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Get the basics right first!

10 October 2023 by Clark Leave a Comment

I’m currently advising several organizations on their approaches to the use of technology to support learning. Moreover, I’ve been doing so for more than two decades, and see a lot more such situations as well. One of the things that I struggle with is seeing folks getting all agog over new technology, yet without getting the design right beforehand. Thus, let me make a simple suggestion: get the basics right first!

So, we know what leads to good learning. Heck, I’ve written a book summarizing what’s known about it, and I’m not the only one. Despite that fact that humans are complex, and increasingly so are our learning goals, there exist robust principles. We know that we should provide a sufficient quantity of appropriately challenging contextualized practice with aligned feedback, for instance. That is, if we actually want to achieve an outcome.

Yet, too often, we don’t see this. We see, instead, information presentation. Sometimes even with a knowledge test! Yet, such an effort is unlikely to lead to any meaningful change. That is, the investment’s wasted!

Worse, too often we see this being done with fancy new tools. Sure, I get as attracted to shiny new objects as anyone. However, I want to understand their core affordances for learning. Anyone had the dubious pleasure of attending a slide presentation in a virtual world? Or maybe being presented with animated presentations of lots of facts? The new tools may have a short-term effect of novelty, but that’s it. The fundamental aspects of how our brains learn are what’s going to make, or break, a learning investment.

On the other hand, if we start with getting the learning right, first, then there may be additional value coming from the tech. Adaptivity, on top of quality learning design, can accelerate the outcomes. Immersion, at the right time and place, is better than not. Language models, properly used, can have big impacts. However, it comes from knowing the specific capabilities, and matching them to the need.

While I haven’t done the ‘back of the envelope’ calculation (I’m not a financial whiz), I can state with a fair degree of comfort that you’re better off doing simple learning with good design. Bad design with shiny tech is still bad design! You’ll more likely have an impact putting your investment into learning quality than using fancy tech to deliver dreck. Of course, once you’ve done that, the investment in tech can do a lot more!

I’m not against new tech, heck I’ve written on games, mobile, and more! What I’m against is new tech in lieu of good design. And I’m even more enamored of good tech on top of good design. So, get the basics right first, then add in the shiny objects. That way you’re going to have a good return on your $$, and that’s a good thing. Right?

PS, speaking of basics, we’ll be running a debate tomorrow (11 Oct) discussing the Learning Experience Design (LXD) label. I’m sure we’ll unpack critical issues. Check it out.

Engaging people at work

12 September 2023 by Clark Leave a Comment

Last week, Donald Taylor wrote an interesting post, wondering about ‘learner engagement’. That’s a topic I do talk a wee bit about ;). He closed with a call for feedback. So, while I did comment there, I thought it potentially would benefit from a longer response. I think it’s more general than learner engagement, so I’m talking about engaging people at work. (But it’s still relevant to his thesis without quibbling about that!)

In his post, he talked about three levels: asset, culture, and environment. I’m not sure I quite follow (to me, culture is an environmental level), and I’ve talked about individual, team, and organizational levels. To his point, however, there are steps to take at every level.

He starts at the individual level, talking about designing learning experiences. I agree with his ‘do deeper analysis’ recommendation, but I’d go further. To me, it’s not just if they recognize that content’s valuable, it’s about building, and maintaining, motivation while controlling anxiety (c.f. Make It Meaningful!). I don’t think he’d disagree.

At the next level up, it’s about making sure people are connected. Here, I’d point to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and ‘relatedness’. I don’t mind Dan Pink’s reinterpretation of that to ‘purpose’, in that I think people need to know how what they’re doing contributes to something bigger, and that something bigger supports society as a whole.

Finally, to me, is culture. You want a ‘learning organization‘, as Don agrees. He says to start with a sympathetic manager, but I think L&D needs to create that culture internally first, then take it to the broader organization (and starting with said manager is a good next step).

I think that latter step solves Don’s final step of breaking down barriers, but he’s a smart guy and I’m willing to believe I’m missing some nuance. I do like his focus on ‘find a measure’ to use. However, ultimately, it should improve a lot of measures around adapting to change: innovation, retention, and success. That’s my take, I welcome yours!

Emotion is the new ID

25 July 2023 by Clark Leave a Comment

Ok, so the title’s a bit over the top, but…I think there’s something here. Everyone is now talking about how AI can take over a bunch of ID roles. Frankly, I agree (and have said so). In thinking about it (on a walk, as usual ;), I realized there’s a reframing, and I think it’s important. Despite being a tad flip, I do think emotion is the new ID.

So, there are things AI can’t do. It doesn’t really understand, basically. It can look at relationships and infer structure from good content! (That is, if there’s bad content, the inferences are also bad). We still need oversight, basically. So, one role will be to check AI output for accuracy. However, that’s something that largely comes from domain expertise. We’ve always needed subject matter experts to review output.

