Clive on Learning

The case against multi-tasking is building

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:58:19 PST

An article, The Myth of Multitasking, in this month’s Management Today magazine, adds to the backlash against the frenetic task switching that has become so common in the past few years, as more and more communication channels open up alongside new mobile technologies. See my posts A challenge to the multitasking assumption and The Big Question: How should presenters address multitasking?

The article collects some fascinating opinions and data. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

"Multi-tasking might look impressive, but it's often just a muddle-headed displacement activity."

"It pays to look busy. Who isn't in awe of the person who can speed-read a report, listen in on a meeting and keep an eye on their e-mails at the same time?"

"Multi-tasking works, right? Wrong. Very wrong. The great multi-taskers of our time turn out to be the ones who remember nothing and get the least done."

"What you give up when you work like that is depth. You give up the capacity to reflect, and any depth of emotion."

"Interruptions are a disaster for idea growth."

"Multi-tasking feels good because it releases dopamine."

"The cost of time lost recovering from informational interruptions is $1bn."

We have to get hold of this problem before we turn into a bunch of crazy, stressed-out air-heads.

Digital learning content does not have to mean CBT

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:02:13 PST

I am becoming increasingly aware of the the need to make clear a distinction between the broad concept of digital learning content, in all its many varieties, and the much narrower idea of interactive tutorials of the traditional CBT (computer-based training) variety.

In the former category I'd put the following:

how-to guides
slide shows, with or without narration
podcasts
videos
software demos
quizzes
polls
learning games
visual aids

I'd say that every l&d professional should have at least a basic level of competence in the design and development of digital learning content, at least those forms of content most relevant to the learning domain for which they are responsible. This is no more than a natural evolution from their traditional responsibility for the production of PowerPoint slides and handouts which support most classroom events.

What this is not saying is that l&d professionals need to be able to create interactive self-study courses which completely replace their face-to-face predecessors. While some trainers will have the aptitudes and interests which will help them to excel in this area, in most cases this will remain a job for specialists. It is much, much harder to create a set of fully self-contained instructional materials than it is to develop the components - the explanations, the examples, the demonstrations, the practice exercises, the assessments.

Unfortunately, most attempts to train l&d professionals in the design and development of digital learning materials begin and ends with the assumption that the end result will be a self-contained tutorial. Because it is typical to try and achieve this in a couple of days with only a minimal amount of practice, these interventions are very unlikely to lead to any useful level of competence and will most likely only reinforce the idea that this is a job to be put out to full-time instructional designers.

What is much more feasible and much more useful is to concentrate on far simpler forms of content:

taking an existing slide show and converting it into a self-contained resource
using screen capture software to make a software demo
using a simple audio editor to record and edit a podcast
creating interactive learning resources (Articulate Engage is great for this)
developing a quiz
taking publicly-available content such as YouTube videos and topping and tailing them to act as learning resources

The way I see it, the idea of rapid e-learning needs to work at two distinct levels:

The use of rapid tools and processes by e-learning professionals to create fully self-contained e-learning courses.
The development of simple digital learning components by l&d generalists and subject experts, for use as classroom aids, reference materials and elements in blended solutions.

What's needed is more training and encouragement to support the latter, rather than a futile attempt to develop advanced levels of instructional design expertise across broad swathes of the l&d profession.

The Big Question: How should presenters address multitasking?

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:58:15 PST

I’m just in time to tackle this month’s Big Question from the Learning Circuits Blog. The question was prompted to some extent by my post Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem, in which I put forward the notion that it wasn’t just webinar presenters who had to deal with their audience multitasking, this was now rife at face-to-face events as well.

There were some great responses to the Big Question – I particularly liked the concept of Binge Thinking suggested by Ken Allen. I’m not going to rework the arguments here, but I would like to clarify my own thoughts and conclusions:

Multitasking is an illusion – we are simply not capable of doing it. Those who attempt to carry out another task while a presentation is taking place will miss out to some extent, but then it could be the presentation is not worth concentrating on anyway.
The very best presenters will always hold attention.
Presenters tackling issues which are highly relevant to the participants will always hold attention.
It is a fact of life that some participants will choose not to participate at some events and will stay glued to their toys. I don’t mind this as long as they are polite about it: show some interest when the presenter starts up; look up and smile once in a while; try not to look as if the presenter has somehow intruded on your personal office space. Personally, if I’m paid to speak, I’ll put up with a lack of politeness; if I’m not, I’m quite prepared to walk off. Life’s too short.

The 21st century LMS

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:22:10 PDT

On 25th September, the eLearning Network held their Next Generation Learning Management event. A cross-section of eLN members, private and public sector users, LMS and content vendors as well as consultants and others attended. All participants took part in an activity to identify what was required in an LMS that was fit for the 21st Century. The activity was carried out in World Cafe style, and the subject was covered from the perspective of learners, businesses, L&D departments and IT.

The output of that activity is now available for download. The document is available on a Creative Commons license, which allows you to distribute it freely.

E-learning on a shoestring

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:56:28 PDT

E-learning in the workplace used to be the preserve of the large corporate or public body. Only they were able to afford the necessarily substantial investments in learning platforms and content development and had the large audiences against which these investments could be amortised. And only these major employers had the specialist technical skills and large l&d departments needed to support these investments. Smaller organisations were essentially priced out.

