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Levels of learning experience design

28 September 2010 by Clark Leave a Comment

If you want to achieve meaningful outcomes in the space of the important work, you need to ensure that the process is optimized. This means that you want to streamline formal learning, maximize the utility of resources, and facilitate optimal interaction. This is the realm of learning experience design.

Learning experience design can, and should, operate at several levels. For one, you want individual learning experiences to be optimal. You want a minimalist approach that combines effective cognitive design with engaging emotional design. You want the formal resources to be designed to mesh with the task and provide effective information design. And you want the social learning tools to be organized around the way the team coheres.

Here we are talking deeper instructional design, information mapping, and aligned social media.

At the next level, you want your learning development processes to make it easy to do good learning design: you want your tools and templates to scaffold proper outcomes (and preclude bad design), and you want your oversight to be based upon sound principles.

Here we are on about design processes and teams, as well as tools. We can be talking about content models and delivery architectures as well.

At a higher level, you want your components of learning to complement one another, so courses are designed in synchrony with your resources and networks, and vice versa, and you want your IT infrastructure to be based upon structures that maintain security, reliability, and maintainability with flexibility so as not to preclude new directions.

Here we are talking content frameworks and hosting architectures, semantics, and organizational alignment and culture.

Unfortunately, most organizations in my experience, are using flawed models at the first level, are embryonic at the second, and are oblivious of the top. Yet, the competitive advantage will increasingly come from just such an optimized structure, as working *smarter* will increasingly be the only sustainable edge. So, are you ready to move ahead?

Shifting perspectives

23 September 2010 by Clark 5 Comments

In the Internet Time Alliance chat, yesterday, we were discussing the apparently difficultly some are seeming to have with the necessary mind shifts to comprehend the benefits of social media for organizational learning. It seems to me that there are 3 roles and each has an associated shift.

‘Management’

The old thinking was that the thinking is done from the top and percolates down. Whatever skills are needed are brought in or identified and the learning unit develops it. There’s a direct relationship between the specific skills and the impact on the business.

The new thinking is that the goals are identified and made clear and then the employees are empowered to achieve the goals in the ways that seem best. They can provide input into the goals, and adapt the skillsets as needed.

The is important because of speed, productivity, and outcomes. First, the world is moving faster, and there is no longer time to plan, prepare and execute. It has also been demonstrated that employees are more productive when they’ve bought into the plan and have responsibility. It’s also the case that bringing more brains ‘online’ to help achieve goals ultimately makes better decisions.

The necessary components are that workers need a context where they can contribute safely and are empowered to work.

The Learning Unit

The old thinking was that the learning unit was about ‘training’. That the learning unit responded to identified skill needs, created training, delivered it, and then measured whether employees thought it was worthwhile. The focus was on courses.

The new thinking is that the learning unit is about ensuring that the necessary complement of skills and resources are available. That the responsibility is not just for formal learning, but performance support, and social interchange. That the role is facilitation, not delivery.

This is important because the workforce needs to be focused on the task, with the tools to hand, but the nature of the important work is changing. It’s no longer about doing something known, but about dealing with the unknown. Really, any time you’re problem-solving, research, design, creating new products and services, by definition you don’t have the answer and the skills necessary are meta-skills: how to problem-solve, get information, trial solutions, evaluate the outcomes. It’s about working together as well as independently.

The necessary components are to define and track the new skills, to provide an infrastructure where learners can take responsibility, and to track outcomes and look for opportunities to improve the environment, whether the performer skills, the tools, or the resources. Yes, there are still courses, but they’re only one component of a bigger picture, and they take a format that is conducive to these new skills: they’re active and exploratory.

The workforce

The old thinking was that they did what they were told, until they could do it without being told. The strategic thinking was done elsewhere, and they took a defined role.

The new thinking is that workers are told what the goals are, and have to figure out how to accomplish it, but not just alone. It’s a collaborative effort where there are resources and tools, and we contribute to the outcome while reviewing the work for opportunities to improve. Workers contribute at both the execution and the innovation level. They have to take responsibility.

This is important because, as stated above, what with automation, the work that really matters is shifting, and organizations that try to continue to sequester the important thinking to small sections of the organization will lose out to those that can muster larger brain trusts to the work.

The necessary components are leadership, culture, and infrastructure. Workers have to comprehend the goals, believe in the culture, and have the tools – individual and collective – to accomplish the goals.

