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.

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.

How I motivated my spouse to clean the living room

Last week while trying to get my husband to clean his stuff out of the living room, I tried to influence him with the idea of a more organized house, with the idea of him as a more organized person, and also with idea of my help. But because it felt wrong — dishonest really — to attempt influence him without him knowing, I decided to be more direct and started my campaign with the words “I want to influence you.” That was about as far as I got. He so loved the idea that I was trying to influence him, that he came over and gave me a hug, and the rest was relatively easy.

I’d like to take the credit for this magic trick, but let’s be honest, there was another motivating factor: we had a new couch arriving. The email of the impending arrival came the same week I was trying to get the cleaning done. That was the real motivation. My influence just helped get it done in a more timely manner. The arrival of the couch meant the completion of the living room, one of the last rooms to be completed in our long renovation saga. It was also about the completion of his idea of home. This was the underlying motivation.

Drive: the book about motivation

Daniel Pink’s new book Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, is actually not that surprising for many of us who have worked in the field of education. The work of Deci & Ryan (intrinsic & extrinsic motivations); Carol Dweck (how our beliefs in intelligence affect our view of ourselves as learners); and of course, Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi (the idea of flow.) What Pink does it put it all together in a compelling package and relates it to the world of work. Because of this, I found his book useful in thinking about motivation — and summarize the key components below.

Beyond carrots and sticks – the 3 components of motivation

Here is the twitter version of the book that the author provides (in the Toolkit section – yes, did I mention it was well-packaged?):

Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.

That’s it. You don’t have to read the book – it’s about intrinsic motivation – or autonomy, mastery & purpose. Understanding these 3 components will help motivate people for most types of work, he argues, especially work in the “new economy” of the “21st century”. With some types of repetitive work, apparently sticks and carrots still are good motivators (the post office comes to mind.) But for “knowledge workers”, he argues, it’s different — assuming that you compensate people fairly.

• Autonomy – people need autonomy over what they do (task), when they do it (time), who they do it with (team), and how they do it (technique) – (derived from Deci/Ryan plus others)
• Mastery – begins with flow (Csikszenmihalyi) – optimal experiences when the task  is neither too easy or too hard, but just above our level, pushing us to get better. Mastery is a mindset where one sees abilities not as finite or set (Dweck), but as infinite – the anything is possible mindset. However, mastery is painful, requiring grit and deliberate practice (Schon plus others). Mastery is impossible to fully realize – one can always get better.
• Purpose – people need purpose – goals that use profit to reach purpose (social innovations); when we need more than self- interest (hello, non-profit world); the idea of purpose maximization, as opposed to profit maximization.

My questions – But do we always know what we want and need? Will it get us to where we want to go? Or take us to unexpected places? When I’ve been placed on teams that are with people that I don’t like and know is when I’ve learned the most about how to work with people different from myself. It is then when I’ve grown. And sometimes these teams create the most innovative ideas — when we step outside our usual ways of being.

And, let’s be honest: extrinsic motivation matters. I wanted to do my Masters — I choose it as my purpose/task. But if I didn’t have a deadline (i.e. spouse threatening insanity if I didn’t finish), then no, I would not have completed it and graduated. If I didn’t start a blog called the Unfinished Masters, and asked all my friends to read it and keep me on track — then no, I would not have finished.

Yes – autonomy, mastery, and purpose make sense — but do people always know what they want and need? Can everyone function on intrinsic motivation alone? This is where influence comes to play, in defining purpose, in setting deadlines or other forms of extrinsic motivation.

How to motivate

• Understand people’s purpose, or help them shape their purpose and goals.
  Many educators do this at the start of class (see Learning Cycle blog)
• Can you structure the interaction so they can achieve mastery? Achieve a level of performance above what they currently have? (Think how video games are constantly challenging players just above their level. Hard to do sometimes for a mixed group.)
• Give them autonomy on how they reach their goals.

So these ideas are very general, let me try to apply to a couple situations.

Motivating my spouse

• Purpose: My spouse wants an organized, functional and beautiful house. Therefore, position the work on tasks that will make the house more functional, and not just because I’m asking him to clean.
• Autonomy: Within the purpose of organizing/increasing functionality let him choose his task; let him do it his way (technique), on his time (with deadlines of course – the couch was the extrinsic motivation part). And does he get to choose his team? Well, he choose to marry me – so yes.
• Mastery: Will the task have flow? Maybe if it’s a challenge of how quickly we can get it done. Can he believe he can do it — yes; although it won’t require practice, it will require grit.

