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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Buy Smart!

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Don’t ask how my thoughts got here, but I was reflecting on the fact that the western economy is largely predicated on a free market (whether we truly achieve that is a different rant). Which, to work properly, needs consumers to be ‘optimizing’. That is, for the free market to drive improvements and fair prices, people have to vote effectively with their dollars.

Which isn’t the case. Herb Simon, the polymath who won a Nobel Prize in economics before becoming one of the world’s top cognitive scientists, coined the term ‘satisficing’ for consumer behavior. That is, folks will settle for what’s good enough. Worse, they’ll settle for how they’ve been manipulated (read: advertising).

My proof is simple (though it works better in Australia where there’s more comprehension of the example): if market pressures worked, every fish and chips shop in Australia would make perfectly light, crispy fish and chips. I mean, we know what it takes to do that. Instead, it’s real easy to find greasy, soggy fish and mealy fries. Someone is buying that fish! QED.

Which is why one of the serious games I’d really like to do is have the player try to succeed in an advertising agency. (Thought I’d written about this before but couldn’t find it. Apologies if I have.) Such a game would help folks understand just how advertising works and ideally help folks become more resistant to it.

But there’s more. I suggest (educated and interested amateur speaking) that our current system doesn’t truly allow for tracking individual contributions (or good teachers would be wealthy :). There are economic systems that do this tracking, but to my understanding, the overhead is unwieldy and ultimately impractical. So, rather than try to change the system, my simple answer is to educate folks (hence my passion for learning).

buysmartlogo-bycooltext

Where my thinking led me was to a ‘buy smart’ campaign. I wonder what we could do if we just managed to get profile to the message that folks should research the bigger picture of your purchase: looking at maintainability, repair, longevity, ideally also including environmental and social impact (can’t help it, I’m a wilderness person :). The more we look for the right choice, not just the easy or popular choice (extraneous of the immediate price pressures we’re currently seeing), the more we end up matching the assumptions of the economic system we are using. And that’s got to be better, right?

I guess it’s just that same wisdom schtick again, thinking longer term and with broader responsibilities. Yet, I can’t help thinking raising awareness could be a small step toward a better future. You think?

Summer Seminar Series

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With the caveat that I’m one of the speakers, I’d like to bring the eLearning Guild’s upcoming Summer Seminar Series to your attention. They’ve put together two back-to-back seminars that cover the latest trends.

Summer seminar series

The two seminars cover social networking, and serious games. The first seminar is led by Mark Oehlert and Brent Schenkler, who not only are fun, dynamic, individuals, but are totally into new tools. And that’s a good thing, because they’re insightful and articulate about the role these new technologies can play in organizational improvement. I track both their blogs just to keep up with what’s happening in these arenas. I’ll get to kibbitz (and learn), but they’re the two leaders of this session.

Which leaves Jeff Johannigman and myself to lead the second workshop on serious games, ILS, etc. Jeff’s got a commercially-validated track record of successful games and a consequent insight into how to create compelling experiences, and provides the perfect foil for my focus on the learning side. Of course, he’s now focused on learning, so we’ve got enough overlap to make this fun (we’ve co-presented before on games at the ILS symposium at the last Guild conference). I expect Mark and Brent will likewise kibbitz on the side in this one. We’ll augment some of the best parts of my workshop on ILS design with his insights on game design, as well as covering issues of development, corporate relevance, etc.

If you can’t tell, I’m excited about this series! I think that together, they cover some important components of acheiving the performance ecosystem: advanced ID and eCommunity. Being run by the eLearning Guild, of which I’m a fan because they do such a good job of providing value for money just reinforces the expectations that the experience will be worthwhile. So, if you’re looking to get in-depth on either topic, or better yet both, this is a great opportunity. Set your calendars for August 11-14, and definitely hope to see you there!

Mobile in 5 Paragraphs

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A colleague asked me for 5 paragraphs on mobile:

Let‘s get that straight right from the beginning: mobile learning is not about courses on a phone. mLearning is where we really bring home the message: “It‘s not about learning…it‘s about doing”, because while there are learning implications for mobile devices, it‘s really about performance support. Yes, one of the applications of mobile devices is learning augmentation, extending the learning experience over time through distributed presentations, examples, and practice, but the real opportunities are providing context-sensitive support for the mobile workforce. Increasingly, the workforce is mobile, whether directly for work or indirectly, e.g. commuting, and they have the devices (“Have you already purchased a mobile learning device” “Let me rephrase the question: do you have a cell phone” “Hello…”). Not taking advantage of it is just leaving money on the table.

