I’ve just read an interesting article from a SlideShare subscription alert. It was interesting on a number of levels. The article ‘Slides that Rock’ describes 5 ways SlideShare has helped them ‘rock’:
1. providing a platform where they can learn 2. building a better network 3. enabling a global presence 4. providing a marketing platform 5. adding credibility
I loved viewing their accompanying SlideShare presentation too which has some excellent learning points many of us can take away. It does have a SlideShare promotional feel to it and is considering SlideShare more from a marketing tool point of view but, nonetheless, all their points are valid and I started to relate it back to eLearning (as is my tendency) and learning in general.
Presentations are a very passive way of sending a message but can play an important part in workplace learning or as part of a formal blended/eLearning solution. Reading copious amounts of text can have a detrimental effect on our levels of engagement and often visuals play a vital role in our comprehension of the material as well as motivating us to ‘stick with it’. “A picture paints a thousand words” as the saying goes is useful to bear in mind. We can learn to change that by taking ideas from these types of presentations such as ‘Slides that rock’.
Of course, we don’t have to stop at changing how our presentations look. We can apply the same principles to our eLearning tutorial slides too not to mention our classroom slides. And just think of the difference you can make to your conference presentations!
When people on my eLearning design workshops fear they haven’t the creative skills to produce dynamic and appealing slides I point them to two of the names mentioned in this article, Nancy Duarte (her Slideology book) and Garr Reynolds (particularly his Presentation Zen Design book).
Two further publication I always recommend are (i) ‘The non-designer’s design book‘ by Robin Williams (covers in layman’s terms the basic principles of graphic design – contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity) and (ii) ‘Visual Language for Designers‘ by Connie Malamed. I’m looking forward to checking out the work of David Crandall and Jesse Desjarnins to whom the article refers.
We could also do well to remember as learning designers though is that we too are marketeers. When we produce a piece of learning, whether it’s designed to be a formal course or ad-hoc, just in time chunks to help with workplace learning, we are producing a product to ‘sell’. The visual design ideas we see here could also be transferred to our marketing material such as posters and leaflets.
On a final note…. the main points that stuck with me from this article however were that SlideShare gave them a platform from where they could learn and it allowed them to build a better network.
We learn from sharing and collaborating with others. We just sometimes need a little help in knowing where to look which is where the role of trainers becoming curators and consultants comes in.
The debate over the importance of learning objectives continues. I enjoyed reading a recent post by Clive Shepherd and more particularly the responses it generated. I like to think I have a fairly open mind and welcome reading debates around various doctrines in the L&D arena.
It’s healthy to question and to see the other point of view. But before we can really decide whether learning objectives should or shouldn’t be used, surely it’s important to first establish what exactly a learning objective is before we condemn?
Why do they have such bad press?
Might objectives have such a bad press because of their misuse and poor construction? I’ve often seen lists of key learning points posted at the beginning of a lesson or course. These are not learning objectives and certainly, if faced with a whole list of key learning points that early on, would probably send the best of us running to the hills.
When someone sees a list as long as your arm, of all the topics they are going to be taught at the very start of a course, session or module it is certainly understandable that their hearts will sink. Any motivation and buy-in that may have already been established is likely to be lost and all they hear inside is “I’m never going to take all that in!” or “it’s going to be a long day”.
Then of course you have a poorly constructed learning objectives. An example of a poorly constructed learning objective could be “you will understand the interview process”. At least it is succinct. But it could do with being more specific and measurable (how do you prove understanding?).
Even if you do have well constructed learning objectives, it’s best to only offer the overall learning objective at the start of the course. When it comes to listing all of lesson objectives at the beginning of the course/programme/module this should be avoided for the same reasons as highlighted above.
So what is a well-written learning objective?
A good learning objective is a succinct, clear description of the task that proves learning has taken place.
Clive’s post gives us pros and cons of learning objectives. I agree with the pros as you might expect and to a great extent I agree with some of the cons but would like to explore these and some of the responses a little further.
