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LXD Strategy

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In the continuing process of resolving what I want to do when I grow up (rest assured, not happening), I’ve been toying with a concept. And I’ve come up with the phrase: Learning Experience Design (LXD)  Strategist. Which of course, begs the question of just what LXD strategy  is. So here’s my thinking.

To me, LXD is about the successful integration of learning science and engagement. Yes, cognitive science studies both learning and engagement, but in my experience the two aren’t integrated specifically well. You either get something flashy but empty, or something worthwhile but dreary dull. I remember a particular company that produced rigorous learning that you’d rather tear your eyes out than actually consume. And, similarly, seeing an award winning product that was flashy, but underneath was just drill and kill. For something that shouldn’t be.

Learning experiences should emotionally hook you (e.g. ensuring you know that you need it, and that you don’t know it). Then it should take the necessary steps such as sufficient spaced meaningful practice resourced with appropriate models and examples and specifically feedback. Ultimately, it should transform the learner. Learners go from not having a clue to having a basic ability to do  and how to continue to develop.

What is LXD  strategy?  Here I’m thinking about helping orgs restructure their design processes, and their org structure, to support delivering learning experience designs. This includes ensuring up front that this really does deserve learning instead of some other intervention, such as performance support. Then it includes how you work with SMEs, how you discern key decisions, wrap practice into contexts, etc. It’s also about using the tools – media and technology – to create a well-integrated experience. Note that the integration can include classrooms, ambient content and interactivity, and more. It’s about getting the design right, then implementing.

LXD strategy is about ensuring that resources and practices are aligned to create experiences that meet real org needs under pragmatic constraints. That’s what I’ve been doing in much of my work, and where my interests lead me as well. And it’s still a part of the performance ecosystem. Understanding that relationship is critical, when you start thinking about moving individuals from novices, through practitioners, to expertise. And the numbers of areas that will need this are going to increase.

LXD is, in my mind, the way we should be thinking about ID is now as LXD. And we need to not only think about what it is, and how to do it, but also how we organize to get it done. That, I think, is an important and worthwhile endeavor. So, what’s  your thinking?

Level of polish?

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A debate broke out amongst some colleagues the other day about the desirable level of polish in our elearning. One colleague was adamant that we were undermining our position by using low quality production. There was a lot of agreement. I had a slightly different view. Even after finding out he was talking more about external-facing content than internal, I still have some differences. After weighing in, I thought it required a longer response, and of course it has to go here.

So, the main complaint was that so much elearning looks dated and incomplete. And I agree!  And others chimed in that this doesn’t have to be, while all agreed that it doesn’t need to approach game quality in effect. Then, in my mind, the question switches to “what is good enough?” And I think we do need an answer to that. And, it turns out, to also answer “and what does it take?”

What is good enough?

So, my first concern is the quality of the design. My mantra on design states that it has to be right first. Then you can implement it. If it isn’t right from the get-go, it doesn’t matter  how you implement it. And the conversation took some time to sort this out. But let’s assume that the design’s right. Then, how much production values do you need?

The original complaint was that we’re looking slack by comparison. When you look at what’s being done in other, related, fields, our production values look last decade, if not last century!  And I couldn’t agree more. But does that matter?  And that’s where we start getting into nuances. My bottom line question is: “what’s the business case?”

So, I suggest that the investment in production values is based upon how important the ‘experience’ is. If it’s internal, and it’s a critical skill, the production values should be only enough to ensure that learners can identify the situation and perform appropriately (or get feedback).  It needs a minimum level of professionalism, and that’s it.  If you’re selling it to high-end customers and want to charge a premium price, you’ll need much more, of course.

The issue was that we’re losing credibility if we don’t approach a minimal level of competency. There were many arguments about the locus: fear of going out of bounds, managers oppression, low level tools, lack of skills, and more. And these all have validity. We should stipulate a minimal level. Perhaps the serious eLearning  Design Manifesto? :) We can do better.

