Scoreboards dashboards and game boards

When we're watching the scoreboard, we're merely keeping score of the points racked up, penalties accumulated and player stats that have been calculated. When we're watching a dashboard, we're also aware of contexts that give us perspectives about the scores. We're seeing trends and making comparisons. With dashboards, we've got the bigger picture in mind which sets us up to make better diagnoses, innovations and decisions.

When we're observing the game board, we see the spaces to explore. We become aware of numerous paths to take and turns to consider. We're assessing the proximity of adjacent components and the travel to reach distant ones. We make sense of relative positions and varying accessibility of places. We get a sense of inside and outside from spaces that contain other things.

When we've got all three in our game (scoreboard, dashboard and game board), we're in great shape to design our experience. We've set ourselves up to generate new alternatives by exploring possibility space, going down different paths and entering different places. We've contextualized our evaluations so we consider other interests, run through different scenarios and play out different combinations of incidents. We then decide which is best with accurate measures and balanced appraisals.

Playing the game this way, others will learn from the spaces we create. Learning will seem like what fills in the space between what we've provided. We leave it up to the learners to complete what is left open for them. We invite them to play around, explore freely and come to their own destinations, conclusions and outlooks.

Dashboards for power games

Imagine we live in a world of intertwined power games. Every player with accumulated power has a dashboard for monitoring their play action and outcomes of their maneuvers. As each player's power evolves, his/her dashboard upgrades as well. As I've pondered the shifting power balances in the Middle East this week, here's how I've envisioned the changing dashboards for the entrenched leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. There are obvious parallels to corporate moguls, political titans and the top positions within institutional hierarchies:

When power has been entrenched for decades, the readout on the dashboard can simply monitor the player's power supply. There may be slight, occasional fluctuations of supply of power which is to be expected. There is no cause for alarm. The entrenched power is neither questioned, challenged or exposed as abusive. There would be no need to watch the dashboard closely as the readout shows the same indication for decades. This dashboard could create mayhem due to its profound disconnection from changing situations.

When a power struggle ensues, the dashboard for the power game needs an immediate upgrade. The player needs to monitor his/her exercise of power as well as the prior supply of power. Situations call for reminding others who's the boss by pulling their chain with intimidation tactics, implied threats and manipulations of evidence. A readout would show how successfully those maneuvers fortified entrenched power, restored others' powerlessness, shot the messenger and convinced others to back off.

When entrenched power has been lost to constituencies, citizenry, customers or marketplaces, the dashboard needs to monitor the player's influence. The exercise of power would show a loss of influence on this new addition to the dashboard. The practice of transparency, empathy and acknowledgement would all move the needle toward the plus side on the influence monitor. Unilateral concessions or obvious sacrifices of unilateral power over others would make the needle jump in the desired direction.

When power sharing emerged from the engagement with others, the dashboard needs a final upgrade. The voters, problem solvers and citizen activists would see the same readout on their personal dashboards as well. Everyone would be tracking mutual empowerment. Interactions that yielded mutual respect, benefit and reciprocation would show up favorably on this readout. It would be clear to everyone how to move toward greater democratization and synchronous innovation by watching this dial on shared dashboards.

As I'm envisioning these power games, the changing of the dashboard would be part of the game. The dashboard would be more than a readout of the play action. Achieving a dashboard upgrade would outrank mere advances in the metrics monitored by the current indicators. The condition of the dashboard becomes fair game in the games played with entrenched power.

Expanded view of a dashboard

My recent posts about dashboards are getting more readers than any others recently. Here's an extended version of the chart I introduced in Finding places for dashboards. This chart includes the more recent explorations into innovation.

Tracking institutionalized interests

For dashboards to function effectively at upgrading higher ed, they must track others' interests. Unlike PLE's that organize one's personal explorations, dashboards are designed to be there for other learners, educators and employers. They will get where people are coming from to assist them getting to a better place. They will orchestrate getting the exact learning needed from the right person at the right time and place. By tracking others' interests complexly, the right diagnosis will be made when something goes wrong.