But most people don't work for large corporate or public bodies; they work for the millions of smaller businesses and not-for-profits that make up a significant proportion of any nation's economy. The employees of these smaller organisations also need to learn and develop and to do so as efficiently and conveniently as possible. And don't forget those organisations - typically cottage industries - that provide training services to the big boys, but have had neither the capital nor the technical expertise to integrate e-learning into their offerings.

But this year we have seen a major shift. I personally have been working with a wide range of smaller companies and training providers who want to establish an e-learning delivery capability. Many of my colleagues are doing the same. The formula appears to be pretty consistent:

Purchase some licenses for one of the more popular rapid authoring tools, typically Articulate / Adobe Presenter (for PowerPoint-based content) or Adobe Captivate (where there's more of an IT training bias). Supplement these if necessary with some tools to help in developing short videos and podcasts. I know there are free authoring tools, but even small companies can afford a few software licenses.
Use Moodle as a delivery platform, typically externally hosted, perhaps with some customisation. Smaller companies don't need full LMS functionality, so Moodle (perhaps with some extra goodies) will do this job adequately. Training providers will have no trouble using Moodle to provide course web sites to support traditional, e or blended solutions.
Get a license to Webex, Elluminate or something similar (perhaps even a free web conferencing tool like DimDim) to provide the capability to run live online sessions.
Train up as many of the training team as possible in content design and development, setting up courses in Moodle and facilitating in a virtual classroom. Not everyone will excel in all these tasks, but at least the whole team will feel involved and empowered. Some technical and creative expertise will be needed, but this can be bought in externally as and when it is needed.

This is e-learning on a shoestring, but it is e-learning that can really deliver. The key is to keep the 'e' elements short and simple and to integrate them cleverly with more traditional approaches. The emphasis, as ever, should be on effective learning, not on playing with technology.

Wisdomap

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:06:21 PDT

I recently had the opportunity for a hands-on demonstration of some new mind-mapping software called Wisdomap, aimed specifically at the education market. Although the initial focus has been teachers in the 16-18 age group, this is a piece of software that could easily cross over into education generally and into workplace learning. Here's what I really like about this software:

Each map has its own unique URL for sharing with students and others.
Each map can be accompanied by a rich 'notes panel' allowing you to supplement map nodes with text and graphics, links, documents for download, audio, even YouTube videos. This allows the map to form a navigational device for exploring detailed content.
Students can be set mindmap building assignments which can then be graded.
A mindmap can be displayed as a presentation, building up as it goes. This is definitely worth trying as a PowerPoint alternative.
The software could be easily integrated into an LMS or VLE.

There are some nice-to-haves which are being considered for development, such as embedding a mindmap into a blog or other web page, and the facility to have multiple users working collaboratively on a single map. However, the software is good as it is and definitely worth a play.

How to do better creative work

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:04:40 PDT

One of the most inspiring books I've read this year has been How to do better creative work by Steve Harrison (Pearson, 2009), which I saw in the window of a specialist art book shop in Brick Lane, London. Steve spent 15 years as a creative director for top ad agencies and his book is aimed at primarily at those doing similar jobs, but I found his ideas rang very loud bells in relation to e-learning development. In fact I'd go so far as to say that anyone who runs an e-learning development company and who doesn't give this book a read would be missing out on some fantastic insights into the creative process.

Not only did I learn how to design an ad that might work (pity, because I'd just created two ads which broke all these rules by not concentrating on problems and solutions and without a clear call to action), I also found out about the 'massive passives', i.e. the majority of internet users who do not engage in any form of online collaboration or networking, but who do an awful lot of consuming. I enjoyed taking the following quote and substituting training for marketing:

"In hard times, clients can't afford to throw money at a marketing problem and agencies can't afford to do work that goes unnoticed. Those who never really knew what they were doing get found out - for, as the saying goes, when the tide goes out you get to know who has been swimming naked."

This one caught my attention:

"If you set out to win awards you won't have a snowball in hell's chance of doing something that works. And, of yes, you'll be out of a job in six months."

Steve mocks the idea that brainstorming produces great creative ideas. Instead he quotes this process by James Webb Young:

Gather as much raw information as possible.
Chew it over and get your first ideas out of your system.
Stop thinking about the subject and let your subconscious go to work.
Be ready for the ideas to flow at any time.
Shape and develop the idea for practical usefulness.

Oh and if you think that time pressure and 'being pumped' is going to work in your favour then think again:

"Time pressure stifles creativity because people can't deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period."

I've run out of energy for typing in any more of these great quotes, so if you want more you'll just have to buy the book. Not that many people actually will, because as Steve points out:

"It's a sad fact, but if you read just one book a year during the course of your career, you'll be among the top five per cent most learned people in the industry. Indeed, you could probably claim guru status."

Aligning learning to business needs

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:51:25 PDT

In his presentation to the eLearning Network event New models for learning management on September 25, John Belton of e2train showed the results of a survey carried out in June of this year amongst members of the Learning & Skills Group. When asked 'What is the greatest single learning challenge facing your organisation at present,' the highest number (28%) cited 'linking learning more closely to business needs.' When asked what the greatest single learning challenge was facing members personally, the highest number (27%) again selected 'aligning learning to organisational objectives.' When asked the more direct question 'Do you think there needs to be a stronger link between learning and development and core business processes and strategy,' a resounding 87% said yes. I think we get the message.

