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Learning about learning

Assessment: What Are You Measuring, Anyway?

3/28/2016

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As an elearning manager, I have reviewed a lot of elearning during my career. Much of it dumps content out there followed by multiple choice questions. If training is learning new skills, then why aren't we testing the skills they are supposed to learn in our programs?  What is the difference between what we do and what marketers do in content marketing? As Harold Stolovich would say, "Tellin' ain't trainin' and trainin' ain't performance." 

After considerable noodling, I've come up with four reasons why we assess learning so poorly.

Hypothesis 1

We don't know what we are supposed to measure

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It's easy to write multiple choice questions. They are quick to craft and program. But they usually only test remembering, which is at the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

If we spend our time crafting outcomes and objectives, then supposedly build our training around them, why aren't we measuring to those goals?

Maybe we don't know we should.

Hypothesis 2

It's hard to measure things in elearning

Yes, it requires a little more thinking to find creative ways to measure skills using an online function. But that doesn't mean you can't. If I am teaching a course to students learning to use a piece of software, shouldn't they be able to use it at the end? I can't tell you how many times I have seen multiple choice, text based questions asking about buttons at the end of these courses. There is no context, and no pictures. What is that helping?

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Ribbons, Awards & 15 Minutes of Fame

3/21/2016

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Guild master? Me?

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Last week was the eLearning Guild's 2016 Learning Solutions Conference. I love going to this conference because it consists of kindred spirits; people who get learning, what works, and are passionate to share those ideas. It's a community of practice that gathers in Orlando to learn. Yeah, I'm a learning junkie. I fly to Orlando and sit in hotels to learn about learning and love every minute of it.  

During this year's second day opening session, the 2016 Guild Masters were announced. I was stuck in Orlando traffic, so I missed the announcement. In reading the back channel Twitter feed, I saw that the late Jay Cross was honored with this title and that made me cry. Jay is credited with inventing the term elearning, and taught us that most of the learning occurs outside of training - informally. He was truly one of my heros. 
Then the feed started congratulating me. For what? All day long people were congratulating me for who knows what. It wasn't until late in the day that David Kelly presented me with my award as 2016 Guild Master. Apparently he handled that great awkward silence when I didn't pop up by asking everyone to have some fun with me and congratulate me without sharing what as they saw me throughout the day. That was fun. I suppose there is some irony in having the two 2016 Guild Masters presented in absentia this year. After all, we are about the virtual thing in elearning. 

I was astounded, humbled and honored to be included with the likes of those who have taught ME so much: Clark Quinn, Jane Bozarth, Chad Udell, Michael Allen, Mark Rosenberg, Allison Rossett, Joe Ganci, Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher. All I know in this business I have learned from those who have been willing to share what they know with others. 
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Go figure. My 15 minutes of fame and I missed it stuck in traffic.

So what does a guild Master do, anyway?

Today is the first day back to work after receiving this award, and I'm sitting here wondering what the heck a Guild Master is supposed to do, anyway, when it hit me. More of the same. For me, that's sharing what I know with others. It's not about being the professorial sage on the stage. It's about learning together. Noodling with others on the best way to do things. Mentoring other IDs on dealing with the SME who can't meet deadlines, who don't get this learning thing at all and want to dump more content than any human can absorb in a few days into a 15 minute elearning module. I have loved developing the IDs on my teams, watching the lightbulbs go off, and seeing them move into better learning for their clients. I've also watched them carry that mission forward. (My husband calls that the cult of Jean Marrapodi. )

It's reminding people that the goal of your learning must be able to be encapsulated in one high level sentence. In the end, what do you want them to KNOW and DO? then finding a way to assess that. It's about assessing the right things. Not vocabulary. It's about making things look good so people aren't distracted and the information is organized. It's about listening and learning from others. It's about tweeting new ideas. Retweeting great ideas of others. Taking scissors to red tape. Documenting processes to see how convoluted they are. Challenging "because we've always done it that way".  

It's about always learning. Not just what we do for a living, but applying tangential thinking to what we do to make it better. This year I've been working on human computer interface design and learned a ton from the world of design thinking, and interface design, and the way they explore people's needs to solve problems. We don't do that enough.

