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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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The Future of Mobile?

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In the webinar I did the day before yesterday, one of the questions I was asked was what I thought the future of mobile would be.  My first response was that mobile wasn’t going away, and that we’d see more converged devices.  I also opined that five years ago I couldn’t have predicted where we are now, and consequently it might be hard to think that far forward.  There was also a question of whether I thought the laptop was dead, and I kind of did.

Since then, however, I had a few moments in the middle of the night when I should’ve been sleeping, and I pondered this a bit more.  Let me answer in greater depth, thinking through hardware, software, and context.

One of the questions was wearables.  I frankly don’t know whether we’ll want them just on our sleeve (though it might be a nice fashion accessory), or still pulled from a pocket.  I think we’ll have the opportunity to have either. What will really be important, however, is having that visual display whether tangible in the world, or projected via a headsup display.  We’ll also have audio, both to listen to, and to communicate with. We’ll still likely couple that with gesture, whether on a screen or detected via gestures.  The important thing is that we’ll be interacting with our normal tools for acting on the world.  I think we may still need keyboards from time to time, as text is still a relatively rich communication channel with low bandwidth requirements.  Whether we can have virtual keyboards is still an open question, I think.

I do think the devices will continue to have richer sensors: in addition to accelerometers, compasses, GPS, microphones and cameras they’ll also have barometers, thermometers, and more.  They’ll be able to tap into these to do ever more clever context-sensing and reacting.  And I think they’ll be in a variety of form factors, some choosing pocketable, some choosing to tradeoff mobility for screen real estate.  Some will choose to have one multipurpose, perhaps, others likely will have several. They’ll synch seamlessly, so that it doesn’t matter what device we have when we’re looking for answers. And there will still be a role for the very large screen, with lots of real estate, when we’re tapping into our powerful pattern matching capabilities.

I think that it’s strongly possible that more of the computational capability will be served from the cloud, instead of locally, though I think the local capabilities will continue to increase as well.  I fully hope that they will be able to do intelligent and context-sensitive things.  My ideal is sort of a continual mentor, developing me over time and scaffolding behavior. This is probably wildly optimistic, though I’ve been asking for it for near to a decade, and we’re beginning to see elements thereof.

The interfaces may well simplify.  With rich communication possibilities, distributed across gesture and voice, the necessary screen representations may be minimized.  Still, as was recently pointed out to me, the current space is relatively mature and only a revolutionary technology shift would have a change. Can we anticipate that?  Likely, but not likely to hit the market within that 3-5 year timeframe.  And I’m willing to be wrong on that.

Regardless of technology, I can safely predict that most people will have some portable digital companion with them that they use to make themselves smarter in the moment, much as we do now. But I’m hoping that we’ll also be able to be using it to make us smarter over time, maybe even wiser.  That, to me, is the real vision of the future.

Interviewed about mobile

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Denise VanderLinde, a  student from Florida Gulf Coast University, interviewed me on mobile.  Here’s the (largely unedited) transcript she provided for me:

  1. What is your definition of mobile learning? Using a mobile device to make us more effective, either in the moment or developing us over time. A mobile device is a small portable device that is with us all the time and we are doing something with it because of where we are.
  2. Would you consider a laptop a Mobile Device? A laptop is not normally considered a mobile device and this topic has been discussed and argued at length, in fact, amongst industry leaders who concur that they are essentially ‘mobile desk tops‘. ‘Pocket-able devices‘ such as tablets and phones are considered mobile devices generally. Phones are usually used to access some information quickly and then it is put away and iPad or other tablet can be used for content creation and can be used for more long-term usage.
  3. Can you tell me about your success story of using mobile technology for learning (or training, or performance improvement)? My company doesn‘t create solutions so much as helping people come up with the strategies to do it. When I was designing solutions, though, a cell phone technology provider approached us to supplement a face to face training course on negotiation to be delivered via the phone. I designed a solution that incorporated (amongst other things) a quiz with 19 elements that were deemed important subject matter that trainees should know cold, 10 little mini scenarios trainees might be subject to, performance support for 16 stages of negotiation and the questions trainees should be asking themselves at each stage.
  4. What important development trends do you see coming down the pike in mobile learning? Context sensitive; we have the capability now but we‘re not taking advantage of it yet. The opportunity to know where people are (GPS chip) and what they are doing via their mobile calendars. That way we can tailor what we pull or push to/from individuals based on their locations and what sorts of meetings they attend and on what subjects etc. to meet individual‘s needs better.
  5. What important problems do you think still need to be resolved in mobile learning?
    1. Cross Platform issue/ lack of standards – html 5 not standard yet but if it were would be great but there will be, of course, resistance by software companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft etc.
    2. I would love to see productivity tools available to enable users to design/write their own apps that meet their needs better.
    3. Thinking that M-learning is just ‘courses on a phone‘ is a change that we‘ve got to make. It‘s much more than that. It‘s about the 4 C‘s: Content, Communicate, Capture and Compute.
  6. Does your firm work predominantly with corporations or do you also work with teachers, schools and/or school boards in improving educational technology use in the classroom setting?   I haven‘t done much mobile K-12 but have done some higher education mobile work but most work in mobile has been corporate. People have their mobile device with them all the time so it‘s a great way to distribute knowledge to the world, not just one head.
  7. Do you find corporate and/or school staff still seem reluctant to use technology or do you see that trend shifting in more recent years? I haven‘t experienced much resistance unless people are asked to use their personal device that they pay for themselves. That is not going over so well but, overall, if you have the right culture, there hasn‘t been much resistance.
  8. Is there anything else at all that you would like to share at this time regarding mobile technology? The one that starts going hand in hand with mobile is to begin to think in a deeper way about Content Systems, about Content Modeling and Content Architectures. It‘s going to support mobile initially and that personalization going forward. I wrote an article on this topic and another is coming out soon in Learning Solutions Magazine.

 

Getting Pragmatic About Informal

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In my post on reconciling informal and informal, I suggested that there are practical things L&D groups can  do about informal learning.  I’ve detected a fair bit of concern amongst L&D folks that this threatens their jobs, and I think that’s misplaced.  Consequently, I want to get a wee bit more specific than what I said then:

  • they can make courses about  how  to use social media better (not everyone knows how to communicate and collaborate  well)
  • share best practices
  • work social media into formal learning to make it easier to facilitate the segue into the workplace
  • provide performance support for social media
  • be facilitating the use of social media
  • unearth good practices in the organization and share them
  • foster discussion

 

I also noted “And, yes, L&D interventions there will be formal in the sense that they‘re applying rigor, but they‘re facilitating emergent  behaviors that they don‘t  own“. And that’s an important point. It’s wrapping support around activities that aren’t content generated by the L&D group. Two things:

  1. the expertise for  much doesn’t reside in the L&D group and it’s time to stop thinking that it all can pass through  the L&D  group (there’s too much, too fast, and the L&D group has to find ways to get more efficient)
  2. there is expertise in the L&D group (or should be) that’s more about process than product and can and should be put into practice.

So, the L&D group has to start facilitating the sharing of information between folks. How can they represent and share their understandings in ways the L&D group can facilitate, not own?  How about ensuring the availability of tools like blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, discussion forums, media file creating/sharing, and profiles, and  helping communities learn to use them?  Here’s a way that L&D groups can partner with IT and add real value via a synergy that benefits the company.

That latter bit, helping them learn to use them is also important.  Not everyone is naturally a good coach or mentor, yet these are valuable roles.  It’s not just producing a course about it, but facilitating a community around  these roles.  There are a lot of myths about what makes brainstorming work, but just putting people in a room isn’t  it.  If you don’t know, find out and disseminate it!  How about even just knowing how to work and play well with others, how to ask for help in ways that will actually get useful responses, supporting needs for blogging, etc.

There are a whole host of valuable activities that L&D groups can engage in besides developing content, and increasingly the resources are likely to be more valuable addressing the facilitation than the design and development.  It’s going to be just too much (by the time it’s codified, it’s irrelevant).  Yes, there’ll still be a role for fixed content (e.g. compliance), but hopefully more and more curricula and content will be crowd-sourced, which increases the likelihood of it’s relevance, timeliness, and accuracy.

Start supporting activity, not controlling it, and you will likely find it liberating, not threatening.

 

Mobile Changes Everything?

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As a prelude to a small webinar I’ll be doing next week (though it also serves to tee up the free Best of mLearnCon  webinar I’ll be doing for the eLearning Guild next week as well, here’re some deliberately provocative thoughts on mobile:

According to Tomi Ahonen, mobile is the fastest growing industry ever.  But just because everyone has one, what does it mean?  I think the implications are broader, but here I want to talk specifically about work and learning.  I want to suggest that it has the opportunity to totally upend the organization.  How? By broadening our understanding of how we work and learn.