Hopefully, the contrasts are clear, as are the opportunities. It’s the shift from hierarchy to wirearchy. What am I missing?

Small addition to ‘right tech for schools’

17 September 2010 by Clark 1 Comment

The discussion on ITFORUM this week has been deeply about mobile learning (if you’re into mlearning, it’s worth checking in!). Based upon this week’s guest’s question about experience with devices, I opined in ways that should be familiar:

Coming out with a book on mobile learning (mostly organizationally focused), and with kids of my own, I’ve naturally thought about what I think the role of mobile devices could/should be in schools:

I like what Elliot Soloway said many years ago, that a laptop was the wrong form factor for a kid. He used PDAs, but it was more for content creation than consumption. I actually think we want separate devices; a PDA form-factor for field work, and a tablet for in-class content creation. I think a PDA sized device for data capture (audio and video for instance) is more plausible than a tablet, and vice versa for serious content consumption and creation.

I think Kindle’s and Nooks are great text consumption devices, but I’m thinking we want more even in the consumption mode: audio, videos, and animation for instance, but I really think the real opportunity is interactivity, and a monochrome screen just isn’t going to cut it. Yes, the dedicated readers are better for reading, but I want a more general purpose device: simulations/games, for example.

Then there’s content creation. I want kids writing, diagramming, drawing, editing video and audio, and more. That more would be actual model building. I think that makes sense for a device bigger than a PDA, e.g. tablet-sized.

And I think the touchscreen approach is right for for much of what I’d like kids to do. Works for me, too ;). (Ok, a keyboard’s good for text entry, so maybe that’s ‘available’).

Those are conceptual arguments, here’s my pragmatic situation. I never bought an e-reader; I’ve liked print just fine. I did not intend to get an iPad; I’m ‘frugal’ (read: cheap), and I don’t spend money typically until I understand the full value proposition. However, between the announcement of the iPad and it’s actual availability, I realized that it had significant roles separate from my iPhone (which I already had). And those were content creation, not consumption (tho’ I’ve now taken advantage of those, too). I haven’t traveled with a laptop since I got my iPad, and am seriously glad I spent the money.

[Slight alteration] I’ve also blogged about how not allowing cross-platform development tools (read: Scratch, perhaps a HyperCard or clone) really is a bad move on Apple’s part for the education community. Their recent loosening of the rules gives some hope, but the lack of ability to import code is still a problem. Maybe HTML 5 will give us a browser-delivery environment.

It’s not that new, but still I think puts a slightly different spin on the situation than my last post. I welcome any thoughts you have!

Enterprise Thinking, or Thinking Enterprise

14 September 2010 by Clark 1 Comment

I realize, with recent releases like Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers and Marcia Conner & Tony Bingham’s The New Learning (both recommended, BTW, reviews coming soon, with standard disclaimer that I’m mentioned in both) that the message is finally getting out about new ways to facilitate not just formal learning and execution, but informal learning and innovation. But there’s more needed. It takes new thinking at the top. You need to think about how the enterprise is thinking.

So what do you want for your enterprise thinking? Shows like The Office make us laugh because we identify with it. We know the officious types, the clueless, the apathetic, the malevolent, the greedy, the ones just marking time. They’re definitely not thinking about how to make the organization more successful, they’re thinking more about what will make their life most enjoyable, and there’s little or no alignment. That’s not what you want, I’ll suggest, but is what’s seen, in various degrees, in most places.

Instead, you (should) want folks who know what the goal is, are working towards it individually and collectively. That are continually looking for opportunities to improve the products, processes, and themselves. This is where organizations will derive competitive advantage.

How do you get there? It takes coordinating several things, including the dimensions of the learning organization: leadership, culture, and practices), and the information infrastructure for working well together. You need to have the tools, you need to understand the behaviors required, you need to know that working this way is valued, and you need to be informed as to what the goals are.

We want to be empowering people with the models that help understand the shifts that are happening and how to cope, so they’re part of the movement. They need to understand things like networks and complexity, so that they’re equipped to contribute at the next level.

It’s time to stop thinking patchwork (“we’ll just put in the tools”, or “we’ll move in the direction of more open leadership”), and starting thinking systemically and strategically. Identify and acknowledge where you are now, and figure out a path to get where you need to be. It’s not likely to be easy, but it’s clearly time to get started.