It's about attending conferences, sharing workshops and learning from others. I leave on such a high from a conference and can't wait to try out the new discoveries. It's also about connecting with those who are in the trenches making a difference to continue to learn from them.


It's also about encouraging every individual to leverage their strengths; to learn from their mistakes and hear the voice of Abilene telling YOU what she told Mae on a regular basis: You is kind, you is smart, you is important.

Cause you is.
​Now..... what have YOU learned today?

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Rebels, Leaders & Other Tide Buckers

2/25/2016

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I'm a rebel. There. I've said it. I admit it. And it gets me into all kinds of trouble trying to fit into Corporate America. Tracy Goodwin (aka The Red Sweater Lady) of Captivate the Room asked to interview me and titled the conversation When Speaking Your Truth Becomes a Threat and More. Yes, indeed, I have stories. How about this?
Me: There is a major problem here and we need to fix it. We could....
Boss: Yes. We all know there is a problem. You need to stop harping on it.
Me: But [boss] don't you see this is just like story of The Emperor Has No Clothes?
Boss: Yes it is. We all know that this is a problem. Nothing is going to change. No one is going to fix it. We need to stop talking about it.
Me: But we could...
Boss: I don't care. WE are not going to fix this. It's not our problem.
Me: But it's making everything we do take six times as long.
Boss: That doesn't matter. That's how it is. If you are going to work here, you need to deal with it.
Me: But isn't fixing it dealing with it?
Boss: No.
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I just spent a year on this merry-go-round working for a large regional bank. I was specifically hired, courted, actually, by my boss to come in to make changes. That was just fine as long as nothing had to change. Huh? I managed to convert a series of allies and bring them along with me to embrace change and work in new ways and they loved it. But it's hard bucking the tide all the time. 

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SMES: A little knowledge is a Dangerous thing

7/2/2015

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Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical
Image credit: Trinity Repertory Company

Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical at Trinity Repertory Company. The play was fascinating. It looked at joy and sadness and how people deal with it in others. As part of the premiere, Trinity offered a conversation with the author, and a lunch and learn with Rachel Warren, the lead, and the music director for a back stage look at the process of bringing the play to life. I've been attending theatre for many years, but never realized how much influence the musical director has on the show, or the painstaking detail that goes into mounting a show. I've love making these discoveries.

A Little Knowledge is a dangerous Thing

When we were in high school, many of us had the experience of participating in theatre. Perhaps it was on stage, perhaps it was behind stage. We had fun, and got a taste of what goes into making theatre. For those of us who have seen shows on Broadway, or other professional productions, there is no comparison to what is produced in the auditorium of XYZ High, a community players group and a show produced by professionals. They have mastered the craft and execute it well.  Those of us with the beginners' taste of show business understand some of what goes on, but only a small fragment of what it really takes. I never realized how much behind-the-scenes thinking and analysis goes on, or the painstaking detail to get just the right prop or costume or flooring for the set. Heck, in high school, we memorized our lines, helped with costumes and makeup, and spent a month or two after school practicing, thenTA-DA! there was a show. In the professional realms there is thinking and trying and tweaking and tech rehearsals and blocking and lots of conversation. I've loved the glimpse into this world these activities around Trinity's shows afforded me to gain a better understanding of it all, but this certainly does not make me a theatre expert.

We All Know How to Learn, Right?

Similarly, we've all been to school in some form or another. Many of us have advanced through college and completed a degree or two, labeling us experts in something-or-other. This does not make us experts in learning or how people learn or creating materials to facilitate that process. Many people I've worked with over the years as subject matter experts (SMEs) would disagree with that. They are experts in a computer system or company product or algebra or biology or whatever it is that we have been tasked to create learning for others about. As a team, it's the SME and me. (Doesn't that sound like a TV show?) I don't challenge the SME on his or her expertise on the subject, yet we play tug of war for hours on how to help learners grasp it. If most SMEs had their way all training or elearning pieces or college courses would be
LONG verbose treatises 
filled with jargon, zillions of minute details and tons of irrelevant material 
that would take you days and days and days to read, 
yet we are somehow supposed to condense this into a one hour elearning or some other impossible task.
So we fight. I skinny it down, and they puff it back up again. It gets even worse when you have a committee working on the review as they agonize whether the word should be validate or authorize or the color of the shirt on the person in the photograph. 

