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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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LXD Roles

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In my thinking about LXD strategy, I also was thinking about what roles are necessary. While you can do handoffs, what are the core skills you need to make this happen? And it’s not that you need all these people, but you need these roles. Someone may be a polymath (though I’m somewhat resistant that one person can do them all sufficiently well), but it’s really not fair to expect someone to be a one-person shop. So what  are the core LXD roles?

At core are two component skills.

Designer: this person looks at the performance need, and validates that this is a role for a learning experience, and then designs it, including any tools that don’t exist. Interacting with SMEs is a component; digesting down into the critical decisions, and then embedding practice in contexts. It’s creative, and while drawing on the strengths of the team, it’s the source of engagement strategy as well as learning outcomes. Also determining data collection and interpretation around design success. So it’s ID, and more.

Technologist: ensures that the developed media are integrated and delivered. This includes being able to use AR and VR when necessary, and string together the media and embed appropriately. This isn’t necessarily a programmer, but instead is technically capable. Such as putting in xAPI statements.

Then, there’s the media.  All of them!  So we’re talking a variety of roles here.

Writing: this is writing both to read  and to hear.  Dialog is different than prose, for one.  And prose for reading is different than, say, academese! It’s about taking the prose and boiling it down. I may have previously recounted how on an early project, my dev partner hired a script writer. That person took my elegantly crafted prose and hacked it up by 30-40%.  All to the good. I now can do the same on pretty much anyone’s (including my own). We often think we can write, but there’s as much skill in writing well as there is any other media production. Like, say,…

Graphics: this is about both images and and  graphics. Again, different, but I’d expect someone to be able to generate a diagram or infographic, but also source and masterfully integrate any images. It includes knowledge about fonts and colors and space and how they generate thoughts and feelings. It’s look and feel, and more.

Video: here we’re not talking about script writing (see above) nor acting, but instead filming and directing. Creating dynamic visuals. That is, knowing how to produce video so that what comes out looks professional and meets the need. Lighting, editing, and more.  It’s not just the filming. There are two different skills here (look at the credits in movies!), but I think we can roll them up. And it can be inserting images, animations, etc too. Video, here, includes compiling what ends up on screen. This may overlap with…

Audio: this is similar to video, but works  with it. It’s about synching the audio, but also music, and sound effects, and combining them in a way that ends up working with the video to produce an output. It can be standalone as well, say with a podcast. It’s about microphones, clips, and more.

Two additional roles (that might be combined).

Resource coordinator: this person is a bit like a project manager, but is responsible for finding images, actors, and any other resources as well as permissions. This person is resourceful and savvy at negotiating bureaucracies as well as intellectual property rights.

Project manager: in my best projects, there has been a project manager who’s developed and maintained the project schedule. This person knows when to prompt about upcoming deadlines, and chase malingerers.

And, of course, oversight.

Leader: someone who knows a bit about all of it, and can review and provide feedback. The development of the individuals should come from the assignments and the feedback. There’s also a role for collecting data about performance as a basis for strategy setting and tracking. And, of course, creating a culture of safety coupled with accountability, and experimentation.

 To be clear, not all of these are necessarily dedicated to the one project, as the categorization suggests. Project managers often are responsible for several (read: too many) projects, and media production may be a central resource. The point is that you need the required expertise, not to be winging it. And I know far too many folks are expected to do so. Yet I worry that the resulting output may not actually be effective.

And this is in a context, assuming there’s performance consulting up front, and a coaching and development program (and resources) in place at the backend. Ongoing development is part of the design, but at some point that gets handed over to the community of practice and manager/leader ongoing activities. Determining that point is part of the design. So too ensuring that there’s a sufficiency of self-learning resources and their use is modeled.

These are the LXD roles I think are necessary. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, so I welcome you weighing in.

LXD Strategy

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In the continuing process of resolving what I want to do when I grow up (rest assured, not happening), I’ve been toying with a concept. And I’ve come up with the phrase: Learning Experience Design (LXD)  Strategist. Which of course, begs the question of just what LXD strategy  is. So here’s my thinking.

