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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Designing Informal

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I haven’t received Jay’s Informal Learning book yet (he’s promised it’s coming) but I’ve been thinking about informal learning a lot lately, not least because it’s emerged as an issue in some recent elearning strategy engagements.

One of the issues is the transition from novice to expert. I think Tony O’Driscoll’s model captures it elegantly, how the role of formal drops off and informal comes to play a bigger role as you transition from novice to expert. At the expert level, collaboration that is the knowledge negotiation process can be handled by email, blogs, and wiki. The problem is having the learner becoming part of the community from the beginning. I’d like to insist that it be baked into the LMS infrastructure, but I think instead that our elearning needs to be designed with communication and knowledge representation into it even for the most formal courses.

Which, of course, is hard to think of when you’re taking the typical siloed view of content and designing independent asynchronous courses. Which is why I’m arguing for a performance focus for organizations.

For example, the learning follow-on systems touted by Will Thalheimer, the example Jay Cross posted about where a new app emailed him several times over several days with further tips, and my own ‘layered learning’ model for slow learning.

Along the same lines, in a couple of recent engagements I’ve been suggesting that customer help needs to have a single entry point, with self-help resources and then an obvious and steady progression forward through getting assistance if the answer doesn’t already exist (ala my Learning At Large paper, PDF).

The points being that we need a broader focus, and our instructional design has to be augmented with information design and information architecture. It’s about supporting performance, not just about courses.

Virtual Worlds?

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A number of years ago I was involved in James Burke’s great Knowledge Web project. In organizing it, we were using Active Worlds, a 3D virtual environment. We’d stand around in this gorgeous room, each with our avatars, and text message each other. It quickly became apparent that the virtual world added nothing.

The new virtual world buzz is around Linden Labs Second Life. I had a look, but wasn’t overwhelmed. Now several colleagues are involved in it in significant ways. Both have experience in (and passion for) learning through technology, and I may have to rethink my take on virtual worlds.

It helps to know that, based upon Marcia Conner’s book Learn More Now, I’m a solitary or, at most, small-group learner. So, as I’ve maintained in the design of games, when your learning objective is interpersonal is when it makes sense to use a social game and a social world.

Through my teaching, particularly the learning theory course I’ve taught this summer, I recognize the constructivist value of having learners negotiate a shared understanding. That hasn’t benefited from a virtual world (except for a novelty factor, a Hawthorne effect, which I suggest will wear off and a new gimmick will be needed). Up ’til now, a discussion board or chat room had all the necessary affordances.

However. A colleague just passed me a link to this video (you’ll most likely have to scroll down) about the New Media Consortium’s space in Second Life. And in it, I saw something I hadn’t really thought about. Most of it was the standard “places to meet”, events, and some nooks and crannies to explore, but…
…that’s not what interested me. What’s interesting is that it is easy (apparently, I didn’t master it in my exploration) to create new things. So you can make models or representations and share them. THIS is a major benefit. Now we can share 3D representations and discuss them.

I’ve suggested in the past that the operating system metaphor I really want is ‘magic’, where I can make things happen with spells (scripts) or buy tools if I have money rather than time. Not to go into that here, but at least in a virtual world we can now make that true. Which also makes true that we can reach a new level of collaboration. And that is interesting!

‘Game’ online

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CO2FX is a ‘game’ about national policies and the carbon dioxide effects. You have responsibility for the science, economic and policy decisions for a national government. It’s very playable, although figuring your way through the interface takes a lot of exploration and experimentation.

The assessment that it’s a game is somewhat problematic; I claim that the designer can’t claim it’s a game, only players can determine whether it is (it’s a subjective assessment). Using my terminology, it’s a scenario (a simulation is just a model; it’s a scenario when you wrap an initial state and a goal state, possiblly with a story; it’s a game when you tune the experience to engagement).

The experience is certainly challenging, and there’s novelty in that what you do doesn’t seem to have the effect you inferred from the feedback, but the overall drama felt lacking; I didn’t feel quite the sense of urgency or outcomes; e.g. my popularity seemed to be waning, even though there was great economic growth, but I didn’t hear rumbles of dissent or have to weather bad press.

It’s a great example of what can, and should, be done, but it doesn’t stand on it’s own (it’d benefit from some ‘wrapping’ around the goals, to scaffold the learning, and to support post-hoc reflection).   Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s great educational value, but I think the claim of it being a game is a wee bit premature.

Doing trumps analysis

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I had a great conversation with my brother-in-law on Sunday. He’s in charge of the training for a division of a sector of a major organization. He took over a group that was stuck in analysis paralysis, and has started executing against their concepts.

What he’s doing is mostly face-to-face stuff, and it’s very broad and general. He doesn’t call it training, he calls it learning (hear, hear). His attitude is very much about winning back trust in the group first, and is happily doing lots of different wild, fun things, and then learning from the outcomes of those experiments. He’s fortunate in that he’s got a supportive leadership (now), a relatively hands-off management, and a budget.