Yes, learning objectives are usually seen as directed from top-down. They give the organisation and the learners progress markers in their development which can be measured. They are certainly required from a development point of view to help the instructional designers construct learning that is logical, specific and relevant.
In Nick Shackleton-Jones’s response to Clive’s post, he recommends learning objectives should appear only in the catalogue and not the course. Certainly, when looking to register for a learning programme, we all need to know what’s in it for us – what we’re signing up for. But learning objectives (specific, well constructed and valid learning objectives) are also important progress markers for the learner within the course. They help us, as the learner, measure our achievements along the way and we can see how our skills are building. They help us, as learners, build confidence in our abilities.
Although I loved his film analogy “I can’t imagine a movie opening with the title ‘in this film you will learn that good eventually triumphs over evil, though this may require car chases and romantic interludes”, what Nick is referring to here isn’t what I would call a learning objective at all. It’s the aim or the message of the film. And, agreed, in the credits we wouldn’t see an overview of what the film was about to tell us. Besides which, who wants to hear spoilers (what will happen in the end) in a movie?
This message appears in the marketing of the film, voice-overs in the trailers and film reviews which would help you decide whether or not you wish to see the film. But these are still not learning objectives. If we were to write a learning objective for the film, first we’d need to establish a task for the viewer to do to prove they understood the message. Perhaps something like “using a your choice of media, submit a critique of [the film] citing at least 2 scenes where good overcame evil”.
In effect, the learning objective is a succinct description of the task that proves learning has taken place. When we have established that these are learning objectives, then including these within the course makes more sense. Throughout a course, whether it’s a classroom course, an eLearning course or a blended course, the programme will very likely consist of a series of progress checks (preferably skills checks not just quiz checks but that’s a whole different topic). Comparing films with training courses is like comparing oranges with sky-scrapers (not even another fruit).
For example, if a session in a ‘presentation skills’ course culminates in a progress check task where the learner has to apply the visual design elements covered in the session to a number of PowerPoint slides’ then it’s only right that the learner knows at the beginning of that session that they will be undertaking that task. Telling them at the beginning of the session is in the form of their learning objective e.g. “apply the 5 key design elements correctly to at least 1 of your PowerPoint slides”.
Now it can become very boring, even though it’s what we all expect, to see a slide titled ‘Learning Objective’ followed by “by the end of the session/module you will be able to….” at the beginning of every session/module (yawn!) Yes – even I get bored of that. Especially when considering an eLearning course. As long as everyone is clear of the task that’s expected of them why not break out from the mold and try saying it slightly differently “Your mission is to apply …. etc”
Are learning objectives confined to formal top-down?
As we’ve heard, learning objectives are more often than not driven from the top. However, even from a personal learning point of view, without individually establishing a goal – an end result i.e. a learning objective, how would we as individuals be able to measure how well we have achieved our own personal learning goals? I’ve done more self-learning in my adult life than have undergone formal training courses. Of course a lot of my development has been serendipitous but where I have made a conscious decision to do something I have, in effect given myself a learning objective.
Recently, I’ve been interested in creating and editing video in my spare time. It’s a minefield and in order to establish where to start I had to give myself a specific performance objective. I decided on a task which was “to create and edit a piece to camera about tips for writing book reviews”. This was my learning objective. It wasn’t a top-down initiative. It was a personal learning goal but a learning objective nonetheless. I’ve been doing this with the help of the eLearning Network’s mentoring scheme (slowly because of work commitments but am pleased with my progress so far – and if my mentor is reading this, I haven’t forgotten).
I certainly agree with Clive’s suggestion that where “participation in an intervention is determined by employees themselves, then their goals should surely over-ride any objectives set by the designer/instructor – at very least they should be negotiated”. This becomes more important in today’s climate where change happens at such a fast pace and the way we deliver learning needs to adapt. Enabling employees to have more of a say in their learning and negotiating their own personal learning goals is more achievable when applying more of a flexible and blended approach to learning. Nevertheless, negotiating and agreeing a real, learning objective which is task based is still as important as ever.
What can we do?
