It's the Little Things

Last night my wife and I went to see the highly praised off-Broadway show STOMP at ASU's Gammage auditorium. My wife has seen many more live shows than I, including this one, and she has been anxious to take me to see it for some time. I knew the basic gist of the show - an acrobatic display combining dance, rhythm, and inventive percussion techniques and tools - but I was not sure if there was any specific plot or story. This show has become a resounding success in a number of ways since its first performance in 1991, and now that I've seen the performance the idea behind the show I think is something that learning professionals can take a lot away from.

The closest relatable experience I had prior to STOMP is my experience seeing Blue Man Group in Las Vegas back in 2003. Now that I have seen STOMP, I am intrigued by the nature of the show, and it made me reflect on my BMG experience. The part of STOMP that struck me most is the way in which the performance is a study in making the most of the simplest tools available. In this case, we're talking about percussive rhythms and beats created with non-traditional tools that bring about intricate dances, some inventive quasi-slapstick comedy, and ultimately, a happy audience. STOMP is more than the use of cigarette lighters, trash cans, newspapers and plastic bags to make synchronized noise. This is a show that takes an idea so basic and seemingly unremarkable, and makes it remarkable beyond conceptualization. It's about redefining percussion itself.

As I discovered last night there is no plot, but that is of no consequence to the quality of the show. There is also no dialog at all during the performance. There are some audible cues given by the performers at various points, though they are very few. This is a show that is intended to get the audience not just bouncing along in their seat, but also clapping and participating. It's a great study in how much communication can be accomplished without words. Simple looks, gestures, expressions; all of these run the show beginning to end. There's no band either; the only instruments are what is being banged, tapped, rattled, zipped, swept, what have you. The whole show just brings to the forefront the very basics of seeing-and-doing learning, and through the use of non-traditional music-making, really asks each audience member to consider the possibilities behind anything. A broom evolves from a tool for sweeping, to an object whose shape can be manipulated to hold a beat, to a tool that sweeps, holds a beat, and complements a dance. It's all a visual demonstration of learning the basics, experimenting outside the bounds of accepted use, and ending in a crescendo of mastery of self and tool. As the performers bounced and vaulted about the stage, I could imagine their individual learning process as individuals, and cooperation as they integrated and added to the moves and display. They were already masters, but through their mastery I could envision the learning process.

But the basis for everything we saw last night was the novelty of "innovel" things. The boring is made bright; the mundane is made marvelous. Going forward, as learning professionals I think the nature of STOMP's performance can help us think creatively about the information and tools available to us and how to apply them, but it can also help us rethink how even the old tools need to be reconsidered and re-purposed. Before we jump to the most complex systems, is there an inventive and efficient way to instruct and inform without fancy technology? How can that fancy technology be applied responsibly for our aims? In other cases, how do we convince others that the latest and greatest isn't always the best?

An Inventive Way To Bring Familes Closer

Normally I tackle adult-oriented education and performance improvement on this blog. Not so this time: A friend of mine told me about Ripple Reader. After checking this out, this is a great service for parents, kids, and children's book authors everywhere.

Parent company Ripple provides a wonderful demonstration of their service once you fill out their information form. The gist is essentially that you can record yourself reading a children's book to your child or grandchild, should you be far away. Ripple provides everything for you to purchase a book, record your delivery, and send it to your loved one. You can even turn your recording into a gift you can send along with the book. Wonderful stuff, and this helps parents combine family time with reading and computer skills.

I can see another use for this one though: A budding amateur narration industry. Can we say crowdsourcing, or American Idol for books, perhaps? I can also see Ripple Reader being used for adult books as well, though I think that there is some overlap here with podcasting and vid/vodcasts.

Training Challenges: Helping Others Help Themselves

training,clients,solutions,design,tools

One of the most common problems training organizations face is the hot dog stand sort of view that their clients have of them. Clients get used to training as the fix to most or all of their problems, and with this mindset they often come to the internal training organization with a to-go order that they look to be fulfilled by training resources. Clients expect training products - typically ILT and/or WBT modules in my experience - to solve whatever performance issues they face.