He’s not doing a lot of ROI analysis at this point, but he did a lot of consultation beforehand about what the big pains were, and I have to say that I laud his approach; it’s pragmatic and it seems to be working. Find the big issues, and address them in an open and engaging way to rebuild trust. The rest can follow.

What I forgot to ask was what he intended to do once he had those wins on the board!

Jonassen on Problem-solving

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Right after my opening keynote at the International Conference on ICT in Teaching and Learning in Hong Kong, David Jonassen presented via a canned video and a live video chat Q&A afterward. David’s presentation on his long term work on problem-solving dove-tailed nicely with mine, as I talked about how to design learning experiences around meaningful decisions, and he talked about different categories of those meaningful decisions. (On a personal note, I was thrilled to hear he was going to use my book in a class of his!)

He started with the claim that we need meaningful education, and that problem-solving was a core skill going forward, a theme I too support. He argued that we also needed to recognize that the types of problems we teach learners to solve in school bear little resemblance to the types of problems our learners face outside of schoo, and that we needed to change the types of problems we introduce learners to. An astute observation!

He made off-hand comments that I suspect not all the audience picked up: the importance of addressing new concepts and problems qualitatively before addressing them quantitatively (contrary to much done in schools), quoting (I *think* it was Gardner) that theories have no meaning until they’re applied, and that our learners were coming to us too spoon-fed with overly simplistic problems and consequently that it was hard to develop richer abilities to flexibly apply schemas (nor, I might add, with mindsets about persistence and willingness to fail).

He also talked about how while he supported problem-based learning,
I’ve taken to given challenging problems as group assignments in my classes when I teach, having them wrestle with some ambuigity as part of developing a decontextualized approach to applying the concepts to the outside world. The problems are simplified to unrealistically focus on particular aspects, but are otherwise framed as Requests For Proposals or grant opportunities that they might really face. They sometimes complain, but I do think at the end of the experience they’re better equipped to solve the problems we want graduates to be able to solve. It’s nice to be able to blame David!

Industrial Strength Game Design

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At the UK eLearning Mission that happened last week, one of the US representatives was from a game development firm established to work in the Serious Games space after having been contacted about one of their pure games (very much like the ‘military squad’ games). They do full immersive games of a scale approaching that of commercial games, and with a similar quality. I assumed at a similar price point, but he jumped on that.

He said they worked out at about $18K per hour of training, but admitted that they couldn’t drop that down to $6K for 20 minutes. It was clear that there was some sort of minimum size before his numbers made sense, but he was cagey about the details. Ah, business…

So it’s not clear what the tipping point is between when you can and should make do with small games or when you want to go for full immersion game play. My natural reactions are to focus on the learning outcomes and keep the immersion for when it makes sense (as his initial example did), such as ambient contextualization, and otherwise situate the decisions you need with the minimal amount of production and tune to get the experience.

I also had a chance to talk to him about the processes they used to develop a game. Unlike the approach I use for small games (see the tools at the Engaging Learning resources page), where first we develop a concept document (audience, decisions, misconceptions, consequences, and a proposed storyline) and then a storyboard (all the screens, variables, initialization, draft visuals, prose, and rules) they develop a script without visual assets at all, and actually put that into the game engine and run it as a text adventure game until they have the play debugged. Then they do the visual assets.

This makes sense, I reckon, for his scale and production processes. An interesting lesson for me (still lusting after a chance to play with a larger size project than I have to date).

UK eLearning Mission

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It’s been too long since I’ve posted, but among other things I’d been preparing for the UK eLearning Mission that happened yesterday. A team of selected eLearning experts are over here on a government sponsored visit to suss out what’s new and exciting. I had the honor of co-chairing the session with Dr. Jim Terkeurst from the University of Abertay, so I used my time to lob a couple of frameworks (will blog them soon) into the air to set the stage.

The reps from the UK, and an assorted lot of US folks, (about 20 folks all up) each presented a bit on their organization and a ‘controversial statement’, in groups of six, interspersed with panel discussions about 4 specific topics (new learning, new technologies, economics, and effective elearning) chaired by inspiring folks like Michael Carter, Gordon Bull, Nile Hatch, and Joe Miller. Top reps of unknown companies like the BBC, Cisco, Microsoft, Reuters, and IBM mixed it up with smaller organizations doing cool stuff such as DDL, 3MRT, BrightWave, and Red7. This was definitely heady company!

I expect to post more reflections, but here are the threads that recurred and emerged (colored by my own filters):

  • Move to more motivation and engagement, seen as a strong shift to games (yes!)
  • A shift from learning as event to learning as process
  • Also shown as a shift to a broader view of elearning (performance support/workflow)
  • A shift to ‘context-aware’ learning (knowing who/where/what to uniquely support)
  • The importance of reflection, and learning to learn
  • The collaborative/connective nature of learning

I have to say it was a delightful chance for me to step away from the ‘head down’ mode I’ve been in since I returned from overseas and hear some challenging discussion. It was also reassuring to hear folks talking about the same directions I’ve been feeling are ways we need to go.

