Two things happened that piqued my interest: a friend shared a TEDx talk by Seth Priebatsch: the game layer on top of the world; and I talked to another friend about the difficulty of selling anything called a “game” into corporations. As many others have concluded, you have to change the name of the game. Call it anything but a game. Which begs the question — what do we call games?

What are games?

What are games? What are some of their characteristics? Learners are actively engaged in a simulation/fantasy or solving a problem, where they will fail multiple times in order to succeed. The game is filled with feedback mechanisms. It’s about getting the points, not so much having the points (for most people anyways). It’s about status in the game, and often about playing amongst a community of gamers, whether that be in a multi-player game or in a single player game where you compete with your friends.

Sounds kind of like….

Discovery learning

What is discovery learning? Here’s a quick introduction.

• Basedon theories of  Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky.
  • Dewey – primary premise was learning by doing, learning is experiential and social; experiential was often defined as “using your hands” — building a house, taking apart a radio, with a group of peers.
  • Piaget – showed that a child is not an empty vessel, but is an active participant in learning about the world; assimilation and accommodation are means of adjusting the understanding of the world. Created the idea that children learn differently from adults and go through “stages of development” — not all of his theories have stood the test of research.
  • Vygotsky – best known for Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and the bringing out the social and cultural influences on cognitive development. ZPD is the zone between what an individual can learn on their own versus what they can learn with guidance or social interaction. In a sense, it is the optimal learning zone. Related ideas include scaffolding and situated learning.
• Architectures for discovery learning
  • case-based learning
  • incidental learning – results incidentally from an interaction, such as a crossword puzzle.
  • learning by exploring/conversing – asking questions to solve a mystery, discover an object
  • learning by reflection – a teacher never gives a direct answer, but instead answers questions with questions, forcing the students to reflect.
  • simulation-based learning
• How discovery learning is different
  • active rather than passive
  • process-orientated rather than content-oriented
  • failure is important
  • opportunity for feedback in learning process

Sound familiar?

Games as discovery learning

So let’s call games what they are — guided discovery learning. Games are guided by the rules of the game, where you get feedback on how you perform, instantaneously.

Change the name of the game to “guided discovery learning.”

Hmmmm…. I think I can sell that.

But what about…

The fear with guided discovery learning (aka games) is that you will not cover the course content and it will take to long or will be too expensive to create. I’ve been struggling with these questions — how do I design a game so people learn the ‘right content’? Well, it’s about the process, not the content, so that’s the wrong question. I’m not selling a learning PRODUCT, I’m selling a learning SERVICE. Games are a type of learning service. That means coming up with a business model that works in the service economy. OK, some more thinking to do here.

We don’t need to learn how to play games — games are already a part of our world. (Seriously go listen to Seth’s TEDx talk.) The problem is that they are just not fun yet. The bigger problem is that we just haven’t figured out a business model for adult learning games that works yet. How do we create and sell guided discovery learning that’s relevant and cost-effective?

Castronova, J. (2002). “Discovery Learning for the 21st Century: What is it and How Does it Compare to Traditional Learning in Effectiveness in the 21st Century?” Action Research Exchange 1 (1)

Bicknell-Holmes and Hoffman (2000) Engage, Elicit, Experience, Explore: Applying Discovery learning to Library Instruction – LOEX. Presentation.

Social Development Theory: Vygotsky. TIPS website – http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Have you ever experienced learning design failure? It’s pretty easy to spot — the primary “tell” being the utterly confused or disgusted looks on the faces of your learners. Or it’s when your stakeholders or learners actively start sabotaging the design and doing whatever they want. Or they just get up and leave. That is a failure of learning design.

Having recently gone through a design failure, here’s some tips for avoiding this gut-wrenching experience.