What does it take?

This was the other issue. It was pointed out that design teams in other disciplines work in layers: from concept to realization. Jesse James Garrett has a lovely diagram that represents this for information architecture. And others pointed out that there are multiple skills involved, from dialog writing, through media production and interface design (they’re conceptually separate), and the quality of the programming and more. The more you need polish, the more you need to invest in the appropriate skill sets.  This again is a matter of marshaling the appropriate resources against the business case.

I think one of the issues is that we overuse courses when other solutions are more effective and efficient. Thus, we don’t have and properly allocate the resources to do the job right when it does positively absolutely has to be in the head. Thus, we do have a lot of boring, information dump courses. And we could be doing more with engaging practice, and less content presentation. That’s a design issue to begin, and then a presentation one.

Ultimately, I agree that bad elearning undermines our credibility. I do think, however, that we don’t need  unnecessary polish. Gilded bad design is still bad design. But then we should align our investment with the professional reception we need. And if we have trouble doing that, we need to rethink our approaches. The right level of investment for the context is the right response; we need the right live of polish. But the assessment the context is complex. We shouldn’t treat is simplistically, but instead systemically. If we get that right, we have a chance to impress folks with our astute sense of doing the right thing with the right resources. Less than that is a path to irrelevancy, and doing more is a path to redundancy. Where do  you want to go?

The roots of LXD

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Instructional design, as is well documented, has it roots in meeting the needs for training in WWII. User experience (UX) came from the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) revolution towards User Centered Design. With a vibrant cross-fertilization of ideas, it’s natural that evolutions in one can influence the other (or not).  It’s worth thinking about the trajectories and the intersections that are the roots of LXD, Learning eXperience Design.

I came from a background of computer science and education. In the job for doing the computer support for the office doing the tutoring I had also engaged in, I saw the possibilities of the intersection. Eager to continue my education, I avidly explored learning and instruction, technology (particularly AI), and design. And the relationships, as well.

Starting with HCI (aka Usability), the lab I was in for grad school was leading the charge. The book User-Centered System Design  was being pulled together as a collection of articles from the visitors who came and gave seminars, and an emergent view was coming. The approaches pulled from a variety of disciplines such as architecture and theater, and focused on elements including participatory design, situated design, and iterative design. All items that now are incorporated in design thinking.

At that time, instructional design was going through some transitions. Charles Reigeluth was pulling together theories in the infamous ‘green book’  Instructional Design Theories and Models.  David Merrill was switching from Component Display Theory to ID2.  And there was a transition from behavioral to cognitive ID.

This was a dynamic time, though there wasn’t as much cross-talk as would’ve made sense. Frankly, I did a lot of my presentations at EdTech conferences on implications from HCI for ID approaches. HCI was going broad in exploring a variety of fields to tap in popular media (a lot was sparked by the excitement around  Pinball Construction Set), and not necessarily finding anything unique in instructional design. And EdTech was playing with trying to map ID approaches to technology environments that were in rapid flux.

These days, LXD has emerged. As an outgrowth of the HCI field, UX emerged with a separate society being created. The principles of UX, as cited above, became of interest to the learning design community. Explorations of efforts from related fields – agile, design thinking, etc, – made the notion of going beyond instructional design appealing.

Thus, thinking about the roots of LXD, it has a place, and is a useful label. It moves thinking away from ‘instruction’ (which I fear makes it all to easy to focus on content presentation). And it brings in the emotional side. Further, I think it also enables thinking about the extended experience, not just ‘the course’.  So I’m still a fan of Learning Experience Design (and now think of myself as an LXD strategist, considering platforms and policies to enable desirable outcomes).

