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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Measuring the right things

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For sins in my past, I’ve been invited on to our school district’s technology committee.   So, yesterday evening I was there as we were reviewing and rewriting the technology plan (being new to the committee, I wasn’t there when the existing one was drafted).   Broken up into five parts, including curriculum, infrastructure, funding, I was on the professional development section, with a teacher and a library media specialist.   Bear with me, as the principles here are broader than schools.

The good news: they’d broken up goals into two categories, the teacher’s tech skills, and the integration of tech into the curriculum. And they were measuring the tech skills.

The bad news: they were measuring things like percentage of teachers who’d put up a web page (using the district’s licensed software), and the use of the district’s electronic grading system. And their professional development didn’t include support for revising lesson plans.

Houston, we have some disconnects!

So, let’s take a step back.   What matters?   What are we trying to achieve?   It’s that kids learn to use technology as a tool in achieving their goals: research, problem-solving, communication.   That means, their lessons need to naturally include technology use.   You don’t teach the tool, except as ancillary to doing things with it!

What would indicate we were achieving that goal?   An increase in the use of lesson plans that incorporate technology into non-technology topics would be the most direct indicator.   Systematically, across the grade levels.   One of the problems I’ve seen is that some teachers don’t feel comfortable with the technology, and then for a year their students don’t get that repeated exposure.   That’s a real handicap.

However, teacher’s lesson plans aren’t evaluated (!).   They range from systematic to adhoc.   The way teachers are evaluated is that they have to set two action research plans for the year, and they take steps and assess the outcomes (and are observed twice), and that constitutes their development and evaluation.   So, we determined that we could make one of those action research projects focus on incorporating technology (if, as the teacher in our group suggested, we can get the union to agree).

Then we needed to figure out how to get teachers the skills they need.   They were assessed on their computer skills once a year, and courses were available.   However, there was no link between the assessment and courses.   A teacher complained that the test was a waste of time, and then revealed that it’s 15-30 minutes once a year.   The issue wasn’t really the time, it’s that the assessment wasn’t used for the teachers.

And instead of just tech courses, I want them to be working on lesson plans, and, ideally, using the tools to do so.   So instead of courses on software, I suggested that they need to get together regularly (they already meet by grade level, so all fifth grade teachers at a school meet together once a week) and work together on new lesson plans.   Actually, I think they need to dissect some good examples, then take an existing lesson plan and work to infuse it with appropriate technology, and then move towards creating new lesson plans.   To do so, of course, they’ll need to de-emphasize something.

Naturally, I suggested that they use wikis to share the efforts across the schools in the district, but that’s probably a faint hope.   We need to drive them into using the tools, so it would be a great requirement, but the level of technology skills is woefully behind the times.   That may need to be a later step.

One of the realizations is that, on maybe a ten-year window, this problem may disappear: those who can’t or won’t use tech will retire, and the new teachers will have it by nature of the culture.   So it may be a short-term need, but it is critical.   I can’t help feeling sorry for those students who miss a year or more owing to one teacher’s inability to make a transition.

At the end, we presented our results to the group.   We’ll see what happens, but we’ve a new coordinator who seems enthusiastic and yet realistic, so we’ll see what happens.   Fingers crossed! But at least we’ve tried to show how you could go towards important goals within the constraints of the system.   What ends up in the plan remains to be seen, but it’s just a school-level model of the process I advocate at the organizational level.   Identify what the important changes are, and align the elements to achieve it (a bit like ID, really).   If you’re going to bother, do it right, no?

(New) Monday Broken ID Series: Objectives

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Next series post

This is the first in a series of thoughts on some broken areas of ID that I will be posting for Mondays.   The intention is to provide insight into many ways much of instructional design fails, and some pointers to avoid the problems. The point is not to say ‘bad designer‘, but instead to point out how to do better design.

The way I‘ve seen many learning solutions go awry is right at the beginning, focusing on the wrong objective.   Too often the objective is focused on rote knowledge, whether it‘s facts, procedures, or canned statements.   What we see is knowledge dump, or as I‘ve heard it called: show up and throw up.   Then, the associated assessment is similarly regurgitation of what you‘ve just heard.   The reasons this happens, and why it doesn‘t work, are both firmly rooted in the way our brains work.

First, our brains are really bad at rote remembering.   We‘re really good at pattern-matching, and extracting underlying meaning.   That‘s why we use external aids like calendars.   Heck, if it‘s rote knowledge, don‘t make them memorize it, let them look it up, or automate it.   OK, in the rare case where they do have to know it, we can address that, but we overuse this approach.   And that‘s due to the second reason.

