about this? Obviously, I haven’t thought so as yet, but I want to keep learning. So if you’ve a better solution, please do let me know. (Feel free to also say that this approach is probably the only solution, at least for now.) Otherwise, I’ll keep looking for a better approach than emotion, or motivation, or…

I’ll be discussing ‘emotion’ in a session for the Learning Guild’s LXD conference, coming up at the beginning of next month. I’m also presenting a two half-days pre-event online workshop on LXD overall, integrating emotion with science. I’ll also explore ‘engagement’ in a full day face-to-face pre-con workshop at their DevLearn conference in October). Hope to see you at one of these!

2022 ITA Jay Cross Memorial Award: Céline Shillinger

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Harold Jarche’s elegantly crafted announcement:

The Internet Time Alliance Memorial Award, in memory of Jay Cross, is presented to a workplace learning professional who has contributed in positive ways to the field of Informal Learning and is reflective of Jay‘s lifetime of work.

Recipients champion workplace and social learning practices inside their organization and/or on the wider stage. They share their work in public and often challenge conventional wisdom. The Award is given to professionals who continuously welcome challenges at the cutting edge of their expertise and are convincing and effective advocates of a humanistic approach to workplace learning and performance.

We announce the award on 5 July, Jay‘s birthday.

Following his death in November 2015, the partners of the Internet Time Alliance — Jane Hart, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Harold Jarche — resolved to continue Jay‘s work. Jay Cross was a deep thinker and a man of many talents, never resting on his past accomplishments, and this award is one way to keep pushing our professional fields and industries to find new and better ways to learn and work.

The 7th annual Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2022 is presented to Céline Schillinger.

In her recent book, Dare to Un-lead, Céline asks, “Can there be liberty, equality, and fraternity at work” Then she shows examples of how this can be achieved. As Head of Quality Innovation & Engagement at Sanofi Pasteur Céline helped to create the ‘Break Dengue’ global community to fight dengue fever. Céline understands the power of community. She says that, “If you cannot find a community of practice for your professional development, then create one.”

Céline has often challenged the status quo, especially regarding the lack of diversity in many workplaces.

“What really matters is to mirror the diversity of the world we serve. We need more women… more humanities majors… more people of colour… more professionals coming from other jobs… in short, a much bigger diversity of viewpoints at all levels. We also need more network and co-construction across levels, as the old pyramidal system is no longer fit for purpose.”

Céline has said that companies must cultivate their rebels in order to remain relevant to their workers, while staying competitive in their arenas. These rebels can let them see beyond the organization‘s walls. We are sure that Jay Cross would agree.

Links:

https://weneedsocial.com/about-me

https://weneedsocial.com/praise-dare-to-unlead

https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/article/69269/quality-lever-transformation-sanofi/

LXD by Design

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Learning Experience Design (LXD), I argue, is the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. All well and good, of course, but how do you introduce it? Specifically, how do we engage people already actively designing? There are a number of ways to cut it. You could talk about the cognitive underpinnings, the implications for the elements of learning, or via the changes in the design process. I do the latter two, with a focus on the engagement side (which I feel is underdeveloped), in my latest book, “Make It Meaningful“. However, what if you’re trying to do both? Here’s a case to visit LXD by design.

It seems pretty safe to say that most people will resist totally throwing out their entire design process. There’s lots of investment. Further, most design processes have a useful basic structure. This suggests looking for the smallest tweaks that will yield the biggest impacts. We’re looking to incorporate the effectiveness of learning science with the emotional appropriateness of engagement. What does this require?

The first change is in the analysis. LXD simply  can’t work without performance objectives. If you’re just trying to make people aware, you’re not really on a transformative journey. You want to be focusing on equipping people so that they’re (meaningfully) changed through the process. You also need some new information: why this is necessary  for the learners, and why experts find it interesting enough to study. There’s more, but this is key.

Then, your design process differs. You are being creative,  given that you’re not just directly practicing. You’re also tuning to get the experience optimized. So, you need to build in some brainstorming, and iteration. In pragmatic ways, of course.

Implementation is also more iterative. You’ll be investing slowly, to allow pivots and to keep the overall costs contained. Postponing programming and preferring paper are components of this.

Even your evaluation is different. You are testing, now, not only effectiveness, but also the experience. Which you may have been doing (*cough* smile sheets *cough*), but you need to test both sequentially, not just one  or the other.

