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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Update on my webinars

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I know, I know, I’ve been doing a lot of updates: books, workshops, and now webinars. I promise I’ll get back to my regular posting on learning things, but the benefit of these, unlike books or courses, is that they’re free. And several are coming up! So I thought I’d at least let you have a chance. So, here’s an update on my webinars.

First, I’ll be talking for eLearning Learning on the 27th of January at 11AM PT (2PM ET). They were interested in discussing about the impact on Covid, and of course I’m taking it in an aspirational direction. I’m presenting about how we’re not well aligned with how we think, work, and learn, and what that looks like in general, and in particular online.

Then, I’m doing a ‘make it meaningful’ presentation for iSpring on 25 Feb at 9AM PT (noon ET). The coordinates to sign up are here.   It aligns with their theme and I’ll get into some top-level issues.

Then, on 18 March, at 10AM, I’ll talk with Barbara Covarrubias Venegas on facilitating innovation. Since here topic is on virtual space, I suspect we’ll focus there. It’s a LinkedIn Live event, you can see it as one of her list of interviews.

Finally, at 10 AM PT (1PM ET) on Thursday the 13th (not Friday), I’ll be talking learning science for ATD.  That, as yet, doesn’t have a page AFAIK. More info as it emerges.

(BTW, there’s a recording of my webinar last week on learning science.)

This actually presents a pretty fair coverage of my areas of focus, so if any one (or more) is of interest, here’s a chance to see my thoughts. My general focus, as I like to quip, is on those things L&D isn’t doing, and what they’re doing badly. Which is most everything! 😁  I’m sure more webinars will eventuate, but that’s it for now. So there you go, an update on my webinars. Hope to see you there!

Update on my workshops

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Just as I did an update on my books, it’s time to also let you know about some workshop opportunities. Together, I think they create a coherent whole. They’re scattered around a bit, so here I lay out how they fit together, how they’re run, what they cover, and how you can find them. They’re not free, but they’re reasonably priced, with reputable organizations. So here’s an update on my workshops.

First, they’re three pieces of the picture. I talk about two things, generally. It comes from my cheeky quip that L&D isn’t doing near what it could and should, and what it  is doing, it’s doing badly. So, that first part is about the larger performance ecosystem, and the second part is about learning experience design (LXD). And, that latter part actually pulls apart into two pieces.

I see LXD as the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. Thus, you need to understand learning science (and the associated elements). Then, you  also  need to understand what makes an engaging experience. So, two workshops address each of these.

The learning science workshop is being run under the auspices of HR.com (brokered through the Allen Academy). It’s under their professional education series, called Effective Learning Strategies. It’s a five week course (with a delayed sixth week). There are readings, a weekly session, and assignments. You can earn a certificate. In it I cover the basics of cognitive science, the learning outcomes, social/cultural/emotional elements, and the implications for design. It’s just what you need to know, and very much aligned with my forthcoming book!

The second part of the story is about the engagement side. While I’ve tried to boil down learning science into the necessary core, there are other resources. This isn’t well covered. And note, I’m  not talking about tarted-up drill-and-kill, gamification, ‘click to see more’, etc. Instead, I’m going deep into building, and maintaining: motivation, reducing anxiety, and more. Formally, it’s the Make It Meaningful workshop. This is a four week course, with videos to present the information, then live sessions to practice application, and takeaway assignments from the Learning Development Accelerator. It’s based upon the learnings from my book on designing learning games,  Engaging Learning,  but I’ve spent months this past summer making it more general, going deeper, validating the newest information, and making it accessible and comprehensible.

The final story is the performance ecosystem workshop. In what may seem a silly approach, it manifests as a course on mobile! However, once you recognize that mobile is about pretty much everything but courses (and can do contextual, which is an important new direction). It makes sense. When I was writing the mobile book, the intent was that it be a stealth approach to shift the L&D mindset away from just courses. Which, of course, was made more clear with my Revolutionize L&D book. So I hope you can see that this course, too, has a solid foundation. It’s about courses, performance support, informal and social learning, contextual opportunities, and strategy, in six weeks of online sessions, with a tiny bit of reading, and interim assignments. It’s by the Allen Academy directly.