I always work with my SMEs to come up with a single sentence goal for the course about what the learner should know and do at the end. I push them to get this down to that high level overview, then use it like a mantra to help them focus on the goal. Will knowing every exception to the rule helps us achieve said goal? No. So we shelve the exceptions for another course, or an addendum after the learner has gained what we wanted them to. 

so What?

I have a Masters degree in online instructional design and a PhD in adult education. You'd think that would qualify me as an expert in something. Yet in the SMEs' thinking, I just don't understand what "they" need to know. I suppose amid the battles I've learned diplomacy and influence and negotiation as we sort out the junk drawer of the bajillion things they would like to include to help them pick and choose what's really important in the end.  And that, I suppose is an important thing. Perhaps with more experience, I'll be an expert in that too.
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ATD2015 Wrapup

5/22/2015

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Lessons from the Learner

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You know what hard work learning is the day after a conference ends when you go from highly jazzed to completely fizzled out.
I've just finished six days of intentional learning. From the time my feet hit the floor till I collapsed on my pillow, I was engaged in discovery about learning. I'm pooped! Most of that time I was in Orlando at the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition learning with and from 10,000 people who work building learning for others. I've been at this for twenty years when I made the move from teaching to training. I've seen the name of what we do evolve over the years. Now we call it talent development. Whatever you call it, it's about designing learning to solve business problems.

I learned a ton over the last few days. Here's a recap of the highlights.

Solving Business Problems

Training is often viewed as a cost center in business because we don't generate revenue. However, if we do our job the right way, we become a valued business partner, enabling employees to do their job better and learn new skills. Foundational to that is linking the goals of what we do to the problems businesses need to solve.

When Instructional Design Met Performance CONSULTING

Jim Robinson & Dick Handshaw  Handout Link
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In 1997 when I was working at Bank Boston, my manager had me read Performance Consulting, a few years after it was published. I thought it was interesting, but didn't do much with it. It wasn't until I got involved with MASS ISPI and attended a workshop by Tina Teodorescu that I really understood what this concept was all about.  Since then, I've been doing a lot to connect the dots with the business need and teaching my students and staff to do likewise.

  • Key Takeaways
  • Focus more on the needs of the business as the foundation for learning
  • Leverage the principles of design thinking with SMEs to uncover needs
  • Connect with people. Conferences provide rich opportunities meet other learning junkies.
Performance Consulting is the process of uncovering business problems at the root of what is presented as a training need. It's about examining things systemically, to look for the causes of the problem, which may be related to coaching and feedback issues, process problems, or even a problematic environment. The key is that the business needs inform the performance needs the individuals must do. We uncover those needs through questioning. Dick Handshaw provides an excellent listing of questions on his website. Aligning our training to those uncovered needs ensures we solve the right problem that impacts business results.
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Dick Hanshaw elaborated on the role of instructional design to create the learning solution for the problem. One concept that he has that I've not seen in other models is the blueprint, where everything is laid out prior to production. There is great wisdom in this.
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Building Strategic Linkages: Map and Measure Your Learning Strategy

Ajay Pangarkar       Handout Link
In this workshop we also talked about meeting business goals but by looking at things strategically. We looked at how business maps things out:
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Then we looked at how this is measured, using a balanced scorecard approach:
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My takeaway from this session was to look for the metrics being used to measure in the business and see how we might leverage them in training, and to focus on more alignment of learning goals with business goals.

Innovating Learning Through Design Thinking Interview Techniques

Amanda Chavez and Katarzyna Siedlecki      Handout Link
Design Thinking has become pretty trendy in business. It's a way to bring about innovation by leveraging the principles of design, which basically is iterative problem solving. There's a lot of research coming out of Stanford about Design Thinking and they even have a 90 Minute Crash Course you can take to learn it. 
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Depending on the model, you'll get pictures like these to depict design thinking. The one on the top is the model used at Stanford, and the one on the bottom is the model used at Booz Allen Hamilton presented in the workshop. The principles are similar in the world of instructional design, but with design thinking the ideate process is a bit more fluid and creative. I loved the idea of doing this with the subject matter experts that I work with to toss around ideas to generate a better end product. In this workshop and a similar one I attended during the week, we used mindmapping, post-it notes, and brainstorming techniques as part of the problem definition, and solution generating process. I definitely want to experiment more with this.

