Will at Work Learning

Getting Journalist Skills (for us bloggers)

I'm thinking some of us bloggers ought to learn from journalists.

Here's a whole group dedicated to citizen journalism. AND, they have a book available to help us learn how to do it.

Conferences Go Paperless -- How Learning, Remembering, and On-the-Job Application Suffer

Last week I spoke at one of the major conferences in the workplace learning-and-performance industry to a room filled with about 150 people. I am not including the name of the conference organizer because I don't want to single them out. They are not alone in the going-paperless practice.

Unfortunately, two of the conference decisions---(1) not to provide participants with paper handouts---(2) not to allow electronic handouts to include sufficient pages to provide images of the slides that are shown---may have hurt learning results. Perhaps ironic in a conference devoted to help people build better learning interventions.

Setting the Scene of My Presentation

I spoke on the topic of Situation-Based Learning Design and the session seemed to be well-received. I got the following emails afterward:

• "I found your session to be amazing!"
• "One of the highlights of the conference for me."

One of my friends, who sat in the audience, told me afterward that he knew the session was good because (1) hardly anybody left even after 90 minutes, and (2) many people were furiously taking notes.

But was it a successful learning experience? Isn't that the key question?

I could have been entertaining. People could have liked the session. They could have taken lots of notes. But probably the most important reason they came to the conference was so that they could go back and do something better and to think differently because they had attended.

I used some learning-design techniques to help them remember---to help them integrate the new learning with their current conceptions---but was this enough?

I think something was missing because of the paperless practices, but before I get to that, let me recount some of the design tactics I used specifically to ensure remembering and application to their work.

1. Content was verified (by research) to be effective in supporting good work practices around learning design. Some stuff you learn at conferences can actually make you less effective.
2. Participants were provided with realistic learning-design decisions to make before topics were introduced. By activating prior knowledge and situating the learning in situations similar to those folks would face in their work as learning professionals, the learning would become more usable and more memorable.
3. Examples of real-world e-learning courses were provided to again link realistic context cues to the learning points.
4. Learners were encouraged to specifically engage in trigger setting (what researchers call implementation intentions) to increase the likelihood that they would take action in implementing what they learned
5. Participants were presented with spaced repetitions of key learning points to support long-term remembering. Repetitions were achieved by providing (a) prequestions, (b) research explanations, (c) supporting metaphors, (d) real-world examples, (e) follow-up practice, (f) similar topics that reinforced points from previous topics, (g) a final summary, and (h) a reminder to link the learning to their future situations.

Good stuff to be sure, but was anything missing?

I think so.

The biggest thing that is missing is super-strong links back to the workplace. Even though I use great long-term retrieval support (better than most conference sessions provide I would think), having our learners rely only on the learning-remembering link when transportable cues are available is committing learning-to-performance malpractice. If learners could take their annotated slide images back to the workplace, they would remember more, share more, and apply more of the session content.

The Problem of Going Paperless.

Note-taking can prompt learners to engage in deep processing of their learning. By organizing the learning content during note-taking, learners will be more likely to fully understand what they're learning and remember it later. Note-taking has other benefits as well. Learners can go back and study their notes at a later time, providing themselves with spaced repetitions---a proven aid to long-term remembering. Finally, learners who take notes may be more likely to attempt to share what they've learned with others when they return to work. The process of preparing to teach others, provides further deep processing of the learning material and makes it more likely that the learning content will be remembered and utilized on the job.

When a conference goes paperless, it is likely to curtail note-taking. When I asked my 150 learners how many of them had paper copies or were looking at the handouts on their laptops, less than half raised their hands.

Just because participants can print out the handouts beforehand, doesn't mean that they will. This is a lame excuse for conference organizers.

Taking Notes with Slide Images versus Taking Notes on Plain Paper

The conference organizer only allowed us 8 pages of handouts. I could only fit 12 of my slides into these 8 pages, because some other things were required as well. For me, this meant that more than 85% of my slides were NOT provided to my learners.

Ironically, one of the research streams I talked about in my session was the importance of context in learning and remembering. Specifically, research is very clear that if stimuli are available in both the learning context and the retrieval context, people will be better able to remember what they learned. The contextual cues in the retrieval situation remind the learners of what they learned.

Slide images are such stimulus cues. If learners can transport slide images (and any notes they've added to those images) from the learning situation (my session) to their work situation, they will remember more of what they learned. So, conference organizers who deprive their participants (aka delegates) of slide images and concomitant note-taking are hurting learning.

This is compounded because learners will also be less likely to take back their learning to their coworkers. Just yesterday I did a web meeting with a prospective client and last night I got a request from that prospective client to get copies of my slides. They said they took notes, but they wanted the slides to ensure they didn't miss anything and also to prepare to persuade others in their organization.

Finally, if you've ever looked at a copy of somebody else's slide deck, you know how hard it is to make sense of it without the context provided by aural narration or annotations. People need to be able take notes so that they will later have the full context of the slides. Research also shows that labels, annotations, and notes must be geographically close to the objects of those textual elements---so that limited cognitive resources are not overtaxed, hurting learning. Bottom line here: Notes near the paper on slide images are more effective than notes taken without slide images.

The Push To Paperless

The paperless movement is bound to continue. It cuts into profits for conference organizers to print handouts. It goes against the rising tide of the green environmentally-friendly zeitgeist (which I am very sympathetic to).

If everyone brought their laptop to each session and had the slides available on their screens, they could take notes using Adobe Acrobat's commenting features, or perhaps some other program. What is needed is the ability to put a comment or note where you want it to be, and draw simple diagrams in case there is some visual meaning that should be captured. Note that PowerPoint, even the latest 2007 version, has no such capability. 

