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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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The Future of L&D? A pitch

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I was talking with a colleague the other day, and got a wee bit dramatic. I also thought it was an important point. So here, for your dining enjoyment, I’ve roughly recreated the pitch (in 3 mins and 30 secs):

I hope this makes sense. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

The Script:

Hi, I‘m Clark Quinn, of Quinnovation, and I‘ve been around the elearning for well-nigh forever, and around L&D for the past couple of decades.  So…I joke that:

L&D isn‘t doing near what it could and should, and what it is doing, it‘s doing badly.  Other than that, it‘s fine.  

Seriously, I think there‘s the obviously important role for L&D,  but also a really important opportunity.  

Things aren’t getting any simpler.    We‘re facing increasing complexity and uncertainty.  And, going forward, I suggest, optimal execution is only the cost of entry.  Continual innovation will be the necessary differentiator.  That is, we will have to do well what we know we have to do,  but we also have to become agile, nimble, and able to pivot in the face of change.  So that means doing courses right, when courses are the answer.  That‘s the optimizing role, going beyond being efficient to being effective.

And it also means that organizations will have to get good at problem-solving, research, design, and more.The thing is with those things, when you start you don‘t know the answer.  That is: They. Are. Learning!  And that is the important opportunity.

Going back to being effective, that means that when we design courses, we need to effectively integrate learning science with true engagement.  Deep LXD,  not tarted up quiz shows and ‘click to see more‘. And, we should only do that when it‘s the right answer!  It‘s not ‘we need a course on this‘, but instead  “we can identify that we have a skills gap and we need to improve our performance”.

And then, it‘s about facilitating social and informal learning:  tapping into the power of our people, creating a learning culture, assisting the organization in systematic in good practices.  

How do we get there?  I argue there are two major steps.  First, we need to measure,  and here I mean more than just efficiency.  It‘s not how much it costs to have a bum in a seat for an hour,  but instead whether that bum in that seat for that hour does the organization any good.  Right now, we don‘t know whether our efforts are really moving any needles.  It‘s a matter of faith that if it look like school, it must be learning.

Second, it means we have to start practicing those principles within L&D: smart experimentation; collaborating; and learning continually and out loud.  We can‘t have credibility if we haven‘t walked the walk.It won‘t happen overnight.  We‘ll have to build back our reputation as scrutable practitioners.  We‘ll have to continually educate.  And likely have to do the ‘better to seek forgiveness than permission‘.

Here‘s the vision I see.  When we‘re not only ensuring good execution on what we know we have to do,  but are responsible for the ongoing success of the organization,  we‘ve moved to an indispensable position.  We‘re key to success in the toughest times!  As key as IT and Finance.  Other groups can and will take it on if we don‘t  but we‘re supposed to be the ones who understand how we learn.  And learning, going forward, is the key to not just surviving, but thriving.  Our orgs need it, the employees need it, and our professional standards demand it.  So let‘s do it.    Let‘s reengineer our status in, and value to, the organization.

Thanks for listening.

What is wrong with (higher) education?

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I was having a conversation with a colleague, sparked by dropping enrollments in unis. Not surprisingly, we ended up talking about flaws in higher education. He suggested that they don’t get it, and I agreed. He was thinking that they get the tech, but not the learning. I think it’s more complex. There are those that get some parts of the learning right. Just not enough, and not all of it right. Thinking further, post-convo, it occurs to me that there is a layer beneath the surface that matters. So I want to consider what is wrong with higher education.

And, let’s be clear, I’m  not talking about the problems with tuition and administration. Yes, tuition’s risen faster than the cost of living. And yes, there’s little commercial pressure to keep universities free from the persistent creep of increasing administration. I saw an interesting article talking about how universities without a solid financial foundation,  and ones without a good value proposition, will perish. It’s the latter I’m talking about.

I previously mentioned the three pillars I think create a valid learning offer:

  • a  killer learning experience,
  • being a partner in your success
  • and developing you as an individual.

I suggest that all three are doable, but it occurred to me that there’s a bit more to unpack.

The ‘being a partner in your success’ bit is most frequently seen. Here, it’s about looking for signs of trouble and being proactive about reaching out and assisting. It’s not ‘sink or swim’, but recognizing there can be troubles and helping learners cope. The Predictive Analytics work that Ellen Wagner did is the type of opportunity we have here.

