Will at Work Learning

Younger Generation NOT Good at Multitasking Either!

Generation Y, millennials, iPod Generation, better at multitasking then their elders. Yadda yadda yadda.

You've heard it all before, but is it true?

No. Probably not.

Read this great article in the Monitor on Psychology by Rebecca A. Clay.

It says:

1. People in general are not good at multitasking.
2. Young people are no better than their elders at multitasking.
3. Multitasking actually takes longer. It is NOT a time saver.
4. Learning done while multitasking is shallower learning, leading not to deep understanding (and flexible mental models) but only to an ability to regurgitate rote information.

Although I recommend the article, I do worry that some of its conclusions are drawn from too small a research base and may encompass a slight bias against the new media revolution. Still, I think we need to read these warnings because too many in our field don't see any downside to the new technologies.

Present Like Steve Jobs? Yes, BUT...

Here's a nice presentation about what makes Steve Jobs a great presenter.

Check it out, then read my comment below:

Here's my comment on this:

Okay, Steve Jobs is great at giving a product-sales presentation. No doubt about that. But let's not generalize this too far. In my field, the learning-and-performance field, many of the recommendations made here are spot on (for example, keep slides simple and relatively undecorated), BUT some are not relevant (for example, "and one more thing") and some important things are not mentioned (for example, provide people with practice opportunities, etc.).

Jobs also has a big advantage that most of the rest of us don't have. He's a celebrity. For some reason, deep in human evolution, this gives him our loving attention.

Presentation characteristics depend on the audience, purpose, etc. If you acted like Steve Jobs at a scientific convention, you would not be trusted. If you acted like Steve Jobs in training people, you would not create long-term remembering of key learning points.

Again, I'm not criticizing Job's presentation skills. He's perfect for his audience and purpose. I've even used him as an example for some of my training-and-development clients. It's just that we have to be a little discerning in deciding what we can use of Jobs' repertoire for our particular purposes.

Can we utilize the "Elevation" Emotion in Learning?

Read this intriguing article in Slate.

It talks about how some people can elicit an emotional response in others that enables optimism and moral inspiration.

Quoted from the article:

University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."

I don't think most training situations would benefit from such elevation, but some might. There's little likelihood that someone learning how to use a spreadsheet could be elevated, for example.

On the other hand, I can see particular opportunities for socially-responsible organizations or initiatives, especially those that are led by elevation-enabling leaders. Perhaps some soft-skill training may benefit, for example, where a management-training facilitator tells stories of others' efforts to help develop the people they work with.

There can be downsides to elevation as well, not least of which is that those who don't feel the elevation think that those who do feel it are either ridiculous or brainwashed. And, elevation by itself doesn't generate changes in behavior.

Haidt's research shows that elevation is good at provoking a desire to make a difference but not so good at motivating real action.

Still, I think it's worth thinking about how to connect with our learners at a deeper level. It doesn't have to be super-deep, just a little bit deeper may help.

Let's remember that we as learning professionals have a responsibility not just to inform, prepare, and provide practice. We can also increase the likelihood that our learners will actually utilize what we teach by enabling their "motivation to apply" what they've learned. Sure, we can utilize our learners' management to promote application, but we can play a role in enabling the learners to want to apply what they've learned. Elevation may be another tool we can use in our work.

Teachable Moment in, by, and for America

As a person whose career focuses so much on learning, I can't help but notice when learning plays a part in the larger world, and especially in the life of my family, community, and country.

My wife and I, and our daughter, live in the United States. Last night our country elected a new President, Barack Obama.

Right after Republican-party candidate John McCain conceded the election in a very gracious speech, with Democratic-party candidate Barack Obama due to speak to the nation to acknowledge his victory, my wife and I decided to wake up our 5-year-old daughter (she's almost six--a few months really matter at her age).

Both my wife and I have been strong Obama supporters in the general election. For weeks, our daughter has been asking about the election. "Who are you going to vote for?" "Is mommy going to vote for him too?" The questions are repeated and keep coming over time. You can feel her trying to learn how the world works, how we fit into the world. Last night at dinner she said, "I hope Iraq Obama wins." We're still working on getting her to say "Barack."

As we put her to bed, we asked her whether we should wake her up to tell her who won. She said yes.

A little after 11PM, I walked upstairs to her room. In her darkened room she was lying across the bed, her orange sheet covering her body, her bare feet sticking out past the side of the mattress. "Alena, Obama won. Do you want to come downstairs to see him speak?" She popped right up, which is unusual as she usually gets up in a slow series of sleepy disgruntlements. She zoomed downstairs and nudged her way inbetween her mommy and daddy.

We had to wait for Obama to appear. As we gloried in the moment last night, with our daughter between us, my wife and I were happy parents, proud of our country. Our daughter got to hear the same pledge of allegiance that she says in her kindergarten classroom every morning. "Do you know what song that is Alena?" "No." "That's the national anthem. That's our country's song."

During the wait for Obama, the announcers kept talking about the historic moment, how we were electing our first black President, how women and African Americans hadn't always had the right to vote. Tired, with her head laying on her mommy, then on daddy, then peeking over the sheets laying across us on the couch, she watched and listened and continued to shift back and forth.