The variety of mobile devices is vast, spanning media players, handheld gaming platforms, PDAs, cell phones (though that name is no longer apt; cellular technology is long gone), and, increasingly, smartphones. There are convergences, however, where many mobile devices are now phones, media players, PIM (Personal Information Management, read: contacts, calendars, memos, and ToDos), GPS, and more. If you‘re having trouble with any of these TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) BTW, you can do a search on them to get them defined.

The issues are in how to develop content and resources for these devices, and the answers stack up like a pyramid. The bottom is the proverbial “low hanging fruit”, the content you already have that can be made available “as is” or converting the files to mobile formats. So, your PDFs, your audio recordings of presentations, any videos, and of course your web pages/HTML. The next level is taking all the content you will continue to produce, and proactively capture it (if you‘re not) and ensure that it‘s an automatic feature of your process to produce mobile ready versions. The top is to develop specific mobile resources, and that‘s where we‘re reaching the tipping point: instead of custom tools, we‘re seeing the major tool providers now providing mobile output options. The mobile web is another increasing option, as more and more mobile devices include browsers. As I say, “480 x 320 is the new 1024 x 768”. Mobile is hitting the mainstream.
And, it is hitting it in many ways. There have been instances of successful courses on mobile devices, but that‘s not the sweet spot. One of the more useful options is in augmenting online or face-to-face courses.

We know learning retention fades fast unless reactivated, and mobile gives us a great way to do that. We can send out different ways of thinking about it, more examples, and even new forms of practice. In fact, we should start rethinking the course, moving to blending including mobile as part of the extended experience! The second major big win is in making accessible support for the mobile workforce. We can provide manuals, trouble-shooting, even remote part ordering, to the field engineer. We can bring customer refreshers and updates, cross-selling recommendations, and purchasing capabilities to our mobile field force. And more.

Organizationally, the workforce is more distributed, more mobile, and needing to be more opportunistic and contextually optimal. Mobile is an enabler of increased individual and organizational performance. You need to treat it like any other initiative, managing the change process, but it also leverages other changes that might be happening. Knowledge or content management, mobile device deployment, webinars, many are the initiatives that, with a marginal extra effort, make mobile an additional delivery channel and opportunity. Take advantage of this new direction!
Further resources include:

Serious About Games, and podcasting

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Lisa Neal and I have co-written an article about whether there are topics that serious games weren’t appropriate for. If you know me, you can probably guess where we come down on the topic ;).

Her blog has a bunch of interesting 10 things lists. For instance, her most recent post presents 10 reasons why text is better than podcasting. I responded:

I recall a story about an organization where the engineering groups produced white papers that the others wanted to read but didn‘t have time. The training group had someone read the white papers to make audio files, so the engineers could listen to them on their commutes. The engineers demanded more! (How often do training groups get demands for more of their services?!?!)

So, while I personally am not particularly auditory, and you make good points, there are times when they‘re the best tool for the job, as the other commenters suggest.

And, of course, there’s ‘voice’ . So, two topics of conversation. What do you say?

Learning to eLearn

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Lisa Neal’s put a nice list of hints and tips to be a better elearning professional. Her tips focus on how to get deeper into formal learning, which Scott Leslie expands in a comment. However, there are some good additions from Jay Cross and Saul Carliner about how to broaden the fields you draw upon.

The point being, you’ve got to be a consistent and persistent self-learner, which is a meta-learning topic. Things are dynamic and changing, and you’ve got to keep pushing the envelope. It takes little time (Lisa’s talking about 10 minutes per day), and yet it may be the best investment you can make personally. I’ll also argue that helping learners to learn (what Tony Karrer calls “building learning skills”) is probably the best investment an organization can make!

What are the ways you keep yourself continually learning?

Questions from the audience

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Today we held the Emerging Trends panel session at the TechKnowledge conference. We‘d intended to use an audience response system (aka ‘clickers‘), but of course the technology didn‘t work at that moment, so my colleagues (Frank Nguyen, Ann Kwinn, and Jim Javenkoski) and I winged it with questions from the audience.

Second Life came up a couple times. Joe Miller was the keynote on Wednesday, and in his far ranging and thoughtful presentation he reinforced my previous thoughts on what the fundamental learning affordances are, and helped illuminate a point that hadn‘t really gelled for me.

Using Tony O‘Driscoll‘s diagram, he elaborated on the topic of the current state of virtual worlds. In 1995, when you first looked at HTML, did you have any idea that the web would grow to where it is today? The argument is similar for Second Life, in that the first generation of the web was “Democratization of Access”, where now anyone could find information. Web 2.0 is “Democratization of Collaboration”, where you can create, share, and comment. He called virtual worlds the “3D internet”, and here it‘s the “Democratization of co-creation”.

