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Context & learning environments

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I was talking with Gina Shreck, who I’d known through Twitter, at a Sun-sponsored happy hour about new learning environments. She’s been quite active in Virtual Worlds (VW), and I was describing an Augmented Reality Game (ARG), and it came to me that there are some really meaningful similarities.

We know from research like John Bransford’s Anchored Instruction and Brown, Collins, & Duguid’s Situated Cognition that learning works better in context (even if you spread across contexts to generalize).   What I realized is that both approaches are really using technology to bring context for learning into vivid relief.   I’ve been active in games for learning because it provided meaningful practice, and of course VW’s can be used to host games in (realizing that VW‘s aren’t inherently games, but instead are just environments), and so are ARG’s.

Even when designed for learning, the point is to try to enrich the context.   Web-based games are the easiest, but there are times when more full contextualization is necessary, and the different environments offer different affordances or capabilities.

Despite the overhead, VWs are immersive in that your avatar is totally ‘in world’, and you can design that world to be anyplace/anytime you want it to be.   You can design the contingencies the way you want.   While most valuable for 3D, it may also be important for when total difference is necessary.   Specific examples include building real world structures that must be explored or investigated, for learning purposes.

On the other hand, ARGs are set in the real world, but specific constraints can be introduced.   You can have specific events, materials, and people (real or virtual) appear in the world you want.   Again, you want to develop associated decision making for those explored contexts.

The reason to use an ARG is to develop the ability to develop the capability in situ, that is, as close to the real world context as possible, whereas VWs can add extra dimensions, or work for contexts that are too expensive or dangerous to do live.   That’s also true for non-VW games as well, of course.

The point is to minimize distance and maximize transfer from learning context to real world application.   The overhead to take advantage of these sorts of capabilities is dropping quite rapidly. The goal is to discover the degree and type of contextualization needed (as well as pocketbook, of course), and decide what environment offers the necessary depth and value to achieve the outcomes you need.   However, you need to understand the full repertoire of tools available, and their affordances, to optimally choose an approach.   So, game on!

Designing on demand

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of working with a team on a grant to use games as a context to conduct high stakes cognitive assessments.   The cognitive tasks for assessment are remarkably abstract, e.g do this particular discrimination task (ie look at a string of four characters and signal if one is a vowel), sometimes while monitoring another situation or as an attention-distractor from another task, but the tasks that they are matched to range from very expensive to life-saving..   The goal is to establish a baseline, and then look for decrements at particular instances before a crucial task, indicating lack of readiness.

The interesting thing is the challenge of placing these tasks in a meaningful context.   It’s creative, and consequently fun.   It’s also collaborative, and when you get divergent contributors in a safe environment, you can really get productive synergy going.   We got together the night before for a meal and some social lubricants, and the next day spent hours in a conference room discussing, whiteboarding and generally designing.

One of the problems is that there have been diverse project specifications from the granting organization, and lack of access to the intended audience. We had some feedback that there should be minimal ‘story’, and very clearly that if the audience doesn’t perceive value, they can ignore the activity completely.   Also, there were some important constraints on how much we could change the core task without invalidating the deep research base.   Fortunately, a background in cog psych as well as having the minds behind the tests with us allowed a reasonable guess.   Still, a bit of a challenge.

We focused in early on the value, and I brought up that if the cognitive activity produces improvements in ability, that it’s training as well as assessment, and the audience cares very much about being able to do the job.   That hadn’t been determined to date, but may be available.   We also talked about marketing the value, and if the assessment can in this case (as it has in the past) serve as a very accurate predictor of performance (e.g. detecting a decrement in performance without prior knowledge), that may provide the necessary motivation.

When it comes to design, I’ve made a claim before that you can’t give me an objective I can’t design a game for (I reserve the right to raise the objective ‘high’ enough, but have yet to be proved wrong; it’s an outcome of the engaging learning framework), and this isn’t an exception. In fact, we came up with numerous possible settings, originally for what we were told of the mission, and then for a more near-term mission.   We also came up with relative degrees of abstraction from real (e.g. closely aligned to real task) to essentially arbitrary (like Tetris has little correlation to real time).   The fact of the matter is, you can embed meaningful tasks in appropriate contexts, and tune into a game no matter what the objective is.   It just takes systematic creativity (not an oxymoron), as in the heuristics I’ve talked about previously in two spots.

