Search Results for: engag

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.

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.

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’?

Designing a game

12 June 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

When I was a young academic in Australia, a colleague asked me if I would talk to some folks about a game. He knew that I had designed games before returning to grad school, and had subsequently done one on my thesis research. This group, the Australian Children’s Welfare Agency, had an ‘After Care’ project to assist kids who needed to live independently. They’d spent their budget on a video, comic book, and a poster, but now realized that the kids would play games at the Care centers. I had a talented student who wanted to do a meaningful honours project, and so I agreed.

Following best principles, we talked not only to the project leaders, and the counselors, but more. We weren’t allowed to talk to youth ‘in care’ (for obvious reasons), but they did get us access to some recent graduates. They gave us great insights, and later they playtested the prototype for fine-tuning.

One of the lessons from this was important. The counselors told us that what these kids needed were to learn to shop and cook. While I could have made a game for that, when we talked to the kids we learned that there was more. (My claim: you can’t give me a learning objective I can’t make a game for, though I reserve the right to raise the objective in a taxonomic sense.) They said what was important were the chains. That is, you could get money while you looked for a job, but… They wouldn’t give you money, however, they’d deposit in a bank account. BUT, to get that, you needed ID. To get that, however, you needed references. And so on. So that was the critical focus.

I taught my interface design students HyperCard, to have a simple language to prototype in. This meant that we had an environment that we knew games could be built in. My student did most of the programming, under my direction. When that wasn’t quite sufficient to finish the development, I used some grant money to hire her for the summer to finish it.

The resulting play was good, but the design was lacking (neither my student nor I were graphic designers). I ended up going with the project team leaders to get philanthropic funding to add graphics. (Which introduced bugs I had to fix.) They also had it ported to the PC, which ended up being a mistake.Their hired gun used a platform with an entirely different underlying model and wasn’t able to translate it appropriately. Ouch.

The resulting game, had some specific design features:

It was exploratory, in that the player had to wander around and try to survive.
It was built upon a simple simulation engine, which supported replay.
There were variables, like health and hunger and sleep that would get worse over time, driving action.
The audience was low literacy, so we used graphics to convey variable states, interface elements, and location.
Success was difficult. Jobs were difficult to obtain, and better jobs were even harder. And, of course, you had to discover the chains.
There was coaching: if you were struggling, the game would offer you the opportunity for a hint. If you continued to struggle, eventually you’d get the hint anyway.
There was also a help system, where the basics were laid out.
There were random events, like getting (or losing) money, or having drugs or sex. (We were trying to save lives, and didn’t worry about upsetting the wowsers.)

There was more, but this characterized some of the important elements. In reflecting upon the experience, I realized the alignment between effective education and engaging experiences that means you can, and should, make learning hard fun. I wrote a journal article (with my student) that captured what I will suggest are critical realizations (still!).

They held an event to launch the entire project, including the game (and they gave me a really nice sweater, and Dana something too ;). Tomorrow, I’ll pass on some of the subsequent outcomes.

Services

31 May 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

From time to time, it’s worth a reminder that Quinnovation (the firm behind the blog) is available to help you. Here are the services you can look to from me, in case you want to accelerate your success.

And a wee bit of self-promotion: if expertise comes from years of practice, how about 3+ decades of investigating the breadth and depth of learning & performance, and exploration of technology support? Why not get assistance from where the thinking originates, not the several-steps away diluted version?

Consulting:

Learning Design: are your design processes yielding the outcomes they should and need to? I have worked with many organizations to generate or tighten learning design processes to reflect learning science (not myths). I recognize that most organizations can’t completely revamp their approaches, so I look to the small changes with the biggest impact. A white paper talks about this.

Performance Ecosystem Strategy: are you leading your organization forward in learning (read: innovation) or are you still taking orders for courses? Based on the book, I’ve helped a number of organizations understand the full spectrum of possibilities, evaluate their situation, and prioritize short-, medium-, and long-term steps. Another white paper talks about this.

