Learning formats in 2020

In preparation for an upcoming conference, Geetha Krishnan has asked us: "what kind of learning formats will be in vogue in the year 2020, specifically with respect to corporate training?" I'm delighted he's experimenting with crowdsourcing his forecast. You may want to help him out with your foresight too. His request proved to be a juicy question for me to consider that resulted in this large outpouring of predictions:

Continued dismantling of bundled media - Just as record albums are now sold as individual songs and large portions of print newspapers are available online at no charge, training programs will get unbundled too. Rather than taking entire courses through formal procedures of enrollment, learning will be offered buffet style. "Take what we want and leave the rest for later or never". The "sit-down seven-course prepared dinner" will become a luxury item only affordable by an elite minority. Just-in time, extremely focused, performance-support will be far more common than just-in-case, broad scope, advance preparations for future responsibilities.

Proliferation of different versions - Just as iTunes offers 10 million songs to download, training in 2020 will be nuanced for oodles of different use cases, applications, levels of expertise, and previous skill developments. On iTunes, some of my favorite songs are available as an original recording, a later studio production, several live concert recordings, an acoustic version, a duet with the original performer and cover versions by other artists. An online search for "fire prevention skills" in 2020 may likewise yield a list of modules for fire marshals, building superintendents, renters, office workers, factory team members, and home owners. Those many versions will also be differentiated by type of construction: high rise, low rise, campuses of separate structures, malls of connected buildings, steel and glass construction, concrete, wood frame, etc. There might even be different versions for taking preventive measures yourself, getting immediate acquaintances to change behaviors, or influencing large populations to prevent fires.

Start-up cost reduction: The costs have plummeted to provide in-store custom eyeglasses or film processing in one hour. Costs have also plunged to start radio stations, ecommerce sites and Web 2.0 platforms. The virtualization of front and back end IT Department services on cloud computing platforms is making it much cheaper to offer lots of free space to users, to scale rapidly and to accommodate expansions or contractions in traffic volume. This suggests that the horde of creative individuals currently uploading videos onto YouTube and coding widgets for Facebook could transition themselves to create revenue-producing, educational offerings. This "long tail" of niche providers will likely formulate fascinating training games, narrative interactions, simulations and immersive scenarios by the zillions.

Convergence of laptops, PDAs and cellphones: Thin clients logged into online SaaS (software as a service) sites will proliferate as cloud computing becomes more prevalent. The need will recede for individual hard drives loaded with software, archived files and personal preferences. The personal interface with the ubiquitous cloud computing environment will be as streamlined as a Wii controller that senses location and movement. Training will be available everywhere all the time at the touch of our fingertips. What we hold in our hands to get trained will be a combination of our current mobile devices.

Consumer reaction to online losses: Cyberspace has made it too easy to speculate on financial gains and suffer staggering losses, as evidenced by the dot.com bust of 2000 and the current global recession. It's also become much easier to lose privacy, be hounded by past misdeeds, get spammed, experience identity theft, become addicted to online games, fall prey to predators, shop for non-essentials excessively and jeopardize employment prospects. All this suggests that most people will back off from the current level of indiscriminate Internet usage and become more selective in the future. I suspect this revulsion from the dangers will also yield a resurgence of F2F contacts, community involvement, and collaborative presence in physical situations. More training will occur in person with online support.

Smart grid distribution networks: It's becoming possible to live "off the grid" and sell excess power from personal solar or wind generation hardware back to the electric utility. I suspect the current wave of crowdsourced content being uploaded, shared, contributed and collaborated on -- is only the first generation. By 2020, this voluminous outpouring will have evolved into a wonderful combination of DIY and DIT training experiences. The self directed efforts envisioned as PLE's (Personal Learning Environments) will be complimented by collaborative efforts among many together. This next generation of generosity will balance self sufficiency with taking and giving back to the community grid. Training will become more social, exploratory, open-ended and unstructured. The results will provide higher quality, more lasting effects and increased momentum going into the next gathering.

Ready or not, here comes the future of corporate training!

Synching up with the learners

Leigh Blackall has just written a wonderful exploration of the dilemmas created by wanting to facilitate online learning while the learners want content delivered to them by an instructor:

But I have been asked to facilitate a learning community. And although I know the word facilitate is being used more than a little loosely by institutions these days, and that the majority of the participants are encouraged to bring with them expectations AND needs of being taught and instructed, I have this idealist expectation to build and facilitate a learning community.

As I've reflected up Leigh's dilemma, that I've also experienced myself, I'm seeing facilitation as a special case for a particular subset of evolved learners. The robust expectations for "getting instructed" that Leigh articulates superbly, are reflections of how far along the learners have come in putting new knowledge to use. Of course this came to my mind as another taxonomy:

Questions of comprehension: Learners who a new to a domain of knowledge are on unfamiliar ground. They need maps, guidebooks and landmarks. Their hunger for formal instruction is not pathological. It's the nature of lacking familiarity, being unsure of themselves and getting easily misled. Learners at this stage can get what they need from archived material online, a modicum of research skills and personally meaningful questions to guide their search.