Since we don’t yet have access to the audience (though we know who they are), I suggested that we need to mock up several different plausible looks and trial them when they do get access (they’re working on that).   They had talked to some stakeholders, but that’s not reliable, for reasons I related to them.   In the process of designing the Quest game, we talked to the counselors who worked with these ‘at risk’ youth, who suggested this issue was smart shopping and cooking.   Fortunately, we then got to talk to some of the youth themselves, who responded “yeah, that’s important, but what’s really important is…” and proceeded to give us a set of relationships that then became key to the game.   Lesson: don’t just listen to the managers, or just the trainers, or just…all those are important, but they may not be right.

It was easy to consider a number of degrees of story ‘depth’, and visual styles to go with each.   At least, they’re in my head, but I went out and grabbed screenshots of various things that could serve as models.   You want the game mechanics to reflect the cognitive task, but you can wrap a number of different looks round that. We’ll pull together our notes, get some storyboards generated, but we managed to sketch out five separate games for what evidence suggests are likely to be the most important skills.

And that’s the real lesson, that it can be done, reliably and repeatedly.   And that’s important, because if you can’t, then it’s all well and good to talk about the value of games as learning environments, but it’s a waste of time if you don’t have an associated design process.   Fortunately, I can still comfortably say: “learning can, and should, be hard fun“.

Learning and Work

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In trying to get attention for work, a colleague is concerned with the ‘learning’ label being a potential detriment.   It’s probably true, and that’s a sad state of affairs.   While I joke that we who work in the learning/training/performance/etc field are those who’ve retained their love of learning despite schooling, I do believe that there’s some baggage associated with the term.

If you put on a ‘serious business’ perspective, learning can seem like warm and fuzzy coddling.   “What we really need is to hire the talent we need and let them know what to do and have them do it, right? They’ll do it, and like it, or they’re out!”   Which, of course, is ridiculous, but who doesn’t believe that view is out there?

What’s really the case is that each organization will have it’s own way of doing things, and that individuals will need to be brought up to speed, then provided resources to support performing, and expected to contribute. And, as I am coming to believe, as things get more complex, we’ll need more from people in terms of adaptation.

Or, as Kevin Wheeler put it:

Today success is in the hands of creative people who have energy and excitement over reaching a business objective. These people are hard to find and hard to keep as their energy and entrepreneurial spirit are not always suited to a controlled environment.   They need space, time, and freedom to experiment. They thrive in a networked world where they can exchange ideas, swap experiments, and engage in conversation.

That, to me, is learning.   To look at it another way, I lump innovation, problem-solving, creativity, design, and more all as activities of learning.   Herb Simon said “to design is human”, and I believe that design is about learning.   But maybe it’s about thinking?   Doing?

So, to me, it’s a shame that a ‘learning’ label would be a barrier to being perceived as relevant to business, but that seems to be the case.   My question is, do we rebrand, or do we reengineer learning’s status in the organization.   I don’t have an answer, do you?

Sims, Games, and Virtual Worlds

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On last week’s #lrnchat, which I missed most of for my lad’s band concert, I tuned in during a break and saw that Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia) had asked a question I wanted to answer (but couldn’t in 140 chars :).   She asked: “Would someone explain diff between sims (often used well for ed) and VWs?”   She was concerned that some people were using them interchangeably, and I do think it’s important to have some clear definitions.

I stipulate (and would love to get agreement on) a definition that works like this:

  • A simulation is, technically, just a model.   It’s captures the relationships of some part of the world (real or virtual), typically not all.   It can be in any potential state, and be manipulated to any other valid state.
  • When we put that simulation into an initial state, and ask someone to take it to a particular goal state, I want to call that a scenario.   And, typically, we wrap a story around it.
  • We can tune that scenario into a game.   Not turn it, tune it.   A game is a scenario that’s been optimized to have just the right (subjective) level of challenge, a story learners care about, and a bunch of other elements that characterize an engaging experience.

So what’s a Virtual World?   In the above definition, it’s a simulation with the particular characteristics that it’s 3D, and typically also can host many individuals within it.   Now, the infamous World of Warcraft has been turned into a game by a) embedding a bunch of quests (initial states where you try to achieve certain goal states) and b) tuning the experience to be compelling (even addictive).

