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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Practicing the Preach

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I’m working on my next plan for global domination. And as I do, I’ve been developing my thinking, and there are some interesting outcomes. Including a realization that I wasn’t doing what I usually recommend. And I also believe that you should ‘show your work‘. So here I’m practicing the preach.

First, I’m developing my understanding, getting concrete about it. I usually use Omnigraffle as a diagramming tool, to represent my conceptual understandings. And I started doing that as part of the ‘developing thinking’ part. But I started with a diagram, and took the elements out and mindmapped them, and threw in other bits. In short, the ‘diagram’ has become a visual place to store bits and pieces of different diagrams, representations, mindmap, prose, or more. As well as outlining elsewhere. But it’s working out for me, so I thought I’d share.

The overall visualization gives me a place, like a business canvas, to drop stuff on and rearrange. It’s a ‘thinking tool’. I’m also copying part of the the activity map and linking things together to capture the actual flow between content and activities. Etc. A virtual whiteboard, I guess.

Second, one of the things to represent was how this would be communicated. Whether a course, or interactive ebook, or whatever, I want to create a flow. And I realized an activity map might make sense. I haven’t done this before (I’ve used storyboards and diagrams), but I find it interesting. Here’s the current status.

Across the top are the various stages (Introduction, the Principles, the resulting learning Elements, the associated Process, and the Closing). Your stages may vary.  Along the side are the different components (the Content topics, the associated practice Activities, the Emotions I to be evoked, the Stories to tell, and the Tools). I think putting in ’emotion’ is an important step! And then I can drop text bits into the intersections.

Finally, as I started developing the associated content, I realized one thing I advocate is backwards design. That is, envision the performance and how it’s distributed across tools and brains. Then, I realized I hadn’t designed the tools first! I’m going back and doing that. So it’s now in the activity map as well ;).

Just thought I’d share this, practicing the preach, and hope that you find it interesting, if not useful. Feedback welcome!

 

A mlearning course?

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As I mentioned in my last post, yes, I’ll be running a course on mobile learning (starts next week! 😱). And I can understand if you’re thinking “a mlearning course?”   So I thought I’d lay out the thinking a bit, and see if I can help you see why I’m doing this.

So, I don’t usually do things just for money. I’ve turned down things I thought were inappropriate in the past. (Which is amongst the reasons I’m not rich! ;) I try to do things that I think are needed.

And that’s part of the reason I’m doing it the way I am: the folks I’m doing it with. Michael Allen’s established a reputation for quality in learning, advocating for good design in print and talks, and living it in his work. We’ve had a good relationship, endorsing each other’s books ;), but working with him on the Serious eLearning Manifesto reinforced that not is he smart and committed, but just a great guy. So doing the course with the Allen Academy ensured that I could trust the integrity of what we’d do.

So isn’t mobile learning already in place? You’d think so, since my book on the topic came out nine years ago, and is already out of print! (And it was a good book  and  since I based it on the cognitive principles, it’s still relevant. It’s also now available again (at a much improved price).   However, I was recently asked to give a mobile talk by the local chapter. When I opined that mobile is old, the organizer let me know “it may be old for you, but not for everybody!”   So there’s still a need!

And, of course, the content is relevant. I derive the course form cognitive principles, so even if the tech changes (and it has) the foundations are transferrable. Whether you’re talking about tablets, phones, or watches, the implications are apt.

So what  will it cover? Here’re the topics of the six weeks:

  1. Introduction. Defining mobile, and some overarching concepts that will guide the rest: the 4Cs, and four major categories of use.
  2. Formal learning. The first of the four categories, and it’s  not about courses on a phone. We’ll look at augmenting  formal learning.
  3. Performance support. We’re looking at why it’s mobile’s natural niche, and what makes it work.
  4. Social/informal. Here we’re looking at going beyond optimizing performance and moving to continual learning and innovation. And mobile’s role.
  5. Contextual. This is mobile’s real opportunity, not just bringing things to wherever/whenever, but doing things  because of when and where we are. And more.
  6. Strategy. This is the wrap up, where we talk about what it takes to make this all work in the organization.