Learning Experience Design Strategy

31 August 2010 by Clark 5 Comments

On our weekly twitter learning fest, #lrnchat, I regularly identify myself as a learning experience design strategist. I don’t always assume people know what that means, but for that audience I figure they can infer what it means. However, I think the idea is worth exploring, because increasingly I think that not only is that what I do, but it also is important.

First, I think it is important to stop thinking about content, and start thinking about learning experience. It’s too easy, when focusing on content, to focus on knowledge, not skills, yet skills are what will make the difference – the ability to do. Also, it helps focus on the conative side of learning, the motivation for and anxiety about learning when you think about the learner experience. And, as always, I take a broad interpretation of learning, so this holds true beyond formal learning; it applies to thinking about performer experience when you consider the tools they’ll have, and even the way that access to communities and other informal learning components will be made available in situ.

When you think about creating learning experiences, you are talking about design. How do you create effective and engaging learning experiences? You need a design process, tools, and good concepts around learning and engagement. Really, both my book on designing engaging learning experiences, and my forthcoming one on mobile learning, are at core about design. And there are levels of design, from individual experiences to the architecture and infrastructure that can support the rich suite of experiences that characterize an organization’s full needs.

Which takes us to the last part, strategy. By and large, I don’t do the design anymore, since I can add more value at a higher level. Increasingly, what I’m doing is helping organizations look at their needs, current state, teams, processes, and more, and helping them develop a strategic approach to delivering learning experiences. I help design pedagogies, processes, templates, and short-, medium-, and long-term steps. And it is in this way that I accomplish what my first real client told me I did for them, I helped them take their solutions to the ‘next level’.

I think learning experience design is important, so important that I want to not just execute against a project at a time, but find ways to develop capability so a lot more good learning experience is created. That means working with groups and systems. More organizations need this than might be imagined: I’ve done this for for-profit education, education publishing, those servicing corporate learning needs, and of course organizations (governmental and corporate) wanting their external or internal learning solutions to be effective and engaging. The sad fact is, too much ‘learning design’ is content design, still. I’m always looking for ways to help spread a better way of creating learning.

For example, I ran a ‘deeper ID’ workshop this week for a team, and presented the concepts, modeled the application to samples of their learning objectives, gave them a practice opportunity, and wrapped up, across each of the learning elements. It was a way to address learning design in a bigger way. An extension would be to then submit sample content to me to have me comment, developing their abilities over time, as I did with another client working on integrating scenarios.

There are lots of ways this plays out, not just workshops but developing content models, spreading new metaphors for mobile learning, creating pedagogy templates, and more, but I reckon it is important work, and I have the background to do it. I’ve found it hard to describe in the past, and I do question whether the ‘learning’ label is somewhat limiting, given my engagement in social learning with ITA and more, but I reckon it’s the right way to think about it. So I’ll keep describing it this way, and doing this work, until someone gives me a better idea!

10 Social Media Rebuttals

8 August 2010 by Clark 2 Comments

Jane Hart posted a tongue-in-cheek video by Ron Desi of 10 reasons why you should not have social media in the organization, and is collecting rebuttals. I figured I should weigh in, so as not to be left out ;), but I’ll go on and list 10 reasons why you should want social media in your organization that aren’t aligned with the reasons not to! But first, the rebuttal:

10. Social media is a fad.

Communication has been at the core of being human since before the campfire. Augmenting our capabilities with technology, using tools, yeah, that’s not new. So using tools to facilitate communication is just natural evolution. Was the computer a fad? The internet a fad? Busted.

9. It’s about controlling the message.

You can’t control the message, and social media isn’t going to change that. They have phones, email, hallway conversations, parking lot conversations, and the social media cigarette break. I won’t even go into why you’d want to control the message, because that comes up later in the list.

8. Employees will goof off.

This is redundant with the previous one. They’ll still have phones, email, paper, etc, e.g. lots of ways to goof off. They’ll goof off regardless if you haven’t given them meaning in the work, but social media won’t affect it, yay or nay.

7. Social Media is a time waster.

They already have social media (email, phones, etc). Are they wasting time with them, or using them to work? Same argument as before: they’ll waste time or not, depending on the work environment, not the tool. You have to make the environment meaningful and valuable, regardless of the technology!

6. Social media has no business purpose.

Again, they already have email. Do you use email for business? What might they do with the ability to ask questions, provide hints, suggestions, and pointers? To work together on a problem? Business is communication.