Games & Mobile: I’ve helped a number of organizations get their minds, strategies, and design processes around mobile and/or games, based upon those books.

Workshops

Want to get your team up to speed on learning science, strategy, games, mobile, or more? I have workshops on each that are interactive, engaging, and effective. Preferably, they’re coupled with followup to extend the learning (applying the learning science), and that can be done in a variety of ways.

Presentations

A number of organizations around the world have booked me to speak to their audiences. They have been about the subjects of my books, or the future of learning technology in general. And have indicated they were quite satisfied with the result ;). If you want a credible, engaging presenter around intelligence augmentation, I’m a candidate.

Writing

In addition to books, I write white papers, blog posts, and articles for others. I could do the same for you.

Coaching

If you’re a learning leader that would like assistance over time addressing your organization’s needs, it would certainly be worth a conversation. I haven’t done this formally, but it seems like a natural extension.

And, of course, there are combinations of these services as well. You can find out more at the official Quinnovation site. Next week we return you to your regularly scheduled blog at this same channel.

Quip: learning & instruction

15 May 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

I spoke at the ATD International Conference last week on myths. I said a number of things (and a number were said about it, too :). However, one comment seems to be getting more traction than others. Moreover, it’s something I say regularly. So I thought I should add it to my collection of Quinn Quips.

The statement is simple:

Learning is action and reflection; instruction is designed action and guided reflection.

What do I mean here? In life, things happen. We make choices, and there are consequences. When we observe them, and reflect, we begin to notice patterns. Some of this can happen unconsciously, but if we want to improve fastest, reflecting helps. This can involve just thinking, or writing, or diagramming, or other ways of representing the contingencies and emerging models.

However, when we want to guide learning, e.g. instruct, one of the tasks we can undertake is creating a problem, and asking the learner to solve it. If we provide resources, and support the thinking afterwards, we increase the likelihood of learning outcomes.

A critical feature of this statement is that the choices of action that we design, and the choices of resources to support reflection (content and representation tools), are critical. And, of course, we might need a series of activities (or application opportunities) to support learning.

An interesting option that emerges here is the opportunity for contextual learning. When an individual is engaged in a task relevant for learning, we can take advantage of it. With resources and reflection facilitation, a performance requirement becomes a learning opportunity!

It’s important that we understand the difference, but recognize (and reflect) the core.

Hard Fun Projects

2 May 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

As a basic premise of my book on designing engaging learning, I maintain that learning can, and should, be ‘hard fun’. When you look at learning and engagement, you find this perfect alignment of elements. And, it occurred to me, that’s also true for good project work. And here I don’t just mean coursework assignments (though that too fits), but organizational innovation should also be hard fun!

As I’ve stated before in various places, when you’re designing new solutions, problem-solving, trouble-shooting, doing research, etc, you don’t know the answer when you begin. Therefore you’re learning when you do so! It’s not formal learning, it’s informal, but it’s still learning. So what works in learning should make sense for innovation too.

And in learning, the alignment I found between elements of effective education and engaging learning make sense. Both require (amongst others):

clear goals
appropriate challenge
meaningfulness of the problem to the context
meaningfulness to the learners
experimentation
feedback

And those also define a meaningful project for solving in the workplace.

That is, first you need to have a clear goal. The size and scope of the task should be within the reach, but not the grasp, of the team. The project has to have a clear benefit to the organization. And the team should be appropriately constituted with skills and committed to the project. The methods required for the innovation will be experimentation and feedback. Of course, you also need diversity on the team, safety to experiment, accountability for the results. (Which is helpful for formal learning too!)

We can, and should, be setting up our projects to meet these criteria. We get better outcomes, research tells us. That not only includes the product of the work, but team engagement as well. This is also a possible start to creating a culture of experimentation and continual learning. Which also has long-term upsides.

This came to me because I was asked in an interview what were the most fun projects I’d done. I realized that working with folks together to address problems, like when I led a team to develop an adaptive learning system, fit the bill. And that’s work I love, whether having a group together to collectively work out better design processes or performance and development strategy. Folks who’ve worked with me similarly have found it valuable. So who’s up for some ‘hard fun’?