I’ve designed in discussions, and group assignments, so while it’s grounded in the book, it’s both updated and more interactive. I should be careful to mention that it’s not about development, using authoring tools, or more. It’s about  thinking different, which mobile requires. The mindset is performance ecosystem, and not surprisingly therefore coupled to the thinking behind the L&D revolution I continue to advocate for.

I’m not dunning for students, since we’ve already got a good number of registrations, but instead I just wanted to expose the thinking behind the choices (showing my work). That is, show you why a mlearning course. Still, I’d welcome seeing you there if you’re interested in getting your mind around some transferrable principles that enable mobile, and more!   Other than that, stay safe and take care.

Extreme Times

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This was originally intended to be one of my Learning Solutions Mag columns (Quinnsights). Sadly, that platform is no longer an option. Guess this  is part of the extreme times! It’s a bit long for my usual posts, but I didn’t want it to go to waste.  

In 2004, I co-wrote a chapter with Eileen Clegg for Marcia Conner & James G. Clawson‘s Creating a Learning Culture book to accompany the event they held on the topic. Eileen‘s husband was doing research on ‘extremophiles‘, organisms that survive in extreme conditions, and we were looking at biomimetic inspiration from those mechanisms. Titled The Agility Factor, I think the lessons we wrote about are all the more important now in these extreme times.

Sure, at this point everyone is touting solutions for working and learning at home. With most of the population under some form of lockdown, there are a lot of prescriptions, to the extent there’s already a backlash! Even I‘ve been guilty. But here I want to talk a bigger scope than just learning. People are worried. Organizations are struggling.

At the time, our commentary was largely reacting to the crash of the internet bubble circa 2001. Times were tough, and organizations were wondering how to cope. Fast forward to 2020, and we‘re in even more dire circumstances. While then we had economic turmoil, now we‘re adding in a lethal disease. Uncertainly abounds. Our employees, our managers, our executives are all scrambling to make sense. And so, I thought it appropriate to revisit those lessons in this new era, and consider the technology/human intersection in these times.

Coping with Extreme Times

One of the main issues that contextualizes this conversation is that different organizations are at different places in their digital transformation. And, as I opined recently, it‘s about getting the culture right first.

It‘s easy to think of organizations that just haven‘t yet started using digital, and are faced with the need to change. They‘re going to struggle. There is a lot of guidance out there, but if you haven‘t got your mind around the technology, or what communication, collaboration, and learning are all about, there‘s more to it.

If you‘ve started with some experimentation, it should be easier. You‘ve tried out some things, and so you‘ve had some technology experience. You may well have tried and failed, but the knowledge from losses should be useful too! That‘s what a learning organization is all about.

Which means that another organization type that will struggle is the one that‘s rigidly hierarchical. One that‘s had all the thinking done up top, and filtered down. They may well have dictated technology practices, but they‘re likely more about making things more efficient. And so, trying to be effective at scale at distance is a different issue.

Instead, the organizations that thrive are those that are continually experimenting, learning, and moving forward. I reckon many folks are wishing they‘d tried out some things already, rather than scrambling. Of course, this is different not just quantitatively, but qualitatively, and that means we‘re going beyond just adaptation. We need to go big in extreme times!

Extremophiles

Across the globe, and presumably the universe, conditions vary from desiccating heat to crippling cold. Environments may have high toxicity owing to chemicals, salt, and more. And, as circumstances change, organisms need to adapt. And yet, life somehow exists in many of these circumstances. How? Through a variety of mechanisms. Not all are unique to extremophiles, but each is used and provides some insight. Here are the suite we talked about:

  • Ionic bonds: while all organisms have proteins connected by ionic bonds, extremophile organisms have more and stronger bonds.
  • Environmental monitoring: here, the organism is in tight coupling with the environment, the better to respond, though sometime the responses are unusual.
  • Heat-shock proteins: special proteins are released under threat to help protect other proteins.
  • Equilibrium: extremophiles can not only attempt to expel any toxicity, certain extremophiles work to neutralize the toxic element internally.
  • Symbiosis: certain organisms create unique relationships that allow them to mutually coexist in extreme conditions.

