What's the biggest problem with elearning modules?

You've probably realised by now that elearning is not the silver bullet of the learning world; it's not your one size fits all solution that you can just buy-in or develop and drop and leave. In fact, there's plenty that goes wrong in producing elearning modules and some of the quality is downright awful... but even good, even great elearning modules aren't without problems.  So here we're going to look at some of those problems and the biggest of them all...


So first off the ranks is the predictable issues; firstly it's expensive business and costs a lot to produce. Lots of time, lots of money to get your end result. Chances are the better your elearning is the more it cost to get produced (although some really expensive stuff can be equally bad). True for sure but hey, if you've got the budget you just shrug your shoulders and accept it as one of the factors you need to take on board.

Secondly there's the interactions. Now poor and cheap elearning tends to have low level interactions so it's clearly an impact there, but if you've got time and money it's possible to have highly interactive high-quality elearning so surely this is a moot point? Not quite, because the interactions on elearning modules are pre-prescribed rather than real-life interactions. If I speak to someone virtually or in person there's a real interaction and it's 'right now'. If I had to think of possible questions someone might ask it would be more like a FAQ guide than real interaction. My point is that an elearning module is highly unlikely to have artificial intelligence in it and is far more likely to have interactions that were written at the time of making it. If you follow some of my other ramblings you'll know that knowledge is not a thing and flows and changes with time - as would your interactions of course, unless they were written and published at one time - then they couldn't...

Then there is the other side of the time issue. Producing good elearning is rarely done in a day or a week (I'll stop there but you get the idea). The problem with this is that in many areas things change quickly and if your elearning takes months to produce it simply can't meet the needs if they change at all (and they often do). Let's also wrap up into that the time of key staff needed to provide input, potentially resources, busy schedules and time is no small issue... but it's still not the biggest issue that I think exists, but we're getting close.

For me the biggest problem with elearning modules is that they are a finished product. If you subscribe to #WOL or my own theory #LOL you'll know that actually the finished product never really exists. What I mean by that is that we are essentially working in perpetual beta and that learning is an action or a verb rather than a noun, so if knowledge and learning change, so must the information. If elearning modules were never 'published' and you carried on working on them, they could adapt with time, change as they needed to and have more interactions added as they changed. Sure you can make a version two and publish that, but as well as the time (and cost) issues you may have it's still a version rather than 'live' if you know what I mean.

Of course, the saving grace is that traditional elearning is not the answer on its own anyway. We still (and perhaps more than ever) need people to support and connect to achieve learning. Those live interactions can work really well, particularly when we connect students rather than just teacher to students.  In this way the interactive MOOCs are far more effective for learning than even the most polished stand-alone elearning. I'm not saying MOOCs are any more the solution than elearning modules though, too many are heavy video based non-interactive content and assessments with some human interaction, but theoretically that MOOC style learning is far closer to achieving our learning aims.

As always I'm not 100% sure this is the final idea and I know to some extent I'll change my mind on at least some of this over time - so please comment on G+ or on this blog directly or via Twitter (@the_nthdegree) or... you'll find me :)

What have you learned today and why that's a bad thing...

I've been known to be pretty hard on the pursuit of 'knowledge', I think it's a fool's folly to try to hold something that flows like a river.  I've written it's a trap, it's not an object and various other views that we should be learning rather than trying to acquire knowledge and that the two things are not the same.  So now here am I about to have a go at learning too?

Not exactly.  But recently I've found myself getting annoyed with the way we try to objectify learning.  If your lesson/course/learning starts by telling me by the end of this lesson/course/learning you will learn x, y and z I'm a little turned off.  In fact I'll go a little further, you can't really tell me what I'll learn by the end either.  Sure you can have a well-defined test and it's reasonable for you to make that assumption - but we should recognise that's exactly what it is.  Just like calling teaching or training "learning" it's a bit of an assumption that the two things are the same.  You don't really write 'learning' do you - that's the desired outcome but it's not what you do.  You make up teaching or training material - and whilst you want to make learning the outcome, that's not strictly what it is.  Now you may think this is just splitting hairs, but in the world where there is so much informal learning where we use investigation type techniques to learn things (not to mention social media type approaches) surely it becomes even more important that we don't assume learning is or needs to be quantified the way we often try.