When I say AI doesn’t really understand, I mean more, however. It’s syntactically manipulating to generate semantics, but semantics is still largely cognitive. Yet as humans, we’re affective (personality) and conative (motivation) as well. In short, we’re emotional (not purely rational). Context matters. Meaning matters! We need to address these elements in our learning experiences.

Thus, I posit that it takes humans to write the introduction to learning experiences, to set the ‘hook‘. Similarly, it takes humans to make practice activities (aka assessment) that have an engaging context, appropriate challenge, and naturally embed the task. Essentially, making the practice meaningful. That’s something we, uniquely, can do.

When I wrote my book Make It Meaningful, I was explicitly addressing the fact that much of ID addresses the learning science alone (if even doing that). It was designed as a complement to my learning science book, to provide a complete LXD picture. What I didn’t expect was the advent of the LLM AIs. Yet, serendipitously (it seems to me, with the usual caveat ;), the latest book addresses the most important part of learning that AI can’t do now or in the foreseeable future.

Look, I strongly believe that we don’t pay enough attention to engagement, and yet we can. (Note: I do not mean the trivial engagement approaches: tarted-up content presentation like ‘click to see more’, fancy production values, etc.) I run workshops online and face-to-face on this because it’s my passionate and informed belief, not because it’s going to make me rich (it won’t). It just so happens that with this advent, I think it’s even more true that emotion is the new ID. Fortunately, I think we do know how to do it. I think it gives us a role going forward; a way to answer the question: but what about AI? We just have to be prepared to respond. Are you?

Grounded in practice

16 May 2023 by Clark Leave a Comment

Many years ago, I was accused of not knowing the realities of learning design. It’s true that I’ve been in many ways a theorist, following what research tells us, and having been an academic. I also have designed solutions, designed design processes, and advised orgs. Still, it’s nice to be grounded in practice, and I’ve had the opportunity of late.

So, as you read this, I’m in India (hopefully ;), working with Upside Learning. I joined them around 6 months ago to serve as their Chief Learning Strategist (on top of my work as Quinnovation, as co-director of the Learning Development Accelerator, and as advisor to Elevator9). They have a willingness to pay serious attention to learning science, which as you might imagine, I found attractive!

It’s been a lot of marketing: writing position papers and such. The good news is it’s also been about practice. For one, I’ve been running workshops for their team (such as the Missing LXD workshop with the LDA coming up in Asia-friendly times this summer). We’ve also created some demos (coming soon to a sales preso near you ;). I’ve also learned a bit about their clients and usual expectations.

It’s the latter that’s inspiring. How do we bake learning science into a practical process that clients can comprehend? We’re working on it. So far, it seems like it’s a mix of awareness, policy, and tools. That is, the design team must understand the principles in practice, there need to be policy adjustments to support the necessary steps, and the tools should support the practice. I’m hoping we have a chance to put some serious work into these in my visit.

Still, it’s already been eye-opening to see the realities organizations face in their L&D roles. It only inspires me more to fight for the changes in L&D that can address this. We have lots to offer orgs, but only if we move out of our comfort zone and start making changes. Here’s to the revolution L&D needs to have!

Missing LXD Workshop

20 April 2023 by Clark Leave a Comment

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reading for this commercial announcement:

What is Learning Experience Design (LXD)? Further, why should you care? Finally, (and arguably most important) what does it mean you should do differently? Those, to me, are important questions. My short answer is that LXD is the elegant integration of learning science and engagement. Which, to me, implies some important nuances on top of what’s traditionally done in instructional design (ID). How to address it? There’s actually quite a lot in LXD, but it’s also a lot of overlap with traditional ID practices and processes. I reckon the easiest (and best) way to address it is to talk about the delta. That is, what’s different between the two. So, in my role for Upside Learning, I developed a missing LXD workshop. We ran it internally to good outcomes, and now, you can take it!

I believe that the difference starts with objectives; you can’t make a meaningful experience if you don’t have learners acquiring relevant new skills (not just an information dump). From there, there are nuances on designing individual practice activities, and then aggregated into practices (that is, putting practices together). Moving on, we look at the content elements of models and examples, and then the emotional aspects of learning. The workshop closes by looking at a design process that accommodates these. Recognizing that folks don’t want to throw out their whole process to start anew, it works from a generic model.

In the workshop, I cover each of those topics in a week; so it’s a six week experience. In between, I ask attendees to do some interim processing to both cement their understanding and to change their practices. Each week we’ll cover underlying concepts, see examples of what we’re talking about, actively process the information, and do a major application task.

To make this available more broadly, Upside’s partnered with the Learning Development Accelerator (LDA) to deliver it. Full disclosure: I’m co-director of the LDA, and Chief Learning Strategist for Upside Learning (in addition to my ongoing role for Quinnovation). (So, it’s all about me! :) Seriously, I think this puts together the tools I believe are necessary to lift our industry.