Together, I think these three workshops provide the knowledge foundations you need to run a L&D operation. Two talk about what makes courses that are optimally engaging and effective, and one looks at the rest of the picture. Evidence suggests there’s a need. And I’ve worked hard to ensure that they’ve got the right stuff. So that’s an update on my workshops. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.  (And, yes, I’d like to pull them all together in one place, but I haven’t found a platform I like yet; stay tuned!)

 

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.

The case for learning science

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In a perfect world, we’d spend all the time we want on learning. However, we don’t live in that world, we live in the real world. Which means our decisions are about tradeoffs. Which means we have to evaluate the case for paying attention to research. So here’s a stab at the case for learning science.

Learning is a probabilistic game. That is, there’s a probability that anything we’ve invested in learning will arise at the appropriate time. I’ll suggest that our brains have some randomness built into them, so there’s always a chance we’ll do things differently. Thus, in a sense, learning design is about increasing the probability that the right thing will occur.

And there are consequences. Say, for instance, that we want people to wash hands sufficiently. Then we might rightly work to increase awareness (along with making sure there’s soap, water, sinks, towels, etc) and the proper procedure. To do that sufficiently, say, takes X minutes of instruction.

Yet we may not have X minutes. Given the drain on resources, allocating that much time means the cost of the washing may be more than the cost of not. People not on the job for that time are an expensive resource. What’s a manager to do?

What we do all the time is make a probabilistic decision. We provide the rules in places where people might get their hands dirty, and we provide support materials (e.g. signs on the walls) in the places you wash your hands.

Most importantly, however, we make a determination of what’s a level of time that is going to likely do ‘good enough’. We’ll spend X-Y minutes, and make essentially a gamble that we’ll get 80% there, and the support materials will do the rest.

What this means is that since we’re not allocating sufficient time, we should be optimizing the quality of the learning design we apply. If they’re only getting X-Y minutes, that time should be as effective as possible. Which means we practice serious learning design, reflecting the best practices.

Quite simply, if you do less than use the best learning design principles derived from research, you’re decreasing the value of your investment in design time and learner time. And there are lots of ways we go wrong, whether it’s myths or just underinformed design. It’s a matter of professionalism as well. So let’s be smart and design smart. That’s the case for learning science. We owe it to our learners and our organizations.

Talking meaningful learning

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So, I’ve previously mentioned the Learning & Development conference I’ll be participating in that starts late this month. And, their main sessions are not webinars, but basically mini-courses (with lots of variation). But they’ll also be having live sessions. Given that I’ve ‘asked and answered’ the question about where things go wrong, it’s time for me to get real. So I’ll be talking meaningful learning. Let me talk about each more.

First, of course, meaningful learning is about getting the learning science right. I’ve argued (and continue to do so) that we’ve got to fix the core of our learning designs before we worry about fancy new hardware like AR and VR. If the core’s wrong, we’re just gilding bad design (and gilded bad design is still bad design). If we don’t focus on the right objectives, manage attention, set challenge appropriately, provide the right models and examples, and most of all have the  right practice, we’re wasting our time. As I’ve also said, once we’ve got that right, we’ve got lots of ways to implement it.

So, the asynchronous course I’ll be offering are the basics of learning science. Our information processing cycle, and the artifacts of our cognitive architecture. We’ll talk those things above, and have fun doing it!   You’ll get to experience several of the phenomena we’re talking about. And process the takehome messages.

For the live session (at two different times, we’re spanning the globe!), yes, I’ll talking meaningful learning. It  is still based upon the contents of Engaging Learning (and previous posts), but a) pulled out of games into specifications for regular learning, b) expanded with all I’ve learned since then (and I’ve been continuing to explore what’s known and what that implies), and of course c) it’s, well, live!

If, by the way, you are thinking about attending the conference, but have some struggles with cost, get in touch with me. I may have a way to help out ;).   I hope to see you there, whether you want to be talking meaningful learning, or for any of the other myriad reasons.

Adapting to change

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We live in interesting times. And, of course, that means many things have changed. Some for the worse, some for the better. I thought I’d just overview some of ways I’m adapting to change, so you can keep track and take advantage.

I was scheduled to do a number of things. One that wasn’t on the list was a trip to Brazil in May, also to give a talk (at least). And, of course, Boston, Brazil,  and Belgium have all been postponed. Understandably. And, sadly, my Quinnsights column had to cease. That might seem, then, to take away all opportunities for me to educate, but in the meantime, in addition to my ongoing Litmos blog (at least for now!), other things have surfaced.