We need to align learning to business needs. Fair enough, so what's stopping us?

All that's required to achieve this goal is to (1) be aware of what the business needs are, and then (2) make sure that any learning interventions that you carry out are aligned to these. Let's examine why this may not be happening. If we are not aware of what the business needs are, then there a few possible causes:

The business itself doesn't know (possible, but unlikely).
We ask but they don't tell us (just possible, but very unlikely).
We don't ask (more than likely).

The solution? Be assertive and ask.

If we are fortunate enough to know what the business needs are but we are going ahead anyway and carrying out interventions which are not aligned to these, then again there a several possible reasons:

We don't really want to align our interventions to business objectives (possible, but that's not what the survey is telling us).
We are being asked by our sponsors in the business to carry out non-aligned interventions and we're not objecting (highly likely).

The solution? Be assertive and say no.

The ability to be assertive is an essential quality for a professional. Remember, it's not enough to call yourself a professional, you also have to act like one.

Perhaps assertiveness courses are not such a bad idea after all, whether or not they're aligned to business needs.

A first look at Sakai 3

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:57:53 PDT

I've been reflecting on John Norman's presentation which he made at the eLearning Network event New models for learning management on September 25. John is from Cambridge University where he has been engaged in the development on the virtual learning environment Sakai 3. I've worked for many years with Moodle and Blackboard, but have had absolutely no contact with Sakai, so what he had to show us was interesting:

In the development of version 3, they have borrowed ideas from social media sites and built these ideas into the VLE, rather than "going out into the wild."
The VLE can appear anywhere through gadgets and applications appearing in other software environments (iGoogle, Facebook, etc.) and on different devices such as smart phones.
The system includes a variety of widgets, such as polls, which can be built into content pages.
It is possible to create new 'sites' simply by searching for members with certain characteristics.

Let me quote you from the Sakai 3 whitepaper:

"In summary, our ambition is not merely an incremental improvement of Sakai nor is it to copy Google. Our goal is not simply to create a better and cheaper version of Blackboard. It is time to arrive at a clearer understanding of the capabilities that represent needs unique to education and for the Sakai community to focus its development effort on providing these capabilities while taking advantage of established open‐source efforts to provide more generic capabilities. We should, in short, strive to create a different type of academic collaboration system. Institutions that choose Sakai 3 will be choosing to run a qualitatively different type of system. This is the kind choice we should provide to the educational community. Not just a choice between open source and proprietary."

Now my perspective is work-based learning, not education, so it would be very easy to be put off by the academic orientation of Sakai. However, as we have seen with Moodle, VLEs can cross over into enterprise use and do a very fine job. I'm certainly interested in seeing whether Sakai 3 will take us on a generation beyond Moodle.

Incidentally, at the same eLN event, Martin Belton from LMS provider e2train was eager to explain how, as far as the LMS is concerned, “the report of my death has been greatly exaggerated”. On the contrary, statistics from Bersin & Associates show the LMS marketplace growing solidly every year from 2005, with 2009 revenues forecast to be in the region of $900m, an increase of 8.4%. Now surely there must be some profit in revenues of that scale.

Old and new models of teaching

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:46:04 PDT

Phil Green alerted me to this amusing image which originates from a JISC InfoNET article Approaches to course design with technology.

Of course it isn’t that amusing because it’s really rather sad. I don’t blame the sponsors and others who commission learning interventions for this state of affairs, because they don’t know any better. But I do blame the professionals who failed to alert the sponsors to the fact that learners are not empty vessels into which we can pour whatever information we want.

See It's not enough to be a professional, you also have to act like one.

Live online learning – a free download

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:11:55 PDT

Onlignment has just issued this free download e-book, a facilitator’s guide to live online learning. In 55 pages it covers:

Whys and wherefores
Planning your session
Communicating with voice and live video
Communicating using images and text
Sharing resources
Building in interactivity
Building up to the session
Facilitating the session
Following up

The e-book is issued on a Creative Commons license.

Download it here.

Clive’s columns vol2

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:00:31 PDT

I’ve assembled another collection of my columns, this time from e.learning age and IT Training magazines and written over the past two years. Here’s what you’ll find:

Mixed messages from the market
Learning for real in virtual worlds
Three tiers in the content pyramid
Statistics are like a bikini
There’s life in Kirkpatrick yet
CIPD survey paints a confusing picture
Tough times bring opportunities as well as threats
Training’s long tail
Learning 2.0 –fast growth but from a small base
Make or break times for learning and development
Back to basics for 2009
Gen Y is the least of our worries
E-learning: The fad that’s lasted 30 years
Necessity really is the mother of invention
No such thing as a free lunch
Three months a-Twittering
Ten rules for great e-learning content
Web conferencing: a technology whose time has come
What it means to be a learning professional
Slides without presenters
Live online learning is the bridge
A new emphasis for live events
Time to ditch the Hollywood model

Clive's Columns Volume 2 can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works License.

