Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Search Results for: align

A request for help

by 1 Comment

I regularly review what I offer and do, trying to ensure an alignment between what the market needs and what I can offer, as is incumbent upon a consultant.   It’s all part of life in the age of perpetual beta.   Now, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I can do, and what the market needs, but there is the potential for some ‘blind spots’.

Ordinarily, I make my best stab and move on, but after working with my ITA colleagues and refining my understanding of the value of crowd-sourcing, I recognize that my perceptions may not be aligned with market perceptions about what I do or what is needed.   So, I’m putting out a request, and asking that you contribute.   Obviously, I’m hoping that if you’ve been reading this blog and/or know me, you will have some feel for what I (can) offer.

I’m asking that whether through comments on this blog post, by twitter (@quinnovator), or email or phone, you provide input on any or all of the following questions for me (as Quinnovation):

  • What services does and should Quinnovation (that is, me) offer?
  • What is, or should be, Quinnovation’s unique market position or value proposition?
  • What problems does or can Quinnovation solve as well or better than anyone?
  • Who is or should be Quinnovation’s target market?

Yes, ultimately it’s my responsibility, but it’s worthwhile to get your input.   Also, please feel free to be brutally honest; I’d rather have insight than inaccurate gentleness.   I welcome your feedback.   Thanks in advance, and eager to see what shows up!

Quinnovation

Levels of learning experience design

by Leave a Comment

If you want to achieve meaningful outcomes in the space of the important work, you need to ensure that the process is optimized. This means that you want to streamline formal learning, maximize the utility of resources, and facilitate optimal interaction. This is the realm of learning experience design.

Learning experience design can, and should, operate at several levels. For one, you want individual learning experiences to be optimal. You want a minimalist approach that combines effective cognitive design with engaging emotional design. You want the formal resources to be designed to mesh with the task and provide effective information design. And you want the social learning tools to be organized around the way the team coheres.

Here we are talking deeper instructional design, information mapping, and aligned social media.

At the next level, you want your learning development processes to make it easy to do good learning design: you want your tools and templates to scaffold proper outcomes (and preclude bad design), and you want your oversight to be based upon sound principles.

Here we are on about design processes and teams, as well as tools. We can be talking about content models and delivery architectures as well.

At a higher level, you want your components of learning to complement one another, so courses are designed in synchrony with your resources and networks, and vice versa, and you want your IT infrastructure to be based upon structures that maintain security, reliability, and maintainability with flexibility so as not to preclude new directions.

Here we are talking content frameworks and hosting architectures, semantics, and organizational alignment and culture.

Unfortunately, most organizations in my experience, are using flawed models at the first level, are embryonic at the second, and are oblivious of the top. Yet, the competitive advantage will increasingly come from just such an optimized structure, as working *smarter* will increasingly be the only sustainable edge. So, are you ready to move ahead?

Learning malpractice

by 8 Comments

Richard Nantel tweeted about Chris Dede talking about Educational Malpractice. Unfortunately, while it does accurately characterize the education space, it is not inappropriate to apply to the workplace as well. I would extend that to Training Malpractice, but I want to take it further. Because organizations are committing crimes at more than just the training level.

Let’s start with formal learning, or training. Remember, our goals are retention over time until the learning is needed, and transfer to all appropriate situations, not just ones that are seen in the learning experience. Now, realize that one of the worst things you can do to lead to long term retention is to try to have all the learning condensed into one session.. Consequently, the ‘massed practice’ of the learning *event* is a broken model! Similarly, the ‘knowledge test’ as a form of assessment has essentially no transfer value to meaningful practice. Yet these are the trusted hallmarks of corporate learning.

But wait, there’s more! Beyond courses, there are performance support resources. Are they organized by need, so that each performer has a unique portal? Well, no. (“Portals? Yeah, we’ve got hundreds of them!”). Every unit has it’s own place to put things for others, and the poor worker has to search high and low to find resources. No wonder they give up. Worse, courses are designed in lieu of any cognizance of the resources.

And while informal learning, as facilitated by search and social networks, may not be actively discouraged, the lack of any cohesive effort to coordinate the network, let alone aligning with resources and formal learning, characterizes the average workplace. Sharing may not be valued or even punished!

The levels above this (systems, strategies) are even more broken. How, when companies supposedly believe that “employees are our most important asset”, can this wholesale malfeasance continue? Please, help right this wrong. If you need help, ask, but don’t continue these mistakes. For your company and your own self-respect.

Enterprise Thinking, or Thinking Enterprise

by 1 Comment

I realize, with recent releases like Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers and Marcia Conner & Tony Bingham’s The New Learning (both recommended, BTW, reviews coming soon, with standard disclaimer that I’m mentioned in both) that the message is finally getting out about new ways to facilitate not just formal learning and execution, but informal learning and innovation.   But there’s more needed. It takes new thinking at the top.   You need to think about how the enterprise is thinking.