For one, I’ll be doing a course for the Allen Academy.   I’ll be talking about mobile learning, a topic I’ve had  some experience with ;). It starts soon, 6 May. I’ll be clear: it’s about ‘thinking’ mobile, which means getting your mind around much much more than ‘courses on a phone’. And it’s about design and strategy, not development. No bit spinning. After all, I’ve quipped about the importance of getting the design right.

Another is the upcoming L&D conference. I’ll be talking “Learning Science 101”, which I think is much needed and also doable. This is a new online event conjured up by some colleagues to meet a need. And, I’m happy to say, there’s a lot to like: thinking really hard about how to take advantage of online for conference-style learning, a great lineup of speakers. This starts June 22, and last 6 weeks, so already you can see it’s different.

Two other non-event things to note. My first two books,  Engaging Learning  and  Designing mLearning, were out of print. Fortunately, when that happens, publishing contracts say the rights can revert to the author if they request it. And…they did!   I’ve taken them with minimal modification (had to remove one case study from the latter; some minor tweaks), and made them available through Kindle. At a greatly reduced price!

And, of course, I’m still working in a variety of ways. Including being available to help you with moving courses or working online. And scheming up more things. I’m tentatively scheduled for another tome, and one was already underway. Somewhat under wraps still, but…

So those are the things I’m doing adapting to change. Not to worry, there’ll be more, in this volatile age. I’m trying to practice what I preach about experimentation, so there’ll likely be other new things percolating. Stay tuned!

Interesting times

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It was when I was living in Australia that I first heard the apocryphal Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.” And, I have to say, the going’s gotten weird. A few reflections on the situation, all of course related to COVID-19.

I wrote some months ago about my spring schedule. And, well, as you might’ve guessed, things have changed. My trip to Boston has been postponed for a year (I’ll be giving a webinar for ATD NE).   I had added a trip to Brazil in May, which I’d yet to tell you about since they hadn’t gotten a page up, but…it’s been postponed.   And my trip to Belgium in June? Not feeling optimistic. (And this isn’t good, personally. As an independent, it’s gigs that pay the way. Need some remote work?)

Remote, because the entire SF Bay Area, where I live, is now on ‘stay home’ mode as of midnight last night.   Only essential services and travel are on. Of course work-based travel is acceptable, but right now, no one wants to meet in person. And there’s actually a good reason for this…

Curve below health system capacity if we take precautionsThis is a really wonderful diagram (ok, my poor rendition of it). It is the clearest depiction of the argument to take extraordinary measures. Simple, elegant. Our health system aims to cope with average levels of problems. We’re talking considerably more than that. This diagram, and the associated label “flattening the curve” really conveys the need for action. But this has really helped convey the necessity. I am using an adaptation to make the case for Community Emergency Response Team, a training initiative I’m engaged in. Which is also postponed.

I worry about much more, of course. We’ve seen weird behaviors (stockpiling toilet paper, an unsymptomatic response), as well as good ones (elbow bumps for greeting). Everyone,  and I mean everyone, is weighing in on how to design learning online and how to work remotely. I wasn’t going to, but an editor for one of my columns asked. I at least got agreement to not just talk the basics, but about using the opportunity to rethink.

My biggest concern is the impact on people’s lives! Folks’ livelihoods are at risk. There’s a lot of financial activity that’s not going to be happening (dining, for instance). The implications for many people – diminished income, mortgages or rent unpaid – are a concern. One interesting aside that a colleague noticed: there’s likely to be many more people who know what good hand-washing means now.   Please do learn it!

The main thing is to stay safe, for your sake and others. There’s a segment of the population that’s at higher risk, and that’s who we’re needing to help. And keep the need within capacity. We’re not only not equipped, but not supplied, to meet the possible demand when we don’t do enough.

I hope to see you at the other end of this, but stay tuned for all sorts of interim initiatives. We’re living in interesting times, and it’s an opportunity to be innovative, resilient, and humane. Here’s hoping that we become better as a consequence.

Tools for LXD?