5. Employees can’t be trusted.

See previous responses. The tool doesn’t matter. Either they can be trusted, or they can’t (and if they can’t, you’ve failed, not them).

4. Don’t cave into the demands of the millennials.

The generational differences myth has already been busted. The evidence is that what the different generations want out of work really isn’t that different. What workers want are ways to achieve meaningful goals, and they want whatever tools will help them. If there are new tools, get those tools into their hands!

3. Your teams already share knowledge effectively.

They may share as effectively as they have been able to, but why would you limit them to what has been possible? Why not empower them with what is now possible?

2. You’ll get viruses.

That’s a risk with all IT, and your IT department should block that at the firewall. You don’t block other IT, you still have email, and ERPs, and other software. Why would you treat this any differently?

1. Your competition isn’t using it, so why should you?

Aren’t you looking for every competitive advantage you can? Why would you even think of not considering a possible advantage?

So let’s now turn this around, what is the advantage we’re talking about?

You can do more work. The tools provided are magnifiers of effort. Tools in general are augments of our ability, and new tools mean either new abilities or more abilities.
You can do more work independent of distance. Social media provides new tools to work together, independent of geographic location, so you can get contributions from the right people regardless of where they work and live.
You can do more work independent of time. Social media tools are asynchronous as well as synchronous, so work can continue as needed.
You can work faster. The barrier to working quickly, the time for communications to percolate, is dropping. We can put richer media through faster.
You can communicate better. The richer media mean you can more effectively transit the message.
You can collaborate better. The tools support not only communication, but also shared efforts on a single output.
You can learn* faster. Learning’s critical, and by sharing that learning more seamlessly, the organization makes fewer mistakes, and fewer repeated mistakes.
You can learn deeper. Your learning now is more richly connected through information resources, people and shared representations. The dialog can go to a whole new level of understanding.
You can innovate better. Learning faster and deeper means more problems-solved and more ideas generated, improved, and developed into solutions.
You can succeed faster. The only sustainable edge will be the ability to out-learn your competitors.

Why wouldn’t you want to get more power in the hands of your people, to not just survive, but thrive?!?!

*Note that I do not mean formal learning here, I mean the broad definition of learning, and very specifically the type of learning that means exploring the unknown and creating new understandings: problem-solving, research, experimentation, creativity, innovation, new products, new services, new markets, new businesses. That’s the type of learning needed, and needing facilitation.

Co-design of workflow

6 August 2010 by Clark 3 Comments

I’ve talked before about how our design task will need to accommodate both the formal learning and the informal job resources, but as I’ve been thinking about (and working on) this model, it occurs to me that there is another way to think about learning design that we have to consider.

The first notion is that we should not design our formal learning solutions without thinking about what the performance support aspects are as well. We need to co-design our performance support solutions along with our preparation for performance so that they mutually reflect (and reference) each other. Our goal has to be to look at the total development and execution of the task.

The other way I’ve now been thinking of it, however, is to think about designing the workflow and the learning ‘flow’ together. Visualize the formal and informal learning flows as components within an overall workflow. You want the performer focusing on the task, and learning tools ‘to hand’ within the task flow. Ideally, the person is able to find the answers, or even learn some new things, while still in the work context. (Context is so important in learning that we spend large amounts to recreate context away from our existing work context!)

The point being, not only is formal learning and informal learning co-designed, but they’re both co-designed in the context of understanding the flow of performance, so you’re designing the work/learning context. Which means we’re incorporating user-interface and user-experience design, as well as resource design (e.g. technical communications) on top of our learning design. And probably more.

Now, are you ready to buy this? Because I’d talked myself to this point and then realized: “but wait, there’s more. If you call now, we’ll throw in” an obvious extension. To be covered in the next and last post of this series (tying it back to the context of explorability and incremental advantage I started with in my last post.

On magic, or the appearance thereof

25 June 2010 by Clark 3 Comments

Many years ago, I responded to a broad query by Jefferey Bonar asking what was the interface metaphor we really wanted. I responded something to the effect of wanting ‘magic’. This was in the early days of the desktop metaphor, and we were already looking to go beyond, and I was looking for the ultimate metaphor of control.

