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Reimagined Learning: Content & Portfolio elaborated

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In a previous post I laid out the initial framework for rethinking learning design, and in a subsequent post I elaborated the activity component. I want to elaborate the rest a wee bit here.  Two additional components of the model around the activities were content and then products coupled with reflection.

Content, elaboratedOne of the driving points behind the model was to move away from content-driven learning, and start focusing on learning experience.  As a consequence, the activities were central, but content was there to be driven to from  the activities.  So, the activity would both motivate and contextualize the need to comprehend some concept or to access an example, and then there would be access paths to the content within  the activity. Or not, in that there might be a selection of content, or even the opportunity or need for the learner to choose relevant content. As with the activity, you gradually want to release responsibility to the learner for selecting content, initially modeling and increasingly devolving the locus of control.

Portfolio - product and reflections - elaboratedA second component is the output of the activity.  It was suggested that activities should generate products, such as solutions to problems, proposals for action, and more.  The activity would be structured to generate this product, and the product could either be a reflection itself (e.g. an event review) or tangible output.  It could be a document, audio, or even video. If the product itself is not a reflection, there should be one as well, a reflection.  Eventually, the product choice and reflection piece will be the responsibility of the learner, and consequently there will be a scaffolding and fading process here too.

Note that the product of learner activity could then  become  content for future activities.  The product could similarly be the basis for a subsequent activity.

The reflection itself is a self-evaluation mechanism, that is the learner should be looking at their own work as well as sharing the underlying thinking that led to the resulting product.  Peers could and should evaluate other’s products and reflections as an activity as well (getting just a wee bit recursive, but not problematically so). And, of course, the products and reflections are there for mentor evaluation.  And, as activities can be social, so too can the products be, and the reflections.

While digital tools aren’t required for this to work, it would certainly make sense from a wide-variety of perspectives to take advantage of digital tools. Rich media would make sense as content, and this could include augmented reality in contexts.  Further, creation tools could and should be used  to create products and or reflections. Of course, activities too could be digitally based such as simulations, whether desktop or digitally delivered, e.g. simulations or alternate reality games.

The notion is to try to reframe learning as a series of designed activities with guided reflections, and a gradual segue from mentor-designed to learner-owned.  Does this resonate?

Reimagining Learning

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On the way to the recent Up To All Of Us unconference  (#utaou), I hadn’t planned a personal agenda.  However, I was going through the diagrams that I’d created on my iPad, and discovered one that I’d frankly forgotten. Which was nice, because it allowed me to review it with fresh eyes, and it resonated.  And I decided to put it out at the event to get feedback.  Let me talk you through it, because I welcome your feedback too.

Up front, let me state at least part of the motivation.  I’m trying to capture rethinking about education or formal learning. I’m tired of anything that allows folks to think knowledge dump and test is going to lead to meaningful change.  I’m also trying to ‘think out loud’ for myself.   And start getting more concrete about learning experience design.

Let me start with the second row from the top.  I want to start thinking about a learning experience as a series of activities, not a progression of content.  These can be a rich suite of things: engagement with a simulation, a group project, a museum visit, an interview, anything you might choose for an individual to engage in to further their learning. And, yes, it can  include traditional things: e.g. read this chapter.

This, by the way, has a direct relation to Project Tin Can, a proposal to supersede SCORM, allowing a greater variety of activities: Actor – Verb – Object, or I – did – this.  (For all I can recall, the origin of the diagram may have been an attempt to place Tin Can in a broad context!)

Around these activities, there are a couple of things. For one, content is accessed on the basis of the activities, not the other way around. Also, the activities produce products, and also reflections.

For the activities to be maximally valuable, they should produce output.  A sim use could produce a track of the learner’s exploration. A group project could provide a documented solution, or a concept-expression video or performance. An interview could produce an audio recording.  These products are portfolio items, going forward, and assessable items.  The assessment could be self, peer, or mentor.

However, in the context of ‘make your thinking visible’ (aka ‘show your  work’), there should also be reflections or cognitive annotations.  The underlying thinking needs to be visible for inspection. This is also part of your portfolio, and assessable. This is where, however, the opportunity to really recognize where the learner is, or is not, getting the content, and detect opportunities for assistance.