If you want to know more, there's a great infographic at the Design Management Institute.

I came, I Learned, I presented.

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I was able to share some of my expertise with people in my session on Ubiquitous Learning: Leveraging the Strengths of Online Learning. Having done all of the development work I did for the college over the past five years, I've seen some things that work well, and that really don't in online learning, and was able to show some examples of things that I've used with great success. Online learning is everywhere, and we miss out on a great opportunity not to leverage it. I had several international folks come up to me after the session to inquire if I'd fly to their company to present my workshop. We shall see where that goes. For now, we continue to learn. I spent several hours this evening going through the handouts for the sessions I was unable to attend. That's one of the benefits of online learning and access: I was able to extend the learning another day, and through mediums like this blog, share ideas with others to continue to learn. I love that. Don't you?

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Unexpected Learning

5/18/2015

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Musings from ATD2015

I'm in Orlando at the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition, fondly known in the industry as ATD ICE. This is my second year, and I'm still amazed by the mammoth size of this event. I forgot from last time that I should have prepared for the Boston Marathon prior to coming here. This place is HUGE and I'm convinced that I am walking several miles between the parking lot and between sessions. 

It's also an interesting thing to see the family gathering atmosphere that occurs here as people who have made connections over the years reconnect at the conference. There's lots of catching up, and I suspect that there are some job connections that come from this event as people build their PLN. One the flip side, if you come alone, things can be daunting and feel clique-ish. It's important to realize that things are not like that at all. Everyone is welcome and often invited. 

The discoveries so far have been rather unexpected.

MUSING One
GIRLFRIEND, Get Down Off Your PRIVILEGED High Horse

When I arrived in town I picked up my rental car and began to grumble about how uncomfortable it was and WHAT! It didn't have power windows and locks. It's a Kia Rio, and definitely NOT a car I'd ever buy for myself because the headrest pitches you toward the windshield and it's really hard to get comfortable.

I drove from the airport to the timeshare I'd rented for the week. RCI had a special promotion of an extra week of vacation for $249, so I cancelled my reservation at the Hyatt, right next to the convention center, and booked a week at the High Point World Resort. The pictures looked good, and the reviews were mainly five star. I'd always had wonderful resorts whenever we'd stayed at RCI places, so I had great expectation, especially after the resort we stayed at for Learning Solutions with its full service, incredible food, poolside restaurant by the enormous pools with multiple hot tubs and posh accommodations.

This place was a little different. My GPS sent me to the strip with all the cheap souvenir shops and down a tiny road to what looked like a pre-fab housing development of budget townhouses. The welcome center was two guys at a desk. One checked me in and the other handed me a stack of paperwork about the "amenities" which included a hot dog roast by the pool in the middle of the complex on Wednesday night.

I found my unit and walked into 1980 complete with the brown canvas couch, the VCR and the Formica furniture in the bedroom, complete with mirrored closet doors.

It looked clean anyway, so I settled where I met the lizard running around the walls of my living room. Oh boy. Could this get any worse? At least it wasn't a mouse. 

I posted something on the ATD Facebook page about the lizard and Michele Lawson suggested I give him a red feather and invite him for networking. So I named him Richard, after someone I'd met at dinner, and decided I could deal with him.

It's funny, how that little bit of perspective changed everything. Last night when I got back Richard was no where to be found, despite his very visible dashing presence the night before. I was kind of sad about that.

This morning I woke up and realized that this place would be luxurious if I were in India and decided that it's not so bad after all, even though the wi-fi is not working. I have a hot spot on my phone. What's the big deal? What was so annoying yesterday is not so much of a bother. I realized that I needed to get down off my high horse and be grateful for having a place that saved me a ton of money and a car that gets me to the conference safely. I have sneakers to wear to be comfortable in the marathon walk from the parking lot, and can walk off some of the calories from the fabulous meals we've been eating. So first lesson learned: In the moments of tiredness, annoyances are bigger than they really are. Get over it and put things in perspective.