Experts don‘t know how they do what they do, by and large.   Our brains ‘compile‘ information; expertise implies becoming so practiced that the process is inaccessible to conscious thought (ask an expert concert pianist to describe what they‘re doing while playing and their performance falls apart).   We found this out in the 80‘s, when we built so-called ‘expert systems‘ to do what experts said they did,   When the systems didn‘t work, we went back and looked at what the experts were really doing, and there was essentially zero correlation between what they said they did, and what they actually did.

What happens, then, is that our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) do recall what they studied, and toss that out.   They‘ll dump a bunch of relevant knowledge on the designer, and the good little designer will develop a course around what the SME tells them.   So, we see objectives like:

Be able to cite common objections to our product.

What‘s needed is to focus on more meaningful outcomes.   Dave Ferguson has written a nice post defending Bloom‘s skill taxonomies, and he‘s largely right when saying that focusing on what people actually do with the knowledge is critical. However, I find it simpler to distinguish, ala Van Merrienboer, between the knowledge the learner needs, and the complex decisions they   apply that knowledge to, with the emphasis on the latter.   So, I’d like to see objectives more like:

Be able to counter customer objections to our product.

The nuances may seem subtle, but the difference is important.

How does a designer do that?   SMEs are not the easiest folks to work with in this regard.   I‘ve found it useful to turn the conversation to focus on the things that the learner needs to be able to do after the learning experience.   That is, ask them what decisions learners need to be able to make that they can’t make know.   Not what they need to know, but what do they need to be able to do.

And, I argue, what will likely be making the difference going forward will be skills: things that learners can do differently, not just what they know.   I recall a case where an organization was not just looking for the learners to understand the organizational values, but to act in accordance with them (and that that meant).   That‘s what I‘m talking about!

When it comes to capturing objectives, I‘m perfectly happy with Mager‘s format of specifying who the audience is, what they need to be able to do, and a way to determine that they‘re successfully performing.   From there, you can work backwards to the assessment, to the concept, examples, and practice that will develop the skills to pass the assessment.

There‘s another step, really, before this, and that‘s determining what decision learners need to make differently or better to impact the bottom line, e.g. choosing objectives that will affect the organization in important ways, but that‘s another topic for another day.

Doing good objectives is both a skill that can be learned, and a process that can be supported.   You should be doing both.   Starting from the right objective makes everything else flow well; if you start on the wrong foot, everything else you do is wasted.   Get your objectives right, and get your learning going!

Predictions for 2009

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Over at eLearn Magazine, Lisa Neal Gualtieri gets elearning predictions for 2009, and they’re reliably interesting. Here’re mine:

The ordinary: Mobile will emerge, not as a major upheaval, but quietly infiltrating our learning experiences. We‘ll see more use of games (er, Immersive Learning Simulations) as a powerful learning opportunity, and tools to make it easier to develop. Social networking will become the ‘go to‘ option to drive performance improvements.

The extraordinary: Semantics will arise; we‘ll start realizing the power of consistent tagging, and start being able to meta-process content to do smart things on our behalf.   And we‘ll start seeing cloud-hosting as a new vehicle for learning services.

I’ve been over-optimistic in the past, for example continuing to believe mobile will make it’s appearance (and it is, but not in the big leap I hoped).   It’s quietly appearing, but interest isn’t matching the potential I’ve described in various places.   I’m not sure if that’s due to a lack of awareness of the potential, or perceptions of the barriers: too many platforms, insufficient tools.

I continue to see interest in games, and naturally I’m excited.   There is still a sadly-persistent view that it’s about making it ‘fun’ (e.g. tarted up drill and kill), while the real issue is attaching the features that drive games (challenge, contextualization, focus on important decisions) and lead to better learning.   Still, the awareness is growing, and that’s a good thing.

And I’ve been riffing quite a lot recently about social networking (e.g. here), as my own awareness of the potential has grown (better late than never :).   The whole issues of enabling organizational learning is powerful.   And I’ve also previously opined about elearning 3.0, the semantic web, so I’ll point you there rather than reiterating.

So there you have it, my optimistic predictions. I welcome your thoughts.

Coping personally, organizationally, and societally

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Having just come back from DevLearn (which rocked; my hearty thanks to all participants and organizers), and now engaged in the Corporate Learning Trends conference (free, online), I’m seeing some repeated themes, and interests.   It’s a busy time, since we‘re deeply engaged in the latter, but some messages are coming through so powerfully that I’ve got to reflect on them.