The learner is driven to content resources (audios, videos, documents, etc) by meaningful activity.  This in opposition to the notion that content dump happens before meaningful action. However, prior activities can ensure that learners are prepared to engage in the new activities.

The content could be pre-chosen, or the learners could be scaffolded in choosing appropriate materials. The latter is an opportunity for meta-learning.  Similarly, the choice of product could be determined, or up to learner/group choice, and again an opportunity for learning cross-project skills.  Helping learners create useful reflections is valuable (I recall guiding honours students to take credit for  the work they’d done; they were blind to much of the own hard work they had put in!).

When I presented this to the groups, there were several questions asked via post-its on the picture I hand-drew. Let me address them here:

What scale are you thinking about?

This unpacks. What goes into activity design is a whole separate area. And learning experience design may well play a role beneath this level.  However, the granularity of the activities is at issue.  I think about this at several scales, from an individual lesson plan to a full curriculum.    The choice of evaluation should be competency-based, assessed by rubrics, even jointly designed ones.  There is a lot of depth that is linked to this.

How does this differ from a traditional performance-based learning model?

I hadn’t heard of performance-based learning. Looking it up, there seems considerable overlap.  Also with outcome-based learning,  problem-based learning, or service learning, and similarly Understanding By Design.  It may not be more, I haven’t yet done the side-by-side. It’s scaling it up , and arguably a different lens, and maybe more, or not.  Still, I’m trying to carry it to more places, and help provide ways to think anew about instruction and formal education.

An interesting aside, for me, is that this does  segue to informal learning. That is, you, as an adult, choose certain activities to continue to develop your ability in certain areas.  Taking this framework provides a reference for learners to take control of their own learning, and develop their ability to be better learners.  Or so I would think, if done right.  Imagine the right side of the diagram moving from mentor to learner control.

How much is algorithmic?

That really depends.  Let me answer that in conjunction with this other comment:

Make a convert of this type of process out of a non-tech traditional process and tell that story…  

I can’t do that now, but one of the attendees suggested this sounded a lot like what she did in traditional design education. The point is that this framework is independent of technology.  You could be assigning studio and classroom and community projects, and getting back write-ups, performances, and more.  No digital tech involved.

There are definite ways in which technology can assist: providing tools for content search, and product and reflection generation, but this is not  about technology. You could be algorithmic in choosing from a suite of activities by a set of rules governing recommendations based upon learner performance, content available, etc.  You could also be algorithmic in programming some feedback around tech-traversal.  But that’s definitely not where I’m going right now.

Similarly, I’m going to answer two other questions together:

 How can I look at the path others take? and How can I see how I am doing?

The portfolio is really the answer.  You should be getting feedback on your products, and seeing others’ feedback (within limits).  This is definitely not intended to be individual, but instead hopefully it could be in a group, or at least some of the activities would be (e.g. communing on blog posts, participating in a discussion forum, etc).  In a tech-mediated environment, you could see others’ (anonymized) paths, access your feedback, and see traces of other’s trajectories.

The real question is: is this formulation useful? Does it give you a new and useful way of thinking about designing learning, and supporting learning?

Slow Learning – #change11

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This is a longer post launching my week in the #change11 MOOC (Massively Open Online Course).  

Our formal learning approaches too often don‘t follow how our brains really work.   We have magic now; we can summon up powerful programs to do our bidding, gaze through webcams across distances, and bring anyone and anything to pretty much anywhere. Our limitations are no longer the technology, but our imaginations. The question is, what are we, and should be, doing with this technology?

I like to look at this a couple of ways. For one, I like to ask myself “what would my ideal learning situation be”

Stop and ask yourself that.   Go ahead, I‘ll wait.   And feel free to share!

For me, that would be having a personal mentor traveling with me, looking at my tasks, providing both support in the moment, and developing me slowly over time.   I talked about how we might systematize that in a post titled Sage at the Side.   I also talked about this model as Layered Learning.   That is, layering on learning across our life.

It‘s part of what my colleague Harold Jarche talks about when saying “work is learning and learning is work”, the notion that as organizations start empowering workers to adapt to the increasing complexity, there will be no difference between work and learning, and we‘ll have to move away from the ‘event‘ model of learning and start integrating learning more closely into our activities.   We‘ll need to have a closer coupling between our activities and the resources, creating what Jay Cross calls a workscape and I‘ve termed the performance ecosystem.   That is, having the tools to hand, including job aids, people, and skill development, but in a more systemic way.