Lots of students, educators and employers express deep interests in remaining institutionalized. They show no interest in being liberated, empowered or engaged in collaborative dynamics. Institutions solve problems for them. They function better under imposed structure and conformity pressures. Dashboards that exclude these interests will only serve a small minority of agendas, intentions and expectations. The exceptional educational value of well designed dashboards will have little impact. So today I'll explore the design challenge of monitoring many others' interests in remaining institutionalized.

Most of us that have happily found well-marked exits from institutions don't appreciate what they do for insiders. We only see the adverse effects and adverse selection of people for positions. As I explored last year in Amazing institutions and Are institutions really problematic?, institutions bring order to tribal dynamics. They provide protection from irrationality, subjectivity and disorder for those who otherwise feel very vulnerable and likely to be harmed again. They provide convincing justifications, requirements and enforcements to questionable endeavors. They make it easy to look busy, productive and proficient when self-structured efforts would appear idle, aimless or incompetent.

Institutions are also breeding grounds for second-class citizens who are never satisfied. These whiners complain about everything that happens or does not occur. They are easily addicted to distractions and habitually entangled by others' chronic childishness. They have no way to show respect, solve problems, take responsibility, function reliably or think through their own options. They come across as "very high maintenance". They rely on institutions to provide legitimizing cover and much-needed structure even though they cannot take advantage of all that to become first class citizens. They are in no shape to shape up or to change their tune.

These second class citizens get consistently misdiagnosed inside institutions.  The first class citizens do not learn the lessons taught by these underdogs. Their first-class scoreboards remain disconnected from these second-class interests. All this creates a phenomenal opportunity to reinvent higher ed to better serve those who are not self structuring, DIY punks, hackers and gamers. Those with well-designed dashboards will be tracking these institutionalized interests and cognizant of how to respond effectively to implicit requests, questions and confusion.

Alarms on the side

Scoreboards get us into trouble by their errors of omission. They don't provide warning lights to help us steer clear of situations that are best avoided. A well-equipped dashboard has alarms on the side to forewarn us of trouble ahead or onboard.

Lots of our technologies give us warnings in addition to the metrics. Automobiles show us when we're low on oil or when the engine is overheating. Radar detectors signal when we're approaching a speed trap on a highway. Digital indoor/outdoor thermometers sound the alarm when the temperature is going below freezing. Geiger counters alert us to toxic levels of radiation. Computer game alerts indicate when our supplies are too low, our spending has gone over the limit or we're about to get penalized.

Each of these alarms is hard wired to an objective data stream. Sensors monitor fluctuations in physical conditions. Logic circuits filter out exceptional data. However, when we're on the lookout for the quality of the education we're getting, there's no hard data. The situation requires being on the alert, rather than receiving automated alerts. I expect we will make more effective judgment calls by setting ourselves up to watch for particular kinds of trouble. The dashboard alarms will involve taking time out to assess our situations with particular issues in mind.

As I've continued to develop my design concept for dashboards in higher ed, I'm seeing several alarms on the side of anyone's dashboard. There are particular kinds of troubles to lookout for when getting educated by experts within institutions. These same troubles can easily reoccur outside of institutions where learning happens within chains of value and reciprocation. Here are four alarms that support enduring learning, self motivation and the cultivation of useful insights:

1. Expertise monitor: We need to be on the lookout for expertise that works against our best interests, as I explored here. When this alarm sounds, we can stop expecting to benefit from the problematic expertise and start locating expertise aligned with our interests.
2. Freeze warning: When we try to relate to someone with no interest in our own interests, they seem cold to us. They're coming from a Bad or Better place below the line. They come across as controlling, manipulative, deceitful or tormented. When we detect a frosty approach to understanding us, we can create a healthy boundary that "just says no" to this abuse. 
3. Booby prize detector: When we're baited by extrinsic rewards like points, badges, grades, rankings or stats, our pursuits become senseless. We get caught up in a stupid game to play. We chase after the booby prizes instead of seeking what we find meaningful, valuable and fulfilling to our unique frames of reference. We need to be on the lookout for our judgment becoming impaired, our priorities getting warped and our satisfaction declining. 
4. Crap detector: When we get caught up in bogus offers, scams and ripoffs, we typically delude ourselves about the value. We talk ourselves into staying with it and avoiding the label of a a quitter. This alarm will call attention to the hypocrisy, false claims and other misrepresentations of value. We can move to solid ground where we have the sense to respect ourselves and to act with integrity. 

