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LXD by Design

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Learning Experience Design (LXD), I argue, is the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. All well and good, of course, but how do you introduce it? Specifically, how do we engage people already actively designing? There are a number of ways to cut it. You could talk about the cognitive underpinnings, the implications for the elements of learning, or via the changes in the design process. I do the latter two, with a focus on the engagement side (which I feel is underdeveloped), in my latest book, “Make It Meaningful“. However, what if you’re trying to do both? Here’s a case to visit LXD by design.

It seems pretty safe to say that most people will resist totally throwing out their entire design process. There’s lots of investment. Further, most design processes have a useful basic structure. This suggests looking for the smallest tweaks that will yield the biggest impacts. We’re looking to incorporate the effectiveness of learning science with the emotional appropriateness of engagement. What does this require?

The first change is in the analysis. LXD simply  can’t work without performance objectives. If you’re just trying to make people aware, you’re not really on a transformative journey. You want to be focusing on equipping people so that they’re (meaningfully) changed through the process. You also need some new information: why this is necessary  for the learners, and why experts find it interesting enough to study. There’s more, but this is key.

Then, your design process differs. You are being creative,  given that you’re not just directly practicing. You’re also tuning to get the experience optimized. So, you need to build in some brainstorming, and iteration. In pragmatic ways, of course.

Implementation is also more iterative. You’ll be investing slowly, to allow pivots and to keep the overall costs contained. Postponing programming and preferring paper are components of this.

Even your evaluation is different. You are testing, now, not only effectiveness, but also the experience. Which you may have been doing (*cough* smile sheets *cough*), but you need to test both sequentially, not just one  or the other.

All along, there are small changes that will help integrate learning science elegantly with engagement. Making those critical changes will likely take a bit longer, at least at first. On the other hand, you should be getting real outcomes  and more engaged learners. Which, ultimately, is what we should be doing.

I’ll be covering this in a workshop for the Learning Guild in two half-day sessions prior to their LXD conference at the beginning of August. (Also doing a session during the conf on emotion.) I hope you’ll find LXD by Design to be a practical and useful, even  transformative, experience.

Critical ID/LXD Differences?

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I’ve argued both that Learning Experience Design (LXD) is an improvement on Instructional Design (ID), and that LXD is the  elegant integration of learning science with engagement. However, that doesn’t really unpack what are the critical ID/LXD differences. I think it’s worth looking at those important distinctions both in principle and practice. Here, I’m talking about the extensions to what’s already probably in place.

Principle

In principle, I think it’s the engagement part that separates the two. True, proper ID shouldn’t ignore it. However, there’s been too little attention. For instance, only one ID theorist, John Keller, has really looked at those elements. Overall, it’s too easy to focus purely on the cognitive. (Worse, of course, is a focus purely on knowledge, which really  isn’t good ID).

I suggest that this manifests in two ways. First, you need an initial emotional ‘hook’ to gain the learner’s commitment to the learning experience. Even before we open them up cognitively (though, of course, they’re linked)! Then, we need to manage emotions through out the experience. We want to do thinks like keep challenge balanced, anxiety low enough not to interfere, build confidence, etc.

We have tools we can use, like story, exaggeration, humor, and more to assist us in these endeavors. At core, however, what we’re focusing on is making it a true ‘experience’, not just an instructional event. Ideally, we’d like to be transformational, leaving learners equipped with new skills and the awareness thereof.

Practice

What does this mean in practice? A number of things. For one, it takes creativity to consider ways in which to address emotions. There are research results and guidance, but you’ll still want to exercise some exploration. Which also means you have to be iterative, with testing. I understand that this is immediately scary, thinking about costs. However, when you stop trying to use courses for everything, you’ll have more resources to do courses right. For that matter, you’ll actually be achieving outcomes, which is a justification for the effort.