Questions of qualification: Learners who already comprehend the terms and concepts want formal procedures to follow. They want to make sure they are "executing the recipe right". They want to be tested by someone qualified to catch their mistakes, clear up their misunderstandings, recognize what is getting overlooked and show them how to successfully conform to the procedures. Their hunger for "click2death" content is not pathological. Learners at this stage can get what they need from sequential modules, games and interactive exercises that score their key presses and monitor their progress.

Questions of application: Learners who are already qualified to execute procedures compliantly are getting into trouble in the field. The recipe does not always work. Sometimes problems get misdiagnosed or made worse by standard procedures. Learners want a community of practitioners they can learn from, exchange concerns with, and gain new insights into unusual situations. Learners at this stage can get what they need from the online facilitation of social learning processes.

Questions of contribution: Learners who can troubleshoot breakdowns and nuance application contexts have a lot to offer others. They are in a position to generate valuable content and respond helpfully to comments, queries and contradictory viewpoints from their readers, subscribers and linkers. Learners at this stage can get what they want by publishing, uploading, and contributing to collective efforts online.

Returning to the dilemma of instructing and facilitating, it now appears to me that the opportunity to facilitate learners must first be created by getting them past the stage of seeking procedural compliance and certified qualification.

Technorati tags: instructional design, interactivity, faciliation

The next killer app?

Harold Jarche just asked: Is education over the Internet already the killer app? He goes on to say:

Well, I think that Chambers was right. We're just measuring the wrong things. Education over the Internet is huge. ... Step outside the box of academic courses or training departments and online learning is growing and not looking like it will stop. As learning becomes essential for our knowledge society, we will become like fish in water, not realizing what it is we're swimming in. One challenge for learning professionals will be to remain relevant as all of the action moves beyond their traditional turf.

Harold's post brought to mind questions I've been wrestling with. Killer apps are usually not backwards compatible. Internet apps may need broadband connections and Java supported browsers. Software apps may require dedicated video cards, newer-than-Pentium II chips, or the Mac OSX Unix framework. This pattern of compatibility requirements has been getting me to wonder: What are the client side requirements for "education over the Internet" to be installed as the next killer app?

My first hypothesis was that informal learning is an essential prerequisite. The free ranging, self-directed, intrinsically motivated exploration by learners has to be functioning to support online learning. Otherwise, offerings that are free of LMS sequencing and monitoring will only seem like more content to be learned formally and compliantly.

I then conjectured that support for this killer app depended on reversing the effects of getting taught. Products of schooling and playing the grade game, no matter how successful, could not get a real education off the Internet. Getting taught content sets up learners to be: terrified of freedom, asking to be kidnapped, and deprived of their sense of wonder.

It made sense that there would have to be a transition like the installation of a new operating system (like Vista) or frameworks (like .NET) to change the learners' ability to learn. I proposed an M.Ed. in Informal learning to have the opposite effect on learners that formal schooling provides. Affecting the learners would take precedence over delivering content, testing comprehension or requiring practice exercises.

It has also been making sense to me that the youngest gamers are getting exactly what is required to support the killer app outside of school. Gameplay learning provides a very different set of meta-cognitive skills, problem solving strategies and a robust tolerance of ambiguity. Gaming changes our epistemology, self concepts and confidence to play out different roles.

More recently, it appeared to me that Personal Learning Environments could be set up to use the Internet as a killer app in education. The organizing of personal searches, subscriptions and relationships with authors of RSS resources -- could detach each learner from getting schooled and empower autonomous/social learning.

After reflecting deeply on the functions and varieties of PLE's last month, I've concluded most recently that using the Internet to get an education depends on reflective practicing. Learners have to be able to learn from what happens as they:

• find what they are looking for and delve into deeper interests
• change the questions they have in mind and directions they're pursuing
• discover others who reveal different perspectives on common interests
• create content for others that gets quoted, debated or disparaged

Successful blogging appears to thrive on reflective practicing. We are making tons of uniquely, personal sense from what shows up in our feed readers. We are sharing our insights among ourselves and learning more from how our content plays out in other readers' understanding as they reflect on what we offer. Perhaps we've got what it takes and only need to figure out a viable way to share our basis for using the killer app already.

Technorati tags: informal learning, reflection, blogging, gaming

Immersion learning

Over the weekend, I helped a friend finalize a 3 minute video "Kids and Kites" on helping learners soar. It will be shown at the Aero Conference (Alternative Education Resource Organization) this week. You can view the video here and the web page I created for him here.

As I watched the rough cut and got ideas for changes in edits, I was amazed at how I was functioning better than ever. I could feel where the video was engaging me and where that enchantment disappeared. I could notice where the music felt right and where it did not. I repeatedly had a strong sense of what was "perfect as is" and what needed tweaking. This is new for me to work this way!

I've edited countless videos for my management consulting work. Since the last time I edited videos (circa 1991), my abilities have grown tremendously. Without any practice or instruction, I've become more competent, quick to respond, insightful and tuned into several subtle levels of digital storytelling. I wondered how this occurred?