MUSING TWO
UNexpected Conversations

I was invited to dinner gatherings by two people I'd never met before, and I'm so grateful to Michelle Lawson and Megan Torrance, who gathered together random groups of people to go to dinner. I ate at Margianno's Italian restaurant and Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steak Houses; both places I wouldn't have stumbled on. The food was great but the company was really fascinating.

I met Richard and Austin from Sage Media out in Denver. They do video, which was pretty interesting, but the conversation evolved to elements of film, which is something I know next to nothing about. It was really interesting piecing fragments of the conversation together with my little knowledge store in this area. I wonder how often that happens in our training classes? Definitely something to think about to make sure that I attach new concepts to something familiar.

On Sunday I had breakfast with Aaron Silvers, a long time Twitter friend of mine who is an expert in xAPI, and his friend Russell Duhon. It was interesting hearing the geek side of the process and the evolution from SCORM, something no one really understands, but we are expected to conform learning in our LMS to it. I wish my friend Jason Kramer would have been there. He'd have eaten that up. Perhaps another conference.

Musing Three
Learnings So Far

I've been focusing on instructional design at this conference. I attended a workshop on Design Thinking for Instructional Designers with Angel Green from Allen Interactions. She walked us through some exercises we could use with our SMEs, which generated an oh duh! moment for me: Leverage Design Thinking Principles with our SMEs. I'd recently taught the principles of Design Thinking to my team of IDs and never thought to have them use that with their SMEs.

After teaching my session, I went to a workshop with Dick Handshaw and Jim Robinson called When Instructional Design Meets Performance Management. I'm trained in both disciplines, but it was really nice to have a refresher from the people who were key influencers in practices we use today. I'd never thought about the importance of getting to the right SME to identify the business issue, and that often means escalating a level or two. I plan to share their slides with my team and work a little harder to dig out the business issue around the behavior problem or need we need to solve for. When training addresses and corrects a business issue, the business sees training as a valued partner. I returned to Dick's ID workshop today and was reminded yet again how important that is.

Today I attended Ken Blanchard's presentation on the new One Minute Manager. His original book is over 20 years old. Business has changed, but paying attention to employees has not. Connecting, praising and redirecting toward the goal go a long way in developing people. It's amazing to have been able to see the pioneers and leaders in our discipline in person. 

Reflection is important

I've been tweeting up a storm at this conference. It's been great meeting people, and sharing the nuggets that I've been discovering in workshops. I really appreciate having the handouts available and online so I can go back to them and add them to my notes. I'm not convinced I appreciate the long trek from one end of the building to another between workshops and from parking to the conference, but I have appreciated having quiet time to reflect like this.

I've learned a lot so far. How about you?
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Lessons From Learning Solutions

3/30/2015

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Loving Learning

I'm at Learning Solutions 2015, in Orlando, Florida. It's big conference #2 of 3 for me for this year. I just love this stuff. I presented a program this year on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which was a new topic to many. UDL is about making learning accessible and equivalent for all learners.  Most elearning designers generate a transcript for audio portions of video, select colors that are color-blind friendly, and may even write tags for pictures that are screen reader friendly. UDL goes beyond that and considers the remedial learner, the gifted learner, the ESL learner, the dyslexic learner and any other learner who may take the program, and provides avenues that consider varied ways to present the WHAT of learning (representation) the HOW of learning (activities and expressions) and the WHY of learning (engagement). Thinking through and planning for these learners makes for a richer experience that benefits all. I'll write more about that another time. 

Motivation

I've been coming to this conference nearly every year since 2002 during the early years of the eLearning Guild. This is such a great conference! I love being able to present, I love attending with sessions, I love the learning, but most of all, I love connecting with the people that I meet. I have learned so much over the past 13 years from my colleagues as we have wrestled together over issues, and learned from one another. The Guild truly is a community of practice, and has been a catapult for my career.  I've had the opportunity to introduce my colleagues to the Guild and this year had the privilege of watching two people from my former team present for the first time. Now I get to watch them grow as they connect the dots from the people they have met and the workshops they attended.