Tip #1 – Make sure there is ONE owner/sponsor

The hardest thing for an outside consultant (or an inside L&D employee for that matter), is to make sure there is ONE person who owns the design. One person who will give you the sign-off, the go-ahead, the buy-in, the responsibility. If you find yourself in a situation where the owner or sponsor isn’t really owning the project — RUN, don’t walk, in the other direction. Ease your way out, or find a way to address the situation. To be honest, by the time you realize this, it’s often too late.

Tip #2 – Get your stakeholders’ attention

We all lead busy lives and our working lives seem to never let up. Learning initiatives often take a backseat to making the end-of-quarter numbers. So when you have your stakeholders review the information, make sure you are getting them at a point where they can pay attention and really try to understand what’s going on. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a nasty surprise just as you’re ready to launch, and where they will claim to have never been consulted.

Tip #3 – Make sure they understand the what the learning experience will feel like

Remember Tip #2 above — first get people’s attention. In addition, if people don’t do learning stuff every day, they will not easily understand the learning experience. Once you have their attention, do whatever it takes to help them understand the what the learners will be doing in the module, what it will feel like, what they will be doing, how the learning sequence ties together. Help them enter into the experience in your head. Then they will be able to give you honest, and grounded feedback on whether or not your learning design will work.

Don’t design alone

The hardest thing to do is do design alone without feedback. Do whatever it takes to get that feedback from your owner/sponsor, your stakeholders, your learners. Consult other learning designers if available. Do whatever it takes to get involvement and avoid surprises.

But sometimes, you just make mistakes. You make errors and there is no one to catch them. Or your design doesn’t quite fit expectations. Admit your problems and if there’s time and money, fix them. Otherwise, take a deep breath, do some meditation, and move on — and don’t forget the lesson you’ve learned.

All business communication would halt or slow to a crawl. People would have to start writing in coherent sentences again. They would have to make linked arguments and not just bullet points. We’d have to think critically about data and what we’re putting forth. We might even have to think long-term. The ensuing panic would result in economic downslide. And whoa! We’d be back in September of 2008, at the edge of the precipice.

Really now? Come on.

Trainers/facilitators/experts/SMEs wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it. It would be just them with their learners. It’s presenting naked– no hiding behind slides! You’d have to get at the essence of what you wanted to say. You would have to find other means of communicating your message — be that drawings, games or just telling stories. Learners would have to share their experiences with each other. And facilitators would have to focus on what’s important — the process of learning, rather than the content. More on “how” are the learning rather than “what” are they learning (credit to Jim P. for this insight.)

People would learn. Meetings would be shorter. We’d have more time. World peace would be just around the corner (ah, a girl can dream.)

A thought experiment — have your organization try being slide-presentation free for a week and see what happens. Or maybe just ban PPT from meetings, and see if you find other ways to communicate.

Constraints create freedom to design. You’ll end up in places you never thought you’d go.

As a part of my work I’ve been doing interviews with SMEs. You know, very highly technical people who are passionate about their work — but not always so good at communicating the essence of the product or idea they are working on. So in come the Learning Designers asking them to think differently — to teach without powerpoint! What? Is it possible – oh yes it is! Is it scary – of course.

But most importantly, as one SME pointed out “it’s orthogonal to my approach”.

Orthogonal – what the heck does that mean? It’s at perpendicular angle to the way, it’s at an tangential angle — basically it’s a techy way of saying: “I was heading in a different direction, and now you want me to rethink my approach?” Depending on the tone, and how many times that phrase is used, it could also mean “You’re pissing me off.”

Well good. As a learning designer I want to be orthogonal to your approach. I want you to think differently about your materials — I want you to think about those people sitting there listening to your powerpoint — YOUR LEARNERS. Guess what — they are orthogonal to your approach.

So the next time a SME says, “that’s orthogonal to my approach”, take it as a compliment.

For those of you not yet in the know, an open space meeting is essentially a gathering, spanning one day or several, around a common topic, where there is no preset agenda. The participants create the agenda on the day by putting up topics for small group discussion. The facilitators provide a grid of time slots and meeting spaces, and people put up the ideas or problems they would like to discuss. At the appropriate times, people vote with their feet and go to the small group gathering that interests them most. They can stay at one group, or flit between groups. Meeting notes are captured, and then published in a wiki or some other format.