After the work was completed yesterday, I realized that I probably had learned better editing skills unconsciously. In the past fifteen years, I have immersed myself in movies. There's a movie on the TV "with the mute on" when I'm reading books. I have rented countless videotapes and DVDs of films. I watched a second time with the "directory commentary" to get a sense of the process and chemistry which created the finished work. I've built a library of my favorite films and now watch them for the third or fourth time.

All this exposure to film making and viewing is immersion learning. I did not study video editing formally in these years. I did not receive content or practice new skills. I was not taught or shown how to edit better than I was. I picked these new abilities up without a structured PLE to get them. I effortlessly acquired new habits of sight, feeling, sensitivity and response. I simply immersed myself in a lot of video with great appreciation, fascination and self direction.

Perhaps the difficulties we're having with clarifying the essence PLE's, eLearning and School 2.0 relate to excluding immersion learning. What if most learning occurs effortlessly? What if formal instruction is so often ineffective because it assumes learning only happens when we make it happen? What if the kind of learning we do without trying or conscious effort is better? What if our skills, conduct, and performance measures are exceptional when we acquired our abilities by immersion? What if this is the kind of learning the digital natives are experiencing? What if the only way to learn from gaming, social networking and self expression is immersion?

Technorati tags: immersion learning, self-directed learning, unconscious learning, habit formation

Disqualified gatekeepers

In a comment on yesterday's M.Ed in informal learning, Pete Reilly asked: "Any ideas on next steps?" I'm foreseeing four steps before academic credit for this approach will be given serious consideration by the gatekeepers:

1. Rethink trust and credibility issues in order to get buy-in from early adopters and eventual gatekeepers


2. Rapidly develop a working prototype that achieves the intended effects and transitions the learners successfully into this unfamiliar approach


3. Offer free trials to learners and instructors in order to provide first hand experience of the effects to them and feedback from them to refine the working prototype


4. Archive (using blogs & wiki) the personal experiences, perceptions of value, concerns raised and flaws identified by users of the prototype.

Future postings will explore steps 2,3 and 4. I'll focus of the first step today: getting buy-in by establishing trust and credibility. This approach implies a very different set of credentials than those admired by academia. Consider the following list of pedagogical qualifications:

• Nurtures the cultivation of better questions, deeper thoughts and broader horizons by the attention to context instead of the relentless delivery of content.


• Restores interest in subject matter by pulling for the learners, taking an interest in the students' viewpoints, concerns, confusion and self-interest


• Takes partial responsibility for a student's loss of motivation, curiosity or creativity


• Devotes time to learn from her teaching experiences, to change his own conduct, to revise the personal example being provided and to restore her own curiosity.

Instructors with these pedagogical qualifications would have the effect of increasing informal learning. In their presence, students would become more curious, exploratory and free ranging. The learning will be more valuable. Instructors with these qualifications would trust others who produce these same effects. These same qualifications would give others credibility and prove they were not hypocrites, scam artists or spin doctors.

Instructors without these pedagogical qualifications undermine the learners' curiosity, creativity and self motivation. The instructor's attempts to generate interest in the subject matter backfire. They set an example of someone who "talks the talk but cannot walk the walk" of effective learning. They cannot provide a living example of doing the right thing because they do not practice what they preach about learning from students, experiences and setbacks. These instructors do not earn respect or trust from students. They experience huge credibility problems by appearing so contradictory and hypocritical.

Instructors who fall short on affecting students favorably -- focus on their own academic credentials. They trust those who are qualified by research in the same area of expertise. They value peer-reviewed publications and insular accolades. They would not consider the qualifications they do not have. They would stick to their own kind and circle the wagons from anything different.

Gatekeepers with academic qualifications will remain opposed to M.Ed degrees that replace formal instruction with support for responsible learners. They are gatekeepers that can be disregarded as obsolete. Trust and credibility need only be established from gatekeepers with pedagogical qualifications, in order to move forward with offering this approach.

Technorati tags: eLearning, informal learning, emergent learning

Responsible learners

Most students in classrooms are like migrant workers getting transported on the back of a truck. The driver cannot be responsible for the bumps in the road that send a few workers flying off the truck. The driver cannot slow down or take time to listen to a worker's questions, concerns and worries. The truck gets where it's going regardless of how many workers stayed on board.

This becomes a stalemate. If the classroom instructor cannot be responsible for each student's experience, then the students will not be responsible either. Everyone is acting irresponsible for each other and for what could be learned from their mutual torment. This lesson of irresponsibility gets ignored repeatedly, even when the lesson is extremely tragic like Columbine High School eight years ago and Virginia Tech this week.

I expect most classroom learning will vanish in the coming decade. The web is an ideal technology to support responsible learners and mentors. Returning to the analogy of the truck of migrant workers, here's what will be different when classrooms get replaced by the next generation of online learning. Each migrant worker will have:

• a steering wheel to turn the truck where they want to go immediately, to spend some time or to explore for the first time


• a gear shift to back up and go over the same ground, to cover familiar ground quickly or to proceed cautiously


• a brake pedal to slow down, stop and park while going off somewhere else


• a gas tank that gets refilled with fuel for the progress they are making

Imagine if each student would not receive any instruction unless she or he asked a question, made a request or sought guidance. Nothing would happen until the student took responsibility for the next learning experience. No question -- no instruction, no forced feeding, no passive consumption. Once the student's request was handled, everything would ground to a halt until the student asked again.

