Learnlets

Designing with science

17 July 2018 by Clark 1 Comment

How should we design? It’s all well and good to spout principles, but putting them into practice is another thing. While we always would like to follow learning science, there’re not always all the answers we need. I was thinking about this with a project I’m working on, and it occurred to me that there might be some confusion. So I thought I’d share how I like to think and go about it, and see what you think.

So, first of all, you should go with the science. There are good principles around in a variety of forms. Some good guidance comes in books such as:

eLearning & the Science of Instruction (Clark & Mayer)
Design for How People Learn (Dirksen)
the Make it Learnable series (Shank)
and less directly but no less applicably, Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning

There’s also ATD’s Science of Learning topic (with some good and some less good stuff). And the 3 Star Learning site. Both of these, of course, aren’t as comprehensive as a book. And, of course, you can also go right to the pure journals, like Instructional Science, and Learning Sciences, and the like, if you are fluent in academese. For that matter, I’ve a video course that is about Deeper Instructional Design, e.g. a design approach with learning science ‘baked in’.

But what I was thinking of what happens when they don’t address the specific concern you are wondering about. The second approach I recommend is theory. In particular, Cognitive Apprenticeship (my favorite model; Collins & Brown), or other theories like Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth), Pebble in a Pond (Merrill), or 4 Component ID (Van MerriÃ«nboer). Or, arguably more modern, something from Jonassen on problem-based learning or other more social constructivist approaches. They’re based on empirical data, but pulled together, and you can often make inferences in between the principles. While the next step is arguably better, in the real world you want a scrutable approach but one that gets you moving forward the fastest.

Finally, you test. If science and theory can’t provide the answer, you either wing it, but it’s better if you set up an experiment. Ideally, with your sample population. So, for instance, you don’t know whether to place the learner’s role in the simulation game as a consultant to many orgs or as a role in one org with many situations. There’re tradeoffs: in the former it’s easier to provide multiple contexts for practice, but the latter may be more closely aligned with job performance. You can test it, and see what learners think about the experience. Of course, it may be that in the process of just designing both that you have some insight. And that’s ok.

And, if you’re a reflective practitioner (and we should be), you might share your findings. What did you learn? Learning science advances to the extent that we continue to explore and test. Speaking of which, how does this approach match with what you do?

Organizational Psychology?

13 July 2018 by Clark 1 Comment

I read an article calling for organizational psychology and the things these folks do for companies. And, interestingly, many of the tasks seem like things that I’ve been calling for L&D to do. So now I have to ask what’s the relationship between these two areas?

My background is psychology, specifically the cognitive kind (ok more cog sci than just psych, but still). And so I’ve been pushing the idea of doing a cognitive analysis of organizations, and incorporating new understandings of cognition in how we run our companies, and more. The point being that we need to align how our organizations operate with how our brains do.

In a sense, then, I’m arguing for a psychological approach to organizations. This includes best principles across the board: working together, learning alone, etc. Yet, I’m typically talking to and about Learning & Development (even when I argue it needs a revolution). Am I missing the forest for the trees?

Now, it’s clear that the formal role of organizational psychology is bigger. It’s about hiring, and incentives, and occupational stress and a number of other things that I normally don’t consider. And, it doesn’t seem to be much about technology, the approaches to innovation seem limited, and some of the things it investigates seem more like outcomes. Yet it also includes training & workforce development, culture, and more.

I also have to say that it’s history seems to be in behavioral psychology. It appears (on the surface, mind you) to be a bit mired in thinking linearly, not networked. Of course, I’m probably biased here, and this is true for L&D too! There’re probably pockets of modernity as well.

So is L&D a subset? I really don’t know. I’d like to hear what you have to say on it. Perhaps my arguments really are (cognitive) organizational psychology. In another sense, I’m not sure it’s important. It’s not so much where you come from as what you are about, and the methods you use. Still, this is a question I’d like to hear thoughts on. Is there a definitive answer?

Why L&D Should Lead

10 July 2018 by Clark 1 Comment

So, I’ve seen a bright future for L&D. It’s possible, and desirable. But is it defensible? I want to suggest that it is. L&D should be the business unit with the best understanding of our brains (except, perhaps, in a neurology company, e.g. medical, or a cognitive company, e.g. AI). And I’ve argued that’s a key role. So, if we grasp that nettle and lead the change, we could and should be leading the way to a brighter new future for organizational success.