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As a side note, Customer Experience is a similarly new phenomena, that apparently arose on it’s own. And it’s been growing, from a start in post-purchase experience, through Net Promoter Scores and Customer Relationship Management. And it’s a good thing, now including everything from the initial contact to post-purchase satisfaction and everything in between. Further, people are recognizing that a good Employee Experience is a valuable contributor to the ability to deliver Customer Experience. I’m all for that.

Lucky on Foundations

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I was thinking about my next directions, and it led to me to think a bit about my foundations. And I realized I’ve been very lucky (and I’m grateful). I’ve had good parents, mentors, colleagues, and friends. But I’ve also had some fortunate timings, and it’s worth reflecting how I’ve been lucky on foundations upon which to build. (A personal reflection, not necessarily worth your time ;)

It started with college, really. I’d always been a typical lad, but with an extra serving of geek (I didn’t fit in with any clique so hung with a few similarly chaotic-good chaps :).  I started college interested in marine bio, but there was no formal link between undergrad study and Scripps. The bio program was all cut-throat med, and while I  could cut it, it was all rote memorization and deadly boring. So…

I took some comp sci classes, and was tutoring for extra money on the side.  Lucky chance: I got a job doing the computer support for the office that coordinated the tutoring. That sparked my awareness of the connections between computers and learning. Of course, back then, at my school, there was no such program. Luck 2: my school had a program where you could design your  own major. I found a couple of professors doing a project on using email for classroom discussion (circa ’78; we had the DARPAnet, otherwise there  was no email; more luck). They agreed to sponsor my project.

After graduating, I looked all over the country for an org that wanted someone interested in computers and learning. More luck, I finally came across Jim Schuyler, and as he was starting DesignWare, I got a job! And, importantly, it was designing and programming on the earliest personal computers. And I realized that there was real potential for learning in games! But I also realized that we didn’t know enough how to design them. And then I read about ‘cognitive engineering’ (applying what we know about cognition to the design of systems).

I was accepted into the cog program with Don Norman, who’d written the article. And this was another major stroke of luck. While Don’s students were researching how to build systems for how people think, my twist was about how people learn. I got to study behavioral, cognitive, social, even machine learning!  Also, Don’s lab partner Dave Rumelhart was conducting his research with Jay McClleland on what became neural nets. You can’t help but get exposed to related research through lab meetings, seminars, and more, even if you’re not active in the particular work. And Ed Hutchins was doing his work on distributed cognition.  This was a fundamental shift in perspective from formal to situated cognition.

The lab ran a Unix system, so I was getting steeped in computing systems to complement my personal computer work, along with the cognition focus. I subsequently did a post-doc at LRDC, getting deeper steeped into cognitive learning, and then joined a school of Computer Science, getting further background in computation. I was on the internet before there was a web (and foolishly was rather complacent about it)! And it’s enabled me to keep an eye on new developments like mobile and content and more, and understand their core affordance.

I also got steeped in design, having a chance to look at graphic, industrial, software, architecture, and other approaches (more luck). I combined that with a study of the academic literature, of course. These three foundations have been the basis of my work: applying cognitive and learning sciences to the design of technology to create learning and performance systems.

There’s much more to the story, of course. Serendipity continued in jobs and people to guide me, I’m happy to say.  Mentors being shy, you can’t really thank folks enough, so if I’ve been lucky in foundations, it’s my job to pass it on. I hope that this blog helps in  some way!

Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design

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After my previous article on direct instruction versus guided discovery, some discussion mentioned Engelmann’s Direct Instruction (DI). And, something again pointed me to the most comprehensive survey of educational effects. So, I tracked both of these down, and found some interesting results that both supported, and confounded, my learning. Ultimately, of course, it expanded my understanding, which is always my desire. So it’s time to think a bit deeper about Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design.

Engelmann’s Direct Instruction is very scripted. It is rigorous in its goals, and has a high amount of responses from learners.  Empirically, DI has great success, with some complaints about lack of teacher flexibility. It strikes me as very good for developing core skills like reading and maths.  I was worried about the intersection of many responses a minute and more complex tasks, though it appears that’s an issue that has been addressed. I couldn’t find the paper that makes that case, however.