Classroom educators pale at this thought. They assume (correctly IMHO) that students would quickly evacuate their classrooms. By taking responsibility for what they learn, how quickly and when, students would have no further use for classroom delivery systems. Why turn over the truck to an irresponsible driver when the freedom to take responsibility is supported by eLearning systems? Why be bored when learning can feel like an adventure? Why stand around in the back of the truck when every learner belongs behind the wheel?

Technorati tags: learning, Virginia Tech, eLearning

Post modern feedback

"Content is feedback". Content developers and instructors misunderstand "giving feedback and learning from feedback" because "content is not feedback" in their world. Content developers and instructors can only give feedback after an evaluation to objectively identify the condition of their subject. Pretest and post-test results occur on either side of delivering content. Content developers and instructors are modernist and behind the times.

Content developers would be fired from a job in a game development company. Content developers would be kicked off the team writing TV shows or film scripts. Content developers would be helpless in a gathering that is developing of an open community, a Web 2.0 business or a viral marketing campaign.

When a gamer has no idea what to do next in unfamiliar territory something happens in the game that helps, hints or guides the next experiment. Games that handle the gap with formal instruction don't sell. When the audience does not understand a protagonist's motives or hesitation, other characters get into conversations or conflicts that reveal what was missing. Stories that "crawl on the fat belly of exposition" (Robert McKee) don't sell. When members of a new community act confused or disoriented, dialogue ensues to support, comfort and listen. Communities that tell the members what to think, how to act or the rules to follow --then fall apart.

Content is feedback. We learn more from how were taught, pictured and related to -- than what we're taught. We get louder signals from where the instructor is coming from than what is being delivered. We take personally what is meant to be taken as impersonal information. Subjectivity overrules objectivity. Post modernism is here. Content delivery sucks.

Four people are instructed: "The sky is blue". It's assumed to be an objective fact delivered as informative content.

1. Joe takes the content as rejection. The feedback he takes from it is "I'm an idiot", "I missed out on this", "I don't have what it takes to get this on my own". Joe feels dismissed, isolated and shot down by being told "The sky is blue".


2. Jill takes the content as criticism. The feedback gives her an argument with her thinking the sky is gray when cloudy, black at night, pink at sunrise and purple at sunset. Jill will try harder to conform with the "true blue" answer in the future.


3. Jack takes the content as a complication. The feedback gives him a way to relate to the instructor and to pursue further dialogue. Jack is developing an understanding of the instructor, the teaching methods, the basis for evaluation and the framing of the learner, as well as integrating the material. Jack is a gamer, post modern critic, and reflective learner.


4. Jane takes the content as the instructor's very subjective story. The feedback gives her a way to anticipate surprise, welcome the mysterious developments in the instructor's character and watch the reciprocal storylines play out over time. Jane is living her story, changing every day and enjoying the ride.

Modernist feedback imposes a narrative about "objectively identified gaps" in knowledge skills or abilities. This narrative dismisses the receivers' inherent freedom to take the feedback subjectively, to reflect it back on the deliverer and to contextualize the content as "command and control" or "disenfranchisement". Post modern feedback expects the receivers' subjectivity to overrule objectivity, to play with different meanings and contextualize it as "unfolding stories". We learn more from feedback than instruction.

Thanks to Wendy Wickham, Valerie Bock and Tony Karrer for reciprocating with Leave a clean corpse and Preparing for changing opportunities.

Technorati tags: instructional design, informal learning, feedback, narrative, post-modernism

Preparing for changing opportunities

On the Learning Circuits Blog, in response to my Leave a clean corpse, Tony Karrer asks:

Is this whole industry really obsolete? Is there some other kind of business that someone who is a SME and used to doing courses and courseware can get into? Should we stop offering ID degrees?

I'm foreseeing four different kinds of business opportunities in the training field for the coming decade. Each has a congruent form of education to prepare for it. Each follows from the significant obsolescence (but not the elimination of the whole industry and ID degree programs) of vendor delivery of instructional content.

Compliance training: Bureaucracies will never disappear entirely, though I expect a significant shrinkage is in progress. Layers of mismanagement will always spend 50% of their training budget on administrative overhead. They will continue to test for conformity with ineffective policy requirements and user manuals. The best way to prepare for creating "check the box after you check your brains at the door" materials -- is doing time in academic bureaucracies. Sit in college classrooms until you get a degree in ID. Take notes on boring bullet points prior to cramming textbooks covered by machine graded tests of your short-term memory of the one right answer.

Systems consulting and implementation: Performance problems that cannot be fixed with compliance training -- call for outside consultants (like Tony) and inhouse liaisons (like Wendy). System wide diagnoses and interventions get developed. Blended solutions install new technologies while developing skills of the system users. Preparing for all this in college -- calls for faculty who use game-like instructional designs (like Karl). Cases, simulations, contests, and in-basket exercises replicate the politics, changing rules, conflicted constituencies and unforeseen consequences -- that are the daily fare of consultants and liaisons.