Besides that, the panel still felt that it‘s about socialization and spatial capabilities, and, as Frank said, that if your objectives didn‘t match those, a virtual world wouldn‘t need to be your solution. I also recited the barriers that Joe had mentioned – usability, download, and processing load -as a way to reinforce the point that there‘s considerable initial investment, and I believe that such worlds make sense when you are intending to have a long-term in-world involvement.

Several questions danced around the relevance of instructional design and the teaching thereof. I pointed to the ongoing dialogs, and we generally agreed that the teaching wasn‘t as aligned to real world practice as it could be, but, as Ann pointed out, ISD principles still apply (our brains haven‘t changed).

Another question came out about the real world validity of Web 2.0. I cited an audiocast of a cutting edge project leader who used BaseCamp, Twitter, Deli.cio.us, IM, and more to keep his team aligned, and my own use of technologies to accomplish various business goals. Jim raised the point that Web 2.0 is a way to have the communication be two way, not just from the designers to the victims, er, learners.   These tools may initially take up extra time, but once ‘assimilated’, they are proving to be time-savers in productivity as well.

One individual pointed out how there seemed to be two camps of instructional technology: traditional eLearning which was instructivist and a second that was social. I agreed and pointed out how we really need to wrap instruction with collaboration from the get-go to help learners immediately recognize that dialog is part of the process and enculturate them into the community.

We also talked about the pragmatics of introductions of technology. To a question about moving the government along, I suggested that there‘s a ‘late adopter‘ advantage of avoiding mistakes (though I‘m not so certain it‘s strategy rather than inertia :), and that solid examples with ROI were the best leverage.

Another question on how to get people to use wikis seemed to suggest that in the particular instance, wikis were the wrong tool (the goal was capturing ‘stories‘). As it pushed one of my hot buttons, I suggested that we should not forget to do a proper match between need and tool, nor forget older tools in the flush of new technologies; in this case a discussion list would probably be a better tool. However, my real answer is that when the need is a resource, a wiki can be a collaboratively improved resource and the way to get participation is to make sure the resource is valuable. I would add, now, that a session I heard indicated success in using incentives to get initial participation, and that may be pragmatic, if not principled ;).

Many thanks to the participants, I thought it was a nice way to cap off the conference.

Climbing the expertise ladder

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Tony Karrer picked up on the Knowledge Planet + Shared Insights = Mzinga (means ‘beehive’ in Swahili) merger, and said “points to another direction – combination of LMS capability + community / social networking. I’m not sure I quite get what that means yet”. He got an explanation he liked from Dave Wilkins (KP, now Mzinga), but I have what I think is a somewhat different one.

To me, courses are at the bottom of Tony O’Driscoll’s map of the transition from novice to expertise. Communities are at the top. What I haven’t previously seen is an elegant transition between the two. I’ve argued that you really should wrap community around the courses at the bottom to support the transition from learner to participant/practitioner to expert/innovator. There are nuances about how it should be done, of course, like so much of what we do. Whether that’s in Mzinga’s direction is an open question.

Tony mentions Q2 Learning as someone else working in the space of learning and community, though while their one product meets the need of learning wrapped with community it’s not clear how that segues from there to their community product. And he cites Wilkin’s pointer to Gartner’s guess that “Enterprise social software will be the biggest new workplace technology success story of this decade.” Which resonates with my previous post about knowledge management.

I really believe that eCommunity and eLearning need to be integrated (it’s part of my eLearning strategy, after all), and I’m pleased to see some initial steps in this space, but as usual I have some specific ideas about how that should happen and I’ll be on the fence until it looks like someone’s really ‘getting’ it. Same with elearning and performance support & portals. LearningGuide seems to be doing it, but is it enough?   Eventually, you want courses, performance support, and community working together, and any two is only a partial step.

The opportunity to elegantly integrate the necessary components is sweet, but maybe loosely coupled components through web services (ala Jay Cross) will ultimately make more sense than a monolithic system. More flexibility, the ability to elegantly do each component rather than try to have a Swiss Army knife…

eLearning architecture, and design

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I was responding to a friend who asked what I meant by suggesting she could play a role in architecting a learning solution. I frankly don’t recall saying it, but I generated an explanation that on reflection seems to have more resonance than I originally expected.

Coming from the background of applied cognition and doing my thesis work in Don Norman’s lab when he was really into the usability stuff (e.g. The Design of Everyday Things; which anyone who designs for others should read) and subsequently hired to teach it (though my heart remained in learning technology; fortunately they let me research whatever the heck I wanted), I was steeped in user interface processes. I subsequently wrote in several different ways about how usability processes are ahead of the instructional design field (e.g. testing), and tried to incorporate them into my own design processes.