As instructional designers we can do a lot more to improve the delivery of our learning objectives which will have a positive impact so they engage our audiences instead of switch them off. Not only can they then be listed in the catalogue (“by the end of the course you will be able to….”) but with a little creative re-writing, the same goals can appear in the course (“your mission for this morning is to apply the 5 design elements correctly to your PowerPoint slides before a run through with your colleague”). They are still the same learning objective but one is from the instructional designer’s perspective, the other for the learner.
I guess the debate will continue – what are your views?
I recently read this excellent post by Clark Quinn (@Quinnovator) despairing about the continued dire examples of eLearning continually being created. Sometimes I wonder whether eLearning designers take their profession seriously enough to continually research, read and improve.
It isn’t particularly hard to keep up with best practice especially given the ease with which we can now collaborate, share and network with peers and experts in the field. With the likes of Cathy Moore, Connie Malamad, Ruth Clark, Tom Khulman to name only a fraction who feel so strongly about improving the quality of eLearning tutorials that they give advice freely, I certainly share Clark Quinn’s frustrations. I’d like to think I play my own little part in the revolution.
However, I then have to take a step back and climb down from my high horse (mixing my metaphors). When discussing what is good eLearning (referring to the self-paced interactive tutorials) it often becomes very clear that even when people have the knowledge, skills and drive to produce quality their hands are quite tightly tied by time and resource constraints. People gasp with disbelief when I give them an indication of how many hours of development time to hours of learning it can take. Then their gasps turn to nervous laughter when contemplating what their bosses/sponsors would say if they asked for enough time to develop this level of excellence let alone get to grips with their new skills.
So I can equally empathise with Rob Stephen’s comment to Clark Quinn’s post. The problem is, in today’s climate where time and resources are scarce, something’s got to give – all too often that something is quality. So instead, perhaps we should ask ourselves “what’s the alternative” and take a more agile approach to make sure quality is maintained. After all there is more to eLearning than the self-paced (so called) interactive tutorials we often think of when faced with the term.
There is little excuse, however, if such poor examples to which Clark Quinn refers are still being produced. As ‘expert’ instructional designers they should know what good learning involves. Although, there may be various reasons why this might be so. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it may be that the sponsor, knowing little about what great eLearning looks and feels like, insists on info-dumps testing knowledge not application to tick those compliance boxes.
The culprit may be the sponsor’s limited budget and of course more complex the eLearning the longer it will take and therefore will cost more but that doesn’t mean that simple interactions needn’t be performance based, relevant and contextual. In which case the experts in instructional design surely would act as consultants to those with less knowledge in learning design. But it shouldn’t just be laid at their door. We all have a duty to work together, to make sure learning is effective no matter how it’s delivered. Are we willing to pay the price of perfection or will pursuit of efficiency be the cost of quality?
If you haven’t already noticed (and if that’s the case, what planet are you on?), there’s vast choice of media tools out there. Increasingly in today’s climate organisations are looking at leveraging these tools’ abilities to learn and work more efficiently. In fact, organisations can see great potential with increased adoption of rapid authoring tools. These tools are helping them transfer training done in the classroom to a more flexible and efficient delivery.
I’ve certainly embraced any gadget that might make my life easier and to a quicker end result. Take the dishwasher for instance. Until I met my husband I never had one. It was a luxury for which I couldn’t justify the expenditure. Now, having had one for the past 8 yrs I can’t imagine not having one. Yes of course I could live without it but it washes my dishes so much more efficiently and on the whole does an excellent job of it too. And while it’s washing those dishes I can get on with something else or even do nothing at all.
But that dishwasher wouldn’t do such a good job without that something extra from us. To get sparkling dishes it’s important place the content correctly (and, yes, my husband regularly rearranges it after I load it). It’s important to know what is suitable content and not to over stack the content. But even then if you have done that correctly, there’s still more to consider. What temperature is needed? We could stick with the default setting but that might be the hottest. Does every load need that setting? Of course you can carry on regardless. Yes the result will be sparkling – but at a cost of wasted energy and a longer cycle.