Game design and development: When an industry is dying or a product line becomes obsolete, systems implementation fails to fix the problems of the clients. Creative talent ventures out as free lancers (like Jay). Nothing in a college classroom prepares for thriving on a network of contacts, learning informally from happenstance or making a difference by prolonged conversations. The sensibilities to thrive outside the machine comes from playing games (and the college experiences outside of classes or sales experiences in the field). Games will get designed to epistemically adopt a role, go out into the long tail and monetize one's personal network. Gamers will create those "serious games" from their countless experiences with playing games and networking.

Market innovation and co-creation: Once there is a critical mass of free agents available to create innovative instructional designs, new support systems and aggregations of their ID offerings will emerge. Networks will reciprocate with a vast number of small providers like Walmart does with manufacturers, Microsoft does with .NET programmers and eBay does with sellers. Each developer of educational value will be listed, searchable and ranked like blogs, shareware and digital content. Each provider will learn what does and does not sell -- by being listed, searchable and ranked in a global, online marketplace. Developers will "prepare for this" by diving in and doing it, just like us bloggers and all those Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. Customers will contribute ideas, questions, alternative directions. The value of the offering will be tuned by the market and co-created with the users. The market will teach these developers to stop delivering content and switch to enhancing feedback, longitudinal evaluation, conversations, subscriptions to internal resources, etc.

Technorati tags: instructional design, informal learning, creativity, consulting, college prep

Vertical and horizontal networks

I'm proposing a distinction between vertical and horizontal networks to clarify our discussions of networks and communities. Vertical networks are confining, imposed and physical. Horizontal networks are expansive, self controlled and non-physical. This distinction replaces the two meanings of "groups" used by Jon Dron and Stephen Downes. It replaces the concept of a network being "contained by a community" as Ray Sims suggests or "within an ecology" as George Siemens proposes.

I finished reading John Naisbitt's (Megatrends) latest book last night: Mind Set! He forecasts a change from tracking the Gross National Product of each country to monitoring the Gross Domain Product for each global industry sector. Automobiles are assembled in one country using components manufactured in dozens of other countries. When a country adds the finished automobile to its GNP, it misrepresents and shortchanges the contributions from other countries. It makes more sense to cut across the borders to account for the health of the global auto industry.

This gives us a way to better understand "learning networks" that Ray Sims explored yesterday. Each of us work in a physical location where other people are present that we did not choose and do not control. This vertical community is imposed on us and establishes artificial borders. The vertical community may silence dissent, as Stephen Downes explains in his rant against small groups. This imposed gathering is not fully open, as Ray explores in his distinction between learning networks and communities.

Inspired by Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat", Dave Gray (CEO and Founder of XPLANE) pictures the blogosphere as a horizontal city. Dave sees similarities to the process of meeting new people, making new friends and frequenting new places. The people who find us online and link to our blog postings share similar passions. These connections are made regardless of locations and schedules. This horizontal access cuts across vertical locations, differences and restrictions.

Horizontal networks also cut across the lines of vertical networks in workplaces (teams, groups, reporting relationships, memberships, etc.). Etienne Wenger defines communities of practice this way. He distinguishes them from matrix organizations where an individual wears two hats and reports to two different supervisors. Communities of practice cut across project or job-assignment lines to confab with peers who have similar technical expertise. Wenger suggests that the community of practice may prove to be more stable and continuous than the changing job assignments, reporting relationships and accountability structures.

Inside a vertical network, we are limited in what we can learn, who we can relate to and how we will grow. Inside a horizontal network we are unlimited and free to explore, choose and change our minds.

Note: I wrote a followup to this post the next day: 4.07.2007

Perceiving networks subjectively

Technorati tags: communities of practice, networks

Terrains, communities and secured platforms

Ray Sims recently posted to his blog about the broad expanse of eLearning alternatives in: Fortress, Gated Community and Free-range learning. That follows our discussion of Blogs vs. Discussion Groups which led me to this perspective -- on when to use the different metaphors we've had fun with lately.

When we think about all the resources made available, searchable and subscribable by Web 2.0,-- landscape metaphors make sense. There is a vast terrain to cover and use as we see fit. There are tools and methods to make those resources easier to access and find again. The learners are in DIY mode if they are freed of formal instruction, forced fed content and elaborate "just in case" preparations. The landscape is ignored or under-utilized if the learners are confined and controlled.

When we think about all the resources we can create, share and discuss together, community metaphors make sense. DIY evolves into DIT (do it together). Interactions, exchanges, and conversations nurture each others' evolving creations, innovations and self expressions. Members feed off of another's thought processes, comments or a quote in another context. Finds get shared via tags, links in postings and additions to wiki online. Boundaries take shape that identify commonalty and exclude incompatible voices. Some communities are more tolerant of deviation and open to diversity. Others are more restrictive, exclusive and guarded.

When we think about developing capabilities, effective practices and skill sets that get results, metaphors of "secured developer platforms" make sense. Distinctions fade away between instructor and learner, SME and designer, or formal and informal learning. Open source development puts all contributors on a level playing field. The developer platform is protected from the abuses of power and powerlessness. Everyone is committed to developing capabilities and the process effects everyone significantly. Capabilities are developed and results get produced.