Another direction, however, proved fruitful.  John Hattie, an educational researcher, collected and conducted reviews of 800+ meta-analyses to look at what worked (and didn’t) in education.  It’s a monumental work, collected in his book Visible Learning. I’d heard of it before, but hadn’t tracked it down. It was time.

And it’s impressive in breadth  and depth.  This is arguably the single most important work in education. And it opened my eyes in several ways.  To illustrate, let me collect for you the top (>.4)  impacts found, which have some really interesting implications:

  • Reciprocal teaching (.74)
  • Providing feedback (.72)
  • Teaching student self-verbalization (.67)
  • Meta-cognition strategies (.67)
  • Direction instruction (.59)
  • Mastery learning (.57)
  • Goals-challenging (.56)
  • Frequent/effects of testing (.46)
  • Behavioral organizers (.41)

Reciprocal teaching and meta-cognition strategies coming out highly, a great outcome. And of course I am not surprised to see the importance of feedback. I have to say that I  was surprised to see direct instruction and mastery learning coming out so high.  So what’s going on?  It’s related to what I mentioned in the afore-mentioned article, about just what the definition of DI is.

So, Hattie says: …”what the critics mean by direct instruction is didactic teacher-led talking from the front…” And, indeed, that’s my fear of using the label. He goes on to point out the major steps of DI (in my words):

  1. Have clear learning objectives: what should the learner be able to  do?
  2. Clear success criteria (which to me is part of 1)
  3. Engagement: an emotional ‘hook’
  4. A clear pedagogy: info (models & examples), modeling, checking for understanding
  5. Guided practice
  6. Closure of the learning experience
  7. Reactivation: spaced and varied practice

And, of course, this is pretty much everything I argue for as being key to successful learning experience design. And, as I suspected, DI is not what the label would lead you to believe (which I  do think is a problem).  As I mentioned in a subsequent post, I’ve synthesized my approach across many elements, integrating the emotional elements along with effective education practice (see the alignment).  There’s so much more here, but it’s a very interesting result. Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design have a really nice alignment.

And a perfect opportunity to remind you that I’ll be offering a Learning Experience Design workshop at DevLearn, which will include the results of my continuing investigation (over decades) to create an approach that’s doable and works. Hope to see you there!

Theory or Research?

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There’s a lot of call for evidence-based methods (as mentioned yesterday): L&D, learning design, and more. And this is a good thing. But…do you want to be basing your steps on a particular empirical study, or the framework within which that study emerged? Let me make the case for one approach. My answer to theory or research is theory. Here’s why.

Most research experiments are done in the context of a theoretical framework. For instance, the work on worked examples comes from John Sweller’s Cognitive Load theory. Ann Brown & Ann-Marie Palincsar’s experiments on reading were framed within Reciprocal Teaching, etc. Theory generates experiments which refine theory.

The individual experiments illuminate aspects of the broader perspective. Researchers tend to run experiments driven by a theory. The theory leads to a hypothesis, and then that hypothesis is testable. There  are some exploratory studies done, but typically a theoretical explanation is generated to explain the results. That explanation is then subject to further testing.

Some theories are even meta-theories! Collins & Brown’s Cognitive Apprenticeship  (a favorite) is based upon integrating several different theories, including the Reciprocal Teaching, Alan Schoenfeld’s work on examples in math, and the work of Scardemalia & Bereiter on scaffolding writing. And, of course, most theories have to account for others’ results from other frameworks if they’re empirically sound.

The approach I discuss in things like my Learning Experience Design workshops is a synthesis of theories as well. It’s an eclectic mix including the above mentioned, Cognitive Flexibility, Elaboration, ARCS, and more. If I were in a research setting, I’d be conducting experiments on engagement (pushing beyond ARCS) to test my own theories of what makes experiences as engaging and effective. Which, not coincidentally, was the research I was doing when I  was  an academic (and led to  Engaging Learning). (As well as integration of systems for a ubiquitous coaching environment, which generates many related topics.)