As such it is necessary for a training organization to find ways to help their clients analyze what their true needs are. This is certainly not a new thing; training departments everywhere go through this on a daily basis right now. The question we in the training and performance improvement space need to ask ourselves is, in the rapidly evolving Web 2.0/Elearning 2.0 world, what are our best and most easily implemented options for providing clients the tools they need to help themselves?

Gaining Perspective

As with any human endeavor, it's often best to check our perspective at the door as the first order of business. After all, our perspective colors all things, and a client is more likely than not going to come from a place that is not unrealistic in its own right, but may not be truly aligned with what the group's actual need is. The client must be prompted to consider their position first before acting. Is training really needed? Will a job aid or mentoring suffice? What about the gap indicates training is the best solution? Does a member of the client's team possess the ability to help solve the problem?

Applying Web/Elearning 2.0

With all of the new possibilities provided by the recent evolution of social networking tools and the web, how do we as training/HPI professionals best capture the moment at which delegation occurs? Using my most recent experience as an example, the training organization that I was a part of had a small collection of resources for training professionals to use in meetings with stakeholders to determine the true needs of the client from a training perspective. These tools focused solely on training however, and the process was very manual.

Hindsight being 20/20, I have some designs I would choose to implement that would alleviate some of the burden of this step. For example, what about using an internal forum/blog that clients can access to ask questions and receive feedback from the training group(s) about whether training is the right option for them? In another case, apps like Adobe Captivate or Microsoft PowerPoint could be used to design and develop branching questionnaires that clients go through that help them identify the nature of their problem, and guide them to the best possible solution selections (and perhaps even provide them the templates they need to create the solution themselves at the end).

Web/Elearning 2.0 tools have come about only recently, and they are typically seen as the vehicles by which content is generated, organized, and packaged for delivery. Perhaps it is time to consider how to leverage these implements before training design even begins. How could your organization benefit from applying these applications as such? Does your organization already do this?

Why Wikis? An example...

Tony Karrer has an instructive posting about wikis. He writes about how often wikis are ill-considered as an elearning tool, primarily due to fears surrounding the insertion of errant or low-quality information by individuals who have little or no expertise. In fact, The Wired Campus has an opinion piece that makes very salient points about new learning technologies such as wikis, and the as-yet unquantified impact on academic leadership. Tony is correct to point out the crowdsourcing nature of wikis. I would also emphasize the power to correct that which is incorrect, a central feature of the wiki system. Some may argue that a post-counterpost struggle may ensue, with wiki modifiers possibly being at odds with wiki admins, and either party insisting they have the correct information. But Tony is again correct to point out that just as the information can be corrected, so too can the perspective and the information others have.

A while back I wasn't so sure of the wiki idea myself. But while at a friends house we were discussing Wikipedia on his big screen TV (computers displaying in 50 inches...greatness), and he demonstrated for me the correction system. He found an historical article, and made a change that made a particular statement incorrect. Within probably 30 seconds after posting and see the new statement in official form, it had been corrected back to the original form. This quality control is certainly susceptible to biases and malfeasance, but I have since become a big fan of Wikipedia, particularly as a means of locating sources for Masters papers I am writing. My university is dutifully wary of Wikipedia as a scholarly resource - which it of course is not - but at the very least I can link to some sources I had not yet found, or branch into related subjects, another power of the wiki format.

My most recent contracting project had me creating a wiki for the program team, partly as a means of communication regarding the program's aims and projects, and getting the word out to the wider workforce. This wiki was fast becoming a good resource on the company's intranet for locating material on the company's history, various industry topics, departments, and other types of knowledge. It would be hard to say that the wiki was becoming a tool for storing business intelligence, as much of the internal information was sensitive and likely unacceptable for company-wide posting. But as an intranet tool the wiki appeared to be serving its purpose well, and the ease of entering the wiki and making editions to information empowered all members of a project team (for example) to enter new information when it became relevant.

I'm still getting to know the wiki, but I do find the participatory element of wikis to be a good thing for engaging others in learning. As such, whether the wiki succeeds of fails as a central information resource on the internet, it seems likely to succeed as a key learning tool.