Our design process needs to start gathering different information. We need to get performance objectives; what people actually need to do, not just what they need to know. You really can’t develop people if you’re not having them perform and getting feedback. You also need to understand  why this is needed, why it’s important, and why it’s interesting. It is, at least to the subject matter experts who’ve invested the time to  be experts in this…

Your process also needs to have those creative breaks. These are far better if they’re collaborative, at least at the times when you’re ideating. While ideally you have a team working together on an ongoing basis, in many cases that may be problematic. I suggest getting together at least at the ideating stage, and then after testing to review findings.

You’ll also want to be testing against criteria. At the analysis stage, you should design criteria that will determine when you’re ‘done’. When you run out of time and money is  not the right answer! Test usability first, then effectiveness, and then engagement. Yes, you want to quantify engagement. It doesn’t have to be ‘adrenaline in the blood’ or even galvanic skin response, subjective evaluations by your learners is just fine. If you are running out of time and money before you’re achieving your metrics, you can adjust them, but now you’re doing it on consciously, not implicitly.

I’m sure there more that I’m missing, but these strike me as some critical ID/LXD differences. There are differences in principle, which yield differences in practice. What are your thoughts?

Shameless self-promotion

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We interrupt your usual blog fodder with this commercial announcement. Our programming will resume after this break:

Me with the bookOk, well, there actually is some shame. I don’t usually do this, but I don’t think it’s unjustified (and I’m excited). My next book is now  out!  In fact, it’s in my mitts. Obviously, it can be in yours, too. Now, there’s a screwup in the printing, but it’s minor (and possibly a blessing)? Anyway, it’s time for some shameless self-promotion.

So,  Make It  Meaningful: Taking Learning Design from Instructional to Transformational is designed to complement the learning science books by providing the other half of the Learning Experience Design (LXD) story. I believe LXD is the  elegant integration of learning science and engagement. The former’s well covered; this addresses the latter (and the integration). I immodestly think it’s a substantive contribution.

However, while the book looks great (to my admittedly biased eye), the title didn’t make it onto the spine! It’ll look a touch weird on your shelf. On the other hand, presuming that’s fixed (working on it), that means that any current versions will be collector’s items, right? Well, maybe…(looking for silver linings).

As a side note that I’ll be running a workshop on this topic at the DevLearn conference in Las Vegas in October. I’ll also be running a LXD design workshop online to accompany the conference in August.

So that’s it, my almost shameless self-promotion. You can check out more about it here or  here.

We now return you to your usual blog, (p)resuming next week at the same bat time, bat channel.  

The cognitive basis of LXD

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Image of the brainWhen ATD asked me to write the learning science book, I’d already had the intention of writing a Learning Experience Design (LXD) book. I’d even begun, and the first section on learning was underway, so essentially I was partly done! I’d also realized that it was going to be monumental undertaking. This is because LXD, to me, encompasses three things, all based on cognitive science. To properly address it, I would have to be talking a master’s course, not just a book!. So here I’d like to make the case why I think that there’s a cognitive basis of LXD.

First, look at the three elements of LXD: learning, experience, and design. For experience, you can think: engagement and/or emotion. That is, ensuring that there’re explicit feelings associated, not just occurrences. Each one of those three things, then, has a cognitive underpinning.

As I’ve discussed previously, learning science was an outgrowth of cognitive science. The inter-disciplinary approach to cognition that inspired the formation of cognitive science subsequently led to learning science. Design, too, was a subject of study. I happened to be a grad student at the time that user-centered approaches, subsequently UX, were being explored. This, too, is cognitive; first because design approaches have to reflect aligning with how users brains work. Then, also, because design processes have to accommodate how designers brains work, and don’t!

Then we come to the experience side. It turns out that understanding ‘experience’ is a cognitive exercise as well. Why are we driven by curiosity? How come we remember emotionally-charged events better? What creates positive affect? It’s an interdisciplinary approach as well, integrating research on emotion and events and more. It’s the topic of my just-released book (which includes design as well, to serve as the complement to my learning science book).