For each of these there are organizational corollaries that we can consider, and then we can look at how technology and learning & development can help. We need to go beyond the usual and think about how to do these in a big way.

Organizational Equivalents

How do translate these? There are not direct transfers, but inferences we can make. Just as organizations been using inspirations from animals to guide new thinking in products, here we‘re looking at inspirations for how to work together better. What do organisms that adapt to environmental extremes mean for organizations coping in extreme times?

First, strengthening the bonds is about building trust in the organization and believing in the organizational mission. First, of course, it‘s about connecting people, so that they care about one another. And having managers work as coaches, using data to improve folks, not censure them. Then, as Dan Pink, in Drive, helped us know, it‘s about connecting people to purpose. That means an organization has to have a meaningful purpose, one that people feel proud to align with. And everyone in the org needs to understand how their role contributes. Yes, this is all work, but the point is that these organisms invest extra effort to be able to withstand extraordinary conditions.

Environmental monitoring isn‘t new, as most organizations track market trends, competitive analysis, customer sentiment, and more. Here it means going further, with everyone being active in their community of practice and actively monitoring trends in related fields for implications to improve practice. The organization needs to be sensitive to what‘s happening in rich and deep ways. This has to not be done as a special operation, but permeate the organization.

Heat shock proteins suggest a proactive approach to trouble. One form is internal monitoring for problems. Health initiatives in the organization are not just promoting healthy behaviors, but also actively developing the skills to notice and watch out for your fellow employee. It‘s about caring enough to look for signs of struggle and reach out and try to help. In times like this, it‘s more, ensuring that as people face changes, they have support to understand, act differently, and persist until it becomes a new way of doing things.

Equilibrium is an interesting one that suggests taking in new ideas, trying them out, and seeing what they imply. Think “let‘s try it out and see how it‘s re-contextualized here and then what it might mean that we can do better”, not “that‘s not how we do it here”. It‘s about experimentation, and internalizing new ideas. It‘s got to be more than just copying (e.g. best practices), and going beyond to understand the underlying ideas and modifying them to work in this context (e.g. best principles).

Finally, symbiosis implies working with other organizations in a radically more integrated manner. Instead of just consuming things, you look at the practices that were instituted by Toyota. They looked at their supply chain partners and assisted them in becoming more effective and efficient. It‘s about radical cooperation.

L&D Technology Role

So, given that we‘re about eLearning, what‘s the role of technology here? At core, it‘s about communication. It‘s about moving to showing your work, including mistakes and lessons learned (always together).   And there are lots of ways to do this.

One of the most important steps is to have bosses, managers and executives, share their thinking. I know, it seems risky, but it builds trust. If ‘the boss‘ is willing to admit mistakes, it makes the environment feel safe. And that builds those bonds that will help an organization weather tough times.

It also means helping individuals develop active monitoring skills. There are tools that track outside news and filter it for particular interests. Everyone can tailor their own feed. And this is part of building your personal knowledge mastery. Everyone should be looking for new ideas to improve.

The new ideas need, of course, to be coupled with experimentation, such as equilibrium suggests. And this may involve collaboration to make it work. So collaborative tools are important to develop testing plans and evaluate outcomes. Building in an expectation of lessons learned, and having scheduled sharing events for these lessons, is a complement. And, if not digitally moderated, at least capturing and sharing the outcomes for others to learn from.