I’ve been a fan of Jesse James Garrett’s Elements of User Experience (PDF) diagram (you know how I am about diagrams), with his structure of working down from strategy, through architecture and experience design, down to the navigation and finally the visual design. In answering her, it struck me as an apt way to think about learning design too.

I realize that many designers start with an outline and start writing, but one of the roles I play with my clients is coming in and suggesting an outline of a pedagogical approach that then is developed as an outline of the pages and then finally is actually filled in. It’s a level above even the outlining, as well as the actual writing (though I’ll often model how to trim that down, too, and where and how to use visuals). It’s an approach that can be applied beforehand lightly, and I believe leads to better outputs.

As I say “if you get the design right, there are lots of ways to implement it; if you don’t get the design right it doesn’t matter how you implement it”. I know it’s recommended to take a structured approach, but I can’t say I’ve seen it implemented near as often as I hear it touted. I’ve been working on a project where they’ve brought in an interface design team and their systematicity tops what I see in the elearning field. The closest is where we start with the objectives, design the assessment and metrics, all before we actually get down to writing the content. How often do you actually see that? I think we could use a bit more rigor, frankly. It can come from templates for SMEs (e.g. in rapid development), to prototypical content, and reviews against guidelines afterward.

What we do crosses paths with usability, and we shouldn’t be unaware.

Graffling, and out of the (OS) Closet…

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My name is Clark and I’m a Macaholic. My grad school experience was largely around applied cognitive science, particularly interface design, and I’d followed the leading edge work at PARC that made it into the Mac (after the Lisa flopped). If you care about user experience, you sorta have to practice what you preach and use a Mac if you can (and I understand if you can’t).

I recognize that Microsoft won the workplace war (Apple shot itself in the foot), but the superior design of Apple is finally getting wider acceptance (c.f. the iPod). Not that I don’t know how to use Windows (we have a PC in the kitchen, next to a Mac), but when I want to get work done, rip my MacBook Pro out of my cold dead hands (which of course was how I felt about the Treo until the iPhone came out, now I’m split :).

The reason I bring this up, however, is to laud a program that runs on the Mac that is exemplary of how to design a program to match the way you think. I have no idea if it’s similar to Visio (which I haven’t used), but it’s superb in working the way I think about things, making it easy to do the things I want to do. And I know I’m not taking full advantage of it! It’s often amazingly intuitive (an over-hyped concept in interface design), usually knowing how I want to finish what I just initiated. I’ve had really great customer service from them as well.

This program is OmniGraffle, which is a Mac only graphing program. You’ve seen the output if you’ve looked at any of my diagrams (e.g. the models page). I went back and recreated all my diagrams in OmniGraffle once I started playing with it because it’s really close to fun to use it. And you’ve got to admit that’s a powerful thing to say about what’s essentially a tool!

My academic integrity (still extant after these years away :) means I couldn’t laud a program I didn’t really believe in, so trust me that this is truly an avid fan’s unsolicited testimony. The colleagues I’ve pointed towards it also rave. If you use a Mac and create diagrams, I recommend checking out the free trial. If you use a PC, you might try to find a way to sample it just to see what an interface *could* be (try, for example: creating a shape, then cutting it and pasting a second one and moving it where you want it, then paste again and see where it ends up).

Jane Hart had a very clever idea and surveyed learning folks’ favorite tools, but I’m particularly interested in ones you use to think better (I use diagrams as my way to model and understand the world, as well as outlines in MS Word to write). I’d welcome hearing your ThinkerTools.

mLearning = mPSS?

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There have been some great discussions swirling around the eLearning Guild’s mobile learning 360 research report team (along with the relative merits and flaws of the iPhone ;). The question came up as to whether the fact that mobile devices focus on communication means that they can’t really deliver learning. My response to this was:

Don’t think about formal learning when you think about mLearning. As David (Metcalf) points out in his mLearning book, think of a mobile device as a learning *adjunct*. It’s a broader view of learning, where we take our learning process and augment it with mobile components. And take a performance focus: what will make people perform better!

It’s NOT about delivering an entire motivating learning experience through a 2″ screen (it *can* be, but that’s not the point). Which typically only is needed when you have a full skill-set change needed. Practitioners and experts can get away with just the facts, ma’am.

SO, we might ‘communicate’ concepts, examples, even practice (though interactivity is still the big barrier in mobile, re: the standards issue Judy (Brown) rightly raised) as *part* of a learning experience.

Or ‘communicate’ job aids/information as performance support.

It’s useful, it can lead to learning, but we need a broader definition of learning when we talk about mobile learning.

And, as the discussion re: Treo/iPhone illustrates, as we asymptotically approach the full capability of a desktop, the cognitive capability asymptotically approaches a full learning experience.

What do you think?