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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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2013 Reflections

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It’s appropriate to look back at the year, here at the end of it.  Reflection is a powerful and all-too-neglected tool.  My year started off with a bit of travel and ended up with a lot of thought, writing, and preparation.

I started off with a bang, with two separate trips for presentations in Saudi Arabia with a few weeks of each other (phew!).  The second included a paper that was a stab at rethinking formal learning:  Redesigning Design  (warning, PDF). It integrated my previous discussion of activity-centered learning with backwards design.  And visiting foreign countries is something I enjoy, if not getting there ;).

I also presented at a wide variety of events, from regular venues like  ASTD‘s TechKnowledge and ICE, and the eLearning Guild‘s Learning Solutions, mLearnCon, Performance Support Symposium, and DevLearn. More unique opportunities included the Professional Association of College Trainers and the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning.  I attended Association for Educational Communications and Technology just to hear what’s happening on the academic side.

I always enjoy such opportunities.  The most interesting aspect to me are the discussions that emerge after sessions, whether I’m the one presenting or I’m getting a chance to listen to someone else.  The conversations in-between are also interesting, with colleagues old and new.  Having a chance to mingle informally adds a valuable component to professional interactions.

Which was the driving force to attend a couple of retreats that are a different sort of professional reflection. This past year I attended  Up to All of Us, and a second, similar, get together, both for the second time. These were opportunities to recharge and connect with like-minded colleagues.  The ability to listen and interact in natural settings over an extended period is a separately valuable type of interaction.

Some of my best interactions came online in small groups, not least the Internet Time Alliance  (the rest of you know who you are).  The chance to interact with colleagues like Jay, Jane, Charles, and Harold continues to be a fabulous boon.  My only regret is that we didn’t quite get things going the way I’d originally hoped we would. Despite the intellectual firepower, we didn’t converge on a unified model until too late. I admit my limitation in that I couldn’t really be prepared to ‘go to market’ until we had a core framework that would serve as the basis for tools, a book, etc.  When we finally did, it was too late as everyone had gone off in their own directions, of need. The model is still important, and will be revisited in the forthcoming tome, and while it can serve as a basis for us working together (we’re still an entity, and available), but the real benefit to us is the continued opportunity to interact intellectually as well as personally.

I engaged in client work as well, of course, which is yet another powerful opportunity to learn, coupled with the opportunity to contribute.  I was fortunate to engage with a variety of different organizations in facilitating design and strategy, including some mobile work.  I like it when I can help clarify concepts, leading to tighter design, as well as raise the full spectrum of issues leading to more comprehensive strategies.  I really enjoy getting into specific contexts, coming to grips with the issues, looking for matching models and frameworks, and systematically working through them to provide innovative solutions.  Not when you’re doing the ordinary, but when you are uncertain what’s needed, or need to take it up a notch, is where I’ve been able to add real value.

I spent much of the latter part of the year working on my next  book, to be out this coming year.  I’m not happy with the state of the industry, nor the pace of change, so the book and another initiative (stay tuned) are a couple of stabs at trying to make things better.  If you’re reading this, you’re more likely part of the solution than the problem, of course ;).

I’d also agreed to do a number of chapters in books and articles, so as soon as the book manuscript was done, I had to scramble to meet my other deadlines.  As well as presentations for some of this coming year’s commitments; a topic for another post.  You’ll see more writing emerging in articles, chapters, etc, soon.  Duck!

Personal life was not neglected, I took a couple of weeks off this summer to travel with the family on an East Coast US History tour, from Boston, through New York City, to DC, with a side trip to Gettysburg.  It was not only pleasant, but also a learning experience in many ways, both seeing new things, and seeing them through different eyes.   I also spent some time in the wilderness, backpacking through Yosemite National Park, a different sort of retreat, but equally valuable.  We also dealt with the passing of my mother, which was not unexpected.  It’s odd to finally be the eldest, the patriarch as it were.

I have to say it was a good year, despite the challenges.  And it leads me to be optimistic, looking forward, as is my wont.   I hope that, as you look back on your year, you find insight, inspiration, and satisfaction.