In writing this outline of motivating my husband, I think it’s more for me than for him.

Motivating my own learning — about wine

• Ever since moving to the Bay Area I’ve wanted to learn more about wine. The grape varieties, the vintners, the regions, etc. My purpose is simple – to become a better Californian and learn about wine.
• Autonomy:I choose to learn about wine by creating a learning module (task). I’d like to try out a new Instructional Design model that I’ve been reading about (technique). I’d like to put it online. My team is myself, and perhaps a couple friends I can cajole into advising as needed. My technique will also involve sampling said wines The time – that’s the hard part — that where I need extrinsic motivation. That’s why I’m writing about this – I’d like to get YOU to help motivate me to complete this by mid-April.
• Mastery: I believe that I am capable of learning about wine; I also believe that I am capable of mastering the domain of wine — and be able to choose wines to go with food, wines to drink at parties, wines as gifts — and maybe more. This will require grit, deliberate practice, and refining my palette for wine. It will also require a drinking buddy.

In the process of writing these points, it becomes clear to me that my challenge is always, will always be the deadline. I love to read and research, but without the extrinsic motivation of the deadline, I would accomplish very little. This essential point is what Pink only touches on — that we need that external structure of deadlines, office spaces where we do our work, the exercise classes — to motivate us to keep focused and keep us going. We often need others to create expectations that we then fulfill. We need that social connection, and sometimes social pressure, to motivate us.

Here’s a story ..it happened to me…

Several years ago I was traveling to an client event in another country. I had been in my new position a couple of months at most. My boss was meeting me there, and  was to brief me on the details. I arrived a couple days early to visit with family — a good thing because on Day 1, the client called asking me to come. Boss was still in New York. So in I went.

Upon arrival I was told that a critical video that we created was stuck at the border.  I was to get it released ASAP. I smiled and said “yes, I’ll take care of it.” I had no idea what they were talking about. Couldn’t find my boss. Panic began to eat at the edges of my brain. I called everyone I knew to get the cell number of the one guy who could release the tape. He was eating dinner.  He apologized, and said he would take care of it as soon as the border customs office opened. Whew!

And then the real whammy happened on Day 1 @ 2 am (ok, technically Day 2). My boss called. She missed her connecting flight. She managed to get a flight to a city that was actually further away. Clearly geography was not her strong suite. But crazier still, they threatened to deport her because of something she said when she crossed the border: “work”. Never, ever, say you’re coming in to work in another country unless you have a work visa. I gave her this advice. Repeated it. To sum up, she would not arrive until much later on Day 2 — if she arrived at all. Me alone with the client (that’s plural client not singular) for another day. Didn’t really sleep.

Got up, put a smile on my face, and explained the crazy situation. Then volunteered to do whatever work they needed — and sure enough, they put to work. The tape arrived. Boss arrived. The rest of the event went swimmingly. We all survived.

When I got back, I was treated as a hero — if they could have given me the consultant equivalent of the purple heart they would have.

END OF STORY.

I can’t help think I could have been better prepared.

Is it possible to train for the unexpected?

YES, YES, YES!!!! Except I wouldn’t call it training…

• Step 1: Tell people the unexpected will happen.
• Teach them the power of negative thinking (book I read once). Have a team brainstorm about all the things that could go wrong and how you could prepare for them. What are the backup plans? This lesson I learned in radio — some technology will fail, some tape will break (yup, good ol’ analog days), some interviewee will *not* show up. Be prepared. Have a plan. Rehearse your plan.
• Who will answer the “red” phone at 3 am? The hardest thing is feeling that you are alone in a situation. The one thing that made a difference to me was connecting with one person who was still at the office at 7pm. Hearing a friendly voice tell me that she would do “everything she could to help me” made all the difference. Thank you team mate!
• Focus on the work that needs doing. I did my best to stay focused on the work that needed doing (get video, get boss, help client) It helped keep most of the anxiety at bay.
• Stay positive & stay focused on the needs of your client. It would have been very easy to fall into victim mode (“I’m not good enough”, “I can’t deal with this”, “I’m an impostor”, “it’s his/her/their fault”, “it’s not my job!”). Look it’s not about you, it’s about the client. So get over it. Put your “game-face” on, and as trite as it sounds, go out there with a positive attitude. What can you do to help?

