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Kaihan Krippendorff Keynote Mindmap

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At a private event, I had a chance to hear Kaihan Krippendorff talk about thinking differently about innovation.  He used an 8P’s model as a framework to illustrate how to think differently.

He started by pointing out that the myth of entrepreneurial innovation is overblown, and that innovation comes from moving outside ‘business as usual’.

In an engaging way, he  used several examples for each of the Ps to show how companies succeeded by rethinking around this element (speaking too fast to capture them!).

krippendorffkeynotemindmap

Editorializing

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I recently wrote about serious comics, and realized there’s a form I hadn’t addressed yet has some valuable insights. The value in looking at other approaches is that it provides lateral insight (I’m currently reading Stephen Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From) that we may be able to transfer.  And the source this time is editorial cartoons.

Editorial cartoons use imagery and text to convey a comment on a current topic.  The best ones portray a poignant insight into an issue of the day, via a twist that emphasizes the point to be made.  They’re usually combined with a distinct visual style from each artist.  They reflect some of the same thoughts that accompany internet memes (the captioned photos) but require more visual talent ;).

The common approach appears to be (and I welcome insight from others) the ability to use another context to exaggerate some viewpoint. It’s a bit metaphorical, but I think the trick is to abstract the structure from the situation to be illuminated, and to map it to another situation that highlights the relationships.  So you could take some recent pop star spat and map it to a political one, or highlight an economic policy as a personal one.

As context, I happened to stumble upon an exhibition of Conrad‘s work in my college art gallery, and as he was the local cartoonist for my home newspaper (The LA Times), I recognized his work.  I had the chance to explore in more detail his award-winning efforts. Agree or disagree, he made powerful comments and I admired his ability.

Now, editorial cartooning is very context-sensitive, in that what is being talked about is very much ‘of the day’. What’s being commented on may not be relevant at a later time, particularly if they conjoin a popular culture event with an issue as they often do.  But the insight, looking for the twist and the way to make the point, is a valuable skill that has a role in learning design too.

In learning design, we want to make the content meaningful.  There’s intrinsic interest in pretty much everything, but it may be hard to find (see: working with SMEs), and also hard to convey.  Yet I believe comics are one way to do this.  You can, for instance, humorously exaggerate the consequences of not having the knowledge.  I’ve done that with content where we introduced each section of a course with a comic (very much like an editorial cartoon) highlighting the topic and necessity.

The point being that we can not only benefit from understanding other media, but we can appropriate their approaches as well. Our learning designs needs to be eclectic to be engaging and effective.  Or, to put it another way, there are lots of ways to get the design implemented, once you have the design right.

Meaningful and meta

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Over the weekend, one of my colleagues posted a rant about MOOCs and critical thinking. And, largely, I think he was right.  There’re several things we need, and MOOCs as they typically are constituted, aren’t going to deliver.  As I talked about yesterday, I think we need a more refined pedagogy.

So the things we need, to me, are two things:

  1. meaningful learning, whereby we have individuals learning skills that are applicable in their lives, and
  2. meta-learning, or learning to learn, so that people can continue to develop their skills in the face of increasing change.

And I don’t think the typical ‘text on screen with a quiz’ that he was ranting about is going to do it. Even with hand-shot videos.  (Though I disagree when he  doesn’t like the word ‘engage’, as I obviously believe that we need engagement, but of both heart  and mind, not just tarted up quizzes.)  He wanted critical thinking skills, and I agree.

Hence the activity framework. Yes, it depends on your design skills, but when done right, focusing on having learners create products that resemble the outputs that they’ll need to generate in their lives (and this is strongly influenced by the story-centered curriculum/goal-based scenario work of Roger Schank) is fundamentally invoking the skills they need. And having them show the thinking behind it developing their ‘work out loud’ (“show your work”) skills that ideally will carry over.

Ideally, of course, they’re engaging with other learners, commenting on their thinking (so they internalize critiquing as part of their own self-improvement skill set) and even collaborating (as they’ll have to).  And of course there are instructors involved to evaluate those critical skills.

As an aside, that’s why I have problems with AI. It’s not yet advanced enough yet, as far as I know, to practically be able to evaluate the underlying thinking and determine the best intervention.  It may be great when we are there, but for now in this environment, people are better.

