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Designing a conference

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When I agreed to join as co-director of the Learning & Development Accelerator, I’d already attended their first two conferences. Those had been designed to reflect the circumstances at the time, e.g. the pandemic. In addition, there was a desire on the part of Matt Richter & Will Thalheimer (the original directors) to reflect certain values. Matt and I are running the event again, but times have changed. That means we have to rethink what’s being done. So here’s my thinking about designing a conference.

First, the values Matt and Will started with included being as global as possible, and being virtual. The former was reflected in having presentations given twice, once early in the US day, and then again later. That supported everything from Europe, Africa, and the Mideast to Asia and Australia. The virtual was, at least partly, a reaction to the lack of desire to travel and meet face to face, but also to provide options for those who might struggle.

We’re definitely still focusing on being virtual. Folks who would find it challenging to arrange travel for whatever reason can attend this event. There’s also the environmental considerations. Yes, technology requires resources, but not as much as collective travel. While there’s also a desire to meet different time needs, we’ve found less demand for multiple times. However, we will be recording sessions that are synchronous, so they can be viewed at convenient times. We also are spreading it over six weeks, so that there’s time to consume as much as you want. Further, faculty can choose when they’re offering ;).

The original design was focused on evidence-based L&D (which remains a key guiding principle for the LDA). Matt & Will solicited their presenters based upon their representation, but the agenda was largely what those folks wanted to present. Which, in many ways, reflects what other conferences do. In this new era, we wondered what would make a compelling proposition when you can travel to F2F events. We decided that we wanted to step away from ‘what we get’, and focus on ‘what the audience needs’.

This event, then, has a curriculum, across two tracks, designed to address specific needs. There’s also a different pedagogy than most conferences.We also have specific faculty, rather than presenters based upon submissions. Of course, there are tradeoffs. At least we can share our thinking.

The faculty are folks we know and trust to present evidence-based content. You won’t hear promotion for snake oil, like learning styles. We have a pretty impressive lineup, frankly, of people we think are world-class. This includes folks like Ruth Clark, Mirjam Neelen & Paul Kirschner, Karl Kapp, Julie Dirksen, Kat Koppett, Stella Lee, Nigel Paine, Will Thalheimer, and Thiagi. On top of, of course, Matt and myself. Reality means that a few folks we would’ve liked to have couldn’t commit, but this is a a broad and reputable group.

The tracks are basics and advanced. We want to be able to serve multiple audiences. The intent is that the basic track has the core knowledge an L&D person should know. As best we can, as we negotiate with the faculty, of course. Then, the advanced topics are things that are emergent and need addressing. Of course, there’s no commitment that you have to stay in one or another. As with other conferences, you can pick and choose what to view.

We’re also not just having presentations; we’ve asked the faculty to provide development. That is, we’re intending several rounds of content, activity, and feedback, spread out over several days or weeks. We don’t want people to hear good ideas, and maybe take them back. We want folks to take action! We’re also designing in the opportunity for mentoring.

Of course, there’ll be some social events, and other ways to not only hear content and apply it, but to mingle with faculty and other attendees. We want to foster some community. Also, we’re intending to somewhat front load stuff so that we can adapt. If we hear that we need to do something we haven’t planned, we’re looking to have leeway to address it. The nice thing about being small is the ability to be flexible!

None of this is saying you don’t get much of the same from conferences (except, perhaps, the design). I’ve been on conference program committees, and know conference organizers as well. They typically get more proposals than they can accept, so they can choose a suite that reflect things for various ranges of experience and cover important topics. They may not, however, know all the submitters, and take chances on a few. I laud that, actually, because we can’t know if a new approach or person is worthwhile without experimentation. Still, there is the chance for gaps, and for bad presentations/presenters. They’re also, except for the pre-conference workshops (e.g. my Make It Meaningful one at the upcoming DevLearn), one-off events.

We’re taking a chance on our format, too. We haven’t done it before. It may not work, though we have good reasons to believe it will. So, we hope to see you at the Learning & Development Conference, Oct 10 – Nov 18, if the above thinking about designing a conference sense. We think it does, we hope you do, too.

