Search Results for: mindmap

Cognitive prostheses

28 October 2014 by Clark 2 Comments

While our cognitive architecture has incredible capabilities (how else could we come up with advances such as Mystery Science Theater 3000?), it also has limitations. The same adaptive capabilities that let us cope with information overload in both familiar and new ways also lead to some systematic flaws. And it led me to think about the ways in which we support these limitations, as they have implications for designing solutions for our organizations.

The first limit is at the sensory level. Our mind actually processes pretty much all the visual and auditory sensory data that arrives, but it disappears pretty quickly (within milliseconds) except for what we attend to. Basically, your brain fills in the rest (which leaves open the opportunity to make mistakes). What do we do? We’ve created tools that allow us to capture things accurately: cameras and microphones with audio recording. This allows us to capture the context exactly, not as our memory reconstructs it.

A second limitation is our ‘working’ memory. We can’t hold too much in mind at one time. We ‘chunk’ information together as we learn it, and can then hold more total information at one time. Also, the format of working memory largely is ‘verbal’. Consequently, using tools like diagramming, outlines, or mindmaps add structure to our knowledge and support our ability to work on it.

Another limitation to our working memory is that it doesn’t support complex calculations, with many intermediate steps. Consequently we need ways to deal with this. External representations (as above), such as recording intermediate steps, works, but we can also build tools that offload that process, such as calculators. Wizards, or interactive dialog tools, are another form of a calculator.

Processing information in short term memory can lead to it being retained in long term memory. Here the storage is almost unlimited in time and scope, but it is hard to get in there, and isn’t remembered exactly, but instead by meaning. Consequently, models are a better learning strategy than rote learning. But external sources like the ability to look up or search for information is far better than trying to get it in the head.

Similarly, external support for when we do have to do things by rote is a good idea. So, support for process is useful and the reason why checklists have been a ubiquitous and useful way to get more accurate execution.

In execution, we have a few flaws too. We’re heavily biased to solve new problems in the ways we’ve solved previous problems (even if that’s not the best approach. We’re also likely to use tools in familiar ways and miss new ways to use tools to solve problems. There are ways to prompt lateral thinking at appropriate times, and we can both make access to such support available, and even trigger same if we’ve contextual clues.

We’re also biased to prematurely converge on an answer (intuition) rather than seek to challenge our findings. Access to data and support for capturing and invoking alternative ways of thinking are more likely to prevent such mistakes.

Overall, our use of more formal logical thinking fatigues quickly. Scaffolding help like the above decreases the likelihood of a mistake and increases the likelihood of an optimal outcome.

When you look at performance gaps, you should look to such approaches first, and look to putting information in the head last. This more closely aligns our support efforts with how our brains really think, work, and learn. This isn’t a complete list, I’m sure, but it’s a useful beginning.

Facilitating Innovation

13 May 2014 by Clark 4 Comments

One of the things that emerged at the recent A(S)TD conference was that a particular gap might exist. While there are resources about learning design, performance support design, social networking, and more, there’s less guidance about facilitating innovation. Which led me to think a wee bit about what might be involved. Here’s a first take.

So, first, what are the elements of innovation? Well, whether you listen to Stephen Berlin Johnson on the story of innovation, or Keith Sawyer on ways to foster innovation, you’ll see that innovation isn’t individual. In previous work, I looked at models of innovation, and found that either you mutated an existing design, or meld two designs together. Regardless, it comes from working and playing well together.

The research suggests that you need to make sure you are addressing the right problem, diverge on possible solutions via diverse teams under good process, create interim representations, test, refine, repeat. The point being that the right folks need to work together over time.

The barriers are several. For one, you need to get the cultural elements right: welcoming diversity, openness to new ideas, safe to contribute, and time for reflection. Without being able to get the complementary inputs, and getting everyone to contribute, the likelihood of the best outcome is diminished.

