Students Are Smarter Than Your Old eLearning Design

Want to know what regular people think of eLearning? A simple, and regular, search of the term "eLearning" on Twitter reveals an overwhelming portion of NEGATIVE tweets about eLearning experiences.  And even worse, they expose the uselessness of the methods being used to assess the learning that is assumed to have occurred during these digital experiences.  Quite frankly, it's embarrassing.  Check out how "MintToppings" passed her "eLearning" quiz.

~

~

We could look at this with a positive spin and applaud miss MintToppings for her higher order thinking skills and technical ability to game the system in the manner she that she did.  Or we could open our eyes to the fact that we still have a lot of work to do.  WE, as an industry, need to step up our game.

If you have a next button with slide after slide of content followed by a multiple choice quiz at the end, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!  Find out how to do it right from those who are paving the way towards the future of learning experiences.  Some of these folks are your peers, but others come from very different industries and they don't have degrees in instructional design. They come with experience in film, gaming, engineering, theater, psychology, anthropology (HT @moehlert), design, and just about every other creative industry you can think of.  The technologies of today and tomorrow, combined with their desire to teach their craft trumps your ID degree.

Anyone with a desire to learn deserves better than a next button and a multiple choice quiz.  I'm certain miss MintToppings would agree.

DevLearn 2012 Conference and Expo - ARIA Resort, Las Vegas, NV - Oct.31st-Nov.2nd

Have We Lost the S...in ISD? What Should Workforce Learning Graduates Hear from You?

Allison Rossett posted a fabulous fake commencement address 2 days ago.  I loved it.  She nails a point I'd like to emphasize here.  The work we do at one level is extremely focused on the micro solutions we call courses, but more than ever we need to be thinking about, and designing, systems.  And I'm not talking about Learning Management Systems.  Just reading her post made me realize that so much of our industry is focused on the ID, Instructional Design. And back when I first started in this business it was mostly referred to as ISD, Instructional SYSTEMS Design.

I'm not sure what happened to the focus on systems but it seems to have faded. According to Wikipedia the terms are synonymous.  From a purely academic perspective I might agree.  But from many years of observing our industry as a whole I'm not so sure. I see two very different practices emerging within our industry: 1) The Instructional Design of Courses, and 2) The Instructional Systems Design of Enterprise Solutions.

The Instructional Design of Courses
For the most part, this is the work of creating the final product. The instructional design required here helps developers work with SMEs, understand the content, create the media, and design the flow in which the content is presented, as well as creating some form of assessment.  Much of this work is seen as requiring one technology for the solution.  You might choose to design a classroom experience, or you may design a fully interactive immersive simulation.  But no matter what tool you choose, for a certain period of time your sole focus is on creating that solution and implementing it successfully. You may also need to make sure it conform with a larger system design that is part of your enterprise and that is where ISD comes in.

The Instructional Systems Design of Enterprise Solutions
Mostly defined as the strategy and management issues of training and development, there is a certain level of Instructional Design that seems to have been lost at this level.  My feeling is that those with the power and authority, and responsibility, to implement enterprise systems solutions do not take instructional systems design into consideration.  After all, "I have instructional designers that do that".  I believe it's a rare manager today that thinks about instructional systems design during the many times that decisions need to be made.  It's far easier for me to see a manager interested in buying an LMS because legal, IT, or HR asked them if training was being tracked or "managed" in some way. Legal needs the information to fend of legal action. IT needs to know because their enterprise vendor has one that could be thrown into the deal. HR needs to know because of compliance, new hire training, and employee development.

So, is there a difference between Instructional Design and Instructional Systems Design? Should they be two different roles within the training team? What does this mean in the corporate world vs. higher ed?

I don't know the answer, but I know what I see and hear from so many colleagues managing training departments, and creating eLearning course solutions.  I hear the terms of the industry being tossed around in various communities with different meanings attached.  I participate in frustrating conversations because many use the same words, but mean different things.  Maybe parsing ID and ISD will help.