Now I didn’t mean magic in the ‘legerdemain’, sleight-of-hand type of thing, nor the magic I feel when sitting on the deck on a warm summer evening with my family, but instead the classic form with incantations, artifacts, etc. What I really wanted was to be empowered, and the best metaphor for total power I can imagine is having the ability to bring things into being, to have questions answered, to control the world with mere gestures and commands. And yet, even that has to have some structure. As Clay Kallam wrote in a recent column comparing two recent fantasy books:

“The plot of both books relies heavily on the magic, but Coe is careful to explain how his works and its limitations and impact. Drake seems to just call on some whenever it suits him, and nothing is explained.”

So, what I meant was that there was rigor underlying the metaphor of magic, rigor that roughly parallels the structures of programming languages. For example, Rob Moser (my PhD student) prototyped a game for his thesis that taught programming via learning to cast magic spells in a fantasy world. My vision was that in any place you wanted to, you could learn the underlying magic (language) to accomplish what you wanted, but if you didn’t, you’d be able to buy artifacts (e.g. wands, crystal balls, etc) that did specific things that you wanted without having to program.

The reason I mention this, before you think I’m going off with the fairies and unicorns, is that there are reasons to start thinking about magic. As Arthur C. Clarke has said:

Any truly advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic.

And I really think we’re there. That is, our technology has advanced to the point that the technology is no longer a barrier. We can truly bring any information, any person (at least virtually), anywhere we want. We can augment our world with information to make us substantially more effective: we can talk through ‘mirrors’ (video portals) to others, actually seeing them; we can bring up ‘demons’ (agents) to go find information for us, we can send out commands to make things happen at a distance, we can unveil previously hidden information about the environment to start making conceptual links between there and our understanding to make us smarter.

There’s more required, such as Andi diSessa’s “incremental advantage”, and more accessible ways to specify our intentions, but with really powerful metaphors emerging (styles is something everyone should get their minds around), with gestural interfaces, and the ability to control games with our bodies, and with augmented reality aka Heads-Up Displays for civilians, we’ve got the tools. What we need is the perspectives and the will.

This is important from the point of view of designing new solutions. Years ago, when I taught interface design, I told my students that one of the pieces in their exploration of the design space should be to imagine what they would do when they had ‘magic’. To be more specific, once you’ve gathered the requirements, before you see what others have done and start limiting yourself to pragmatics, imagine what you’d do with no limitations (ok, except mind-reading, I’m just not going there). Given that among our cognitive architectural pre-dispositions is to prematurely converge on solutions, we need lateral input. By exploring the possibilities space in a more unhampered way, we might come across a solution that’s inspired, not tired, and revolutionary, not evolutionary.

This, however, is not just interface design, but specifically learning and performance support design. What would you do if you had magic to help meet your learning and performance needs? Because you have it. Really.

So think magically, not in the trivial sense, but in the sense that we have awesome powers at our command. The limitations are no longer the technology, the limits are between our ears (and, occasionally, in our wallets or will). Go forth and empower!

Mobile as Main Mode

21 May 2010 by Clark 7 Comments

As I was booking my travel to San Diego for the eLearning Guild’s mLearning conference, mLearnCon (June 15-17), I thought about a conference focusing on mobile learning versus the regular, full, elearning conference or even a full training conference (congrats to Training magazine pulling a phoenix). And I wondered how much this is a niche thing versus the whole deal.

Now, I don’t think all of everything needs to be pulled through a mobile device, but the realization I had is that these devices are going to be increasingly ubiquitous, increasingly powerful, and consequently will be the go-to way individuals will augment their ability to work. Similarly, increasingly, workers will be mobile. Combining the two, it may be that support will be expected first on the personal device! While the nature of the way the device will be used will differ, desktops for long periods of time, mobile devices for short access, the way most ‘support’ of tasks will occur will be via mobile devices.

That is, people will use their mobile devices to contact colleagues, look for answers, access materials and tools ‘in the moment’. The benefits of desktops will be tools to do knowledge work, and there will be needs for information access, and colleague access, and collaboration, but increasingly we may want that when and where we want.

I’m thinking mobile could become the default target design, and desktop augments will be possible, versus the other way around. While you might want a desktop for big design work where screen real estate matters. For example, I’m designing diagrams on my iPad. I wouldn’t want to do it on my iPhone, but I am glad to take it with me in a smaller form-factor than a laptop. I may take back and polish on the laptop, but my new performance ecosystem is more distributed. And that’s the point.

Increasingly, we expect at least some access to our information wherever we are. (Yes, there are some folks who still eschew a mobile phone. There are people who still avoid a computer, or even electricity!) Mostly, however, we’re seeing people finding value in augmenting their capabilities digitally. And so, maybe we increasingly need to view augmentation as the baseline, and dedicated capability as the icing on the cake for specialized work.