You also shouldn’t take for granted that everyone knows how to work and play well together. Someone may not be able to ask for help in effective ways, or perhaps more likely, others may offer input in ways that minimize the likelihood that they’ll be considered. People may not use the right tools for the job, either not being aware of the full range (I see this all the time), or just have different ways of working. And folks may not know how to conduct brainstorming and problem-solving processes effectively (I see this as well).

So, the facilitation role has many opportunities to increase the quality of the outcome. Helping establish culture, first of all, is really important. A second role would be to understand and promote the match of tools to need. This requires, by the way, staying on top of the available tools. Being concrete about learning and problem-solving processes, and educating them and looking for situations that need facilitation, is another role Both starting up front and educating folks before these skills are needed are good, and then monitoring for opportunities to tune those skills are valuable. Finally, developing process facilitation skills, serving in that role or developing the skills, or both, are critical.

Innovation isn’t an event, it’s a process, and it’s something that I want P&D (Learning & Development 2.0 :) to be supporting. The organization needs it, and who better?

#itashare

Social media budget line item?

13 February 2012 by Clark 3 Comments

Where does social media fit in the organization? In talking with a social media entrepreneur over beers the other day, he mentioned that one of his barriers in dealing with organizations was that they didn’t have a budget line for social media software.

That may sound trivial, but it’s actually a real issue in terms of freeing up the organization. In one instance, it had been the R&D organization that undertook the cost. In another case, the cost was attributed to the overhead incurred in dealing with a merger. These are expedient, but wrong.

It’s increasingly obvious that it’s more than just a ‘nice to have’. As I’ve mentioned previously, innovation is the only true differentiator. If that’s the case, then social media is critical. Why? Because the myth of individual innovation is busted, as clearly told by folks like Keith Sawyer and Steven Berlin Johnson. So, if it’s not individual, it’s social, and that means we need to facilitate conversations.

If we want people to be able to work together to create new innovations, we don’t want to leave it to chance. In addition to useful architectural efforts that facilitate in person interactions, we want to put in place the mechanisms to interact without barriers of time or distance. Which means, we need a social media system.

It’s pretty clear that if you align things appropriately: culture, vision, tools, that you get better outcomes. And, of course, culture isn’t a line item, and vision’s a leadership mandate. But tools, well, they are a product/service, and need resources.

Which brings us to the initial point: where does this responsibility lie? Despite my desire for folks who are most likely to understand facilitating learning (though that’s sadly unlikely in too many L& D departments), it could be IT, operations, or as mentioned above, R&D. The point is, this is arguably one of the most important investments in the organization, and typically not one of the most expensive (making it the best deal going!). Yet there’s not a unified obvious home!

There are worries if it’s IT. They are, or should be, great at maintaining network uptime, but don’t really understand learning. Nor do the other groups, and yet facilitating the discussion in the network is the most important external role. But who funds it?

Let’s be real; no one wants to have to own the cost when there’re other things they’re already doing. But I’d argue that it’s the best investment an L&D organization could make, as it will likely have the biggest impact on the organization. Well, if you really are looking to move needles on key business metrics. So, where do you think it could, and should reside?

Thinking Strategy, Pt. 2

26 October 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

Building on yesterday’s post, in another way of thinking about it, I’ve been trying to tap into several layers down. Like the caveat on an attempt at mind-mapping the performance ecosystem, this only begins to scratch the surface as each of these elements unpacks further, but it’s an attempt.

The plan you take (your sequence of prioritized goals), the metrics you use, and your schedule, will be individual. However, the other elements will share some characteristics.

Your governance plan should include a schedule of when the group meets, what policies guide the role of governance, what metrics the governance group uses to look at the performance of the group implementing the plan (ie how the executors of the strategy are doing, not how the strategy is doing), and what partners are included.

The strategy will need partners including fundamental ones providing necessary components (e.g. the IT group), and members who may have political reasons to be included such as power, budget, or related interests.

The resources needed will include the people, the tools, and any infrastructure elements to be counted upon.

Support capability will include supporting the team with any questions they might need answer, and also the folks for whom the strategy is for.