Think about that: how would you construct an optimal performance environment for yourself?   What would it look like?   Again, feel free to share.

Would it look like an LMS over here, training away over there, job aids scattered across portals, and social networks hierarchically structured or completely banned?   Would you have spray-and-pray (aka show up and throw up) training?   Online courses that are clicky-clicky bling-bling? Resources accessible by the way the organization is siloed?   Even the simple and well-documented matter of spaced learning is largely violated in most of the learning interventions we propagate.   In short, all of this is in conflict with how the human brain works!

Look at how how we learn naturally, before schooling (what I call the 7 C‘s of natural learning). We see that we learn by being engaged in meaningful activity, and working with others.   It‘s not about knowledge dump and test, but instead about coupling engaged activity with reflection.   I like Collins, Brown, & Holum‘s Cognitive Apprenticeship as a model for thinking more richly about learning.   Other learning models are not static (c.f. Merrill‘s trajectory through CDT to ID2 to Ripples), and I believe they‘ll converge where Cognitive Apprenticeship is (albeit perhaps my slightly adulterated version thereof).   It talks about modeling, scaffolding and release, naturally incorporating social and meaningful activity into the learning process.

Taking a broader look, too many of our systems have a limited suite of solutions to choose from, and ignore a number of features that we need.   The ADDIE process assumes a course, and still doesn‘t have any real support for the emotional engagement aspect. A step above is the HPT approach, which does look at the learning need and checks to see whether the solution might be a course, a job aid, realigning incentives, or some other things. However, it still doesn‘t consider, really, engagement, nor does an adequate job of considering when connecting to a person is a more valuable solution than designing content.

And while Gloria Gery‘s seminal work on Electronic Performance Support Systems suggested that these systems could not only provide support in the moment but also develop the learners‘ understanding, I still don‘t see this in any systems in practice. Even GPSs don‘t help you understand the area, they just get you where you‘re trying to go. So we are still missing something.

I‘m really arguing for the need to come up with a broader perspective on learning.   I‘ve been calling it learning experience design, but really it‘s more.   It‘s a combination of performance support and learning (and it‘s badly in need of some branding help). The notion is a sort-of personal GPS for your knowledge work. It‘s knows where you want to go (since you told it), and it knows where you are geographically and semantically (via GPS and your calendar), and as it recognizes the context it can provide not only support in the moment, but layers on learning along the way.   And I think that we don‘t know really how to look at things this way yet; we don‘t have design models (to think about the experience conceptually), we don‘t have design processes (to go from goal to solution), and we don‘t have tools (to deliver this integrated experience).   Yet the limits are not technological; we have the ability to build the systems if we can conceptualize the needed framework.

I think this framework will need to start with considering the experience design, what is the flow of information and activity that will help develop the learner (e.g. “If you get the design right, there are lots of ways to implement it”).   Then we can get into the mechanics of how to distribute the experience across devices, information, people, etc.   But this is embryonic yet, I welcome your thoughts!

Really, I‘m looking to start matching our technology more closely to our brains.   Taking a   page from the slow movement (e.g. slow X, where X = food, sex, travel, …), I‘m talking about slow learning, where we start distributing our learning in ways that match the ways in which our brains work: meaningfulness, activation and reactivation, not separate but wrapped around our lives, etc.

There‘s lots more: addressing the epistemology of learners, mobile technologies, meta-learning & 21st C skills, and deep analytics and semantic systems, to name a few, but I think we need to start with the right conceptions.   Some of my notions of design may be too didactic, after all, and we‘ll need to couple information augmentation with meaning-making to make real progress, but I think this notion of stepping back and reflecting on what we might want to achieve and where we‘re currently inadequate is an initial step.

And now the initiative is over to you. I look forward to your thoughts.

Readings

Collins, A., Brown, J.S., and Holum, A. (1991).   .   Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Educator, Winter.

Quinn, C. (2004).   Learning at Large.   Educational Technology, 44, 4, 45-49.

Quinn, C. (2009). Populating the LearnScape: e-Learning as Strategy. In M. Allen (Ed.) Michael Allen‘s eLearning Annual 2009. Pfeiffer, San Francisco.

Quinn, C. (2010). Rethinking eLearning.   Learning Solutions Magazine. April.