The ‘developing you as an individual’ is really building your more general skills: communicating, working with others, a positive attitude, knowing how to search, etc. And, of course, knowing how to continue to learn. Given the rate of change, most of what you learn as the core of a degree may well be out of date in short order!  But you can’t address these skills on their own, they’re specifically about how you do domain things.  And that’s a layer I’ve yet to see.

And the ‘killer learning experience’ is a second area where I think folks still aren’t doing well. My short (and admittedly cheeky) statement about education is that they’re wrong on two things, the curriculum and pedagogy, other than that they’re fine. Most universities aren’t doing a good job of curriculum, focusing on knowledge instead of skills. And some are moving in a good direction. Startups are addressing this area as well.

The other problem is the pedagogy. There’re two elements here: the learning design, and engagement. Too often, it’s still the ‘information dump and knowledge test’. But even when that’s right, making it truly meaningful for the learners is sadly neglected. Even professors who care often forget to put the ‘why’ into the syllabus.

In short, what is wrong with higher education is the ability to successfully execute on  all these points. (It’s true for other education, too, but…) I’ve seen efforts that address one, or two (and plenty that get none right). However, as of yet, I have not seen anyone doing it the way it could be done.  It’s doable, but not without some serious attention to not only the elements, but their successful integration. And it’s important enough that we should be doing it. At least, that’s what I think. So, what do  you think?

Learner-centered, or…

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I saw a post the other day that talked about ’empathy’, and I’m strongly supportive. But along the way they cited another topic that I’ve had mixed feelings about. So I thought it was time to address it. I’m wondering about ‘learner-centered’, and it may seem churlish to suggest otherwise. However, let me make the case for an alternative.

First, ‘learner-centered’ (apparently also known as ‘student centered‘) is used to take the focus away from the teacher. And I approve. It’s too easy, without awareness, to put the emphasis on ‘teaching’, and you’re on a slippery slope to lectures and knowledge tests. I’m all for that. However, I’m worried about a down-side.

My worry, with learner-centered learning, is that we may become too accommodating. It could be too easy to cater to learners. For instance, one belief that persists is that learning should be ‘fun’. Which is wrong. We know that we need ‘desirable difficulty’ (ala Bjork). That’s why I’ve lobbied for ‘hard fun‘. We could also use learner-centered to make the case for adapting to preferred learning styles. Which, too, would be wrong.

Obviously, you can also argue that learners need meaningful learning, so a learner-centered approach would be appropriate. But I want to suggest another candidate. One that, I argue, leads to good outcomes without carrying any opportunity for baggage.

I’m arguing for ‘learning-centered’, not learner-centered. That is, the focus is on the learning needed, not on the learner. Which isn’t to say we leave the learner out of the equation, but the question then becomes: what does this mean?

I’m suggesting that the key is learning focused on:

  • meaningful outcomes
  • aligned design
  • addressing learners’ prior knowledge
  • addressing learners’ emotions: motivation, trust, anxiety, confidence

And, look, I get that folks talking about ‘learner-centered’ will argue that they’re talking about the same things. I just see it also carrying a greater potential for focusing on the learner  at the expense of learning. And, in general, I would expect to be wrong. That is, most folks aren’t going to go awry. But is there an alternative without the problems?

So, the question is whether ‘learning-centered’ has similar pitfalls, or is it more likely to lead to better outcomes? And I don’t know the answer. It’s just a concern that I’ve felt, and thought I’d raise. Now it’s your turn!  What are your thoughts on the phrase ‘learner-centered’?

Making learning meaningful?

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So, last week, I asked the musical question: where are we going most wrong? I followed that up asking what most would help.   I also suggested   that I had my own answers.   So I have answers for each. My answer for the first part, where we’re going wrong, is somewhat complex. But for the second, I’m  thinking that the biggest opportunity is making learning meaningful. My thoughts…

So, where we go most wrong is, to me, tied together. I think it’s mostly that we’re starting on the wrong foot. We’re not ensuring that we’re addressing the real problem. We take orders for courses, and then take what the experts tell us needs to be in. This gives us the wrong objective, the wrong content, and the wrong practice!

I’ve suggested that measurement might be the best solution for this. If we measured our impact (not our efficiency), that drives us to focus on things were we can make a difference.   Time for a shout out to Will Thalheimer and LTEM (or whatever it becomes). Or use appropriate techniques instead of throwing a course at everything.