I continue to explore all three, from a professional responsibility and personal interest. I admit I nerd out about these things, and am always eager to find out more and discuss it. And  I’ve do have  a bias. My Ph.D. is in Cog Psych, so I do look at world with that filter. But I also see that the perspective provides some useful leverage. My current ideal is to make experiences that are transformative, in that they change people in ways that they want, or need, to change. That’s the goal.

I will continue to maintain that knowing the underpinning architecture, and then the manifestations in the three areas, are important. I believe that knowing the cognitive basis of LXD is an advantage in being able to execute against the requirements in optimal ways. So, am I missing anything?

 

Gamification or…

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On my walk yesterday, I was reflecting on our You Oughta Know with Christy Tucker  (a great session, as usual), who talked about scenarios. It got me pondering, in particular, about different interpretations of ‘gamification‘. As I dictated a note to myself as I walked (probably looking like one of those folks who holds phone calls on their perambulations), I found myself discussing the differences between two approaches. So here’re some thoughts on gamification or the alternative.

To start, let’s say we have a learning goal. For instance, how to deal with customers. A typical approach would be, after an initial course, to stream out questions about different aspects of the principles. For this, you might give points after correctly answering n. Once you answer n, you get X points (10, 100, 1000, whatever). 2n gets you 2X points or maybe 3X. These points may entitle you to prizes: swag, time off, office party. Pretty typical gamification stuff.

Then, consider an alternative: they do successively more challenging scenarios. That is, initially it’s an easy customer with a straightforward problem. Then, it’s a mix of more difficult customers with simple problems and easy customers with more difficult problems. Finally, you’re dealing with difficult customers  and difficult problems. Along the way, you give badges for successive levels of customer difficulty, and similarly for handling increasing levels of difficulty of problems.

Which of these is easier to implement? Will one or the other lead to better handling of customers? Which will lead to long-term engagement of your employees? Of course, these are extremes. You can have the questions in the ‘prize’ situation get steadily more challenging. They can even be written as ‘mini-scenarios’. You can mix in scenarios with knowledge questions.

What I want to suggest, however, is that  not doing the latter, the scenarios, is going to keep any initiative from having the biggest impact. They’re competency-based, providing explicit levels of capability. They’re also a chance to practice when it doesn’t matter, before it does.

This shouldn’t stand alone. Of course there should be coaching, and increasing responsibility, and more. It’s not about just the formal learning. Extending the learning experience should include both formal and informal mechanisms. The point I want to make, however, is that having learners perform in practice they way they’ll need to perform when it matters, is the best preparation. Yes, you need knowledge (the stuff that, increasingly, AI can handle), but then you need meaningful practice.

Of course, if it’s something you do frequently after the learning experience, coaching may be enough. However, if aspects of it are rare but important, scenarios are the important reactivation practice that will keep skills tuned. So, that’s my take on gamification or alternates. How would you fine tune my response?

Pre-order for Make It Meaningful now available

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I’m happy to report that the ebook version of my next tome, Make It Meaningful: Taking Learning Design From Instructional to Transformational, is now available for pre-order! Why should you care?  Here’s a pass at explaining, and you can decide whether a pre-order for Make It Meaningful  makes sense for you.

Why this book?

Here’s the marketing blurb:

Learning Experience Design is, as author Clark Quinn puts it, about “the elegant integration of learning science with engagement”. While there are increasing resources available on the learning science side, the other side is somewhat neglected. Having written one of the books on the learning science side, Clark has undertaken to write the other half. The book is grounded in his early experience writing learning games, then researching cognition and engagement, and ongoing exploration and application of learning, technology, and design to creating solutions and strategies. It covers the underlying principles including surprise, story, and emotion and pulls them together to create a coherent approach. The book also covers not just the principles, but the implications for both learning elements and a design process. With concise prose and concrete examples, this book provides the framework to take your learning experience designs from instructional to transformational!