In this time of economic uncertainty or outright fear, one of the resonant themes is ‘how to cope’. Marcia Conner, one of our forward thinkers, is going to be talking about the topic of coping tomorrow at 10 AM PT, and I’m looking forward to it!I believe that’s important at the societal level as well.   We need to invest in our capabilities when things are down so we’re poised to capitalize on the upswing. Jay invited me to share his breakfast byte at DevLearn on the topic.

We brainstormed with the attendees, and came up with some interesting points.   At the personal level was to be nimble, strategic, and develop yourself.   Tony Karrer talked today about investing in knowing how to use the tools effectively, building upon all the tools that Robin Good and Jane Hart had described yesterday (simply amazing tools).

The organization level of that is to develop infrastructure and capability.   Dave Pollard today talked about moving from Knowledge Management 1.0 to 2.0, empowering people to self-help. What can you do to foster creativity and innovation on a shoestring when you can’t cope with full-fledged initiatives?   Can you get a small social networking tool initiative going that can help people help each other?

A couple of recurrent themes were selling this to management, and managing the proliferation of tools.   For the former, I reckon it’s about helping more than just novices, but providing self-help.   It depends, of course, on what your needs are and consequently what you choose to implement, but the outcomes can clearly be linked to organizational goals and problems, like reducing time-to-information, increasing productive collaboration, and sharing.   For the problem of tracking the tools, I think the key are the needed affordances.   I’ve been focused on finding the affordances of the tools, but it’s another thing to think about the affordances an organization needs and map tools into them.   Briefly, it’s about collaborative representations (prose, graphics), pointers to relevant topics, etc.   More work to be done here, I reckon.

These topics are being discussed at the Corporate Learning Trends social site this week (and ongoing, hopefully) and you can join in.

Note that I think these are relevant societally as well.   We developed some serious infrastructure through the WPA, and the Interstates, and it’s crumbling.   At some point you need to build it back up (rebuild differently?) to meet the needs.   That may increasingly be things like networks (and healthcare) as well as things like bridges.   I think this is key to thinking about how to invest for the tough times; focus internally until times get good again and be poised to rebound.   It’s like your body rebuilding while you’re asleep so you can restart the new day. Of course, you need to have hoarded the resources.   May be a way short-term shareholder returns damage long-term survivability?

Here’s hoping the economic situation is short and mercifully gentle, and that you all survive and prosper!

First eLearning?

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This month’s Big Question from the Learning Circuit’s blog is, basically, where do you begin?   Of course, that begs the question: what do you already know? Design, ID, a tool, ?

However, it appears that the question sort of assumes a preexisting master’s in ID/IT.   Which, if it’s done well, includes several different tools, lots of ID, a whiff of interface design, some experience prototyping different types of interactions (sync, games, etc), and one major project with project planning, prototyping, testing, and production.   Which, of course, is a dream.

Regardless, I’d recommend Clive Shepherd’s 30 60 minute Master’s (NB: you have to open an account), my own 7 Step Program (PDF) on the reading side.   Then I’d recommend taking a topic and storyboarding, testing, refining, prototyping, testing, and refining.   All before you actually start building.   I don’t really care how you prototype: it can be PPT, raw html, whatever.   Or a rapid elearning tool, but don’t put hands to a development tool ’til it’s mapped out on paper (you don’t want to prematurely converge on what the tool makes easy until you’ve figured out the best design).

For production, there are lots of tools out there. Apparently Udutu is free to author in, and there are lots of tools out there, SmartBuilder, Lectora, etc.   Whatever your org already has it’s mitts on.   Of course, if you’ve gone more creative in your design, you might need to actually work in, say, Flash.

But get the design right first; as I say, “if you get the design right, there are lots of ways to implement it, but if you don’t get the design right, it doesn’t matter how you implement it!”

Design: final heuristics

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Part 4 of the 4 part series:

Here‘re the final suite of heuristics I came up with many years ago as a result of looking at our design process and the barriers our cognitive architecture can put in our own way.

Full Spectrum Design: One of the most insidious problems observed in educational multimedia is a tendency to incorporate all the solution into the computer.   The system will be the repository of all the text, sound, graphics, etc, and the instruction.   Unfortunately, this does not properly reflect what’s known about reading text on screen and the role of the teacher.   In conjunction with the No Limits Analysis, another way to get the best design is to consider the full spectrum of media, particularly considering delivering text on paper, having the instruction accomplished by an instructor, etc.   The proper use of the term multimedia is to consider all the available media and their use and to distribute the instructional task across all of them.