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:17:11 PDT

I came across this study courtesy of Donald Clark who reviewed it back in early September. It reports on a meta-analysis of more than 1000 studies of online learning conducted between 1996 and 2008, focusing in on those which contrasted online learning with face-to-face instruction. It was published by the US Department of Education in May. The report can be downloaded here.

I'm going to share with you what I believe were the most important findings:

"Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. Interpretations of this result, however, should take into consideration the fact that online and face-to-face conditions generally differed on multiple dimensions, including the amount of time that learners spent on task."

This is a significant result but, as the authors point out, we are not comparing apples with apples here. The main problem is that the effect of using different methods and media can easily be confused. If you want to compare the effectiveness of face-to-face instruction and online instruction as alternative media then you need to hold the method constant. So, if the classroom experience is synchronous and collaborative, then the online experience needs to be the same, which probably limits you to virtual classroom sessions. If past media comparison studies are anything to go by, then the conclusion anyway is likely to be 'no significant difference', because media have only a marginal impact on effectiveness - it's the choice of methods that really makes the difference. If, on the other hand, you want to contrast face-to-face and online communication in terms of its efficiency then there's no contest - it is, of course, massively cheaper if you are able to avoid the time and trouble involved in moving people to a central training location.

Now researchers probably don't want to be limited to comparing synchronous collaborative experiences in real and virtual classrooms, because most online learning is actually asynchronous, i.e. self-paced. As a classroom intervention is always synchronous, the issue here is not whether you are moving the learning online, but the change of method, from live to self-paced. Now we know that self-paced learning is typically more flexible, less stressful for the learner, and generally a whole lot quicker, but we also know that self-paced learning won't work in every instance, certainly not on a stand-alone basis - many situations require interaction with a tutor and/or with fellow learners, and some learning activities really do have to be synchronous.

"The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes — measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation — was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se."

Which makes the point. A blended solution is not more effective because it mixes face-to-face and online media (although this may well make the intervention cheaper), but because it ensures that the right educational and training methods - self-paced, collaborative or instructor-led - can be used for each element in the intervention.

E-Learning Debate 2009

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:45:03 PDT

Today saw a tremendous gathering of the who's who of UK learning technologies in the historic debating chamber of the Oxford Union. Many thanks must go to e-learning developers Epic for putting together this event and allowing their own industry to be placed under the microscope. The motion was as follows:

"This house believes that the e-learning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow."

Needless to say this wording is open to all sorts of interpretations. As a result, much of the debate was about what e-learning should be rather than whether it should be at all.

There were eight speakers, so excuse the fact that my notes are sketchy:

For: Prof. Diana Laurillard

Hundreds of years back the argument was about p-learning - adding paper to the mix. If those of the oral tradition had had their way, the world would have been denied the explosion of knowledge that led to The Enlightenment.

User-generated content is the equivalent in importance to the invention of writing.

The internet is a wonderful testimony to society's ability to share and build knowledge in cooperation.

Against: Dr Marc Rosenberg

What do we have to show for 30-40 years of CBT / e-learning, especially when compared to what has been achieved in just a few years with mobile technology and the internet? At best we've got a 20% penetration.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same poor result.

Today's e-learning is marginally useful.

An LMS is just an e-learning vending machine.

E-learning is rocket science - rapid tools and processes serve to de-professionalise the field.

Blended learning is so often blended training. Courses cannot keep up with today's knowledge.

Need to re-define e-learning, or the 'e' in e-learning will mean enough.

For: Maj Gen Tim Inshaw

E-learning is an expectation of Gen Y. It's more effective and more efficient. But e-learning cannot provide the skills of tomorrow on its own.

Against: Claire Little, SHL Group

The e-learning of today is only really useful for black-and-white (unambiguous) topics, not for the more essential problem-solving and interpersonal skills.

Only a small proportion of the world's population has internet access, particularly broadband. Mobile penetration is almost 100%, yet e-learning does not fully exploit this opportunity.

For: Andy McGovern, Reuters

Reuters adopt a broad definition for e-learning. The criticism of the narrow view of e-learning, (i.e. CBT-style, self-paced) has been largely overcome, with the increased use of synchronous online learning, online books, content generated by subject experts and so on.

In Reuters, they are getting 3000 e-learning course completions a month; have now reached 65m minutes online with Books 24x7 and a huge ROI. More than 10K employees are using an online language learning package.

Against: Wendy Cartwright, Olympic Development Authority

E-learning in its narrow sense is over-hyped. And not a high preference, according to the latest CIPD survey.

E-learning is providing only shallow learning of compliance topics - not the profound learning you get through interaction with other people. It is much better when combined with other approaches (again, as found in the CIPD survey).

The most needed skills of tomorrow will be interpersonal, and e-learning is not going to provide these.

For: Kirstie Donnelly, learndirect

'E' is not for end of, it is for evolution. D-learning (digital) provides a better description.

The courses of yesterday don't work. We need to put the learner in control: on-demand, anytime, anywhere learning; learning without walls, breaking down the social and pedagogical constraints.

US studies show online learning beats the classroom on almost all counts.

Against: David Wilson, Elearnity

The debate is not about whether e-learning is useful or efficient, but whether the e-learning of today will meet the skills of tomorrow. Doing compliance training, product knowledge and induction programmes is not delivering these skills. The reality is that most organisations do not do much of Learning 2.0, serious gaming, etc. Essentially it's basic knowledge acquisition.