Quinn, C. (2010). Designing for an uncertain world. Learnlets. April.

Thalheimer, W. (2006).  Spacing Learning Over Time.  Work Learning Research.

Intimacy & Immediacy

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I’ve been wrestling with the difference between the smartphone (or PDA, aka the ‘pod’) versus a tablet (aka the ‘pad’), and it occurred to me that one way to think about it might be to distinguish between ‘intimacy’ and ‘immediacy’.

Laptops versus mobile devicesBy  immediacy, I’m talking about how you use the devices.  As Palm  documented  a long time ago, you use laptops only a few times per day, but for long periods of time.  Whereas you use mobile devices many times a day for quick access.  Tablets are actually more used like laptops in this respect.  You don’t tend to whip your tablet out, answer a quick question, and put it away.  The size tends to make it awkward to whip in and out, and instead is more amenable to using for a period of time.  Of course, smaller tablets may bridge the gap.

By intimacy, I mean the relationship to the device.  As Judy Brown defines a mobile device, it’s small enough to fit in your pocket, has a battery to last all day, and you really know it.  I’m particularly picking up on the latter, and moreover, that you can customize it. David Pogue has opined that it’s not really the smartphone that matters, but rather the ‘app phone’, and I think it’s important that you can optimize the device by loading it with capabilities that accessorize  your brain.  Though you can add ringtones, and even some apps (via, for instance, Brew), it’s much harder to augment your capabilities without a rich market of differentiated programs.

There’s more.  For one, the smaller screen means you have the device closer.  Laptops are inherently at arms length (or at least forearm’s length), to effectively use a keyboard. The smaller screen of a mobile device invites it closer, as does the small keyboard, using thumbs instead of the whole hand. A touchscreen  interface also invites a different relationship.

Characterizing laptop, tablet, and mobile devicesThis gives me a framework for distinguishing between the devices.  A laptop, even if customized by your applications, isn’t intimate, and by size isn’t used with immediacy.  Tablets are intimate, but not immediate.  Smartphones are intimate and  immediate.  Finally, there’s the category of immediate but not intimate. This might be the use of a touchscreen kiosk you find at a public spot or in a museum, or perhaps also using someone else’s device for a quick access.

This seems to give me a handle on thinking about the differences between tablets and smartphones & PDAs (I think the iPod touch is a great device, say for kids in schools).  Does it work for you?

 

CLO Thinking (& Measurement)

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I attended the CLO Symposium with my ITA colleagues Jay Cross and Jane Hart.  It was an interesting event, with a theme of “Game-Changing Learning: Development for the New Normal“, held at a classy venue on the beach, and was well-organized.  (You can see Jay’s writeup here.)  And the keynotes that I saw were in synch: Stephen Covey talked about the need for trust and Jon Katzenbach on how to build culture were both excellent, as was Dan Pontefract’s story on making collaboration intrinsic to Telus.  At a lower level, however, the conference felt mired in the past.

Jay, Jane, and I ran a unpanel where we took questions from the audience and took turns answering it.  Some folks even had trouble with the format, apparently!  We got questions about how the role of the learning unit changes, about myths and new tools, and about measurement.  Our riff inspired some subsequent inquiries if we could assist.  Well, but of course!

A lot  of the other sessions also seemed to deal with measurement.  A special lunch was held specifically around creating a standard set of measurements: effectiveness, efficiency, and business impact. While the latter is business specific, the other two could be handled. Efficiency tends to mean things like amount per hour of training, etc.  Effectiveness was less clear, but I’m afraid we’d see pre-post test messages instead of number of people completing the competency test (happy to be wrong).  My problem here is that this stuff shouldn’t be a topic in 2011, it should be already well-practiced  and in the repertoire. We should be thinking about how to start tracking meaningful activity in social networks, the value of performance support and more, not old stuff about courses.  And, how to tie it back to important deltas in organizational performance.

As for addressing the social and informal metrics, while I addressed this a bit earlier, let me go a bit further.  If you are putting in performance support (e.g. a portal, but *ahem*, well-designed) or social network, you should be asking yourself what it should be achieving.  Is it closing more sales?  Generating higher revenue per sale?  How about less time spent on customer calls?  If you put in an HR portal, you should expect less calls to HR.  If you put in a social network among sales folks, you might expect a higher percentage of closing. Figure out what change this should  affect, and then find a way to measure it. Which should be the indicator that you have a problem in the first case!