This may be too much, but I hope you’re seeing that mobile is more than just a niche phenomenon. There are real opportunities on the table, and real benefits to be had. I’m surprised that it took so long, frankly, as I figured mobile was closer to ready-for-prime-time than virtual worlds. Now, however, while there are still compatibility problems, mobile really is ready to rock. Are you?

Performer-focused Integration

17 May 2010 by Clark Leave a Comment

On a recent night, I was part of a panel on the future of technical communication with the local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication, and there were several facets of the conversation that I found really interesting. Our host had pulled together an XML architecture consultant who’s deep into content models (e.g. DITA) and tools, Yas Etassam, and another individual who started a very successful technical writing firm, Meryl Natchez. And, of course, me.

My inclusion shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. The convener had heard me speak on the performance ecosystem (via Enterprise 2.0, with a nod to my ITA colleagues), and I’d included mention of content models, learning experience design, etc. My background in interface design (e.g. studying under Don Norman, as a consequence teaching interface design at UNSW), and work with publishers and adaptive systems using content models, means I’ve been touching a lot of their work and gave a different perspective.

It was a lively session, with us disagreeing and then finding the resolution, both to our edification as well as the audiences. We covered new devices, tools, and movements in corporate approaches to supporting performance, as well as shifts in skill sets.

The first topic that I think is of interest was the perspective they took on their role. They talk about ‘content’ and include learning content as well. I queried that, asking whether they saw their area of responsibility covering formal learning as well, and was surprised to hear them answer in the affirmative. After all, it’s all content. I countered with the expected: “it’s about the experience” stance, to which Meryl replied to the effect of “if I’m working, I just want the information, not an experience”. We reconciled that formal learning, when learners need support for motivation and context, needed the sort of experience I was talking about, but even her situation required the information coming in a way that wasn’t disruptive: we needed to think about the performer experience.

The other facet to this was the organizational structure in this regard. Given the view that it’s all content, I asked whether they thought they covered formal learning, and they agreed that they didn’t deliver training, but often technical writers create training materials: manuals, even online courses. Yet they also agreed, when pushed, that most organizations weren’t so structured, and documentation was separate from training. And we all agreed that, going forward, this was a problem. I pushed the point that knowledge was changing faster than their processes could cope, and they agreed. We also agreed that breaking down those silos and integrating performance support, documentation, learning, eCommunity, and more was increasingly necessary.

This raised the question of what to do about user generated content: I was curious what they saw as their role in this regard. They took on a content management stance, for one, suggesting that it’s content and needed to be stored and made searchable. Yas talked about the powerful systems that folks are using to develop and manage content. We also discussed the analogy to learning in that the move is from content production to content production facilitation.

One of the most interesting revelations for me actually came before the panel in the networking and dinner section, where I learned about Topic-Based Authoring. I’ve been a fan of content models for over a decade now, from back when I was talking about granularity of learning objects. The concept I was promoting was to write tightly around definitions for introduction components, concept presentations, examples, practice items, etc. It takes more discipline, but the upside is much more powerful opportunities to start doing the type of smart delivery that we’re now capable of and even seeing. Topic-based is currently applied for technical needs (e.g. performance support) which is enough reason, but there can and should be educational applications as wellThe technical publications area is a bit ahead on this front. Topic-based authoring is a discipline around this approach that provides the rigor needed to make it work.

Meryl pointed out how the skill set shift needn’t be unitary: there were a lot of areas that are related in their world: executive communications, content management, information architecture, even instructional design is a potential path. The basics of writing were still necessary, but like in our field, facilitation skills for user-generated content may still play a role. The rate of change means that the technical writers, just like instructional designers, won’t be able to produce all the needed information, and that a way for individuals to develop materials would be needed. As mentioned above, Yas just cared that they did the necessary tagging! Which gets into interest system areas about how can we make that process as automatic as possible and minimize the onerous part of the work.

The integration we need is for all those who are performer-focused to not be working in ignorance of (let alone opposition to) each other. Formal learning should be developed in awareness of the job aids that will be used, and vice-versa. The flow from marketing to engineering has to stop forking as the same content gets re-purposed for documentation, customer training, sales training, and customer service, but instead have a coherent path that populates each systematically.

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