Transforming learning and development

In a series of posts on the Onlignment blog that has run throughout 2012, I have endeavoured to explain how transformation can take place in workplace learning and development.

I started the series by setting out the need for transformation.

I then set out a vision for workplace learning and development that is:

• aligned
• economical
• scalable
• flexible
• engaging
• and powerful

I moved on to look at some of the changes that can be made to realise this vision, expressed as six shifts:

• from generic to tailored
• from synchronous to asynchronous
• from compliance to competence
• from top-down to bottom-up
• from courses to resources
• from face-to-face to online

I brought the series to a conclusion by focusing on the practical steps that we can take to make transformation happen:

• Recognising the uniqueness of your particular organisation in terms of its requirements, the characteristics of its people and the constraints which govern its decision making.
• Establishing a learning architecture and infrastructure that recognises these unique characteristics.
• Putting in place processes for improved performance needs analysis and blended solution design.
• Building capability in areas such as the design of digital learning content, learning live and online, and connected online learning.

If this is all too much for you, I summarised the main ideas in this video.

Enjoy!

Do instructional designers need to know about what they are designing?

I remember many years ago being told of the important difference between process and content. It was applied in that context to managers, the inference being that management is a process that can be applied to any domain. In other words, if you�re a good manager, then you can do a good job wherever you�re asked to apply your skills, whether that�s a school, a hospital, a retail chain or an engineering company. I was always sceptical, but I got the idea.

In the thirty years since I left full-time employment, I have worked with dozens, perhaps even hundreds of organisations in every sector imaginable. In the course of the various projects I have undertaken, I have developed expertise in some of the narrowest slices of working life imaginable; so obscure, in fact, that only rarely has this knowledge assisted me in answering questions on University Challenge. Even though I typically started these projects as a novice in terms of the particular knowledge domain, most were a success and the clients seemed happy.

Having said that, from time to time I have had the luxury of developing learning materials relating to my own specialities in workplace learning. These are the projects I have most enjoyed and which, in my opinion, delivered the best results. So, what works best: designing with your own content expertise, or concentrating on the process, without necessarily having content expertise?

Arguments for designing with content expertise: 

• It saves a lot of time and effort: extracting information from subject experts is hard work and requires skill and persistence.
• You have greater credibility with the client: in the awards judging I participated in recently, I encountered several organisations that concentrate on a single vertical industry (such as oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, healthcare or finance) or a single horizontal slice (such as marketing or sales). These organisations employed designers who were subject experts. They appeared to be doing a really good job.
• You have heuristic knowledge: you know how things work; you have the anecdotes and the stories that bring learning materials to life.
• You are more interested in what you�re doing: because you are teaching what you know and care about.

And here are the arguments against:

• Your knowledge may not be current: if you�re not still working in the field, you can easily become out of touch with the latest developments.
• You may suffer from the curse of knowledge: as a subject expert, you can fall into the trap of believing everything that you know is important and interesting to your learners.
• You may be blinkered when it comes to teaching methods: there�s a risk that you�ll stick to same old formula, regardless of what�s now possible.
• You may be better at content than process: this is the problem with just about all technical training - you are asked to become a trainer because you know about the subject matter, but you never quite developed the same expertise in adult learning.

It looks like, whichever way you go, there are potential problems that need to be addressed. As for me, I�m undecided.

New directions in self-study e-learning: the return of scrolling

Earlier this week I wrote about the first of the new directions in self-study e-learning that I had noticed -  the use of social interactions. Today I explore another - the use of scrolling pages to replace the slide to slide mechanism that dominates so much e-learning.

Sometime back in the mists of time, when Jakob Nielsen was establishing his web usability standards, it became received wisdom that web users dislike scrolling - far better to present information in small chunks that appear 'above the fold' (a newspaper term meaning at the top of the page) rather than have users go to all the trouble of scrolling further down a single page. So, a single piece of work - a document if you like - became fragmented into pieces.

Jakob Nielsen did a thorough job of research, so I assume he was right in saying that users preferred not to scroll, but that was a long time ago, when many people were unskilled at using a mouse, and long before mice got scroll wheels and web pages could be scrolled with a swipe of the thumb. I don't think anyone thinks twice now about scrolling. If anything, there are likely to prefer staying on a single page rather than waiting for new ones to download. And if you want to print what's in front of you, far better to have it all in one place.