Okay, I'm having trouble convincing some of you I can tell (which is pretty impressive from a blog - maybe just me arguing this in my own head).  Let's take #lrnchat as a great example. That's when a great number of experts (and me) get together for a Twitter chat where we talk learning.  Q0 is the same each week 'what did you learn today, if not today this week'.  I can't be the only one who cringes each time this question is asked - it's really really difficult to answer and not because I'm not learning, but because it's asking me to quantify something that I'm not sure can be thought of that way. At the end of the session comes an even harder question 'what did you learn' from this chat? Damn it, I've participated I've shaped some ideas and I've interacted every way I can but I can't simply answer that question and that's an issue... but is the issue with me or the question?  

So for me knowledge is a river and learning is a journey (yes, I know how it sounds).  Learning is what we do when we shape our opinions, when we think, when we contribute and when we consider what others say.  It's a journey not a destination because we don't arrive at a point where we've 'learned' anything, we are continually learning and evolve. Our opinions and ideas (just like our knowledge) are formed over time and re-form. That's not to say we all do it at the same rate or with the same approach, but if your ideas are formed and can't be changed you've stopped learning - only at that point have you 'learned' something. Does that mean learning is a 'bad' thing? Shock horror, but if learning is concrete then maybe yes that's the bad thing, the idea of learning as a journey is a good thing, but learning as a thing is an end-state so that's not so cool. I know some of you think I'm just caught up in the language, but look at examples in history - we learned Newton's laws of motion (c'mon you can remember some of them) only to find that they're actually not 100% accurate (think speeds approaching the speed of light and relativity). If we'd all stopped at the point of having learned Newtonian physics then that would be that. I learned English at a very young age (being English I don't count it as my greatest success...) but I didn't actually. I learned some basic parts of the language and to this day I continue to build and learn my vocabulary whilst I drop off other parts that aren't of use to me, my language evolves - isn't that what learning really is?

So here's the thing, when you say 'what will you or have you learned' maybe that's not the most productive question.  Maybe the question is 'did it make you think?', 'did it challenge your preconceptions or make you change your mind?' or even just 'did you enjoy it?'. For me if I'm going to answer those questions from now on, not with a semi-fake I learned 'x, y and z again' but with an honest 'it made me think about so-and-so...'.  

So let's stop treating knowledge and learning as nouns, they're not 'things' and it's okay that we can't always quantify them as such. Learning, if we must classify it, is a verb, it's an action it's something that we do and I hope I'm always in learning mode. So if you learned something from this blog then okay, but I'm hoping it just made you think about what learning is... because to me that's learning.

Keep learning everyone (however you define it) and feel free to disagree with me by commenting - my mind's not set on this so I'm happy to re-shape my ideas with you (or you can take it in a new direction with or without me :)

Try WOL with a WIFE that helps everyone?

Involved in a #PKMCHAT today we were talking about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the old chestnut came out that for WOL (Working Out Loud) to happen there needs to be some motivation for the individual or WIFM (what's in it for me).  I get that, I really do. Whenever we embrace change or we want to shift culture or opinions we need to invest time into outlining why this is better for the individual.  The problem that I have with it is that it's... well... selfish.  It's also kind of against the very principles of WOL - if you WOL entirely for you then you're not really WOL so much as advertising, promoting and using other people.

I floated the theory of a silly acronym called WIFE - that's "what's in it for everyone?". Now don't get me wrong, I'm not as self-less as that might paint me, but I firmly believe that when we look beyond just ourselves we see the true benefits of community and sharing. So blogging is an example of WOL - but good blogging is the type that wants to share and form ideas, it serves a purpose beyond the individual. If my only reason for writing this stuff is for me and to get stuff off my chest (or worse for financial gain or profit) then I don't think that's really WOL or really helping others. Does my blog here really help everyone - almost certainly not, but if it makes you think it has some value beyond myself. That's the real point here that what we do should be about more than just ourselves. If all this sharing is about just ourselves then I think we've missed the point just as assuredly as if we state that we share only for others and not ourselves - part of the idea behind WOL is that we work in public, that means and encompasses learning too.

Surprise surprise but I suggested this in the chat today with the original founder of the phrase WOL (John Stepper):

I'm pleased to say John does look beyond the simple WIFM factor:

...and of course is (at least) one step ahead of me:

Again, I'm not here trying to promote a left-wing tree-hugging solution to your life by sharing all your good stuff so that someone else gets the credit. I just think that your motives for sharing should be more than purely personal or you might just as well bury your head into research and publish an end article.  The way I like to WOL is by pushing my ideas, half-formed or otherwise out into the public arena for feedback for me, yes, but also in case someone else finds them useful and it causes people to think. I like to challenge not because I like to have arguments with people (honest!) but because I like to look at things from a fresh perspective.