The 70:20:10 framework, while not descriptive, does capture the reality that most of what we learn at work doesn’t come from courses (the ’10’).  Instead, we learn by coaching/mentoring (the ‘2o’), and ‘on the job’ (70).  Yet, by and large, the learning units in organizations are only addressing the 10 percent.  They could, and should, be looking at how to support the other 90, but haven’t seen it, yet there’re lots that can be done.

The bigger picture is that digital technology augments our brain.  Our brains are really  good at pattern-matching and extracting meaning. They’re also really  bad at doing rote things, particularly complex ones.  Fortunately, digital technology is exactly the opposite, so combined we’re far more capable.  This has been true at the desktop, with not only powerful tools, but support wrapped around tools and tasks.  Now it’s also true where- and whenever we are: we can share content, compute capabilities, and communication.  And you should  be able to see how that benefits the organization.

And more: it’s adding in something that the desktop didn’t really have: the ability to capture your current context, and to leverage that to your benefit. Your device can know when and where you are, and do things appropriately.

So why is this game-changing?  I want to suggest that the notion of a digital platform that supports us ubiquitously will be the inroad to recognize that the formal learning is not, and cannot, be separate from the work.  If we’re professionals, we’re always working and learning (as my colleague Harold Jarche extols us).  If a new platform comes out that’s ubiquitous yet relatively unsuited for courses, we have a forcing function to start thinking anew about what the role of learning and performance professionals is.  I suggest that there are rich ways we can think about coupling mobile with work.

Why do I suggest that courses on a phone isn’t the ideal solution?  You have to make some distinctions about the platform.  A tablet is just not  the same as a pocketable device. It has been hard to get a handle on how they differ, but I think you do need to recognize that they do.  For example, I’ll suggest that you’re not likely to want to take a full course on a pocketable device, however on a tablet that’d be quite feasible.

To take full advantage, you have to consider mobile as a platform, not just a device. It’s a channel for capability to reach across limitations of chronology and geography, and make us more productive. And more.  So, get on board, and get going to more and better performance.

Educational Game Design Q&A

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I was contacted for a research project, and asked a series of questions. Thought I’d document the answers here, too.

Q0. How many years have you been designing educational games?

Over 30, actually, off and on.  Started with my first job out of college, designing and programming educational computer games.  Been a recurrent theme in my career since then.

Q1. Please walk us through your process for creating an educational game from concept to implementation. Please use one of your games as an example.

A long answer is the only option (it’s a big process).  Using a design framework of Analysis, Specification, Implementation, and Evaluation:

Analysis

For any educational task, you have to start by looking at what your design objective is: you need to document what folks should be able to do that they can’t do now. I argue that this is most importantly going to manifest as an ability to make better decisions, ones that the learner doesn’t reliably make now.  It’s complicated, because SMEs don’t always have access to how they do what they do, and you have to work hard.  This isn’t unusual to learning  design, except perhaps the focus on skills.

Then, you need to know how folks go wrong; what are the reliable misconceptions. People don’t tend to make random mistakes (though there is some randomness in our architecture), but instead make mistakes based upon some wrong models.

You also need to know the consequences of those mistakes, as well as the consequence of the right answer. Decisions tend to travel in packs, and if you make this one wrong, you’re then likely to face that other one. You need to know what these are.  (And the probabilities associated with them).

In addition, you need to know the settings in which these decisions occur, as many as possible.

And you need to know what makes this task inherently interesting (it is).  Here’s where the SME is your friend, because they’re so passionate about this they’ve made it the subject of their expertise, find out what makes them  find it interesting.

Specification

With this information, you address those aligned elements from effective education practice and engaging experiences.    You need to find a storyline that integrates what makes the task interesting with the settings in which the decisions occur.  I like a heuristic I heard from Henry Jenkins: “find a role the player would like to be in”. Exaggeration is a great tool here: e.g. you’d likely rather be working on the ambassador’s daughter than just another patient.

You need to make those misconceptions seductive to get challenge. You don’t want them getting it right unless they really  know their stuff.

You need to handle adjusting the difficulty level up at an appropriate rate; you might have complications that don’t start until after they’ve mastered the interface.

