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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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VideoConferencing and Mobile

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“Father, it’s been too many days since my last blog”, but it’s been a bit hectic. I’ve been dealing with some presentations, and more to come. Yesterday, one of them was a video conference for the Graduate School of Education (if I understand correctly!) at ITESM (Institute Technologica).
VideoConference

Here you can see the setup, I was in a video conference center, and I could control whether they saw me or my slides, and I could see them. Well, actually, some of them, as others were at satellite centers. I’m not an experienced video presenter (I do a lot of webinars, like tomorrow’s eLearning Guild Online Forum introducing eLearning, but it’s my first videoconference), but tried to balance some of me talking to them directly (they had a translator, I don’t speak Spanish unfortunately) with my usual diagrams and voice over (their system wouldn’t allow them to see both me and my slides at the same time). They’re quite advanced technologically, even telling me before we began that they’re making mobile a part of their learning solutions, with vidcasts and audcasts as well as quizzes.

Which was relevant, as they’d asked me to speak on mobile learning. I spoke to mobile design, my pet passion, and emphasized as I have in the eLearning Guild’s mobile research report that you have to ‘think different’, not about courses, but about performance support. They asked some very good questions afterwards, including what competencies learners should have (to be effective self-directed learners, and not to take that for granted but scaffold it), how mobile could be incorporated into universities (separate content from display, while using more open tools), and what content makes sense for mobile (interactive, reactivating, not content dump).

In one sense, I missed that I didn’t get a trip to Monterrey, Mexico (love to see new places, particularly ones with good food!), but it was a learning experience both in the new medium for me, and of course in thinking anew about the topic. Every time I present, there’re always new thoughts, even if it’s the same topic, though I try to get to speak on new things to challenge myself (one of my learning strategies). Of course, I also offer to host one of my well-reviewed workshops on game or mobile design, as well.   For instance, I’m talking about emotional elearning and mapping tools to learning needs at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn (in San Jose CA), about eLearning Strategy for SENA (in Columbia, this time I do get a trip), and on learning technology futures in Copenhagen for the Danish Research Network (another trip!). What would you like to hear about?

Critical Thinking

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Harold Jarche writes about the need for critical thinking, and has a map of the skills mapped to particular tools. I agree, and added:

I‘ve been a fan of critical thinking for years, since I was a grad student and TA‘d for Jean Mandler‘s class on it. We used Diane Halpern‘s book as a text, and that approach is still relevant.

I think we need to do more, however. Just having the tools isn‘t enough. To develop new skills, we need support: motivation, examples, guided practice. The received wisdom is that it has to be layered on to authentic tasks. Of course, I say build it into a game! (there‘s a bit in Quest).

I sympathize with [] cynicism, but I believe it can be taught, and there‘s evidence to support my position. But we do it by making it a priority (before college), and making it part of what we test (meaning a whole new type of testing, but that‘s what we need anyway).

We need to build critical thinking on top of our systems, into our content (Pellegrino’s brilliant article for the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has a section on this, it’s available from this page), and make it a priority. Not to put too big a point on it, our future’s at stake!

Digital Gibberish

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I have to admit that I‘m a contrarian sometimes, and this Digital Native Digital Immigrant thing was cute for a while, even useful for some awareness raising, but at the end of the day, I think it‘s false. The premise is that kids are growing up with a digital world, and that the multi-tasking nature of their lives is different leading to different expectations. The more sophisticated version of the argument is based in Vygotskian forms of psychology, where the tools you use change the way you think.

Consequently, we see calls for more use of media, games, community, etc. There‘s a push for shorter, more engaging content, less verbosity and more ‘presentation‘, etc. All good things, but for the wrong reasons.

This is a topic I‘m willing to be wrong on, but so far I don‘t see it. The extension to the Vygotskian argument is that it would have to be a whole new culture, but this sub-culture is still grounded in the prevailing mind-set of 21st century earth. So, wherever it‘s flourishing, it‘s still not fundamentally different.

Here‘s why: we still have the same wetware, and we‘re still processing the same languages and viewpoints. It‘s evolutionary, not revolutionary. Yes, there are and will be changes from an environment where more people can share their viewpoint (and see the controversy over Andrew Keen‘s view that the internet is destroying culture), but it‘ll be gradual, and from a learning point of view what‘s best is still what‘s best.