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I’ve been thinking on LXD for a while now, not least because I’ve an upcoming workshop at DevLearn in Lost Wages in October. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about are the tools we use for LXD. I’ve created diagrams (such as the Education Engagement Alignment), and quips, but here I’m thinking something else. We know that job aids are helpful; things like checklists, and decision trees, and lookup tables. And I’ve created some aids for the Udemy course on deeper elearning I developed. But here I want to know what  you are using as tools for LXD? How do you use external resources to keep your design on track?

The simple rationale, of course, is that there are things our brains are good at, and things they’re not. We are pattern-matchers and meaning-makers, naturally making up explanations for things that happen. We’re also creative, finding solutions under constraints. Our cognitive architecture is designed to do this; to help us adapt to the first-level world we evolved in.

However, our brains aren’t particularly good at the second-level world we have created. Complex ideas require external representation. We’re bad at remembering rote and arbitrary steps and details. We’re also bad at complex calculations.  This makes the case for tools that help scaffold these gaps in our cognition.

And, in particular, for design. Design tends to involve complex responses, in this case in terms of an experience design. That maps out over content, time, and tools. Consequently, there are opportunities to go awry. Therefore, tools are a plausible adjunct.

You might be using templates for good design. Here, you’d have a draft storyboard, for instance, that insures you’re including a meaningful introduction, causal conceptual model, examples, etc. Or you might have a checklist that details the elements you should be including. You could have a model course that you use as a reference.

My question, to you, is what tools are you using to increase the likelihood of a quality design, and how are they working for you?  I’d like to know what you’ve found helpful as tools for LXD, as I look to create the best support I can. Please share!

Level of polish?

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A debate broke out amongst some colleagues the other day about the desirable level of polish in our elearning. One colleague was adamant that we were undermining our position by using low quality production. There was a lot of agreement. I had a slightly different view. Even after finding out he was talking more about external-facing content than internal, I still have some differences. After weighing in, I thought it required a longer response, and of course it has to go here.

So, the main complaint was that so much elearning looks dated and incomplete. And I agree!  And others chimed in that this doesn’t have to be, while all agreed that it doesn’t need to approach game quality in effect. Then, in my mind, the question switches to “what is good enough?” And I think we do need an answer to that. And, it turns out, to also answer “and what does it take?”

What is good enough?

So, my first concern is the quality of the design. My mantra on design states that it has to be right first. Then you can implement it. If it isn’t right from the get-go, it doesn’t matter  how you implement it. And the conversation took some time to sort this out. But let’s assume that the design’s right. Then, how much production values do you need?

The original complaint was that we’re looking slack by comparison. When you look at what’s being done in other, related, fields, our production values look last decade, if not last century!  And I couldn’t agree more. But does that matter?  And that’s where we start getting into nuances. My bottom line question is: “what’s the business case?”

So, I suggest that the investment in production values is based upon how important the ‘experience’ is. If it’s internal, and it’s a critical skill, the production values should be only enough to ensure that learners can identify the situation and perform appropriately (or get feedback).  It needs a minimum level of professionalism, and that’s it.  If you’re selling it to high-end customers and want to charge a premium price, you’ll need much more, of course.

The issue was that we’re losing credibility if we don’t approach a minimal level of competency. There were many arguments about the locus: fear of going out of bounds, managers oppression, low level tools, lack of skills, and more. And these all have validity. We should stipulate a minimal level. Perhaps the serious eLearning  Design Manifesto? :) We can do better.

What does it take?

This was the other issue. It was pointed out that design teams in other disciplines work in layers: from concept to realization. Jesse James Garrett has a lovely diagram that represents this for information architecture. And others pointed out that there are multiple skills involved, from dialog writing, through media production and interface design (they’re conceptually separate), and the quality of the programming and more. The more you need polish, the more you need to invest in the appropriate skill sets.  This again is a matter of marshaling the appropriate resources against the business case.

I think one of the issues is that we overuse courses when other solutions are more effective and efficient. Thus, we don’t have and properly allocate the resources to do the job right when it does positively absolutely has to be in the head. Thus, we do have a lot of boring, information dump courses. And we could be doing more with engaging practice, and less content presentation. That’s a design issue to begin, and then a presentation one.