All along, there are small changes that will help integrate learning science elegantly with engagement. Making those critical changes will likely take a bit longer, at least at first. On the other hand, you should be getting real outcomes  and more engaged learners. Which, ultimately, is what we should be doing.

I’ll be covering this in a workshop for the Learning Guild in two half-day sessions prior to their LXD conference at the beginning of August. (Also doing a session during the conf on emotion.) I hope you’ll find LXD by Design to be a practical and useful, even  transformative, experience.

Critical ID/LXD Differences?

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I’ve argued both that Learning Experience Design (LXD) is an improvement on Instructional Design (ID), and that LXD is the  elegant integration of learning science with engagement. However, that doesn’t really unpack what are the critical ID/LXD differences. I think it’s worth looking at those important distinctions both in principle and practice. Here, I’m talking about the extensions to what’s already probably in place.

Principle

In principle, I think it’s the engagement part that separates the two. True, proper ID shouldn’t ignore it. However, there’s been too little attention. For instance, only one ID theorist, John Keller, has really looked at those elements. Overall, it’s too easy to focus purely on the cognitive. (Worse, of course, is a focus purely on knowledge, which really  isn’t good ID).

I suggest that this manifests in two ways. First, you need an initial emotional ‘hook’ to gain the learner’s commitment to the learning experience. Even before we open them up cognitively (though, of course, they’re linked)! Then, we need to manage emotions through out the experience. We want to do thinks like keep challenge balanced, anxiety low enough not to interfere, build confidence, etc.

We have tools we can use, like story, exaggeration, humor, and more to assist us in these endeavors. At core, however, what we’re focusing on is making it a true ‘experience’, not just an instructional event. Ideally, we’d like to be transformational, leaving learners equipped with new skills and the awareness thereof.

Practice

What does this mean in practice? A number of things. For one, it takes creativity to consider ways in which to address emotions. There are research results and guidance, but you’ll still want to exercise some exploration. Which also means you have to be iterative, with testing. I understand that this is immediately scary, thinking about costs. However, when you stop trying to use courses for everything, you’ll have more resources to do courses right. For that matter, you’ll actually be achieving outcomes, which is a justification for the effort.

Our design process needs to start gathering different information. We need to get performance objectives; what people actually need to do, not just what they need to know. You really can’t develop people if you’re not having them perform and getting feedback. You also need to understand  why this is needed, why it’s important, and why it’s interesting. It is, at least to the subject matter experts who’ve invested the time to  be experts in this…

Your process also needs to have those creative breaks. These are far better if they’re collaborative, at least at the times when you’re ideating. While ideally you have a team working together on an ongoing basis, in many cases that may be problematic. I suggest getting together at least at the ideating stage, and then after testing to review findings.

You’ll also want to be testing against criteria. At the analysis stage, you should design criteria that will determine when you’re ‘done’. When you run out of time and money is  not the right answer! Test usability first, then effectiveness, and then engagement. Yes, you want to quantify engagement. It doesn’t have to be ‘adrenaline in the blood’ or even galvanic skin response, subjective evaluations by your learners is just fine. If you are running out of time and money before you’re achieving your metrics, you can adjust them, but now you’re doing it on consciously, not implicitly.

I’m sure there more that I’m missing, but these strike me as some critical ID/LXD differences. There are differences in principle, which yield differences in practice. What are your thoughts?

Shameless self-promotion

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We interrupt your usual blog fodder with this commercial announcement. Our programming will resume after this break:

Me with the bookOk, well, there actually is some shame. I don’t usually do this, but I don’t think it’s unjustified (and I’m excited). My next book is now  out!  In fact, it’s in my mitts. Obviously, it can be in yours, too. Now, there’s a screwup in the printing, but it’s minor (and possibly a blessing)? Anyway, it’s time for some shameless self-promotion.

So,  Make It  Meaningful: Taking Learning Design from Instructional to Transformational is designed to complement the learning science books by providing the other half of the Learning Experience Design (LXD) story. I believe LXD is the  elegant integration of learning science and engagement. The former’s well covered; this addresses the latter (and the integration). I immodestly think it’s a substantive contribution.