Practicing these kinds of vigilance will avoid most of the ways that college can be bad for our brains. When we alert to problems with expertise, cold outlooks, booby prizes and crap, our anxiety will be lowered. We benefit from a better self concept, more self respect and increased confidence. We'll become more self motivated and satisfied with our own accomplishments for our own reasons. Our learning will endure much longer than it does when we comply with requirements, cram for the exam and judge our efforts by the grade we get.

Finding places for dashboards

Dashboards in higher ed will make it possible for most learning to occur among peers. The labor cost will plummet as the work gets done by those currently considered to be unqualified. There will be almost no "covering the material" or "studying a textbook". The learning will be driven by individual interests arising from each person's recent experiences, explorations and contributions to others' learning. For a system like this to work, each learner needs a dashboard to keep track of their own and others' interests. Dashboards cannot become a universal solution. They don't function for the immediate interests in what I've been calling bad and better places. The design and use of dashboards needs to find where they function effectively. Here's how I've gone looking and found two places.

In any bad place, there are chains of pain. The executive yells at the manager who chews out the direct report who goes home to criticize his/her spouse who screams at their child who whips the dog that attacks the cat that devours a bird. There's no need for a dashboard in chains of pain. All participants are too upset to show an interest in other interests or to see their situation comprehensively. Everyone simply acts out how they were made to feel through their linkage in the chain of pain so the next in line feels the same way. Misery loves company.

In a better place, there are chains of command. The exercise of authority occurs through hierarchical levels. There are roles to fill and penalties for stepping out of line. Higher-ups dictate what those below are allowed to do and how they get evaluated for complying with those dictates. In higher ed, the college president tells the provosts who tell the deans who advise the department chairs who inform the faculty who pass it on to the students.  There's a need for scoreboards in chains of command to measure and compare outcomes. Chains of command keep outbursts to a minimum while fueling every kind of  lip service, sabotage, retaliation and defiance that wont' get caught. Everyone is paying their dues and getting even when they can.

In a good place, there are chains of value. The experience of benefiting from a purchase, interaction or other experience gets passed on down the line. The goodness found by one gets shared so others can take advantage of the opportunity, join in the satisfaction or experience the difference for themselves. Each adds their own subjective value before sharing those advantages with his/her social network.  The beneficiary of a valuable educational experience will tell her/his friends about the experience, the explanations for it and the likely follow-through to get more out of it. There's a big need for dashboards in chains of value. Each needs to monitor how others could value something they might share and what interests of theirs might be served. The tie-ins to one's own interests require continual attention to maintain the intrinsic motivation to serve others' interests and respond effectively to their requests. Everyone is making a difference in others' lives.

In a great place, there are chains of reciprocation. The experience of giving comes back around. It makes tons of sense to share surpluses, care for unmet needs, serve others' interests and contribute to common good. The generosity of spirit gets repaid in countless ways. There's the sheer enjoyment of the process. There are the results that become evident. There's the feedback others communicate. There are opportunities created to make a bigger difference or to collaborate at enhancing the difference made. Dashboards can track all these ways of getting repaid as well as what's going on with others. Everyone is immersed in co-creating satisfying experiences.

Dashboards for upgrading higher ed

I expect college dropouts will be the first to adopt connected dashboards to get a higher quality education at a lower price. They will be followed enrolled college students who will aggregate their interests in better college education like consumer advocacy movements have improved lots of what we buy. For the reasons I explored yesterday, I doubt that a majority college administrators or faculty members will adopt connected dashboards. There will be exceptions, just as there are with academics making use of handheld and social networking tools currently.