And there will need to be policies around what responsibility there will be for support, access to resources, and other issues that will guide how the strategy is put in place, accounting for issues like security and risk.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, so what am I missing?

Learning Technologies UK wrap-up

31 January 2011 by Clark 4 Comments

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Learning Technologies ’11 conference, talking on the topic of games. I’ve already covered Roger Schank‘s keynote, but I want to pick up on a couple of other things. Overall, however, the conference was a success: good thinking (more below), good people, and well organized.

The conference was held on the 3rd floor of the conference hall, while floors 1 and ground hosted the exposition: the ground floor hosted the learning and skills (think: training) exhibits while the 1st floor held learning technology (read: elearning) vendors. I have to admit I was surprised (not unpleasantly) that things like the reception weren’t held in the exhibit halls. The conference was also split between learning technologies (Day 1) and learning and skills (day 2), so I have to admit being somewhat surprised that there weren’t receptions on the respective floors, to support the vendors, tho’ having a chance to chat easily with colleagues in a more concise environment was also nice.

I’m not the only one who commented on the difference between the floors: Steve Wheeler wrote a whole post about it, noting that the future was above, and the past showing below. At a post-conference review session, everyone commented on how the level of discussion was more advanced than expected (and gave me some ideas of what I’d love to cover if I got the chance again). I’d heard that Donald Taylor runs a nice conference, and was pleased to see that it more than lived up to the billing. There was also a very interesting crowd of people I was glad to meet or see again.

In addition to Roger’s great talk on what makes learning work, there were other stellar sessions. The afore-mentioned Steve did a advanced presentation on the future of technologies that kept me engaged despite a severe bout of jetlag, talking about things you’ve also heard here: semantics, social, and more. He has a web x.0 model that I want to hear more about, because I wasn’t sure I bought the premise, but I like his thinking very much. There was also a nice session on mobile, with some principles presented and then an interesting case study using iPads under somewhat severe(military) constraints on security.

It was hard to see everything I wanted to, with four tracks. To see Steve, I had to pass up Cathy Moore, who’s work I’ve admired, though it was a pleasure to meet her for sure. I got to see Jane Bozarth, but at the expense of missing my colleague Charles Jennings. I got to support our associate Paul Simbeck-Hampson, but at the cost of missing David Mallon talk on learning culture, and so on.

A great selection of talks to hear is better than not. There was also a very interesting crowd of people I was glad to meet or see again. A great experience, overall, and I can happily recommend the conference.

Presenting in a networked age

30 October 2009 by Clark 2 Comments

The Learning Circuit’s Big Question this month has to do with the increasing prevalence of internet access during presentations. The context is that during presentations it’s certainly possible that your audience is multi-tasking, and the question is; what are the implications? In live presentations, the increasing prevalence of wi-fi or phone data means laptops and/or smartphones can be online, and in virtual ones there’s typically a number of other applications available at the same time.

The audience can be doing things related to the presentation, like live-blogging it, tweeting it, or taking notes (I’ve been known to mindmap a keynote a time or two). They could even be looking up words or phrases mentioned by the speaker, or the speaker’s bio, or related material. Alternatively, they can be doing other things, like checking email, surfing the web, or other, unrelated, activities. Particularly in online presentations, there could actually be live chatting going on in a side-channel.

Are these activities valuable to the listener? Are they valuable to the presenter? Certainly, note taking is (though it doesn’t take connectivity). There’re results on this, particularly if you’re re-representing the material in different ways (mind maps, or paraphrasing). Blogging is, effectively, note-taking so should be valuable too, and tweeting may also be valuable (any studies? Research topic!). Certainly looking up things you don’t know so you process the rest of the material could also be valuable if it doesn’t take too long. And the reprocessing and seeing others’ thoughts from chat could be valuable. Even playing solitaire can be an advantage to listening, if you’re taking up some extra cognitive cycles that might otherwise lead you off into related thoughts but away from the presentation (likely only true if it’s just audio).