Ambiguity, complexity, and the distributed expertise of teams creates “black swan” events. How can we deal with the unexpected, emergent behavior of systems? I think there’s a  game to be created here (or maybe several already exist?)

This isn’t training — it’s strategy.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

There are many older pieces still to add, and many new ones running around in my head. But hey, check it out and I welcome your feedback.

Building on the idea of learning through examples, if you provide multiple examples to people learning a new idea, it usually leads to a better understanding of how the abstracted concept was derived. Thus the abstracted concept, or theory is just a way of explaining why the world works as it does.

Perceiving what to perceive: contrasting cases

However, when an individual is new to a domain, how they know what to look for? How do the know what is important? What is relevant to notice? This is where the design idea of contrasting cases comes to bear. Learners are given an example, then asked to derive an explanation of a pattern or what they see in front of them. Then they are given another example — a contrasting case — which is significantly different from the prior case or example. The learner then has to explain both cases. They have to create a model that can encompass both examples.

What the learner is doing is perceiving salient differences through multiple contrasting cases. Or as Daniel Schwartz & John Bransford write an article in 1998 called A Time for Telling: “analyzing contrasting cases can help learners generate the differentiated knowledge structures that enable them to understand a text deeply.” By learning how to perceive salient differences through multiple contrasting cases, and by creating new schema or mental models from learners’ own experience, learners created their own base of knowledge from which to further understand a concept.

A time for telling

After deeply engaging with material through contrasting cases, the learners are then more prepared to receive a lecture on the subject. “Noticing the distinctions between contrasting cases creates a ‘time for telling’; learners are prepared to be told the significance of the distinctions they have discovered” (Schwartz & Bransford.)

Analogies: a special kind of case
Likewise, having multiple, appropriate analogies or examples helps learners incrementally develop increasingly abstract schemas, especially if they are able to apply it to problem soon after learning. An analogy is a particular type of case that compares a concept familiar to a learner (the source) to an unfamiliar concept (a target). For example, comparing a plumbing system to the concept of cash flow, drawing a relationship between cash and the flow of water, between leaks and the loss of cash through bad accounts and interest. Based on this comparison, learners draw inferences about a target that deepens or elaborates their understanding.

Analogies are powerful tools for helping learners understand a new domain. The challenge is choosing an analogy that maps not just surface elements but that also maps relationships between the elements. For example, in the cash flow/plumbing system analogy, a hot water tank could be analogous to accounts receivable, a place where sales/incoming water is held before being transformed into cash bank balance/or hot water for the house. Even in this example, the analogy is a bit strained as water does not fully capture the transformation of cash as an asset as it moves through the system.

Analogical reasoning also depends on some prior knowledge of the source. However, even if the source is not completely understood by the learner it can still be helpful in learning. It is the comparison of the two cases, the source and the target, and examining their similarities that facilitates the creation of abstract concepts and schema.

To load – click the Play arrow. Once it loads > click More then Autoplay. Or to step through it at your own pace,  just click the Play arrow.

Try Prezi out for yourself at http://prezi.com – it’s fun and easy to ease. Now I just have to find something else to Prezi…..hmmmm.  I could imagine doing a family tree with historical pictures in this way. Still figuring out the publishing options.

Learning a complex new subject matter often takes extensive practice. Development of expertise requires many hours of practice. Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book Outliers emphasizes how it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. The research behind this claim comes  from studies done by John Hayes who found that geniuses in various fields produce their best work after 10 years of apprenticeship (which works out to about 10,000 hours); and by Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer (1993) which found that the best violinists practiced 7,000 hours before coming to a Berlin music academy, whereas the good violinists practiced only 5,000 hours. It takes about 3 years for London taxi drivers to acquire the “knowledge” of London in order to expertly navigate through the streets. It takes time to learn to learn the patterns, rules and problem-solving strategies for a domain of knowledge.