The quality of the conversations depends on the participants, the topics, and the energy of the space. It’s a different way of having a professional conference. You are responsible for creating your own experience. Ok, I buy into that. But still, I find myself wanting more. What’s missing for me?

For me it’s the difference between formal and informal learning, where structured conferences are the former, and unconferences are the latter. There is a place for both. One is about learning in a designed path, in a structured way, to a particular outcome. The other is about exploring a topic.  So it depends what I need at that time. Am I exploring or wanting to get somewhere?

What I love most about the open space meetings is going places where I never thought I’d go. What I don’t like is when I’m looking to plunge deeply into a topic, and be taken to place I didn’t know I could go, by someone who has explored and thought about it in depth — when I need a guide.

Now that I’ve written this it seems obvious, but it’s not so obvious in the moment when you’re having great conversations and still find yourself looking around for the sage. I want both. I want to dive deep with a guide, and then explore, with others, and find my own way. Like improvisational jazz — structure and unstructure within the same experience.

Can’t we design a middle way?

What shape might this take?

• Learning as search

  • I have an immediate learning need and I search for something that will help me.
  • Text search  is limited — there is too much noise that comes from searching. Search engines may improve their algorithms, but there’s too much data out there.
  • Company channels - I go to my company’s learning channel (most likely an app) I look up a word and see a set of linked concepts – something like this:
  • Rating systems – I have the option to add layers or re-sort the data so I can see popularity, rating, recommendations by the Learning Group; recommendations by the CEO; or how they link to being a part of a learning series (aka curriculum). It also recommends others who may want to be taking the course at the same time and suggests them as learning buddies.
  • Learning solo or in groups: I also have the option of learning on my own, learning with a group, or with my team where we learn parts of a complex set of information (distributed cognition), or just learning with others who are taking this or have taken this recently.
  • Choosing & Follow-up  – I choose the learning chunk I want. This is followed-up by an email that asks me to  rate it, whether I want it put towards my performance goals and also send me related links for more learning. Maybe I take advantage of this, maybe I don’t.
  • If I don’t find what I need, I tweet internally. Hopefully someone in the Learning Group responds and sends me a link to the relevant information. I smile, they’re just like ComcastCares.

• Learning as part of Business/Talent Management

  • My company has set strategic goals. This translates into competencies. This eventually turns into learning goals at the group and individual level. Or maybe it’s just that my manager has set learning goals for the group.
  • The business management/talent management system sends me reminders on expected courses.
  • I take courses online/in-person. Or maybe I test out of them. Only successfully completed courses go on the record.
  • For bonus points I create learning modules and advertise internally. This goes towards my learning points. I check my learning points against those as colleagues on the leaderboard. Learning as gaming.
  • My learning points come up as part of my review process.

In 2015 we will still be recovering from this economic downturn. Whether companies will be able to invest in an infrastructure that brings together all the pieces of their business so that there can be a coherent learning plan remains to be seen. Or whether the management of this infrastructure goes to the cloud and software as  service can step in to fulfill this role remains to be seen.

I imagine workplace learning technology that is not that much different from today — I imagine it better integrated and linked to my personal objectives and my company’s strategic business objectives.

Workplace learning technology in 2015 will help me customize my learning experience to my needs and my company’s strategic goals.

Whatever happens — people will still need help separating the signal from the noise.

Walking into Hacker Dojo at the start of the Women in Mobile event there was a loud buzz in the air. Voices bouncing off the concrete floor and reverberating through the open space — a large gathering of women and several men mixed in. And…. (sniff, sniff)…the smell of pizza in the air! (thanks PayPal) Ah, the scent of a meetup. Smiles as I greet Seema and Grace at the registration desk.