Look, cognitive science is somewhat complex. In fact, the human brain is arguably the most complex thing in the known universe! However, we have a good understanding of cognition for the purposes of guiding learning and performance in the workplace. Or, as I like to say, understanding how we think, work, and learn. Moreover, we really can’t (and shouldn’t) be doing our jobs unless we have that knowledge. (I have a workshop that can help. ;)

Now, it’s also becoming a cliche that the organizations that learn fastest will be the ones that thrive (not just survive, or not!). We must learn, individually and together. And knowing how to have people work and play well together, representing, reflecting, collaborating, and more should be L&D’s role. We should be the ones who know the most and best about how to do those things in consonance with how our cognitive architecture works.

And, to be clear, there are lots of practices in organizations that are contrary to the best learning. Fear, lack of time for reflection, micro-management, old-school brainstorming, the list goes on. Without knowledge, we may firmly be convinced we’re doing it right, and instead undermining the best outcomes! (One way to tell if it’s safe to share in your org: put in a social network. If no one participates…) On the flip side, there are lots of practices that science tells us work. Details around formal learning, creating spaces for informal learning, practices for short-term and long-term innovation, etc.

We have an uphill battle gaining the credibility we need, but I say start now, and start small. Instill the practices within L&D, take ownership of the necessary skills and knowledge, make it work, document it, and then use that success as a stepping stone to spread the word.

Then, if we are doing that facilitation of learning, you should be able to see that we are enabling the most important work in the organization! We can be the key to org success, going forward. L&D should lead the change. That’s the vision I see, at least. Does this sound good and make sense to you?

The ITA Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2018: Mark Britz

5 July 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

In honor of the colleague, mentor, and friend that brought us together, every year the Internet Time Alliance presents the Jay Cross Memorial Award. The award is for an individual who represents the spirit of continuing informal learning for the workplace. This year, Mark Britz is the deserving recipient.

Jay was a fierce champion of social and informal learning. He saw that most of how we learn to do what we do comes from interacting with others. As a response to his untimely passing, the remaining members of the ITA decided to honor his memory with an award. Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, & myself each year collectively decide an individual who we think best reflects Jay’s vision. And we announce the recipient on the 5th of July, Jay’s birthday.

Mark has resonated and amplified the message of ongoing learning since we first crossed paths. He has interacted with the ITA members regularly via tweets, blogs, and in person when possible. And we’ve appreciated his engagement with the ideas and his contributions to our thinking.

I got to know Mark’s thinking a bit better when he wrote a case study based upon his work at Systems Made Simple for the Revolution book (Jay wrote the foreword). And he’s continued to blog about workplace learning at The Simple Shift with short but insightful posts. Currently part of the team running events for the eLearning Guild, Mark manages to consistently touts views that illuminate thinking about the new workplace.

The situation he cites in that case study is exemplary of this type of thinking. Charged with starting a corporate ‘university’ in an organization that was composed of many experts, he knew that ‘courses’ weren’t going to be a viable approach. Instead, he championed and built a social network that pulled these experts together to share voices. The core L&D role was one of facilitating communication and collaboration, rather than presenting information.

For his continuing work promoting communication, collaboration, and continual learning, we recognize Mark’s efforts with the 2018 Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award.

Silly Design

3 July 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

Time for a brief rant on interface designs. Here we’re talking about two different situations, one device, and and one interface. And, hopefully, we can extract some lessons, because these are just silly design decisions.

First up is our timer. And it’s a good timer, and gets lots of use. Tea, rice, lots of things. And, sometimes, a few things at a time. As you can see, there’re 3 timers. And, as far as I know, we’ve only used at most two at a time. So what’s the problem?

Well, there’re different beeps signaling the end of different timers. And that’s a good thing. Mostly. But there’s one very very silly design decision here. Let me tell you that one has one beep, one has two beeps, and one has three. So, guess which number of beeps goes to which timer? You can see they’re numbered…

Got your guess? It’d be sensible, of course, if the one beep went with the first timer, and two beeps went with the second. But you know we’re not going there! Nope, the first timer has two beeps. The second timer has 3 beeps. And the 3rd timer, of course, has one.

It’s a principle called ‘mapping’ (see Don Norman’s essential reading for anyone who designs for people: The Design of Everyday Things). In it, you make the mapping logical, so for instance between the number of the timer and the number of beeps. How could you get this wrong? (Cliche cue: you had one job…)

On to our second of today’s contestants, the iTunes interface. Now, everyone likes to bash iTunes, and either it’s a bad design for what it’s doing, or it shouldn’t be trying to do too many things. I’m not going there today, I’m going off on something else.