It gets interesting when we start talking about learning in the context of sims, games, and Virtual Worlds.   A simulation, for a motivated and effective self-learner, is a powerful learning environment.   They can explore the relationships to their desired level of understanding.   The only problem is that motivated and effective self-learners are unfortunately rare.   So, we more typically create scenarios.

When you choose an initial state, and properly choose the goal state, you can ensure that they can’t achieve the goal state until they fully have grasped the nuances of the relationships and can act upon them in specific ways.   That’s the essence of serious game design! This is, I argue, the best learning practice next to live performance with mentoring.   The benefits to scenarios, of course, are that live performance can have costly consequences (e.g. losing money, breaking things, or killing people) and individual mentoring doesn’t scale well.

Are there reasons to tune a scenario into a game?   I want to argue that there are.   First of all, there are the motivational aspects, keeping the learner’s interests.   Second, optimizing the challenge means that the learner is moving through in the minimal amount of time.   Finally, we can alter the storyline to make it more meaningful – exaggerating characters or motives or context – which actually brings the practice environment closer to the urgency likely to be felt in the real world, when it matters. Truly, learning can and should be ‘hard fun’!

How about learning in virtual worlds?   I’ve talked about this before, but certainly, I believe, if the learning objectives inherently support 3D reasoning, whether industrial plant arrangement and operation, molecular structure, or architecture, absolutely.

However, a virtual world is just a simulation, and if you want learning outcomes, you need either self-directed and motivated learners, or embedded scenarios.   Which is what I have been seeing, for example I have seen a very nice demonstration for insurance adjusting.

In addition, when social interaction matters, there are some interesting opportunities.   Individuals can represent themselves as they please, and can create the contexts they wish as well.   (However, I have also seen what are, essentially, slide presentations in a virtual world, and think that’s ridiculous.)

On the other hand, virtual worlds currently have some overhead issues: learning to be effective in them has a learning curve, and there are technical overheads as well.   Consequently, I have been loath to recommend them for many situations where they could be used, if there isn’t an inherently 3D rationale.

However, I do believe that a) the overheads are rapidly being dropped by advancements both UI and technical and b) that there are some ephemeral things that are still fully to be realized.   People I trust, including Joe Miller and Claudia L’Amoreaux of Linden Labs, Karl Kapp of Bloomsburg University, and Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University, continue to express not only the available, but also the untapped potential.

Still, I think the definitions are solid, and am comfortable with the current assessment of virtual worlds.   I’m willing to be wrong, on the latter :). I welcome your thoughts.

Getting Revolutionary: LC Big Q

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The Learning Circuits’ Blog Big Question of the Month is whether and how get ‘unstuck’, when you’ve got a lot to offer and it’s well beyond what they expect you to do in your job.

This actually resonates with two separate things, some thoughts around ‘being revolutionary’, and a previous post based upon a similar complaint that triggered this month’s question (must be a lot of understandable angst out there).   The previous post was about trying to meet unreasonable expectations, and the individual wasn’t getting the support they needed to do the job the way it should be done.   Similarly the big question was triggered by someone knowing what should be done but feeling trapped.

The thread that emerges, for me, is that training departments can’t keep operating in the same old way, despite the fact that formal instruction doesn’t have to die (just improve).   Incrementalism isn’t going to be enough, as optimal execution is going to be just to stay in the game, and the competitive advantage will be the ability to innovate new value to offer.   It’s just too easy to copy a successful product or service, and the barriers to entry aren’t high enough to prevent competition.   You never know when a viral or chaotic event will give someone a marketing advantage, so you’ve got to keep moving.

Trying to keep to the status quo, or slowly expand your responsibility is going to fail, as things are moving too quickly. You have to seize the responsibility now to take on the full suite of performance elements: job aids, portals, social learning, content and knowledge management, and more, and start moving.   It still has to be staged, but it’s a perspective shift that will move you more strategically and systemically towards empowering your organization.

And back to the tactics, what do you do when your clients (internal or external) aren’t pushing you for more and better?   Show them the way.   While I’ve learned that conceptual prototypes don’t always work (some folks can’t get beyond the lack of polish, even when you’re just showing the proof of concept), try and mock up what is on offer, and talk them through it. Help them see why it’s better.   Do a back of the envelope calculation about how it’s better.   Bring in all the factors: outcomes, performance, engagement, learner experience, whatever it takes.