While individual results, such as the benefits of relearning, are valuable and easy to point to, it’s the extended body of work on topics that provides for longevity and applicability. Any one study may or may not be directly applicable to your work, but the theoretical implications give you a basis to make decisions even in situations that don’t directly map. There’s the possibility to extend to far, but it’s better than having no guidance at all.

Having theories to hand that complement each other is a principled way to design individual solutions  and design processes. Similarly for strategic work as well (Revolutionize L&D) is a similar integration of diverse elements to make a coherent whole. Knowing, and mastering, the valid and useful theories is a good basis for making organizational learning decisions. And avoiding myths!  Being able to apply them, of course, is also critical ;).

So, while they’re complementary, in the choice between theory or research I’ll point to one having more utility. Here’s to theories and those who develop and advance them!

Social Silliness

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It’s that time again. Someone pointed me to a post that touted the benefits of social learning. And I’m a fan!  However, as I perused it, I saw that was a bit of social silliness. So, let me be clear about why.

It starts off mostly on the right foot, saying “playing off of the theory that people learn better when they learn collectively…” I’m a proponent of that theory. There are times when that’s not the most effective nor efficient approach, but there are times when it’s really valuable.

What follows in the article are a series of five tips about applying social learning. And here we go off the rails!  Let’s go through them:

  1. A Facebook Group Or A Forum, or both.  Well, yes, a group is a good idea. But Facebook is  not! Expecting everyone to have to be open to being on Facebook isn’t a good policy. While I’m on Facebook (and no, don’t connect to me there, that’s for personal relationships, not professional ones; go see me on LinkedIn ;), I know folks who aren’t and won’t be. Create your own group in your own tool, so folks know what’s being done with their data!
  2. Leaderboards. What? NOOOO!  That’s so  extrinsic  ;). Seriously, that’s the second most important tip?  Er, not. If you’re not making sure folks are finding intrinsic value in the community, go back and fix it. People (should) come because it’s worth it. Work to make it so. That’s hard, but in the end if you want to build community, start modeling and encouraging sharing, and make it safe.  Don’t do it on points.
  3. Surveys or polls. Ok, let’s put this in context. Yes, getting people to participate and collecting their opinions is good. Is this the third most important tip? No, but no points lost for this suggestion. However, let’s do it right. You can really decrease participation when you’re allowing ‘drive-by’ surveys. Have a policy, be clear, and do it  when it makes sense. This would be a subset of a more general principle about stimulating and leveraging the community, I reckon.
  4. Interactions between the L&D  Team and Employees.  This requires nuance. Not just any interactions. In a sense, L&D should be invisible, the hidden hand that keeps things moving. Facilitating, yes, where someone needs a nudge to contribute, someone else needs a nudge to  not contribute (in that way, or that often, or…), some statement needs some nuance, etc. But ultimately, the community should be interacting with each other, not L&D.
  5. elearning Courses that Require Teamwork. Back to my point above, yes,  sometimes. This is a good idea. And it can build the community skills that will carry over. You want a smooth segue from courses to community. The suggestion included, however, “only that employee can access that particular phase or section” is a lot of extra design. Why not just group assignments with facilitation to participate? It’s not a horrible idea, but not a general one.

Overall, this is nowhere near the first five tips  I would suggest about building community. I agree community’s big, but I’d be pushing:

Start small: get it working somewhere (particularly within L&D), then spread slowly to other groups.

Make it safe: ensure that there’re principles in place about what’s acceptable behavior, and that the relevant leader is sharing. If they don’t, will anyone really believe it’s safe?