Yet what if we we’re energy conscious and washed everything on the coolest setting? Yes some dishes will be clean but those pots and pans we cooked the Sunday lunch in didn’t come very clean at all. So what do we do? Either hand wash them or wash them again. Either way that’s extra time and energy.
And there’s still the question about the detergent! There are so many of them out there all claiming to give the best results. There are Eco friendly ones; power-ball ones; double, triple, quadruple action ones; some in packets that dissolve; some in packets you need to discard.
Fortunately, we more often than not get superb results. My parents, on the other hand, don’t. Is that the fault of the dishwasher? Well, of course there could be a problem but after some observation it was more about their stacking process; their refusal of following best practise because they ‘know best’ and the misguided thinking that cramming as much in as possible, using the coolest setting and cheapest tablets will give them good results. But no! Although if they’re happy with it, what’s the harm maybe? They might be ok with having to re-wash. It doesn’t affect anyone else. (I later discovered that, sometimes, my father merely put the thing on rinse!!!).
A dishwasher is a brilliant time-saving invention but it won’t wash the dishes without our carefully considered actions and procedures.
Similarly, although there are many rapid authoring tools out there, that’s all they are – tools. With careful consideration, you’ll choose the best for what you want but without the right input from us, without carefully considering the right content , without understanding the implications that over-stacked content has on the result (our learners’ brains); without careful consideration of your audience and making the right decision for them your time and effort may be wasted and you may be doubling (or tripling) your workload. This is definitely a case of one size doesn’t fit all.
So remember, when thinking about changing the way you deliver your training, there are lots of tools to help reach global audiences, they may help reach more people in a shorter amount of time but it takes more than just stacking content from your classroom courses.
I’ve just watched Craig Taylor’s excellent Pecha Kucha ‘Using technology to enhance an assess-train-assess approach’ in which he shares examples of how assessing competency levels before automatically mandating everyone attend the same annual refresher has had a positive impact on business.
When I hear people talking about the need to design a course here may be some reasoning behind it:
a) there is an update
b) compliance -staff are required to attend refresher training every year whether they need it or not
c) there’s some new approaches to working practise
However, before you automatically go through the usual motions and go down the ‘we’ve got to design a new course’ why not ask yourself the following questions:
How much do they know already?
How often would they carry out that work?
and the biggie…. What REALLY tells you whether they are competent or not?
Why do we insist on putting everyone, no matter how experienced they are in the subject, through a course before establishing whether they actually need it? Even when the instructional design is top notch including relevant task based interactive activities, it’s a waste of resources and staff time if they already know the subject matter and are applying successfully. Of course we need to maintain quality and adhere to legal requirements but is herding us all through one-size-fits-all courses the most efficient or, indeed, effective way of doing this?
It seems we often pay more attention to recording ‘bums on seats’ – virtual or otherwise instead of establishing the quality of work performance. So our workforce are all too often taken off their important jobs and attend compulsory training where there is limited flexibility in what they can choose to do. There is a simple, logical and very effective solution – assessments not courses.
As I said in a comment to Ryan Tracy’s blog post ‘online courses must die‘ “why force individuals to go through the same mandatory content year after year when all they may need is a yearly, skills based assessment. If that assessment highlight skills gaps then a more flexible learning programme will make sure individuals learn only what they need not what they don’t”
Now I’m not saying that we’ll never need formal courses ever again. This would be ridiculous and untrue. Besides, I’d be talking my way out of a job if I do that. There are many reasons why someone will need formal courses. But before we decide, we do need to be more analytical before designing how to facilitate our workforce’s learning paths. Yes, it may mean more hard work gathering all the information you’ll need. Yes, it will mean we would need to encourage ownership of learning more to the individuals themselves and help them develop their meta-cognitive skills. And yes, it will mean L&D professionals would then become more cultivators of learning.
When reflecting on why this ‘herding’ approach occurs so frequently, I was reminded of a conversation I had recently around the reluctance in considering just assessing staff to prove competence before deciding whether anyone needed more formal training. It appears it all boiled down to the quality of the assessment – or rather the poor quality of the assessment. This meant that everyone had to be forced to attend the same training course to make sure the content was covered (not I didn’t say learned) and which could be tracked for statistical purposes and to prove attendance. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but the whole point of an assessment is to test whether a person is competent in the subject matter.