We have to think about a bigger role for technology in learning. The next generation will not want simple click and learn courses.

Badly used, rapid e-learning could signal the development of more non-relevant courses more quickly.

Concluding remarks: Prof. Diana Laurillard

The 'opposition' has focused on the worst possible manifestations of e-learning and ignored all the good work.

E-learning is not rocket science - it's much harder than that! It's about moving millions of minds. We've hardly started.

Concluding remarks: Dr Marc Rosenberg

To paraphrase Shakespeare, 'we are not here to bury e-learning but to save it.'

The usual rule in project management is you can have what you want fast, cheap or good, but you can only pick two of these. In e-learning we typically pick the wrong two.

The e-learning of tomorrow has to be good, not just fast or cheap. We have to acknowledge that the e-learning of today is not good enough.

The result: 90 voted for the motion and 144 against.

My view? Well I agreed with every speaker, which was quite possible given the different ways in which the motion could be interpreted. I changed my mind eight times but ended up voting for the motion.

The debate continues at www.elearningdebate.com.

Mobile broadband the route to universal access

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:22:02 PDT

According to Finishing the Job in this week's Economist, mobile phone access will soon be universal and the next job will to do the same for the internet:

"... at current rates of growth it seems likely that within five years, and certainly within ten, everyone in the world who wants a mobile phone will probably have one. 3G networks capable of broadband speeds will be widespread even in developing countries, and even faster 4G networks will be spreading rapidly in some places."

Mobile phones have had a spectacular impact on the economies of developing countries. The next priority is to ensure universal internet access. According to research conducted by the UN's International Telecommunications Union, Informa Telecoms & Media and Forrester Research, this is more likely to occur through the use of mobile broadband delivered to low-cost netbooks, than through fixed broadband subscriptions:

The One Laptop Per Child initiative may have stalled somewhat but, if these forecasts are correct, similar low-cost devices will eventually proliferate, perhaps eventually at the target $100 unit price. Quite a prospect.

Putting it bluntly: business games seem to work

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:26:18 PDT

Thanks to Patrick Dunn for alerting me to Does Game-Based Learning Work?, a report by Richard Blunt of ADL. It seems this report dates back to January 2008, so apologies to those for whom this is old hat.

This extract from the abstract summarises the findings succinctly:

“Three research studies were conducted at a national university to examine the difference in academic achievement among students who did and did not use video games in learning. Three different video games were added to approximately half the classes of freshmen Introduction to Business and Technology courses, 3rd year Economics courses, and 3rd year Management courses. Identical testing situations were used in all courses while data collected included game use, test scores, gender, ethnicity, and age. ANOVA, chi-squared, and t tests were used to test game use effectiveness. Students in classes using the game scored significantly higher means than classes that did not. There were no significant differences between genders, yet both genders scored significantly higher with game play. There were no significant differences between ethnicities, yet all ethnic groups scored significantly higher with game play. Students 40 years and under scored significantly higher with game play, while students 41 and older did not.”

It’s important to make clear that all three of the games (Industry Giant II, Zapitalism, Virtual U) were essentially business simulations. The report does not describe how they were implemented, so there’s no evidence here to support the use of 3D or any other media. What we do know is that they were game-based sims, implemented using technology.

The findings indicate that the inclusion of the games in the curriculum was sufficient to raise mean test scores from 79.18% to 91.5% (Industry Giant II), 77.86% to 94.81% (Zapitalism) and 68,43% to 89.99% (Virtual U). As the abstract states, gender or ethnicity did not affect the results, but age did:

Without use of the business sim, those aged 41-50 scored higher than younger age groups.
When using the sim, the younger age groups were able to beat the scores of the older group.
The scores of the older group actually went down when using the sim.

I can only guess on the causes here. Point 1 above could be explained by the fact that the older group had much greater life experience and therefore was less in need of a simulation to help them understand the dynamics of business. Point 2 seems to show that the sim in question contributed powerfully to the learning of the younger groups. Point 3 is a mystery - why would older students not benefit from the game? Were they technophobic? Did they feel patronised by the use of a game? Suggestions please.

How online media helps to create ever brighter stars

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:11:05 PDT

Webinars, video recordings and podcasts provide the opportunity for experts to share their thoughts and experiences with a wide audience. Of course they can also do this through face-to-face events such as conferences, but are limited in their reach by geography. The cost of flying an expert over and then putting them up while they recover from the jet lag and do a little sightseeing is usually prohibitive. The result is that the vacuum becomes filled by lots of second division experts (and I don’t mean to be derogatory here – these can be fine people), who live more locally, filling in to deliver similar expertise but at a much lower cost.

Online, of course, the situation is quite different. The limitations on using the first division expert are much reduced. You're paying for a couple of hours at most, rather than a week away and all those expenses. Even if the top expert has an extortionate hourly rate (and if you're one of them then why not?) then their services are likely to become affordable.

So, what was once a very localised business could become centralised and a star system could begin to operate, as in films, TV, books and sports. The top players get most of the business (or at least most of the money) and attract celebrity status. Those in division two pick up the scraps.