There was another reason why the slide metaphor was adopted for so much e-learning and that was Flash. Although Flash windows can be made to scroll, they were never conceived that way. Flash was originally designed to display animations, and these clearly need to be displayed in a fixed size window. In fact, fixed sizes were and still are commonplace in media generally, whether you're talking print, TV, photography or slides. But all that has changed after 20 years of web surfing. Although we still don't like web pages to have variable widths, and generally that doesn't happen, we're quite comfortable with the idea that web pages have variable lengths. You keep scrolling until you reach the bottom.

So, what's bringing about a change in thinking about the use of scrolled pages for e-learning? The simple answer is mobile devices and the need to make e-learning work on these as well as it does on PCs. Flash doesn't work on mobiles, so we're having to revert to native web technology, i.e. hypertext markup language, albeit in its flashy new fifth edition. Nobody wants to create multiple versions of their e-learning to suit the idiosyncrasies of different devices. The ideal is web pages that intelligently adapt to the devices on which they are being viewed, which is increasingly how the web sites we use everyday already work. If you try and maintain a fixed size window you have almost no flexibility to achieve this goal - you simply have to allow scrolling.

In conversations with Steve Rayson at Kineo, which is developing its own intelligent page formatting technology which they call 'responsive e-learning', it works a treat and users have absolutely no problem with scrolling when necessary. Obviously you have to leave behind the slide show metaphor and consider each page a self-contained document (in learning terms a lesson perhaps) but, hey, weren't we all getting just a little bit fed up with clicking next to continue? One of Kineo's clients has tested scrolling e-learning and reports that users are much more likely to scroll down a page than they are to click to another one. I wouldn't be surprised if others found the same.

There is a barrier to going this way. Currently most e-learning authoring tools maintain the slide show metaphor and enforce fixed window sizes. In the meantime you're going to need some specialist development expertise. Ah, the bleeding edge.

New directions in self-study e-learning: social interactions

Over the past week I�ve been heavily involved in helping to judge this year�s E-Learning Awards. I used to have a role in administrating them, but I never got to see any of the entries. Last year and this I�ve been on the panels for several of the categories and it�s been a real eye-opener.

First and foremost, the experience has lifted my spirits. I get so much flack from trainers about boring e-learning that nobody wants to do, that sometimes I despair that we�ll ever get it right. While there clearly is a lot of rubbish, poorly designed and implemented, the awards show me that there�s also some absolutely fantastic stuff that learners love and which is making a fundamental impact on organisations. I�d go so far as to say we�ve finally come of age.

There are many reasons why the current crop of e-learning projects is proving more successful, not least the following:

• An acknowledgement that resources matter as much as courses.
• A much more modular approach, with content presented in small chunks.
• A shift in emphasis from knowledge exposition to skill-building using challenging scenarios.
• Better art direction and much more use of video.
• Deployment through much friendlier and more usable platforms than your traditional LMS.

I�m also beginning to see some changes to the way that your good old e-learning tutorial is presented. One of those is the inclusion of interactions that break out of the constraints of isolated self-study. The evidence I saw was in work by the innovative developer Nelson Croom, but I�ve seen similar things before.

The idea is that you present a question to the learner and then, once they have provided an answer, allow them to compare their response to those of other learners. This could work with a simple MCQ:

• 'Which of the following actions would you take in this situation?'
• The learner selects a response and perhaps gets some expert feedback.
• �Here�s what others decided. 80% went for option A ��

It would also be possible for learners to leave comments to explain their selections, and these could form the basis for a more in-depth comparison of perspectives.

What Nelson Croom showed, which I hadn�t seen before, was the application of this technique to open input questions, where the learner is required to enter a textual response (a sort of short essay).

• �What do you think was the cause of this situation?�
• The learner types in their response
• The responses of other learners to the same question are then presented

My understanding from Nelson Croom is that response rates to short essay questions in which student answers are compared and contrasted is much greater than when the learner�s response sits alone (and is not submitted to a tutor for grading). This is hardly surprising, because it takes an iron will to type in lots of text when you are the only one who will see it. I also understand that learners have responded very well to this form of interaction. You could achieve a similar effect by sending learners to a forum, but that�s a bit clunky and certainly wouldn�t work if you had a large number of questions.

There is a practical implication to these new forms of �social interaction� in that, if you want to use them, you�ll have to develop them yourselves, because no off-the-shelf authoring tool will do it for you. You need to set up a database and use this to store user responses question by question, so they can be drawn down later for future students to view. This isn�t complicated web programming, but it�s not trivial either. Hopefully, one of the tools vendors will see the potential and provide this service for you.