Return on Wisdom

20 March 2018 by Clark Leave a Comment

In the early days of the internet, I had a chance to read one of the early translations of The Japan That Can Say No. The point I took away was the critique of short-term decision making driven by the need for shareholder returns. I was pondering this the other day, as I wondered how organizations can look to make longer-term investments. And it led me to ponder the question of what the return is on wisdom.

So, the book was a sensation. At the time, the rumor was that it was written by two top Japanese. It wasn’t released in English, but instead was illicitly translated because of the scandalous claims. Still, I thought the assessment of the problems with derivative financing and efficiency approaches were apt. Are these approaches wise?

I use the term wisdom because I think we can, and need to, go beyond ‘smart’. I was pursuing my own quest to transcend what I do, and came upon a nice view of wisdom from Sternberg. This one argues that we should make decisions with both short- and long-term views, for not just us and ours, but for all people, with an explicit consideration of the value that we are following. Ok, so I’m a native Californian, but I don’t see a problem with this view. Smart is ‘in the moment’, wise is looking at the bigger picture.

I ponder this in the context of organizations continually looking to reduce costs through expediency. As an alternative, they could be looking at longer term approaches that help them get their workforce more intrinsically engaged. Does outsourcing and layoffs end up being more costly than investing in better leadership and culture?

There are some answers. Laurie Bassie’s research found that there was a correlation between high scores on handling people and business results. Similarly, Towards Maturity finds that companies with good L&D practices are more likely to be successful. It’s not surprising. When you provide meaningful work with enablement to succeed, you’re aligning the elements to succeed. It’s a path to a coherent organization. And, like with light, it’s more powerful.

There are arguments to move in wise directions. It may be hard if you’re driven by the need to produce short-term returns. Still, it’s the wise thing to do.

Activity or Application?

6 March 2018 by Clark 3 Comments

I’m a fan of Michael Allen’s, not only because he knows his stuff and he’s a very good person, but also because he has a knack for making things accessible. For example, his Guide to eLearning is as good a guide to designing elearning as you can get (that and Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn, both appropriately in their second edition). So when I thought to criticize one of his models, I had to think really hard! And I’m still wrestling with it, but I also realize I’d gone down the same path! Obviously, it’s time to explore the issue.

One of Michael’s models is the CCAF model for making meaningful elearning. That’s:

Context: that sets up the situation
Challenge: that prompts the need for action
Activity: that the learner takes, and
Feedback: that comes from the situation.

There are nuances about this, but it nicely incorporates some of the best principles about designing effective (and engaging) practice. If you put people in a context and ask them to act, you’re minimizing the distance between the practice and the actual performance. Which is, of course, key to successful transfer. So this is a very handy shorthand, like Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping.

Now, in many ways, this is similar to my own activity-based design, which is more a curricular model than a pedagogical one, but it foregrounds activity instead of content. The goal is to have learners do something! And, of course, I’m thinking of creating a work product in many instances, or making meaningful decisions.

So what was I concerned about? Perhaps because I’d been thinking (and whinging) about ‘click to see more’ interactions, I want those activities to mean something! You could have an activity that’s just ‘matching’, or ‘identify the right word’ type of knowledge test. Those are activities, just not cognitively challenging ones. And of course Michael emphasizes this in his descriptions, but…there’s an opportunity for people to be slack.

I wondered about using ‘application’ instead of activity, focusing on the fact that people should be applying the knowledge to do something, not just doing any sort of activity. Do the semantics matter enough to be worth considering? Application-based design? Context-Challenge-Application-Feedback? Perhaps not, but I thought I’d think ‘out loud’ as usual. (Both to reiterate the point as well as to solicit your input.) So, what are your thoughts? Worth it? Or too much ‘splitting angel’s hairs on the head of a pin’ (metaphors mixed while you wait)?

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