The two posts I've written about dashboards remain the most read for several weeks now. (Disconnected dashboards create mayhem, From scoreboards to dashboards). I've just begun to follow a growing buzz about gamification which aligns superbly with the use of dashboards I have in mind. I'm also getting renewed interest in what I wrote 3 years ago about Personal Learning Environments - PLE's and PLE 2.0. All that tells me to share much more of my design thinking about dashboards that can serve those seeking better/cheaper college educations.  I've just created a new tag: dashboards to help readers revisit this series of blog posts in the future.

I foresee dashboards getting used by seekers of college educations to:

1. become more self aware of where they're at in their development and states of mind
2. be more understanding of where others are at and thus more capable of getting on others' wavelengths
3. be more transparent and easily trusted by those in need of one's assistance
4. become more supported, validated and respected by peers while supporting, validating and respecting them
5. be more challenged and playful, without becoming overstressed, while pursuing personal objectives
6. become more successful at getting the right person for the job of whatever is going to be learned next
7. be responded to more quickly at any hour, day or location which will get the timing right for optimal learning

When dashboards come into widespread usage, the current model of lectures delivered by experts in classrooms will get questioned, invalidated and compared unfavorably to these peer dynamics. Prior to widespread deployment, the early adopters will make it evident how they are learning more in better ways at lower costs. 

From scoreboards to dashboards

Offering higher quality higher ed experiences at a much lower cost can only happen in a Good Place above the line I explored yesterday. Those superior offerings require connected dashboards in use by everyone involved. That involves some deeply disturbing changes in where people are coming from and how they see their worlds. Here's an overview of the challenges in getting from the costly use of scoreboards to the beneficial use of dashboards.

In a Bad Place, there's no way to really keep score. There's tons of self-confirming evidence which avoids rattling people's cages. Everyone in the bad place gets lots of opportunities to say "I knew it" and "here we go again". But there's no indication of unexpected results or accomplishments that could be used to improve the processes. Awareness is limited to the silo, vault or echo chamber. Every attempt to keep score (grades, performance reviews, time budgets, etc) seems like useless paperwork, going through the motions or spinning one's wheels in a rut. There's little interest in getting ways to monitor the metrics and keep score. Most are afraid that the outcome measures will lead to getting unfairly accused, blamed or singled out. The sense of powerlessness that pervades a Bad Place frames outcome indicators as "out of one's personal control". Attitudes of resignation get expressed as "there's nothing you can do about that except learn to live with it". Attempts to upgrade accountability measures receive lots of push back as most in the Bad Place already feel over-pressured, imposed upon and abused.

In a Better Place, there are scoreboards galore. Everyone is keeping track of measures and comparing outcomes. Widespread desires to improve get seemingly well-served by tangible results which get recorded objectively. Everyone is held to the same standards and assessed accurately. It's assumed that any subjectivity would only skew the data, bias the assessments and taint the comparisons. In a Better Place, it becomes desirable to accumulate larger quantities regardless of quality, use or personal significance. Amassing large inventories makes for favorable comparisons, reputations and first impressions.

From a Good Place, it becomes apparent that scoreboards in any Better Place are in big trouble. Scoreboards are disconnected dashboards. Keeping score objectively misses out on essential subjectivity. Normative evaluations suppress the recognition, amplification and celebration of unique traits, outlooks and contributions. Avoiding skewed data results in avoiding diverse frames of reference which could support creativity, innovation and design thinking. Scoreboards get everyone trying harder to play by the same set of rules instead of playing with the rules, questioning the premises and moving the goal posts.

In a Good Place, dashboards monitor much more than measurable metrics. People appear as assemblages of interests to be understood, supported and translated into common interests. Individuals use their own perception filters and frames of reference to give meaning to incidents. Each has a back story which defines much of their outlook and attributions. Conflicts between personal interests and between individuals create opportunities for new understandings, closer relationships and deeper commitments to shared purposes. Activities are monitored for how things are coming along (work processes) how things are shaping up (milestones) how aims are evolving (changing objectives) and how better methods are getting discovered (process improvement). All this yields a more supportive context which nurtures continual exploration, useful mistakes and reflective practices.

