See you in Second Life Tonight

I will be speaking at the Second Life Future Salon tonight. If you don't know about what I am talking, you owe it to yourself to at least check it out by clicking here.

Full Spectrum Warrior debate

Some people are criticizing the US Army's involvement with the computer game Full Spectrum Warrior. Although I was not involved in any way in the project other than doing a case study for LBD, I take the attacks very personally as attacks on necessary innovation.

The US military had always been good at building accurate simulations around pieces of equipment. The goal of FSW was to develop two new capabilities:

• Using simulations to train softer skills
• Add "game elements" to a simulation to increase voluntary participation.

Both were accomplished in spades. The commercial success of FSW both proved the second point, and also probably served as a great advertisement for the US Military. Further, FSW can be deployed using a $150 off the shelf Xbox, instead of $10 million dedicated hardware (which took some negotiating, as Microsoft loses money with each Xbox sold).

Game elements will always be controversial. Simulations by themselves are really boring. An accurate military simulation would have a soldier standing around, with no action, for days, weeks, or months, before something "happened." Just cutting right to the action is a game element.

Game elements are controversial even when they surround the simulation elements, because they consume resources, but more so when they selectively subvert the accuracy of the simulation, such as making bigger things happen sooner than real life.

Traditionalists will far too quickly damn an entire program for not getting the mix of simulation, game, and pedagogical elements right the first time (the only acceptable sin for them is too much pedagogy). I, for one, support the people willing to take risks.

Simulations, Microcosms, Apprenticeships, and Skunk Works

I wrote a book called Learning By Doing, all about the use of computer simulations in formal learning programs. But in many ways, it should have been called "Learning By Doing Part I."

Other, critical "learning by doing" techniques includes Microcosms, Apprenticeships, and Skunk Works.

Microcosms are small, controlled, comparable, but "real" worlds or projects, such as growing a garden, planning a party, running a meeting, baking a cake.

Apprenticeships are learning from someone with more experience, often in exchange for performing some menial task.

Skunk Works are teams that are trying something that has never been done before, with the goal of getting real feedback from the marketplace or enterprise.

The role of technology in all of these can be transformational, suggesting projects or"matching people up" at the beginning, giving real-time workflow centric advice during, and then tracking results afterwards.

Why I hate speaking to groups of twenty

For years, I have had a pretty significant fear of public speaking. Thankfully, through blood, sweat, and tears, I have been moderately successful at resolving that. For the last several years, I have had the honor and, yes, pleasure of speaking with groups ranging from two people to many thousand.

Here is a curious observation from that.

• I like speaking with three people, because I can customize my material to the very specific needs of the individuals.
• When I speak to hundreds or thousands, the audience seems pretty happy (with the exception of Stephen Downes!) if I can give some useful information and perspectives, and keep them relatively entertained and motivated to go deeper. There is also a lot of energy to tap and play back.

But fifteen to twenty people in an audience is always very, very hard. It is small enough so that people feel that the presentation should be highly customized (like a one:three experience), yet there are always many groups who want to take the conversation in very different directions (high level, low level a, low level b, etc).

I will continue to play with techniques, but for now, twenty is a very lonely number.

The way formal learning ought to be

I was up in St. John's, Newfoundland at the end of last week. There is a lot to love about that part of the world, including the people, the architecture, and the rugged beauty of the land.

What I did not expect to find, however, was a state of the art simulator. But at The Center for Marine Simulation, they have one of the best in in the world. It is for training people who will run a ship, including the captain.

The crew works in an accurate replication of a bridge.

This bridge is about 25 feet wide and about 9 feet deep. This entire bridge rests on a six motion base.

Huge screens show dynamically rendered computer graphics in a complete, 360 ring seen through all of the windows of the bridge.

When you are in the simulation, you feel the rocking of the wave, the impact of the wind, even the chop when you put the boat in reverse. I found myself quickly pacing from one end of the bridge to the other to get a visual fix on an object to reinforce what my radar was showing me.

The formal learning also, of course, includes comprehensive instruction on the front end and debriefs (or after action reviews) on the back end.

One of my mantras has been, the organizations that care the most about training use simulations. You can tell people who built this center really care.