If you spend the valuable time and effort in creating great learning programmes, whether they are formal courses or a collection of learning nuggets on-demand, the only way learning can be confirmed is by completing an assessed activity. If that assessment can easily be ‘guessed’, then the learner doesn’t have to use any problem solving techniques to analyse and apply. If you honestly have little confidence in the assessment at the end of a learning programme, of course you won’t want to put it out there on its own. It will about as much use as a chocolate teapot!
We’ve often discussed what makes good learning, ‘e’ or otherwise. What now begs the question is “what is good assessment?”
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am a big advocate of informal learning although I’ve never been happy with the term. In fact I’m living proof that it is effective. To find out how you’ll have to wait til the end of the post for my own experiences. But before that, I wanted to investigate further why people are the problem with informal learning.
I recently read an article in this month’s eLearning Age by John Helmer about informal learning. It’s about the 70 20 10 rule but in essence, the 70 and 20 of that rule equates to a lot of informal learning. I was particularly interested in a reference John Helmer made to “Jay Cross et all decreeing the shutting down of training departments”. It reports on suggestions that if 90% of learning actually goes on informally, “need they (L&D professionals) even show up for work?” It goes on to reference Epic’s Oxford Union debate raising concerns that we couldn’t risk the professional development of our medical experts, pilots etc to informal learning.
Like I said in the title of this blog, the trouble with informal learning is people. And the problem with people is they sometimes act rashly without thought. Or they think but don’t analyse properly. Or they misinterpret. And all too often they hear what they want to hear like ‘if informal learning means workers learn as they do their jobs and from their colleagues, we obviously don’t need all those trainers and learning developers’. The problem with some other people is when they hear the word ‘informal’ they really hear ‘haphazard, chaotic, left to chance, won’t happen’. It’s a bit like when people hear the term ‘blended learning’ they really hear ‘eLearning + classroom + a little more eLearning’.
So some people think informal learning is an excuse to axe L&D teams while there are others who when they hear ‘informal learning’ think “that’ll never work – can’t measure that – what statistics can we report back with that?”
Now before I go on any further, I’d like to share a little secret you may not know. Jay Cross isn’t advocating no formal learning at all – formal learning will be essential for certain areas such as training novices or for compliance and where death/safety/litigation etc might be a consequence of learning being left to the motivation of the individual. And of course this relates back to the 70 20 10 theory.
So what’s the future for L&D professionals with this movement towards more self-directed, workplace learning and less formal courses? If L&D professionals are shrewd enough, shout loud enough and they have the backing from senior managers, they can become the cement that holds the organisation together by working with individuals as coaches and cultivators of their personal learning journey. People will need support from learning professionals, they will need to learn how to use the new tools, they will certainly need to learn how to critically appraise the information they find. L&D professionals are just that – professionals in learning and development.
They have the opportunity to be the consultants they really are and advise senior managers how to encourage their staff to, as Jay Cross and the Internet Time Alliance refer to as ‘work smarter’. Formal learning will not disappear but its future will be more meaningful and relevant, more in line with business goals and therefore more effective.
Ok – so now we’ve accepted that informal learning is being taken on board how on earth do we know if it’s doing any good? Here’s my question to you. How do we know when a person is capable of doing their job? Does tracking every click through a screen or have everyone sit for hours in a classroom do that? Or is it by assessment of their skills?
In my view, the ONLY way we can assess competency is in them applying any learning to a work-based task. In preparation for that they may undertake a formal assessment followed application in the workplace. Tracking what I call ‘bums on seats’ or clicks through pages only tracks attendance. It doesn’t tell us anything about whether those individuals have even paid attention let alone learned anything. Therefore, does it really matter how they gain the knowledge or skills?