If we had the right objective, there’s still the challenge of making sure we’re talking about ‘do’, not  know.  However, I think it’s less likely.

Most importantly, I think there’s good support for evidence-based learning design. Whether it’s Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Cathy Moore, Patty Shank, Mirjam Neelen, or someone else, there’s good guidance for design. Basically, how to create practice that aligns with outcomes, resource with models and examples, etc.

One area, however, I think we reliably get wrong  and there’s not as much guidance for, is making learning meaningful. Not only is Keller the only ID theorist talking about the emotional side, there’s not much other systematic guidance. Rance Green’s new book on instructional story design gives a good stab, but I think there’s more. And while Nick Shackleton-Jones book has some good ideas, his model also has a fundamental flaw.

And I  have addressed this. My book  Engaging Learning was about designing games for learning, but the alignment at the core is applicable to making learning personally relevant. And, of course, my thinking’s continued. I’ve been digging in deeper into the emotional side.

So, my thinking is that this might be an area to really unpack and get concrete about. It’s been part of my approach to LXD, but I’m wondering about not trying to cover all the learning science, and focus on the unique elements of engagement. I’m signed up to speak on it at the Learning and Development Conference, but the question is whether I start doing more. Should I focus on making learning meaningful? And I really, really welcome your thoughts on this!

 

Taking courses online

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So I was talking to my brother the other day. He is a community college instructor (and, now, department chair). He was telling me about taking his class online (like so many others). I of course offered some suggestions, and he opined that I could (and should) be helping others too. Which, of course, I agree with, because that’s what I do. So, here, is a brief summary of my experience taking courses online. Because, owing to circumstances, I do have some availability.

My background is deeply steeped in applying learning science to technology-mediated experiences. To start, I saw the opportunities and designed my own major in the topic. After some work, I obtained a Ph.D. because I wanted to know more about cognition and learning. And I’ve been doing it for decades now, both academic and organizational. I not only taught, but was asked to lead my university’s learning technology committee.

I stepped away from the university to assist first one, then another initiative in online learning. For one, I set the learning design (policies and plans) to spin up an agency to support national online learning. For the latter, I led the learning design effort to get an innovative course online. At the same time, I was assisting and leading other initiatives. These include an online learning competition, advising other orgs, and creating an online learning quality assessment.

I came back to the US to lead the development of an adaptive learning platform for online courses. Since then, I’ve been assisting many orgs in a wide variety of roles around online learning. I’ve guided the design of online content for high school curricula, advised on improving design processes for a courseware provider, and guided an online program manager to incorporate learning science in their practices.

Along the way, I’ve continued to lead in technology approaches, including games and mobile (and wrote the books on each topic ;).   And I’ve maintained a reputation for staying on top of learning science as well, recently writing a book on myths around learning science. My work’s been recognized, with invitations to speak nationally and internationally, as well as being the first recipient of the eLearning Guild’s Guild Master award. I’m noted as a clear communicator who helps folks ‘get’ the opportunities, and apply the principles to achieve desirable goals.

As you see, I’ve worked at every level, from helping design individual courses, to working with design processes and teams, to looking at organizational approaches and issues. And I’ve demonstrated a commitment to design solutions that leverage the best learning design to achieve engaging experiences with meaningful outcomes under pragmatic constraints. And I’m adept at working virtually, which I’ve been doing for a long time in many ways.

So, I’d like to help  you!   Whether it’s working serially on courses, assisting a team get on top of best principles, or conducting sessions to assist your instructors, I’m willing to be flexible to figure out the best ways to help you make the best changes quickly, not just the expedient ones. In the long term, you still want effective learning design and engagement, because it matters to your learners and your reputation.

The opportunity to get better quickly is on tap. I’ve spent my entire career caring about making good learning happen. Are you ready? Let me know.

This has been a public service announcement, we now return you to your irregularly scheduled blog.

Content systems not content packages

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In a conversation last week (ok, an engagement), the topic of content systems came up. Now this is something I’ve argued for before, in several ways. For one, separate content from how it’s delivered. And, pull content together by rules, not hardwired. And it’s also about the right level of granularity. It’s time to revisit the message, because I thought it was too early, but I think the time is fast coming when we can look at this.