There will be a summary report, but i’m not sure how far it will be available. However, a couple of pointers worthy of note include Stephen Heppel’s NotSchool program that’s trying to re-engage disaffected youth (I met Stephen in Perth, very clever guy), and several of the things that are happening in SecondLife.

All hosted by SRI and with a reception sponsored by Oracle afterwards, it left a feeling that elearning is definitely an area with enormous potential and excitement, and of course some very challenging issues. Many thanks as well to the UK government for arranging this whole visit.

eLearning Learnings

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This past week I was at the eLearning Guild‘s conference (a great conference, as always), and had a number of learnings, as well as a delightful chance to chat with a whole bunch of people.

One of the great delights was finding out that an individual who had attended my learning game design workshop at a previous eLearning Guild conference was presenting the current status of a game project they were developing. They had done an outstanding job focusing on their goals, and consequently coming up with a compelling scenario that really hit their goals for making an impact on their business. He was very gracious, mentioning the workshop (even the book, and I didn‘t even pay him!), and also demonstrating the difficulties as well as the successes they had. It‘s gratifying to have what you say come to fruition, and to see more people trying to take their elearning to the ‘next level‘.

One interesting thing was that they had to use a side bucket of R&D money to do this, rather than having it being a mainstream activity. It‘s sad that they have to sneak it in, and then hope to get support now that it‘s to a ‘playable‘ stage.

I wonder how many people are finding it difficult to sell games. It‘s amazing to think that the most powerful practice opportunity is hard to justify, but the fact is that people‘s minds are limited. Particularly when one of the things that has been labeled as ‘games‘ is those mindless tarted up drill-and-kills. So you have to play games (ahem), and call it a ‘scenario‘ or (inaccurately) a scenario. Which isn‘t inappropriate but I‘d like you to be tuning it to a game for the best learning, not just leaving it a scenario (my terminology is a simulation is just a manipulable model, when you wrap an initial and goal state and a story it‘s a scenario, and when you tune it until it‘s engaging you‘ve got a game).

There were a number of other presentations talking about how to ramp up the engagement of the content, some better than others, but the important thing is that people are now talking more about the emotional content of the learning.

New Skills

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In Engaged and Engaging Science: A Component of a Good Liberal Education, Judith A. Ramaley & Rosemary R. Haggett (Association of American Colleges and Universities Winter 2005 peerReview) claim:

Increasingly, capacities such as cognitive flexibility, creativity, knowledge transfers, and adaptability are becoming the new basic skills of an educated generation.

They’re arguing that science is part of this, and that it needs to be taught in meaningful and engaging ways. I can’t agree more that our curriculum needs to stop focusing on rote knowledge, and start addressing on learning to learn. And, of course, I can’t agree more that making it engaging is the way to get learners meaningfully involved.

Later on, they talk about “the convergence of the disciplines…; the growth of multidisciplinary interest in the science of learning and the
availability of deeper understandings of how people learn; the capacity to model dynamic systems.” Again, absolutely!

I note that Jay Cross says, in his aInformal learning blog, “Senge was right on the mark when he trumpeted the need for systems thinking in The Fifth Discipline.” He heard me mention systems thinking back at the eMerging eLearning Conference in Abu Dhabi in November that he got me invited to. I can’t say I contributed (he cites Verna Allee, who I agree has got a lot going on in her value network stuff), but I’m glad to hear more voices talking about the necessity of systematic model-based reasoning as a core skill to cope with the increasing need for the capability to deal with novel problems, and continuous innovation.

Universal Learning Design

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Back when I was building an adaptive learning system that presented content differentially based upon the individual’s characteristics as a learner, I came across the concept of ‘universal learning design’. It sounded like a great idea, but there wasn’t really any useful guidance at that time.

I was recently reminded about it by a talk announcement and went back to the CAST site (Center for Applied Special Technology). There I found more guidance, particularly in the form of a book on the subject.

Their core notion is to have multiple representations of the content (which I already support as an instantiation of Rand Spiro’s Cognitive Flexibility Theory), multiple forms of assessment (which is why I support eportfolios), and multiple forms of affective support. It’s the latter that resonates for me currently, as I’m recognizing that at least some of the power of engaged learning comes from addressing the affective/emotional components of learning.

Their specific thoughts on this are found in this chapter, and there’re some examples to make it concrete.

I am still trying to go further, and incorporate attitude change into the learning process as well, recognizing that equipping the mind isn’t sufficient if the behavior change requires an associated attitude change. Also deciding when you need major change and when it’s just the right ‘nudge’ that’s necessary. However, those are topics for other posts I reckon.

There’s also the