Ensure value: make sure that people coming to the community will find reasons to return. To get it to critical mass, you need to nurture it. Start by seeding valuable information over time, and inviting (or incepting) some respected folk to contribute. And the surveys and polls are ways to find out what’s going on and reflect that back.  It takes effort to kick start it, but it’s critical to get people to stay engaged. As part of this:

Enable sharing: the ‘show your work‘ mentality should be encouraged. Get people showing what they’re doing (once it’s safe) enables long term benefits. This will start providing valuable content, and support the organization beginning to learn together.

Persist: success will depend on maintaining the support until the community reaches critical mass. That means a continual effort to make value, surface value until the community is doing this itself.

I’m not saying this is my official list, this is off the top of my head. However, when I look at these two lists, the problem for me is that the top list is tactical, but creating community is really a strategic initiative. Which means, it needs to be treated as such. No social silliness, it needs to be seriously addressed. So, what am I missing?

Packaging change

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wrapped presentI’ve been looking at a couple of things, with a goal is to look for the sweet spot at the intersection.  I’m looking at my missions, interests, and what’s resonating. And, I find, that they’re converging into a few things. Which I thought I’d make concrete, because I really want to see if these are things that are tangible and valuable. What is the right packaging? I’m asking for your help: is this the right suite, and if not, what do you want?

To start, one of my themes for the year is transformation, about deeper learning design. I’ve argued strongly that we need to do deeper learning design before we worry about tarting it up with personalization/adaptation, VR/AR, AI, etc. It’s time to get serious about actually having an organizational impact! And we’ve converging evidence about what it is.

As triangulation, what’s appearing as interests are those things people are asking for, or are tracking. And I’ve been asked recently (and been happy to oblige) talking about learning science. The eLearning Guild just had a summit, and my learning experience design workshop from Learning Solutions has been again  accepted for DevLearn (and I’d welcome seeing you there!).

We also know what’s largely lacking, and how to help. Through experience, I’ve found there are several ways to make progress. For one, you need the foundational knowledge, and it really needs to be shared and agreed in the organization. For another, you can benefit from a clear understanding of your current state. You can’t move forward if you don’t know where you are! Then, you need a clear plan that gets you from where you are to where you can be, that’s right for you. No ‘best practices’, but a principled  approach, looking at the bigger picture. Finally, support in moving forward can be valuable. There are ways you can fall back or barriers can hinder you that you need fresh thinking to address.

So the offer involves any combination of the following things:

Workshop: we actively explore and bring to bring it to life the necessary knowledge, and then practice applying it. This brings a shared vocabulary and understanding of what needs to change and why.

Assessment: an independent assessment of where you are in your processes, and what are the opportunities for change. The goal is to identify the minimal interventions that can have the biggest impact.

Strategy Session: here the goal is to determine the path to change. What are the opportunities, barriers, and what are the sequence of moves that create the change? It’s about understanding context and opportunity, bringing in the best principles, and using them as a guide to move forward.

Coaching: here we provide the lightest weight support that will keep momentum. In my experience, it’s been easy for folks to fall back into prior thinking without an ongoing stimulus, and the ability to comment early on in a plan on interim moves help keep a strategy on track.

These can manifest in several ways:

  • a learning science workshop for the team and an evaluation of your design process for the small changes with the big impact
  • the assessment, a strategy session for improvements, and a termed coaching engagement to support success

Your situation would make a particular combination more sensible. They’re better together, but any one is a catalyst for improvement. And these are all things I’ve done with organizations and have had success with. Each alone is done for quite less than $10K (parameters vary), but the goal is to make these very accessible. And, of course, substantial discounts for taking on more than one (to make the change more likely to stick).

I note that my other theme for the year is ‘intellectricity‘, unpacking the power of your people in informal learning. While I’m helping organizations around this as well, I haven’t yet formalized it like this. Yet it’s clear each could be done in the above formats as well, and I’m happy to make the same offer. And there seems to be growing interest in this area as well.