After introductions to APWT by Shirley (surely you know Shirley Lin!), and Lilian Tham — they hand it over to the moderator, Ishita Majumdar (Executive In Residence, Plug-N-Play) to talk about how these women entrepreneurs in mobile got started, what they/their companies are doing, and their advice for creating your own products and startups. I walked in with no expectations, and walked out excited by possibilities — the Silicon Valley magic.

Here’s the 3 women presenting and what I found cool about what they do.

• Georgi Dagnall, CEO, GeoGad
• Bess Ho, ninja mobile developer with 10 apps in the app stores and speaker at Web 2.0
• Katie McMahon, Marketing Maven,  SoundHound

Geodad – Your personal mobile tour

My first thought — isn’t this just a mashup of maps + tours? It reminded me of running routes that I could do and share with others. Ok, it’s an app, and it also has a web interface for creating personal tours. You mean I could create a personal tour of my home town Port Kells? (Ok, not really a town…more of a corner) Upload commentary, pics, and other stuff that I find cool about it? Ok, I could get into that.I could create my own personal tours around my interests and share it with others? Like a chocolate tour of SF? Ice cream tours? Coffee houses in tour of the South? City of Durham could put its Black History tour on this thing. Very cool.

But hey, I could use it for more than just tourist tours — I could use it for onboarding new people, and giving them a tour around a campus, office or facility (it’s based on longitude and latitude).  Hotels could use it to orient their guests/corporate users (could have used this as an event coordinator when I was trying to figure out what was possible in a space.) I could also use it to create an oral history project, combining it with locations. Or have students create their own oral history project! Or the local homeowners associations could use it to create garden tours, walking tours and more and more.

All right I get it, now I just have to try it. It’s completely free too! (Both iPhone & Android versions I think.)

SoundHound – sample sound, find music

SoundHound is probably the best-funded group that was here tonight. And SoundHound has some serious IP behind it. SoundHound  samples your voice, or a tune that you hum, the music via the radio or speaker –  and finds the song, artist, etc, AND link to places where you can purchase it! How cool is that? (The real question is can it understand MY tone-deaf humming?)

Most sound-matching technology goes from sound > text-text > matching. SoundHound does sound > sound-sound > matching. Much harder, many more possibilities.

So I can imagine doing role plays based on this sound matching. Stay with me — instead of a branching structure, imagine an algorithm that responds to tonality, to specific words, and creates a response based on that. Possibilities of more general role plays. Many things to play with here.

Very cool app. Download – there’s a freeium version or premium version at low cost. Both iPhone & Android.

Bess Ho – app creator, promotion-hacker extraordinaire

Bess Ho is amazing. That’s all I can say. Comes up with app ideas, does quick market research to see what’s out there, then if a competitor exists, designs to its failings, and then starts coding. Her advice: (a) Keep it Simple (2) Do One Thing Really Well (3) Make it Fun.

And she practices guerilla marketing – like showing up at the Palo Alto Festival with her music app, and just talking her way into performing, then near the Apple store in Palo Alto and just stop people on the street to promote her app. This girl is hacker to the core. Great energy, makes anything seem possible. Bess Ho rocks. You can follow here on twitter @bess.

If you’re like me your first reaction is — NO WAY.  You’re skeptical, you may get this feeling in your gut that makes you cringe. You’re thinking — love does not belong in the workplace, it’s personal, it belongs at home. You have a vision of people in loose, flowing clothes running around hugging each other. With flowers. And other stuff. (Ok, maybe that’s just me.)

But something made my critical mind pause.

The Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect describes how people act in accordance to the expectations you have of them — whether these expectations are conscious or unconscious. If you think people are stupid, guess what? — they can read your mind and act that way. This effect has been demonstrated in the classroom, at home, and at work. (Related effect — the Galatea effect > the expectations we have of ourselves.) Furthermore, a positive mindset from a leader can produce powerful behavioral effects, even in the absence of auditory or visual contact (references below). Whether you are leading employees or students — your mindset matters. Call it good will, call it focusing on the positive — or simply call it love.