On the other hand, it might also add an intrusive overhead. Multi-tasking has been shown to provide a performance decrement. Related activities help, but unrelated activities will hinder the ability to process. It may be that you can get so caught up in the chat, or the search to comprehend a term, that you lose the thread of the discussion. And if it’s complex, the cognitive overhead might prevent you from actually being unable to make the necessary links. Certainly the tasks that aren’t content related are an intrusion.

So what’s to do? There are possible actions on both the part of the presenter/organizer, and on the part of the audience. For the audience, it’s got to be a personal responsibility to know how you learn best, and take appropriate steps. If note-taking helps you focus and elaborate, do so. If tweeting, blogging, or mind-mapping does so, rock on. If you really need to focus: put away the laptop and phone and focus! It’s for your benefit! Really, the same is for students. Now, individuals may not be as self-aware as we may desire, but that’s a separate topic that needs to be taken care of in the appropriate context.

For the presenters or organizers, as the most onerous step they could prevent wi-fi access. However, increasingly others are benefitting from the tweets from conferences and the blogging as well. I think that’s overly draconian, an implicit sign of distrust. If the presentation doesn’t match the audience interests, they should be able to vote with their feet or their minds. As I told a medical school faculty years ago, you can’t force them to attend, taking away the internet might make them resort to doodling or daydreaming but while you can lead a learner to learning you can’t make them think. It’s up to the presenter to present relevant material in an engaging manner.

As a presenter, you can actually use these channels to your advantage. As a webinar presenter, I like having a live chat tool. I monitor it, and use it to ask questions. In the last presentation I gave, it was awkward when a moderator had to read me the questions from the audience, and I couldn’t ask a general question an just survey the stream. I realize it’s difficult to both present and monitor a chat stream, and not all presenters can do it, so having a moderator can be a benefit. But stifling that flow of discussion could be a bane to those who learn better that way.

I haven’t had a tweet stream monitor in a live presentation yet, and it could be harder to pay attention to it, so again a moderator could help. In smaller sessions you can have interaction with the audience, but in larger presentations, it might take someone to follow it and summarize, though having a monitor that the presenter could see easily could also work.

However, it seems to me that you can’t force people to pay attention with or without technology, providing a rich suite of ways for people to process the information is valuable, and it can be a valuable source of feedback during the presentation.

Which leads to the new skills: for audiences, to know how you best process presentations and take responsibility for getting the most out of it; for presenters to improve their presentation skills to ensure value to the audience and support richer forms of interaction with the audiences; for moderators to track and summarize audience feedback in various forms; and for organizers to support these new channels.

There’s no point in trying to stifle technology affordances, the real key is to take advantage of them. If we have to learn, adjust, and accommodate, it’d be awful boring otherwise! :)

Mapping the learning space

20 May 2009 by Clark 6 Comments

In trialing a mind-mapping tool on my iPhone, I started mapping the ‘performance ecosystem’ space. I carried it over to my desktop tool (not literally, the free version doesn’t seem to export), and started elaborating. I got to this point, and think it’s not too bad a top-level cut, with the caveats that a) each of those nodes unpacks even further, let alone each leaf, and b) that I haven’t even tried to capture the cross links, e.g. between performance support and mobile, between mobile and content model, etc.

strategicmindmap

Here’s the same as an outline (ok, Stephen? :):