The other component  is, of course, gradually handing off control of the learning design responsibility to the learners. They should start choosing what product, what reflection, what content, and ultimately what activity.  This is part of developing their ability to take control of their learning as they go forward.  And this means that we’ll have to be scrutable in our learning design, so they can look back, see how we’re choosing to design learning, so they can internalize that meta-level as well.

And we can largely use MOOC technologies (though we need to have sufficient mentors around, which has been a challenge with the ‘Massive’ part).  The point though, is that we need curriculum design that focuses on meaningful skills, and then a pedagogical design that develops them  and the associated learning skills.  That’s what I think we should be trying to achieve.  What am I missing?

Learning Through the Wild

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So last week I was in the wilderness for some more time, this time with family.  And there were several learnings as an outcome that are worth sharing.

VogelsangLakeAs context, Yosemite National Park is one of the world’s truly beautiful places, with the valley as an accessible way to see the glacier-carved rock. Beyond the valley, however, there is backcountry (mountains, rivers, lakes) that is only accessible by backpack, and I’ve done plenty of that. And then there’s one other option: the High Sierra Camps. There you can stay in tent cabins, eating prepared meals, but you can only get to them by horse or by hiking. (You can also get just meals, and carry in your tents and bags and all, which is what we did.) What this does is get you to a subset (a spectacular subset) of the high country, a chance to experience real wilderness without having to be able to carry a backpack.

Also as context, I am a fervent believer in the value of wildness.  As I expressed before, there’s the creativity aspect that comes from spending time in the wilderness. You can reflect on your regular world when you’re no longer tied to it.  As you hike or ride along the trails, your mind can wander and process in the background. There are also mental health benefits to be found in escaping from the everyday clatter. (This is very  necessary  for  me! :) And,  importantly, the processes in nature provide a counter-balance to the artificial processes we put in place to breed plants and animals. The variation generated in the wild is a complement to our own approaches, just as computers are a complement to our brains. Consequently, I believe we need to preserve some of our natural spaces.

So, one of the learning outcomes is being able to experience the wilderness without having to be physically capable of carrying everything you need on your back.  I reckon that if you can experience the wildness, you can appreciate it, and then can become a supporter.  Thus, just the existence of these alternate paths (between cars and backpacking) means to me a higher likelihood of preserving the environment.

Similarly, there are rangers who visit these camps, and provide after-dinner campfire talks.  They talk  at  dinner, talking about what they will be covering, but also advocating for the value of the programs and the wilderness. Similarly, the staff at the camps also do a good job of advocating for the wilderness (as they would), and there are guidebooks available for perusal to learn more, as well as information around the dining rooms (and  great food!).

One of the larger learning lessons is that, once you’re in context, the interest is naturally sparked, and then you’re ripe for a  message. Your curiosity gets stoked about  why coyotes howl, once you hear them. Or you wonder about the geology, or the lifecycle of plants, or…you get the idea.  Creating artificial contexts is one of the tricks of learning (please, don’t keep it abstract, it doesn’t work), but layering it on in context is increasingly doable and more valuable.

Meaningful engagement in context is a valuable prerequisite for learning. The reason we can go to conferences and get value (contrary to the old “you can’t learn from a lecture”) is because we’re engaged in activity and conferences serve as reflection opportunities.  Sometimes you need to get away from the context to reflect, if the contextual pressures are too much, and sometimes the context naturally sparks reflection.  Making time for reflection is a component of a learning organization, and getting support in context or having time away from context both are parts. So my recommendation is to support wilderness, and get out in it!

The probability of wasting money

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Designing learning is a probability game.  To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, you can lead a learner to learning, but you can’t make them think.  What I mean is that the likelihood that the learning actually sticks is a result of a myriad of design decisions, and many elements contribute to that likelihood.  It will vary by learner, despite your endeavors, but you increase the probability that the desired outcome is achieved by following what’s know about how people learn.

This is the point of learning engineering, applying learning science to the design of learning experiences.  You need to align elements like:

  • determining  learning objectives that will impact the desired outcome
  • designing  sufficient contextualized practice
  • appropriately presenting a conceptual model that guides performance
  • providing a sufficient and elaborated suite of examples to   illustrate the concept in context
  • developing emotional engagement

and so on.