You need to specify characters, dialog, rules that describe the relationships, variables that code the state of the game, a visual (and auditory) look and feel.  The UI expressed to the learner, and more.

You’ll need to specify what the ‘perspective’ of the player is in relation to the character.

Overall, you need to nail meaningfulness, novelty, and the cycle of action and feedback to really get this right.

Finally, you need to specify the metrics you’ll use to evaluate your creation. What will be the usability goals, educational outcomes, and engagement metrics that will define you’re done?

Implementation & Evaluation

I’m a design guy, so I don’t talk so much about implementation, and evaluation follows the above.  That said…

The tools change constantly, and it will vary by size and scope. The main thing here is that you will  have to tune.  As Will Wright said, “tuning is 9/10ths of the work”.  Now that’s for a commercially viable game, but really, that’s a substantial realization compared to how complex the programming and media production is.

Tuning requires regular evaluation.  You’ll want to prototype in as low a fidelity as you can, so it’s easier to change.  Prototype, test, lather, rinse, repeat.  (Have ever 3 words ever sold more unnecessary product in human history?)

There’s much  more, but this is a good first cut.

Q2. Describe your greatest success, challenge, failure.

My greatest success, at least the most personally rewarding in terms of feeling like making a contribution, is definitely the Quest game. When you’re making a game that can save kids’ lives, you’ve got to feel good about it. On no  budget (we eventually got a little money to hire my honors student for a summer, and then some philanthropic money to do a real graphic treatment), we developed a game that helped kids who grow up without parents experience a bit of what it’s like to survive on your own (goal: talk to your counselors).  Interestingly, I subsequently got it ported to the web as a student project (as soon as I heard about CGI’s, the first web standard to support maintaining ‘state’, I realized it could run as a web game), and it still runs!  As far as I know, BTW, it’s the first web-based serious game ever.

My greatest challenge was another game you can still play on the web.  We’d developed a ‘linear scenario’ game on project management for non-project-managers, and they liked it so much they then asked for a game to accompany it.  But we’d already accomplished the learning!  Still, we did it.  I made the game about just managing to cope with missing data, scope creep, and other PM issues, so engineers could a) understand why they should be glad there were  project managers, and b) that they shouldn’t be jerks to work with.

Biggest failure that I recollect was a team brought together by a publisher to work with the lead author on a wildly successful book series.  There was a movie script writer who’d become a game designer, and me, and a very creative team. However, we had a real problem with the SME, who couldn’t get over the idea that the ‘game’ had to develop the concept without getting mired in the boring details of particular tools. We would get progress, and then generate a great concept, and we’d be reined back in to “but where’s the tool simulation”?  Unfortunately, the SME had ultimate control, not the creative team, and the continuing back and forth ultimately doomed the project.

Q3. When determining game play is avoiding violence an issue? Q4.  Is accounting for gender an issue when creating games?

I answered these two questions together; I don’t shy away from controversy, and believe that you use the design that works for the audience and the learning objective.  I believe education trumps censorship.  I argued many years ago (when Doom was the GTA of the day) that you could get meaningful learning experiences out of the worst of the shoot-em-ups.  Not that I’d advocate it.  Same with gender.  Figure out what’s needed.

As a caveat, I don’t believe in gratuitous violence, sex, or gender issues, (Why is sex more taboo than violence? I don’t get it.) but I believe you need to address them when relevant in context. In ways that glorify people, not violence or intolerance.

Q5. How did you develop your creation process?

I went from ad h0c at the start to trying to find the best grounding for process possible.  Even as an undergrad I had received a background in learning, but as a grad student I pursued it with a vengeance (I looked at cognitive, behavioral, constructivist, ID, social, even machine  learning looking for insight).  At the time, the HCI field was also looking at what made engaging experiences, and I pursued that too. The real integration happened when I looked systematically at design and creative processes: what worked and what didn’t.  Using the learning design process as a framework (since folks don’t tend to adopt new processes whole-cloth, but tend to modify their existing ones), I worked out what specifically was needed in addition to make the process work for (learning) game design.

Q6.  How do you work? Individually? As a team? If so, how do you develop a team?

Euphemistically, I work however anyone wants.  I seldom really do individual, however, because I have no graphic design skills to speak of (much to my dismay, but a person’s got to know their limitations, to paraphrase the great sage Harry Calahan).  Also, I strongly believe you should source the full suite of talent a game design needs: writing, audio, graphic, programming, UI, learning design, etc.  Naturally, in the real world, you do the best you can (“oh, I can do a good enough job of writing, and you can probably do a good enough job of audio as well as the programming”).