Which is not to say there weren’t good topics on tap too: leadership development for agility, bridging the gap between IT and the learning unit, informal learning, etc.  But when other topics are ‘how to talk to executives’, in- or out-sourcing talent, and on-demand training, it’s clear we’re not where we can, and should, be.

“The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”, as  William Gibson  has said, but I guess my concern is with some of what is considered game-changing in an era where the new normal is continual innovation and perpetual beta.  Things are moving too fast not to already have mastered the basics of measurement, and be thinking about adapting.  The ability to talk ‘business’ should be a pre-requisite for the job, and the strategic issues need  to be culture and collaboration.  We’re getting there, but then patience has never been one of my strong suits ;).

 

Vale Jobs

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My first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games. I had to do the TRS-80 Model I before I got to work on an Apple ][, but I finally bought a ][e, and sold it to my company shortly thereafter as I headed off to graduate school.  I was a grad student in an HCI lab (with Donald Norman, who went on to become an Apple Fellow), and so I was very aware of the Macintosh (I’d coveted a Lisa before that), and bought a Mac II to write my PhD thesis on.  Since then I’ve only used Macs as my main machine (tho’ there has been the odd PC around the house).  And that’s quite a few; in my office right now is an iMac DV, a Powerbook Wallstreet and also a G4, as well as an old and a new MacBook Pro, iPhone, and an iPad.

And let’s not dismiss the software.  Despite some quirks, the OS has a solid foundation, and the interface experience on top of it is pretty good.  I learned HyperCard (even though I’d moved on from programming), love Keynote, think Pages is *almost* there (the outlining is not quite yet industrial strength), etc.  So you can imagine it was with some unexpected sadness that I learned about the passing of Steve Jobs.

Enough has been said about the fact that it wasn’t just the surface design, but his insistence on a comprehensive user experience.  It has also already been covered that it was much more than that, it was the insight into the market, e.g. not just the iPod, but iTunes.  Not just the iPhone, but the whole reengineering of the relationship between hardware provider and telcos.  Industry-changing stuff, and absolutely true.  But I want to talk about one other thing that has somewhat passed under the radar.

How many of you would have liked to work  for Apple? You didn’t hear much about it, like you might with Google, but it seemed like a pretty cool place to hang out.  And there are two aspects to this.  One is that you didn’t  hear much.  In the notoriously gossipy Silicon Valley, Apple was remarkably resistant to leaks.  I think this is reflective of the other component. While you can install some pretty rigorous constraints, I think you do better if you instill some loyalty. And I think that while Jobs was at times dictatorial, as has come out, I think he did it through selling a vision inside the company as well as outside.

It has been said that the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship (the only problem is ensuring the benevolent part), and I think Steve Jobs made a company doing things worth getting behind, and I suspect that it was pretty easy to go along with some of the constraints because you knew why  they were there.  But it has  to also be  a place where you can make mistakes, as Steve made them himself, starting with the Apple ///.  I think that Apple has wanted the best, but rewarded folks for being that, too.

This is all inference, as I never worked there, and haven’t discussed it with the few people I’ve known who worked there.  But some pretty fabulous stuff has come from there, and it can’t all be one person.  So I just wanted to acknowledge that he not only built products, and a company, but a culture that allowed the company to succeed, wildly.  I’m somewhat skeptical of the ability to use a university model to develop executives who can perpetuate the Apple success, but the fact that they’re trying is worthy of consideration.  I think they can continue to succeed, but I hope that they have some other approaches too.

And, that, to me, is a lesson to take away from this.  Steve Jobs was inspiring, but he recognized it was more than just luck, it was a habit of mind that can be developed. Not only do you have to pursue your dream, but there are skills and habits of mind that go along with it.  And if you recognize that, identify those skills, model them, develop them,  and reward them, you can build a successful company.

RIP.

Three core foundations for online learning

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The wise Ellen Wagner has a neat post about what should be the ‘ten commandments’ of online learning.  I agree with them, and recommend them to  you.  I have thought about it in a slightly different, but similar frame.