I love it when the veterans of our industry talk about our field at a very high level as Allison did in her post. I wish more would do so.  Perhaps Allison's fake commencement address will kick off a trend.

If you had to give a commencement address to a class of graduating learning professionals, what would you say? If you post it, let me know.

UPDATE: I got a couple twitter responses to this post and I wanted to share some interesting content.  Donald Clark retweeted my post and when I checked out his stream found this gem on design models. Reuben Tozman also reached out and reminded me of his post on systems titled 7 Metaphors for Experience Design.

Creating Passionate Learners 2005 = same in 2011

For those of you that were not into the blogosphere WAY back in...oh... say... 2005 or 2006, the name Kathy Sierra is probably new to you.  It's about time we ALL start learning how to "Create Passionate Users", or in our case Create Passionate Learners...and I'd argue they're the same thing, but I digress.  Let me start with why I am blogging on this topic.

@moehlert tweeted a reminder of an IT Conversations recording of her keynote from the Tools of Change conference (2/16/2011). So, I took 25mins and listened to her story.  I already knew most of the story but its always fun to get a refresher from thought leaders who bring a unique perspective to our industry.  And yes, she IS a learning person...turned blogger...turned top-selling, uber-tech author at O'Reilly.

If you are new to Kathy Sierra, after listening to the recording above, you should read the archives of her blog at headrush.typepad.com.  That will give you a pretty good idea of where she stands on turning users/learners into PASSIONATE learners/users.

My favorite moment in blogging...

I started blogging in August 2005 and I did not have anyone "following" me at the time.  So you can imagine how psyched I was when, after 4 months blogging, Kathy posted a comment on my post 2005 Review of eLearning.

Kathy Sierra said...

The chart that Kathy references
in her comment

What a great post Brent! You've given me about 15 different things to think about here... and I could not agree more. What I didn't mention in my "is it interesting" post (and thanks very much for the nice comments) -- but that you must have picked up on -- is that the ones who were approving my checklist were the ISD'ers and the heads of the LMS team at Sun. They basically said, "If it isn't supported technically by the LMS, it *must not be relevant.* Talk about tail wagging the dog... ; )

I'm especially interested in that diagram of courses vs. collaboration, too.

Thanks for this great blog, Brent. I'm so glad I found it.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2005 

As I was writing this post, and reviewing old posts, so many things struck me:

1. How amazingly powerful blogging and social media was and is,
2. how easy it is to forget about our learners in the process of ISD,
3. how much I miss Kathy's blog posts,
4. how much I wish she'd agree to speak at DevLearn 2012,
5. and how strange it is that my review of 2005 could easily be my review of 2011.

That last one, number 5, really has me thinking and pondering this question, "If I just changed a few dated words, and re-posted that post with a new 2011 title, would anyone know the difference?"
Because, ya know, it is that time of year where everyone reviews the past year and pontificates about the year to come.

But more importantly, are things STILL so much the same?  I've done a lot since 2005 and I'm sure all of you have too, and yet I wonder why so much of our industry still feels the same.  We've seen new iPhones, iPads, and iOS, Android, tablets, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, HTML5, apps, apps, and more apps, and on and on and on.  So why are still talking about building courses? Why do job reqs still read the same?

My guess is that if we started thinking like Kathy and focused on what can we do to help our users kick ass in THEIR job that we would be looking at eLearning A LOT differently.

So, lets make 2012 the year eLearning actually becames about the learner!

P.S.
Here are some other posts where I reference Kathy Sierra.

@KathySierra Learns Spanish via Twitter
Should We Twitter Face-to-Face?
Cubicles Cause Brain Damage

Templates: Love 'em or Hate 'em?

Do you use templates?  Are you a purist and despise templates?  Personally, I don't like to take a hard line on this topic.