Appreciative Processes

Ever heard of Appreciative Inquiry? It’s a type of inquiry that envisions a future that focuses positive relationships and collaboration, building organizations based on what works rather than trying to fix what doesn’t. Appreciative Processes improve systems by amplifying what’s working — identifying what people do best.

Think about how we approach most work — FIX THE PROBLEM. Do a gap analysis. Figure out what people need to learn, figure out what mindsets we need to change, usually ending up with the question — how do we fix our PEOPLE?

Appreciative Processes combine the Demming approach with Appreciative Inquiry — figure out what processes  make a difference and use an appreciative mindset to bring out the best in people. Use Appreciative Leadership to create a culture of systemic change and continuous improvement.

Back to LOVE

Ok, so here we are — back at the idea of love in organizations. When we think about creating an environment that:

• Focuses on what people and organizations do well
• Focuses on strengths,
• Allows people to do their best everyday
• A place where people enjoy being and where they enjoy each other

That’s a organization that uses love.

If it makes you feel better to call it something else, go ahead do so. But just remember, you’re losing the energy of a very powerful word.

Just try this — go about your work constantly thinking — “I love this place, my work, and the people I work with.” Try it for just ONE day. See what difference it makes.

Learn More…

• If you’re interested in learning more — come to a workshop on “Releasing the Power of Love in the Workplace”, by Roger Harrision sponsored by BAodn on June 9, 2010 in San Francisco. [Link to workshop]
• Accessing the Power of Love in the Workplace, by Roger Harrision, Ph.D. [Download PDF document here]
• The Appreciative Leader and Appreciative Change Processes by Gervase R. Bushe, Ph.D. [Download PDF document "aplc" here]. Or visit www.clearlearning.ca
• Pygmalion & Galatea effects

• Why the heck am in a meeting with a bunch of OD folks when I think of myself as an Instructional Designer?
• What’s is organizational development? How is it different from organizational learning?
• What the difference between development and learning?

Flash Mob Dance - Informal Group Learning?

I realized that  really liked the folks at this meeting — it was the first meeting I’ve been to in the Bay Area where I felt “Ah, I’ve found my people.” Since I want to keep going, I had to figure out a WHY I was there — what was the connection?

Development vs. Learning

Why not start with the basics?

• Development – stages that one goes through in one’s life or one’s life or one’s career, often thought of as change in roles (becoming a mother or becoming a manager). These stages in development can be biological (aging); psychological (maturing, identity); or sociocultural (change in roles, life or career events/problems/trajectory). In addition, there are variables such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and the impact and influence on that person’s development.
• Learning – knowledge, skills and attitudes required to master a subject, attain performance, or understand a domain, or innovate. Learning, like development, is about change and growth. Or sometimes just about “running to stand still” — keeping up with change to maintain one’s position. There is formal and informal learning; online, face-to-face, and blended; there is the technology of learning from CMS/LMS/Performance Management systems to Webinars to games and virtual worlds. Learning is a part of development. Learning integrated with development leads to “teachable moments” — learning appropriate to developmental stages. There’s much much more but I’ll stop here.

Organizational development vs. learning

Continuing from the explanation above, then organizational development is about the stages of an organization. It has an action orientation — it’s about evaluating and creating an intervention. Examples below:

• What an organization need when moving from start-up to mature organization
• Using diagnostic tools to understand what “life event” an organization is facing and creating an intervention, such as:
  • Using organizational 360 or SLCQ (Strategy Leadership Culture Questionnaire)
  • Using something like the Periodic Table of Strategy (Mercer-Delta) to determine the challenge and potential strategic moves for an organization
  • Gap  of where an organization is, where they want to go, and what it will take to get there.
  • SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• Based on Senge’s five disciplines to create the learning organization:
  • personal mastery
  • mental models
  • shared visions
  • team learning
  • systems thinking
• Using coaching, mentoring, other tools to improve organizational performance

Organizational Learning

Quite simply, organizational learning is the collection of stuff involved in individual and collective learning inside an organization. It is also about the analysis and support of learning processes, formal and informal.