I came up with this as I was trying to suggest what the core value propositions (yeah, I said it, deal with it) of an online offering should be.  And I tried to frame it the way I thought Steve Jobs might:

  • An absolutely killer learning experience
  • We don’t just develop your understanding, we develop you
  • We’re your partner for your success

What I mean by a killer learning experience is one that is engaging and  effective, ie all the principles of Engaging Learning. It’s a pedagogy that’s challenging, meaningful, relevant, tightly coupled, and more. It’s also social, having you learn with others, not just on your own.

Developing the person means not only developing their knowledge of the topic, their degree, but also their success factors. That includes things like helping them develop a portfolio of work, developing skills in working with others, communicating, etc.  In essence, layered on top of the domain knowledge are 21st century skills, which are likely to be the only lasting value you can provide learners (c.f. Father Guido Sarducci’s 5 Minute University).

And finally, it’s about not just providing the content and having the learner sink or swim, but instead actively looking at the learner’s performance, finding ways to scaffold the learning and being attentive to signals of potential trouble.  It’s data-driven adaptivity to the individual learner, coupled optimally with human intervention.  And competency-based, so the learner has clear indications of what they need to do.

We can do this, on a cost-effective basis, and I reckon it’s going to be the only sustainable differentiator to be a successful provider.  The only question then becomes: who’s going to bring it all together?  The market is waiting.

Reflecting socially

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About ten years ago, now, Jay Cross and I met and with some other colleagues, started what we called the Meta-Learning Lab. We’ve maintained our interest in meta-learning across our involvement now with the Internet Time Alliance, and a component we identified as one of the most valuable activities you can do is reflection.

We don’t mean just navel-gazing, of course, but instead we mean systematically stepping back and reviewing ongoing activity with a view towards looking for improvement. It’s baked into things like Watts Humphrey’s Personal Software Process, and without that level of rigor, it still has benefits.  Even more so if it’s shared.

So, blogging is one way of sharing your thoughts and getting feedback (as I do here).  The social processing  that happens when sharing is not just for formal learning, but for personal, self-directed learning as well.  Creating a representation of your understanding is valuable in and of itself, to make your thinking concrete, but sharing and getting feedback is even more powerful.

This isn’t just for individuals, of course, but also for teams.  If teams share their collective thinking (blogs again, or perhaps wikis), they can get feedback not just from each other but also from non-team individuals.  This improves the thinking.

And we can start using richer media than just text.  We can capture our understanding with images, audio or video, e.g. conducting interviews (you think differently creating a response to a deep question synchronously than asynchronously).  You can go out and create a video of something that communicates what you think.  You can even film a performance by the individual or team and bring it back for discussion. What a couple of high-tech firms have done, having outstanding performers talk about or perform on video, and adding their own reflections (‘directors notes’ versions), is really powerful for learners too.

Mobile gives us the capability to be more flexible in our communication capture and sharing, which decouples our thinking from the desktop.  We also may be able to review interactions in a social media system, messages and such, to reflect on our communication patterns and improve. And facilitating all this is, to me, one of the opportunities for the learning professional as we start a) expanding our responsibility for all performance, not just ‘training’, and b) start investing our efforts in proportion to the workplace impact (c.f. 70:20:10).

So, I encourage you to start reflecting personally, of course, but consider also reflecting socially, with your colleagues, teammates, and more.  Learning out loud is a key to moving forward faster and more effectively.

A new literacy? There’s an app for that

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The ubiquity of powerful mobile devices able to download applications that enable unique capabilities, has led David Pogue to coin them “app phones“.  Similarly, the expression “there’s an app for that” has been part of widespread marketing campaign.  However, it turns out that apps are more than just on phones.  Facebook has apps, as I just heard about BranchOut as a job hosting extension of the popular social network (I’m preparing for my talk at the Australasian Talent Conference).  Of course, there are other apps I don’t get involved in, such as all the quizzes, because I’m worried about the data they share, but there’s a meta-point here.

Increasingly, organizations and providers are creating APIs to their environments, which allow other organizations to add value in ways that expand their ecosystem.   This is of benefit to both parties and the users of the environment, with appropriate caveats about how the information is used.  From the user point of view, there are extensions to environments and tools you use that can give you unique capabilities.  And, from the personal efficacy department, being able to find and use these extensions is a new skill.  In the Personal Knowledge Management  framework of my colleague Harold Jarche, it’s be a new component of improving personal productivity.