To me, LXD is about the successful integration of learning science and engagement. Yes, cognitive science studies both learning and engagement, but in my experience the two aren’t integrated specifically well. You either get something flashy but empty, or something worthwhile but dreary dull. I remember a particular company that produced rigorous learning that you’d rather tear your eyes out than actually consume. And, similarly, seeing an award winning product that was flashy, but underneath was just drill and kill. For something that shouldn’t be.

Learning experiences should emotionally hook you (e.g. ensuring you know that you need it, and that you don’t know it). Then it should take the necessary steps such as sufficient spaced meaningful practice resourced with appropriate models and examples and specifically feedback. Ultimately, it should transform the learner. Learners go from not having a clue to having a basic ability to do  and how to continue to develop.

What is LXD  strategy?  Here I’m thinking about helping orgs restructure their design processes, and their org structure, to support delivering learning experience designs. This includes ensuring up front that this really does deserve learning instead of some other intervention, such as performance support. Then it includes how you work with SMEs, how you discern key decisions, wrap practice into contexts, etc. It’s also about using the tools – media and technology – to create a well-integrated experience. Note that the integration can include classrooms, ambient content and interactivity, and more. It’s about getting the design right, then implementing.

LXD strategy is about ensuring that resources and practices are aligned to create experiences that meet real org needs under pragmatic constraints. That’s what I’ve been doing in much of my work, and where my interests lead me as well. And it’s still a part of the performance ecosystem. Understanding that relationship is critical, when you start thinking about moving individuals from novices, through practitioners, to expertise. And the numbers of areas that will need this are going to increase.

LXD is, in my mind, the way we should be thinking about ID is now as LXD. And we need to not only think about what it is, and how to do it, but also how we organize to get it done. That, I think, is an important and worthwhile endeavor. So, what’s  your thinking?

Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design

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After my previous article on direct instruction versus guided discovery, some discussion mentioned Engelmann’s Direct Instruction (DI). And, something again pointed me to the most comprehensive survey of educational effects. So, I tracked both of these down, and found some interesting results that both supported, and confounded, my learning. Ultimately, of course, it expanded my understanding, which is always my desire. So it’s time to think a bit deeper about Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design.

Engelmann’s Direct Instruction is very scripted. It is rigorous in its goals, and has a high amount of responses from learners.  Empirically, DI has great success, with some complaints about lack of teacher flexibility. It strikes me as very good for developing core skills like reading and maths.  I was worried about the intersection of many responses a minute and more complex tasks, though it appears that’s an issue that has been addressed. I couldn’t find the paper that makes that case, however.

Another direction, however, proved fruitful.  John Hattie, an educational researcher, collected and conducted reviews of 800+ meta-analyses to look at what worked (and didn’t) in education.  It’s a monumental work, collected in his book Visible Learning. I’d heard of it before, but hadn’t tracked it down. It was time.

And it’s impressive in breadth  and depth.  This is arguably the single most important work in education. And it opened my eyes in several ways.  To illustrate, let me collect for you the top (>.4)  impacts found, which have some really interesting implications:

  • Reciprocal teaching (.74)
  • Providing feedback (.72)
  • Teaching student self-verbalization (.67)
  • Meta-cognition strategies (.67)
  • Direction instruction (.59)
  • Mastery learning (.57)
  • Goals-challenging (.56)
  • Frequent/effects of testing (.46)
  • Behavioral organizers (.41)

Reciprocal teaching and meta-cognition strategies coming out highly, a great outcome. And of course I am not surprised to see the importance of feedback. I have to say that I  was surprised to see direct instruction and mastery learning coming out so high.  So what’s going on?  It’s related to what I mentioned in the afore-mentioned article, about just what the definition of DI is.