Aligning Training Processes, Tools, and Metrics

I don't know why, but I have been getting a tremendous amount of interest recently in a concept I first put forth a few years ago called Learning Accord.

It suggests that you can rank many aspects of a Formal Learning Program (FLP) from tactical to strategic, including:

• Type of learning material;
• Types of results needed; and
• Processes used.

With this organization, you can accurately predict how well a program will work. The most successful FLP's have a great deal of accord between the material, results, and processes, and the least successful have significant discord. So if you are planning any FLP, I would strongly suggest an early meeting between buyer, builder, and deployer around the issue of accord.

If you are interested in learning more about the idea, use the link above (Learning Accord) or check out the appendix in Learning By Doing. After that, feel free to email me and I can send you a ppt of the charts, including an academic version that has not been published anywhere.

CSTD Fredericton

Well after finally getting my wireless to work I am able to upload some blogging from the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) conference in Fredericton (links in this post are to my summaries).

Clark Aldrich led off with a talk called Simulations, Computer Games and Pedagogy. It took a long time to get to the point, so he really didn't get inot a lot of detail.

Then, in one of the breakout sessions, Darlene Burt and Darren McKinnon of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce did a really nice session on the development and deployment of a personalized learning system for customer center staff, New Communication and Information Technologies Emerging in the Workplace. Good, comprehensive presentation that was well organized and didn't skimp on detail.

Good things about the conference so far: good mix of people, and not the same crowd I see at academic conferences. Talked with many people thus far. One good talk. Some interesting displays.

Bad things so far: the Delta Hotel here is declining in quality (room wasn't restocked, no milk for coffee in room service, convenience store closed). No signs at the conference and no rooms listed in the conference schedule - as a result, I missed this afternoon's session, as there were no sessions scheduled for the one room (the lecture theatre) I thought there would be.

One Version of the Future

Per Mindy B's request, here's my version of our future.

I can elaborate a little now. As to a longer focus on workflow learning, we have several members of the LCB Blog Squad who are very involved in such efforts. I'll encourage them to post some of their thoughts. Jay Cross and Tony O'Driscoll laid out a more detailed vision of workflow learning in the February Training.

From a very high overview, I think we'll see changes in what learning interventions are and changes in what the Learning and Development function does.

Supervisors at all levels will be held responsible for the development of their employees. My growth strategy (versus developmental plan) will be focused on building my strengths and will be a matter of public knowledge so my colleagues will be able to help me meet my personal goals while we work together. Employees will be given opportunities to learn whenever, however they need.

Let's say I'm a marketing director with budget responsibility for my department. A week from today there's a meeting to launch the budgeting process for next year's budget. When I logged onto my work portal this morning my tablet PC reminded me of the meeting with to do's from my supervisor's memo. It also has organized last year's budget, my budgeting notes, a guide from finance on corporate budget strategy for this year - with my bosses reactions and directions included.

My system also gives a list of requested initiatives from my notes for meetings with my business partners, industry benchmarking numbers for similar initiatives and a reminder that I never took the training for the forecasting component of our new financial software - with a link to the online training. Outlook has even identified that my staff can meet with me at 3PM on Monday and is holding the time on everyone’s calendars waiting for my approval. Finally, I have my comments regarding budget processes for each of my direct reports culled from our reviews over the past year, L&D’s suggestions for materials to share with each, and coaching tips for me.

To guide the development of interventions that anticipate employee needs, we learning professionals will have to become proficient in systems thinking, business processes, change management and strategic planning. We'll get so close to our business partner that we'll become one of them. Needs analysis will truly be about what is needed and what the best solution(s) is – not the best training solution. Assessment will become focused on helping employees develop self-awareness of what they need to know to execute on their business objectives and pave the way for where they want their careers headed.

You asked who the vendors will be. Some will be the vendors you know today - SumTotal, GeoLearning, SAS, Oracle, etc. But don't be surprised if you're learning business process tools from Hyperion or Verity, synchronous meeting tools from Interwise or Skype, team/community enablement tools from UberGroups or Google and data mining and content management tools from Documentum or Fatwire.