Technorati tags: eLearning, informal learning, free range learning, DIY

Free flying song birds

Yesterday Kevin Roberts added a post to his blog: How to surf the Attraction Economy. (thanks for Mike Sansone for the link). Roberts is CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi. I've not read any of his books, so the ideas in his post are new to me. What he's saying about the future of marketing/advertising applies to eLearning as well. His propositions "shook my cognitive tree" about the digital natives, The Long Tail, pulling for the learner, free range chickens and the role of storytelling in the emerging economy. He even explained his forecast with a taxonomy! Yesterday was a big day for my "finding it in my blog reader"!Roberts implies that literacy is changing from print to sight, sound and motion (sisomo). The message is lost if it's not in a story. The message is forgotten if it's not something people want to watch over and over.

Roberts sees a progression from products to trademarks, trademarks to brands. brands to Lovemarks. Consumers are more creative and passionate about their purchases. When the provider combines love and respect for the consumer, the positive effects are staggering. Pulling off that combination requires a significant loss: no ego and no silos of expertise.

The Long Tail model emphasizes small affinity groups "finding" a match to their unique needs of the moment and preferences. Roberts sees that model misses out on how much "sharing of their finds" is occurring. The find is small but the sharing is big. This gives an added to dimension to the ways that learning can become viral and benefit from network effects.

Rather than picturing the learners feeding on a free range, Roberts has inspired a new picture. Imagine the learners are song birds. Rather than feeding on "content" to survive, they are singing as they thrive. They are soaring with the feeling of being loved and respected. Their passion is uncontainable. They are sharing their joy by singing exuberantly. They are a moving picture of sights, sounds and emotion. Let see if eLearning can play along with that invitation.

Technorati tags: Kevin Roberts, sisomo, eLearning, The Long Tail

The end of content

Z: I don't know what learning is.

A: You're doing it now by "not knowing what learning is" and finding out what learning is.

Z: Why make a thing of learning? Why pretend it's something to know and talk about? Why not simply explore doing it better and getting better results from doing it?

A: If you have a concept of "learning", then you can see that you're doing it and then consider other ways to do it and better ways to do it.

Z: Why can't I do it better by simply doing it, seeing what results I get and changing my approach accordingly? That's how I get better when I'm immersed in playing games.

A: If you are learning better without the concept of learning, you cannot conceive of how to change your approach. You can only change incrementally, inside the frame of reference of doing it now.

Z: That's if I am using the frame of reference of a machine, doing what I do consistently and repeatedly. What if I am using the epistemic frame of innovating?

A: What difference does that make?

Z: When I'm innovating, I am venturing into unknowns. I cannot proceed according to plan. I cannot "make a thing" of my process because I need to remain open to unforeseen possibilities. If I use the epistemic frame of a machine, I am blinding myself to opportunities, assuming this situation is the same as previous ones and relying on my concepts, tools and experience to produce results.

A: What are you relying on to produce results when you're using the epistemic frame of an innovator?

Z: My questions, my ability to read a situation, my continual experimenting, and my safeguards against falling for content, machine premises and limiting assumptions.

A: Do you see me falling for machine premises and limiting assumptions?

Z: Yes and no. By asking that question, you are learning without making a thing of it. You are challenging your assumptions and suspecting you are limiting yourself. You are using the epistemic frame of innovating. Yet when you talk about learning you are trusting your use of concepts to conceptualize, not to do something better and get different results. When you expect improvement from the content of your expertise, you are falling for machine premises.

A: Sounds like the end of content, instruction, education and formal learning.

Z: Let the playing continue.

Technorati tags: learning, epistemic games, innovating

Leave it to the digital natives

What if the "digital native generation" is already learning to be tech savvy innovators? What if their playing "epistemic games" is giving vast numbers of teens the "natural ability" to create new tools, enterprises and communities?

What if we are "preaching to the choir" who already get it? What if all we are saying about informal learning and use of Web 2.0 tools is patently obvious to the under-20 population? What if they already learned what we're talking about by gaming, by doing in simulation and by iterative trials learning? What if their experience have convinced them to learn informally and use the tools before anyone told them about these "good ideas"?

What if we, digital immigrants, are having trouble getting it, making the transition, reinventing ourselves -- because we've been schooled? What if the damaging effects of formal instruction have crippled the over-20 generations? What if we are stuck in the talking stage -- over-analyzing what is occurring emergently? What if those teens dropping out are missing out on that damage? What if they will get out with their creativity and love of learning intact.

What if we are the last generations to understand content? What if the digital natives won't get it when we speak devoid of context: personal experience, experiments or expressions? What if they are becoming fluent in a foreign language of creative action? What if they are learning "epistemic frames" that make much more sense of how to create value, attract a following and monetize their contributions easily? What if they will create enterprises in the near future that will naturally implement the "starfish", "long tail" and "blue ocean" principles without having read the books?

What if we "bloggers about eLearning" are the transition team? What if we are in a perfect position to make sense of this wrenching transition? What if we can provide the change models, support systems and communities to help the over-20 generations make sense of the disruptions and to trust the discontinuous change process? What if we don't need to make the change happen, only serve others as these changes emerge?