Projects That Didn’t Fly

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I’ve had the pleasure of leading the design of a number of projects that have had some impact. These include a mobile app a company could point to. Also a game that helped real kids. Even a context-sensitive performance support system that was worth a patent. Then, of course, are the projects that didn’t, for whatever reason, see the light of day.  So here are some reflections on a few projects that didn’t fly.

Back in the mid-90s, I was part of a government-sponsored initiative in online learning, and we were looking for a meaningful project. We made a connection to two folks with a small company that taught about communicating to the press. They could’ve come out with a book, but they wanted to do something more interesting. We collaborated on an online course on speaking to the media. I partnered with an experienced digital producer, and backstopped with a university-based media team. We had a comic skit writer, and cartoonists, to augment our resources. The result was technically sophisticated, educationally sound, and engaging both visually and in prose. It never flew, however, as we didn’t partner it with a viable business model. Which was reflective of the times.

Then, at the end of the 90’s, I was asked to lead a team developing an adaptive learning system. The charge was to help learners understand themselves as learners. I had a stellar team: software engineer, AI expert, psychometrician, learning science guru, visual designer, and an interface designer. The model was to do an initial profile, then present you with learning elements (concepts, examples, practice, etc) and update your model based on your performance. There was even a machine learning component to improve the models as we went along. We actually got a first draft up and running (10 elements in the student model), before ego and greed undermined and killed it. The lessons learned, of course, have continued to inform me, including, for instance, my calls for content systems.

Then, around the mid-2000s, I was given the task to devise a content model for a publisher.  They wanted to develop once and populate a variety of business products. Drawing on previous experience, I developed a robust model, which started from individual elements and supplemented and aggregated them in a systematic way. This also ended sadly. In this case, the software side never reached fruition.

There are lots of reasons good intentions can go awry.  In my case, it wasn’t going to be on a lack in the learning design ;). What I’ve learned, however, is that learning design isn’t the only element that matters. There’s vision, and execution, and partners, and more. All are ways in which things can go wrong. Yet, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It just means that we should, to the extent of our abilities, also try to ensure the success of the other comments. It’s worth exploring projects that didn’t fly so as to see how future ones might.

Help with breaking up

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In a current engagement, we’re faced with the challenge of being given large goals. They can be learning, or performance support, or even just awareness. One of the things we’re wrestling with is how and when to break things up into smaller chunks. To be clear, this is about whether to put it into a separate entity, rather than how to segment within an entity. This isn’t an area of my expertise, I admit. As a consequence, I’ve done some scouring and pondering, and here’re some thoughts and my request for help with breaking up.

My initial reaction is that this is about curriculum. That is, the level above pedagogy: not how to teach, but what to teach. A term which made sense is ‘curriculum mapping‘. Which works for K12, but the advice I found wasn’t helpful in this instance. It seemed to be about iterating, which is good, but I was looking for some research-based principles. We don’t have external standards.

Asking around, my colleagues suggested it’s more like information architecture. I know a bit about information architecture, but not a lot. In general, I take it as organizing around the way users think about the content. Which is good for information, but not necessarily for learning.

Of course, your learning objectives should provide a guide. There should be a path from the learner’s initial state, through enabling objectives, to the final objective. That should define the scope of an experience. If it gets too big, then make one or more of the enabling objectives their own piece. In this case, we’re taking something already created and trying to make sense of it.

Really, I’m fine with that latter, but I just wonder if there are any evidence based principles to guide this thinking. Something besides seemingly sensible breakups. It all seems based upon perception (and iterative testing). However, I wonder if there are metrics, or a principled basis. Hence, my request. I’m asking for help with breaking up. What am I missing? Any pointers?

What’s New at Quinnovation

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Time for an update, as things have been happening, Some over the past year, some more recently. So here’s what’s new at Quinnovation.

So, as I’ve already noted, I was asked to join the Learning Development Accelerator last fall as Editor in Chief of the new LDA Press. That means, practically, serving as both acquisition and development editor. So far, I’m better in the latter than the former. We did publish our first, book, er, mine ;). I’ve also joined as co-0rganizer.