I’ve always managed the files on the qPad through iTunes. It used to be straightforward, but they changed it. Of course. There’re also more ways to do it: AirDrop & iFiles being two. And, frankly, they’re both somewhat confusing. But that’s not my concern today. The new way I use is only a slight modification on the old way, which is why I use it. And it works. But there’s a funny little hiccup…

So, there are two ways to bring up a list of things on your iPad. For one, you select it from the device picture at the top (to the right of the forward/back arrows), and you see a list of things you can access/adjust: music, movies, etc. As you see to the left.

On the other hand (to the right), you select it from a list of devices, and you get the drop down you see to the right. Note that the lists aren’t the same.

Wait, they’re not the same? No, only one has “File Sharing”! So, you have to remember which way to access the device before you can choose to add a file. This is just silly! Only recently have I started remembering which way works (bad design, BTW, trusting to memory), and before that I had to explore. It’s not much, just an extra click, but it’s unnecessary memory load.

The overhead isn’t much, to be clear, but it’s still irritating. Why, why would you have two different ways to access the device, and not have the same information come up? It’s just silly! Moreover, it violates a principle. Here, the principle is consistency (and, arguably, affordances). When you access a device, you expect to be able to manipulate the device. And you don’t expect that two different ways to get to what should be the same place would yield two different suites of information. (And don’t even get me started about the stupid inconsistencies between the mobile and web app versions of LinkedIn!)

At least if you haven’t communicated a clear model about why the one way is different than the other. But it’s not there. It’s a seemingly arbitrary list. We operate on models, but there’s no obvious way to discriminate between these two, so the models are random. Choosing the device, either way, is supposed to access the device. That’s the affordance. Unless you convey clearly why these are different.

This holds for learning too. Interface folks argued that Gloria Gery’s Electronic Performance Support Systems were really making up for bad design. And so, too, is much training. Don argued in his The Invisible Computer that UI should be up front in product design, because they could catch the design decisions that would make it more difficult to use. I want to argue that it’s the same with the training folks: they should be up front in product or service design to catch decisions that will confuse the audience and require extra support costs.

Design, learning or product/service, works best when it aligns with how our brains work. If we own that knowledge, we can then lobby to apply it, and help make our organizations more successful. If we can make happier users, and less support costs, we should. And as Kathy Sierra suggests, really it’s all about learning.

Microlearning Malarkey

27 June 2018 by Clark 7 Comments

Someone pointed me to a microlearning post, wondering if I agreed with their somewhat skeptical take on the article. And I did agree with the skepticism. Further, it referenced another site with worse implications. And I think it’s instructive to take these apart. They are emblematic of the type of thing we see too often, and it’s worth digging in. We need to stop this sort of malarkey. (And I don’t mean microlearning as a whole, that’s another issue; it’s articles like this one that I’m complaining about.)

The article starts out defining microlearning as small bite-sized chunks. Specifically: “learning that has been designed from the bottom up to be consumed in shorter modules.” Well, yes, that’s one of the definitions. To be clear, that’s the ‘spaced learning’ definition of microlearning. Why not just call it ‘spaced learning’?

It goes on to say “each chunk lasts no more than five-then minutes.” (I think they mean 10). Why? Because attention. Um, er, no. I like JD Dillon‘s explanation: it needs to be as long as it needs to be, and no longer.

That attention explanation? It went right to the ‘span of a goldfish’. Sorry, that’s debunked (for instance, here ;). That data wasn’t from Microsoft, it came from a secondary service who got it from a study on web pages. Which could be due to faster pages, greater experience, other explanations. But not a change in our attention (evolution doesn’t happen that fast and attention is too complex for such a simple assessment). In short, the original study has been misinterpreted. So, no, this isn’t a good basis for anything having to do with learning. (And I challenge you to find a study determining the actual attention span of a goldfish.)

But wait, there’s more! There’s an example using the ‘youtube’ explanation of microlearning. OK, but that’s the ‘performance support’ definition of microlearning, not the ‘spaced learning’ one. They’re two different things! Again, we should be clear about which one we’re talking about, and then be clear about the constraints that make it valid. Here? Not happening.