So, Hattie says: …”what the critics mean by direct instruction is didactic teacher-led talking from the front…” And, indeed, that’s my fear of using the label. He goes on to point out the major steps of DI (in my words):

  1. Have clear learning objectives: what should the learner be able to  do?
  2. Clear success criteria (which to me is part of 1)
  3. Engagement: an emotional ‘hook’
  4. A clear pedagogy: info (models & examples), modeling, checking for understanding
  5. Guided practice
  6. Closure of the learning experience
  7. Reactivation: spaced and varied practice

And, of course, this is pretty much everything I argue for as being key to successful learning experience design. And, as I suspected, DI is not what the label would lead you to believe (which I  do think is a problem).  As I mentioned in a subsequent post, I’ve synthesized my approach across many elements, integrating the emotional elements along with effective education practice (see the alignment).  There’s so much more here, but it’s a very interesting result. Direct Instruction and Learning Experience Design have a really nice alignment.

And a perfect opportunity to remind you that I’ll be offering a Learning Experience Design workshop at DevLearn, which will include the results of my continuing investigation (over decades) to create an approach that’s doable and works. Hope to see you there!

Theory or Research?

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There’s a lot of call for evidence-based methods (as mentioned yesterday): L&D, learning design, and more. And this is a good thing. But…do you want to be basing your steps on a particular empirical study, or the framework within which that study emerged? Let me make the case for one approach. My answer to theory or research is theory. Here’s why.

Most research experiments are done in the context of a theoretical framework. For instance, the work on worked examples comes from John Sweller’s Cognitive Load theory. Ann Brown & Ann-Marie Palincsar’s experiments on reading were framed within Reciprocal Teaching, etc. Theory generates experiments which refine theory.

The individual experiments illuminate aspects of the broader perspective. Researchers tend to run experiments driven by a theory. The theory leads to a hypothesis, and then that hypothesis is testable. There  are some exploratory studies done, but typically a theoretical explanation is generated to explain the results. That explanation is then subject to further testing.

Some theories are even meta-theories! Collins & Brown’s Cognitive Apprenticeship  (a favorite) is based upon integrating several different theories, including the Reciprocal Teaching, Alan Schoenfeld’s work on examples in math, and the work of Scardemalia & Bereiter on scaffolding writing. And, of course, most theories have to account for others’ results from other frameworks if they’re empirically sound.

The approach I discuss in things like my Learning Experience Design workshops is a synthesis of theories as well. It’s an eclectic mix including the above mentioned, Cognitive Flexibility, Elaboration, ARCS, and more. If I were in a research setting, I’d be conducting experiments on engagement (pushing beyond ARCS) to test my own theories of what makes experiences as engaging and effective. Which, not coincidentally, was the research I was doing when I  was  an academic (and led to  Engaging Learning). (As well as integration of systems for a ubiquitous coaching environment, which generates many related topics.)

While individual results, such as the benefits of relearning, are valuable and easy to point to, it’s the extended body of work on topics that provides for longevity and applicability. Any one study may or may not be directly applicable to your work, but the theoretical implications give you a basis to make decisions even in situations that don’t directly map. There’s the possibility to extend to far, but it’s better than having no guidance at all.

Having theories to hand that complement each other is a principled way to design individual solutions  and design processes. Similarly for strategic work as well (Revolutionize L&D) is a similar integration of diverse elements to make a coherent whole. Knowing, and mastering, the valid and useful theories is a good basis for making organizational learning decisions. And avoiding myths!  Being able to apply them, of course, is also critical ;).

So, while they’re complementary, in the choice between theory or research I’ll point to one having more utility. Here’s to theories and those who develop and advance them!

Engaging Learning and the Serious eLearning Manifesto

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Way back in ’05, my book on games for learning was published. At its core was an alignment between what made an effective education practice and what makes engaging experiences. There were nine elements that characterized why learning should be ‘hard fun’.  More recently, we released the Serious eLearning Manifesto. Here we had eight values that differentiated between ordinary elearning and  serious elearning. So, the open question is how do these two lists match up? What is the alignment between Engaging Learning and the Serious eLearning manifesto?

