Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Search Results for: quip

Tradeoffs in aesthetics

by Leave a Comment

For the LDA debate this month, Ruth Clark talked to Matt Richter and I about aesthetics in learning. Ruth, you should know, is the co-author of eLearning and the Science of Instruction, amongst other books, a must-have which leverages Rich Mayer’s work on multimedia learning. Thus, she’s knowledgeable about what the research says. What emerged in the conversation was a problem about tradeoffs in aesthetics, that’s worth exploring.

So, for one thing, we know that gratuitous media interferes with learning. From John Sweller’s work on cognitive load theory, we know that processing the unnecessary data reduces cognitive resources available to support learning. There’s usually enough load just with the learning materials. Unless the material materially supports learning, it should be avoided.

On the other hand, we also know that we should contextualize learning. The late John Branford’s work with the Cognitive Technology Group while at Vanderbilt, for instance, demonstrated this. As the late David Jonassen also demonstrated with his problem-based learning, we retain and transfer better with concrete problems. Thus, creating a concrete setting for applying the knowledge is of benefit to learning.

What this sets up, of course, is a tradeoff. That is, we want to use aesthetics to help communicate the context, but we want to keep them minimal. How do we do this? Even text (which is a medium), can be extraneous. There really is only one true response. We have to create our first best guess, and then we test. The testing doesn’t have to be to the level of scientific rigor, mind you. Even if it just passes the scrutiny of fellow team members, it can be the right choice, though ideally we run it by learners.

What we have to fight is those who want to tart it up. There will be folks who want more aesthetics. We have to push back against that, particularly if we think it interferes with learning. We need to ensure that what’re producing doesn’t violate what’s known. It’s not always easy, and in situations we may not always win, but we have to be willing to give it a go.

There are tradeoffs in aesthetics, so we have to know what matters. Ultimately, it’s about the learning outcomes. Thus, focusing on the minimum contextualization, and the maximum learning, is likely to get us to a good first draft. Then, let’s see if we can’t check. Right?

Meta-reflections

by Leave a Comment

Lake reflectionI was recently pinged about a new virtual world, a ‘metaverse‘ inspired new place for L&D. It looked like a lot of previous efforts! I admit I was underwhelmed, and I think sharing why might be worthwhile. So here are some meta-reflections.

I’ve written before on virtual worlds. In short, I think that when you need to be social and 3D, they make sense. At other times, there’s a lot of overhead for them to be useful that can be met in other ways. Further, to me, the metaverse really is just another virtual world. Your mileage may vary, of course.

This new virtual world had, like many others, the means to navigate in 3D, and to put information around. The demo they had was a virtual museum. Which, I presume, is a nice alternative to trying to get to a particular location. On the other hand, if it’s all digital, is this the best way to do it? Why navigate around in 3D? Why not treat it as an infographic, and work in 2D, leading people through the story? What did 3D add? Not much, that I could see.

My take has, and continues to be, as they say, “horses for courses”. That is, use the right tool for the job. I complained about watching a powerpoint presentation in Second Life (rightly so). Sure, I get that we tend to use new technologies in old ways first until we get on top of the new capabilities. However, I also argue that we can short-circuit this process if we look at core affordances.

The followup message was that this was the future of L&D, and we’d get away from slide decks and Zoom calls, and do it all in this virtual world. I deeply desire this not to be true! My take is that slide decks, Zoom, virtual worlds, and more all have a place. It’s a further instance of get the design right first, then figure out how to implement it. I want an ecosystem of resources.

Sure, I get that such a meta verse could be an integrating environment. However, do you really want to do all your work in a virtual world? Some things you can’t, I reckon, machining materials, for instance. Moreover, we have benefits from being out in the world. There are other issues as well. You might be better able to deal with diversity, etc, in a virtual world, but it’ll disadvantage some folks. Better, maybe, to address the structural problems rather than try to cover them over?

As always, my takeaway is use technology to implement better approaches, don’t meld your approaches to your tech. Those are, at least, my meta-reflections. What are yours?

Designing a conference

by Leave a Comment

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.