Is WOL a good thing? Mostly yes it is, but the answer is definitely when the WIFE is involved :)

The Dangers of Autopilot

Following a recent discussion on #lrnchat around habits it was clear (for once) that I actually agreed with the majority of learn-chatters that when we fall into habits it can hamper learning.  I'd go quite a bit further on this one and say that those habits we form tend to lead us into a form of autopilot.  What I mean by that is by living our lives by doing what we always do we tend to disengage from thinking about things - it becomes a subconscious act similar to breathing.  Autopilot through our work means that we don't think so much we just do, and that means that the opportunities to learn and improve are obviously reduced.

Thing is we all have habits, these aren't necessarily good or bad, they're just things we do over and over to allow us to drop our concentration levels.  There's plenty of information out there and self-help books that talk about how to break habits and form 'good' habits, but I'm not sure I subscribe to any habits as a best state to be in.  It boils down to one simple concept and that is that if you're doing something out of routine (however positive some may view it) you're not fully awake, and then you're not fully in a position to learn and improve what you're doing.  Let's give an example here, if you were to form a good (?) habit of spending the first 30 minutes of your working day going through a planning exercise to prioritise what you would do for the day you may actually miss something that required instant actions to take advantage of - or maybe some feedback that would allow you to change your approach to that planning, or even just answering a call that would mean saving hours of work later in the day.  It doesn't mean that planning is a bad thing, it doesn't even mean that having the intention to do the work then is a bad thing, it just means you maintain the flexibility to change.  You can only do this if you don't routinely enter your planning stage by shutting off your active mind to other things.

I hear a huge amount of criticism of multi-tasking and some of it I think is justified - there really are some tasks that require your full attention.  But as a general concept I think keeping an active mind that's open to more inputs is a good thing not a bad.  When I'm at work I have my door open and welcome interruptions even when I'm deep in work - I can usually hit my stride again fairly quickly and I like to be there for others - the interactions they bring often contribute to the work I'm on and can lead me in new directions.  That doesn't mean I always work this way - sometimes we get very tight timelines, sometimes I say 'I'm into something right now - give me an hour please' and sometimes I even hide somewhere else.  I also don't push paperclips aound the desk (the habit of clockwatching) when I'm done or can't concentrate I change what I'm doing, regardless of the schedule (I don't make it a habit to walk out of meetings, but yeah, otherwise I subscribe to if it isn't working then look at alternatives).  What I do isn't perfect and I'm open to improving it, that's the point though, when we set rigid in our habits they stop us from looking for improvements.  My last post was on the idea that continuous improvement needs to be continuous, that means always having our eyes and ears open to the way things could be improved.

A great example of this was when a student inadvertently walked into a meeting I was having with a head of school on Friday.  The student had no idea who we were and thought it was a break out room and had a quick chat with us - he then went on to tell us about two courses he had or was studying - one was great and the other was poor and he gave us some unsolicited feedback on what was going on.  If we had announced this was a meeting and turfed him out, we'd have missed that great feedback.  If we'd have been on autopilot, we wouldn't have even had a situation he could have walked in to and again we would have missed out.

Learning is pervasive.  It's in everything we do if we have our minds open to it.  I know some people schedule time for their learning, I can see some sense in scheduling time to learn a particular thing, but the truth is learning is (like most things it seems) an attitude.  That means if you do schedule learning for 2pm on a Monday and a learning opportunity pops up on Friday do you just ignore it?  If you see something when you're in the gym on a Wed lunchtime do you park it because it's not part of your schedule? This may be good news for those of you who like or have to stick to schedules, because if learning is an attitude it can happen at any time even if you're life is heavily structured.  The key is that you have to be prepared to break those routines if you want to get the most out of learning and that can be difficult.

Thinking back to my teaching days, you had to schedule what was being taught in each lesson, but I never let that stop me from realising great opportunities such as responses or ideas from my students that could take us in new directions. Sure it was a pain and I may have to jig the schedule around, but the gains of taking those inputs and external factors into consideration way outweigh the inconvenience of the scheduling.

In summary this isn't a fully formed idea I have and I welcome your ideas.  I think habits are a dnagerous thing, particularly when they take over and you don't bother thinking and observing what is going on around you.

Seeking Continuous Improvement.... continuously!

I'm having a blast so far in the tertiary educational sector in New Zealand - I've got to admit it's all new to me having spent the last 20 odd years in a variety of educational and training exploits from secondary school teaching through to my more recent corporate experience in the corporate learning technology sector.  One thing that gripes me a little though is that the attitude towards continuous improvements can be a little... well, stilted.