So what do you think Mindy? Are you prepared for the change?

Just Showing up

On my long-term and short-term projects, I am around motivated and talented people.

But a theme has come up when talking to colleagues. A lot of people these days, according to a lot of good sources, are just "showing up. "

They are just showing up to meetings, unprepared.
They are showing up to league basketball games without having done much practice.
They write reports and letters without doing much research.
I have seen sales calls when both sides knew nothing about the other.

If the theme is just "showing up," however, the expectations seem to vary.

Some people still expect to be great. Some people think we will revel in their wondefulness, unprepared as they are.

Others just want to get by. The years of incredible rewards for incredible efforts are over, they think. Why push?

Both have implications for formal learning. But first, let's test the premise. Are people seeing this in their own workplace?

The reality of knowledge work

I installed a wireless home network this weekend, and it was a lot harder than I thought it should have been (three XP computers and a TiVo with new Linksys wireless stuff). I spent over an hour going online, Googling user groups, until I got what I needed to configure everything. The experience was similar to when I got a wide screen television, and had to change not just the user settings, but the accessed-only-by-secret-code factory settings.

The fussy, brittle, politically correct, theorist side of me was indignant at both activities. What about 'Customer satisfaction,' seamless integration,' 'quality assurance,' 'user interface,' blah blah blah?

And yet the rest of me was realizing how old I must sound. "I can't believe I have to go get gasoline for this new-fangled automobile. Why Bessie just needed some grass." Or even, 'why does the hardware store sell me these grass seeds that will need to be mowed once a week?'

So I spent an hour doing knowledge work. Big deal. What was I belly-aching about? Networking software and televisions might get easier over time, but what comes next will require just as much adapting.

It is easy to theorize about learning in the future. It is just a bit harder when it takes up a Saturday afternoon.

On being 85% right...

I remember the first time I was aware of reading a professionally published book and finding a typo. It was a Stephen King novel and I was at summer camp. I found the misspelled word, and even though I knew it was wrong, I reread it again and again, and finally looked it up in a dictionary just to confirm what I already knew.

Today, I almost wish that more words in some of the things I read were misspelled. It would remind me that the author is imperfect, and I should take his or her thoughts in the appropriate light.

This reasoning made me reflect upon some of my own rules for writing.

Rule 1: When describing about the uknown future, shoot for 85% accuracy. Aiming for higher than that makes you boring, and lower than that makes you just another industry hack.

Rule 2: When describing about the present or inevitable future, be specific enough so that it is obvious when you are wrong. This can be embarrassing in the short term, but what learning isn't?

Rule 3: Let people know if you are describing the first or the second.

Globalization depends on an informed and educated citizenry.

When talking and writing about simulations, one fun technique is to take a famous quote and change it just a bit. Here are some:

I made a perfect simulation about growing a company. The only problem is that it takes twenty-five years to play.
—With apologies to Steven Wright

An inexperienced learner is thrown by frustration, but a good learner uses it.
—With apologies to the late actor Carroll O’Conner

High production values that restrict immersion I wouldn’t give a fig for. High production values that open up immersion I would give my career for.
—With apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes

The genre is the content.
—With apologies to Marshall McLuhan

Globalization depends on an informed and educated citizenry.
—With apologies to Thomas Jefferson

Teach someone a computer game; and you have engaged him for today. Teach someone a computer game genre and you have engaged him for a lifetime.
—With apologies to the old Chinese proverb

See you in New York tonight!

I hope to see some of you at ASTD's famed New York chapter for a presentation and book signing tonight.

Here's the link:

http://www.astdny.org/events.asp



Clark

Cheating or just smart?

There was another story in the paper today about kids using technology to cheat while taking tests. I think the set up was scanning some test questions in real time and getting the responses IMed back to them while they were still at the desk.

The headline, "Cheating or just smart?" was mine not theirs. It is reminiscent of a headline I read about a year ago when some teacher seduced some high school boys, and the caption read, "victims or just lucky?"

How not to talk about simulations

This has happened to me more times than I can count. A bunch of people are in a room, invited for a two day meeting to talk about simulations. The moderator starts out by asking the group why they are interested in simulations.