Augmenting Human Intellect: Vale Doug Engelbart

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Somehow, I forgot to farewell one of the finest minds to cross our paths.  (I was sure I had, but searching this morning found no evidence. Mea culpa.)  Last night, I had the privilege of attending a Festschrift for Doug Engelbart, who passed last July, with speakers reciting the trajectory and impact of his career.  And I was inspired anew by the depth of his vision.

Doug is widely known as the inventor of the mouse, but that was just an implementation detail in his broader view. His mission manifested further in the ‘mother of all demos‘, where he showed collaborative work, video conferencing, and more, working with a mouse, keyboard, and graphic display. In 1968. And yet this too was just the tangible output of a much larger project.

At a critical juncture early in his career, he took a step back and thought about what he could really contribute.  He realized that the problems the world was facing were growing exponentially, and that our only hope was to learn at a similarly exponential rate, and decided that helping humans accomplish this goal was a suitable life’s work.  His solution was so all-encompassing that most people only get their minds around a small bit of it.

One component was a knowledge work environment where you could connect with colleagues and collaborate together, with full access to articulated knowledge sources. And yes, this foresaw the internet, but his vision was much richer.  Doug didn’t see one editor for email, another for documents, etc, he wanted one work environment.  He was also willing for it to be complex, and thought using inadequate tools as riding tricycles when we should be riding road bicycles to get places.  His notion was much closer to EMACS than the tools we currently use.  The mouse, networks, and more were all just developments to enable his vision.

His vision didn’t stop there: he proposed co-evolution of people and technology, and wanted people developing systems to be using the tools they were building to do their work, so the technology was being built by people using the tools, bootstrapping the environment. He early on saw the necessity of bringing in diverse viewpoints and empowering people with a vision to achieve to get the best outcomes. And continual learning was a key component. To that end, he viewed not just an ongoing reflection on work processes looking for opportunities to improve, but a reflection on the reflection process; sharing between groups doing the work reflection, to collaboratively improve.  He saw not just the internet, but the way we’re now seeing how best to work together.

And, let’s be clear, this isn’t all, because I have no confidence I have even a fraction of it.  I certainly thought his work environment had too high a threshold to get going, and wondered why he didn’t have a more accessible onramp.  It became clear last night that he wasn’t interested in reducing the power of the tools, and was happy for people to have to be trained to use the system, and that once they saw the power, they’d buy in.

To me, one of the most interesting things was that while everyone celebrated his genius, and no argument, it occurred to me to also celebrate that time he took to step aside and figure out what was worth doing and putting his mind to it.  If we all took time to step back and think about what we could be doing to really make a dent, might we come up with some contributions?

I was fortunate to meet him in person during his last years, and he was not only brilliant and thoughtful, but gentle and kind as well.  A real role model.  Rest in peace, Doug.

Moving forward

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Last week, I talked about what L&D could (and should) look like.  In thinking about how to move folks forwards, I’m working on looking at various ways to characterize the different elements, and what various levels of profession should be.  One of my first stabs is trying to get at the necessary core principles, and the associated approach to be taken.  Here’s the thinking:

RethinkingPrinciplesWe start with the culture of the organization.  What the culture should be doing is empowering individuals, providing them with  support for learning. And that is not to provide all the answers, but to support people discovering the answer.  The goal is to not only address optimal execution, but increasingly to address continual innovation, which comes from cooperation and collaboration.  The goal is to augment their existing capabilities with appropriate skills and tools to focus on accomplishing the work to hand.  And not reintroducing things that already exist or can be found elsewhere.

That means that formal learning really should be focused on proprietary activities. Don’t design training on commercial tools, that exists. Save the effort to do a real course for those things that are fixed for long enough and specific to your organization.  And make it meaningful: contexts that the user  gets, skills that the user recognizes are needed, and that will make a real impact on the business.  Done properly, with sufficient practice, it will take time and money: formal learning  should be expensive, so use those precious resources where and when it really should be applied.