The elements of the Serious eLearning Manifesto (SeM) are pretty straightforward. They’re listed as:

  • performance focused
  • meaningful to learners
  • engagement driven
  • authentic contexts
  • realistic decisions
  • real-world consequences
  • spaced practice
  • individualized challenges

The alignment (EEA: Effectiveness-Engagement Alignment) I found in Engaging Learning was based upon research I did on designing games for learning. I found elements that were repeated across proposals for effective education practice, and ones that were stipulated for engaging experiences. And I found a perfect overlap. Looking for a resolution between the two lists of elements looks something like:

  • clear goals
  • balanced challenge
  • context for the action
  • meaningful to domain
  • meaningful to learner
  • choice
  • active
  • consequences
  • novelty

And, with a little wordsmithing, I think we find a pretty good overlap!  Obviously, not perfect, because they have different goals, but the important elements of a compelling learning experience emerge.

I could fiddle and suggest that clear goals are aligned to a performance focus, but instead that’s coming from making their learning be meaningful to the domain. I suggest that what really matters to organizations will be the ability to  do, not know.  So, really, the goals are implicit in the SeM; you shouldn’t be designing learning  unless you have some learning goals!

Then, the balanced challenge is similar to the individualized challenge from the SeM. And context maps directly as well. As do consequences. And meaningfulness to learners. All these directly correspond.

Going a little further, I suggest that having choice (or appearance thereof) is important for realistic decisions. There should be alternatives that represent misconceptions about how to act. And, I suggest that the active focus is part of being engaging. Though, so too could novelty be. I’m not looking at multiple mappings but they would make sense as several things would combine to make a performance focus, as well as realistic decisions.

Other than that, on the EEA side the notion of novelty is more for engaging experiences than necessarily specific to serious elearning.  On the SeM side, spaced practice is unique to learning. The notion of a game implies the ability for successful practice, so it’s implicit.

My short take, through this exercise, is to feel confident in both recommendations. We’re talking learning experience design here, and having the learning combine engagement as well is a nice outcome. I note that I’ll be running a Learning Experience Design workshop at DevLearn in October in Las Vegas, where’ll we’ll put these ideas to work. Hope to see you there!

Packaging change

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wrapped presentI’ve been looking at a couple of things, with a goal is to look for the sweet spot at the intersection.  I’m looking at my missions, interests, and what’s resonating. And, I find, that they’re converging into a few things. Which I thought I’d make concrete, because I really want to see if these are things that are tangible and valuable. What is the right packaging? I’m asking for your help: is this the right suite, and if not, what do you want?

To start, one of my themes for the year is transformation, about deeper learning design. I’ve argued strongly that we need to do deeper learning design before we worry about tarting it up with personalization/adaptation, VR/AR, AI, etc. It’s time to get serious about actually having an organizational impact! And we’ve converging evidence about what it is.

As triangulation, what’s appearing as interests are those things people are asking for, or are tracking. And I’ve been asked recently (and been happy to oblige) talking about learning science. The eLearning Guild just had a summit, and my learning experience design workshop from Learning Solutions has been again  accepted for DevLearn (and I’d welcome seeing you there!).

We also know what’s largely lacking, and how to help. Through experience, I’ve found there are several ways to make progress. For one, you need the foundational knowledge, and it really needs to be shared and agreed in the organization. For another, you can benefit from a clear understanding of your current state. You can’t move forward if you don’t know where you are! Then, you need a clear plan that gets you from where you are to where you can be, that’s right for you. No ‘best practices’, but a principled  approach, looking at the bigger picture. Finally, support in moving forward can be valuable. There are ways you can fall back or barriers can hinder you that you need fresh thinking to address.

So the offer involves any combination of the following things:

Workshop: we actively explore and bring to bring it to life the necessary knowledge, and then practice applying it. This brings a shared vocabulary and understanding of what needs to change and why.

Assessment: an independent assessment of where you are in your processes, and what are the opportunities for change. The goal is to identify the minimal interventions that can have the biggest impact.

Strategy Session: here the goal is to determine the path to change. What are the opportunities, barriers, and what are the sequence of moves that create the change? It’s about understanding context and opportunity, bringing in the best principles, and using them as a guide to move forward.