• Courses and curriculum
• Informal learning – social media, water-cooler learning, blogs, wikis, enabling conversations, mentoring, etc.
• Technology that support the above
• Design that supports the above
• Understanding of the cognitive and social processes that support learning
• Understanding the organizational processes that support or impeded learning
• Design of learning that supports organizational strategy
• Senge’s five disciplines

It’s in the last four that we cross-over into the realm of organizational development. There is clearly a link between the two — when things aren’t working on an organizational level, often we often turn to learning and development. However, much less often, do we turn to learning and development when things ARE working – or when we want to make things better when they are already good.

Why an Instructional Designer meets with OD folks

Instructional design (ID) is too narrowly focused on creating learning — instead of being more broadly focused on creating learning specific to organizational strategy — specific enough to measure impact. Because of the narrow focus of ID, I’m am pulled to people and groups asking bigger questions, with an organizational focus.

I love thinking about how people learn, but I also need (for my sanity) to think about how organizations learn, and how individual learning is relevant in this bigger picture.

That’s why I joined BAodn.

References for this Learning vs. Development article:

• Learning in Adulthood: A comprehensive guide by Merriam, Caffarella, Baumgartner
• Infed website: http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-organization.htm
• Organizational Learning vs. the Learning Organization by Carol Gorelick (Google Books)

Perfect for a learning experience! Here’s a domain where you have to know a lot of terms, be able to distinguish between the terms, and then be able to establish a point-of-view of your wine preferences — as opposed to Robert Parker’s wine preferences, or the Wine Spectator’s wine preferences. Yes, and then there’s understanding all these wine point guides.

So let’s just reiterate these key points:

• Audience – novice wine drinkers who want to learn more about wine, who are intimidated by the language of wine, and who may position themselves as anti-wine or anti-elitist.
• Outcomes - establish a point-of-view on what wine one likes to drink – wine preferences; be able to “defend” or speak-to that POV.
• Learning Tasks – some initial thoughts
  • Distinguish red from white (hey! an easy win, no?)
  • Understand fortified wines are, blends vs. single varietals, old world vs. new
  • Distinguish main varietals – Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Grigo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot, common blends (Bordeaux)
  • Know some of the lesser varietals/blends
  • Pair wine with foods – the basics, more complex
  • Going into a wine store and buying wine for:
    • a drinking party
    • a special occasion
    • for your cellar – collecting wines

Distinguishing is both a visual task (red/white, etc.), cognitive task – knowing the terms, and being able to taste the difference. It’s also about being able to understand the mental models in the wine world (such as old world vs. new world). It may also be possible to define some cognitive strategies: systematic approaches to problem solving in this domain or rules of thumb (especially when it comes to wine pairings). Developing a cognitive strategy for oneself and a POV is about creating an approach to answering the question – “What wine do I want to drink?” To this end, a tool such as a wine journal, is a good start.

Methods

• This could be done as an extremely long PowerPoint presentation (save me now…put me out of my misery!) – or maybe just some part of it….
• It could be an in-person learning experience — in fact, some of it *has* to be!!! Virtual wine is just no fun. Self-directed, in-person learning experience — include a guide to wine bars, wine tasting, or do-it-yourself tryouts
• It could be a game – stay with me. If you have a group of people who are resistant to wine, one could create a game (part-task practice) on suggesting wine to a particular type of wine drinker. The more “right” suggestions you make, the more the will drink (although not P.C., it would be fun to see how much you could get people to drink…. creating drunks…. hmmm…sub-goal)

So these are just some initial thoughts on creating a learning experience about wine. I have to thank my friend Paul for all his years of encouragement on experimenting with wine. More next week.

p.s. If you have thoughts or experiences on who you learned about wine, please share!