And to the extent that you’re not fully delivering on the nuances of these elements, you’re decreasing the likelihood of having any meaningful impact. It’s pretty simple:

If you don’t have the right objectives (e.g. if you just take an order for a course), what’s the likelihood that your learning will achieve anything?

If you don’t have sufficient practice, what’s the likelihood that the learning will still be there when needed?

If you have abstract practice, what’s the likelihood that your learners will transfer that practice to appropriate situations?

If you don’t guide performance with a model, what’s the likelihood that learners will be able to adapt their performance to different situations?

If you don’t provide examples, what’s the likelihood that learners will understand the full range of situations and appropriate adaptations for each?

And if you don’t emotionally engage them, what’s the likelihood that any of this will be appropriately processed?

Now, let’s tie that back to the dollars it costs you to develop this learning.  There’s the SME time, and the designer time, and development time, and the time of the learners away from their revenue-generating activity. At the end of the day, it’s a fair chunk of change.  And if you’re slipping in the details of any of this (and I’m just skating the surface, there’re nuances around all of these), you’re diminishing the value of your investment, potentially all the way to zero. In short, you could be throwing your money away!

This isn’t to make you throw up your hands and say “we can’t do all that”.  Most design processes have the potential to do the necessary job, but you have to comprehend the nuances, and ensure that the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed on development.  Just because  you have an authoring tool doesn’t mean what comes out is actually achieving anything.

However, it’s possible to tune up the design process to acknowledge the necessary details. When you  provide support at just the right places, and put in place the subtle tweaks on  things like working with SMEs, you can develop and deliver learning that has a high likelihood of having the desired impact, and therefore have a process that’s justifiable for the investment.

And that’s really the goal, isn’t it?  Being able to allocate resources to impact the business in meaningful ways is what we’re  supposed to be doing. Too frequently we see the gaps continue (hence the call for Serious eLearning), and  we can only do it if we’re acting like the professionals we need to be.    It’s time for a tuneup in organizational learning.  It’s not too onerous, and it’s needed.  So, are you ready?

Serious Comics

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I attended  ComicCon  again this year, and addition to the wild costumes, crowded exhibit hall, and over-priced food, there are a series of sessions. They cover television, movies, and print in a wide variety of markets.  And I like the sessions that aren’t associated with popular media (as waiting in lines is something I’m fairly averse too).  One I saw this year (not all of, for several reasons) was particularly thought-provoking.

As background, when I was  approached by the Australian Children’s Welfare Agency, many years ago, to do a game to help kids who grow up in ‘non-parental’ situations, they’d already spent their money on a video, and a comic book, and a poster.  As far as I know, it was the first serious game you could play on the web (and I’m happy to have that disconfirmed, but as I’ve thought about it and tried to find out to the contrary, I haven’t found to the contrary). And back then we didn’t even  have the label ‘serious game’!

And I’ve been a fan of serious games since before then (my first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games).  In fact, one of the reasons I went to grad school was because  I saw the connection between adventure games and learning, but  it wasn’t clear they were commercially viable (at that time).

But I didn’t think about the comic book much.  I got a copy as part of the overall launch when the game was released along with the other materials, so I’m sure I read it (it may even be lurking somewhere in a cubbyhole somewhere, though could also have been the victim of a move or a tidiness binge).  And I’ve argued before about how graphic novel and such formats aren’t used enough in learning.

So this session was on serious comics, and it of course resurrected those thoughts. One panelist opened about how they were using comics to spark reading, and I was reminded how apparently the original Pokemon games (not Go, though that was obsessing my kids on the trip) required and consequently  sparked lots of reading. The second speaker introduced how he was using comics to spread STD/HIV awareness. These are actually both serious issues.

Of course, I was also reminded of an interactive comic book I once read on my iPad that had games interspersed that advanced the storyline (I couldn’t finish because I couldn’t complete one of the games: I’ve little time to spend developing the necessary ‘twitch’ skills).  However, more serious games, requiring applying the knowledge available through the comic, could provide an embedded practice environment.  It’s sort of a blend between a pure comic and a pure game, for important outcomes.  And this is very doable in ebook formats, even if the ‘game’ is just a mini-scenario or several, but with HTML 5 embedded you could do more.