One says, "Oh, I love simulations. I lead role-plays all of the time in my sales class, and they work really well."

Then someone says, "That's right. I build online certification programs, and simulations are critical."

Another says, "I agree. I love simulations. My kids play computer games all of the time. They are great."

Another says, "Simulations are the best. When I was in law school, we did moot courts, and they were very powerful."

The next person says, "Sure. I have spent decades modeling simulations using all sorts of tools like Stella, and they are great."

Then someone adds, "Absolutely. Simulations are necessary because learning needs to be made a lot more fun."

Another says, "Absolutely. I was a pilot, and we lived in the flight simulator."

"That's right," someone agrees. "The simulations are the most used part of our e-learning library."

Another says, "Oh, I love simulations. I was in the military and we practiced everything a hundred times."

Then someone says, "I work in IT, and we rigorously simulate every new architecture before we implement it."

At this point, I know the conversation is doomed. We have, in five minutes, dug ourselves into an intellectual hole that will take at least a day and a half to dig ourselves out of before we can actually move forward.

Questions about eLearning and Public Education

LCB received an email from John R. Wallace who is new to the elearning world and seeking advice on resources on the web regarding public education and elearning. Here are his questions. I'm sure the Learning Circuits Blog community can overwhelm him with good ideas!

....Which brings me to you. I have found the entries at
"The Learning Circuits Blog" to be very interesting,
serving as excellent stepping stones in my recent, much
more focused exploration of e-learning. I hope you might
be able to offer some advice...

Why am I having such a hard time finding articles or
information about e-learning as it might be applied in
public education?

Where are the discussions, the forums, and the people who
are involved?

Are large publishing houses the only real source of
investment in K-12 multimedia content (thus obviating the
growth of ADL-type communities in the field of public
education)?

Have I just been Googling the wrong two dozen search terms?

Also, what area(s) of e-learning do YOU see as having the
greatest potential in contributing to public education?...

Nested Feedback: Designing Learning Experiences for Generations for Gamers

One of the interesting parts of creating educational simulations is the role of nested feedback. At any given point, a learner should be getting feedback on short, medium, and long-term actions, all simultaneously.

This thinking is very foreign to traditional instructional designers, but very familiar to anyone who builds or uses computer games.

I like to think of feedback at intervals of Turn 1, Turn 3, and Turn 9. Turn 1 feedback happens after every turn. Turn 3 feedback reflects on the execution of simple strategies and ability to build capacity; we see the results of multiple tactics. Turn 9 gets to the biggest ideas of success or failure.

Here is a breakdown, focusing on specifics.

Turn 1 Feedback is around:
*Do I understand my options at any given moment?
*Can I map an action that I want to do/ would do in real life to the screen/ virtual world?
*Do I know if I did something really wrong (not always possible)?
*Do I know if I did something really right (not always possible)?

Turn 1 Feedback meets these learning objectives:
+Use of simple process
+Understanding options/tactics

Turn 1 Feedback Uses:
- Voices
- Graphics

Turn 3 Feedback is around (depending on the learning objectives/content/genre):
*Can I influence/ optimize one (primary systems) variable?
*Do I know if I am on the right track?
*Do I know if I have blown any chance of success?
*Do I know where I am losing ground/ need to triage?
*Do I know if I am doing something rather wrong?
*Do I know if I am doing something rather right?
*Do I know what my long-term goal is?
*How does what I do maximize some part of the system?
*How do I traverse some part of the map?
*How do I build some part?
*How do I get some critical competency/ tool?
*How do I control some territory,?
*How do I build some important personal relationships
*Given my strategy, am I executing against it?

Turn 3 Feedback meets these learning objectives:
+How actions impact a System
+Executing complicated process

Turn 3 Feedback Uses:
- Triggers at milestones reached
- Onscreen graphs and maps

Turn 9 Feedback is around (depending on the learning objectives/content/genre):
*Did I win?
*Can I optimize/ influence many (primary systems) variables
*Did I build what I wanted to build?
*Did I get to where I wanted to go?
*What does victory actually look like?
*Do I understand the trade-offs in my victory?