LXD by Design

by Leave a Comment

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?

by 4 Comments

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?

What’s In It For Them?

by Leave a Comment

One of the things I talk about in my most recent book,  Make It Meaningful, is the importance of communicating the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). I do think it’s important, but in recent work I’ve found an interesting alternative. I’m not sure I completely have my mind around how to address it, so as I’m wont to do, here’s some ‘thinking out loud’ about What’s In It For Them (WIIFT).

To start, WIIFM is about connecting learners to a visceral understanding of the reason for the learning experience. There should be a clear value proposition, to them.  It can be either having to do with either the consequences of having the resulting skill, or not. The point is that they ‘get’ that they need this (then there’s more). I believe that learners will invest in learning if they understand why.

However, in this instance, we have audiences who may or may not be interested. This is a suite of offerings, different for different potential clients. What we want here is for them to quickly determine  whether there’s WIIFM. We don’t think everyone will be appropriate for every thing we’re providing. Importantly, we don’t want them to waste time on ones that aren’t relevant. So we very quickly want to establish what’s in it  for the appropriate audience.

There are a number of ways to send signals. For one, the filename and the title of the resource can (and should) be clear what this particular thing about. Then, there should be a brief description of why this particular thing exists. Then, there can be a brief introduction saying what is going on. Obviously, all should align, so that folks can get in with the minimal effort to get there.

This, to me, suggests that the intro either explicitly making it clear  who we think  is   the audience, or provides an initial statement of what the outcomes are so that individuals can self-select. I’m not sure yet which I think is better, or even whether it’s useful to do both. There’s a tradeoff, of course; brevity is useful, and so is clarity. I suppose we can always make our best guess in the instance. For sure we’ll test it.

So, I’ve been led to wonder how to communicate What’s In It For Them so that they know whether they’re ‘them’ or not! There are also probably converging influences. I reckon marketing has this issue, as does documentation? What have seen/done/found out? I welcome your input.

 

Why L&D isn’t better

by 1 Comment

As I’ve noted before, someone on LinkedIn asked a question, and it’s prompting a reply. In this case, the question was in response to my previous post on superstitions (for new L&D practitioners). He asked “How did we even get here?” I’ve talked before about the sorry state of our industry, but haven’t really shared my thinking on why this is the case. My short response was that it’s complex. Here’s the longer response, trying to answer why L&D isn’t better.

First, I think we’re suffering from some mistaken beliefs. In particular, that presenting information will lead to behavior change. As I’ve noted before, I think this is a legacy of our beliefs that we’re formal logical reasoners. That is, if we were such beings (we’re not), this would likely be true. We’d respond to information by changing how we act. Instead, of course, we don’t change our behavior without practice, reinforcement, etc.

Another contributor, I suggest, is that a belief that if we can perform, we can teach. We can, therefore, take the best performer, and turn them into a trainer. Which is mistaken for a couple of reasons. For one, expertise is compiled away, and isn’t accessible. Estimates suggest around 70% of what experts do, they literally can’t tell us. It’s also a mistake to think that just anyone can teach. There’re specific skills that need to go into it.

Of course, we’re not aware of our flaws. We don’t measure, by and large. Even when we do, we too often measure the wrong things.  So, we see the bad practice of just looking at what learners think of the experience. Which has little correlation with the actual impact. We seldom look to see if the learning has actually changed any behavior, let alone whether it’s now at an acceptable level.

I do think we also still see the effects of 9/11. When we didn’t want to travel, we went to elearning. Rapid eLearning tools emerged to make it fast to take the PPTs and PDFs from the previous courses and put them onscreen with an added quiz. This has led to expectations that courses can be churned out quickly. Indeed, except that these ‘courses’ won’t have any impact!

One other factor is that our stakeholders also don’t know nor care. They know they need to invest in learning, so they do. It’s a cost center, not a driver of business success. No one is (yet) calling us on the carpet to justify our success. That’s changing, however. I just would like for us to be proactive, not reactive. Moreover, there’s a bigger opportunity on tap, not only to help the organization execute on the things that it needs to do, but also to facilitate the new knowledge the org will need.