So what do you want for your enterprise thinking?   Shows like The Office make us laugh because we identify with it. We know the officious types, the clueless, the apathetic, the malevolent, the greedy, the ones just marking time.   They’re definitely not thinking about how to make the organization more successful, they’re thinking more about what will make their life most enjoyable, and there’s little or no alignment.   That’s not what you want, I’ll suggest, but is what’s seen, in various degrees, in most places.

Instead, you (should) want folks who know what the goal is, are working towards it individually and collectively.   That are continually looking for opportunities to improve the products, processes, and themselves.   This is where organizations will derive competitive advantage.

How do you get there?   It takes coordinating several things, including the dimensions of the learning organization: leadership, culture, and practices), and the information infrastructure for working well together.   You need to have the tools, you need to understand the behaviors required, you need to know that working this way is valued, and you need to be informed as to what the goals are.

We want to be empowering people with the models that help understand the shifts that are happening and how to cope, so they’re part of the movement.   They   need to understand things like networks and complexity, so that they’re equipped to contribute at the next level.

It’s time to stop thinking patchwork (“we’ll just put in the tools”, or “we’ll move in the direction of more open leadership”), and starting thinking systemically and strategically.   Identify and acknowledge where you are now, and figure out a path to get where you need to be.   It’s not likely to be easy, but it’s clearly time to get started.

Thou Shalt Learn!

by Leave a Comment

Like that will work…not!   Seriously, there are several things that have to line up to get social media working for you (which, if you’ve been paying attention, is the new and only sustainable competitive advantage).   As I discussed a couple of days ago, your learners have to have the skills.   But there are a couple of other things you have to have in place.

First, you have to have the tools.   And, frankly, not just any tools.   There are some nuances that will likely make a difference.   Certainly usability is one. The closer the necessary usage steps are to a) familiar uses and/or b) user goals, the more likely the tools will be used. Similarly, the more they’re aligned with the user’s task flow, and tasks, the more likely they’ll be used to the benefit of the organization.   The notion is that the tools are ‘ready to hand’ as the need strikes.

You also have to have a culture where contributing is accepted: safe, even rewarded.   I previously commented on the dimensions necessary, including a supportive learning environment, leadership, and concrete processes and practices.   People won’t contribute if it’s not safe, valued, and rewarded.   As my ITA colleague Jon Husband says, wirearchy is based upon trust and credibility, as well as information and knowledge.   Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham, in their new book The New Social Learning, similarly emphasize trust.

The fact of the matter is, if you build it, they may not come.   There are lots of reasons why people may be hesitant, and really you have to actively recruit and support their participating in most cases.   They have to experience it, perceive the value, and still be supported in adopting the regular use of a social infrastructure.   It will take time, but the outcomes are powerful.   Just don’t go into it naively; either be willing to take the time to experiment and learn, or bring in the outside help to accelerate your use of social learning to accelerate learning in the big sense: problem-solving, experimentation, research, creativity, etc (all those areas that contribute to organizational innovation and success).

Social media is the key to leveraging the power of people, to learn, and you don’t want to leave it to chance.   Really, it’s learn or die.   Which are you keen on?

10 Social Media Rebuttals

by 2 Comments

Jane Hart posted a tongue-in-cheek video by Ron Desi of 10 reasons why you should not have social media in the organization, and is collecting rebuttals.   I figured I should weigh in, so as not to be left out ;), but I’ll go on and list 10 reasons why you should want social media in your organization that aren’t aligned with the reasons not to! But first, the rebuttal:

10. Social media is a fad.

Communication has been at the core of being human since before the campfire.   Augmenting our capabilities with technology, using tools, yeah, that’s not new.   So using tools to facilitate communication is just natural evolution.   Was the computer a fad? The internet a fad?   Busted.

9. It’s about controlling the message.

You can’t control the message, and social media isn’t going to change that.   They   have phones, email, hallway conversations, parking lot conversations, and the social media cigarette break.     I won’t even go into why you’d want to control the message, because that comes up later in the list.

8. Employees will goof off.

This is redundant with the previous one. They’ll still have phones, email, paper, etc, e.g. lots of ways to goof off.   They’ll goof off regardless if you haven’t given them meaning in the work, but social media won’t affect it, yay or nay.

7. Social Media is a time waster.

They already have social media (email, phones, etc).   Are they wasting time with them, or using them to work?   Same argument as before: they’ll waste time or not, depending on the work environment, not the tool.   You have to make the environment meaningful and valuable, regardless of the technology!

6. Social media has no business purpose.

Again, they already have email. Do you use email for business?   What might they do with the ability to ask questions, provide hints, suggestions, and pointers?   To work together on a problem?   Business is communication.