No Limits Analysis: After assembling a team, the first step in the design process is analysis, and an important component is proper information gathering to ensure that all relevant possible sources of inspiration have been considered.   However, before we consider what others have done in the same, we should see what we come up with when we think as if there were no limits.   This occurs after the pedagogical problem has been identified but before other examples are considered.   The step is to consider how the problem would be addressed if there were no technological limitations, as if anything could be accomplished as if by magic. Arthur C. Clarke said “any truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and we‘re really at the stage where the barriers are our imaginations, not the technology.   So stop and think what an ideal solution would be.   You may not be able to achieve what you imagine, but you certainly can‘t if you don‘t identify that option, and you‘ll prematurely limit the solution space.

Kitchen Sink Analysis: After the No Limits Analysis, comes the systematic consideration of other corners of the design space or other relevant prototypes for modification.   Lewis & Reiman suggested that “plagiarism” is an appropriate design strategy (as far as your lawyers would let you, as they cautioned), where ideas are lifted from existing designs rather than reinventing the wheel.   An expansion to this concept is to not only look at what others have done but to also consider how instruction might proceeded without computer support, what theory suggests as an approach, etc.   In short, the suggestion is to exhaustively search all potential sources of input into the design process, including the proverbial ‘kitchen sink’.   This process is both to help populate the design space and discover all constraints.

And let me add one other that I didn‘t explicitly include before:
Lateral input:   Research on brainstorming and creativity (cf D Bono), has shown that besides being systematic and covering all the known or plausible solutions, lateral thinking is valuable. After you‘ve been exhaustive within the box, find ways to get ‘outside the box‘.   Use random inspirations: play a game, doodle, get some random input!   Get silly!   It may not be politically correct anymore, but back when I worked for a learning game company, the CEO (hi, Sky!), used to bring in pizza and beer on Friday afternoon and have some idea sessions!   There are lots of tools and approaches, just make sure you make some concerted effort here.

OK, that‘s it for this series on design.   I hope these past few posts give you some useful guidance or ideas.   I welcome your own!

First: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-design-as-search/

Second: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-our-barriers/

Third: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-the-first-heuristics/

To-Learn Lists?

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The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question of the Month is about To-Learn lists: whether they make sense, how to implement them, etc.   Interesting question.   On the face of it, it seems useful: identifying and focusing on explicit and specific learning goals.   In practice, do they make sense? Do they even exist?

i would suggest that they do exist, and that every time a manager and employee agree on a development plan, there’s at least an implicit To-Learn list.   Obviously, a competency path in an LMS is similarly a formal TL list. And we have an implicit one when we sign up for a course, whether online or face-to-face, buy a book on a topic, or access an online tutorial, FAQ, help page, etc.

I do think that being explicit about learning is valuable, hence my focus on meta-learning, and having clear goals is a way to make them happen.   On the other hand, I think many of our learning goals are small and immediate (like my desire to figure out how to fix the CSS on my website and this blog).   Would it make sense to capture them in the context and generalize them to be thought of at other times?   Probably, and consequently another way we could use our mobile tools to make us more effective (I regularly capture ToDos in my mobile devices, which is why the iPhone is still making me crazy!). And there have been times I’ve put things to look up into my ToDo (though these days I often just look them up in the moment).

So, I think they’re a great idea, maybe not separate from ToDos in general, but worth thinking of as a sub-category, and worth taking the effort to make explicit.   Little bits of learning over the long haul: slow learning!

Distributed Learning

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Distributed learning is an idea that I think offers an untapped potential, what with the new technologies we have.   I’m not talking here about distance learning, but instead a combination of slow learning with ubiquitous learning.   The idea is to combine learning on the go and on-demand with a long term relationship, personalized awareness, and mixed media.   Think of it as cloud computing for your learning goals.

There are strong reasons for spreading learning over time (Will Thalheimer‘s got a whole white paper on it) –   think drip irrigation.   We can use technology to do this in a contextually relevant way; not just random elements, but wrapped around the events in our life.   With some knowledge of our schedule, and our learning goals, a system could pop out little relevant bits of learning to develop us over time.

Imagine that you’ve learning goals about communication, and about coaching.   Assume, for the moment, an imaginary curriculum that places ‘authenticity’ after ‘understanding the other’s point’, and that you’ve completed the latter.   Then, before a business meeting with a potential new contact, you might get a message to “‘say what you mean, mean what you say, without being mean‘, after you ensure you’ve heard them”   that comes in right before the meeting.   After the meeting you might be connected to a coach/mentor, to see how it went.

Later that same day, you’ve got a review meeting with one of your reports, and as your coaching curriculum’s next topic is “focus on behavior, not person”, you get not only a relevant message beforehand, but a customized job aid to take with you (filled out with the individual’s last details and your particular area to work on), and a self-evaluation form afterward.