First, as an overarching component, you need to understand that platforms can, if properly developed, allow others to add new capabilities.  Then, you need to be aware of the ways in which you’d like to augment your capabilities (accessorize your brain), know which platforms you’re on, choose the most plausible platform and channel (while there’s a Facebook app available for your app phone, it may  not support the app you need, and it may need to be desktop or mobile web), be able to search for the app you need (which may require tapping into other PKM skills like leveraging your network), and be able to hook into it, use it, and keep it handy.

Personal efficacy seems to me to be a growing differentiator.  Jay Cross cites how the exceptional Google engineer is estimated to be 200 times more valuable than the average engineer.  While some of this will come from skills, I suspect that a lot, and a growing component, of success will come from continual improvement both organizationally and individually.  Watts Humphrey makes a compelling case for the benefits of self-improvement process in software engineering, and it’s clear the process generalizes to other tasks.  Jay and I have previously argued (PDF) that improving the ability to learn might be the best investment you could make, and this is a component of being effective: knowing when to augment your capabilities and how.

New capabilities are emerging rapidly.  Understanding them conceptually and clarifying their unique capabilities gives you a handle on generating the skills you need to take advantage of them in a generalizable way.  I reckon apps meet the criteria.

The Pad and the Pod

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I had a conversation today where I was asked about the difference with a tablet versus a smartphone (or pad versus pod :).  This is something I’ve been thinking about, and some thoughts coalesced as I answered. I don’t think this is my definitive answer, but it’s worth wrestling with (learning out loud and all that).

The must-read for mobile designers, The Zen of Palm, shows data collected from years ago on the early Palm devices (Figure 1.3) which showed the difference between usage of desktops versus handhelds. The general pattern is that folks access desktops a few times a day for long periods, while handheld devices were accessed many times a day for very short periods.

I believe this is still largely true: we tend to use our smartphones and similar devices as learning/performance support as quick access to information.  While we might listen to music, that’s a different thing.   Yes, there will be times we access a video or read a document or even listen to a podcast, but the usual use is as quick access.

And I think we use tablets more like desktops.  We settle down with them for longer periods of time, and engage more deeply. They’re often about content consumption, and they may also be for content creation, in both cases more so than the smaller devices.  And I think it’s more than a quantitative difference, I really do feel it’s qualitative.  Yes, this blurs when we’re talking about 7.1″ tablets instead of 10″, but overall I think it holds.

Which naturally leads to the question of what’s the difference between a tablet and a desktop?  And here I’m on stranger ground.  I think one of the interesting phenomena of the tablet experience is the ‘intimacy’ of the experience. You’re holding the device and touching it.  It’s in your arms, instead of at arms-length.  And I believe, without having come up with empirical ways to document, that’ it’s a more personal engagement. It helps that the first successful instance, the iPad, has an overall aesthetic that’s elegant, so media look good and the user experience feels natural.  I hate the over-used phrase ‘intuitive’, but many inferences about how to use the device play out.

So, in a sense is the tablet a mobile device?  When it’s acting like a desktop: being used to take notes, for instance, I don’t really consider it a truly mobile device, but when it can be with you to meet needs that you’re unlikely to consider meeting with a laptop, and it can deliver some meaningful interaction that’s more immediate than you’d accomplish with even a netbook, a tablet definitely is a mobile device.  And there are plenty of those times.

Fundamentally, though they can share apps, I think a pad serves a different need than a pod.  I think the pod is more performance support and learning augmentation, while the pad is more full learning.  There is overlap, and each can act as the other, but if you’ve got both, I reckon you’ll find this to be the case.

Naturally, I’m still thinking that a real learning opportunity for the pad will be when they can be more than content consumption, and actually do meaningful interaction. Not just quizzes, which can be done now via mobile web, but immersive simulations and serious games.  And you can do that now, but  not in a cross-platform way. We need a standard, like ePub for ebooks, but one that supports simulation-driven interaction.  Flash could’ve been it, but the performance problems have been a barrier.  It’s not clear whether HTML5 will meet my desires, but otherwise we need something else.  When we’ve got that capability, we have a market to provide more meaningful experiences to learners.

The implications for design are to not be exclusive to either, but if you’re designing performance support, you might be thinking more pod, and if you are thinking more full task and full learning, you might be thinking more pad.  That’s what I think, what do you think?