"What color skin do you have to have to be President?", she asked. "Any color. You can have any color skin. In the past, a black person couldn't be President, but now they can." "What color skin did they have to have?" "They had to have white skin." "I have both colors (she has some of her mother's Colombian skin)." "Yes, you do, just like him." We point at the TV where Barack Obama is speaking. A moment of quiet reflection. "But a woman can't be President." "Oh yes, a woman can be President. You can be President if you want to." Another moment of quiet reflection, longer this time. Her quiet was surprising because usually when we tell her she can be anything she wants to be, she immediately interrupts and tells us she wants to be a veterinarian because she loves animals.

Alena was riveted to the two Obama girls as they took the stage. When they didn't come out later when the Obamas and Bidens took the stage, she asked where the girls were.

I'm going to bet that my daughter remembers this election. I remember President Kennedy getting shot and killed when I was a little younger than she is now. I remember my mom in tears and not being able to watch cartoons because adult shows preempted the cartoons on the TV. Alena did ask last night if there were any kid shows of the Obama speech. Alas, no..., perhaps a lost opportunity for learning.

Even as a learning expert, it's hard for me to fully fathom how tiny moments have profound learning effects for kids. Some of it is surely emotional and social. Seeing all the faces with tears of joy around the country must have had an impact. Seeing how one's parents cry, beam, and do uncharacteristic things (waking the kids in the middle of the night) must have an effect. Hearing the announcers glow with special rhetoric must make a difference. Seeing all the different types of faces on the stage, brown, white, and in between. Youngsters like the Obama girls. Elders like Biden's fragile steely mom. Hearing Obama's eloquence, his example of the 106 year-old woman voter born before women could vote, must have made a difference. And new research on learning tells us that learning something just before sleeping helps cement that learning. So many factors at play.

I can't help wondering what other wonderful teachable moments we have in store for us. How many teachable moments have already occurred. How this affects not only our children, but us; not only our country, but people around the world. How this has changed us forever.

A Better Learning to Performance Model and Job Aid

For almost a decade I've been building a model of how learning works to prompt performance. Each iteration gets better (in my unbiased opinion). Here's the latest one--this one has the advantage of pointing out the responsibilities learning professionals have AND the responsibilities that learners' managers and the workplace have in creating on-the-job results.

You can use this model for two purposes:

1. As a visual metaphor for how learning works to drive on-the-job performance and results.
2. As a job aid to assign responsibilities and tasks.

This graphic draws on many sources, many I'm probably unaware of. It draws from the wisdom of authors such as Wick, Pollock, Jefferson, and Flanagan of Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning fame, and Tim Mooney and Rob Brinkerhoff from the new book Courageous Training (which is great by the way, I'll review it within the next month).

It also draws from countless researchers on learning, memory, instruction, and cognition who have helped me understand learning at a deep level, enabling me to add to models that don't fully include wisdom on how learning and cognition really work to drive remembering.

Also, I'd like to thank my many clients who have enabled me a great real-world workshop in which to think deeply about how learning works in a practical reality. I'd particularly like to thank my friends at Walgreens, and especially Anne Laures who commented on an earlier version of this model.

Download Learning-Performance_Diagram_v2.pdf.

As always, this is a work in progress, so let me know what you like and what I might be missing. Note, of course, that human learning and performance is too complicated to include every factor of relevance. My goal is to create a model simple enough to be easily understood and precise enough to be useful and provide practical learning-to-performance improvement.

Oh, if you have to give it a name, you might call it the Learning-to-Performance Landscape Model, but I'll probably come up with a better name.

Learning Styles Challenge 1-Year Update

It has been exactly one year since I offered $1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate that utilizing learning styles improved learning outcomes. Click here for the original challenge.

So far, no one has even come close.

For all the talk about learning styles over the last 15 years, we might expect that I was at risk of quickly losing my money.

Let me be clear, my argument is not that people don't have different learning styles, learning preferences, or learning skills. My argument is that for real-world instructional-development situations, learning styles is an ineffective and inefficient waste of resources that is unlikely to produce meaningful results.

Let me leave you with the original challenge:

"Can an e-learning program that utilizes learning-style information outperform an e-learning program that doesn't utilize such information by 10% or more on a realistic test of learning, even it is allowed to cost up to twice as much to build?"

The challenge is still on.

Human Cognition is More Reactive Than You Think

In today's New York Times there is a great article, Who's Minding the Mind?, by BENEDICT CAREY that sums up a large number of research studies on human cognition that show that human beings are more reactive than we might think. We tend to believe that we, as human beings, are very proactive and consciously in control of our thoughts and actions; but these studies show that much of what we do and think is due to hard-wired, often unconscious processes.

For example, the article cites how sitting near a briefcase (as opposed to a backpack) can make people more competitive. Or as Carey writes:

New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

This basic fact about human behavior is relevant to the learning and performance field, of course. One of the things I've talked about for years is the notion of "spontaneous remembering." If we create learning right, we're more likely to help our learners—when they're on the job at a later time—by helping them spontaneously trigger memories of what they've learned. We can do this best by requiring our learners to utilize realistic cues in the learning context in making real-world decisions and taking real-world actions. This is why simulations are so effective (if they are well designed).