Which is not to say you don’t also have the opportunity to request particular information beforehand, so there might be a custom ‘pull’ portal available to you with things you’re likely to need (in addition to the general search tools you already have).   A smart system might recognize that it’s been too long since some knowledge has been applied, and choose to send you some challenge to keep the knowledge active, at least until it’s part of your internalized repertoire.

Why is this of interest?   It’s about developing people over time, in the ways they want (an individual should could choose their goals, though there could be ones also negotiated with an employer).   It’s about taking advantage of your life’s occurences, not removing oneself from it to learn.   It’s being contextualized sensitive to not only where you are, but ‘when’ you are.   It’s about being opportunistic, effective, and efficient, rather than intrusive, effortful, and minimally effective.   Which is not to say that there might not be more concerted chunks, particularly at the beginning, or at major inflection points, but it’s the optimal blend – an information model, not an industrial model.

We’ve got the capability (Clarke’s “any truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”), but we need the will and the resources.   Anyone game?

eLearning 2.0

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During the 1st day of Mark and Brent’s Collaboration summer seminar, they got folks active: starting blogs, wikis, webtops, etc.   They’re doing a great job:

c2sss

Naturally, in addition to the tactical questions (“how do I move this tab”?), the conceptual questions started: when do you use a blog versus a wiki, how do you make sense of all the options out there.

Now, as part of my performance ecosystem, I think blogs are a personal reflection or a history (as I told an attendee, it would be great for capturing a ‘war story’), whereas wikis are for collaboration to create a unified view of something (e.g. the way to tune a network).   I don’t think blogs support a rich discussion and aren’t that collaborative.   Also, one of the problems I see is that we often forget old tools in the excitement of new tools: discussion boards are a great way to have an ongoing conversation; you don’t need some new tool for this. Yet wikis are really good for capturing the output of a collaboration.

Also recently I’ve been having conversations with folks about integrating tools to meet larger needs.   Ning is a tool that provides ways for individuals to have profiles, to have forums, to list events, etc.   Increasingly, LMSs also have these capabilities.

The interesting thing is the great spate of tools out there: Google, Central Desktop, Zoho, Wetpaint, PBWiki, an ever growing list. There are suites of web meeting apps, web-based productivity tools, etc. How do you make sense of it? I think there’s another ‘bubble’ with these, and eventually a bunch will fail and out of the ashes a few will persist.   The good thing, I think, is that by getting your hands dirty with a variety of these, you’ll access some generalized skills.   And web apps are not going away.

I believe training anybody on any particular tool (even the seemingly ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite), is the wrong way to go.   Talk to them about the skill (writing, creating presentations, etc), and then give some assignments across a couple of different tools.   This gives you transferrable skills, which will equip you to communicate and collaborate regardless of the latest wave of tools.   And that’s what’s important, in this day of increasing change.

Learning by doing

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Well, this weekend was an interesting one.   On Saturday morning I not only resurrected my site, but got my Twitter experiment advanced by managing to insert a tweet feed into the blog sidebar. Of course, it formats strangely, and I haven’t been able to fix it yet.   I tried using the span command, but around the Javascript it didn’t seem to work.

Then it was changing the bathroom light fixtures.   Successfully, following on a recent toilet replacement exercise.   In between was an absolutely great block party our neighbors organized, with activities for the kids, food and drink for all.   Learnings from each exercise!

One of the things I tweaked to was that if we sit down and start using the right tool for the job, have patience and persistence, and be willing to stop and think, we can get more done that we thought, we just have to be brave (he stays, still in anxiety mode over making a deck on the slope in the backyard).   Of course, we’re benefited to the extent we see more standards in tools and equipment (I like that they’re standardizing on electrical hardware, which makes it pretty much plug-and-play, even if it took some creativity to end-run two different boxes in two different bathrooms, ahem).   Slowly but surely, the house is being transformed.

The second learning is on community.   By pulling together all the neighbors on our cul-de-sac, we’re building an awareness of each other, which supports us helping each other.   The usual suspects pitched in, and some new folks were invited to join.   It was a lovely evening though the breeze picked up to the point where people started heading out for sweaters before coming back.   I had to think: why can’t the whole world be getting together in their neighborhood and having a party?   Of course, it’s hard when they’re bullets flying by, bombs going off, etc.   Sigh.   Still, creating the right environment for getting together creates the right environment for sharing, and that’s where learning happens.

So, use the right tools, set the right context, and be willing to work and reflect and improve and continue on.   Hope you too had a good weekend!