Then, if they don’t want it, do your best within the constraints to do it anyway (write better objectives, practice, etc. even if they won’t appreciate it), and live with what you can do.   And, truly, if you’re capable of more (not more work, better/smarter work), and it’s on offer but continually not accepted, it probably is time to move on.   Don’t give in, keep up the fight for better learning, your learners need it!

Dispositions of Productive Inquiry

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In my last post, I referenced John Seely Brown’s mention of dispositions, and I think it’s worthwhile to try to represent and discuss his point here, as it’s relevant to social learning, organizational culture, and success, topics I’ve mentioned in the past.

In The Power of Dispositions, JSB & Douglas Thomas (Ubiquity) argue that we need more than skills for 21st century education.   They suggest that there exists an innate disposition of productive inquiry, an inclination (in particular contexts) to engage in a continual cycle of questioning and answering that leads the individual through a process of ongoing learning.   It’s about knowing, not about knowledge.   They suggest: “more basic than a skill; it is an embodied element of how we understand and perceive the world”.

They argue that by placing questions of meaning, and focusing on contexts and inquiry rather than content and results, we make environments conducive to these dispositions.   Naturally, some of their observations are based in computer games, where I’ve argued contextualized challenge creates the most meaningful exploration and, consequently, learning.

I believe there’s something fundamental here, but am also left a bit dissatisfied, as there’s no obvious prescription, and I’m impatient to change the world.   However, I have to agree that what I see in the schooling my children face, specifically in the transition to middle school, is that the teachers are not providing any context about why it’s important, nor working to make it meaningful, and focusing on product and not process.   (This is true of too much of our learning, organizational as well.)

I do believe that if we put up interesting challenges and support the process of exploration we can make more meaningful learning, and if that leads to a development of disposition, we’ve had a good outcome.   I certainly know that we need to make our learning more meaningful, even when the outcome is known, if we want it to stick.   That we could create a culture of productive and continual inquiry, however, is the bigger opportunity on the table, for schools, organizations, and society.   And that’s worth shooting for.

Transformative Experience Design

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As part of the continual rethink about what I offer and to who (e.g. training department rethinks to managers, directors, VPs; experience design reviews/refines to learning teams), my thoughts on learning experience design took a leap.   I’ve argued that the skills in Engaging Learning (my book) are the ones that are critical for Pine & Gilmore’s next step beyond their experience economy, the transformative experience economy. But I’ve started to think deeper.

John Seely Brown challenged us at the Learning Irregulars meeting that what fundamentally made a difference was a ‘questing disposition’ found in certain active learning communities.   This manifests as an orientation to experimentation and learning. My curiosity was whether it was capable of being developed, as I’m loath to think that the 10% that learn despite schooling :) is inflexible because I believe that more and better learning has a chance to change our world for the better.

I hadn’t finished the article he subsequently sent me (coming soon), but it drove me back to some early thinking on attitude change.   I recognize that just learning skills aren’t enough, and that a truly transformative experience subjectively needs to result in a changed worldview, a feeling of new perspectives.   This could be a change in attitude, a new competency, or a fundamental change in perspective.

Which brings me back to looking at myth and ritual, something I tried to get my mind around before. I was looking for the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ritual, and the closest thing I could find is Rapport’s Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, which is almost impenetrably dense (and I’m trained and practiced at reading academic prose!).   However, the takeaway is that ritual is hard to design, most artificial attempts fail miserably.

Others have suggested that transformation is at core about movement, which takes me back to ritual.   Both a search on transformation and a twitter response brought that element to the surface.   The other element that the search found was spirituality (not just religious).   Which is not surprising, but not necessarily useful.

Naturally, I fall back to thinking from the perspective of creating an experience that will yield that transformational aesthetic, but it’s grounded in intuition rather than any explicit guidance. Still, I think there’s something necessary in the perspective that skills alone isn’t enough, and as I said before, as much of our barriers may be attitude or motivation as knowledge and skills.

I’ve skimmed ahead in JSB’s article, and can see I need a followup post, but in the interim, I’d welcome your thoughts on designing truly transformative experiences, not just learning experiences.