The reason I’m putting this out there, however, is because I want feedback and/or uptake. It’s not enough to just encourage, I want to actually support meaningful change! I have strong grounds to believe these are important and necessary changes, and I want to help make it happen, the more the faster the better. And if this isn’t the packaging you expect, let me know. I’m happy to discuss and adapt. What I want to do is have an impact, so help me figure out how.

#LSCon 19 Reflections

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It’s hard to think of now, but last week I was at the Learning Solutions conference. And I had a really great time. I didn’t see as much as I’d like (as you ‘ll see, I was busy), but there were some really worthwhile learnings, and some fun as well. Here are my conference reflections.

For the first time, I rented a scooter. That was a learning all in itself. I’d been having pain, and walking was the  worst. The scooter was a way to address that, and it did. I scooted around and avoided much walking. Not all, but a lot. And it was fun to zoop around, but…it was hard to maneuver in small spaces. Like the necessary elevators. And my room. I tried to slow down and do it carefully, and that worked to an extent, but it wasn’t pretty.

Decorated mobility scooterThe great part was that, having heard of my plight, some friends descended upon my ride and tarted it up with glitter and dangly things. And, best of all, caution tape. Very appropriate. Very much appreciated!  And it wasn’t even too hard to take off at the end.

Thus, I was happy to zoom to my room to run my pre-conference workshop on learning experience design. It was designed as an integration of Engaging Learning and the Serious eLearning Manifesto.    I snuck a bit of ‘transformation‘ in there as well.  The evaluations aren’t back yet, but I think overall it achieved the purpose. One attendee later suggested an improvement that I’d agree on (allowing learners to choose from the topics to workshop on). Always learning!

That evening, we did something I’d never done, Presentation Roulette. The speakers (I agreed to be one, without having seen it before; I do like experimenting [read: living dangerously]) choose a random title out of a sock (well, it was clean) and are then given a deck that Bianca Woods of the Guild had developed for that title, including the silliest pictures she could find on the web. As she describes it, a mashup of presentations and improv comedy.  It was very fun, and in particular extremely funny; the other presenters did great jobs. I’ll attend again even if I don’t present!

Tuesday was a normal day (e.g. I didn’t present). As usual, I mindmapped the keynotes (several posts back), cruised the floor, and attended some sessions. The panels were good. I attended the one on the Future of ID, and the comments were insightful about how the tools and goals were changing. Similarly the one on the Future of Work had a convergent message I resonated with, that we need to focus on using tech to augment us on the stuff we’re good at, not try to fight off automation of rote tasks. I also took some time off for calls and work.

That evening, after dinner, some friends and colleagues (they’re the same folks) came over to my suite. (I have gotten lots of accommodations for my situation; and I’m  very grateful.)  Fueled by libations, we proceeded to gin up an evil plan to control the world (or at least the market).  Politically correct it wasn’t, fun it was.  Too late to bed.

The next day I was part of the Guild Master panel with about 14 participants. Too many!  Great thoughts, and I tried to stifle myself and only make the most cogent points. Apparently I still spoke a little too much. I blame it on this blogging, it gives me lots of thoughts. :) The points I wanted to make were, not surprisingly, about the need for getting back to basics in learning design, and to look beyond optimal execution to continual innovation.

I also sat in an ARK Kit presentation. It made AR seem almost within reach. At this time you still do need some coding, but if it progresses like many tools, much will soon become at a higher level of ability to describe what you want and make it so.

I still wasn’t done, as later that day I also gave my ‘professionalism and myths’ talk. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I do believe we made some converts. I added in not just debunking myths, but how to talk to folks who buy into it. There’s a little learning science in it as well. We really do need to be on a sound basis before we can have credibility.

