Learnlets

Social ROI?

14 January 2014 by Clark 7 Comments

Ok, so I’ve been thinking about this, but not sure what the current state of play is. Someone was stating that talking about ROI of the social network was important but hard to do now, and essentially wondered if there was new thinking in this area. So let me ask the question.

So I’m calling out L&D because they’re only measuring efficiency when they should be measuring impact. You look at measures used to evaluate the industry, and they’re things like cost/time/seat. Which is potentially a useful measure, but only after you’ve decided that having a bum in the seat is having a positive impact on the organization. If you’re not doing something measurable – decreasing time to close sales or increasing the number of problems resolved accurately on the first call – it doesn’t matter how efficient you are!

With social media, I believe it’s the same thing. If we put in social media and facilitate discussion in engineering, we’d expect a different impact than in manufacturing. In engineering we might get less time to design a requested feature, and in manufacturing we might increase usable yield. It really doesn’t matter if you’re seeing more use of the system, more messages or connections or what have you, if you’re not seeing an impact. Of course, if you can correlate them, all the better.

Sure, we also might affect indirect metrics – retention, workplace satisfaction, or customer satisfaction – with tangible value, but our real focus should be on direct metrics. If creating a more effective culture for sharing, and sharing is supposed to lead to better outcomes, it sure would be nice to demonstrate those benefits. I guess my experience with instructional design – if you design it according to the formula, it is good – leads me to some skepticism that we can just trust the outcome.

So, is this obvious, or are we still wrestling with this? Other opinions?

Making Mobile Mayhem

8 January 2014 by Clark 3 Comments

As I suggested in my post on directions for the year, I intend to be stirring up a bit of trouble here and there. On a less formal basis, I want to suggest that another area where we need a little more light and a little less heat (and smoke) is mobile. There is huge opportunity here, and I am afraid we are squandering it.

We’re doing a lot wrong when it comes to mobile. As Jason Haag has aptly put it, elearning courses on a phone (or tablet) is mobile elearning, not mobile learning (aka mlearning). And while there’s an argument for mobile elearning (at least on tablets), and strong case for augmenting formal learning with mobile (regardless of device), mobile elearning is not mlearning’s natural niche.

mLearning’s natural niche is performance support, whether through content (interactive or not), or social. Think about how you use your phone? When I ask this of attendees, they’re using them to get information in the moment, or find their way, or capture information. They’re not using them to take courses!

So we need to be thinking outside the course. To help, we need case studies, across business sectors, and across the areas. Which means we need people to be getting their hands on development tools.

Which is a second problem: the tools that are easiest to use are being used to create courses. The elearning tools we use are increasingly having mobile output, but it’s too easy to then just output courses. It turns out one of the phenomena that characterize our brains is ‘functional fixedness’, we use a tool in the way we’ve used it before. Yet we can use these tools to do other things. And there are tools more oriented towards performance support. Anything that creates content or interactivity can be used to build performance support, but we have to be doing it!

There’s more that we need to be doing in the background – content, governance, strategy – but we need to get our minds around mobile solutions to contextual needs, and start delivering the resources people need. Mobile is big; the devices are out there, and they’re a platform for so much; we need to capitalize.

The place where you’re going to be able to see the case studies and explore the tools and start getting your mind around mobile will be this summer’s mLearnCon (in San Diego in June!). And you really should be going. Also, if you are doing mobile, you really should be submitting to present. We need more examples, more ideas, more experience! (If you need help writing a proposal, I’ve already written a guide.)

Really, presenting is a great contribution to yourself and the industry, and we really could use it. Help us make mobile mayhem by showing the way. Or, of course, join us at the conference to get ready to mix it up. Hope to see you there.

2014 Directions

1 January 2014 by Clark Leave a Comment

In addition to time for reflection on the past, it’s also time to look forward. A number of things are already in the queue, and it’s also time to see what I expect and hope for.

The events already queued up include:

ASTD’s TechKnowledge 2014, January 22-24 in Las Vegas, where I’ll be talking on aligning L&D with organizational needs (hint hint).

NexLearn’s Immersive Learning University conference, January 27-30 in Charleston, SC, where I’ll be talking about the design of immersive learning experiences.

Training 2014, in San Diego February 2 – 5, where I’ll be running a workshop on advanced instructional design, and talking on learning myths.

The eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions will be in Orlando March 17-21, where I’ll be running a 1 day elearning strategy workshop, as well as offering a session on informal elearning.

That’s all that is queued up so far, but stay tuned. And, of course, if you need someone to speak…

You can tell by the topics I’m speaking on as to what I think are going to be, or should be, the hot issues this year. And I’ll definitely be causing some trouble. Several areas I think are important and I hope that there’ll be some traction:

Obviously, I think it’s past time to be thinking mobile, and I should have a chapter on the topic in the forthcoming ASTD Handbook Ed.2. Which also is seen in my recent chapter on the topic in the Really Useful eLearning Instruction Manual. I think this is only going to get more important, going forward, as our tools catch up. It’s not like the devices aren’t already out there!