Ultimately, I agree that bad elearning undermines our credibility. I do think, however, that we don’t need  unnecessary polish. Gilded bad design is still bad design. But then we should align our investment with the professional reception we need. And if we have trouble doing that, we need to rethink our approaches. The right level of investment for the context is the right response; we need the right live of polish. But the assessment the context is complex. We shouldn’t treat is simplistically, but instead systemically. If we get that right, we have a chance to impress folks with our astute sense of doing the right thing with the right resources. Less than that is a path to irrelevancy, and doing more is a path to redundancy. Where do  you want to go?

Learning Lessons

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Designing mLearning bookSo, I just finished teaching a mobile learning course online for a university. My goal was not to ‘teach’ mobile so much as develop a mobile mindset. You have to think differently than what the phrase ‘mobile learning’ might lead you to think. And, not surprisingly, some things went well, and some thing didn’t. I thought I’d share the learning lessons, both for my own reflection, and for others.

As a fan of Nilson’s Specifications Grading, I created a plan for how the assessment would go. I want lots of practice, less content. And I do believe in checking knowledge up front, then having social learning, and a work product. Thus, each week had a repeated structure of each element. It was competency based, so you either did it or not. No aggregation of points, but instead: you get this grade if you do: this many assignments correct, and  write a substantive comment in a discussion board  and comment on someone else’s this many times,  and complete this level on this many knowledge checks. And I staggered the deadlines through the week, so there’d be reactivation. I’ve recommended this scheme on principle, and think it worked out good in practice, and I’d do it again.

In many ways it ‘teacher proofs’ the class. For one, the students are giving each other feedback in the discussion question. The choice of discussion question and assignment both were designed to elicit the necessary thinking, which makes the marking of the assignment relatively easy. And the knowledge checks set a baseline background. Designing them all as scenario challenges was critical as well.

And I was really glad I mixed things up.  In early weeks, I had them look at apps or evaluated ones that they liked. For the social week, I had them collaborate in pairs. In the contextual week, they submitted a video of themselves. They had to submit an information architecture for the design week. And for the development week, they tested it.  Thus, each assignment was tied to mobile.

It was undermined by a couple of things. First, the LMS interfered. I wrote careful feedback for each wrong answer for each question on the knowledge checks. And, it turns out, the students weren’t seeing it!  (And they didn’t let me know ’til the 2nd half of the abbreviated semester!) There’s a flag I wasn’t setting, but it wasn’t the default!  (Which was a point I then emphasized in the design week: start with good defaults!)

And, I missed making the discussions ‘gradeable’ until late because of another flag. That’s at least partly on me. Which meant again they weren’t getting feedback, and that’s not good. And, of course, it wasn’t obvious ’til I remedied it. Also, my grading scheme doesn’t fit into the default grading schema of the LMS anyways, so it wasn’t automatically doable anyways. Next time, I would investigate that and see if I could make it more obvious. And learn about the LMS earlier. (Ok, so I had some LMS anxiety and put it off…)

With 8 weeks, I broke it up like this:

  1. Overview: mobile is  not courses on a phone. The Four C’s.
  2. Formal Learning:  augmenting learning.
  3. Performance Support: mobile’s natural niche
  4. Social: connecting to people ‘on the go’
  5. Contextual: the unique mobile opportunity
  6. Design: if you get the design right…
  7. Development: practicalities and testing.
  8. Strategy: platform and policy.

And I think this was the right structure. It naturally reactivated prior concepts, and developed the thinking before elaborating.

For the content, I had a small set of readings. Because of a late start, I only found out that I couldn’t use my own mLearning book when the bookstore told me it was out of print (!). That required scrambling and getting approval to use some other writings I’d done. And the late start precluded me from organizing other writings. No worries, minimal was good.  And I wrote a script that covered the material, and filmed myself giving a lecture for each week. Then I also provided the transcript.

The university itself was pretty good. They capped the attendance at 20. This worked really well. (Anything else would’ve been a deal breaker after a disaster many years ago when an institution promised to keep it under 32 and then gave me 64 students.)  And there was good support, at least during the week, and some support was available even over the weekend.

Overall, despite some hiccups and some stress, I think it worked out (particularly under the constraints). Of course, I’ll have to see what the students say. One other thing I’d do that I didn’t do a good job of generally (I did with a few students) was  explain  the pedagogy. I’ve learned this in the past, and I should’ve done so, but in the rush to wrestle with the systems, it slipped through the cracks.

Those are my learning lessons. I welcome  your feedback and lessons!