This year I got to meet some new friends whose workshops took me in directions I've never considered before, despite working in eLearning for 18 years.

New Faces, New Discoveries

Hadiya Nuriddin
Focus Learning Solutions


Hadiya presented on leveraging non-fiction writing techniques for writing elearning scenarios. I'd never thought about that before. Thinking about the constructs of plot, story line and context made a lot of sense. Thinking about whose perspective you are writing from and for was a big keeper as well. 

As a bonus, I learned about RACI charts on her website. Definitely a keeper for project management role definitions!

David Glow
Business Critical Learning

I've been chatting with David on Twitter, where he is @criticallearner, for several years so it was really fun to meet him in person. He taught us a slew of training hacks. My two favorites were using Siri to transcribe audio, and to change the extension of a PPTx file to .zip and it will extract all of the images in the file into a folder called Images. That is super helpful when you are moving things over from a storyboard.
Ty Marbut
Ty Marbut Instructional Videos

Ty is a twenty-something who ran circles around me. For those of you who know me well, that takes some doing. Ty showed me a bunch of neat video tricks and introduced me to the concept of interactive videos, which isn't nearly as hard as one would imagine. I love the concept and can't wait to try this one out. 
Dave Anderson
Community Manager, Articulate

I'd read Dave Anderson for years, so it was fun to come and learn some tricks from him in person. He taught us to leverage mindmapping to create a design treatment for an elearning piece. We walked through six steps, and came out with the colors, fonts, elements and people types that belong in a piece. That was fun and complemented Hadiya's piece really well. 
Jason Kramer & Naomi Pariseault
NECB eLearning

This was their first conference presentation, and it was fun to watch their creativity unleashed.


One Day to Go!

If we weren't full enough, there's yet another half day tomorrow, ending with a keynote on Design Thinking. I'm looking forward to topping off my learning tank for the week with some new inspiration.  Thank you eLearning Guild for the hard work to pull this off year after year.

So.... if you're here, what did you learn this week?
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Why do we Love Conferences & Hate Training?

2/10/2015

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I've spent the last couple of days at Training 2015 sharpening the saw in my talent toolbox. As a trainer and instructional designer, I'm continually looking to improve my craft. I've learned a ton in the different sessions, much with direct applicability to my job, and look forward to trying out the new ideas.
I love conferences, and my friends might consider me a conference junkie. During this event, I've been struck by the fact that most of the workshops I've attended have been lectures with PowerPoint slides, one of the things that people lament about as being the dreadful part of training. I've been totally engaged by the content, and left making connections to my world. What is it about conferences that make them engaging that is such a contrast to much of our training that puts people to sleep?

At A Conference

  • User selection
    In most conferences, there are choices to be made during workshop slots. Program titles and descriptions are provided, and attendees select the sessions they would like to attend. There is interest and investment in attending.
  • Audience match to the topic
    In a conference, we have like-minded people in attendance. 

    Conferees generally have some grounding in the topic, even if it is new to them. The jargon is familiar, and the context of the topic is understood. 
    Slides are crafted to impress, since the presentation is often to a peer group. 
  • Expert's View of Specific, Condensed Content
    Workshops are presented on topics in the presenter's area of expertise. Many times, the presenter has submitted a proposal that was reviewed and vetted by a selection committee. Since the audience is often new to the topic, the high points are covered to provide a taste of that expertise and enough insight to be able to ensure the attendees leave feeling informed, and often equipped with something to implement. There is a laser focus on a slice of the presenter's knowledge and experience.
  • Right-sized Timeframe
    Workshops tend to run 60-90 minutes at a conference. This constraint creates the need for careful planning. When a person is asked to present at a conference, s/he is given a small window of time and needs to determine exactly what will fit into those few minutes. Workshops must fit into that schedule another program needs to occupy the space when it concludes.  