A second area I’m surprised we still have to worry about it good elearning design. I’m beginning to see more evidence that people are finally realizing that knowledge dump/test is a waste of time and money. I’m also part of a forthcoming effort to address it, which will also manifest in the aforementioned second edition of the ASTD Handbook.

I’m quite convinced that L&D has a bigger purpose than we’re seeing, which is naturally the topic of my next book. I think that the writing is on the wall, and what is needed is some solid grounding in important concepts and a path forward. The core point is that we should be looking from a perspective of not just supporting organizational performance via optimal execution, with (good) formal learning and performance support, but also facilitation of continual innovation and development. I think that L&D can, and must address this, strategically.

So, of course, I think that we still have quite a ways to go in terms of capitalizing on social, the work I’ve been advocating with my ITA colleagues. They’ve been a boon to my thinking in this space, and they’re driving forward (Charles with the 70:20:10 Forum, Jane with her next edition of the Social Learning Handbook, Harold with Change Agents Worldwide, and Jay continues with the Internet Time Group). Yet there is still a long ways to go, and lots of opportunity for improvement.

An area that I’m excited about is the instrumentation of what we do to start generating data we can investigate, and analytics to examine what we find. This is having a bit of a bubble (speaking of cutting through hype with affordances, my take is that “big data” isn’t the answer, big insights are), but the core idea is real. We need to be measuring what we’re doing against real business needs, and we now have the capability to do it.

And an area I hope we’ll make some inroads on are the opportunities provided by a sort-of ‘content engineering‘ and leveraging that for customized and contextual experiences. This is valuable for mobile, but does beyond to a much richer opportunity that we have the capability to take advantage of, if we can only muster the will. I expect this will lag a bit, but doing my best to help raise awareness.

There’s much more, so here’s to making things better in the coming year! I hope to have a chance to talk and work with you about positive changes. Here’s hoping your new year is a great one!

2013 Reflections

31 December 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

It’s appropriate to look back at the year, here at the end of it. Reflection is a powerful and all-too-neglected tool. My year started off with a bit of travel and ended up with a lot of thought, writing, and preparation.

I started off with a bang, with two separate trips for presentations in Saudi Arabia with a few weeks of each other (phew!). The second included a paper that was a stab at rethinking formal learning: Redesigning Design (warning, PDF). It integrated my previous discussion of activity-centered learning with backwards design. And visiting foreign countries is something I enjoy, if not getting there ;).

I also presented at a wide variety of events, from regular venues like ASTD‘s TechKnowledge and ICE, and the eLearning Guild‘s Learning Solutions, mLearnCon, Performance Support Symposium, and DevLearn. More unique opportunities included the Professional Association of College Trainers and the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning. I attended Association for Educational Communications and Technology just to hear what’s happening on the academic side.

I always enjoy such opportunities. The most interesting aspect to me are the discussions that emerge after sessions, whether I’m the one presenting or I’m getting a chance to listen to someone else. The conversations in-between are also interesting, with colleagues old and new. Having a chance to mingle informally adds a valuable component to professional interactions.

Which was the driving force to attend a couple of retreats that are a different sort of professional reflection. This past year I attended Up to All of Us, and a second, similar, get together, both for the second time. These were opportunities to recharge and connect with like-minded colleagues. The ability to listen and interact in natural settings over an extended period is a separately valuable type of interaction.

Some of my best interactions came online in small groups, not least the Internet Time Alliance (the rest of you know who you are). The chance to interact with colleagues like Jay, Jane, Charles, and Harold continues to be a fabulous boon. My only regret is that we didn’t quite get things going the way I’d originally hoped we would. Despite the intellectual firepower, we didn’t converge on a unified model until too late. I admit my limitation in that I couldn’t really be prepared to ‘go to market’ until we had a core framework that would serve as the basis for tools, a book, etc. When we finally did, it was too late as everyone had gone off in their own directions, of need. The model is still important, and will be revisited in the forthcoming tome, and while it can serve as a basis for us working together (we’re still an entity, and available), but the real benefit to us is the continued opportunity to interact intellectually as well as personally.

I engaged in client work as well, of course, which is yet another powerful opportunity to learn, coupled with the opportunity to contribute. I was fortunate to engage with a variety of different organizations in facilitating design and strategy, including some mobile work. I like it when I can help clarify concepts, leading to tighter design, as well as raise the full spectrum of issues leading to more comprehensive strategies. I really enjoy getting into specific contexts, coming to grips with the issues, looking for matching models and frameworks, and systematically working through them to provide innovative solutions. Not when you’re doing the ordinary, but when you are uncertain what’s needed, or need to take it up a notch, is where I’ve been able to add real value.