This is in opposition to the notion of pre-packaged content. MOOCs showed that folks want to drill in to what they need. Yet we still pull everything together and launch it as a final total solution. We are moving to smaller chunks (all for the better; even if it is burdened with a misleading label). But there’s more.

The first point is about content models. That we should start designing our content into smaller chunks. My heuristic is the smallest thing you’d give one person or another. My more general principle is that resolves to breaking content down by it’s learning role: a concept model is different than an example is different than a practice.

This approach emerged from an initiative on an adaptive learning system I led. It now has played out as a mechanism to support several initiatives delivering content appropriately. For one, it was supporting different business products from the same content repository. For another it was about delivering the right thing at the right time.

Which leads to the second point, about being able to pick and deliver the right thing  for the context.  This includes adaptive systems for learning, but also context-based performance support. With a model of the learner, the context, and the content, you can write rules that put these together to optimally identify the right thing to push.

You can go further. Think of two different representatives from the same company visiting a client. A sales person and a field engineer are going to want different things in the same location. So you can add a model of ‘role’ (though that can also be tied to the learner model).

There’s more, of course. To do this well requires content strategy, engineering, and management. Someone put it this way: strategy is what you want to deliver, engineering is how, and management is overseeing the content lifecycle.

Ultimately, it’s about moving from hardwired content to flexible delivery. And that’s possible and desirable. Moreover, it’s the future. As we see the movement from LMS to LXP, we realize that it’s about delivering just what’s needed when useful. Recognizing that LXPs are portals, not about creating experiences, we see the need for federated search.

There’s more: semantics means we can identify what things are (and are not), so we can respond to queries. With chatbot interfaces, we can make it easier to automate the search and offering to deliver the right thing to the right person at the right time.

The future is here; we see it in web interfaces all over the place. Why aren’t we seeing it yet in learning? There are strong cognitive reasons (performance support, workflow learning, self-directed and self-regulated learning).  And the technology is no longer the limitation. So let’s get on it. It’s time to think content systems, not content packages.

 

How do you drive yourself?

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How do I drive myself? I was asked that in a coaching session. The question is asking how I keep learning. There are multiple answers, which I’ve probably talked about before, but I’ll reflect here. I think it’s important to regularly ask: “how do you drive yourself?”

As it’s the end of the year, my conversant was looking at professional development. It’s the time to ask for next year’s opportunities, and the individual was breaking out of our usual conversation to talk about this topic. And so he asked me what  I  did.

And my first response, which I’ve practiced consciously at least since grad school, is that I accept challenges. That is, I take on tasks that stretch me. (It might be that ‘sucker’ tattoo on my forehead, but note that my philanthropic bandwidth is pretty stretched. ;). This is professionally  and personally.

That is, I look to find challenges that I think are within my reach, but not already my grasp. Or, to put it another way, in my Zone of Proximal Development. Accepting assignments or engagements where, with effort, I can succeed,  but it’s not guaranteed.

Which means, of course, that there’s risk as well. Occasionally, I do screw up. Which I  really really hate to do. Which is a driver for me to push out of my comfort zone and succeed. Or, at least, learn the lesson.

There’s more, of course. One thing I did started with my first Palm Pilot (the Palm III, the accompanying case is still my toiletry bag!).  I had to justify to myself the expense, so I made sure that I really used it to success. This was part of the driver of the thinking that showed up in Designing mLearning,  how to complement cognition. IA instead of AI, so to speak.

I also live the mantra “stay curious, my friends”. I’m still all too easily distracted by a new idea, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Well, as long as it’s balanced with executing against the challenges.

That’s how I drive myself. So, how do you drive yourself?

Unpacking some nuances

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In my book  Engaging Learning, I had a suite of elements  for both effective education practice and engaging experiences. Of course, the point was that they perfectly aligned. However, I’m unpacking a couple of them, and I thought it’d be helpful to ensure that I am clear about them, and so that you are too. So I’m unpacking some nuances in two different groups of elements.

For one, I talk about contextualized, anchored, and relevant.  These three are related, but each plays a different role, and it’s important to be concerned about each separately.

Contextualized isn’t difficult. Research (e.g. Jonassen’s work) has shown that we perform better working from problems that are concrete rather than abstract. (Which is why those abstract problems kids are assigned in schools are so  wrong!). We work better with concrete problems with facilitation to support abstraction and transfer. Otherwise we get ‘inert knowledge’, knowledge that we can pass a test on, but will never even activate in a relevant problem situation.