Monday Broken ID Series: Process

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Previous Series Post

This is the last formal post in a series of thoughts on some broken areas of ID that I’ve been posting for Mondays.   The intention is to provide insight into many ways much of instructional design fails, and some pointers to avoid the problems. The point is not to say ‘bad designer’, but instead to point out how to do better design.

We’ve been talking about lots of ways instructional design can be wrong, but if that’s the case, the process we’re using must be broken too.   If we’re seeing cookie-cutter instructional design, we must not be starting from the right point, and we must be going about it wrong.

Realize that the difference between really good instructional design, and ordinary or worse, is subtle.   Way too often I’ve had the opportunity to view seemingly well-produced elearning that I’ve been able to dismantle systematically and thoroughly.   The folks were trying to do a good job, and companies had paid good money and thought they got their money’s worth.   But they really hadn’t.

It’d be easy to blame the problems on tight budgets and schedules, but that’s a cop-out.   Good instructional design doesn’t come from big budgets or unlimited timeframes, it comes from knowing what you’re doing.   And it’s not following the processes that are widely promoted and taught.

You know what I’m talking about – the A-word, that five letter epithet – ADDIE.   Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.   A good idea, with good steps, but with bad implementation.   Let me take the radical extreme: we’re better off tossing out the whole thing rather than continue to allow the abominations committed under that banner.

OK, now what am I really talking about?   I was given a chance to look at an organization’s documentation of their design process.   It was full of taxonomies, and process, and all the ID elements.   And it led to boring, bloated content.   If you follow all the procedures, without a deep understanding of the underpinnings that make the elements work, and know what can be finessed based upon the audience, and add the emotional elements that instructional design largely leaves out (with the grateful exception of Keller’s ARCS model).

The problem is that more people are doing design than have sufficient background, as Cammy Bean’s survey noted.   Not that you have to have a degree, but you do have to have the learning background to understand the elements behind the processes.   Folks are asked to become elearning designers and yet haven’t really had the appropriate training.

Blind adherence to ADDIE will, I think, lead to more boring elearning than someone creative taking their best instincts about how to get people to learn.   Again, Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping is a pretty good shortcut that I’ll suggest will lead to better outcomes than ADDIE.

Which isn’t to say that following ADDIE when you know what you’re doing, and have a concern for the emotional and aesthetic side (or a team with same), won’t yield a good result, it will.   And, following ADDIE likely will yield something that’s pretty close to effective, but it’s so likely to be undermined by the lack of engagement, that there’s a severe worry.

And, worse, there’s little in their to ensure that the real need is met, asking the designer to go beyond what the SME and client tells you and ensure that the behavior change is really what’s needed.   The Human Performance Improvement model actually does a better job at that, as far as I can tell.

It’s not hard to fix up the problem.   Start by finding out what significant decision-making change will impact the organization or individual, and work backward from there, as the previous posts have indicated. I don’t mean to bash ADDIE, as it’s conceptually sound from a cognitive perspective, it just doesn’t extend far enough pragmatically in terms of focusing on the right thing, and it errs too much on the side of caution instead of focusing on the learner experience.It’s not clear to me that ADDIE will even advocate a job aid, when that’s all that’s needed (and I’m willing to be wrong).

Our goal is to make meaningful change, and that’s what we need to do.   I hope this series will enable you to do more meaningful design.   There may be more posts, but I’ve exhausted my initial thoughts, so we’ll see how it goes.

Cultural success

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I’ve been a wee bit busy this week, engaged on two different initiatives involved in improving what the organizations are doing. The interesting bit was that there were two widely different cultures, and yet each was successful.   How could that be?

Normally, we look at the elements of successful learning cultures as providing safety and reward for contributing, acceptance of diversity, and other dimensions.   It’s easy to imagine that this results in a relatively homogeneous outcome, which, while certainly desirable, might seem bland.   However, the two juxtaposed experiences demonstrated that this is definitely not the case.

In one, there’s definitely a feeling of responsible progress, but it’s a very supportive environment, and while there’s gentle teasing, it’s a very warm and fuzzy place, self-described by the leader.   This leader has some clear ideas, but is very collaborative in getting input in what goals to choose and more so in how to get there.   It’s necessary in the community in which they play, but it works.   People are clear about where they’re going, and feel supported in getting there in reasonable steps.