Coaching: here we provide the lightest weight support that will keep momentum. In my experience, it’s been easy for folks to fall back into prior thinking without an ongoing stimulus, and the ability to comment early on in a plan on interim moves help keep a strategy on track.

These can manifest in several ways:

  • a learning science workshop for the team and an evaluation of your design process for the small changes with the big impact
  • the assessment, a strategy session for improvements, and a termed coaching engagement to support success

Your situation would make a particular combination more sensible. They’re better together, but any one is a catalyst for improvement. And these are all things I’ve done with organizations and have had success with. Each alone is done for quite less than $10K (parameters vary), but the goal is to make these very accessible. And, of course, substantial discounts for taking on more than one (to make the change more likely to stick).

I note that my other theme for the year is ‘intellectricity‘, unpacking the power of your people in informal learning. While I’m helping organizations around this as well, I haven’t yet formalized it like this. Yet it’s clear each could be done in the above formats as well, and I’m happy to make the same offer. And there seems to be growing interest in this area as well.

The reason I’m putting this out there, however, is because I want feedback and/or uptake. It’s not enough to just encourage, I want to actually support meaningful change! I have strong grounds to believe these are important and necessary changes, and I want to help make it happen, the more the faster the better. And if this isn’t the packaging you expect, let me know. I’m happy to discuss and adapt. What I want to do is have an impact, so help me figure out how.

Redesigning Learning Design

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Of late, a lot of my work has been designing learning design. Helping orgs transition their existing design processes to ones that will actually have an impact. That is, someone’s got a learning design process, but they want to improve it. One idea, of course, is to replace it with some validated design process. Another approach, much less disruptive, is to find opportunities to fine tune the design. The idea is to find the minimal set of changes that will yield the maximal benefit. So what are the likely inflection points?  Where am I finding those spots for redesigning?  It’s about good learning.

Starting at the top, one place where organizations go wrong right off the bat is the initial analysis for a course. There’s the ‘give us a course on this’, but even if there’s a decent analysis the process can go awry. Side-stepping the big issue of performance consulting (do a reality check: is this truly a case for a course), we get into working to create the objectives. It’s about how you work with SMEs. Understanding what they can,  and can’t, do well means you have the opportunity to ensure that you get the right objectives to design to.

From there, the most meaningful and valuable step is to focus on the practice. What are you having learners  do, and how can you change that?  Helping your designers switch to good  assessment writing is going to be useful. It’s nuanced, so the questions don’t  seem that different from typical ones, but they’re much more focused for success.

Of course, to support good application of the content to develop abilities, you need the right content!  Again, getting designers to understand what the nuances of useful examples from just stories isn’t hard but rarely done. Similarly knowing why you want  models and not just presentations about the concept isn’t fully realized.

Of course, making it an emotionally compelling experience has learning impact as well. Yet too often we see the elements just juxtaposed instead of integrated. There  are systematic ways to align the engagement and the learning, but they’re not understood.

A final note is knowing when to have someone work alone, and when some collaboration will help.  It’s not a lot, but unless it happens at the right time (or happens at all) can have a valuable contribution to the quality of the outcome.

I’ve provided many resources about better learning design, from my 7 step program white paper  to  my deeper elearning series for Learnnovators.  And I’ve a white paper about redesigning as well. And, of course, if you’re interested in doing this organizationally, I’d welcome hearing from you!

One other resource will be my upcoming workshop at the Learning Solutions conference on March 25 in Orlando, where we’ll spend a day working on learning experience design, integrating engagement and learning science.  Of course, you’ll be responsible for taking the learnings back to your learning process, but you’ll have the ammunition for redesigning.  I’d welcome seeing you there!

The pain of learning

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My dad, in his last years, lost the use of his hands and most of his hearing. It seemed like he then gave up. I finally challenged him on it, and he said “when you’re in constant pain…”.  And I got it.