It‘s important also to support people in these new ways of working. Don‘t just expect them to get it, but build support into and/or around the tools. Don’t just train, but anticipate struggles and build support. And have support for unanticipated struggles! This also includes quick references about what to do when you‘re worried about someone or even yourself. This is the heat-shock approach of preventing breakdowns during the transitions.

And, of course, building a network that includes your partners along the supply chain is the symbiotic approach. It‘s about building a sharing community that can help them be better, and they can do the same for you. It‘s also about collaboration, working together on problems rather than casting blame. This builds bonds with them too!

The L&D role is to facilitate all this communication and collaboration. In extreme times, L&D is part of the solution. Continual learning is required, and building a strong framework for keeping people together to work and learn is critical. We’re increasingly learning that working together is better; bake that into your own operations!

Craft and commercial?

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Occasionally I try to look at the broader swings we see (in a variety of things). In learning technology, there’s been a gross pendulum swing, and maybe smaller ones. I think we’ve swung between craft and commercial approaches to design, and I’m hoping we’re on a return swing.

When we first started playing with learning technology, every approach was pretty much hand-crafted. We didn’t have specific tools for learning outcomes, and we had to apply generic tools like computer systems and the like. Early approaches like Plato were custom crafted, and the individual applications on top of that. And a small industry was built upon this basis to build solutions at scale, but the market never emerged. The whole solution was too costly, despite the power.

The PC revolution initially meant individuals or small teams built solutions. There did emerge authoring systems (e.g. Pilot) and even a meta-language for developing human-computer learning interactions. However, the usage was small. People handbuilt things like games (e.g. Robot Odyssey and SnooperTroops), though a few companies arose to do this systematically.

As technology changed, so to did the platforms. Video discs and Computer- and then Web-Based Training emerged. Companies emerged to do them at scale, but things were changing rather fast. Flash came about as a web-based lingua franca, where programs could run in most browsers with a plug in.  And, specifically for learning, Authorware became a powerful tool.

Still as things changed quickly, most solutions were driven by a real need, and hand-crafting was the norm.  But, of course, this changed.

With the horrors of 9/11, travel went from an increasingly affordable luxury to undesirable. The demand came for ‘elearning’, reducing costs from travel and overhead. With it came tools that made it easy to take content, add a quiz, and pop it up on a screen. A shift came from quality to quantity.

And this has continued in many guises. The difference, I  hope, is that the pendulum is swinging back.  The signs I see are an increase in interest in learning science. Several contributions may come from the Guild’s DemoFest, Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn, Will Thalheimer’s Debunker Club, and the Serious eLearning Manifesto. We’re learning more about good design, and more people are picking up on it. We’re talking learning experience design, integrating learning science with engagement.

If you look at other industries like automobiles, we went from craft to commercial (c.f. assembly line manufacturing). While we’re unlikely to go back to fully crafted, owing to safety regulations, we’re seeing more options for establishing individual representation. And in furniture and clothing we’re seeing more craft.

The quality is important, and if we swing back to craft now, maybe when we swing back we’ll be commercial reflecting learning quality, not expediency. In some sense it doesn’t matter between craft and commercial, as long as it’s good. And hopefully that becomes a defining characteristic of our industry. Fingers crossed!

Blinded by the buzzword!

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With any industry, a large quantity of buzzwords exist, and Learning & Development isn‘t any different. Likewise, plusses and minuses accrue.  It‘s helpful to know the buzzword as well as the real meaning behind it, but how do you do this?

Buzzwords can become vernacular. With a professional vocabulary, everyone has a shared understanding of what‘s meant. It‘s more efficient when concepts have short words or phrases that define them. “Authoring tools” went from bizbuzz to common parlance. In our field, of course!  We can refer to things tersely that unpack into a complex understanding. (And, it can be cool to have a secret language for those in the ‘know‘. ;)

The flipside is when those buzzwords aren‘t shared, or are vague, or even deliberately misused, confusion ensues.   If people are using terms others don‘t know, there‘s an opportunity for uncertainty or even misconceptions. People can toss around buzzwords to sound cool. Or for more nefarious purposes.