I once wrote that in the future there would be lots of little interactive ‘learnlets’ that would teach you anything you needed to know (including how to make learnlets ;) and games or even interactive comics are what I meant  and what could be pretty close to ideal.  It’s been doable for a while, but now it’s doable pretty much with commercially available tools (e.g. not requiring custom programming).  We can make learning ‘hard fun’, and we should. So, what are you waiting for?

The Inaugural Jay Cross Memorial Award winner is…

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Reposted from the Internet Time Alliance website:

The Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award is presented to a workplace learning professional who has contributed in positive ways to the field of Real Learning and is reflective of Jay‘s lifetime of work. Recipients champion workplace and social learning practices inside their organisation and/or on the wider stage. They share their work in public and often challenge conventional wisdom. The Jay Cross Memorial Award is given to professionals who continuously welcome challenges at the cutting edge of their expertise and are convincing and effective advocates of a humanistic approach to workplace learning and performance.

We are announcing this inaugural award on 5 July, Jay‘s birthday. Following his death in November 2015, the partners of the Internet Time Alliance (Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn) resolved to continue Jay‘s work. Jay Cross was a deep thinker and a man of many talents, never resting on his past accomplishments, and this award is one way to keep pushing our professional fields and industries to find new and better ways to learn and work.

The Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2016 is presented to Helen Blunden. Helen has been an independent practitioner at  Activate Learning  since 2014. Her vision is to help people stay current in a constantly changing world of work and do this by working and sharing their work and learning in a generous, open, and authentic manner. Helen started her career within the Royal Australian Navy across two branches (Training Development and Public Relations) as well as working within Service and external to Service (with Air Force and Army and Defence civilians), then with the Reserves. Helen later worked as a Learning and Development Consultant for Omni Asia Pacific, and subsequently with National Australia Bank as a Social Learning Consultant. Helen is an active blogger and is engaged professionally on various social media platforms.

Here is Helen in her own words:  “In my observations, it‘s not only learning teams in organisations or institutions that need to change and recreate the traditional ways of training into learning experiences. It‘s wider than that. I have smaller businesses, some of whom are vendors who offer training products and services to the public or to organisations who are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get ‘into the 21st century‘ as their clients ask for more blended programs – shorter programs – but still achieve the same outcomes. Dare I say it, the tools that Jane Hart offers as tools for professional development are not for learning people alone – they‘re for everyone. This is where I‘m grappling to understand the enormity of the change and how, for the first time, you‘re not only helping a client design and develop the learning experience – but you need to teach them how to use the tools so it becomes part of their social behaviour to build their own business, brand and reputation.”

Helen will be formally presented with the award in her home city of Melbourne by Simon Hann, CEO of DeakinPrime, the corporate education arm of Deakin University.

It is with great pleasure that the partners of the Internet Time Alliance present the first Jay Cross Memorial Award to Helen Blunden.

helenblunden

Organizational Learning Engineering

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Organizational learning processes – across L&D, Executive Development, Leadership Development, and more of the roles in HR and talent management – are largely still rooted in both industrial era models and myths. We see practices that don’t make sense, and we’re not aligned with what we now know about how we think, work, and learn. And this is a problem for organizational success. So what are some of the old practices compared with what we now know?  No surprise, I created a diagram (a table in this case) representing just some of the tensions:

OldNew2

I won’t elaborate on all of these, but I want to make two points.  The first is that I could’ve gone on; both in breadth and depth.  That is, each of these unpacks with many implications, and there are more ways organizations are not aligned with what’s know about how people work.  The second point is that there are known ways to address these problems.  Systemic ways to get the combined benefits of more effective output  and more engaged people. Not surprisingly, treating people in ways that reflect their inner nature is more rewarding for them as well as more successful for the organization.

I’ve argued in the past that we should treat learning design seriously, with the depth of rocket science applied as a learning engineering. Similarly, we should be basing our organizational learning designs – our strategies, processes, and policies – on what’s known about people. That’s not being seen often enough.  It’s time for organizational learning to move into the information age, and start performing like professionals.  The action is at the coal face, not in the comfort zone. There’s good work to be done, and it’s time to do it.  Let’s go!