To be clear, since the advance notice timeframe puts this in summer, we’re offering it in Asia time-frames first (tho’ anyone is welcome!):

Australian Eastern Standard Time: July 7, 14, 21, 28, August 4 and 11 from 12h00 to 14h00 each day
Singapore Time: July 7, 14, 21, 28, August 4 and 11 from 10h00 to 12h00 each day
India Standard Time: July 7, 14, 21, 28, August 4 and 11 from 07h30 to 09h30 each day
New York Time: July 6, 13, 20, 27, August 3 and 10 from 22h00 to 24h00 each day

We’re offering it for US$100 to LDA members, and US$350 to non-members (for only $40 more, you get the full LDA offerings as well).

We’re planning to offer the missing LXD workshop again at a later date at East Coast/Europe friendly times (probably at a steeper price, we’ll have worked the bugs out ;). You can find out more at the LDA site. It’s got learning science and engagement bundled up into a coherent whole, for those who’ve already been doing ID and want to lift their game. I hope you’ll find it worth your while.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading until next week at the usual time.

Misconceptions?

28 February 2023 by Clark 6 Comments

Several books ago, I was asked to to talk about myths in our industry. I ended up addressing myths, superstitions, and misconceptions. While the myths persist, the misconceptions propagate, aided by marketing hype. They may not be as damaging, but they also are a money-sink, and contribute to the lack of our industry making progress. How do we address them?

The distinctions I make for the 3 categories are, I think, pretty clear. Myths are beliefs that folks will willingly proclaim, but are contrary to research. This includes learning styles, attention span of a goldfish, millennials/generations, and more (references in this PDF, if you care). Superstitions are beliefs that don’t get explicit support, but manifest in the work we do. For example, that new information will lead to behavior change. We may not even be aware of the problems with these! The last category is misconceptions. They’re nuanced, and there are times when they make sense, and times they don’t.

The problem with the latter category is that folks will eagerly adopt, or avoid, these topics without understanding the nuances. They may miss opportunities to leverage the benefits, or perhaps more worrying, they’ll spend on an incompletely-understood premise. In the book, I covered 16 of them:

70:20:10
Microlearning
Problem-Based Learning
7 – 38 – 55
Kirkpatrick
NeuroX/BrainX
Social Learning
UnLearning
Brainstorming
Gamification
Meta-Learning
Humor in Learning
mLearning
The Experience API
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Learning Management Systems

On reflection, I might move ‘unlearning’ to myths, but I’d certainly add to this list. Concepts like immersive learning, workflow learning, and Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs) are some that are touted without clarity. As a consequence, people can be spending money without necessarily achieving any real outputs. To be clear, there are real value in these concepts, just not in all conceptions thereof. The labels themselves can be misleading!

In several of my roles, I’m working to address these, but the open question is “how?” How can we illuminate the necessary understanding in ways that penetrate the hype? I truly do not know. I’ve written here and spoken and written elsewhere on previous concepts, to little impact (microlearning continues to be touted without clarity, for instance). At this point, I’m open to suggestions. Perhaps, like with myths, it’s just persistent messaging and ongoing education. However, not being known for my patience (a flaw in my character ;), I’d welcome any other ideas!

Meta-reflections

20 December 2022 by Clark Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Designing a conference

22 September 2022 by Clark Leave a Comment

When I agreed to join as co-director of the Learning & Development Accelerator, I’d already attended their first two conferences. Those had been designed to reflect the circumstances at the time, e.g. the pandemic. In addition, there was a desire on the part of Matt Richter & Will Thalheimer (the original directors) to reflect certain values. Matt and I are running the event again, but times have changed. That means we have to rethink what’s being done. So here’s my thinking about designing a conference.

First, the values Matt and Will started with included being as global as possible, and being virtual. The former was reflected in having presentations given twice, once early in the US day, and then again later. That supported everything from Europe, Africa, and the Mideast to Asia and Australia. The virtual was, at least partly, a reaction to the lack of desire to travel and meet face to face, but also to provide options for those who might struggle.

We’re definitely still focusing on being virtual. Folks who would find it challenging to arrange travel for whatever reason can attend this event. There’s also the environmental considerations. Yes, technology requires resources, but not as much as collective travel. While there’s also a desire to meet different time needs, we’ve found less demand for multiple times. However, we will be recording sessions that are synchronous, so they can be viewed at convenient times. We also are spreading it over six weeks, so that there’s time to consume as much as you want. Further, faculty can choose when they’re offering ;).

The original design was focused on evidence-based L&D (which remains a key guiding principle for the LDA). Matt & Will solicited their presenters based upon their representation, but the agenda was largely what those folks wanted to present. Which, in many ways, reflects what other conferences do. In this new era, we wondered what would make a compelling proposition when you can travel to F2F events. We decided that we wanted to step away from ‘what we get’, and focus on ‘what the audience needs’.