However, while the book looks great (to my admittedly biased eye), the title didn’t make it onto the spine! It’ll look a touch weird on your shelf. On the other hand, presuming that’s fixed (working on it), that means that any current versions will be collector’s items, right? Well, maybe…(looking for silver linings).

As a side note that I’ll be running a workshop on this topic at the DevLearn conference in Las Vegas in October. I’ll also be running a LXD design workshop online to accompany the conference in August.

So that’s it, my almost shameless self-promotion. You can check out more about it here or  here.

We now return you to your usual blog, (p)resuming next week at the same bat time, bat channel.  

The cognitive basis of LXD

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Image of the brainWhen ATD asked me to write the learning science book, I’d already had the intention of writing a Learning Experience Design (LXD) book. I’d even begun, and the first section on learning was underway, so essentially I was partly done! I’d also realized that it was going to be monumental undertaking. This is because LXD, to me, encompasses three things, all based on cognitive science. To properly address it, I would have to be talking a master’s course, not just a book!. So here I’d like to make the case why I think that there’s a cognitive basis of LXD.

First, look at the three elements of LXD: learning, experience, and design. For experience, you can think: engagement and/or emotion. That is, ensuring that there’re explicit feelings associated, not just occurrences. Each one of those three things, then, has a cognitive underpinning.

As I’ve discussed previously, learning science was an outgrowth of cognitive science. The inter-disciplinary approach to cognition that inspired the formation of cognitive science subsequently led to learning science. Design, too, was a subject of study. I happened to be a grad student at the time that user-centered approaches, subsequently UX, were being explored. This, too, is cognitive; first because design approaches have to reflect aligning with how users brains work. Then, also, because design processes have to accommodate how designers brains work, and don’t!

Then we come to the experience side. It turns out that understanding ‘experience’ is a cognitive exercise as well. Why are we driven by curiosity? How come we remember emotionally-charged events better? What creates positive affect? It’s an interdisciplinary approach as well, integrating research on emotion and events and more. It’s the topic of my just-released book (which includes design as well, to serve as the complement to my learning science book).

I continue to explore all three, from a professional responsibility and personal interest. I admit I nerd out about these things, and am always eager to find out more and discuss it. And  I’ve do have  a bias. My Ph.D. is in Cog Psych, so I do look at world with that filter. But I also see that the perspective provides some useful leverage. My current ideal is to make experiences that are transformative, in that they change people in ways that they want, or need, to change. That’s the goal.

I will continue to maintain that knowing the underpinning architecture, and then the manifestations in the three areas, are important. I believe that knowing the cognitive basis of LXD is an advantage in being able to execute against the requirements in optimal ways. So, am I missing anything?

 

Gamification or…

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On my walk yesterday, I was reflecting on our You Oughta Know with Christy Tucker  (a great session, as usual), who talked about scenarios. It got me pondering, in particular, about different interpretations of ‘gamification‘. As I dictated a note to myself as I walked (probably looking like one of those folks who holds phone calls on their perambulations), I found myself discussing the differences between two approaches. So here’re some thoughts on gamification or the alternative.

To start, let’s say we have a learning goal. For instance, how to deal with customers. A typical approach would be, after an initial course, to stream out questions about different aspects of the principles. For this, you might give points after correctly answering n. Once you answer n, you get X points (10, 100, 1000, whatever). 2n gets you 2X points or maybe 3X. These points may entitle you to prizes: swag, time off, office party. Pretty typical gamification stuff.

Then, consider an alternative: they do successively more challenging scenarios. That is, initially it’s an easy customer with a straightforward problem. Then, it’s a mix of more difficult customers with simple problems and easy customers with more difficult problems. Finally, you’re dealing with difficult customers  and difficult problems. Along the way, you give badges for successive levels of customer difficulty, and similarly for handling increasing levels of difficulty of problems.

Which of these is easier to implement? Will one or the other lead to better handling of customers? Which will lead to long-term engagement of your employees? Of course, these are extremes. You can have the questions in the ‘prize’ situation get steadily more challenging. They can even be written as ‘mini-scenarios’. You can mix in scenarios with knowledge questions.

What I want to suggest, however, is that  not doing the latter, the scenarios, is going to keep any initiative from having the biggest impact. They’re competency-based, providing explicit levels of capability. They’re also a chance to practice when it doesn’t matter, before it does.