To get concrete, terms like xAPI may be obscure. ‘Microlearning‘ is still ill-defined, meaning two different things by its use. And the prefix ‘neuro‘ has little practical implications, but it sounds like we‘re on top of the latest scientific findings!

How do we deal with this? We need to be aware. A healthy skepticism is a valuable frame of mind around claims. Which requires us to be proactive; we need to be willing to ask people to be clear when they toss terms about. And to keep up with the literature in our field.

The best time to be open is when a term is being used for the first time in your experience. You need to look for definitions. Most importantly, look for independent definitions. And ask yourself “who‘s telling me, and what is their vested interest”

The ultimate goal is to be acquainted with the terminology of your field, and open to new ideas while resistant to unwarranted hype. It requires effort, but the alternative is wasting time or money on things not worthy of resources.

With my wicked smart and totally cool colleagues Jennifer Murphy of QIC and Chad Udell of Float, we‘ll be running a buzzword bingosession at the top-notch DevLearn conference at 3PM on Wed the 23rdof October. You‘ll cut through the haze, have some fun, and maybe win a prize!   Hope to see you there.

New reality

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I’ve been looking into ‘realities’ (AR/VR/MR) for the upcoming Realities 360 conference (yes, I’ll be speaking). And I found an interesting model that’s new to me, and of course prompts some thoughts. For one, there’s a new reality that I hadn’t heard of!  So, of course, I thought I’d share.

A diagram from reality, through augmented reality and augmented virtuality, to virtual reality.The issue is how do AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) relate, and what is MR (mixed reality). The model I found (by Milgram, my diagram slightly relabels) puts MR in the middle between reality and virtual reality. And I like how it makes a continuum here.

So this is the first I have heard of ‘augmented virtuality’ (AV). AR is the real world with some virtual scaffolding. AV has more of the virtual world with a little real world scaffolding. A virtual cooking school in a real kitchen is an example. The virtual world guides the experience, instead of the real world.

The core idea to me is about story. If we’re doing this with a goal, what is the experience driver? What is pushing the goal? We could have a real task that we’re layering AR on top of to support success (more performance support than learning). In VR, we totally have to have a goal in the simulated world. AV strikes me as something that has a virtual world created story that uses virtual images and real locations. Kind of like The Void experience.

This reminded me of the Augmented Reality Games (ARGs) that were talked about quite a bit back in the day. They can be driven by media, so they’re not necessarily limited to locations. A colleague had built an engine that would allow experiences driven by communications technologies: text messages, email, phone calls, and these days we could add in tweets and posts on social media and apps. These, on principle, are great platforms for learning experiences, as they’re driven by the tools you’d actually use to perform. (When I asked my colleagues why they think they’ve ‘disappeared’, the reason was largely cost; that’s avoidable I believe.)

I like this continuum, as it puts ARGs and VR and AR in a conceptually clear framework. And, as I argue for extensively, good models give us principled bases for decisions and design. Here we’ve got a way to think about the relationship between story and technology that will let us figure out what makes the best approach for our goals. This new reality (and the others) will be part of my presentation next month. We’ll see how it manifests by then ;).

#LSCon 19 Reflections

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It’s hard to think of now, but last week I was at the Learning Solutions conference. And I had a really great time. I didn’t see as much as I’d like (as you ‘ll see, I was busy), but there were some really worthwhile learnings, and some fun as well. Here are my conference reflections.

For the first time, I rented a scooter. That was a learning all in itself. I’d been having pain, and walking was the  worst. The scooter was a way to address that, and it did. I scooted around and avoided much walking. Not all, but a lot. And it was fun to zoop around, but…it was hard to maneuver in small spaces. Like the necessary elevators. And my room. I tried to slow down and do it carefully, and that worked to an extent, but it wasn’t pretty.