I spent much of the latter part of the year working on my next book, to be out this coming year. I’m not happy with the state of the industry, nor the pace of change, so the book and another initiative (stay tuned) are a couple of stabs at trying to make things better. If you’re reading this, you’re more likely part of the solution than the problem, of course ;).

I’d also agreed to do a number of chapters in books and articles, so as soon as the book manuscript was done, I had to scramble to meet my other deadlines. As well as presentations for some of this coming year’s commitments; a topic for another post. You’ll see more writing emerging in articles, chapters, etc, soon. Duck!

Personal life was not neglected, I took a couple of weeks off this summer to travel with the family on an East Coast US History tour, from Boston, through New York City, to DC, with a side trip to Gettysburg. It was not only pleasant, but also a learning experience in many ways, both seeing new things, and seeing them through different eyes. I also spent some time in the wilderness, backpacking through Yosemite National Park, a different sort of retreat, but equally valuable. We also dealt with the passing of my mother, which was not unexpected. It’s odd to finally be the eldest, the patriarch as it were.

I have to say it was a good year, despite the challenges. And it leads me to be optimistic, looking forward, as is my wont. I hope that, as you look back on your year, you find insight, inspiration, and satisfaction.

Making sense of emerging technologies

23 December 2013 by Clark Leave a Comment

Last week I was attending the board meeting for eLearnMag, the Association of Computing Machinery’s ezine on eLearning. The goal was to bring together the board to discuss new directions. eLearnMag bridges the academic and practitioner sectors, providing an opportunity for research to inform practice, and vice-versa.

In preparation for the meeting, a survey was taken of the readership, to find what they were looking for. The top element, by far, was to keep up with emerging technologies. This makes sense in an era of increasing technology advancement, but it brings with it a worry as well.

Too often, new technologies come out with an abundance of excitement. Bluntly, there’s a lot of smoke as well as fire. Every new technology is going to be a panacea, particularly for education. Remember Virtual Worlds? They were to be the ultimate solution for all learning needs, but instead experienced a crash after a bubble of hype. Now, they’re reemerging with a more reasoned understanding of their core values.

How do we keep from being buried by hype? We need to understand the core affordances of technologies, the real capabilities brought by technology. More importantly for our purposes, we need to understand the core learning affordances. We do this by teasing out the fundamental capabilities, and then matching that to our needs.

For example, I previously took a stab at exploring the affordances of virtual worlds, and similarly for mobile. The point is to map core capabilities and emerging capabilities, and use those to evaluate technologies for supporting learning and performance.

Going forward, I implore you to try to avoid the hype, and look at the real capabilities. Look for insight, not bluster. It’s strategic in making sure technology is used appropriately, and pragmatic to avoid investing in chimeric capabilities. So, what technologies are you curious about?

Categorizing mLearning

17 December 2013 by Clark Leave a Comment

In thinking about mlearning, I have characterized the possibilities of mobile as augmenting formal, performance support, social, and contextual. It occurs to me, as I continue to think mobile, that there is another way to view it.

The realization came from the fact that you can use social for both augmenting formal learning and performance support, just as you can with content (both media files and interactive experiences). Which leads to a different way of characterizing the space. Thus, social versus content is a different cut through mobile than is formal learning versus performance support.

An interesting other cut is that you can do something contextual for any or all of these areas as well: you could provide a contextually relevant or local directory of mentors for formal social or collaborators for performance support. For formal content, you could leverage contextual elements with associated content, or even create an alternate reality game playing off the context. And for performance support, you might customize job aids to point to local resources, or provide augmented reality to annotate the world.

What I’m doing here is revising the way I cut through the space. Social plays a role in both formal and performance support, as does content. Contextual is really a third dimension in addition to the other two dimensions.The older characterization was useful for thinking through design, but I think this is conceptually cleaner.

I’m always trying to get better, and this seems more accurate. So, does it make sense to you? More importantly does this help, or only confound the space from the point of view of doing good mDesign?

Revolutionize Learning & Development

11 December 2013 by Clark 9 Comments

It has become clear that one of the things that is needed is a shakeup of Learning & Development (L&D). My simple version is that L&D isn’t doing all it could and should be doing, and what it is doing it is not doing well. The flaws are myriad

What we see are courses as the only tool in the toolbox. The LMS, rapid elearning tools, virtual classrooms, and of course the omnipresent F2F training sessions are the rule. Organizations are not doing root cause analysis or aligning with business metrics, but instead are serving as ‘order takers’. Organizations are not looking to using performance support even though it’s likely a better value than courses, let alone looking to the network as a systematic component of the solution. Worse, the courses that are being offered are largely knowledge dump/test.