Anchored, here, means that it’s a real use of the knowledge. Instead of using problems about fractions of a crayon, for instance, it might be about serving food (pies, pizza). Similarly, engineering equations about curves could be used for a roller coaster instead of a abstract pattern. The activity using the knowledge should be the way it’d be used in the world.

That’s related to, but different from, being relevant. Not relevant to the learning, but to the learner.  That is, the problem they’re solving is one that the learner cares about. So, for maritime enthusiasts, we might use geometry to figure out sail angles to the wind. While for gamers, we might use it to calculate graphics.

The second dichotomy is about active versus exploratory. They’re related, but each has an independent component.

For exploratory, I’m talking about learners having choices. That is, there are alternate choices of action. They can choose one or the other. The alternatives to the right answer, by the way, isn’t obvious or silly, but instead represents reliable ways learners get it wrong.

For active, I mean they must commit. It’s not enough to roll over the options and see the feedback, they have to choose one, and then see if it was right or not. And give consequences of their choices before feedback!

Unpacking some nuances helps, I hope, to ensure you address each separately, and consequently appropriately.  Here’s to nuanced design!

Passion and Learning

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My better half recently got a sample of special butter. A gift from a co-worker (an interesting story), and led me to reflect on the link between passion and learning.

M’lady’s co-worker is a fan of good butter. I was able to view a picture of her refrigerator, and the assortment of butters rivals what you might see in a fine grocery!  We did a tasting between the ordinary butter we ordinarily purchase and this special butter. The difference was noticeable. I was reminded of the fine butter they serve when in Europe. Or at really fine restaurant.

This may seem odd, but think about it a bit. What do you care enough about to really understand? At various times I’ve been known to wax poetic about beer, cooking, waves, and more. And, of course, cognition, learning, engagement, and design. I managed to get educated about (American) football and cricket (yes, cricket) from inspired roommates. The list goes on.

And what’s fun is learning from these folks just  why  they find it so interesting. Which is related to the task of finding the intrinsic interest for designing learning. Talk to the experts! They’ve spent hours becoming experts, what motivated them? If you can find that, you’ve got a handle on it.

And I’m sure you’ve learned something from someone who was passionate about it. That’s usually a good indication that they’re also knowledgable, but there are caveats on that.  People can get passionate about myths, too. There  are  reasons to be cautious. In general, however, you’re liable to be lucky.

Passionate people not only make fields comprehensible, they tend to drive fields forward. If you’re here, I’m expecting you’re passionate about performance & development. Maybe even up for a revolution! Let’s connect passion and learning to make it better.

 

Play to Learn

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Tic Tac Toe gameThinking more about Friston’s Free Energy Principle and the implications for learning design prompted me to think about play. What drives us to learn, and then how  do we learn?  And play is the first answer, but does it extend? Can we play to learn beyond the natural?

The premise behind the Free Energy principle is that organisms (at every level) learn to minimize the distance between our predictions and what actually occurs. And that’s useful, because we use our predictions to make decisions. And it’s useful if our decisions get better and better over time. To do that, we build models of the world.

Now, it’d be possible for us to just sit in a warm dark room, so our predictions are right, but we have drives and needs. Food, shelter, sex, are drives that can at least occasionally require effort. The postulate is that we’ll be driven to learn when the consequences of not learning are higher than the effort of learning.

At this level, animals play to learn things like how to hunt and interact. Parents can help as well.  At a higher level than survival, however, can play still work? Can we learn things like finance, mathematics, and other human-made conceptions this way? It’d be nice to make a safe place to ‘play’, to experiment.

Raph Koster, in his  A Theory Of Fun,  tells us that computer games are fun just because they require learning. You need to explore, and learn new tricks to beat the next level.  And computer games can be about surviving in made-up worlds.

The point I’m getting to is that the best learning should be play; low stakes exploration, tapping into the elements of engagement to make the experience compelling. You want a story about what your goal is, and a setting that makes that goal reasonable, and more.

To put it another way, learning  should be play. Not trivial, but ‘hard fun’.  If we’re not making it safe, and providing guided discovery to internalize the relationships they need, to build the models that will make better decisions, we’re not making learning as naturally aligned as it can be. So please, let your people play to learn. Design learning experiences, not just ‘instruction’.