In short, we don’t seem know what learning is, and we’re blind to the fact that our approaches aren’t useful. These, of course, are all premises I’ve addressed in my call to Revolutionize L&D. I still think there’s a meaningful role for L&D to play, but we have to lift our game. That’s my explanation of why L&D isn’t better, what’s yours?

 

What makes a good book?

by 1 Comment

I was in contact with a person about a potential book, and she followed up with an interesting question: what’s the vision I have for publishing? She was looking for what I thought was a good book. Of course, I hadn’t really articulated it! I responded, but thought I should share my thinking with you as well. In particular, to get your thoughts!  So, what makes a good book? (I’m talking non-fiction here, of course.)

My first response was that I like books that take a sensible approach to a subject. That is, they start where the learner is and get them realizing this is an important topic. Then the book walks them through the thinking with models and examples. Ultimately, a book should leave them equipped to do new things. In a sense, it’s the author leading the reader through a narrative that leaves them with a different and valuable view of the world.

I think these books can take different forms. Some shake up your world view with new perspectives, so for example Don Norman‘s Design of Everyday Things or Todd  Rose‘s The End of Average. Another types are  ones that provide deep coverage of an important topic, such as Patti Shank‘s  Write Better Multiple-Choice Questions.  A third type are ones that lead you through a process, such as Cathy Moore‘s Map It. These are rough characterizations, that may not be mutually exclusive, but each can be done to fit the description above.

To me the necessary elements are that it’s readable, authoritative, and worthwhile. That is, first there’s a narrative flow that makes it easy to process. For instance, Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind takes a journalistic approach to important phenomena.  Also, a book needs an evidence-base, grounding in documented experience and/or science. It can re-spin topics (I’m thinking here about Lisa Feldman Barrett’s  How Emotions Are Made), but must have a viable reinterpretation. Finally, it has to be something that’s worth covering. That may differ by reader, but it has to be applicable to  a field. You should leave with a new perspective and potentially new capabilities.

That’s what came off the top of my head. What am I missing in what makes a good book?

The Performance Ecosystem and L&D

by 2 Comments

On LinkedIn recently, a survey in a post asked whether L&D should simply become performance consulting (Y/N). In the ensuing discussion, a comment was made that the binary discussion was flawed, and that a richer picture was possible. I was extremely pleased when she referred to my  Revolutionize Learning & Development book, and posted a diagram from it. I backed her comment, but it occurs to me that there’s more here, and of course I have a connection. So here’re some thoughts on the Performance Ecosystem and L&D.

To start, she cited how I wanted to move to Performance and Development. Indeed, I’ve posted about it, and included a diagram. In it, performance consulting  is represented, but as she noticed, there’s more. I think performance consulting is great, but…it’s not everything. To me, it only addresses the ‘optimal execution’ side of the picture, and ignores the ‘continual innovation’ opportunity.

To be fair, suggesting that L&D take responsibility for informal learning could be considered a stretch. My argument is simply that informal learning has practices and policies that can optimize outcomes,  and that it’s a necessary component of success going forward. (I note that problem-solving, design, research, and innovation all start without a known answer, so they’re learning too!) It’s not necessarily L&D’s role,  but who else (should) know more about learning?

So, innovation is an opportunity. A big one, I suggest. It’s a chance to move to the most valuable role in the organization, going forward. Orgs  need to innovate, and facilitating the best innovation is going to be a critical role. Why  not L&D? Yes, we have to get out of our comfort zone, start working with other business units, and most importantly know learning. So? We should anyway!

The infrastructure necessary is what I call the performance ecosystem. It’s about formal learning, but also more. That includes social, and information and learning resources. It includes facilitation as well as performance interventions. It’s about technology, but how to use it in ways that align with our brains.

The interesting issue for me is how to awaken this awareness. I  suggest  mobile is a gateway to the appropriate thinking. I wrote about mobile before writing the Revolution book (as my then-publisher required), but even there I laid out the case how mobile was not (just) about formal learning. Indeed, when you look at the way people use mobile, it’s very different. It’s also a digital platform, which means that it supports multiple outcomes.