When learners process learning objectives or prequestions before encountering learning material, the learners are primed to pay attention to relevant learning material. It's not necessarily a conscious process, but it works.

There are many examples available, but here's another point: The learner-centric movement of the 1990's and 2000's has relied too heavily on the notion that the learners always know best, and that they are in conscious control of their learning and we just need to let them make the best decisions.

When we realize that our learners are more deterministically driven than the we want to believe (its about free will a little, isn't it?), we have more work to do if we really want to drive maximum performance. Even when our clients consciously want to do something, we may be able to help them reach their goals by setting up learning and performance situations that unconsciously trigger the behavior they want to achieve.

The Magic Question for Learning and Instructional Design

The most important question that instructional designers can ask is:

“What do learners need to be able to do, and in what situations do they need to do those things?”

While we might discount such a simple question as insignificant, the question brilliantly forces us to focus on our ultimate goals and helps us to align our learning interventions with the human learning system.

Too many of us design with a focus on topics, content, knowledge. This tendency pushes us, almost unconsciously, to create learning that is too boring, filled with too much information, and bereft of practice in realistic situations.

The Magic Question requires us to be relevant. For workplace learning, it focuses our thinking toward learners' future job situations. For education learning, it focuses our thinking toward real-world relevance of our academic topics.

The Magic Question in Practice

In practice, the Magic Question forces us to begin our instructional-design efforts by not only creating a list of instructional objectives, but also by creating a list of performance situations. For example, if we're creating leadership training, we not only need to compile objectives like, "For most decisions, it can be helpful to bring your direct reports into decision-making, so as to increase the likelihood that they will bring energy and passion in implementing decisions." We also need to compile a list of situations were this objective is relevant, for example in weekly staff meetings, project meetings, in one-on-one face-to-face conversations, in phone conversations, etc. Also, for general decision making, but not in situations where time is urgent, where safety is an issue, where legal ramifications are evident, etc.

By framing our instructional-design projects in this way, we get to think about our learning designs in ways that are much more action-oriented, relevant, and practical. The framing makes it more likely that we will align our learning and performance contexts, making it more likely that our learners, in their future situations, will spontaneously remember what we've taught them. The framing makes it more likely that we will focus on practice instead of overloading our learners with information. The framing also makes it more likely that we will utilize relevant scenarios that more fully engage our learners. Finally, using the Magic Question forces our SME's (subject-matter experts) to reformulate their expertise into potent practical packages of relevant material. It's not always easy to bend SME's to this discipline, but after the pain, they'll thank you profusely as together you push their content to a much higher level.

Obviously, there is more to be said about how the Magic Question can be integrated into learning-design efforts. On the other hand, as my clients have reported, the Magic Question has within it a simple power to (1) change the way we think about instructional design, and (2) transform the learning interventions we build.

More Evidence that the Internet is Not the Ideal Learning Tool

An article on the behavior of websurfing.

Wiki's -- Failure or Boon of Online Collectivism?

I've been suspicious of the wiki bandwagon for quite some time. An earlier piece I wrote summed up my concerns. Fortunately, someone else has come along and written more deeply and elegantly on the topic. Check out Jaron Lanier's piece, DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, published 5-30-2006 in The Edge an online publication.

Jaron Lanier's piece points out several things:

1. Sometimes the collective is wise. Sometimes it is stupid. Sometimes it is very stupid.
2. We, as individuals, have difficulty knowing what's good and what's not good.
3. There is very often a need for wise and knowledgable editors to filter messages.
4. Google search results have a similar problem.
5. Websites and blogs that aggregate info have a similar problem.
6. Our democracies may be threatened by this collective stupification.

Relating This to the Learning-and-Performance Field

My main concern with wiki's is that information from real experts can be stupified to the mediocre averaging of above-average minds. I have a wiki design that overcomes this problem, but I need a generous funder to make it a reality. BIG HINT to you rich philanthropic types. SMILE.

Wiki's aren't the only newtech fetish that exhibits the filtering problem. Blogs that simply compile messages from other blogs and web pages offer a prime exhibit. Jay Cross recently noted how the blogosphere was like an echo chamber, where the most prolific bloggers cite the most prolific bloggers into recursion ad absurdium. I see this echoing effect as a potential problem, dulling and twisting the voices of truly brilliant people and fully-vetted ideas.

I don't want these compilers to stop. I like the material to sift through. But I do hope most people realize that there is very little nutrition left in sifted poop.

And we definitely need others to vet our work. For example, many great books that I read have acknowledgements aplenty for people who have provided feedback to the author(s).

My simple little point is that we need expertise too. We need filtering. We need wisdom. Some of that wisdom can come from the collective, but some must also come from people who have done the hard work of learning a knowledge discipline.

Anyway

Go read Jaron Lanier's piece, and the vetting it receives from the collective spectrum of people in The Edge's readership.