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In conversations, I’ve begun to suspect that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem facing designers wishing to do truly good, deep, design, is client expectations. That is, a belief that if we’re provided with the appropriate information, we can crank out a solution. Why, don’t you just distribute the information across the screen and add a quiz? While there are myriad problems, such as lack of knowledge of how learning works, etc, folks seem to think you can turn around a course in two weeks. Thus, I’m led to ponder if time is the biggest problem.

In the early days of educational technology, it was considered technically difficult. Thus, teams worked on instantiations: instructional designers, media experts, technologists. Moreover, they tested, refined, and retested. Over time, the tools got better. You still had teams, but things could go faster. You could create a draft solution pretty quickly, with rapid tools. However, when people saw the solutions, they were satisfied. It looks like content and quizzes, which is what school is, and that’s learning, right? Without understanding the nuances, it’s hard to tell well-produced learning from well-designed and well-produced learning. Iteration and testing fell away.

Now, folks believe that with a rapid tool and content, you can churn out learning by turning the handle. Put content into the hopper, and out comes courses. This was desirable from a cost-efficiency standpoint. This gets worse when we fail to measure impact. If we’re just asking people whether they like it, we don’t really know if it’s working. There’s no basis to iterate! (BTW, the correlation for learner assessment of learning quality, and the actual quality, is essentially zero.)

For the record, an information dump and knowledge test is highly unlikely to lead to any significant change in behavior (which is what learning we are trying to accomplish). We need is meaningful practice, and to get that right requires a first draft, and fine tuning. We know this, and yet we struggle to find time and resources to do it, because of expectations.

These expectations of speed, and unrealistic beliefs in quality, create a barrier to actually achieving meaningful outcomes. If folks aren’t willing to pay for the time and effort to do it right, and they’re not looking at outcomes, they will continue to believe that what they’re spending isn’t a waste.

I’ve argued before that what might make the biggest impact is measurement. That is, we should be looking to address some measurable problem in the org and not stop until we have addressed it. With that, it becomes easier to show that the quick solutions aren’t having the needed impact. We need evidence to support making the change, but I reckon we also need to raise awareness. If we want to change perception, and the situation, we need to ensure that others know time is the biggest problem. Do you agree?

I’ve argued both that Learning Experience Design (LXD) is an improvement on Instructional Design (ID), and that LXD is the  elegant integration of learning science with engagement. However, that doesn’t really unpack what are the critical ID/LXD differences. I think it’s worth looking at those important distinctions both in principle and practice. Here, I’m talking about the extensions to what’s already probably in place.

Principle

In principle, I think it’s the engagement part that separates the two. True, proper ID shouldn’t ignore it. However, there’s been too little attention. For instance, only one ID theorist, John Keller, has really looked at those elements. Overall, it’s too easy to focus purely on the cognitive. (Worse, of course, is a focus purely on knowledge, which really  isn’t good ID).

I suggest that this manifests in two ways. First, you need an initial emotional ‘hook’ to gain the learner’s commitment to the learning experience. Even before we open them up cognitively (though, of course, they’re linked)! Then, we need to manage emotions through out the experience. We want to do thinks like keep challenge balanced, anxiety low enough not to interfere, build confidence, etc.

We have tools we can use, like story, exaggeration, humor, and more to assist us in these endeavors. At core, however, what we’re focusing on is making it a true ‘experience’, not just an instructional event. Ideally, we’d like to be transformational, leaving learners equipped with new skills and the awareness thereof.

Practice

What does this mean in practice? A number of things. For one, it takes creativity to consider ways in which to address emotions. There are research results and guidance, but you’ll still want to exercise some exploration. Which also means you have to be iterative, with testing. I understand that this is immediately scary, thinking about costs. However, when you stop trying to use courses for everything, you’ll have more resources to do courses right. For that matter, you’ll actually be achieving outcomes, which is a justification for the effort.