I have to say, delightedly, that I continue to have folks say that my books have helped them. Different books for different folks, but something I love to hear. As an author, you get some idea of the sales, but none of the impact. Some of these were small effects, and some were “I’ve used this to change my/our practice.”  That’s what it’s about, after all, you write a book to effect change. I’m grateful for those who share this insight!  In particular, I hear lots of folks using the Myths book in their orgs to counter employees/customers’ misguided intentions. The Revolution book still (or, perhaps,  now) has influence. And I still hear about the Games book!

I also slipped away with some more conspirators and experienced  The Void. It  was  hard on my legs (I went with cane, not scooter), mostly because they didn’t have anywhere to sit while you waited!?!?!  (I gave them a serve in the too-long post-experience survey.) However, it’s very cool: a compelling experience and great implications for learning. Embedded performance? That would be ‘yes’.

The keynotes, by the way, were excellent  AND…  I’ve heard over the years that conference organizers say it’s hard to have diversity in speakers. All white males (e.g. me ;), or at least white.  This time, there were two women, and two blacks, out of three people. With good messages.  It was inspiring to hear and to see!  Kudos to David Kelly and the Guild for managing to debunk the barrier.

There was some discussion of whether there was a place for those who proselytize learning science or it was all going commercial and cheap. I feel like there’s a growing interest in the science, but I’m frequently a year or several ahead of the market. In this case, I want to yell “make me right!”  This is a field I care about, and we can be doing so much good. I want us to capitalize on that potential. There were new folks looking for solutions and the opportunity to grow. I hope we can make that happen in a positive direction.

Overall, it was a success. I had time with smart colleagues, saw interesting sessions, and met new folks. I presented and got feedback, which is a great cycle. And it was another chance to immerse myself in the state of the industry. Here’s to continual improvement.

 

 

Redesigning Learning Design

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Of late, a lot of my work has been designing learning design. Helping orgs transition their existing design processes to ones that will actually have an impact. That is, someone’s got a learning design process, but they want to improve it. One idea, of course, is to replace it with some validated design process. Another approach, much less disruptive, is to find opportunities to fine tune the design. The idea is to find the minimal set of changes that will yield the maximal benefit. So what are the likely inflection points?  Where am I finding those spots for redesigning?  It’s about good learning.

Starting at the top, one place where organizations go wrong right off the bat is the initial analysis for a course. There’s the ‘give us a course on this’, but even if there’s a decent analysis the process can go awry. Side-stepping the big issue of performance consulting (do a reality check: is this truly a case for a course), we get into working to create the objectives. It’s about how you work with SMEs. Understanding what they can,  and can’t, do well means you have the opportunity to ensure that you get the right objectives to design to.

From there, the most meaningful and valuable step is to focus on the practice. What are you having learners  do, and how can you change that?  Helping your designers switch to good  assessment writing is going to be useful. It’s nuanced, so the questions don’t  seem that different from typical ones, but they’re much more focused for success.

Of course, to support good application of the content to develop abilities, you need the right content!  Again, getting designers to understand what the nuances of useful examples from just stories isn’t hard but rarely done. Similarly knowing why you want  models and not just presentations about the concept isn’t fully realized.

Of course, making it an emotionally compelling experience has learning impact as well. Yet too often we see the elements just juxtaposed instead of integrated. There  are systematic ways to align the engagement and the learning, but they’re not understood.

A final note is knowing when to have someone work alone, and when some collaboration will help.  It’s not a lot, but unless it happens at the right time (or happens at all) can have a valuable contribution to the quality of the outcome.

I’ve provided many resources about better learning design, from my 7 step program white paper  to  my deeper elearning series for Learnnovators.  And I’ve a white paper about redesigning as well. And, of course, if you’re interested in doing this organizationally, I’d welcome hearing from you!

One other resource will be my upcoming workshop at the Learning Solutions conference on March 25 in Orlando, where we’ll spend a day working on learning experience design, integrating engagement and learning science.  Of course, you’ll be responsible for taking the learnings back to your learning process, but you’ll have the ammunition for redesigning.  I’d welcome seeing you there!