 

Ambiguity Denial Syndrome?

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I was talking with a colleague at an event one of the past weeks, and I noted down the concept of ambiguity denial syndrome. And I’m retrospectively making up what we were talking about, but it’s an interesting idea to me.

FractalSo one of the ways I start out a talk (including later today for a government agency) is to talk about chaos. I use a fractal, and talk about the properties a fractal has.  You know, that it’s a mathematical formulation that paints an image from which patterns emerge, yet at any point you really don’t know where it’s going to go next.

I use this to explain how our old beliefs in an ability to plan, prepare, and execute were somewhat misguided.  What we did was explain away the few times it didn’t work. But as things move faster, the fact that things are not quite as certain as we’d believe means we have to become more agile, because we can less tolerate the mistakes.

The  point I’m making, that the world increasingly requires an ability to deal with ambiguity and unique situations. And our learning designs, and organization designs, and our cultures, need to recognize this. And yet, in so many ways, they don’t.

At the individual level, we’re not equipping folks with the right tools. We should be providing them with models to use to interpret and adapt to situations (explain and predict). Our learning designs should have them dealing with a wide variety and degrees of certainty in  situations.  And we should be testing and refining them, recognizing that learners aren’t as predictable as concrete or steel.  Instead we see one-shot development of information  dumps and knowledge tests, which aren’t going to help organizations.

At the interpersonal level, we should be facilitating people to engage productively, facilitating the development of viable processes for working and learning together. We know that the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room (if we manage the process right), and that  we’ll get the best results when we empower people and support their success. We need them working out loud, communicating and collaborating, to get the best. Instead, we still see top-down hierarchies and solo work.

In short, we see people denying the increasing complexity that the world is showing us.  Implicitly or explicitly, it’s clear that many folks believe that they can, and must, control things, instead of looking to adapt on the fly.  We have new organizational models for this, and yet we’re not even seeing the exploration yet.  I acknowledge that change is hard, and navigating it successfully is a challenge. But we have lots of guidance here too.

Too many processes I see reflect industrial age thinking, and we’re in an information age. We have greater capacity amongst our people, and greater challenges to address, with less tolerance for mistakes.  We need to address, even embrace ambiguity, if we are to thrive. Because we can, and we should.  It’s the only sensible way to move forward in this increasingly complex world. So, are you ready?

eLearning Process Survey results!

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So, a few weeks ago I ran a survey asking about elearning processes*, and it’s time to look at the results (I’ve closed it).  eLearning process is  something I’m suggesting is ripe for change, and I thought it appropriate to see what people thoughts.  Some caveats: it’s self-selected, it’s limited (23 respondents), and it’s arguably readers of this blog or the other folks who pointed to it, so it’s a select group.  With those caveats, what did we see?

SQ1The first question was looking at how we align our efforts with business needs. The alternatives were ‘providing what’s asked for’ (e.g. taking orders), ‘getting from  SMEs’, and ‘using a process’.  These are clearly in ascending order of appropriateness. Order taking doesn’t allow for seeing if a course is needed and SMEs can’t tell you what they actually do. Creating a process to ensure a course is the best solution (as opposed to a job aid or going to the network), and then getting the real performance needs (by triangulating), is optimal.  What we see, however, is that only a bit more than 20% are actually getting this right from the get-go, and almost 80% are failing at one of the two points along the way.

SQ2The second question was asking about how the assessments were aligned with the need. The options ranged from ‘developing from good sources’, thru ‘we test knowledge’ and ‘they have to get it right’ to ‘sufficient spaced contextualized practice’, e.g. ’til they can’t get it wrong.  The clear need, if we’re bothering to develop learning, is to ensure that they can do it at the end.  Doing it ‘until they get it right’ isn’t sufficient to develop a new ability to do.  And, we see more than 40% are focusing on using the existing content! Now, the alternatives were not totally orthogonal (e.g. you could have the first response and any of the others), so interpreting this is somewhat problematic.  I assumed  people would know to choose the lowest option in the list if they could, and I don’t know that (flaw in the survey design).  Still it’s pleasing to see that almost 30% are doing sufficient practice, but that’s only a wee bit ahead of those who say they’re just testing knowledge!  So it’s still a concern.