Performance support is more likely to add value in the moment, helping augment our limited memory and working memory capacity. When people need to be focused on the task, designing or curating resources to be used in the moment is a more cost-effective option, though again to be used appropriately.  If things are changing too fast, or the situation’s unique, there are better options.  And when you are developing or sourcing support, realize that less is more.  Look to be minimalist, and your performers (and the bottom line) will thank you.

If things are changing too fast, or the situation’s  new and unique (which will be happening more often), the network is likely to be your best resource and likely should be your  first.  The role here is to make sure that the network is available and vibrant. Facilitation of dialog, and skills, will make this solution the most powerful one in a company that intends to thrive.

The infrastructure, beyond the usual integration of tools, needs to take another level down, and start treating content as an asset that drives outcomes.  The steps that matter are to get detailed about the content structures, the model, underneath, and the associated governance. At the end, it requires a focus on semantics, what labels we have and how we define and describe content to move forward into personalization  and contextualization.

Finally, we need to measure what we’re doing, and we have to stop doing it on efficiencies. How much it costs us per seat hour doesn’t matter if that time in the seat isn’t achieving anything. We need to be measuring real business effects: are we increasing sales, decreasing costs or errors, solving problems faster, decreasing time to market, increasing customer satisfaction, the list goes on.  Then, and only then, should we be worrying about efficiencies. Yes, we should be smart about our investments, but all the efficiency in the world about doing something inane is just kind of silly.

So, does this make sense?  Any tuning or clarification needed? Feedback welcome.

 

What does change(d) look like?

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In an post this past spring, I opined that we  do have to change.  One obvious related question is what that change would look like.  What would an effective L&D unit be doing, and what would the employee/manager/exec experience be?  This is a longer topic, but here’re some initial thoughts that I really would welcome your thoughts on.

I see employees experiencing less ‘training’.  As I’ve said, effective training is expensive when done properly, and should be used only when significant skill shifts are needed.  It should only be for proprietary approaches, otherwise you should use others’ materials.  And it only is for upskilling new employees (and only when needed), or when a significant change is happening.

I’d expect to see more performance support, easily accessible via user-centric portals and search and delivered when and where needed.  Similarly social would play a much more central role, arguably our first recourse.  Employees would be tightly coupled to their work teams, and more loosely coupled to their communities of practice.  Teams would be diverse and flexible, and group work would be the norm.

Resources would be sometimes created, sometimes crowd-sourced within (or without) the organization, and sometimes curated.  Much curation would happen by individual in communities monitoring the larger network, individuals in teams bringing in relevant elements from their communities, and sharing back reflections and outcomes that inform the community while communities would share back to the larger network.  This is the vision of the Coherent Organization.

Managers would be playing a leadership and mentoring & coaching role rather than a directive role. They’d be looking to share the vision of goals and rationale, and then supporting performance aligned towards this goal. Executives would be aligning manager visions with organizational goals, monitoring performance, and facilitating infrastructure to support effective communication and cooperation, and well as establishing and maintaining a learning organization culture.

The L&D unit would need to be monitoring the effectiveness of communication and collaboration, management, and leadership, as well as experimenting with new tools to support the work.  The L&D unit becomes responsible for the learning to learn skills, the learning and performance tools, and the corporate culture.

If organizations are to successfully couple optimal execution with continual innovation, particularly in times of increasing change and decreasing resources, the mechanisms for success transcend training.  Providing support when needed, and leveraging the power of people will be key.  Does this make sense?  Next step: how do you get there?

#itashare

Making Sparks Fly

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Last night I did a presentation for the San Diego chapter of ISPI titled ‘making sparks fly’. I used that concept to talk about a couple of my favorite topics: deeper instructional design, and social learning.