In a Great Place, it becomes apparent why it is so difficult to transition from a scoreboards in a Better Place to dashboards in a Good Place. Below the line, everything gets perceived in either/or binary terms. Subjectivity can only be bad when embracing objective measures, evaluations and comparisons. Frames or reference and varied outlooks could only be taken as mere speculation, spin doctoring or distortion of the facts. Individual interests also get disregarded from negative experiences in Bad Places with others' chronic complaining, commiseration and victim stories. Interim processes get overlooked following the inefficiencies, wasted time spent and hand holding of high maintenance individuals in a Bad Place.

From a Great Place, those in other Places can be told to "keep up the good work" and "persist until the disadvantages of your current Place weigh heavily on your efforts". There's no need to push others to change. There's a process to be trusted by giving it time to work through the sticking points and discover the freedoms for oneself. Migrations out of Bad and Better Places follows naturally from the awareness shared from a Great Place.

Getting above the line

Most of everyone inside higher ed oscillates between a Bad and Better Place. For example, after a boring class, a student may experience an exhilarating walk across campus or an enlivening conversation with a friend before entering the next boring class. A faculty member may get some time to further a favorite research interest before returning to grading submittals. There are only temporary escapes from the Bad Place, no lasting changes. This helps us understand why there are such chronic problems with motivation, acting out, dropping out, soaring tuition and more. Getting these chronic problems to vanish requires getting above the horizontal line. There's no solution below the line that could endure longer than a Spring Break.

When we're in a Good or Great Place, we're inner directed. What we're doing is self motivated and intrinsically rewarding. We are living a mystery with loads of questions which gives our lives the flavor of captivating adventure stories. We self-structure our further investigations, experiments and testing of hypotheses. We naturally collaborate with others on similar quests and find guides to help us along the way. We experience our progress and outcomes as personally meaningful and aligned with some deeper purpose. We pursue passions we find within according to our own priorities and purposes. We realize a wonderful combination of our rational and irrational sides. What we do is good for our brains, our collegiality, our work and the value we extract from our experiences.

Below that line in a Bad or Better Place, all that is different. We're outer directed and entangled in others' expectations. We're dependent on others to provide us with structure for our activities and evaluations for our outputs. We don't trust our judgment or rely on ourselves successfully. We get too busy to be concerned with the meaning our efforts could have for us personally. We do things for show to impress others and to compensate for our insecurities. We're tormented by opposing inclinations from our rational and irrational sides. All this is bad for our brains, our collegiality, our work and the value we extract from our experiences.

As you may suspect, it takes big bucks to provide educations below the line. The students need tons of imposed structure which the extrinsically-rewarded faculty provide against their own heartfelt wishes. Little academic learning happens without stiff requirements and formal evaluations. Everyone learns to cope with the Bad and somewhat Better Places that persist relentlessly. There's nothing in the ways that learning and teaching happen that could significantly lower costs or improve quality below the line.

There are huge differences between a Bad Place and Better Place below the line. I'm lumping them together here because they have a lot in common compared getting above the line. Getting to a Better Place falls far short of getting to a Good Place. The kind of change involved in getting above the line transcends the oscillation between Bad and Better Places. In a Good or Great Place, it does not take much money to make learning or teaching happen. There's much less need for structure, schedules, or evaluations. The quality of learning and instructing can soar, instead of the tuition and fees.

Getting to a better place

I've now finished my 15 issues in the reform of higher ed. I hit two home runs in that series of essays: How colleges are bad for our brains and Disconnected dashboards create mayhem. Both posts attracted an exceptional number of readers from around the world. That gives me a direction to go from here with the aim to provide more value to you. These 15 issues will serve us as design criteria for a newly conceived version of higher ed. (If you're new to design thinking, you may want to explore what I've written about design evaluation). These 15 criteria pose much higher standards for higher ed than are currently being met by most public or private colleges and universities.