SQ3The third question was looking at the feedback provided. The options included ‘right or wrong’, ‘provides the right answer’, and ‘indication for each wrong answer’.  I’ve been railing against one piece of feedback for all the wrong answers for years now, and it’s important. The alternatives to the wrong answer shouldn’t be random, but instead should represent the ways learners typically get it wrong (based upon misconceptions).  It’s nice (and I admit somewhat surprising) that almost 40% are actually providing feedback that addresses each wrong answer. That’s a very positive outcome.  However, that it’s not even half is still kind of concerning.

SQ4The fourth question digs into the issue of examples.  There are nuances of details about examples, and here I was picking up on a few of these. The options  ranged from ‘having’, thru ‘coming from SMEs’ and ‘illustrate the concept and context’, to ‘showing the underlying thinking’.  Again, obviously the latter is the best.  It turns out that experts don’t typically show the underlying cognition, and yet it’s really valuable for the learning. We see that we are getting the link of concept to context clear, and together with showing thinking we’re nabbing roughly 70% of the examples, so that’s a positive sign.

SQ5The fifth question asks about concepts.  Concepts are (or should be) the models that guide performance in the contexts seen across examples and practice (and the basis for the aforementioned feedback). The alternatives ranged from ‘using good content’ and ‘working with SMEs’ to ‘determining the underlying model’.  It’s the latter that is indicated as the basis for making better decisions, going forward.  (I suggest that what will helps orgs is not the ability to receive knowledge, but to make better decisions.)  And we see over 30% going to those models, but still a high percentage still taking the presentations from the SMEs. Which isn’t totally inappropriate, as they  do have access to what they learned. I’m somewhat concerned overall that much of ID seems to talk about practice and ‘content’, lumping intros and concepts and examples and closing all together into the latter (without suitable differentiation), so this was better than expected.

SQ6The sixth question tapped into the emotional side of learning, engagement. The options were ‘giving learners what they need’, ‘a good look’, ‘gamification’, and ‘tapping into intrinsic motivation’.  I’ve been a big proponent of intrinsic motivation (heck, I effectively wrote a book on it ;), and not gamification. I think an appealing visual design, but just ‘giving them what they need’ isn’t sufficient for novices: they need the emotional component too. For practitioners, of course, not so much.  I’m pleased that no one talked about gamification (yet the success of companies that sell ‘tart up’ templates suggests that this isn’t the norm). Still, more than a third are going to the intrinsic motivation, which is heartening. There’s a ways to go, but some folks are hearing the message.

SQ7The last question gets into measurement.  We should be evaluating what we do. Ideally, we start from a business metric we need to address and work backward. That’s typically not seen. The questions basically covered the Kirkpatrick model, working from ‘smile sheets’, through’ testing after the learning experience’ and ‘checking changes in workplace behavior’ to ‘tuning until impacting org  metrics’.  I was pleasantly surprised to see over a third doing the latter, and my results don’t parallel what I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m dismayed, of course, that over 20% are still just asking learners, which we know in general isn’t of particular use.

This was a set of questions deliberately digging into areas where I think elearning falls down, and (at least with this group of respondents), it’s not good as I’d hope, but not as bad as I feared.  Still, I’d suggest there’s room for improvement, given the constraints above about who the likely respondents are.  It’s not a representative sample, I’d suspect.

Clearly, there are ways to do well, but it’s not trivial. I’m arguing that we can do good elearning without breaking the bank, but it requires an understanding of the inflection points of the design process where small changes can yield important results. And it requires an understanding of the deeper elements to develop the necessary tools and support. I have been working with several organizations to make these improvements, but it’s well past time to get serious about learning, and start having a real impact.

So over to you: do you see this as a realistic assessment of where we are? And do you take the overall results as indicating a healthy industry, or an industry that needs to go beyond haphazard approaches and start practicing Learning Engineering?

*And, let me say, thanks  very much to those respondents who bothered to take the time to respond.  It was quick, but still, the effort was completely appreciated.