5. Employees can’t be trusted.

See previous responses.   The tool doesn’t matter.   Either they can be trusted, or they can’t (and if they can’t, you’ve failed, not them).

4. Don’t cave into the demands of the millennials.

The generational differences myth has already been busted.   The evidence is that what the different generations want out of work really isn’t that different. What workers want are ways to achieve meaningful goals, and they want whatever tools will help them.   If there are new tools, get those tools into their hands!

3. Your teams already share knowledge effectively.

They may share as effectively as they   have been able to, but why would you limit them to what has been possible?   Why not empower them with what is now possible?

2. You’ll get viruses.

That’s a risk with all IT, and your IT department should block that at the firewall.   You don’t block other IT, you still have email, and ERPs, and other software.   Why would you treat this any differently?

1. Your competition isn’t using it, so why should you?

Aren’t you looking for every competitive advantage you can?   Why would you even think of not considering a possible advantage?

So let’s now turn this around, what is the advantage we’re talking about?

  1. You can do more work.   The tools provided are magnifiers of effort.   Tools in general are augments of our ability, and new tools mean either new abilities or more abilities.
  2. You can do more work independent of distance. Social media provides new tools to work together, independent of geographic location, so you can get contributions from the right people regardless of where they work and live.
  3. You can do more work independent of time. Social media tools are asynchronous as well as synchronous, so work can continue as needed.
  4. You can work faster.   The barrier to working quickly, the time for communications to percolate, is dropping. We can put richer media through faster.
  5. You can communicate better.   The richer media mean you can more effectively transit the message.
  6. You can collaborate better. The tools support not only communication, but also shared efforts on a single output.
  7. You can learn* faster. Learning’s critical, and by sharing that learning more seamlessly, the organization makes fewer mistakes, and fewer repeated mistakes.
  8. You can learn deeper. Your learning now is more richly connected through information resources, people and shared representations.   The dialog can go to a whole new level of understanding.
  9. You can innovate better. Learning faster and deeper means more problems-solved and more ideas generated, improved, and developed into solutions.
  10. You can succeed faster. The only sustainable edge will be the ability to out-learn your competitors.

Why wouldn’t you want to get more power in the hands of your people, to not just survive, but thrive?!?!

*Note that I do not mean formal learning here, I mean the broad definition of learning, and very specifically the type of learning that means exploring the unknown and creating new understandings: problem-solving, research, experimentation, creativity, innovation, new products, new services, new markets, new businesses.   That’s the type of learning needed, and needing facilitation.

School of the Ether

by 1 Comment

Many years ago, Australia reached their farflung learners via the School of the Air.   While they’ve now moved to internet technologies,this post on the mobile talks at the eLearning Africa conference reactivated and extended some thoughts.

In the course of   interviews for the mobile book, Bob Sanregret of Hot Lava (now part of Outstart) mentioned some work they were involved in preloading safe sex information on mobile phones for sale.   This idea is intriguing, because it avoids download issues and data plans, but still ensures that the opportunity is there for elearning content.   And, the content does not have to be voluminous, but instead the smaller and more focused the better.

I’ve been sensitized to international mobile issues from a variety of channels. I had the pleasure to meet Inge de Waard, has been active in using mobile learning in developing countries, and served as a reviewer on a draft of the mobile book.   I have been contacted about using mobile learning to support health learning in Arab countries and India.   I was asked about the killer mobile application for a high-speed network in Taiwan as well.   I’ve also heard the stories of empowerment that come from eliminating the middleman in grain sales in India.   All told, there are considerable issues in distribution of devices, and the cost of and uptake of data services, in many locales.

The interesting issue in the post is how to use mobile devices to support learning. One of my points, and I’ll point to David Metcalf’s book mLearning as the progenitor of the idea that mLearning is really about augmentation: augmentation of formal learning and augmentation of performance.   While it might be feasible to deliver a small full course (a learnlet :) on a smartphone, trying to do so on a regular cellphone would be problematic.   Delivering adequate learning resources could be difficult. Instead, the question would more likely be about how to blend mobile devices and any other resources, and what those resources could be.

Looking at the device side, internet access is dicey. I think it was Bob who told me that there hasn’t been a cellphone sold in the US in the past 2 years that doesn’t have a browser built into it (and I remember an earlier stat that 75% had them, and 75% of owners didn’t know they   had them).   However, data services might not be practical for either availability or cost issues.   What is available, reliably, is voice and SMS (text messages). This, then, becomes the channel.

The reason I was reminded of the School of the Air is that they augmented correspondence materials with shortwave radio.   What could be done, then, is to augment print materials with voice. However, the quantity of learners in remote Australian areas was small, and I think the developing world has a larger scale of need.   This suggests programmatic solutions, whether voice or SMS.   Text might be simpler in a response format, though voice could work through the keypad as well.