In the former, it’s about two things: getting the real cognitive underpinning right,  and the emotional content, both integrated in a natural and elegant way.  So you start with your objectives (at a high enough level, addressing real business needs). Then you immediately develop deep practice with core decisions embedded in meaningful contexts. You need sufficient practice to not get it wrong, as opposed to just getting it right. Then we elaborate with model-based concepts and story-based examples.  All introduced in ways that engage the emotions as well as the mind, and closing that process off similarly addressing the emotional as well as the cognitive.  The point being, if you’re going to do formal, do it right.

From there, I segued off to talk about social: the power of the additional processing you get from social learning.  This includes sharing ideas, and collaborative work.  Then, systematically looking at tools like blogs, wikis, profiles, feeds, and more for both formal and informal learning.  The notion is that thinking and working ‘out loud’ are, in the right culture, better than not.

Formal learning (and I didn’t discuss performance support, after all it  was ISPI :) addresses the optimal execution that will be just be the cost of entry going forward, while continual innovation requires the creative friction, the interpersonal interaction that generates new ideas.  You need to have good learning and good performance support on those processes you can identify, but then you need to create the environment where folks are helping one another solve the new problems that arise, including new ideas.  Engaging the learner, and the interaction, are both sparks to take what we do to the next level.

There’s more: culture, mindset, L&D role, and we touched on that, but in the broader picture, you want to start with social and performance support, only doing formal when you absolutely have to (as it’s dear). We need to stop doing formal only, and badly. We need to cover the spread, and do all well.  Or else…

The ‘Role’ of Compliance

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I’m not an expert on compliance training. I haven’t suffered through it, and I haven’t been asked to design it. But I know it’s a monkey on the back of the industry, and I know we have to address it. So how? I think there are two main barriers.

The first is the regulatory aspect. Much like I really think the problem holding back better for-profit schools is that the accreditation process isn’t informed enough about pedagogy, I think the agencies that oversee required learning don’t really focus on the right thing. When you are mandating the requirement by seat time, you’re missing the point. Really, you should have competencies associated with objectives. Compliance decoupled from outcomes is just a legal bulwark, not a meaningful prevention of behavior.

Of course, we could be spending that time doing more than a knowledge dump. I think there are two parts: helping people define the situation, and then providing them with skills to address it. Whether it’s ethics, harassment, or some other topic, if you’re just raising awareness you’re not equipping people, and if you’re just providing responses, you’re not helping them understand when it makes sense.

I’ve previously addressed the awareness issue, when I talked about shades of grey. The point being that seldom are things black and white, and the best way to help learners understand the situation is to give them scenarios and discuss in groups whether and how a situation qualifies. Having this done in groups, and then having a reflection session facilitated by an expert on the topic would really help learners get value. Even online, having them share their initial thoughts, and then see some other discussion would be valuable to get some of the benefits of social interaction.

So then the question becomes one of how to equip the learners to deal with the situations. There are always mandated policies, but they’re not always as easy to apply as suggested. First of all, I think role-plays make great sense here. You can use scenario tools for asynchronous situations, or just traditional role-play in the classroom. What’s important is that you consider these processes with problematic examples. So, for example, trying to do behavior coaching with a passive-aggressive individual. You might have someone who’s facing such a problem role play the tough individual to deal with, and another member of the class can try to apply the principles. Again, you’re venturing out into the grey that acknowledges it’s never as clear cut and easy as it seems.

Of course, the latter pedagogies don’t guarantee anything (learning is probabilistic, after all), and you’ve still the barrier that there’s little real reason to care given the current way the requirements are structured, but at least you have the opportunity to make the process less onerous for the learner and have a greater likelihood of actually accomplishing something meaningful in the workplace. Someone familiar with compliance want to weigh in on how I’m off-base?

Evidence-based Design

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In my last post, I asserted that we need evidence-based design for what we do.  There are a number of sources for same. Of course, you could go do a Master’s or Ph.D. in cognition and learning, but there are shorter paths.

There are several good books out (and I believer that there is at least one more on the way) that summarize the implications of research design. Ruth Clark has been a co-author on a couple, eLearning and the Science of Instruction, and the subsequent Efficiency in Learning.  Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn is another good one. Michael Allen’s work on design is also recommended, e.g. Guide to eLearning.