So, turns out I’ve a misbehaving disk in my back, and it started pressing on the nerve over the summer. Pain scales are 1-10; this ultimately got to an 8 when I was trying to walk or even stand (from my lower back down my leg to my toes). Tried physio, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and then a steroid pack; nope. The ‘big hammer’ option was a cortisone injection, and that happened. Better yet, it knocked it back; down to 1). Er, for some six – eight weeks, then it came back. They gave me another one sooner than they were supposed to, but it hasn’t worked (ok, it’s knocked it to a 6 on average, but…this isn’t tolerable).  And my point here isn’t that I’m looking for sympathy, but to (of course) talk about the learnings. Because, despite the physical pain, there are learnings (good and bad).

Because there’re a physiological basis (pressing on the nerve), I’ve stuck with treatments likely to minimize the inflammation. I haven’t looked at a chiropractor nor acupuncture. Given that the current approaches are failing, those may come up, though I’m expecting surgery as the nuclear option. Not that I’m eager (to the contrary!). One learning is how close minded I can be about exploring alternative solutions. On the other hand, as it shoots down the leg into my foot, I’ve learned a lot more about physiology!

In the course of navigating airports and the like while in the throws of this (long story), I  also  found that the milk of human kindness can be diluted by pain. When you’re muttering obscenities under your breath because of the knives that accompany every step, clueless actions on the part of others – like stopping suddenly, blocking access, or even just bad signage – can earn muffled imprecations and aspersions on parentage and intelligence.  I’ve always tried to maintain ‘situational awareness’ (and know I’ve failed at times), but I highly recommend it!

On the other hand, when sitting (the only time it settles down), I’m expanding on my growing recognition over the past years that I have no idea what anyone else may be going through.  I’m sure my limping through parking lots and stores can be perceived as congenital damage or wear and tear. There’s no real way for anyone to know how much someone else hurts. We don’t have meters over our heads or icons.

And I’m increasingly grateful!  That may sound odd, but this experience is teaching me (and I am trying to find the positive).  Finding ways to minimize it is an ongoing experimentation. The support of my family helps, and I’ve learned (some) to ask for help.  But even an involuntary and undesirably challenging experience still is an experience.

Also, as much as it may be hard to struggle to find time and motivation for exercise, you learn to miss it. It seems every time I start taking a serious stab at diet and exercise, something goes wrong!  It’s almost like I’m not supposed to; and I know that’s wrong.  (I’ve also learned to secretly suspect my pain doctor is a closet sadist, but that’s the pain talking. :)

This is definitely  not ‘hard fun‘, to be clear. This is much more lemonade.  Fingers crossed that this, too, will pass. And if you do see me limping around, cut me some slack ;).  But also, please understand that it’s hard to know what other people are going through, and do your best to be sympathetic. Which seems like the right message for this time of year anyway. Wishing you and yours all the best for the holidays and the new year!

From instructor to designer & facilitator

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Someone on Quora asked me about the instructor role:
How would the role of a teacher change in this modern online learning world?
While I posted an answer there, I thought I’d post it here too:

I see two major roles in that of the ‘teacher‘: the designer of learning experiences (pre), and the facilitator of same (during/post). I think the design changes by returning to natural learning approaches, an apprenticeship model (c.f. Cognitive Apprenticeship). Our wetware hasn‘t changed, so we want to use technology as an augment. Tech can make it easier to follow such a design paradigm.

The in-class role moves from presentation to facilitation. Ideally we have content and check, as well as any preliminary experiences, done in a ‘flipped model‘. Leveling-up learners to a baseline happens before engaging in the key learning activities. Major activities can be solo if the material is more dedicated to training, but ideally are social particularly when complex understandings are required (mostly).

The role of teacher is to check in on group discussions and projects, and bring out important lessons from the report-backs. We extend the learning with efforts to either or both of expand understandings into more contexts, or document the resulting applied understandings, to create a unified understanding.

Application-based instruction is the focus, having learners do things with the learning, not just recite it. The design role is to create a sequence of preparation, meaningful engagement, and knowledge consolidation that‘s a learning experience. The facilitation role is to help bring out misconceptions and important hints and tips to lead to learner success.