We’re doing some fun things with that. The first is the You Oughta Know series of Wed webinars, introducing people, well, that you oughta know. We’ve had an amazing run of guests. I’ll also be starting up a series of Very Opinionated Tech Takes. Yeah, it’s me going off on various techs, but I will be unpacking my thinking behind the takes. And I have had a number of decades of experience at it… Finally, there’s the forthcoming Learning & Development Conference, where we’re looking to do what we think should be done. That is, a focus on important specifics; we’ve two tracks, one more for beginners and one more advanced. Attendees can choose. We’ve got a good tight faculty, and are expecting a great development experience.

In addition to my LDA duties, I’m still continuing on with Quinovation, of course. That has meant some steady client work since the beginning of the year; including two projects on learning and performance strategy. One is likely to be continuing at least a little while longer. From that one is a topic I’ll be discussing as part of at DevLearn. I’ll also be running a ‘Make It Meaningful workshop there; a full day digging into the principles and tricks of making experiences emotionally engaging. (I’ll also be part of a panel of the Guild Masters.)

I’ve also taken on some other roles via Quinnovation. For one, I’ve been working with an initiative attempting to take K12 STEM into the 21st Century. Yes, there are plenty of efforts in this area, I just happen to be involved in this one that has an approach I’m getting to shape aligned with my perspectives. I’m also now on the advisory board of a startup with a platform for augmenting formal learning programs. Finally, I’ve signed on to assist an established elearning firm improve their approach as part of a growth initiative. All are focusing on applying learning science to make bigger and better impacts. Those are the types of things I can comfortably get behind.

So that’s what’s new at Quinnovation. Reckon I’ll be busier than the proverbial beaver, but that’s preferable to the alternative. Stay tuned!

Templates as content model extensions

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I’ve been touting content models for, well, years now. Interestingly, I’m currently doing some more concrete work on them, from the bottom-up. Instead of looking at top-down implementation of governance and structure, the focus is on guidance for creating resources at scale. Yet the two are related, and I think it’s worth looking at templates as content model extensions.

The notion of content models is that instead of creating full courses, we build content in chunks, and pull them together by rule. Or even more appropriately, deliver the appropriate chunk to the right person at the right time. It’s been happening for web design for years, but for some reason the notion of content management systems lags in L&D. Yes, there are entailments – governance, strategy, engineering – but the alternative is that lingering legacy content that’s out of date but no one can deal with.

That’s the top level focus. Underpinning this, of course, is getting the content right, and that means having some good definitions around the content. I’d done that many moons ago, and in a current engagement it’s reemerging. The situation is that there are a number of people all writing content around this particular initiative, and it’s uncoordinated (sound familiar?). The realization that clients are struggling is enough of a driver to look for a solution.

Without a content management system, as yet, it still makes sense to systematize the resources around a map of the space, ensuring they align to what we know about how people learn and perform. That latter is important, because many times they just need the answer now, not a full course.

What we’ve ended up doing is creating meta-content that tell how to develop content that meets particular needs. With entailments, such as assembling a representative team to determine what’s needed and the labels to use. It also involves drafting and testing these content guides, prior to broader use.

It’s the tactical step of a strategic goal to provide support for people to successfully meet their needs. And, to be clear, to reduce the reliance on the support staff. Leveraging the cognitive and learning sciences, we’re building templates as content model extensions. This is before there’s even the technology support available to be more proactive, but planning for the possible future is part of the strategy.

I’ll be presenting a session on this at the DevLearn conference in October. If you’re interested and going to be there, I welcome seeing you.

Emotion, or motivation, or…

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I’ve been promoting the importance of the emotional ‘hook’. Which I was called out on, rightly. I freely admit that the phrase is less than fully accurate. So let’s explore the issue of whether we’re talking emotion, or motivation, or…

As context, one perspective from cognitive science is thinking of our ourselves as comprised of three components. One is cognitive, that is what we think and know. Which is malleable, as we can learn more! A second component is termed affective, that is who we are. Which isn’t malleable; these are our fixed characteristics, certainly personality (e.g. OCEAN/HEXACO). Finally, there’s our conative component. This is our intent: to learn, to act, and arguably what we value. 