This shouldn’t stand alone. Of course there should be coaching, and increasing responsibility, and more. It’s not about just the formal learning. Extending the learning experience should include both formal and informal mechanisms. The point I want to make, however, is that having learners perform in practice they way they’ll need to perform when it matters, is the best preparation. Yes, you need knowledge (the stuff that, increasingly, AI can handle), but then you need meaningful practice.

Of course, if it’s something you do frequently after the learning experience, coaching may be enough. However, if aspects of it are rare but important, scenarios are the important reactivation practice that will keep skills tuned. So, that’s my take on gamification or alternates. How would you fine tune my response?

Pre-order for Make It Meaningful now available

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I’m happy to report that the ebook version of my next tome, Make It Meaningful: Taking Learning Design From Instructional to Transformational, is now available for pre-order! Why should you care?  Here’s a pass at explaining, and you can decide whether a pre-order for Make It Meaningful  makes sense for you.

Why this book?

Here’s the marketing blurb:

Learning Experience Design is, as author Clark Quinn puts it, about “the elegant integration of learning science with engagement”. While there are increasing resources available on the learning science side, the other side is somewhat neglected. Having written one of the books on the learning science side, Clark has undertaken to write the other half. The book is grounded in his early experience writing learning games, then researching cognition and engagement, and ongoing exploration and application of learning, technology, and design to creating solutions and strategies. It covers the underlying principles including surprise, story, and emotion and pulls them together to create a coherent approach. The book also covers not just the principles, but the implications for both learning elements and a design process. With concise prose and concrete examples, this book provides the framework to take your learning experience designs from instructional to transformational!

I hope that suggests why I think it’s important. Further, here are the short versions of what some early readers had to say:

“…the right emotional engagement tactics can be effective, desirable difficulties. The book explains why and how, with good examples.”
Patti Shank, PhD Author of Write Better Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess Learning

“… the notion of engagement, and its true meaning, is like the mysterious fifth element waiting to be discovered and summoned through three words in this book: Make. It. Meaningful.”
Zsolt Olah, Senior Learning Technologist, Amazon

“…systematically reveals the secret sauce for creating impactful learning experiences…brings to light the missing emotional design dimension that separates instructional design from LXD. Highly recommended..!”
Les Howles, Co-Author, Designing the Online Learning Experience

“As a fan of Clark Quinn‘s books, I‘m happy to announce this is another winner. Make It Meaningful closes a gaping hole in instructional design models by showing how to address the emotions in learning design.”
Connie Malamed, Publisher of theelearningcoach.com

Going a wee bit further…

What’s included

There are two sections, the first on principles, the second on practice. Initially I cover a bit of basics about learning, how to ‘hook’ people, then how to extend the experience, and some tips and tricks. In the subsequent section I consider the implications for the different elements of learning design: introduction, concepts, examples, practice, and closing, and then the amendments to your design process to incorporate the necessary elements. Thus, I’m trying to be thorough.

Who this is for

This is a book for those who already know the basics of science-grounded design, and are looking to take their learning experience design to the next level. It’s about addressing the emotional side. To be sure, it  also  makes mention of the cognitive essentials, but it is first and foremost focused on the emotional side.

What else should you know?

This is the first offering from the Learning Development Accelerator (LDA)  offshoot, LDA Press. (Note: as Editor-In-Chief, I’m biased.) In my own words:

LDA Press, an imprint of the Learning & Development Accelerator, is a boutique publisher focusing on evidence-informed titles that fill needed gaps in the literature while offering authors the relationship they deserve.

Hopefully, my experience with publishers (as author and consultant), is a good start. Then, the rigor of academic training in writing and reading should provide a reasonable expectation of quality. Additionally, I’m also looking to make the prose comprehensible. Finally, we’ve engaged professional copy-editing. We’ll see how that plays out, but so far it’s seems like we’re on track. Also, we’re actively soliciting additional needed works.

A further point: we’re keeping costs low. Thus, print copies of Meaningful  will be 22.99 (discount for LDA members), and the ebook is only $10.99 (also a discount for LDA members), plus there’s a special discount for pre-orders! The book releases 16 May, both ebook and print, but the latter may take awhile since orders will only be available on that date.

I think this book is needed, and immodestly believe it’s one that I am capable to write. At any rate, now you know you can make a pre-order for Make It Meaningful. Whether that makes sense for you is something only you can determine.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…