I hope that suggests why I think it’s important. Further, here are the short versions of what some early readers had to say:

“…the right emotional engagement tactics can be effective, desirable difficulties. The book explains why and how, with good examples.”
Patti Shank, PhD Author of Write Better Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess Learning

“… the notion of engagement, and its true meaning, is like the mysterious fifth element waiting to be discovered and summoned through three words in this book: Make. It. Meaningful.”
Zsolt Olah, Senior Learning Technologist, Amazon

“…systematically reveals the secret sauce for creating impactful learning experiences…brings to light the missing emotional design dimension that separates instructional design from LXD. Highly recommended..!”
Les Howles, Co-Author, Designing the Online Learning Experience

“As a fan of Clark Quinn‘s books, I‘m happy to announce this is another winner. Make It Meaningful closes a gaping hole in instructional design models by showing how to address the emotions in learning design.”
Connie Malamed, Publisher of theelearningcoach.com

Going a wee bit further…

What’s included

There are two sections, the first on principles, the second on practice. Initially I cover a bit of basics about learning, how to ‘hook’ people, then how to extend the experience, and some tips and tricks. In the subsequent section I consider the implications for the different elements of learning design: introduction, concepts, examples, practice, and closing, and then the amendments to your design process to incorporate the necessary elements. Thus, I’m trying to be thorough.

Who this is for

This is a book for those who already know the basics of science-grounded design, and are looking to take their learning experience design to the next level. It’s about addressing the emotional side. To be sure, it  also  makes mention of the cognitive essentials, but it is first and foremost focused on the emotional side.

What else should you know?

This is the first offering from the Learning Development Accelerator (LDA)  offshoot, LDA Press. (Note: as Editor-In-Chief, I’m biased.) In my own words:

LDA Press, an imprint of the Learning & Development Accelerator, is a boutique publisher focusing on evidence-informed titles that fill needed gaps in the literature while offering authors the relationship they deserve.

Hopefully, my experience with publishers (as author and consultant), is a good start. Then, the rigor of academic training in writing and reading should provide a reasonable expectation of quality. Additionally, I’m also looking to make the prose comprehensible. Finally, we’ve engaged professional copy-editing. We’ll see how that plays out, but so far it’s seems like we’re on track. Also, we’re actively soliciting additional needed works.

A further point: we’re keeping costs low. Thus, print copies of Meaningful  will be 22.99 (discount for LDA members), and the ebook is only $10.99 (also a discount for LDA members), plus there’s a special discount for pre-orders! The book releases 16 May, both ebook and print, but the latter may take awhile since orders will only be available on that date.

I think this book is needed, and immodestly believe it’s one that I am capable to write. At any rate, now you know you can make a pre-order for Make It Meaningful. Whether that makes sense for you is something only you can determine.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…

 

Sensitivities and Sensibilities

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We are currently experiencing a crisis of communication. While this is true of our nation and arguably the world, it‘s also true in our little world of L&D. Recently, there have been at least four different ‘spats‘ about things. While I don‘t want to address the specifics of any of them, what I do want to do is talk about how we engage. So here‘s a post on sensitivities and sensibilities.

First, let me be clear, I‘ve some social issues. I‘m an introvert, and also miss social cues. I also have a bad habit of speaking before I‘ve done the knowledge-check: is this true, kind, and necessary? Subtlety and diplomacies aren‘t my strong suit. I continue to be a work in progress. Still, I never intentionally hurt anyone, at least not anyone who hasn‘t demonstrated a reliable propensity to violate norms that I feel are minimum. I continue to try to refine my responses.

There are two issues, to me: what we should say, and how we should say it. For instance, I think when someone says something wrong, we need to educate. Initially, we need to evaluate the reason. It could be that they don‘t know any better. Or it could be that they‘re deliberately trying to mislead.  

Let‘s also realize we‘re emotional animals. If I‘m attacked, for instance, I’m likely to blame myself, even when it’s wrongly. Others are highly unlikely to wear blame, and lash out. We are affected by our current context; we are more critical if we‘re tired or otherwise upset, and on the reverse are more tolerant if rested and content.  