Q7. Is there a recipe for success in this industry? If so what is it and what would you say your biggest lesson has been so far?

My short answer is two-fold. I immodestly think that you really have to understand the alignment between effective practice and engaging experience (there’re lots of bad examples that show why you can’t just shove game and instructional designers into a room and expect anything good). Second, you have to know how to work and play well with others.  Game design is a team sport.

And finally, you really, really, have to develop your creative side.  As I tell my workshop attendees: I’ve got bad news, you have a big job ahead of you; if you’re going to do good serious game design, you’re going to have to play more games, go to more amusement parks, read more novels, watch more movies. It’s a big ask, I know, an onerous task, but hey, you’re professionals.   But you also have to be willing to take risks. Much to m’lady’s dismay, I argue that I continue to have to crack bad jokes as practice to find out what works (that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it).

If you can get a handle on these three elements: understanding the alignment, able to convince people to work with you on it, and push the envelope, I reckon you can succeed. What do you reckon?

Thinking well and, well, not so well

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A number of books have crossed my path for a variety of reasons, and there’re some lessons to be extracted from three of them.  All have to do with looking at how our brains work, and some lessons therefrom.  There have been quite a bit of kerfuffle about ‘brain-based learning’, of which too much is inappropriate inferences from neuroscience to learning.  What I’m doing here is not that, but instead reporting on three books, only one of which has an explicit discussion of implications for both education and work. Still, valuable insight comes from all three.

Let me get the negative stuff out of the way first, a book that a number of folks have been excited about, Joshua Foer’s  Moonwalking with Einstein, just did nothing for me. It’s a great tale well told, but the lessons were only cautionary. In it, a journalist gets intrigued enough with remembering to train sufficiently to win the US memory championships (apparently, globally, a relatively minor accomplishment).  He reveals many memory tools to accomplish this, and points out some potential fraud along the way.  He also concludes that despite this heightened ability, there is little relevance in the real world.  We have devices that can be our memory now, and the need for these skills is questionable at best.  All in all, little benefit except to be skeptical.

A second book, Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking Fast and Slow, is a different story. Kahnemann, and his late long-time collaborator Amos Tversky, conducted some seminal research in how we make decisions (essential reading in my grad school career).  And the best way to convey how we do this, as Kahnemann tells us, is to postulate two separate systems. Not surprisingly one is fast, and one is slow.  The book is quite long, as Kahnemann goes through every phenomenon of these outcomes that they’ve discovered (often with collaborators), but each chapter closes with some statements that capture the ways your thinking might be wrong, and ways to compensate. It could use more prescriptions and less description (I started skimming, I confess), but understand the two systems and the implications are important.  It’s a well-written and engaging book, I just wish there was a ‘take home’ version.

The fast system is, essentially, intuition. This comes in many ways from your experience, and experts in a field should trust their intuition (there’s a strong argument here for hiring someone with lots of experience) in their area.  In areas where expertise is needed, and you don’t have it, you should go to the slow system, conscious rational thought.  Which is very vulnerable to fatigue (it taxes your brain), so complex decisions late in a day of decision are suspect.  If your decision is commonplace, you can trust the fast system, and many times you’ll be using the slow system just to explain the decision the fast system came up with, but we’re prone to many forms of bias.  It’s a worthwhile read, and tells us a lot about how we might adapt our learning to develop the fast system when necessary, and when to look to the slow system.

Finally, Cathy Davidson’s written Now You See It, a book that takes an attentional phenomena and builds a strong case for more closely matching learning and work to how we really think.  (I was pointed to it by a colleague who complained that my learning theory references are old; I still take my integration of learning theory as appropriate but nice to see that more recent work reflects my take on the best from the past. :) The phenomena is related to how our attention is limited and we need help focusing it.  For a dramatic demonstration of this phenomena, view this video and follow the instructions.  Her point is that what and how we pay attention does not reflect our current schooling systems nor our traditional work environments.  She uses this and myriad examples to make a compelling case for change in both.  On the learning side, she argues strongly for making learning active and meaningful (a view I strongly support), and start using the technology. On the other side, she talks about the new ways of working consonant with our Internet Time Alliance views.  It’s very readable, as it’s funny, poignant, apt, and more.