Will Thalheimer, Ruth, and Julie regularly write and talk about these things in other forums than books.  Go listen to them!  I try as well, though often filtered through games, mobile, or elsewhere.  There’re others, too.

A number of people run workshops on deeper design. I know I have one, and I’m sure others have them as well. Do try to make sure that it covers both cognitive and emotional elements, focusing on meaningful change.

There are gaps: there isn’t all the research we need, or at least not digested.  The role of emotional engagement isn’t as well fleshed out as we’d like, and some of the research is frankly focused on studies too small to give practical guidelines (c.f. the consternation on serious game design that surrounded a recent post).  Where we don’t have research, we have to make inferences from theoretical frameworks, but you should know those too.  It’s better than going on ‘intuition’ or folk science.

Still, there’s no excuse to do un-engaging, over-written, and under-practiced learning.  Better design doesn’t take longer (with the caveat that there’s some initial hiccup ’til we make the change).  We have the knowledge, and the tools aren’t the barrier.  Let’s do better, please!

How I Work

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David Kelly posted the following:

Lifehacker has a series called “How I Work. Every Wednesday they feature a new guest and the gadgets, apps, tips, and tricks that keep them going. It‘s a very interesting series that gives you a glimpse into how different people work and solve problems.

After recently seeing  Daniel Pink‘s interview  some colleagues and I thought it would be interesting to answer these questions as well as a fun way to share and get to know each other better.  I invite you to participate as well – I‘ll link other people‘s postings at the bottom of this post.

I decided to join in:

Location

Walnut Creek, CA

Current Gig

Executive Director of Quinnovation and Senior Director of Interaction & Mobile for the Internet Time Alliance.

Current mobile device

iPhone 4 & (original) iPad

Current computer

MacBookPro 13″ (w/ Apple Monitor)

One word that best describes how you work

Interruptedly (and, yes, I made that word up)

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Looking at what’s open or has been recently: Safari, TweetDeck, Mail,  Skype, Reminders, iCal,  Word, Keynote, Notes, OmniGraffle, & OmniOutliner.

I keep up with what’s new with Safari and TweetDeck, maintain communication channels with Mail and Skype, keep myself organized with iCal and Reminders, write with Word and Notes, plan and present with Keynote, and think things through with OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner.

QuinnovationWorldHeadquartersWhat’s your workspace like?

Somewhat compact and crowded.  I moved from a bigger desk to our smallest room to accommodate the changing needs of our kids.  The room also houses a couch that becomes a bed for guests, and some shelves, so there’s not a lot of space. It’s organized for efficiency and effectiveness, not aesthetics.

What’s your best time-saving trick?

To put things into my calendar or my reminder list  now!

What’s your favorite to-list manager?

I struggled after losing Palm Desktop, but finally have settled on Reminders (Apple’s tool), as it synchs across devices seamlessly.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without?

Definitely my iPad.  It replaces computer on many trips, and serves as a content and interactive device at times when I’m in more leisure than on the go.  If that’s cheating, it’d be a pocket tool kit: usually the Coast micro-tool, or Swiss-Tech Micro-Tech when traveling (no blade). Always need a file, screwdriver, …

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I’d like to say diagramming, representing models, but I don’t know if that’s ‘everyday’. If not, I’d say taking what ever’s left over in the fridge and making a real meal out of it.

What do you listen to while you work?

Not bloody much.  I can’t listen to most music while working, as the lyrics interfere with my thinking.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

I’m definitely an introvert, but I’m also a ham (a nice tension, eh?).  So I don’t mind being on stage, but as soon as I’m off I go back to ‘I wonder if someone will talk to me’, and get drained when I’m around too many people.  I work best in small groups.

What’s your sleep routine like?

I work hard to get a regular eight hours,  having read the research. So it’s usually  to bed sometime between 10 and 11, and the house wakes up around 6.  Travel wreaks havoc with that, but caffeine helps.

Fill in the blank. I’d love to see _______ answer these same questions.

Alan Kay or John Seely Brown

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

To be myself.

