Information Overload and New Initiatives

A recent article over at CLO online talks about the problem of information overload in the workplace. The article talks about the impact of this problem on the quality of work, the morale of employees, and the amount of time information overload causes when people have to keep re-orienting to tasks they get pulled away from, or get prioritized into.

While the thrust of the article is about how to reduce and manage information overload, what I think this article partially highlights is the importance of the design and adoption of informal learning solutions for workplace learning and performance professionals. The explosion of new technologies for activities such as social networking, social media, collaboration, and the various means by which information can be made available in different content forms, means that people are going to be forced to choose, and some may adopt a new initiative for things like internal social networking or collaboration, but others may choose to stick with the tried-and-true methods that they drew success from prior to the new implementation. As is often the case in today's world, it's about change management.

I have been in situations where I've researched different options for an effective informal learning implementation, and the design that ends up taking hold (because time constraints are short and no time is given to experiment, a separate organizational concern) is the one I know most employees are going to use, rather than the one that may be more effective at connecting people with information, and put that ever-important content curation dimension in the hands of experts. The influence of existing practice and the it's-what-I-know factor can be a serious challenge when trying to change the information behaviors of an organization.

The lesson of the article above, for me, is that buy-in and a sensible implementation and marketing strategy to move an organization away from older, less efficient formal or informal information systems, is the key to an organization's success from transformational and learning perspectives.

If What You Mean Is the Opposite of the Thing, then Yes...

This month's Learning Circuits Big Question is:

DOES THE DISCUSSION OF "HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS" IMPACT YOUR ELEARNING DESIGN?

I think there is some further parsing that's needed in the question, but in my case the answer is a simple yes, but not in the way that's implied. The details are problematic.

In instructional design there are some established best practices when breaking up content into appropriate pieces, how to handle visual presentation, the quality of narrators, as well as other considerations. All of these and others are based on responses human audiences have given to instructional events and their design. While none of the above should be taken as "gospel", many of these best practices are generated from experience and research in evaluating learning programs and their effectiveness. To this end we have discovered at least some of how the brain works (or rather, behaves), and we as professionals incorporate these success-minded considerations as we design and develop solutions.

The best practices are, at least in some cases, not directly derived from direct application of learnings from research on the brain itself. In this sense many of us are not using knowledge of brain functioning but rather knowledge of human behavior. Clark Quinn expresses a somewhat similar point of view. After all, we got pretty far into the twentieth century without knowing a whole lot about how our brains learn, and our more primitive instructional strategies were fruitful in some significant way. This is of course not to excuse or endorse bad or traditional strategies, but simply to point out that we may not know enough yet to say we're applying the concept deeply. And that's my main point in answering this month's query.

Jason McDonald explains some of my sentiment as well. I put some heavy stock in Jason's point about the disconnect between what science has actually found, and what is communicated by journalists in periodicals. Not to paint too broadly here, but scientific results are consistently mis-represented/mis-communicated in the press. An assessment of the average person's understanding of evolutionary theory's basic thrust is enough to confirm that.

My question in response to the Big Q: Do we know enough about the brain to really say we are applying the fruits of brain-based research? At the risk of sounding like a denier of the evidentiary discoveries thus far, I do not think we know enough yet for the actual science of brain functioning to impact WLP work. I think what we have gained from pure practice and evaluation, and from other sciences such as human psychology, has been and may be enough for a while.

Tacit Knowledge And Performance Improvement

There's a concept that's been around for some time in training. That concept is tacit knowledge (TK), and the term defines what I think is the holy grail for training analyses and designs to convey to learners: The between-the-lines knowledge that expert workers have that they use to accomplish work. When I say "between-the-lines", I mean the bits of knowledge they form and/or pick up throughout the course of their daily work. These bits often contribute to a greater quality of the work. This is what we as WLP professional seek to identify and to communicate.

Wikipedia has a good synopsis of TK. After reading through the information and examples there, I reflected on my own collection and use of TK and the ways in which I came to collect that information and ultimately use it in context. I specifically recalled a job I had after graduating high school. I was working in a rebar production facility, starting out as a general worker. The number of individuals staffing the place was quite low, and so specific skills were at a premium when someone was on vacation or sick. As time progressed I learned the basics of forms bending for different types and kinds of bars through simple curiosity, and small opportunities to take over when someone had to leave for a few minutes. I took in knowledge through observation and impromptu action learning moments; teachable moments as others call them. Repetition was part of the job as well so the environment made it difficult to forget after a few goes. By the end of the thirteen month period I worked there, I had added myself as a skilled worker within the workforce. To this day I remember a lot of the specific bits of TK. I remember how the bars had to be set in the machine, the quirks of the aged equipment that would prohibit or maintain performance, ways in which the equipment would break down, the signs to determine potential breakdowns that didn't happen according to the manuals...this was all important stuff for a skilled bending technician in the workplace.