This event, then, has a curriculum, across two tracks, designed to address specific needs. There’s also a different pedagogy than most conferences.We also have specific faculty, rather than presenters based upon submissions. Of course, there are tradeoffs. At least we can share our thinking.

The faculty are folks we know and trust to present evidence-based content. You won’t hear promotion for snake oil, like learning styles. We have a pretty impressive lineup, frankly, of people we think are world-class. This includes folks like Ruth Clark, Mirjam Neelen & Paul Kirschner, Karl Kapp, Julie Dirksen, Kat Koppett, Stella Lee, Nigel Paine, Will Thalheimer, and Thiagi. On top of, of course, Matt and myself. Reality means that a few folks we would’ve liked to have couldn’t commit, but this is a a broad and reputable group.

The tracks are basics and advanced. We want to be able to serve multiple audiences. The intent is that the basic track has the core knowledge an L&D person should know. As best we can, as we negotiate with the faculty, of course. Then, the advanced topics are things that are emergent and need addressing. Of course, there’s no commitment that you have to stay in one or another. As with other conferences, you can pick and choose what to view.

We’re also not just having presentations; we’ve asked the faculty to provide development. That is, we’re intending several rounds of content, activity, and feedback, spread out over several days or weeks. We don’t want people to hear good ideas, and maybe take them back. We want folks to take action! We’re also designing in the opportunity for mentoring.

Of course, there’ll be some social events, and other ways to not only hear content and apply it, but to mingle with faculty and other attendees. We want to foster some community. Also, we’re intending to somewhat front load stuff so that we can adapt. If we hear that we need to do something we haven’t planned, we’re looking to have leeway to address it. The nice thing about being small is the ability to be flexible!

None of this is saying you don’t get much of the same from conferences (except, perhaps, the design). I’ve been on conference program committees, and know conference organizers as well. They typically get more proposals than they can accept, so they can choose a suite that reflect things for various ranges of experience and cover important topics. They may not, however, know all the submitters, and take chances on a few. I laud that, actually, because we can’t know if a new approach or person is worthwhile without experimentation. Still, there is the chance for gaps, and for bad presentations/presenters. They’re also, except for the pre-conference workshops (e.g. my Make It Meaningful one at the upcoming DevLearn), one-off events.

We’re taking a chance on our format, too. We haven’t done it before. It may not work, though we have good reasons to believe it will. So, we hope to see you at the Learning & Development Conference, Oct 10 – Nov 18, if the above thinking about designing a conference sense. We think it does, we hope you do, too.

Projects That Didn’t Fly

20 September 2022 by Clark Leave a Comment

I’ve had the pleasure of leading the design of a number of projects that have had some impact. These include a mobile app a company could point to. Also a game that helped real kids. Even a context-sensitive performance support system that was worth a patent. Then, of course, are the projects that didn’t, for whatever reason, see the light of day. So here are some reflections on a few projects that didn’t fly.

Back in the mid-90s, I was part of a government-sponsored initiative in online learning, and we were looking for a meaningful project. We made a connection to two folks with a small company that taught about communicating to the press. They could’ve come out with a book, but they wanted to do something more interesting. We collaborated on an online course on speaking to the media. I partnered with an experienced digital producer, and backstopped with a university-based media team. We had a comic skit writer, and cartoonists, to augment our resources. The result was technically sophisticated, educationally sound, and engaging both visually and in prose. It never flew, however, as we didn’t partner it with a viable business model. Which was reflective of the times.

Then, at the end of the 90’s, I was asked to lead a team developing an adaptive learning system. The charge was to help learners understand themselves as learners. I had a stellar team: software engineer, AI expert, psychometrician, learning science guru, visual designer, and an interface designer. The model was to do an initial profile, then present you with learning elements (concepts, examples, practice, etc) and update your model based on your performance. There was even a machine learning component to improve the models as we went along. We actually got a first draft up and running (10 elements in the student model), before ego and greed undermined and killed it. The lessons learned, of course, have continued to inform me, including, for instance, my calls for content systems.

Then, around the mid-2000s, I was given the task to devise a content model for a publisher. They wanted to develop once and populate a variety of business products. Drawing on previous experience, I developed a robust model, which started from individual elements and supplemented and aggregated them in a systematic way. This also ended sadly. In this case, the software side never reached fruition.

There are lots of reasons good intentions can go awry. In my case, it wasn’t going to be on a lack in the learning design ;). What I’ve learned, however, is that learning design isn’t the only element that matters. There’s vision, and execution, and partners, and more. All are ways in which things can go wrong. Yet, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It just means that we should, to the extent of our abilities, also try to ensure the success of the other comments. It’s worth exploring projects that didn’t fly so as to see how future ones might.

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