And you’ve heard me go off on this before. So what more can I do? How about write a book laying out the case in more detail? Let’s say I:

document the problems with evidence
point to the things about learning and organizations that we are not paying attention to
show what it could be like if we were doing what we should be (with case studies), and
lay out a road map forward

Would that be helpful?

Well, as I’ve hinted, that’s what’s been my project for the past months. It’s gone into production, with a target date of May 2014. The title, slightly unwieldy but capturing the necessary thoughts, has been finalized:

Revolutionize Learning & Development: Performance and Innovation Strategy for the Information Age

I aim to spark the revolution, and I hope you’ll join me!

Augmenting Human Intellect: Vale Doug Engelbart

10 December 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

Somehow, I forgot to farewell one of the finest minds to cross our paths. (I was sure I had, but searching this morning found no evidence. Mea culpa.) Last night, I had the privilege of attending a Festschrift for Doug Engelbart, who passed last July, with speakers reciting the trajectory and impact of his career. And I was inspired anew by the depth of his vision.

Doug is widely known as the inventor of the mouse, but that was just an implementation detail in his broader view. His mission manifested further in the ‘mother of all demos‘, where he showed collaborative work, video conferencing, and more, working with a mouse, keyboard, and graphic display. In 1968. And yet this too was just the tangible output of a much larger project.

At a critical juncture early in his career, he took a step back and thought about what he could really contribute. He realized that the problems the world was facing were growing exponentially, and that our only hope was to learn at a similarly exponential rate, and decided that helping humans accomplish this goal was a suitable life’s work. His solution was so all-encompassing that most people only get their minds around a small bit of it.

One component was a knowledge work environment where you could connect with colleagues and collaborate together, with full access to articulated knowledge sources. And yes, this foresaw the internet, but his vision was much richer. Doug didn’t see one editor for email, another for documents, etc, he wanted one work environment. He was also willing for it to be complex, and thought using inadequate tools as riding tricycles when we should be riding road bicycles to get places. His notion was much closer to EMACS than the tools we currently use. The mouse, networks, and more were all just developments to enable his vision.

His vision didn’t stop there: he proposed co-evolution of people and technology, and wanted people developing systems to be using the tools they were building to do their work, so the technology was being built by people using the tools, bootstrapping the environment. He early on saw the necessity of bringing in diverse viewpoints and empowering people with a vision to achieve to get the best outcomes. And continual learning was a key component. To that end, he viewed not just an ongoing reflection on work processes looking for opportunities to improve, but a reflection on the reflection process; sharing between groups doing the work reflection, to collaboratively improve. He saw not just the internet, but the way we’re now seeing how best to work together.

And, let’s be clear, this isn’t all, because I have no confidence I have even a fraction of it. I certainly thought his work environment had too high a threshold to get going, and wondered why he didn’t have a more accessible onramp. It became clear last night that he wasn’t interested in reducing the power of the tools, and was happy for people to have to be trained to use the system, and that once they saw the power, they’d buy in.

To me, one of the most interesting things was that while everyone celebrated his genius, and no argument, it occurred to me to also celebrate that time he took to step aside and figure out what was worth doing and putting his mind to it. If we all took time to step back and think about what we could be doing to really make a dent, might we come up with some contributions?

I was fortunate to meet him in person during his last years, and he was not only brilliant and thoughtful, but gentle and kind as well. A real role model. Rest in peace, Doug.

Design for Doing

3 December 2013 by Clark 2 Comments

It occurs to me that we are too busy designing for learning, and that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about learning, as I often say. What is it about? It’s about doing. It’s about performance. So what does that mean?

My backwards design process suggested looking at the desired performance, and then working backwards. This comes from a good analysis of the performance gap and determining the root cause of the difference between the existing performance and the desired one. The solution then is determining what can be in the world, and what has to be in the head.

Another way to be thinking about it is looking at how people really perform in the world. We need to be looking at when and how people need support, and figure out how we can bring support. People would rather not have to discover the answer if possible, and rather find it. Ideally, we are supporting finding the answer, but there are times when we haven’t anticipated the need, or it’s too unique to be worth investing.

The point here is that these ways of thinking about the problem come from thinking about meeting organizational needs, not about delivering learning services. They come from focusing on the doing, not the learning. And that’s a perspective organizations need.

We do, however, need to be thinking about a broader picture. It’s not just doing the work, but it’s also about doing innovation, and continual capability development. So it’s not just putting in place elements that support optimal execution, but it’s also about putting in place the elements that support cooperation and collaboration.

The overall focus has to be supporting the needs of the organization. We need to be thinking about supporting the do, not just the learn. Are you designing for doing?

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