I highly recommend Cathy Davidson’s book as something everyone should understand.  Like I said, I wish there were a ‘Readers Digest Condensed‘ version of Kahnemann’s book.  It’s worth having a look at if you’re responsible for decisions by folks, however, and at least the first few chapters if you’re at all responsible for helping people make better decisions.

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?

Social Learning, Strategically

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Increasingly, as I look around, I see folks addressing learning technology tactics; they’ll make a mobile app, they’ll try out a simulation game, they’ll put in a portal.  And there’s nothing wrong with doing each of these as a trial, a test run, some experience under the belt.  However, in the longer term, you want to start doing so strategically. I’ll use social media as an example.

Talking with my ITA colleague Jay Cross at lunch the other day, it occurred to me that I was seeing the same pattern with social media that I see elsewhere.  When I think through many instances I’ve seen, heard of, or experienced, I see them addressing one issue. “We’ve put in a social media system to use around our formal learning.”  “We’ll buy a social  media platform to use for our sales force.”  And these aren’t bad decisions, except for the fact that such an initiative has broader ramifications.

What I’m not seeing is folks thinking enough along the lines of “social media is a platform, and we should be looking at how the investment can be leveraged.”  I’m not seeing enough focus on using every tactic as a step on the way to a ‘workscape’ (aka performance ecosystem).  You want to be building the infrastructure for working smarter, and every move should be developing that capability.  You want to be getting closer and closer to workers having tools to hand, the resources they need to get the job done.

To empower workers, you want to have the tools for communication, e.g. video sharing, blogging micro- and macro-, discussion forums, etc as well as the tools for collaboration, e.g. shared documents and expertise finding, arranged around tasks and interests, not around silos.  To free folks up to get the job done, they need to be able to work smarter.

And you want to align what you’re doing with organizational goals, define metrics that will impact key business metrics, provide governance with partners both fundamental and strategic, leverage other organizational initiatives (oh, you’re putting in a CMS?  With just a small additional effort, we can use that to facilitate sharing of information…), etc.  It’s time to start thinking strategically, if you want to really move your organization forward.  There’re a number of steps: advanced ID, performance support, mobile, each taking on another facet, but arguably the biggest benefit will come from bringing together the talent in your organization.  Why not?

Probably the best first step to take is to start using social media in  the learning unit, so folks there ‘get it’ (you got to be in it to win it, as they say re: the lottery; guess that’s why I wasn’t one of the 3 winners :).  That’s a strategic step that can drive the rest.  And you can take the slow path and figure it out yourself, or accelerate with some assistance, but it’s really time to get going.  So, what’s stopping you?

 

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?

70:20:10 Tech

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At the recent Up To All Of Us event (#utaou), someone asked about the 70:20:10 model.  As you might expect, I mentioned that it’s a framework for thinking about supporting people at work, but it also occurred to me that there might be a reason folks have not addressed the 90, because, in the past, there might have been little that they could do. But that’s changed.

In the past, other than courses, there was little at could be done except providing courses on how to coach, and making job aids.  The technology wasn’t advanced enough.  But that’s changed.

Tech help by 70:20:10 stageWhat has changed are several things.  One is the rise of social networking tools: blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, and more. The other is the rise of mobile.  Together, we can be supporting the 90 in fairly rich ways.

For the 20, coaching and mentoring, we can start delivering that wherever needed, via mobile.  Learners can ask for, or even be provided, support more closely tied to their performance situations regardless of location.  We can also have a richer suite of coaching and mentoring happening through Communities of Practice, where anyone can be a coach or mentor, and be developed in those roles, too.  Learner activity can be tracked, as well, leaving traces for later review.

For the 70, we can first of all start providing rich job aids wherever and whenever, including a suite of troubleshooting information and even interactive wizards.  We also can have help on tap freed of barriers of time and distance.  We can look up information as well, if our portals are well-designed.  And we can find people to help, whether information or collaboration.

The point is that we no longer have limits in the support we can provide, so we should stop having limits in the help we *do* provide.

Yes, other reasons could still also be that folks in the L&D unit know how to do courses, so that’s their hammer making everything look like a nail, or they don’t see it as their responsibility (to which I respond “Who else? Are you going to leave it to IT? Operations?”). That *has* to change. We can, and should, do more.  Are you?