The article goes on to cite a bunch of facts from the Journal of Applied Psychology. That’s a legitimate source. But they’re not pulling all the stats from that, they’re citing a secondary site (see above) and it’s full of, er, malarkey. Let’s see…

That secondary site is pulling together statistics in ways that are thoroughly dubious. It starts citing the journal for one piece of data, that’s a reasonable effect (17% improvement for chunking). But then it goes awry. For one, it claims playing to learner preferences is a good idea, but the evidence is that learners don’t have good insight into their own learning. There’s a claim of 50% engagement improvement, but that’s a mismanipulation of the data where 50% of people would like smaller courses. That doesn’t mean you’ll get 50% improvement. They also make a different claim about appropriate length than the one above – 3-7 minutes – but their argument is unsound too. It sounds quantitative, but it’s misleading. They throw in the millennial myth, too, just for good measure.

Back to the original article, it cites a figure not on the secondary site, but listed in the same bullet list: “One minute of video content was found to be equal to about 1.8 million written words”. WHAT? That’s just ridiculous. 1.8 MILLION?!?!? Found by who? Of course, there’s no reference. And the mistakes go on. The other two bullet points aren’t from that secondary site either, and also don’t have cites. The reference, however could mislead you to believe that the rest of the statistics were also from the journal!

Overall, I’m grateful to the correspondent who pointed me to the article. It’s hype like both of these that mislead our field, undermine our credibility, and waste our resources. And it makes it hard for those trying to sell legitimate services within the boundaries of science. It’s important to call this sort of manipulation out. Let’s stop the malarkey, and get smart about what we’re doing and why.

Top 10 Learning Tools 2018

26 June 2018 by Clark 1 Comment

Every year of late, Jane Hart has polled about people’s top 10 learning tools. From this, she creates a list of the top 100 learning tools. It’s a fun and valuable exercise, so as usual I’ll weigh in with mine (in no particular order). Looking at last year’s post, I see I’ve switched from Google to DuckDuckGo (privacy issues), and from Skype to Zoom (functionality). And I mention email over Slack, the former of which I may not always mention but use, versus Slack which has kind of slowed down for me.

DuckDuckGo: a search engine is my first recourse when I have questions. And not liking the tracking, I’ve switched and made DDG my default.
Twitter: drinking from the fire hose that is twitter is one way I see what other people are talking about. And share what I discover.
Mail: I still use email (yeah, I know). I talk to people that way, and respond to requests, but also get questions answered and pointers to things. (I’m bad about using the phone, mea culpa.)
GoodReader: I use GoodReader on my iPad to read longish PDFs, white papers, and things. Also to read and mark up the journal or conference submissions I review. Or for requests for colleagues.
MS Word: writing is one of the first ways I make sense of the world. Articles, columns, books. And they all get written in Word. I wouldn’t mind disentangling myself, but it’s pretty much a lingua franca and has industrial-strength outlining, which I rely on for longer writing.
WordPress (e.g. this blog): is the other way I write and make sense of the world. It gets autoposted to LinkedIn and Facebook (at least, notifications), so comments there or here are a way for me to learn.
Keynote is the presentation tool I use, and I create the stories I present at conferences in Keynote.
OmniOutliner: another tool I use to be organized is OmniOutliner. Outlines are great ways for me to think in, or even just related columns. I can’t see how to do the outline function as well in something like a spreadsheet, or I would, because the columns in OO are, well, very expensive to upgrade.
Omnigraffle: another way I make sense is to diagram. And…while I’m a bit grumbly at their support right now, OmniGraffle is still my ‘go to’ tool for this. I don’t need all the power, and it’s expensive, but I haven’t found a replacement yet that works as intuitively.
Zoom: I’ve pretty much switched to Zoom over Skype, so talking to my ITA colleagues, or having video chats with folks is most often through Zoom these days.

Please do share your list, too!

A good publisher

20 June 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

I shot this short little video because, well, I have to say that my experience with ATD has been excellent. They’ve done what I’ve needed: listening when they should, arguing with me when they should, responding to my questions, and executing on their responsibilities professionally. They’ve gone above and beyond, and I’m pleased to have them as my publisher on my most recent tome.

If you’re going to complain about the bad things (or, at least, make fun of them :), I reckon you should highlight the good ones too. They showed their capabilities while serving as co-publisher on my last book, and now they’ve demonstrated the whole deal. Thanks, team!

A solid education platform

19 June 2018 by Clark 4 Comments

In the past couple of days, I’ve come across two different initiatives to improve education. And certainly our education system can stand improvement. However, each one had the same major flaw, and leaves open an opportunity for improvement not to occur. Over a number of engagements I’ve developed the basis of what I think is a necessary foundation for a viable education platform. It’s time to toss it out and see what you all think.