Turn 9 Feedback meets these learning objectives:
+Understanding Systems
+Use of Time
+Execution of Complex Strategy

Turn 9 Feedback uses:
- After action reviews
- Complex charts and graphs
- Multiple analyses of plays
- Advice for future plays
- Scores
- Consequences of actions taken

When learners first engage the sim, they are focused on Turn 1 Feedback. But after a few iterations, either replaying or continuing on to advanced levels, the learners increasingly focus on Turn 9 Feedback.

One necessity of building these nested feedback cycles is that we have to spend a lot more time thinking about failure than thinking about success. Our increasing challenge is how to help learners recognize, and then avoid, failure. This also gets to a concept of level design, again familiar to gamers and foreign to traditional instructional designers.

The bad news is that this is obviously a lot of work. The good news is that it produces formal learning experiences that teach much more, in much less time, in a format that meets the needs of the next generation of learners.

The Interface is the Content

One of the big "ahas" of the next generation of elearning designers is that the interface is a significant piece of the content, not just a conduit to the content. We are learning that the interface should line up to the real life activity at some level, high or low, to enable transferability of content.

Computer games designers get this, in that they think about the interface and the complexity of interaction, although they also mislead us, in that they don't care about transferability of skills to the real world; they also rely quite a bit on established genres (first person shooters, real-time strategies).

Not realizing the learning opportunity of the interface, as is the case with traditional designers and learners used to traditional models, has a feedback loop of problems.

If the learner does not realize that the interface is part of the learning, they think the time spent learning the interface is wasted time, which they resent.

Because traditional designers think of the web, with ease of navigation, as a model of a good interface, they design content that is very difficult to transfer.

We are getting over this. But it is slow.

Learning By Doing out tomorrow

Starting tomorrow, a little rock that is my second book will be tossed into the water of our collective understanding. How big the ripples cast is hard to say.

And yet, I can't help but be excited. I am excited because I do think we are in an inflection point when it comes to education. Probably the most true statement from the book comes from its introduction:

"At least a handful of people reading this book will, through their work, define the future of learning, just as absolutely as Shakespeare defined drama, Eastman defined photography, the Beatles defined modern music, Ford defined automobiles, Hitchcock defined modern cinema, and Beethoven defined, well, Beethoven... Productivity and the corresponding standards of living can be raised to the next level. The work of a few people will echo through the ages, changing the very wealth of nations."

To any potential readers, don't worry. Only the introduction and the conclusion have this much hype.

Yet I believe every word.

Training Pays Off

CDW does not just let new telephone reps loose, first they must complete a six and half week training course. And their training continues with a six-month Academy and then a Master's Curriculum. While the stock market has gone down over the last five years, CDW's stock price is up fifty percent.

This is because they, like others, see training as an investment rather than an operating expense. Laurie Bassi, one-time professor of economics at Georgetown University and former vice president of ASTD says that organizations that make large investments in people do much better than others. She further says that the education and training variable is the most significant predictor of an organization's success as compared to price-to-earning ratios, price-to-book statistics, and measures of risk and volatility.

Bassi puts her theories to the test -- her and a fellow partner launched an investment firm that buys stocks in companies, such as CDW, that invest heavily in employee training. It has returned 24 percent a year over the past two years, topping the S&P by four percentage points.

In the Human Equation, Jeffery Pfeffer writes, "Virtually all descriptions of high performance management practices emphasize training" (p.85). Yet, on the very next page he writes that in times of economic stringency, many U.S. organizations reduce training to make profit goals.

Training works, yet it remains at the bottom of the pole in many an organization. But my guess is that it will not remain this way for long. The baby-boomers are starting to retire. There may be quite a few people out of work now, but when the pool of workers slowly starts to dry-up, then it is going to make the labor shortages of the late 90s look like a small bump in the road. How do we best prepare for it?

Cheers,
Donald Clark

For more on Bassi, see:
Carnahan, Ira (2005). Forbes. "Blame the Accountants". April 25, 2005, p. 48.

Delahoussaye, M & Ellis, K. & Bolch, M. (2002). Training Magazine. "Measuring Corporate Smarts." August 2002, pp. 20-35.