One must wonder if the environmental costs of laptop energy-use might outweigh the environmental costs of paper printing, shipping, etc.

If organizers expect participants to print their own copies, than there doesn't appear to be an environmental benefit. Just the costs are shifted to the conference participant.

I have found that I am sometimes able to annotate my own slides so that my audience members don't have to---this would create a minor learning benefit perhaps---but it doesn't really solve the underlying issues.

Academic conferences often have session-leaders write short papers that conference participants can access for later reading. This might be a way to transfer more of the learning content back to the workplace---but could we really make this cultural shift. Also, such short papers would provide a strictly post-learning intervention. It wouldn't fully compensate for the loss of context and note-taking.

Summing it Up

When conferences go paperless:

1. They either hurt learning, remembering, and on-the-job application,
2. Or, they create minor environmental improvements.
3. With current state of installed technology usage, they can't create good learning impacts and good environmental impacts (most people don't have a way to take notes on their slides on their computer).
4. Conference organizers save themselves a heap of money, increasing their profits, which probably doesn't trickle down to conference participants in the form of lower registration fees, especially if participants have to print and transport handouts to the conference and back by themselves.
5. You as a learner have to make a conscious decision to support your conference learning, and you can do this by getting a PDF of the slides beforehand and either printing them out or using Adobe Acrobat to take notes on the slides on your laptop.
6. If you as a conference goer want to maximize learning, you can contact conference organizers and complain, or vote with your dollars by not attending conferences that don't support your learning.

• Tell them: You want slide images.
• Tell them: You want a way to take notes on those slide images.

APA Conference on Healthy Workplaces

The American Psychological Association is holding a conference on healthy workplaces.

The conference is designed especially for human resource professionals, benefits managers, health and wellness professionals, business consultants, occupational health professionals, health plan executives, corporate medical directors, business owners, managers and psychologists who work with organizations.

Click to learn more.

DePaul Learning Executive Certificate Program

DePaul's new Learning Executive Certificate Program seems like an intriguing way to LEARN formally and informally from the other program participants. (especially if you're in the Chicago area)

Program Business Goal

This 20-week program is intended for active learning leaders to strengthen and expand their overall leadership capability, network, and contributions. Learning and Talent Management Executives from the Chicagoland area will guide participants through such activities as project-sharing, peer-reviews, and blended learning assignments with learning & business leaders. All participants will bring both business and learning experience so that they can contribute meaningful perspectives on action learning with meaningful business outcomes. 

This certification program calls for a high level of collaboration prior, during and after the 20-week formal sessions. The primary tools to accomplish this interaction will be several web-based systems designed to maximize shared learning.  This program is in partnership with DePaul University and culminates in a DePaul Certificate of Achievement.

Learn more:

Prospectus (PDF)

DePaul Website

Learning Leader Website (members get $1200 discount)

Thinking of Going to Graduate School?

I often get asked by people in our field (the learning-and-performance field) about how to select a graduate school and how to approach graduate school once in. Maybe because I spent so much time in graduate school (10 years), I think I can offer some ideas:

1. Start reading the research now to find out whose research you admire, etc.
2. The ideal is to find a professor you want to work with, although this is very difficult.
3. Find a program that is well-respected and offers several professors who are top notch. Go to a school with an active colloquy or open research-discussion sessions.
4. If you can, go to one of the best schools. It will help you later as you network your way to career postings you want.
5. Expect a long and difficult haul. Expect wonderful rewards if you put in the effort.
6. Avoid professors who are evil. Seriously, there are some who are just dysfunctional. Ask for student references and talk to real students who have gone through the program. Ask for the good the bad the ugly.
7. Find a program with a very strong research methodology approach. If you graduate without knowing how to evaluate research, you won't do anybody any good. I've seen too many smart people who just shy away from the whole research enterprise because they've never been prepared for it.
8. Get a reading list of the articles and books used in the required courses. Ask around to see if these are written by the top thinkers in the field. Do not confuse "top thinkers" with "most-popular thinkers."
9. My own bias is to focus on the fundamentals of learning at the same time focusing on what is practical, but this is hard to find.
10. Be prepared to have a very thick skin. Be open to ideas. Relish them, but stick to your guns if you know deep down that you've got an intriguing idea.
11. Ask the professors what journals they publish in. Determine if these are top tier or lesser tier journals. Aim for the top tier.
12. Beware of the programs labeled as "adult learning, curriculum studies" and the like. These often are weak in the foundations of human learning (but not always). If you go to a school focused on instructional technology, make sure you find one with good background in learning.
13. If you want to build learning interventions when you get out of school, don't just focus on academics, build stuff while in graduate school that you can show to prospective employers later.
14. Note that the best development shops are very skeptical of graduates of instructional-design programs because many come out of those programs with rigidly inflexible mental models of how to build learning. This unbearable hardness of being is often combined with an arrogance that leaves these graduates with little ability to learn. Bottom line: Find a school, and adopt an attitude, that is inquisitive, open, skeptical, and hungry for knowledge. Find a way to test your ideas and learning interventions using valid methods so you can get the feedback loops you need to continually improve what you're doing and thinking.
15. Begin to take control of your learning now, before you get into school. In the doctoral program, it's 95% you.
16. Realize that when you start reading in the field, it will feel like you are a complete idiot. This is normal as you learn the language of the thinkers and researchers. On the other hand, as you learn more and more, don't forget how the real world talks.
17. Most of the time, but not always, PhD degrees are more research-oriented than EdD degrees, which is a good thing.

Note that I write these recommendations because I believe we need many more people in our field who can bridge the gap between research and practice. If you're completely not cut out to do research, that's fine. Be practical. But get yourself enough research background so you can evaluate research claims when you see them. Beware of a fear of research. Fear usually comes from a lack of exposure. Expose yourself.