I like to think of all templates as time-savers and as such they become productivity tools.  They don't impact my instructional design.  Unless a certain template is requested or mandated, finding a template also serves as inspiration.  And quite frankly every custom project you do should also be considered a template for any other similar project that appears in the future.  It has nothing to do with being lazy, but has everything to do with being productive and getting better at what you do.

Consider all of the things you were NOT able to do with the first project.  When a similar project starts you now have much of the work completed and you can use your development time to add, or improve the parts of the "template" that you now have time for.

Also consider a customer asking you to do work within an unreasonably short timeframe.  Instead of not being able to do the job, you could inquire if a pre-designed template solution would be okay.  I think its always worth asking.

Baked Goods Gift Tags

The internet provides an endless supply of templates for SO many different projects.  I'll share this one I just discovered from LOVE vs DESIGN.  Baked Goods Gift Tags.

Download Template here

But if you're looking for eLearning Templates a Google search will turn up many, but I'd recommend starting with the eLearning Brothers at elearningtemplates.com

Building the Instructional Designer's Relevance in 2012 - Aaron Silvers

@aaronesilvers

Aaron Silvers gave a fascinating presentation for the recent eLearning Guild's online forum entitled Building the Instructional Designer's Relevance in 2012.  You can find the recording here.  If you are not a paid member of the Guild you won't be able to view it, but presentations like this are exactly what makes the Guild archives well worth every penny you invest in a membership.  And yes, it IS an investment...in YOU!  Nobody can make you better at your craft.  You MUST own it and make time to improve yourself and your skills.

Is Image Memorability Important to eLearning?

I discovered this interesting research report from a tweet that pointed to an article in Scientific mind titled Haunting Scenes.  Read at the end why I found more info at MIT News.

Brent Schlenker
Program Director for DevLearn

I wonder how a silly pic like this, on the right, would rank in a memorability algorithm?

Exciting Research

The interesting news is that the research found "the most memorable photos are those that contain people, followed by static indoor scenes and human-scale objects."  Landscapes seemed to be forgettable.  According to previous research humans can remember thousands of images, but understanding what makes certain images more memorable than others was not known.  This study focused on memorability of an image as a measurable trait.  And they were successful enough to create an algorithm that can predict memorability.  Cool!

Disappointing Ideas Regarding Application of Results
The most frustrating part about the article?

"Such an algorithm could be useful to graphic designers, photo editors, or anyone trying to decide which of their vacation photos to post on Facebook" - Aude Oliva, associate professor of cognitive science and a senior author of the paper.

Seriously, MIT?  That's the best you can come up with?  <insert face in hands>
I understand that Facebook is hot and you need to encourage interest in your research in order to get grants and bla, bla, bla, but I was hoping to hear you say something about LEARNING.  I'm thinking that memory is tied to learning some how, right?

Applying These Results to Learning Design
My apologies to the researchers and to MIT for my pedestrian response to academic research.  But I see your research as being important to learning, education, and training more than Facebook and vacation photos.  Shouldn't we be more excited about the possibility of selecting better images that help learners retain more important information in long term memory? Memory does have a little to do with learning.

My favorite quote from the lead researcher, Phillip Isola:

"Pleasantness and memorability are not the same"

I know, in my experience designing eLearning courses, that making graphics simply looked nice, and pleasant, to the corporate stakeholders was the goal if not a battle you had to fight.  Corporate training developers are often asked to PROVE why they chose the graphic design elements they did.  And many times the selection of images to use are decisions based on the whims of clients, and Sr. Management.  Research like this is extremely helpful to our community in making the case for the design decisions we make.

But more importantly it helps us do our jobs better.  Creating media for eLearning courses is part of the job.  Understanding what makes an image memorable is a BIG DEAL!  

And yes, there is a lot more to the design of instruction than the memorability of the images used in that instruction.  But it seems to me like there is a useful connection here.  That's all I'm really saying.  Perhaps I'm wrong, and I completely missed the point on this one.  Oh well, wouldn't be the first time.

Read the research report yourself and let me know what you think.