The other culture is similarly committed to quality, but the leader has a much different personality. Instead of warm and fuzzy, there’s much more attitude and edge.   The comments are more pointed, but it’s even more self-directed than other directed, and is taken as well as given. It’s more lively, probably not quite as ‘safe’, but also probably a bit more fun.   It’s probably more suited to the entrepreneurial nature of the organization than the previous more institutional approach.

Yet both are in continual processes of improvement; in both cases my role was to add the outside knowledge of learning and technology in their self-evaluation.   It’s a pleasure to work with organizations that are serious about improvement, and eager to include the necessary input to get there.

My take-home is that there are lots of different ways organizations can be functional, as well as dysfunctional.   It doesn’t take much more than commitment to move from the latter to the former, and the leader’s style can be different, as long as it’s consistent, appropriate, and successful.   Definitely a nice thing to learn.

Meeting unreasonable needs

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I was contacted yesterday by a relatively new ID person, who was in a tough spot.   This person understood the principles of Tony Karrer’s “Before You Ask” post, as the situation was well laid out.   Some help was asked for (clearly no expectation other than, perhaps, a thoughtful reply; the circumstances were quite clear).

The situation is that this person is the support for an LMS across multiple geographic locations.   The ID was hired to do ‘training’ on the system, but access to SMEs is limited at beast, the uses in the different contexts were different enough that a course model isn’t a viable solution, yet this person wasn’t clear on what alternatives to take: “I am beginning to think that the position is flawed in its design.”

For what it’s worth, here’s what I replied (slightly modified for clarity and anonymity):

First, I’d offer a pointer to John Carroll’s minimalist instruction (via “The Nurnberg Funnel”).   He taught a word processing system via a set of cards that trumped the instructionally designed manual by focusing on the learners’ existing knowledge and goals.   It’d be one way to ‘teach photography’ instead of ‘the camera’.

Of course, I also recommend teaching ‘the model’, not the software *nor* the task. That is, what is the LMS’s underlying model, and how does it lead you to predict how to do x, y, and z.   If you can teach the model, and through a couple of examples and practice get them to be able to infer how to do other tasks, you’ve minimized ‘training’ and maximized their long-term success.   Your lack of access to SMEs means you have to become one, however, I reckon.   Doing good ID does mean more responsibility on the designer in any case.   Sorry.

On top of either approach (common tasks, or model-based learning) consider that your role is to put out some basic materials (don’t think training, think job aids), and then serve as a ‘consultant’.   Have them come to you to ask how to do things, and either create FAQ’s or more job aids, depending on their need and your assessment of the value proposition in either.   So don’t think your only solution is ‘training’.

Also consider gestating a ‘community’ to surround your wiki, and grow it into a self-help resource that people can get into to the level they can handle.   Have discussion board where people can post questions. You’ll be busy at first, but if they find value, it can grow to be self-sustaining.   People will often self-help, if it’s easy enough.

BTW, another organization had some success many years ago starting with a central office, bringing in and training local ‘champions’ who gradually moved the locus of responsibility back to their unit.   Of course, they got buy-in to do so, but you might try to work with your early adopters and help them become the local resources.

Overall, don’t try to accomplish everything with ‘the course’, but look to the broader range of performance ecosystem components (if you’ve followed my blog, you know I’m talking job aids, ecommunity, etc) and balance your efforts appropriately.

The response was that this was, indeed, helpful.   I feel for the person in the situation of having to do a particular role when the ‘received wisdom’ about how to do it is at odds with what really is useful, and is underresourced to boot. A too-frequent situation, and probably not decreasing, sigh.   But taking the broader performance perspective is a useful framework I also found useful in another recent engagement, professional development for teachers.   Don’t just worry about getting them the basics, and develop them as practitioners, even into experts, as well.   Moreover, help them help themselves!

This is just the type of situation where taking a step back and looking at what is being done can yield ways to rethink, or even just fine-tune the approach.   I typically find that it’s the case that there *are* such opportunities, and it’s an easy path to better outcomes.   Of course, I also find that years of experience and a wealth of relevant frameworks makes that easier ;).   What is your experience in adapting to circumstances and improving situations?