Technorati tags: Web 3.0, digital natives, epistemic games, elearning

Liberating the learners

Workplace and academic learning has been privatized for centuries by the idea that people need to be taught. Formal instruction is justified by the assumption that learners cannot be: self taught, naturally curious, intrinsically motivated or guided by their own intuition. The oscillation between the "sage on stage" and the "guide on the side" maintains that expert delivery of controlled content.

Workplace and academic learning can be democratized by the creating support systems for learners to teach themselves what they need to know when they want to learn it. Elementary school students take two years to get up to a "second grade reading level" when getting taught to read. An unschooled eight-year-old can learn to read at that level in ten weeks if s/he waits until the desire is felt, peer pressure from readers is prevalent and the mentor can nurture the rapid development of competency.

Socrates said we cannot teach someone something they do not already know. The idea of "liberating learners from instruction" has been around for thousands of years. What's new is the software to support that liberation. Until now, it took a learner with the mind of a tinkerer or a mentor who refused to answer questions directly and did not speak without being asked a question.

Now a whole generation has learned to use new technologies, play complex games and express themselves creatively without formal instruction. The paradigm of liberated learning has been assimilated in the process of teaching themselves to blog, link, ping, post, publish, send, upload, subscribe, comment, favorite, bookmark, mash, rip, filter and wishlist.

Technorati tags: Web 3.0, elearning, instructional design, democratization

Challenges posed by my forecast

The most memorable aspects of 2006 for me involves blogging. On two previous occasions I had started blogs that never got beyond five postings. Reading Naked Conversations last summer gave me the needed insights to dive into daily posting. In August I launched Clues to the College Blues . I was not finding blogs to comment on until November when I suddenly appeared on the Learning Circuits Blog. As I wrote previously, I began learning so much from the exchanges among us that this second blog came into being easily. I had 253 unique visitors on the first week. The "power of community" had shifted from an abstraction to a vivid experience. That reinforced what I had written about on amazon.com this year about The Starfish and the Spider, The Long Tail and Blue Ocean Strategy . 2006 has been a year of enlivening convergence for me.

My forecast for 2007 suggests that those of us in instructional design, delivery and software development have some "discontinuous changes" to assimilate:

1. I expect we will jump from refining instructional designs to following the learner's lead in how to approach what is next to be learned.


2. I anticipate we will transform the value of what we offer from "better than rote learning" to "cooked up on the spot from an infinite arsenal of resources".


3. I foresee a shift from experiential learning modules to the delivery of performance support snippets, just-in-time, through mobile computing devices.

This forecast poses challenges to our comfort zones, self confidence and familiar outlooks. Discontinuous changes (paradigm shifts, playing with the rules instead of by the rules, going outside the box) have that effect. We cannot go on thinking the way we have, relying on our past experience to cope or imagining the future as comprehensible. This challenge presents itself as four choices:

1. Are you going to connect to activities you have never done before -- or disconnect by continuing what you're already good at doing?


2. Are you going to open your mind to receive inspirations and intuitions that guide you through these unknowns -- or close your mind with opinionated thought processes, compartmentalized reasoning and "hardening of the categories"?


3. Are you going to imagine scenarios where these changes could become a "dream come true" for you -- or imagine a nightmare where your situation goes from bad to worse and paranoia is justified?


4. Are you going to proceed as a visionary leader that takes us where we have never been before -- or as an erudite historian that lives in the past and tells the same old story?

Technorati tags: Web 3.0, instructional design, forecasting, December question

Version 3 in 2007

The December Big Question asks for three kinds of insights that generated lots of ideas for me. It makes the most sense to offer my forecast first, since that defines the challenges we will soon face, as well as making sense of my personal highlights from 2006.Software developers believe there is predictable growth pattern reflected in the original progression of Microsoft Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. In their view, the first two versions were buggy, but necessary phases to work out those bugs. Widespread adoption did not occur until 3.0, the first of the phases that does not crash, contaminate or lose data. They think Web 2.0 tools and web sites have loads of problems that are easily debugged, just like Windows 2.0. My forecast for eLearning changes in 2007 uses this "three version" frame of reference. I forecast that Version 3.0 is "due for beta release" in 2007.

Use of software tools for instructional design and delivery

1.0 - The premises of early CBT tools (Macromind Authorware anyone?) appears to be still prevalent in most course development software and open portals for eLearning. The software is used to structure the sequence of content, optimize the learning and reliably test the retention. This version calls for an engineering temperament.

2.0 - Social networking tools (blogs, wiki, RSS, bookmarks, etc) have been gaining acceptance and use in instructional design and delivery, as we all know and write about often. Techies are using these tools to the max and driving themselves crazy, as Kathy Sierra illustrates. This version calls for the temperament of diplomats, community builders and team leaders.

3.0 - Software as a service puts the users workflow front and center. There will eventually be no more need to open software, login into web sites or upload to remote servers. Everything will be available instantly and used without distraction. 2007 will bring the first tools (or vaporware talk of tools) for eLearning that serves each learner's unique flow of: intrinsic curiosity, imposed need to know, personal obstacles to comprehension/application and situational opportunities to learn socially, actively and/or informally. This version calls for the temperament of gamers, ecologists and multi-taskers.