This last bit, the conative, is what I suggest we neglect in our learning design. We address the cognitive, and there’s little to do on the affective side, but we too often basically assume that the learner is ready for what we’re presenting. Which I suggest is a mistake. 

There’s considerable evidence that we perform better when we’re engaged. When experiences are motivating, and anxiety is kept to a minimum, and our confidence is built, etc. Further, we can address these. We can help folks see the WIIFM, make it psychologically safe, and provide appropriate levels of challenge with useful feedback. (And we should!) However, too often we don’t.

So I use the shorthand term ‘emotion’ to address this.  I use the term to separate from the cognitive in a shorthand way. The problem, of course, is whether anxiety and motivation are truly ‘emotions’. Effectively, they’re not. My stance, however, is that I can’t be talking ‘conative’ to folks who aren’t aware of that concept!

I also resist just talking about motivation. Anxiety is an issue. So too is confidence. John Keller’ has his ARCS model (arguably the only ID theorist considering the conative aspect, though I don’t know if he uses that term ;). His model incorporates gaining/maintaining Attention, manifesting the Relevance of what’s being learned, building Confidence, and ensuring Satisfaction from the experience. Really, we want an umbrella term for these elements. 

There is the concept of engagement. However, it’s been trivialized. Claims that ‘click to see more’ is more engaging, that points & leaderboards are engaging, etc. have undermined the term. So I avoid it to avoid getting mired in that morass. Instead, I think talking about emotion as a shorthand way to address the non-cognitive. Yet…

I was called out for talking about an ‘emotional hook’ by a very learned client. Rightly so. The question is, do we have a better term? Is there a more appropriate and yet still accessible way ta talk about this? Obviously, I haven’t thought so as yet, but I want to keep learning. So if you’ve a better solution, please do let me know. (Feel free to also say that this approach is probably the only solution, at least for now.) Otherwise, I’ll keep looking for a better approach than emotion, or motivation, or…

I’ll be discussing ‘emotion’ in a session for the Learning Guild’s LXD conference, coming up at the beginning of next month. I’m also presenting a two half-days pre-event online workshop on LXD overall, integrating emotion with science. I’ll also explore ‘engagement’ in a full day face-to-face pre-con workshop at their DevLearn conference in October). Hope to see you at one of these!

2022 ITA Jay Cross Memorial Award: Céline Shillinger

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Harold Jarche’s elegantly crafted announcement:

The Internet Time Alliance Memorial Award, in memory of Jay Cross, is presented to a workplace learning professional who has contributed in positive ways to the field of Informal Learning and is reflective of Jay‘s lifetime of work.

Recipients champion workplace and social learning practices inside their organization and/or on the wider stage. They share their work in public and often challenge conventional wisdom. The 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 announce the award on 5 July, Jay‘s birthday.

Following his death in November 2015, the partners of the Internet Time Alliance — Jane Hart, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Harold Jarche — 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 7th annual Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2022 is presented to Céline Schillinger.

In her recent book, Dare to Un-lead, Céline asks, “Can there be liberty, equality, and fraternity at work” Then she shows examples of how this can be achieved. As Head of Quality Innovation & Engagement at Sanofi Pasteur Céline helped to create the ‘Break Dengue’ global community to fight dengue fever. Céline understands the power of community. She says that, “If you cannot find a community of practice for your professional development, then create one.”

Céline has often challenged the status quo, especially regarding the lack of diversity in many workplaces.

“What really matters is to mirror the diversity of the world we serve. We need more women… more humanities majors… more people of colour… more professionals coming from other jobs… in short, a much bigger diversity of viewpoints at all levels. We also need more network and co-construction across levels, as the old pyramidal system is no longer fit for purpose.”

Céline has said that companies must cultivate their rebels in order to remain relevant to their workers, while staying competitive in their arenas. These rebels can let them see beyond the organization‘s walls. We are sure that Jay Cross would agree.

Links:

https://weneedsocial.com/about-me

https://weneedsocial.com/praise-dare-to-unlead

https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/article/69269/quality-lever-transformation-sanofi/

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.