I recalled a later career experience in my first career position after getting my undergraduate degree. I had joined an elearning company (which is now part of SkillSoft) early on when it was hiring many people to build its workforce. Over the course of several years we became such a close and efficient team that when the company tried outsourcing some development to an outside vendor, the results were not satisfactory or up to standards. As a team we had a working language; we knew how each individual member operated, we knew who could solve specific problems quickly, why certain tools functioned certain ways, etc. And once I had considered this past experience, I had an idea.

Tacit knowledge, in pretty much all the cases I have seen it referenced, has been discussed in relation to individuals. But what about groups? I Googled "group tacit knowledge" quickly to see what turned up. Amazingly, very little did, and digging harder reveals little more. I found two items that discuss the concept within the context of a group. Those are here (a study from 2008) and here (book chapter from 1998). I also found one short paper from 2007. I was struck by how little information there appears to be on the subject. I would think that there would be more about this.

Taking things into consideration however, I think there may be some difficulty in today's workplace in studying group-based tacit knowledge, and in implementing any findings. Many of today's workplaces are high turnover environments relative to past decades. This brings the potential to break "unit cohesion" when attempting to gather or even develop a group with deep expertise. In that sense it may remain more advantageous to pursue TK at an individual level. However, in my current work context, group tacit knowledge could potentially be a very real thing. Employees stay with the company a very long time, and while project teams break up and reassemble in different mixtures every few years, there is a lot of internal networking and collaboration. The goal of any training effort for each of these projects would be to collect the "group-operational" knowledge and pass that down to the wider workforce for faster take-up and more immediate performance increases.

I have ideas now of who in my contact list I need to talk to about this, and some of the questions I need to ask. Feel free to comment and leave your experiences and suggestions.

The Transition Continues Apace...

I've been in instructional design and development for just over ten years now, and for that span of time, the Windows PC was the platform for the best and most powerful apps. Chris over at eQuixotic has been keeping a very watchful and longing eye on the continuing but very slow transition of key development apps over to Apple's OSX. Chris covers ScreenFlow 2.0, the latest Mac-only elearning app, and other big "wins" like Camtasia, which just made the journey over this past September.

I think the time is ripe for me to make the switch to Apple. Their releasing of this bad boy makes my upcoming decision a bit easier I'm thinking. The Windows platform is still very robust and getting moreso, but as a designer/developer I would like a more integrated and simple workstation. The more apps that cross the divide the more the Mac is slated to become a very strong training development tool.

mLearning: What The Future May Look Like

I attended the Greater Arizona eLearning (GAZeL) Association's recent meeting at Arizona State University's SkySong here in Scottsdale, and was treated to a great presentation and talk on the current state of mlearning (mobile learning). Brad Boute of (r)elearning blog and Ann Boland of OHE Associates presented, and it was a very instructive and eye-opening couple hours full of facts and debate among the attendees.

Raising Eyebrows

I had worked on an mlearning project with a previous employer in the early "aughts". Porting portions of the certification training classes we were developing seemed to be very a very powerful thing on its face, especially for our audience that was comprised generally tech-savvy novices looking to become IT experts. Alas, smartphones 5-7 years ago were nothing like what they are now, and had very little if any Flash support or extensive media capability. Ultimately the project didn't get off the ground and it didn't make money, thus the business felt existing forms of learning were more viable. And temporally speaking, they were mostly right. But after attending last Thursday's event, I was more convinced than ever that mlearning will be a fixture in training designs in the future.

Perhaps the most striking thing I took away from the event was the possibility that is latent and waiting to be taken advantage of for conducting truly untethered learning both in formal and informal ways. Brad and Ann spoke a lot about how prolific the use of cell phones is around the world, even moreso than computers. The fact that so much of the world's population, 60%, already lives within range of a cell tower, and that that number is expected to reach 90% in a few years, was something I wasn't aware of. I was aware that other countries like Britain tend to be ahead of the US in the proliferation of newer and greater wireless technologies, but I did not know that so many countries, even poorer nations, have access to greater cell phone technology than computer technology. Brad and Ann stressed that these markets are ripe for mlearning to take hold and improve education in ways previously unheard of, in part based on the ways in which people in these nations were using their cell phones and services in ways that couldn't have been predicted by even the cell phone companies themselves. The example provided of individuals using cell minutes as a micro-currency was fascinating. Today's very capable pocket devices like Blackberrys, WinMo phones, and the iPhone and its application library, certainly open a lot of doors that even laptops and their current fashionable netbook alternative cannot open.