Decorated mobility scooterThe great part was that, having heard of my plight, some friends descended upon my ride and tarted it up with glitter and dangly things. And, best of all, caution tape. Very appropriate. Very much appreciated!  And it wasn’t even too hard to take off at the end.

Thus, I was happy to zoom to my room to run my pre-conference workshop on learning experience design. It was designed as an integration of Engaging Learning and the Serious eLearning Manifesto.    I snuck a bit of ‘transformation‘ in there as well.  The evaluations aren’t back yet, but I think overall it achieved the purpose. One attendee later suggested an improvement that I’d agree on (allowing learners to choose from the topics to workshop on). Always learning!

That evening, we did something I’d never done, Presentation Roulette. The speakers (I agreed to be one, without having seen it before; I do like experimenting [read: living dangerously]) choose a random title out of a sock (well, it was clean) and are then given a deck that Bianca Woods of the Guild had developed for that title, including the silliest pictures she could find on the web. As she describes it, a mashup of presentations and improv comedy.  It was very fun, and in particular extremely funny; the other presenters did great jobs. I’ll attend again even if I don’t present!

Tuesday was a normal day (e.g. I didn’t present). As usual, I mindmapped the keynotes (several posts back), cruised the floor, and attended some sessions. The panels were good. I attended the one on the Future of ID, and the comments were insightful about how the tools and goals were changing. Similarly the one on the Future of Work had a convergent message I resonated with, that we need to focus on using tech to augment us on the stuff we’re good at, not try to fight off automation of rote tasks. I also took some time off for calls and work.

That evening, after dinner, some friends and colleagues (they’re the same folks) came over to my suite. (I have gotten lots of accommodations for my situation; and I’m  very grateful.)  Fueled by libations, we proceeded to gin up an evil plan to control the world (or at least the market).  Politically correct it wasn’t, fun it was.  Too late to bed.

The next day I was part of the Guild Master panel with about 14 participants. Too many!  Great thoughts, and I tried to stifle myself and only make the most cogent points. Apparently I still spoke a little too much. I blame it on this blogging, it gives me lots of thoughts. :) The points I wanted to make were, not surprisingly, about the need for getting back to basics in learning design, and to look beyond optimal execution to continual innovation.

I also sat in an ARK Kit presentation. It made AR seem almost within reach. At this time you still do need some coding, but if it progresses like many tools, much will soon become at a higher level of ability to describe what you want and make it so.

I still wasn’t done, as later that day I also gave my ‘professionalism and myths’ talk. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I do believe we made some converts. I added in not just debunking myths, but how to talk to folks who buy into it. There’s a little learning science in it as well. We really do need to be on a sound basis before we can have credibility.

I have to say, delightedly, that I continue to have folks say that my books have helped them. Different books for different folks, but something I love to hear. As an author, you get some idea of the sales, but none of the impact. Some of these were small effects, and some were “I’ve used this to change my/our practice.”  That’s what it’s about, after all, you write a book to effect change. I’m grateful for those who share this insight!  In particular, I hear lots of folks using the Myths book in their orgs to counter employees/customers’ misguided intentions. The Revolution book still (or, perhaps,  now) has influence. And I still hear about the Games book!

I also slipped away with some more conspirators and experienced  The Void. It  was  hard on my legs (I went with cane, not scooter), mostly because they didn’t have anywhere to sit while you waited!?!?!  (I gave them a serve in the too-long post-experience survey.) However, it’s very cool: a compelling experience and great implications for learning. Embedded performance? That would be ‘yes’.

The keynotes, by the way, were excellent  AND…  I’ve heard over the years that conference organizers say it’s hard to have diversity in speakers. All white males (e.g. me ;), or at least white.  This time, there were two women, and two blacks, out of three people. With good messages.  It was inspiring to hear and to see!  Kudos to David Kelly and the Guild for managing to debunk the barrier.