Learning Architecture
â‘ Performance Support
â–¼â‘ Job Aids
â€¢ â‘ Information Design
â–¼â‘ Portals
â€¢ â‘ Information Architecture
â–¼â‘ Interactives
â€¢ â‘ EPSS
â‘ Formal
â–¼â‘ Delivery
â€¢ â‘ F2F
â€¢ â‘ Synch
â€¢ â‘ Asynch
â–¼â‘ Deeper ID
â€¢ â‘ Emotional
â€¢ â‘ Cognitive
â‘ Social Learning
â–¼â‘ Identify
â€¢ â‘ Profile
â–¼â‘ Chat
â€¢ â‘ Microblog
â€¢ â‘ IM
â–¼â‘ Journal
â€¢ â‘ Blog
â–¼â‘ Discuss
â€¢ â‘ Forums
â–¼â‘ Collab
â€¢ â‘ Wikis
â‘ Integrated Architecture
â–¼â‘ Content Model
â€¢ â‘ Semantics
â–¼â‘ Governance
â€¢ â‘ Lifecycle
â–¼â‘ Systems
â€¢ â‘ KM
â€¢ â‘ LMS
â€¢ â‘ CMS
â‘ Mobile
â–¼â‘ Access
â–¼â‘ Designed
â–¼â‘ Contextualized
â‘ Concepts
â–¼â‘ Culture
â€¢ â‘ Leadership
â€¢ â‘ Processes & Policies
â€¢ â‘ Supportive Environment
â–¼â‘ Expertise
â€¢ â‘ Levels
â€¢ â‘ Development
â–¼â‘ Meta-learning
â€¢ â‘ Skills
â€¢ â‘ Awareness

Definitely a ‘learning out loud’ work-in-progress. Feedback welcome!

Guild Keynote: Stefan Sagmeister

17 April 2008 by Clark Leave a Comment

Stefan Sagmeister’s a renowned designer, and gave us a talk about what he’s learned and how it’s influenced his design. Or rather, more how what he’s learned has driven a number of design projects. He started with the type of stuff his studio does: music business design (a music building flexible logo approach), socially responsible design (helping TrueMajority.org demonstrate Pentagon spending in context, with creative approaches including the pig car train and the topsy-turvy bus), and corporate design (an embossed organic hierarchy, e.g. flowers, as a vehicle for different lighting treatments to illustrate a lighting company corporate report).

The second part of his talk started with talking about how creative organizations use reflection to maintain innovation. This was an interesting contrast to a discussion in the first day of the Learning Management Colloquium where Lance was arguing with a audience member about whether reflection was necessary (!?!). Obviously, I’m all for it; in times of increasing change, execution of established patterns won’t help, and you’ll need to innovate, and reflection is a component of that.

From his reflections, he had a list of statements or mantras that he then had used as the basis for a number of commissioned works with a wide variety of representations, from words created out of a variety of materials to huge manifestations of the prose. There was quite a variety, some of them seeming to overlap a bit in the content of the phrases, and sometimes in the approach taken. Some were very clever plays, however, on the concepts. A billboard that faded illustrated letting go of issues, and a visual web that you got ‘tangled in’ as you passed by reflected the problems of lying.

Not specifically about learning, the issues of creativity and reflection were valuable and inspirational. My last mind map, at least for this conference:

eLearning Guild Keynote: John Patrick

16 April 2008 by Clark 1 Comment

Today’s keynote was John Patrick, talking about the future of the internet and implications for learning. There was a lot of the former, and unfortunately not enough of the latter. He made some great points, specifically that we’re only tapping 5% of the potential, citing a number of examples of where people were dropping the ball (what a great deal, getting paid to whinge about bad internet experiences :), and also about what was possible with coming developments. Here’s the mindmap:

In followup questions (part of the learning management colloquium), he talked a bit more about learning to learn (a pet fave of mine): that, generationally-independently, some get it and some don’t. I asked the obvious question: given that the internet has so much knowledge, but (as he claimed in his talk) that folks don’t necessarily have good internet skills, would the obvious implication be that the role of formal learning be about how to learn to learn with internet resources? His answer was discursive, unfortunately, but an interesting opportunity would be a software ‘net-surfing’ coach that watched your net strategy and provided guidance.

The opportunities of ubiquitous internet access are exciting, certainly, but I think it will take some smart ‘voting with eyeballs’ to really make a change. I’m an idealist, but I also recognize that individuals are satisficing, not optimizing, and people are still buying shoddy product (why are people still buying Coors?). How will we get the necessary cluetrain going? Odd thought: ridicule.

« Previous Page