I‘m also aware that we have no insight into where someone‘s coming from. We can guess, but we really don‘t know. I really learned this when I was suffering from a pinched nerve in my back; I have more sympathy now since I‘ve come to recognize I don‘t know what anyone else is living with.

So, I‘m trying to come up with some principles about how to respond. For instance, when I write posts about things I think are misguided or misleading, I call out the problems, but not the person, e.g. I don‘t link to the post. I‘m not trying to shame anyone, and instead want to educate the market. I think this is a general principle of feedback: don‘t attack the person, attack the behavior.  

Also, if you‘re concerned about something, ask first. Assume good intentions. How you ask matters as well. The same principle above applies: ask about the behavior. I’m  impressed with those who worry about the asker. If the ask seems a bit harsh, they wonder whether the asker might be struggling. That‘s a very thoughtful response.  

There‘s a caveat on all this: if folks continue to promote something that‘s demonstrably wrong, after notification, they should get called out. Here in the US, the first amendment says we can say whatever, but it doesn‘t say we don‘t have any consequences from what we say. (You can‘t yell ‘fire‘ in a crowded theatre if there isn‘t one!) Similarly, if you continue to promote, say, a debunked personality test, you can be called out. ;)

So this is my first draft on sensitivities and sensibilities. Assume good intent. Ask first. Educate the individual and the market. Don‘t attack the person, but the behavior. I‘m sure I‘m missing situations, conditions, additional constraints, etc. Let me know.  

Learning or Performance Strategy

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Of late, I’m working in a couple of engagements where the issue of learning and performance strategy have come up. It has prompted some thoughts both on my part and the part of my clients. I think it’s worth laying out some of the issues and thinking, and of course I welcome your thoughts. So here are some reflections on whether to use learning or performance strategy as an organizing concept.

In one case, an organization decreed that they needed a learning strategy. Taken with my backwards design diagram  from the learning science book, I was tasked with determining what that means. In this case, the audience can’t be mandated with classes or tutorials. So really, the only options are to support performance in the moment and develop them over time. Thus we focus on job aids and examples. I think of it as a ‘performance strategy’, not a learning one.

In the other case, an organization is executing on a shift from a training philosophy to a performance focus. Which of course I laud, but the powers-that-be expect it to yield less training without much other change. Here I’m pushing for performance support, and the thinking is largely welcome. However, it’s a mindset shift for a group that previous was developing training.

I general, I support thinking that goes beyond the course, and for the optimal execution side of a full ecosystem, you want to look at outcomes and let that drive you. It includes performance consulting, so you’re applying the  right solution to performance gaps, not the convenient one (read: ‘courses’ ;). Thus, I think it makes more sense to talk performance strategy than learning one.

Even then, the question becomes what does such a strategy really entail, whether learning  or performance. Really, it’s about having a plan in place to systematically prioritize needs and address them in effective ways. It’s not  just design processes that reflect evidence-informed principles, though it includes that. It’s also, however, ways to identify and track problems, attach organizational costs and solution costs, and choose where to invest resources. It includes front-end analysis, but also ongoing-monitoring.

It also involves other elements. For one, the technology to hand; what solutions are in use and ensuring a process of ongoing reviews. This includes both formal learning tools including the LMS and LXP, but also informal learning tools such as social media platforms and collaborative documents. Another issue is management: lifecycle monitoring, ownership, and costs.

There’s a lot that goes into it, but being strategic about your approach keeps you from just being tactical and missing the forest for the trees. A lot of L&D is reactive, and I am suggesting that L&D needs to be come proactive. This includes going from courses to performance, as a first step. The next step is to facilitating informal learning and driving innovation in the organization. Associated elements include meaningful measurement  and truly understanding how we learn for a firm basis upon which to ground both formal  and informal learning. Those are my thoughts a learning or performance strategy, what am I missing?