Thus, mobile thinking is a way to break through the mindset of courses, and start looking at the bigger picture of technology supporting how we think, work, and learn to the success of our organizations. Which is why I’m happy to say that I’ll again be running the mobile course with Allen Academy, starting next week. Through 18 Jan, they’re offering this as a two-fer, so you get both the mobile and the learning science course for one low price! Together, you’re addressing my silly clip about L&D, both doing courses well  and going beyond them.

If you want to get your mind around the performance ecosystem and L&D, I suggest that mobile learning is a effective vehicle. You get both some deep advice about mobile, but it also generalizes to digital technology overall. The course itself looks at formal learning, performance support, informal learning, and more, as well as strategic issues. Coupled with learning science, this is a real grounding in the most important opportunities and necessities facing L&D today. Whether you call it P&D or L&D, these are core concepts. Hope to see you there!

 

The (Post) Cognitive Perspective

by 5 Comments

I’m deeply steeped in the cognitive sciences, owing to a Ph.D. in cognitive psych. Fortuitively, this was at the time my advisor was creating the cognitive science program (and more). So I’ve a bias. Yet I also have a fair bit of empirical evidence that taking a cognitive perspective accomplishes things that are hard to do in other ways. So let me make the case that the cognitive perspective is more than just a useful one, but arguably a necessary one.

I‘ll start by reflecting back on something I wrote before, about virtual world affordances. At the time, platforms like Second Life were touting the advantages of an immersive navigable world. Of course, the promises were all-encompassing: everything would move to virtual worlds. In retrospect, it didn‘t eventuate. Why? I argue it’s because the cognitive overhead of virtual worlds means that there has to be a sustained value proposition, and that came from when you truly need 3D immersion and social.  

Similarly, when I wrote my books on games and mobile, I focused on the cognitive impacts. The first reason was because technology was changing so fast that anything hardware-specific would be out of date before the book was published. The second is because our brains don‘t change that fast, so what works will work regardless of the technology .  

Note that our understanding of cognition has changed. We‘re now in a ‘post-cognitive‘ era, where the notion that all our formal, logical thinking is done in our heads is wrong. Research is showing that we‘re far more ‘situated‘ than we think, and distributed as well. That includes distributed across external representations and other people! It’s very contextual, and it’s not all in our heads!

So these days, when I look at things, I try to look with a cognitive (ok, post-cognitive) perspective. I look to see how things align, or not, with how our brains work. When I evaluate learning technologies, for instance, I look to see how well they do things like provide meaningful practice: active and contextualized. You can also see when particular technologies (e.g. VR/AR/AI) will be valuable, and not. Similarly, when I look at workplace change proposals, I look at how well they reflect our mechanisms for adapting to change.  

I‘ll argue that these perspectives are valuable. You can quickly see why most training doesn‘t work, cut through hype from vendors, create explanations about why myths are mythtaken, etc. You can save money, be more effective, etc when you align with how our brains work. I‘ve talked before about how there are gaps. This is the flip side, how to avoid those gaps, and do better.   In short, you‘re better able to assist your organization in being more effective (and efficient).  

That‘s why I‘m pleased that I am able to put these basics into the learning science book, and workshops. It‘s possible to get better at this sort of perspective. It‘s also possible to get it on tap as needed. However, it does take both the cognitive understanding and the experience in applying it. So, how‘s your cognitive perspective?

On a side note, I want to encourage you to consider my workshop at DevLearn on Make It Meaningful, a full day exploring how we make learning experiences deeply engaging (adding to effectiveness). This is also the topic of my online workshop through the Learning Development Accelerator. This is, to me, the most important topic to  complement  learning science. (Available as a book and workshop. ;) In both cases, I’m trying  to help us  stop making boring courses that people want to avoid, and suggest that this  can be done for most any topic. It also leads to more effective learning outcomes! Hope to see you at one! (Of course, if your organization would like your own private version, let me know!)