At a Training

  • Someone else determines attendance
    In most companies, training fulfills a requirement. Whether it is compliance or learning a new software, it is someone else's idea that the learner attend.
    Learners may not be vested or interested.
  • Varied Audience
    In theory, at a training event, the audience is level set. A particular type of employee is required to attend. If the trainer has done a thorough needs analysis, strengths and weaknesses of the population are understood and the curriculum matches the need.
    More often, training is one-size-fits-all with no variance for needs of differing populations.
  • Expansive Content Presented by a Facilitator
    Training is often bloated with unnecessary content. Nice-to-know is not separated out from need-to-know. Classes are presented by trainers who may not be experts, but rather new learners a few steps ahead of the trainees. If an expert is invited in, s/he may not be able to distill content to critical points. Additionally, content may not have relevance to the learner's job today. 
    Too much information creates cognitive overload, and learners become overwhelmed, unable to filter out key points.
  • Timeframe May Be Too Long
    Living in a faced paced society combined with the impact of television has shortened learner attention spans. Six or seven hours of training, especially when learners are not completely engaged, is exhausting. Unless the material is properly scaffolded, the learners will lose ground as time goes on. 
    Time is bloated to match the content.

So What?

What does all this mean for us? How can we create right-sized learning that learners are invested in? 
  1. First, we need to consider the needs of the learner. We need to understand their current job and how this training fits into it. 
  2. Second, we need to strip out any fluff and keep the main thing the main thing. What's the critical nugget(s) that your learners need to leave with? We need to make sure to identify that and reinforce it throughout the program.
  3. Thirdly, we need to think about designing to a timeframe, rather than build until it is finished and determining the time at the end. If you know you have a half day to accomplish something that might have taken three without a constraint, you'll work hard to ensure that the key points are the keys.


Impossible, you say? I'm not so sure. We do it with conferences all the time.
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Knowledge Repositories, Randomness and Learning

2/2/2015

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Last night I attended Trinity Rep's rendition of Will Eno's play Middletown. The play has the rumblings of becoming my favorite play of all times because of the themes and thoughts it evoked for me. The play is set in an average town and is about average people, their loneliness, back stories and interconnectionedness. There's quite a few juxtapositions in it which leaves us with a lot of things to ponder. Contrast that with Rosenkrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, which was produced in the tiny Wilbury Theatre which considers fate and free will, the absurdities and complexities of life, choices, and tells the back story of Shakespeare's Hamlet. What, pray tell, you might ask, does this have to do with learning?

Randomness

In both plays, there are a lot of random scenes with no apparent interrelationships. It isn't until near the end that things start to tie together.

We cannot allow training that we create, whether it is elearning, collaborative sessions, or classroom work to be like this. Learning must be intentionally planned out for the learner to learn. That's why we need an instructional designer to work with the sequence lest our learners leave at halftime, missing the entire point of the play.
PictureLibraries: Who sets the agenda when you go there?

Are Your Learners Leaving at Intermission?

I wrote earlier about the elearning that caused me to bail on getting my PMP certification because of the vocabulary spouting talking head. (Yup, I left at intermission on that one.) Last week, I was asked to take a technical training course to be able to access a software application at the office. The training consisted of 10 modules, with directions telling me I had to complete two mandatory sections and an elective. There were two mandatory items and eight optional ones. There were also two labeled advanced and eight labeled beginner. I suppose you can guess which of the ten the mandatory ones were. My goal is to be able to set up a shared resource site  You'd think this would be easy, right?

There is no seeming order to the modules. Each covers a different topic, with well designed how-to instructions and practice exercises. The production values were great. However, as a learner, I feel like I have no idea WHY I need to learn these things because I have no idea WHAT I'm going to do with the software so far. I have an idea of what I WANT it do do, and I suspect going to this repository to ask HOW to do these things would be a much more efficient way to access the knowledge repository of all of these skills.  There is no Table of Contents of the modules. If you search the repository for the software name, you get 87 modules with titles and descriptions, but nothing that seems to overview the software or its purpose. 

So now I know how to mark a post Employee of the Month. Yay? 

Granted, there are nine other modules I need to work through, so perhaps I'll find something to meet my goals. I've found myself being baffled by the first module because I didn't have any context. I imagine that be it will the same with other modules, unless I can find something that sequences this. 

The best way I can explain this is to imagine yourself being dropped into the help section of a piece of software, picking random items and pretending this is the way to learn how to use it. 