After laying out what is known and where the global market and technological features are projected to lead, the discussion evolved into a debate about what we in the US could do in the classroom and in the workplace. What hurdles there might be to the promulgation of mlearning? Taking public schools and colleges into consideration, mlearning has a lot of costs to work out, primarily related to carrier contracts. Other hurdles include the different ways in which many phones display the same content, and in the interfaces that differ from carrier to carrier even for the same phone model. These technical problems have significant bearing on what an mlearning designer can do at present, but there are platforms that can be used to strut some fairly heavy media. As a smartphone user, the browsers are still far less reliable and capable than a typical desktop browser, but it is amazing that there are phones that can view full, real webpages anywhere, from your pocket. However, learning could also take place in the context of an application as opposed to the more classical browser-oriented elearning mode. There are other design challenges, but it was a great exchange of viewpoints from teachers, executives, and professionals of different levels, experiences, and contexts.

The possible future of mlearning and its potential effect on how learning takes place, leads to an interesting question: Will Elearning 3.0 have mlearning as a major fixture? Obviously, we're years from knowing, as Elearning 2.0 tools are still coming online. But I can't help but think now that the increasing "untethering" of our computing power will be the catalyst for the next major evolution in instruction. What are your thoughts about mlearning? Do you have experience with it? If so, what hurdles do you deal with at present, and how have you overcome these, if you have?

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?

Whewww!

So the last two weeks have been quite action-packed for me. Finishing up this quarter's Masters project proved more time consuming than initially expected, and I'm glad I started it a couple weeks early! I had to prepare elearning and classroom instruction modules that complemented each other for a new software application put in place by my client. This was an interesting project in that it really illustrated for me how instructional design as a field is beginning to merge with Human Performance Improvement/Technology (HPI/HPT), as I discussed in a post last month.

My client is in the process of integrating his training team with an application that tracks performance data of individuals and shifts to specific equipment metrics, and aids training personnel in working with their customers on how to best solve performance issues. They are getting a kind of visibility into performance improvement opportunities that my client's training group has not previously had, and the new functionality allows the training team to uncover solutions it had never considered in the past. This is about going beyond training, and getting into other HPI interventions that may be more capable of solving the performance issue.

There's an obvious caveat to the project however, in that training personnel can view individual job performance data. This can lead to sticky situations that can be hard to dial back if the application is misused. It's a good thing though that my client recognizes this and has already forged a partnership with HR and training's stakeholders to put in place rules to guard against misuse of data.

It's been a wonderful project, and a great opportunity to take part in such a significant new development for this client. I heartily thank my client for agreeing to let me help them with this effort, and in turn helping me with my studies and application. And, in the process of completing the project, I was able to test Captivate 4.0 thoroughly enough to do a write-up! I'll be posting that hopefully in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

Siftables: The Future of Interactive Learning?

I received a Tweet from Clive Shepherd of Clive On Learning this morning, and I must say the video he linked is very compelling. It's a demonstration of a new interactive interface that utilizes microcomputers within small block-sized instruments - called "Siftables" - with small LCD screens, and each block interacts and is aware of other blocks through wireless communication. This is definitely a new way of looking at learning and work, and adding in a level of interactivity that heretofore has not been possible, or cheap.

It's obvious from this demonstration that a lot of work went into the design of Siftables. The transferability of the technology between disciplines, and the inclusion of human gesturing into their functionality is remarkable. Looking at this from the perspective of a (prospective) parent, this is exactly the kind of "toy" I would want my child to have for education in their formative years. It also provides a world of possibilities for parents to interact with their children's learning.

Impressive stuff, and I will definitely follow this one.

Zen and the Art of e-Learning

Chris over at eQuixotic is one of my favorite bloggers in the e-learning community. I can appreciate the view that training programs are often presented poorly, and ultimately leave their audience wanting more. I recently found this post about the book Presentation Zen. I think Chris's post is a must-read for elearning developers of all stripes and backgrounds, and it's one of my recent favs.