The funny thing is, all the stuff they‘re touting for the digital generation is really what‘s best for the older generation too (ecommunity, immersive simulations, rich media). We just couldn‘t do it before. So it‘s a fun argument to lobby for doing what‘s right, but it‘s based upon a false premise and that I can‘t abide.

It‘s ironic that I, who‘ve generally been a rebel (e.g. my views are further apart from the mainstream than either major party is from each other), am coming down with such a ‘establishment‘ view, but it‘s what my reason tells me. I‘m happy to be wrong, so let me know where I‘ve missed it.

Partner & customize

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April’s Learning Circuits blog big question is: ILT and Off-the-Shelf Vendors – What Should They Do? The problem is that ILT and OTS vendors are producing canned product in an increasingly flexible and changing world. Their products take time to develop, and there’s much competition from what you can find free-to-air on the web. What’s a vendor to do?

I believe there’s a pyramid of basic business stuff at the bottom, vertical market specialization in the middle, and then there’s organization-proprietary stuff at the top. The top should be custom-developed in house. Another cut through this is the stuff that every novice needs to know, the middle ground where practitioners need updates as things change, and then at the top there’s the ongoing negotation of understanding among experts. This is a framework that has helped me think through the tools we use for elearning, but also helps me think through how to address this problem.

There are several sorts of basic business needs: specific tool skills (e.g. spreadsheet use), basic business comprehension (e.g. ROI, Sarbanes-Oxley), and interpersonal skills (e.g. communication, negotiation). At the next level up, we have vertical market specifics, such as financial (e.g. what defines ‘insider trading’) and health (e.g. federal regulatory procedures). I think there’s a role for vendors of shelfware in both these markets. However, they’ve got to get better, as most of what I’ve seen isn’t informed by what we know about learning.

So, for instance, the ILT vendors need to wrap the F2F experience with preparation, and subsequently support the learners afterwards, ideally creating a community. And the software vendors need to find ways to tap into the benefits of social learning, by having at least virtual meetings, and again building community.

So the ILT and OTS folks ought to partner, and distribute what’s best done asynchronously through OTS stuff and what’s done better F2F. Also, we probably need to find new business models. For example, training for software and processes should be provided free by the tool vendors. So the shelfware vendors need to develop it in conjunction with the tool/service vendors. I think, similarly, that vertical markets should create associations that partner with a vendor to get cost-effective solutions developed to serve those markets (and that’s happening). Those will be the only roles for shelfware vendors, and they’ll be limited.

Other than that, those hoping to build a library and milk it like a cash cow are probably doomed unless they are the ones that create the demonstrably superior learning that’s optimally efficient in time, optimally effective in outcome, and optimally engaging in experience. Pine & Gilmore tell us that the next step beyond the experience economy is the transformation economy, experiences that change us in ways we are interested in (and that’s what Engaging Learning is all about!). And those that do create it will be the ones who partner with vendors or associations, or own the market in that space.

eLearnMag’s 2007 predictions

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Lisa Neal over at eLearnMag has got a number of top elearning folks to make their predictions for the industry in 2007. Since she didn’t include me (she’s promised to next year ;), I’ll lob my own here.

I think gaming’s crossed over to the mainstream, whether you call it Serious Games, Immersive Learning Simulations, or what have you. More tools are supporting at least the level of Branching Scenarios (Captivate, SimWriter, SmartBuilder, to name a few). Coupled with the eLearning Guild‘s forthcoming report on the topic, I expect by the end of the year there will be quite a few more in place or under development. And I expect thinking through when to use them will have an impact on the quality of the instructional design overall.

I also (finally) see the mobile movement making strides. I’m not sure the average training group really gets the potential yet, but I’m hoping it will cross the chasm this year, and predicting we’ll have several more really great examples. Unfortunately, I don’t see Apple opening up the iPod or the new iPhone to allow us to put learning apps on there, but the tools to use mobile phones and smartphones as learning augments, not elearning lite(tm), are becoming practical and able to link back to LMS/LCMS’.