Games & Meaningful Interactivity

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A colleague recently queried: “How would you support that Jeopardy type games (Quizzes, etc.) are not really games?”  And while I think I’ve discussed this before, I had a chance to noodle on it on a train trip.  I started diagramming, and came up with the following characterization.

GameSpacesI separated out two dimensions. The first  is differentiating between knowledge and skills.  I like how Van Merriënboer talks about the knowledge you need and the complex problems you apply that knowledge to.  Here I’m separating ‘having’ knowledge from ‘using’ knowledge, focusing on application.  And, no surprise, I’m very much on the side of using, or  doing, not just knowing.

The second dimension is whether the learning is essentially very true to life, or exaggerated in some way.  Is it direct, or have we made some effort to make it engaging?

Now, for rote knowledge, if we’re contextualizing it, we’re making it more applied (e.g. moving to the skills side), so really what we have to do is use extrinsic motivation.  We gamify knowledge test (drill and kill) and make it into Jeopardy-style quiz shows.   And while that’s useful in very limited circumstances, it  is  not  what we (should) mean by a game.  Flashy rote drill, using extrinsic motivation, is a fall-back, a tactic of last resort.  We can do better.

What we should mean by a game is  to take practice scenarios and focus on ramping up the intrinsic motivation, tuning the scenario into a engaging experience.  We can use tools like exaggeration, humor, drama, and techniques from game design, literature, and more, to make that practice more meaningful.  We align it with the learners interests (and vice-versa), making the experience compelling.

Because, as the value chain suggests, tarting up rote knowledge (which is useful  if that’s what we need, and sometimes it’s important, e.g. medical terminology) is better than not, but not near as valuable as real practice via scenarios, and even better if we tune it into a meaningful experience.  Too often we err on the side of knowledge instead of skills,  because it’s easy, because we’re not getting what we need from the SME, because that’s what our tools do, etc, but we should be focusing on skills, because that’s what’s going to make a difference to our learners and ultimately our organizations.

What we should do is be focusing on better able to  do, moving to the skill side. Tarted up quiz shows are not really games, they’re simplistic extrinsic response trainers.  Real, serious, games translate what Sid Maier said about games – “a series of interesting decisions” – into a meaningful experience: a series of important decisions.  Practicing those are what will make the difference you care about.

Leadership for Complexity

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The other meme from the retreat event  last weekend was the notion of leadership for complexity.   A few of us decided to workshop a topic around performance, leadership, and technology.   We realized technology was only a means to an end, and the real issue was how to move organizations to optimal performance (e.g. the Coherent Organization).

We talked through how things are moving from complicated to complex (and how important it is to recognize the difference), and that organizations need to receive the wake-up call and start moving forward.   Using the Cynefin model, the value will not come from the simple (which should be automated) nor the complicated (which can be outsourced), but from dealing with the complex (and chaotic).   This won’t come from training and top down management. As I’ve said before, optimal execution will only be the cost of entry, and the differentiator (and hence the value) will be continual evaluation. And that comes from a creative and collaborative workforce.   The issue really is to recognize the need to seize new directions, and then execute the change.

One concern was whether we were talking evolution or revolution.   Rather than taking an either or, I was inclined to think that you needed revolutionary thinking (I like Kathy Sierra’s  take on this), but that you fundamentally can’t revolutionize an organization short of total replacement (“blood on the streets” as one colleague gleefully put it :).   I reckoned a committed change initiative to the place the revolutionary thinking pointed was what was needed.

The issue, then, is the vision and guidance to get there.   What’s needed is leadership that can lead the organization to be able to leverage complexity for success.   This will be about equipping and empowering people to work together on shared goals: sharing, commenting, contributing, collaborating, and more.   It will be inherently experimental in an ongoing way.

What that means practically is an exercise I (and we) are continually working on, but we’ve coalesced on the top-level frameworks to form the basis of tools, and what’s needed are some organizations to co-develop the solutions.   Design-based research] if you will. So who’s up for working on the path to the future?

#itashare