Deliberate practice – feedback

It is not any kind of practice that will help you become an expert – but deliberate practice. In this type of practice you are not just performing, but trying to learn how to do it better. Learners are usually highly motivated so when given feedback on their performance, and they carefully monitor their work to reduce differences and master the performance.

Julia with mallet - beware!

Part of deliberate practice is making mistakes and adjusting. I put this picture of Julia Child here as an inspiration. She is someone who learned to cook and become and expert in her field, through trial and error — doing it over and over again. And every meal was a test, and her diners without doubt gave her feedback. We should all be so fearless.

Test at regular intervals with feedback

Learners forget new information with time, very rapidly within the first day, and then less so over time. Testing learners has shown to help improve retention and recall. Therefore tests can be used not just for assessment, but as a study mechanism.

In studies by Landauer and Bjork (1978) they found that testing individuals  after a delay creates a sufficient level of difficulty that requires learners to work harder, thus improving their recall of an series of items. However, this was followed up Karpicke and Roediger (1979), who found that yes, creating a delay helped, but what helped more was giving people feedback after testing, therefore one could test at regular intervals, and provide feedback, and it would have the same effects.

It should be remembered that many of these experiments were done in the laboratory, on recall and retention of word pairs, so although likely useful in the “real world”, I have not seen field research verifying these experiments.

Practice, give feedback, test, give feedback and practice again. This guideline, like many of the others I have written about, should intuitively make sense. Perhaps in a context where compliance is an issue, the testing, practice, feedback cycle will be helpful (hopefully one can make it fun and not too onerous!) But being motivated, deliberate practice is the key to deep learning and expertise.

Happy Brains

Last night I uploaded a slidecast of Learning Design for the Brain – Multimedia Learning Principles.

This is a deck that I’ve been working on for some time — I created it back in August to better understand all those rather confusing and repetitive multimedia principles. It’s rather technical and academic in nature, but I’m hoping it will be useful, if only for the checklists at the end.

You can view the slidecast at my portfolio page or at SlideShare.net. Also available is a Checklist (PDF download) of  multimedia principles – this is helpful when designing.

Some notes  on creating slidecasts:

• if you’re doing this for the first time, use a short slide deck
• creating a separate audio file and synching online via the slidecast feature takes time! it’s a Flash-based system – very cool and easy to use but a little slow and painful for large files
• Slideshare does not export your animations – it flattens them. I realized this AFTER creating the audio. What a pain and workarounds to get that they way I imagined. Still not quite right.

So enjoy.

• Keep it simple
• Remove extraneous detail
• Pare the learning down to essential components
• Clearly explain how these components relate to one another
• Help learners focus on what’s important.

The capacity for the brain to hold new information is limited.

• By the capacity of working memory (sometimes called short-term memory)
• By the how complex the material is to the learner

So, when learning try to communicate new knowledge:

• no more then 2-4 elements at a given time (i.e. per slide)

Knitted Brain

Some background information and research in case you want to know:

• When introducing new knowledge, the constraints of working memory limit how much information can be processed in a given time frame. Miller, 1950′s discovered the rule of 7 — no more than 7 items could be kept active in short term memory.
• However, when you’re trying to understand something, relate components of an concept, compare and contrast, then you want no more than 2-4 elements in working memory. (Sweller’s cognitive load theory).
• Interference  can limit recall of information. Recall is worse the more facts you learn about a concept. Interference literally knocks the old information out of your brain when attaching new facts to a concept, if the facts have no intrinsic relationship to each other. It interferes when the memory one is trying to create. This is why extraneous information is often not advised. (Anderson, 2006).
• Fan effects – the more facts or links associated with a concept, the longer it will take to recall any one fact.
• Redundancy effects, as opposed to interference,  can help with recall. Especially when the pieces are linked appropriately.

• • Example of irrelevant facts that INTERFERE:
    • Locke was unhappy as a student at Westminster.
    • Locke felt fruits were unwholesome for children.
  • Example 2 of REDUNDANT facts that help in recall.
    • Mozart made a long journey from Munich to Paris.
    • Mozart was intrigued by musical developments coming out of Paris.
• People use redundant facts to infer the target concept.

For more information, read up on Sweller’s cognitive load theory, and Mayer’s theory of Multimedia Learning.