I'll begin with a readout for everyone's dashboard regardless of their role in higher ed as student, educator, administrator or publisher. Tracking your qualitative experience of location can give you a sense of whether to move beyond that or stick around. This overall sense of place will correlate with the kind of job you've been given, the value you can get from the experience, the collegiality serving you and the impacts on your brain.


When we're in a Bad Place, it's very likely everyone else in our experience will be there too. Locations are shared, even if they're abstract like where we're coming from or where we're at. Being in the same place makes for a lot of compatibility of expectations and shared abilities to cope with adversity. On the downside, this can dysfunction as collusion, commiseration or costly compromises.

When we get to a Better Place, we'll find others are split between the Bad Place we we're at and this Better Place we've created for ourselves. When we get to a Good Place, we'll be aware of others in all three places and ways to help them move beyond their current locations. Coming from a Great Place will transform their entire array of locations and movements between them.

Each place proves to be very hypnotic and persuasive about staying put. Any Bad Place is the worst that way. It creates experiences of being stuck with no options and trapped by overwhelming limitations. Getting to a better place takes a lot of determination and effort at first. Books like David Allen's Getting Things Done or Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek are great for structuring the challenge of getting unstuck.

I'm envisioning my design for reinvented higher ed as a Good Place. It's above what I'll define as a Better Place. It takes more than being self-structuring and successful at getting results. All that is necessary but not sufficient to realize higher quality higher ed at a lower cost.

Disconnected dashboards create mayhem

Imagine you were playing a computer/console game with a great dashboard filled with readouts of your location, points, penalties and assorted inventories. The dashboard gets updated continually and presented in graphic formats that make it easy for you to get a quick read on where you stand. The only trouble is: the dashboard inside your game tracks the game play of somebody else playing some other game. It's totally disconnected from everything you've done and are trying to accomplish.

That's how I see the metrics used by higher ed to stay on track so their institutions survive and thrive. The dashboard for higher ed is connected to some other game and there are no readouts for what's really happening in the lives of the faculty, students, support staff, administrators or surrounding community. Those who watch the data have no clue whether a college is headed for success, turnarounds, trouble or extinction.

The dashboard in use tracks many metrics that misguide the players and creates numerous problems. Here's some of what those disconnected dashboards tell the faculty to do:

• Make a priority of teaching poorly in order to score points in committee work, academic research and accumulated citations in others' publications
• Make sure the students meet the requirements and get grades so they gain a false sense of progress and accomplishment
• Hold out the promise to the students of earning a diploma without suggesting they will get a real education or better employment prospects from that
• Disregard the students' other courses, workloads and deadlines so to pile on too much work at the end of each quarter/semester
• Do nothing when students lose their motivation or need a sounding board since there's no measure for that  kind of faculty initiative
• Accept no excuses when students miss deadlines to maintain the deception that academic performance problems result entirely from personal shortcomings
• Regard the majority of entering freshmen who drop out before graduation as simply ill-prepared and under-financed for the demands of higher ed

How could this happen? Why are there not whistle blowers at every institution of higher ed who act on their conscience and expose their disconnected dashboards. Why are the administrators so enamored with watching their enrollment stats, financial data, alumni contributions, athletic standings and college rankings?

Perhaps I know the answer to these questions. Could it be that dashboards cast spells? Do the Keepers of Data use magic on muggles? Does what gets measured and routinely updated put those in charge in a hypnotic trance to disregard their situation and believe in delusions? Yes indeed!

Whatever gets measured gets all kinds of quirky conduct to occur:

1. People adjust their priorities to focus on what's important while recognizing what to shortchange, downplay and disregard
2. Achievers figure out how to maximize their rewards and minimize their penalties regardless of how insensitive or unresponsive that appears to others
3. Paranoids find ways to close off access to the data, keep secrets and eliminate pattern recognition by outsiders
4. Visionaries adopt short-sighted outlooks that lose sight of trends, contexts and long-term consequences

The solution to this starts with revising the dashboards and changing what gets measured. When we stop thinking that learning happens from exposure to information, we will be in a better position to formulate new process and outcome measures.

Note: This post addresses issue: 13. Remodeling the dashboard
of the 15 Issues in the reform of higher ed.