The problem, of course, would be the distribution of materials. One of the interesting mentions in the post is how they’re using radio to deliver content, and then other technologies to support conversation. This is an intriguing intermediate, and of course television could be used if feasible, as could mail delivery of magazines or texts.   There’s another possibility, too.

Models for intelligent delivery

If learning is meaningful activity resourced with content and scaffolded with reflection, then maybe there’s a simplification.   Typically, we create artificial activities and supplement with rich resources since the learning activity isn’t contextually valid.   Perhaps if we could use the learner’s own environment as a source of activity we could use streamlined resource materials.   That’s the type of model I talked about in an article (PDF) a number of years ago, where I suggested we could identify the learner’s context, learning goals, and available content as a basis for intervention.

The idea is that rules governing the matching (by categorically, semantically, not hand-wired, ideally) of learner to content can create a custom learning experience.   While ideally there would be some social network as part of this (and using distance technologies like voice and SMS can accomplish this, as the article recounted at least in the case of SMS), we can create a successful learning experience for an individual.

I admit I’m not certain about having appropriate activities for individual standard K12 learning, but it’s a goal, and then we can approximate with content and designed activities.   It’s a step towards the goal I’m trying to find about taking an architecture like the diagram, and finding a flexible and powerful pedagogy that can distribute learning across our activity and life.

Getting strategic

by 3 Comments

Was on a call with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, and we were talking about how to help organizations make the transition from delivering courses to supporting the full performance ecosystem.   Jane Hart has had a recent series on what she calls ‘performance consulting‘, and its a good way to look at things from a broader perspective.   She was about to give a presentation, and we were talking through her slides.

Charles Jennings pointed out that they layer above her slides to the Learning and Development group was a missing ‘governance’ role, which he’s been thinking about quite a bit.   The point being that someone needs to be assisting in the strategic role of ensuring the coverage is addressing the broad needs of the organization, not just courses.

Harold Jarche pointed out that just mimicking the Human Performance Technology (HPT) approach (e.g. ISPI) would miss the same things it misses.   I’ve been a fan of HPT since it goes beyond ADDIE in considering other potential sources of problems than just skills (e.g. performance support, incentives), but Harold’s right that it doesn’t inherently cover social learning, let alone engagement.

Jay Cross reminded us we can’t just ignore the fact that their perspective is strongly focused on compliance and other such needs.   They have LMSs, and if we try to say that’s irrelevant we’ll be ignored as being out of touch.   The fact is that there is a role for formal learning, it’s just not everything.

5 types of org learningMy takeaway was that we need a combined approach to help folks understand the bigger picture.   From Rand Spiro’s Cognitive Flexibility Theory, we need to provide multiple models to increase the likelihood that the audience will find one that resonates. Whether it’s the continuum from novice through practitioner to expert, Jane & Harold’s 5 types of org learning (e.g. FSL, IOL, GDL, PDL, & ASL), or Jay’s point about continual change meaning formal methods aren’t sufficient, there are multiple ways it helps to think about the full spectrum of learning design.   It’s also important to point out how supporting these is critical to the organization, and that it’s a way to take a strategic role and increase relevance to the organization.

Similarly, there are some sticks available, such as increasingly irrelevancy if the L&D department does not take on this role.   If they allow IT or operations to take it over, a) it won’t be run as well as if learning folks are involved, and b) they’ll be the ones seen providing the necessary performance infrastructure and adding value to the enterprise.

Finally, what’s also needed is a suite of tools and processes to move forward. It’s clear to us that there are systematic ways to augment existing approaches to move in this new direction, but it may not be obvious to those who would want to change what they should start doing differently.   We talked about ‘layers’ of extension of operation, starting with adding engagement to the design of learning experiences, and incorporating performance support and eCommunity to the potential solution quiver.   Next steps include considering Knowledge Management and Organizational Development.   Governance also needs to work it’s way into the mix.   My barrows include mobile and deeper content models in addition to the others.

Quite simply, it has to start with the first step: analysis of the problems.   For example, if the answer is changing quickly, if the audience are experts, or it’s easier to connect to the right person than to develop content, facilitating communication may be a better solution than developing content.   It helps to have the tools available in the infrastructure, a platform approach, which is why we advocate thinking about having a portal system and social networking in place in the organization, so you don’t have to build a whole infrastructure when   you see the need.   The learning processes will have to be richer than existing ones, and that will require new tools, I reckon.   However, it will also require a new attitude and initiative.

The L&D group may not be the right group for the message, it may have to go higher (as Charles and Jay continue to suggest), but we’re looking to figure out how to help folks wherever they may be.   The final solution, however, has to be that some group that understands learning is facilitating the learning function in the organization at a systemic level. That’s the goal. How your organization gets there will depend on where you’re at, and many other factors, but that’s what any organization that wants to succeed in this time of increasing change will have to achieve.   Get it on your radar now, and figure out how you’re going to get there!