Reflecting (on 2021)

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I don’t think I’ve made a habit of it, but it occurs to me that it might be good to reflect a little on this past year. In particular, I want to revisit the areas I’ve been focusing on. There’ve been some emergent themes, and it’s worth it (to me, at least ;) to think a bit more about them. So here’s what I’m thinking about while reflecting on 2021.

Obviously, the cognitive and learning sciences have been a theme. The publication of my book on  learning science this year was a catalyst, as you might expect. In it, I covered not only the basics, but some of the extended areas. These extended areas include thinking about situated learning and the importance of context, distributed cognition and the use of external representations, and an area new for me, embodied cognition including gesture and motion. Annie Murphy Paul’s  The  Extended Mind covers these nicely.

Another topic is talking about engagement (including four posts on the topic, starting here). Which I view as the complement to the learning science side. I think of learning experience design as the elegant integration of learning science and engagement, and am continually working to create a definitive approach to the latter as I’ve done with the former. (Stay tuned.)

Coping with change is another recurrent theme. As we are facing increasing chaos, the ability of organizations to adapt requires innovation. Which, really, is a form of learning. I argue further that it’s an area L&D  should be engaged in. Agility will be a critical differentiator for organizations, and it’s an opportunity to be more central to organizational success.

I’ve also been on about how the transformation organizations need shouldn’t start with digital. I think this is an increasingly important realization in this era of change. To be successful, organizations need to work in coherence with how their people think, work, and learn. If you get that right, digitization can facilitate outcomes. However, if you digitize some of the old approaches that are holdovers from prior eras, you can limit the effectiveness of the investments.

Reviewing my past year’s posts, there’s a mix of other topics. I’ve continued my usual ‘takedowns’ of myths, shared thoughts on education, and unpacking nuances of learning design. A mixed bag, but then this blog is about my various ideas. So that’s my current reflections.

Take note, there will be some changes to announce come the new year. Until then, please have a safe and happy holiday season, and best wishes for the new year.

 

Relevant and anchored

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In reviewing my forthcoming book on Make It Meaningful, I’m poring over my Education -Engagment Alignment (EEA). I’m rewriting part to revisit it. Which I’ve done, but in doing so I had a revelation. I’ve maintained that they’re independent elements. However, I now see Relevant and Anchored as complementary components.

‘Anchored’, in my terminology, is ensuring the learning outcome meets a real need. It’s about the relationship between the learning objective and the performance gap. If you’re trying to get better at something, for instance, the objective is specifically related. If you’re learning about dealing with customer objections, you’ve got a specific objective to use a particular approach. It is not  ‘understand’ but ‘do’. You’re not anchoring if your root cause of the performance gap isn’t a lack of skill. If the learning covers information that’s ‘nice to know’, you’re not anchored. This is determined, by the way, by a performance consulting process.

‘Relevant’, again the way I term it, is about whether the learner  cares about that learning objective. If learners don’t care about being a repair tech, having an objective about the problem-solving process can’t matter. This is something we should design into the experience. That is, we should be helping learners ‘get’ that the consequences of acquiring this skill matter to them. We can use curiosity, or consequences, or…but we should  not leave it to chance!

Using the usual present/absent two-factor diagram, it looks like this:

That is, if you have neither the effort is worthless. Which is like a lot of what we see! When you’re anchoring, but not being relevant, the solution is likely to be moderately effective (tho’ not as much as it could be). People stay away if possible! If it’s relevant but not anchored, it’ll be engaging, but not effective and not meaningful. This is the typical tarted up stuff, aka well-produced but not well-designed and produced. However, if you get both in there, you’ve truly made it meaningful.

I suggest you want relevant  and anchored. If we’re putting in the effort, we should be aligning both. I suggest LXD means the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. It sticks better!  We know how to do this, reliably and repeatedly. Our learning doesn’t have to be dull nor ineffective, and we owe our learners this.