So, one initiative had a proposal of 10 different areas they wanted people to contribute in. This included AI, and personalization, and ‘out of class’ credit, and more. Which is all good, make no mistake! However, nowhere was there the option of ‘a deeper pedagogy’. And that’s a problem. It’s all too easy to chase after the latest shiny object. It makes us feel like we’re both doing something constructive and keeping up with developments. (Not to mention how much fun it is to play with the latest things.) However, gilding bad design is still bad design! We need to make sure the foundation is strong before we go further.

The other initiative has three ways to contribute: lifelong learning, a marketplace, and emerging technology. And, again, the big gap is talking about the pedagogy to begin with. With a marketplace, you might get some Darwinian selection process, but why not put it out there from the get-go? Otherwise, it’s just cool tinkering around a broken core.

So here’s where I pitch my 3 part story. Note that curriculum is broken too (I’m channeling Roger Schank: ‘Only two things wrong with education, what we teach and how we teach it’), and yet I’m not addressing that. Well, only a second layer of curriculum (see below ;). I think the choice of the first level curriculum is a big issue, but that changes depending on level, goals, etc. Here I’m talking about a platform for delivering the necessary elements of a supportable approach:

The first element is a killer learning experience. What do I mean here? I mean an application-based learning approach. Even for so-called theory classes (e.g. typical higher ed), you do something with this. And the experience is based upon minimal content, appropriate challenge, intrinsic motivation, and more. My claim: this is doable, even when you want to auto-mark as much as possible. Of course, there are still people in the loop.
Which leads to the second element, we as the provider are a partner in your success. It’s not ‘sink or swim’, but instead we’re tracking your progress, intervening when it looks like you’re struggling, and accessible at your time and place. We’re also providing the necessary resources to succeed. And we’re not interested in a curve, we’re competency-based and want everyone to get where they can be. We’re also making sure you’re getting what you need.
And that’s the third element, we develop you. That is, we’re not just developing your knowledge of the field, we’re also developing key success skills. That means we’re giving you chances to practice those skills as well, and tracking them and developing them as well. This includes things like communication, collaboration, design research, and more. So-called 21C skills.

I suggest that with such an approach, and the right curriculum, you’re providing a full suite of what education should be about. And, I suggest, we can do this now, affordably. Technology is part of the picture, learning science is part of the picture, and the commitment to do the right thing is part of the picture. Also, I think this is viable at all levels. K12, higher ed, and workplace.

And, I’ll suggest, anything less really isn’t defensible. We have the know-how, we have the tools, all we need is the will. Yet, despite some notable steps in the right direction, we’re really not there. It’s time to put a stake in the ground. Who’s up for it?

Game Results

13 June 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

The game we designed (as I talked about yesterday), Quest for Independence, was actually a fair bit of a hit. While we couldn’t talk to kids still, anecdotally we heard that the kids were playing it. And, as the design intended, it led them to talk to the Care counselors. That was good enough, but there was more.

First, the Aussie science program Quantum had a bit on it. They even interviewed me (with a big production about bringing stuff to our house), but never used the footage. They also couldn’t talk to the kids ‘in care’, but it turns out Quest was being used by kids not in care! High schools were using it to explore life after school as well. That was a nice outcome.

Another occurrence brought new action. Sometime after the game launched, I became aware of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) standard for the web. What this did was allowed web pages to do backend processing based upon user actions, and then programmatically change the front end. In short, web pages could react based upon what had happened before.

For Quest, this meant that we could port it to the web! That is, you started the game, the player’s actions were sent to the web, the program could calculate the outcome and render an appropriate new page, with the graphics assembled to represent the game variables, the current location, and more. This was exciting.

And, again, I had a student wanting to do a project. So the project was to take the game graphics, and the programming, and make the game web-playable. And lo, it was done; the game could be played over the web. Most wonderfully, it still can be! (Yay, standards!)

Naturally, I wrote it up (with the student; a principle I always stuck to: even if I usually ended up writing it all, they got credit for their work and ideas). And, as far as I know, it was the very first web-delivered serious game. At the least, without Flash.

The underlying principles in the game also became part of a couple of chapters, and ultimately the alignment between effective education and engaging experiences formed the core of my book on serious game design, Engaging Learning.

One final reflection is that working on this, on a project that really helped real kids, was still one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on. It’s nice to help clients deliver outcomes, but saving lives that were at risk? That’s just too good. Anyone up for some more ‘hard fun’?

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