Finally, I expect to see more strategic approaches to using technology to augment performance, stepping through a richer focus including performance support with job aids (ala Allison Rossett’s new book), eCommunity, single-sourcing, and informal learning. While I think this will be more idiosyncratic than systemic, I think the beginning of the wave will be seen.

I do hope it’s a great year for one and all, and the best yet for using technology to really impact our ability to innovate, solve problems, and make the world a better place.

Technical Communication

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Last week I presented at the DocTrain conference on customizing information. This is a conference for technical communicators interested in documentation and training. On exhibit were a wide variety of content management systems and content development, QA, and other tools. My presentation followed JoAnn Hackos’ keynote about the importance of structure in content, and included a mention of DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture which provides a way to describe the structure of content in meaningful ways that synergize with ontologies and topic maps as ways to describe what the content’s about.

JoAnn was gracious in person, and eloquent about the power of models for content. This was a great setup for my talk about how to exploit models of content, task, user, and context to create customized information delivery (Wayne Hodgins’ the Right Stuff: the right information to the right person in the right place at the right time in the right way on the right device…).

However, the message didn’t really seem to take hold (except for one gent who didn’t have a business card).

Now, I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me. I was on about games for a couple of years before I started getting traction, and the same pattern was seen with mobile several years before it took off (which is just now beginning to make headway). So maybe the idea is still ahead of it’s time?

Or maybe I didn’t seed the ground well enough at the beginning. I’m also willing to believe it may be partly my presentation, which can be a bit conceptual at times (I’m working on it, OK?). And it may not have been quite the right audience, perhaps more the communicators and the administrators instead of the managers.

So, I’m willing to let this one instance go, but not the whole idea. We can’t just trust to Jay Cross’ Informal Learning, much as that’s necessary (and Jay gets this, working with me as he has on meta-learning). We can’t just create an ecosystem of learning resources, though we need to do this too, but we also need to educate our folks about how to use the system, and we also need to optimize information flows for and to them. And we do this through models, with logic to glue them together.

Not sure where to carry this message forward, but it’s part of the push to stop the silo separation: documentation separate from training separate from support. It’s about performance, at the end of the day, and as long as we don’t have that overall perspective that integrates the elements, we’ll keep having redundant content development, proliferating portals, and confused and ineffective performers.

Running a pervasive game

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There was mayhem in the streets of Palo Alto yesterday as teams of players chased the clues to solve a mystery. At the Institute For the Future we ran a pervasive game as an example of the topic of this month’s meeting. Credit goes to Jim Schuyler of Red7 for organizing and leading the team who developed the game, and implemented it in his FIT environment for just such purposes. Not a learning game, but definitely fun and it *could* be.

Nicole Lazarro of Xeo Design who I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, Mads Rydahl of Planet (a Scandinavian game design firm), and Mike Love from IFTF all helped Jim and I create the design, which was tested, refined, and then run. The game included props such as posters on notice boards, clues to be sent in by phone, and confederates hanging out.

We had an inside team manning the web browser while 3 different teams (each doing the same thing, to have the right group size, but there’s no technical reason they couldn’t have different tasks) ran around figuring out puzzles and text-messaging them to the game system which gave them the next task. At times, interaction with the inside team was required.

It was tough; not all teams solved the puzzles in the allotted time (we had to go back for the presentations by Nicole and myself, and discussion: her on the 4 emotional keys, me on learning games), but the interaction was well-received. Competitive spirits came into play as well as the thrill of discovery (Nicole’s ‘fiero’), and frustration. It wasn’t perfect, given that it was thrown together by a volunteer team in a short period of time, but it worked: 1 team managed to save the day (accomplishing the final rescue), and a good time was had by all.

It was a great learning experience, both in working with others on the design and in watching the players (I followed one team around). In addition to Nicole’s model, Mads was quite keen on having the boundaries between the game action and the real world blur. This actually happened not only by design, but also by circumstance; but a police officer was in the building as the teams left (the mystery was solving a theft), and the confederate’s bike was stolen while he was talking to the team!

There’s great potential in this for marketing (the gelato store built into the plotline did a rousing business on a blazing hot day from the team members), learning, as well as just plain fun. If we believe Pine & Gilmore that the next step beyond the experience economy will be the transformation economy, this will be one of the tools in our repertoire.