Formal assessments will still have your learning objective. After all, a learning objective should be a description of the assessment anyway. It’s referencing the END of the journey. How your workforce get there will depend on the level of experience of the individuals. Those dependent learners i.e. newcomers, or those with no prior experience will likely need a more formal approach. Those more experienced, who can build on prior knowledge and are used to a more self-directed way of learning would benefit from a more organic learning journey. So what if the individual has gained the majority of their knowledge by being self-motivated enough to follow current research, have conversations with experts whether face to face, by blogging and reading blogs attending conferences, connecting through tools such as Twitter, asking colleagues on best practice. At the end of it all, it’s still an assessment which will prove how effective any learning method has been.
As learning professionals, aren’t we supposed to be following the androgogical principles in our learning solutions? Ryan Tracey has an excellent post on this. Quoting from his article, androgogical principles are based on the assumptions that adults are…..
1. Adult learners are self directed. 2. Adults bring experience with them to the learning environment. 3. Adults are ready to learn to perform their role in society. 4. Adults are problem oriented, and they seek immediate application of their new knowledge. 5. Adults are motivated to learn by internal factors.
And we all know what assumption is the mother of don’t we? No? You might need to Google that one.
Ryan goes on to say that life isn’t that simple. We know from experience that adults’ motivation for effort (whether that’s for learning or working) is directly affected by circumstances and they can range from how pressured they are by deadlines to having to learn something brand new where they become novices again (and the actions of their superiors). Sometimes, a more formal approach to learning will be the solution, sometimes a more experiential, self-directed, informal approach will be the order of the day but what is a fact, it’s not about battling them out against each other but more about how they work together.
Going back to the article in eLearning Age, John Helmer calls for a ‘north star’ and says that “until we have templates, until we have frameworks, until we have proof, informal learning will remain more style than substance”. If you’re looking for guidance, there are plenty of case studies from major organisations who have successfully encouraged a more informal approach to learning which you can find on the Towards Maturity site www.towardsmaturity.org. As for templates and framework, you need to check out Clive Shepherd’s new book The New Learning Architect which not only gives an excellent framework to work with.
And finally, in defense of informal learning I would like to share with you how it has played an enormous role in my own personal development and, as such directly influential in my career progression, expertise and growth that has constantly helped shape the blended courses courses I deliver for my employer in the field of online learning.
When I joined the Digital Learning team in a previous job, I attended formal courses in all my now areas of expertise. It started with a blended learning course. That was the only ‘formal’ element of my learning journey in these topics. I was hooked. I always had a liking for technology and a passion for learning so I already had motivation. My destiny was then delivering that same course and I sat and observed, then delivered a bit at a time, then all on my own. That’s what I would class as application back in the workplace which embedded the learning. Since then, it’s instilled a passion that set me on my eternal informal learning journey. I also had amazing support and encouragement from my colleagues and line managers.
Now I research, connect, analyse, blog, read, collaborate to keep my knowledge fresh and up to date. No-one has forced me to do this, it wasn’t asked of me at work and it certainly hasn’t been managed or directed (apart from it being necessary to keep out of date). It’s all purely self-directed and informal. Without the technology such as Twitter (my biggest and best professional development tool), blogs, white papers, and then dabbling in blogging myself, I doubt I would have been as successful. Even thought I work from home I can assure you that I’m also able to access these tools when in the company office. None of our staff ‘waste’ our time on it – we don’t have the time to waste. But my passion has extended beyond work and I continue my professional development in my own time probably unhealthily so.
If you were able to track how many Tweets I read, how many websites and blogs I visit and read, how many people I speak to, that wouldn’t tell you whether I actually learned anything. My self-directed, informal path may not be measured by tracking but it is measured in the success of the courses I run, the feedback I get, the achievements of those individuals who have benefited as a result of my own efforts.
So the only piece of advice I can give to organisations is if you think it’s a risk to allow your staff to pursue a more informal approach in their own development and ban the use of the tools that facilitate that learning just take a moment to think about the risks of not doing it. Think about what you are are not achieving as a result. And for those individuals who are frustrated and complain that your organisation won’t allow you to learn this way, if you value your own personal development you will find a way on your own in your own time. It may not be fair but life rarely is.
To re-iterate my initial thought. The only problem with informal learning is people!