---------------------------------

COMMENT:  I don't pay to read Scientific American and so I only had access to 5 paragraphs of the article.  So, did those 5 paragraphs entice me to PAY because I became interested?  No.  A quick google search of the researcher from MIT revealed his findings in other more user-friendly online magazines and the actual complete research paper.  Sorry, Scientific American. I liked the article in MIT NEWS.

DIY not ISD

I've been beating this drum for many months now. DIY is killing ISD. Conversations around the irrellevance of ISD with Karl Kapp basically bring us full circle to this post by Harold Jarche. Thanks Harold! Its a realization that many are unwilling to accept.

"If you’re in the learning business, don’t try to build another LMS or portal. Instead, figure out ways that enable DIY. Believe it or not, learners can, and will, do the rest. They already are."

Thanks Tony for linking up to it.

Harold's post points to Donald Clark kicking off this conversation. A comment on this wonderful topic had this to say in response to Donald "not getting Starbucks"...

"Starbucks - the classroom of elearning 2.0?"

Well said Dan.

A quick search of my blog finds the following posts:

DIY eLearning Video
DIY inhouse Photo Studio
DIY Visual Thinking School
Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media
MAKE Instructable eLearning

And there's more, but you get the idea...

I can over-simplify the issue significantly and state the following: ISD is only necessary when you are mandating learning to unwilling participants...for everthing else we do indeed learn it ourselves.

Web2.0 explained - images and music only - BEAUTIFUL

elearnspace points to this wonderful video. 5 mins that will, once and for all, help you understand what's going on with the web.

If you are into this stuff new web stuff already, then watch this video for the amazing storytelling quality sans voiceover. That's right an amazingly complete overview of a very complex technical topic all done without narration.

You can read O'reilly's Take on Web2.0 or you can be mesmerized by this video.

Is there anything in our ISD books about how to do this? Or that we even should? THIS is new media, and WE (ISDers) don't do it well. Others do...we don't! Have ya seen the tutorials on instructables lately? Not an ISDer in the bunch but THEY are creating tutorials...damn good ones...and people are learning! (Great tutorials using ComicLife here, here, here)

How many of you could walk into your boss/client/manager and say, "I'd to teach a basic overview of web technologies just using video and music...no talking...just camera shots of me writing, and video of my computer screen...I think its going to be really neato". Creativity is not a team sport. The reason why Web2.0 is working is because nobody needs to explain their new ideas. They simply create it and put it out there, and see if it sticks. If it sticks...Yahoo buys you for 10 million.
This is also how creative innovation works. You simply do it and then show people. One guy/gal does it alone...or at best a small group of dedicated friends just get together and say, "wouldn't it be cool if...".

Truly innovative ideas normally are very difficult to "sell"...many times even describe, adequately, with words. Explaining how you will improve something slightly is easy. Explaining why that something should be destroyed and something completely new and different created in its place is very difficult. Or try explaining something that isn't even a category yet, and it doesn't fit ANY norm...how do you do that? Walt Disney did it...but few others have.

Reward-Motivation Memory Formation = Gagnes First Event...sort of.

I was cruising the BrainBasedBusiness blog lately reading their take on the new research on the brain not being made for repetition. That's a blog post in and of itself, however while at the Neuron web page, another link caught my eye...Reward-Motivated Learning: Mesolimbic Activation Precedes Memory Formation.

I remember the first post I made after discovering BBB...(remember the hippo pic?)

Well, the hippocampus is at it again:

"These findings demonstrate that brain activation preceding stimulus encoding can predict declarative memory formation. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that reward motivation promotes memory formation via dopamine release in the hippocampus prior to learning."

So maybe we shouldn't throw Gagne's 9 events out the window just yet. Its clear that a motivated learner makes for a better learner...but now we have proof we can take to management that maybe we should pay our employees to sit through our courses...ya know...for increased ROI!

And of course there is always the possibility that I totally misundestood many of the $.50 words used in the research summary...In which case...

Never mind!