Given the choice, here’s what I would select in order of preference:

The very best speakers and experts in the world, seen live. Why live? Because you want a piece of that special magic you only get up close and face-to-face. Above all, from that point on you can boast how you saw them live.
The very best speakers live and online or recorded delivering a live event. You’re still getting great content, but without the hassle of travelling and the high ticket prices.
The second division of speakers live and online or recorded. Here the utility of not having to leave home to see them is not outweighed by the risk of missing a lifetime opportunity.
The second division speakers live. Not so good because you’re committed to all that hassle of getting to the event. In these cases it’s the other benefits of a live event, such as the networking, which is going to assume the top priority.

The same dynamics could be seen to apply to live online learning events as well as webinars, but here there is a moderating factor. Whereas you can run a webinar for practically any size audience, a learning event is likely to run for 16 people or less, and division one teachers and trainers only have so many hours in the day, leaving plenty of scope for others. So, to summarise, where the star system could operate most noticeably is with presentations, whether live or recorded. The world is becoming a much smaller place, and that makes it easier for the powerful to become more so.

CreateDebate does what it says on the tin

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:07:34 PDT

Earlier this week I tested out a site called CreateDebate. which allows you to set out a proposition and some opposing arguments and then invite others to join the debate. I picked a contentious issue – how relevant is the ADDIE model in 2009? – and then invited some colleagues that I thought would have an opinion on the subject to join the discussion. I also tweeted that the debate was on and this brought along other visitors.

I was impressed with how quickly the debate took shape. Within a couple of days 22 different arguments had been added - in all cases well-considered and helpful – and 86 votes cast. The end result in quantitative terms was that 42 believed that ADDIE had had its day and 34 that it was still the way forward. More importantly, the debate page provides the opportunity in the long-term for anyone interested in the issue to explore the different arguments and perhaps to add their own. I was impressed with the outcome and very grateful to those who contributed.

The guys at CreateDebate tell me that the site is also configurable for private discussions among groups of students, so this makes a useful educational tool that could easily be launched from an LMS.

Learning & Development 2020 – almost passed me by

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:31:54 PDT

This one nearly passed me by completely. I've just been browsing L&D 2020: Phase 1 Report: Trends, scenarios and emerging conclusions, which can be downloaded from the Training Journal site. The report was compiled by Paul Fairhurst of the Institute for Employment Studies and first released in September 2008. It attempts to predict the future for l&d ten years or so hence. There are some fascinating detailed predictions which make this a very entertaining read, but I thought I would share the emerging conclusions:

“The importance of continuous, informal, social learning will continue to grow and will require L&D professionals to become competent in creating the conditions for this to occur.
Individuals will increasingly look for ways for their informal learning to be recognised (accredited) to demonstrate their value in the market.
The skill of learning will become increasingly important and people will need to be helped to become even more effective at learning for themselves and with others.
Whilst individuals will find ways to learn for themselves, the role of the line manager in focusing and reinforcing learning will continue to be crucial.
New technologies are not just ways of delivering the same content differently, they open up new opportunities for people to learn.
The boundaries between L&D and OD will blur further as learning is embedded into the way organisations work.
There will be a shift in balance of the L&D professionals’ skillset towards greater business understanding, change management, organisation development and use of new technologies.”

I may return to explore some of the more detailed predictions in due course when I've had a chance to give the report the attention it deserves. Well done to Debbie Carter, Editor of Training Journal, who I believe was instrumental in commissioning this research.

Live online learning is the bridge

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:44:18 PDT

If there is widespread resistance to the idea of self-paced e-learning, you could consider using live online learning as a bridge. When you move from instructor-led interventions in the classroom to self-paced content accessed online, you are making two major changes at once: not only are you shifting the medium (from face-to-face to online) you are making an even more substantial change to the method (from instructor-led to self-paced learning). This could be inappropriate for several reasons:

The contrast between old and new could be too much for employees to cope with at once.
You have two change programmes to manage at once: you have all the cultural issues associated with the change in method, and the technical issues related to the use of new technology.
Your l&d professionals are likely to be completely out-of-sorts with such a stark change in their skillset.

So, a better strategy for increasing the use of online learning could look like this:

Introduce web conferencing as a way to top and tail what are substantially classroom-based interventions. Run a welcome session a week or two before the face-to-face event, and run a wrap-up session a few weeks after the event.
Gradually introduce more asynchronous online activities between the welcome session and the event (some reading, videos, podcasts, web research, perhaps a questionnaire), and similarly between the event and the wrap-up.
Consider removing the face-to-face event as the centrepiece if it not essential, and replacing this with more live online sessions, some structured e-learning and increasingly some collaborative online activities using forums, wikis, etc.

Note that I'm not suggesting that you select methods or media inappropriately in order to manipulate a process of transformation; of course, it must also make sense to carry out an activity online rather than face-to-face or asynchronously rather than synchronously. But there are many instances in the design of blended solutions in which there are multiple options which would do the job equivalently. In these circumstances you have the opportunity to edge the organisation nearer to familiarity and comfort with online approaches.