This really is true face-to-face as well, but technology offers us tools to take the drudge work out of the experience and end up having the facilitation role be focused on the most valuable aspects. That‘s my take, at any rate.

And what’s your take?

(And this may be my only post this week; happy holidays everyone!)

Editing, process, topics, and other reflections

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My lass let me know there was a typo in my recent post on Transformation.  I’m thrilled that she’s reading them (!), but she triggered many thoughts about my writing approach. I thought I’d share how I deal with blogging, articles, and writing in general, as a ‘show your work‘ effort. And, in a sense, solicit your thoughts on approach, editing, and topics (amongst other things).

Process

It starts with my commitment to two blog posts a week. And I’m pretty sure I average that, since while I occasionally only get one, I also occasionally get three (say, during a week at a conference with mindmaps).  That means, however, that sometimes I’m brimming with ideas and have them queued up a week or two in advance, and sometimes I’m writing them at the last minute (*cough* this one *cough*).  When I know I’ll be on the road on a particular week, I definitely try to have them in the hopper in advance.

Regardless, I tend to write each in one fell swoop. Something sparks a thought, and I rush to get it down. Sometimes I’ll have an idea elsewhere, and jot myself a one line reminder, and need to generate the full prose. But my writing’s often like that: once I’m going, I have to let that full idea gestate. Even when writing a full book (as I’ve done a time or two ;), I outline it in a go, and then write sections in a burst.

Now, I write in several channels: my blog, my committed articles, and of course books. And, not surprisingly, I write them differently.  The blog comes out ‘as is’. I do reread it after it’s first done, typically, but as my lass discovered, it can have flaws. I reread my Trends article after posting, for instance, and noticed a couple of flaws. (I’ve fixed them, of course, similarly when folks comment in one way or another about something I’ve left confusing or wrong.)

My articles are different. I write them typically in one go, but I always hang on to them for at least a day, and reread with fresh eyes. I think that’s obligatory for such efforts. In one case, I have an editor who reads them with a careful eye, and always sends back a revised version. I don’t get to  see the revisions (which is frustrating), but the articles are always improved. Editing is valuable!

For books, as I mentioned, I outline it, then write sections. And, depending on the book, the experience changes. With  Engaging Learning, it had been percolating for so long it kind of flew out of my fingers onto the page.  For  Designing mLearning, it was different; I outlined, and wrote, and as I got further in I found myself rearranging the structure and going back to add things.  The Revolutionize L&D book was closer to the Designing mLearning book, with two changes. I didn’t reorganize as much, but I kept going back and adding stuff. It was hard to finish!

With my books, I’ve always had an editor. The ones from the publisher varied in quality (good experiences generally), but I also have m’lady serve as my first (and best) editor. And I’ve learned to truly value an editor. The benefit of a second eye without the assumptions and blinders the writer brings is great!

Topics

The ideas come differently as well. My blog tends to get whatever I’m thinking about (like this). My articles tend to be a deeper dive into whatever I think (or we agree, with my editor) is important. I keep a list of potential topics for each, and take whatever feels ‘right’ for the month.

Books, of course, are a bigger story. For one, you need a publisher’s agreement (unless you self-publish). My first book was based upon my research for years on games and engagement. The mLearning books were publisher requests, and yet I had to believe I could do a proper job. Revolutionize emerged from my work with people and orgs and looking at the industry as a whole, and was something I think needed to be said. My latest, on myths, was also requested, but also something I felt comfortable doing (and needed to be done).

(Interestingly, on the requested books, I first checked to see if someone else might write it instead, but when the obvious candidates declined, I was happy to step up. I got their voices in anyway. ;)

The hard part, sometimes, is coming up with topics. The commitment to two posts a week is a great catalyst for thinking, but sometimes I feel bereft. I welcome suggestions for topics for any of the above as well. Someone asked what my next book would be, and I asked them what they thought it should be.  However, I’m not ready to write a memoir yet; I’m not done!  Thoughts solicited on any or all of the above.