There was some discussion of whether there was a place for those who proselytize learning science or it was all going commercial and cheap. I feel like there’s a growing interest in the science, but I’m frequently a year or several ahead of the market. In this case, I want to yell “make me right!”  This is a field I care about, and we can be doing so much good. I want us to capitalize on that potential. There were new folks looking for solutions and the opportunity to grow. I hope we can make that happen in a positive direction.

Overall, it was a success. I had time with smart colleagues, saw interesting sessions, and met new folks. I presented and got feedback, which is a great cycle. And it was another chance to immerse myself in the state of the industry. Here’s to continual improvement.

 

 

Chasing Technology Good and Bad

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I’ve been complaining, as part of the myths tour, that everyone wants the magic bullet. But, as I was commenting to someone, there are huge tech opportunities we’re missing. How can I have it both ways?  Well, I’m talking about two different techs (or, rather, many).  The fact is, we’re chasing the wrong technologies.

The problem with the technologies we’re chasing is that we’re chasing them from the wrong beginning. I see people chasing microlearning, adaptive learning, video, sims, and more as  the answer. And of course that’s wrong. There  can’t be one all-singing all-dancing solution, because the nature of learning is remarkably diverse. Sometimes we need reminders, sometimes deep practice, some times individualization makes sense, and other times it’s not ideal.

The part that’s really wrong here is that they’re doing this  on top of bad design!  And, as I believe I’ve mentioned, gilded bad design is still bad design.  Moreover,  if people actually spent the time and money first on investing just in improving their learning design, they’d get a far better return on investment than chasing the latest shiny object.  AND, later investments in most anything would be better poised to actually be worthwhile.

That would seem to suggest that there’s not a sensible tech to chase. After, of course, authoring tools and creating elearning. And that’s not true. Investment in, say, sims makes sense if you’re using it to implement good design (e.g. deep practice).  As part of a good learning design  strategy.  But there’s something deeper I’m talking about. And I’ve talked about it before.

What I’m talking about are content systems. They may seem far down the pike, but let me (again) make the case about why they make sense now, and for the future. The thing is, being systematic about content has both short-term  and  long-term benefits. And you can use the short-term ones to justify the long-term ones (or vice-versa).

In the short term, thinking about content from a systems perspective offers you rigor. While that may seem off-putting, it’s actually a benefit.  If you design your content model around good learning design, you are moving towards the first step, above, about good design. And, if you write good descriptions within those elements, you  really provide a foundation that makes it difficult to do bad design.

My point is that we’re ignoring meaningful moves to chase chimera. There are real value steps to make, including formalizing design processes  and  tools about good design. And there are ways to throw your money away on the latest fad.  It’s your choice, but I hope I’ve made a case for one interpretation. So, what’s yours?

Learning Experience Portals?

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What is a learning experience platform?  Suddenly the phrase seems ubiquitous, but what does it mean?  It’s been on my mental ‘todo’ list for a while, but I finally spent some time investigating the concept. And what I found as the underlying concept mostly makes sense, but I have some challenges with the label.  So what am I talking about?

It’s ImPortal!

Some background: when I talk about the performance ecosystem, it’s not only about performance support and resources, but finding them.  Ie, it includes  the need for a portal. When I ask audiences “how many of you have portals in your org”, everyone raises their hands. What also emerges is that they have  bunches of them. Of course, they’re organized by the business unit offering them. HR, product, sales, they all have their own portals. Which doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is to have a place to go for thing organized by people’s roles and membership in different groups.

A user-centered way of organizing portals makes sense then. People need to be able to see relevant resources in a good default organization, have the ability to reorganize to a different default, and  search.  Federate the portal and search over all the sources of resources, not some subset.  I’ve suggested that it might make sense to have a system on top of the portals that pulls them together in a user-centric way.

An additional issue is that the contents of said portal should be open, in the sense that all users should be able to contribute their curated or created resources, and the resources can be in any format: video, audio, document, even interactive. In today’s era of increasing speed of change and decreasing resources for meeting the learning needs, L&D can no longer try to own everything. If you create a good culture, the system will be self-policing.