Our design process needs to start gathering different information. We need to get performance objectives; what people actually need to do, not just what they need to know. You really can’t develop people if you’re not having them perform and getting feedback. You also need to understand  why this is needed, why it’s important, and why it’s interesting. It is, at least to the subject matter experts who’ve invested the time to  be experts in this…

Your process also needs to have those creative breaks. These are far better if they’re collaborative, at least at the times when you’re ideating. While ideally you have a team working together on an ongoing basis, in many cases that may be problematic. I suggest getting together at least at the ideating stage, and then after testing to review findings.

You’ll also want to be testing against criteria. At the analysis stage, you should design criteria that will determine when you’re ‘done’. When you run out of time and money is  not the right answer! Test usability first, then effectiveness, and then engagement. Yes, you want to quantify engagement. It doesn’t have to be ‘adrenaline in the blood’ or even galvanic skin response, subjective evaluations by your learners is just fine. If you are running out of time and money before you’re achieving your metrics, you can adjust them, but now you’re doing it on consciously, not implicitly.

I’m sure there more that I’m missing, but these strike me as some critical ID/LXD differences. There are differences in principle, which yield differences in practice. What are your thoughts?

It’s become obvious (even to me) that there are a host of teachers moving to L&D. There are also a number of initiatives to support them. Naturally, I wondered what I could do to assist. With my reputation as a cynic apparently well-secured, I’m choosing to call out some bad behaviors. So here are some superstitions for new practitioners to watch out for!

As background, these aren’t the myths that I discuss in my book on the topic. That would be too obvious. Instead, I’m drawing on the superstitions from the same tome, that is things that people practice without necessarily being aware, let alone espousing them. No, these manifest through behaviors and expectations rather than explicit exhortation.

• Giving people information will lead them to change. While we know this isn’t true, it still seems to be prevalent. I’ve argued before about why I think this exists, but what matters is what it leads to. That is, information dump and knowledge-test courses. What instead we need is not just a rationale, but also practice and then ongoing support for the change.
• If it looks like school, it’s learning. We’ve all been to school, and thus we all know what learning looks like, right? Except many school practices are only useful for passing tests, not for actually solving real problems and meeting real goals. (Only two things wrong: the curriculum and the pedagogy, otherwise school’s fine.) It, however, creates barriers when you’re trying to create learning that actually works. Have people look at the things they learned outside of school (sports, hobbies, crafts, etc) for clues.
• People’s opinion is a useful metric for success. Too often, we just ask ‘did you like it’. Or, perhaps, a ‘do you think it was valuable’. While the latter is better than the former, it’s still not good enough. The correlation between people’s evaluation of the learning and the actual impact is essentially zero. At least for novices. You need more rigorous criteria, and then test to achieve.
• A request for a course is a sufficient rationale to make one. A frequent occurrence is a business unit asking for a course. There’s a performance problem (or just the perception of one), and therefore a course is the answer. The only problem is that there can be many reasons for a performance problem that have nothing to do with knowledge or skill gaps. You should determine what the performance gap is (to the level you’ll know when it’s fixed), and the cause.  Only when the cause is a skill gap does a course really make sense.
• A course is always the best answer. See above; there are  lots  of reasons why performance may not be up to scratch: lack of resources, wrong incentives, bad messaging, the list goes on. As Harless famously said, “Inside every fat course there‘s a thin job aid crying to get out.” Many times we can put knowledge in the world, which makes sense because it’s actually  hard to get information and skills reliably in the head.
• You can develop meaningful learning in a couple of weeks. The rise of rapid elearning tools and a lack of understanding of learning has led to the situation where someone will be handed a stack of PPTs and PDFs and a rapid authoring tool and expected to turn out a course. Which goes back to the first two problems. While it might take that long to get just a first version, you’re not done. Because…
• You don’t need to test and tune. There’s this naive expectation in the industry that if you build it, it is good. Yet the variability of people, the uncertainty of the approach, and more, suggest that courses should be trialed, evaluated, and revised until actually achieving the necessary change. Beware the ‘build and release’ approach to learning design, and err on the side of iterative and agile.

This isn’t a definitive list, but hopefully it’ll help address some of the worst practices in the industry. If you’re wary of these superstitions for new practitioners, you’ll likely have a more successful career. Fingers crossed and good luck!

There’s some overlap here with messages to CXOs  1 and 2, but a different target here.