Changes in the concept of "educational value"

1.0 - The value of an educational offering is like a Google or Amazon ranking. It depends on the quantity of hits, purchases, or users in the installed base. This thinking supports blockbuster hits, best sellers, and playoff championships. It's playing "King of the Hill" on the bell curve of mass consumption, one size fits all and follow the herd.

2.0 - The value of an educational offering is like a Netflix, eBay seller or Technorati rating. It depends on the assessed quality, number of links between blogs or the accumulation of contributors. This thinking supports the quality of wikipedia articles and the automatic recommendations based on your wishlist, queue and past purchases/rentals. It's playing at the democratization of production and distribution; allowing for the long tail of innovators, niches and small suppliers.

3.0 The value of an educational offering is like search results ranked by relevance -- that uses sophisticated AI to drill down deep into XML resources to come up with the astoundingly perfect finds. This thinking supports on-demand, mass customized, and personally configured eLearning modules, links and coordinates to visit in virtual space. It's playing like a continually updated dashboard widget and PDA with broadband access. 2007 will bring AI wedded to Web 2.0 tools that will gain adoption faster than the Web 2.0 blog, wiki, and bookmark tools.

Changes in free online educational offerings

1.0 Content is offered: Books, articles, research papers are offered for free download. PDF is the preferred format, though Microsoft Word is widespread also.

2.0 Instruction is offered: Individual modules, lessons with embedded sims, animations or SCORM compliant testing are offered for free use in course development. XML is the preferred format and Adobe Flash is widespread also.

3.0 Performance support is offered: Job aids, troubleshooting guides, diagnostic assistance and intelligent tutors are offered for free use in improving conduct on the job. 2007 will bring a shift from "preparing to perform" to "dive right in and figure it out as you go". Support for "learning by doing" will seem more useful, applicable, valuable (than content or instruction) to adults pursuing "continuing education" to further their "careers" and promotion potential.

Challenges we will face and my highlights from 2006 will follow in a separate posting.

Technorati tags: Web 3.0, December question, instructional design

Engage me or enrage me

In follow up to yesterday's post: The Feasibility of Forecasting, I just read Rick Nigol's latest posting on his blog: Breakthrough eLearning. He writes about Marc Prensky's recent talk:

Prensky's thesis is that many kids are thoroughly bored and uninterested in school because the nature of schooling has not changed much in hundreds of years. The digital natives face the same old rote memory approach to learning that we did. However, in their lives outside the classroom they are using digital tools (e.g. WWW, wireless text messaging, electronic games, MP3s, PDAs, high end software) to be creators and active participants in activities, not just passive receptors and regurgitators of information. Hence, their rallying cry at school is "engage me or enrage me."

He concludes:

I am not advocating a games-based approach to eLearning merely so that learners can be entertained. The point is always about realizing learning outcomes in the form of changed behaviour. It's just that you are more likely to get there if your learners are engaged in the learning.

If the folks experiencing your training are not yet yelling "engage me, or enrage me," remember that it's just a matter of time before the digital natives start outnumbering the digital immigrants.

In other words, the learners will provide the evolutionary pressure on instructional designs and designers to change before it is manadated by upper management.

Technorati tags: instructional design, Web 3.0

The feasibility of forecasting

I've recently read two blogs, (Clive Shepherd and Patrick Dunn ) that suggest that the future will be the same as the present, if it's left up to instructional designers.

Clive writes:

"I think the challenges remain much the same. In my view the corporate learning and development community is inherently conservative. If you strip away the warm and cuddly layer, underneath are people who are running scared of change and burying their head in the sand."

Patrick writes:

• Traditional trainers have to abandon the moral high ground. They have to grow beyond defensive beliefs that technology is a threat to their established ways of working. They have to develop some humility, and move beyond a patronising view of technology-based learning as the preserve of nerds and simpletons, offering little more than optional support for their far more sophisticated work.

I find both comments insightful and probably accurate. Yet if that's all that is true, there's no purpose in forecasting. Changes will get talked about, but not implemented, just like the failed attempts of colleges to upgrade undergraduate programs. Forecasts will be the stuff of dreamers, authors and bloggers while the workers grind out more modules. Instructional designers will change when they receive management directives to change. The profession is inherently in service of business agendas and not free to innovate, upgrade or reconceive its purpose.

Both go further and become more optimistic:

Clive writes: "I know this doesn't apply to you, dear fellow blogger, but it's those other people out there, you know who". Patrick writes: "Although most e-learning can hardly be described as innovative, a small proportion of e-learning organisations thrive on innovation and invention".

So one possibility that makes forecasting feasible, is innovation emerging from bloggers, visionaries and consultants in the field. I also foresee another evolutionary force on the training profession that will bring many changes soon: the culture of the trainees. As their media diet and tools continue to get transformed, the learners will pressure the instructional designs and designers to "keep up with the times". By keeping an eye on changes in the "big picture", forecasts can be made that take no initiative from instructional designers.

Technorati tags: instructional design, elearning, Web 2.0 tools