There's a Difference Between Learning Something New And Finding an Answer

The point of all of this is that we need to understand the learner need when we are creating training. If someone has experience and needs specific answers, send them to the repository. If they have no foundation, sending them to a knowledge repository without a curriculum plan or sequence of activities is like sending someone to the librarian to learn calculus. A librarian knows how to find specific information, and is a resource to be used thusly.  When you need to learn something from the beginning, you need a teacher, or a curriculum set up by one who teaches. A teacher plans the activity and breaks things into bite sized, sequenced lessons. A librarian finds resources to find answers.

Big difference. Remember what role you play when you provide learning to your learners.
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Talent Management & Talent Development for 2015

1/14/2015

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names and priorities

Over the years, we have watched the names change for those of us who deal with people in the business world. In the 60s it was Personnel, and the function was primarily administrative. Then in the 80s it was Human Resources, and we managed human capital with better alignment to the business. Today it's Talent Management. Whatever we call ourselves, we're focused on the people side of the business, allowing the business to focus on the business operations and growth.

In the arena I work in, we've been training, learning & development, something or other university, and lately, Talent Development. We're about teaching people to do their jobs and improve their skill sets. Most of the time, we fall under the umbrella of Talent Management, though sometimes we report to operational lines of business.

I was at the ASTD conference in 2014 where the American Society for Training and Development changed its name to ATD, the Association for Talent Development. It was a pretty slick transformation as the reveal occurred overnight and all the branding throughout the enormous conference center changed from the old to the new, supported by a giant announcement meeting pep rally type forum. I would expect people who teach about change management do it well.

I initially resisted the name change, but I'm growing to like it, since it better reflects what we are trying to do for people. We are learning that training may not be the best way to develop skills. We've also seen that some of the training we've created has been pretty useless. Dan Pontefract makes a great point in his article Talent Development Isn't Just About Training:
Talent is developed inside and outside of ‘training and development’. It comes in the form of coaching, mentoring, job shadowing, wiki’s, blogs, rotations, lectures, books, articles, job aids, leadership models … the list literally goes on and on.         -Don Pontefract

70:20:10 Rule

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He's right. There's so much more to learning than sitting in a classroom. Research that comes out of the Center for Creative Leadership speaks to the 70:20:10 rule. The origins of this come from the work of Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger at the Center for Creative Leadership. The rationale shares that learning starts with a need: “Development generally begins with a realization of current or future need and the motivation to do something about it. This might come from feedback, a mistake, watching other people’s reactions, failing or not being up to a task – in other words, from experience. The odds are that development will be about 70% from on-the-job experiences, working on tasks and problems; about 20% from feedback and working around good and bad examples of the need, and 10% from courses and reading.”  

This aligns with Jay Cross' work on Informal Learning, which he calls "unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way most people learn to do their job." Think about how you do your work, and what you've learned during the last week. How much of it was in a classroom?
People acquire the skills they use at work informally — talking, observing others, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know. Formal training and workshops account for only 5% to 20% of what people learn from experience and interactions.     
                  -Jay Cross
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http://www.coursepark.com/blog/2011/05/informal-learning/

Learning Concierge

For the people in the learning world, things have changed.  People have been sharing these models for almost 20 years. It's time to start implementing them.

We need to function like a concierge for much of what we do. We need to be equipping learners to find the resources that they need to support them to do their jobs. We may be creating classroom experiences, but it is no longer the primary vehicle for learning. We need to be listening for needs, rooting out problems and offering solutions.  If we are going to be developing talent, we need to examine what needs developing and provide ways to develop skills. We want learners to see their learning partners as allies and resources. For some of us, that means a paradigm shift to adapt to the needs of the 21st century workforce.

After all, we're no longer personnel paperwork administrators. 

References

  • Cross, J. (2015). Informal Learning Center. Retrieved from http://www.jaycross.com/wp/?portfolio=informal-learning
  • Lombardo, M. M. & Eichinger, R.W. (1996). The Career Architect Development Planner (1st ed.). Minneapolis: Lominger. p. iv.
  • Ponterfact, D. (2014). Talent development isn't just about training. [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://www.danpontefract.com/talent-development-isnt-just-about-training/
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    Jean Marrapodi

    Teacher by training, learner by design.

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