Games lessons

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:05:57 PDT

This week's Economist carried an interesting article about the use of video games at school. The article, Games Lessons, describes how Katie Salen, a games designer and professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York, has taken the initiative in setting up Quest to Learn, "a new, taxpayer-funded school which is about to open its doors to pupils who will never suffer the indignity of snoring through double French but will, rather, spend their entire days playing games."

Not any old games of course, but 'serious games' which encourage children to explore concepts and issues while engaged in a series of challenges. This new learning architecture "transfers the pedagogic effort from the teachers themselves (who will now act in an advisory role) to a set of video games that she and her colleagues have devised. Instead of chalk and talk, children learn by doing—and do so in a way that tears up the usual subject-based curriculum altogether."

Each school day will consist of four 90-minute blocks, each tackling a different cross-disciplinary domain:

Codeworlds (a combination of mathematics and English)
Being, Space and Place (English and social studies)
The Way Things Work (maths and science)
Sports for the Mind (game design and digital literacy)

It is not a new idea to base a learning intervention around some form of challenge, scenario, game or simulation, which will allow learning to occur through a process of guided discovery. What is new, at least to me, is the idea of constructing the whole curriculum around this approach. It will be extremely interesting to see how they get on.

Of course I couldn't help reflecting on the application of this approach to work-based learning. Here again, there is an over-reliance on didactic learning through chalk and talk, and it is tempting - particularly when working with more experienced employees who require less structured interventions - to advocate a greater use of games and simulations for this audience too. And there will be many occasions where this will work. On the other hand, much training is procedural and task-based, because the goal is performance, not learning per se. Employers might also argue that, unlike school children, employees get plenty of real-life challenges and experience in the course of their work - there is no need to simulate, because the real thing is happening every day.

But, of course, it's encouraging to hear how if the project succeeds, "it will provide a model that could make chalk and talk redundant. And it will have shown that in education, as in other fields of activity, it is not enough just to apply new technologies to existing processes — for maximum effect you have to apply them in new and imaginative ways."

And while we're bashing chalk and talk, take a look at eLearning Sucks, a brilliant presentation on SlideShare from Brighton-based company Red Magma, which makes much the same argument.

What every learning and development professional needs to know about e-learning

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:01:15 PDT

The following copy accompanied the release yesterday of a free 20-page booklet entitled What every learning and development professional needs to know about e-learning:

Change and opportunity

Surprising as it may seem, most educational and training methods are relatively timeless. Most of the familiar options, whether that's providing instruction, leading discussions, delivering case studies, running role plays and simulations, providing coaching, apprenticeships and so on, have been practised for hundreds, if not thousands of years. True, we do make different choices from the available methods, as we learn more about learning, but the options stay pretty consistent. Learning media options, on the other hand, have been growing exponentially.

Put yourself in the shoes of a trainer, just thirty years ago. You'd have felt lucky to have such a plethora of media choices available to you, including blackboards, flip charts, film and video, slides, books and posters. You'd have been familiar with all these media, because in those days, no trainer would have regarded any of these to be particularly specialised - they were the basic tools of the job. But with the arrival of PCs, mobile devices and in particular the Internet, the media options available have increased so dramatically that it has been hard for the trainer to keep up.

As a result, many of the tasks associated with the use of technology for learning have been left to specialists, and many trainers have become disengaged, perhaps even alienated from technology.

So what’s the big deal?

Technology now provides so many opportunities for learning and development that it is no longer viable for trainers to keep their distance, leaving new media to the geeks and the ‘digital natives’.

The pace of change is so fast that those who keep their distance stand to be marginalised on a permanent basis. The new learning technologies provide opportunities for every trainer to play an active role, whether that's as an online tutor, facilitator or moderator, or as a content designer or developer. All that’s needed is a willingness to get engaged, adapt and apply.

Without the involvement of those who really understand adult learning and how it applies to their workplace, e-learning could easily be applied inappropriately, as it has been on occasions in the past. With every trainer engaged, new media options can be properly integrated with existing approaches in the form of blended solutions that deliver results effectively and efficiently.

In some ways elearning is no big deal, it’s just a new channel for learning materials to be made available to learners, and for learners to communicate with peers and with trainers. But it would be a mistake to play down the consequences of this new channel, because it’s capable of delivering learning interventions to more people, more quickly, more cheaply and more flexibly than any technology we've encountered before.

In 2009, when we face greater challenges at work than we have in a generation, elearning is a very big deal indeed.

About the booklet

The free 20-page booklet, written by Laura Overton and myself, helps trainers to understand just how extraordinary the opportunities are for improving the impact, accessibility, flexibility, timeliness, cost-effectiveness and environmental friendliness of learning and development interventions. And most importantly of all, it shows trainers how they can play a vital role in bringing this all about.

Although the primary focus of the booklet is workplace learning in the UK, the content has broad application and could be adapted to other settings.

You can download the booklet in PDF format at Towards Maturity.

Coming to terms with live online learning

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:05:03 PDT

Over at Onlignment, we're having trouble communicating. No, I don't mean that we're unable to communicate (we mostly use Skype) or that we're lost for words (chance would be a fine thing), just that we can't find the right words. The field of real-time, online communications (see the problem?) is seemingly devoid of simple, generally-recognised terms, yet that's where Onlignment's focus is and that's what we need to communicate about.