And, of course, the resources aren’t all about learning. Performance support is perfectly acceptable. The in-the-moment video is as needed as is the course on a new skill. Anything people want, whether learning resources from a library to that quick checklist should be supported.

The Learning Experience Platform(?)

As I looked into Learning Experience Platforms (LXP), (underneath all the hype) I found that they’re really portals; ways for content to be aggregated and made available. There are other possible features – libraries, AI-assistance, paths, assessments, spaced delivery – but at core they’re portals. The general claim is that they augment an LMS, not replace it. And I buy that.

The hype  is a concern: microlearning for instance (in one article that referred to the afore-mentioned in-the-moment video, glossing over that you may learn nothing from it and have to access it again). And of course exaggerated claims about who does what.  It appears several LMS companies are now calling themselves LXPs. I’ll suggest that you want such a tool designed to be a portal, not having it grafted onto to another fundamental raison-d’être. Similarly, many also claim to be social. Ratings would be a good thing, but also trying to be a social media platform would not.

Ultimately, such a capability is good. However, if I’m right, I think Learning Experience Platform isn’t the right term, really they’re portals. Both learning  and experience are wrong; they can be perform in the moment, and generally they’re about access, not generating experiences. And I could be wrong.

Take-home?

Ecosystems should be integrated from best-of-breed capabilities. One all-singing, all-dancing platform is likely to be wrong in at least one if not more of the subsidiary areas,  and you’re locked in.  I think a portal is a necessary component, and the LXPs have many performance & development  advantages for over generic portal tools.

So I laud their existence, but I question their branding. My recommendation is  always to dig beneath the label, and find the underlying concept. For instance, each of the concepts underpinning the term microlearning is valuable, but the aggregation is problematic. Confusion is an opening for error. So too with LXP: don’t get it confused with learning or creating experiences.  But do look to the genre for advanced portals.  At least, that’s my take: what’s yours?

Complex thinking

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An interesting article I came across brings up an interesting issue: how do we do complex thinking?  Are some people just better at it?  The short answer appears to be ‘no’.  Instead, a couple of tools play a role, and I think it’s an interesting excursion.

The article says that our brains are limited in thinking about complex situations. Yet, experts can do this.  How? The article cites metaphors as the key, grounding our thinking in models that we’ve developed from our experiences. They draw upon George Lakoff’s work on metaphor (a core aspect of my grad school experience) to explain how our understanding advances.  At core, there’s a fundamental requirement that our knowledge builds upon previous knowledge, which ultimately is grounded in our physical activities.

My PhD thesis topic was thinking with analogy, which shares much with this model. The point being that we use familiar frameworks to make inferences in new areas. We map the familiar to the points in the new that match, and then we extrapolate from the familiar to explain things in the new. And using familiar models as explanatory frameworks are essentially the same process as metaphors. Metaphors tend to be more literal, with a shared point, while analogies go further, and share  structure. The latter is, I’ll suggest, more useful.

Note that the frameworks are built of conceptually-related causal relationships, e.g. models. Thus, when we want to communicate models, we can detail them, but using metaphors or analogies are short-cuts.  When we want someone to be able to understand, particularly to be able to use the reference as a tool to support  doing, we can use them to facilitate comprehension. We want to leverage, as much as possible, pre-existing knowledge.  And people aren’t necessarily great at coming up with analogies (research shows), but they’re good at using them.

Another short-cut that the article cites is diagrams.  Here, we’re making visible the relationships, supporting the understanding. Equations can get specific, but conceptual understanding is facilitated by seeing the connections.

The important outcome is that we all have our cognitive limitations to overcome, but we’ve also developed powerful tools to support these limitations. To the extent we understand how these tools support learning, we can use them to help achieve the outcomes we need.  We  can do complex thinking, with the right tools. Are you facilitating success by leveraging these tools?