I think we know what to call a business meeting that's held online (an online meeting?) and we're happy with the term for an online lecture/presentation (a webinar of course), but we're bamboozled when it comes to live online learning.

I've recently been reading through all the literature I can fins on the topic, and this has highlighted just how many terms we have to cover this seemingly simple idea:

The virtual classroom (was the established term, at least in the UK, but by no means universal; doesn't really describe what's going on here, i.e. a live event).
Remote instructor-led training (not a bad term, but the words 'instructor' and 'training' don't cross-over well into educational settings, and imply a certain pedagogy even within workplace learning).
Synchronous online communications for learning (this is the term that Xyleme used to describe the podcast I just made with them; it's not bad, but I've yet to meet a learning and development professional outside the e-learning field who even knows what the word 'synchronous' means, let alone it's implications for learning).
Synchronous training.
Synchronous teaching and learning online.
Synchronous e-learning.
Webinar (many people use this term generically to apply to learning events as well as presentations).
Webex (its ubiquity, particularly in large corporates, means that more people know what it means to hold a Webex session than a virtual classroom or a synchronous event).

So what term do you use currently and what term would you recommend we use in future. Help required.

Good job we didn't have trouble agreeing on common meanings for 'e-learning', 'blended learning', 'serious games' and the like.

A challenge to the multitask assumption

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:58:49 PST

A few weeks ago I wrote on the Onlignment blog about The multitask assumption. By this I meant the assumption you can safely make with any webinar that a good proportion of the audience is multitasking - you know, checking emails, answering the phone, listening to music, finishing off a report, and so on. Well, on the basis of recent research, I think it's fair to challenge that assumption. Your webinar audience might think that they're multitasking, but they're not. Humans can't multitask, they can only switch from task to task, and they do this relatively poorly.

Yes we can multitask as long as only one of those tasks is making use of our working memory. We can walk and talk at the same time (because the walking's automatic), but we can't talk and listen. The conscious part of the human brain works sequentially, one task at a time. Computer processors are much the same. The difference is that computer processors can switch from one job to another millions of times a second. whereas human brains take a second or two to switch attention. That's why computers can be said to multitask, and humans can't.

According to work conducted at Stanford University and reported by Constance Holden in ScienceNOW Daily News under the heading Multitasking muddles the mind, "cognitive performance declines when people try to pay attention to many media channels at once." Clifford Nass, co-author of the study, claims "the study has a disturbing implication in an age when more and more people are simultaneously working on a computer, listening to music, surfing the Web, texting, or talking on the phone. Access to more information tools is not necessarily making people more efficient in their intellectual chores." Also disconcerting, he notes, is that "people who chronically multitask believe they're good at it."

Technology invites us to try and multitask in ways that would never have been practical in years gone by. Our computer operating systems assume we'll be working on more than one activity at a time - that's why Microsoft calls theirs Windows and not Window. Tiny devices that we can carry around in our pockets provide us with the ability to receive voice, text, picture and video messages at any time and anywhere, and so we do. Twenty-first century culture makes us feel that we should be multitasking, because that's the cool and contemporary thing to do. And digital natives even believe that their brains have been specially trained to multitask, because that's what Mark Prensky told them years of videogaming had achieved.

Switching attention from one stimulus to another may be due to excess capacity; we've all attended presentations which move at too slow a pace, leaving our brains with plenty of scope for thinking of other matters. On the other hand, task switching may just be down to sheer laziness - after all, concentrating is hard.

Research just got a whole load easier

clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:52:30 PDT

It's interesting to reflect back on how much has changed in the past couple of years with regard to some of my core work activities. Something I have to do quite a bit of is research. I don't mean anything academic and heavy; just collecting interesting material around a particular topic from a wide variety of sources and combining this with my own ideas and reflections to form the basis for a new piece of work - an article, a presentation, a course, a book. The source material hasn't changed a great deal in form - web pages, PDFs, books, magazine articles, handwritten notes - but the way I process this certainly has.

The biggest change for me has been the use of Evernote. This is a note-keeping tool that you can use offline, but which synchs up when online, so you can carry your notes with you regardless of the device you are using. I have shifted almost all my in-progress work to Evernote, including this and other blog postings. An invaluable feature of the tool is the ability to tag notes with descriptive labels; this makes it easy to collect together all the notes around a particular theme in order to synthesise ideas; it's also important logistically, because otherwise, once your database has grown to hundreds or thousands of notes, you'd never be able to find what you needed. You can copy and paste from PDFs or web pages, or import them wholesale. You can record your own audio notes from your phone. It will even find and read the text within any images you import.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable differences that Evernote has made is in the quantity of hard copy notes that I keep. I seem to be using far fewer notepads and post-it notes, and, when I do use them, they hang around less long. When I get a new book or magazine with useful material inside, I type or copy in my notes straight away, tag them and they're instantly archived. What happened in the past was that I had to hunt through shelves of books and piles of magazines trying to find that quote or statistic that I knew I'd read somewhere, often to no avail.

There is a complication. One of my projects at the moment involves me in pulling together a body of work with two partners. I want to keep all my notes in Evernote, but what we really need is a collaborative note-keeping space. We've started to use Google Docs for this purpose, which does the job, but means I have to keep two systems running in parallel. Ideas anyone?