When we talk continuous improvement, we should always be asking 'how can we do this better' - or sometimes even 'how can I do this better'.  When we stop asking that question we stop improving.  As a newbie to the sector I've asked that question a fair few times already and I've loved the response I've gotten... but when we go wider beyond just our organisation I'm worried.  When I ask the regulatory body why they do things the way they do (and hopefully I ask this in a non-threatening way as a newbie) they shut me down - this is the way we do it.  That sounds dangerously to me like 'we've always done it this way' and that's about the worst thing to hear for anyone who wants to hang their hat on continuous improvement.

Thing is, we need to remember that the thing about continuous improvement is that it's not limited purely to the area we're looking at, it also needs to be in everything we do - especially the standards we measure others by.  What that should remind us is that it's not good enough to have  a plan for continuous improvement in our academic areas, we also need to apply the principles of continuous improvement to the area of continuous improvement.  For me that means asking that 'how can we do this better question' - and if you forget to do that then you end up doing things the way you've always done them.

Don't get me wrong I'm not advocating change for the sake of change or 'churn' as I like to call it, but we should always be seeking ways in which we can improve, in everything we do.

Call me a bit coy here but we're on another one of my principles.  Continuous improvement is not a 'thing' - it's not just a process or a tick-box exercise or even a part of your QMS - it's an attitude.  I heard someone today ask why so many polytechnic's were working on their QMS right now - I could easily argue that you should be constantly working on improving your quality so it would seem weird if you weren't looking at ways to make it better.

In short quality is about continuous improvement and there are two key areas there - sure, improvement but also continuous.  It's not okay to improve and then stop improving... it needs to be continuous.  So next time you seek continuous improvement, seek it continuously.

When Working Out Loud isn't really WOL

So Working Out Loud (or WOL) is a pretty big buzz these days and if you've not picked up on it there's plenty of information out there telling you all about how to be working out in the open.  In simple terms it's about being far more transparent in the way we work, sharing and showing your work both the good stuff you do and other material too - learning opportunities if you will.  As with all buzzes though there's a fair deal of misinterpretation about what WOL actually is and what it refers to and perhaps even more importantly how to do it.

Here's a few areas that I think people are going wrong when they talk WOL:

1) "It takes me three times as long to work out loud.  I need to reproduce and present everything now, I've got to edit, re-edit and then post it up".  If that's you, stop, take a breath and reflect on what you're doing.  WOL isn't about presenting anything, but that's probably the biggest misconception.  WOL is about working in a visible space not preparing and presenting in that space.  If you're working on a document for instance you could work on a Google doc or a doc that others could contribute to, rather than turning that into a presentation for the sole purpose of 'working out loud'.

2) "I don't like to boast about what I do".  Unfortunately a lot of people misinterpret WOL and end up using social media (among others) to spread the word of just how wonderful and successful they are.  Think about some of the issues with Facebook and how it can make some people seem like they've got perfect families and jobs and wow, look at me.  Instead when we work out loud we share the reality of what we do.  That means spending every bit as long on the difficulties and learnings as we do on the roaring successes. We absolutely should share the success stories, but I don't think I've ever seen an example of a perfect project or points when we couldn't have used a little help.  If you're sharing success that's great but it's not the end of the story - how can the success help others in their work?

3) "I don't have time".  This is fundamentally incorrect for me as I think WOL is not about blogging and presenting but an attitude. I've blogged before that time is never the reason we don't do things, it's about priorities; if it was important enough to us we'd re-organise what we do.  Me, I don't always blog - in fact I've been nearly a month without writing about learning in one way or another in a blog. In a Twitter chat last week one of my peers commented on the fact that I wasn't working out loud, but I don't agree with this. Blogging is one medium for WOL but it's not the only way - in fact some people write blogs as a mouthpiece or as a bragging example (see 2 above), me I don't think I do - they're conversational and they're my take on the situation - I think blogs are a great form of WOL if you do it this way and then interact with the comments on your blog.  But if I don't blog that doesn't mean I'm not WOL.  I was in a meeting today and I continually asked questions and started forming views out loud with the team.  WOL is a way of sharing and exploring in a public arena - that makes it an attitude, and you always have time for the right attitude.

4) "I don't do Social Media".  Somebody out there still says this right? I hope not, but even if this was your stance there's a huge misconception that WOL is limited to social media like blogging tools, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  I WOL as a practice and I do this in the office, on my whiteboard, in the collaborative tools I use and even when I speak (I've been known to form new ideas, change them and take new directions whilst actively involved in conversation).  This comes partly back to my previous point that WOL is an attitude and partly down to the fact that the media for sharing and collaboratively working is less important than the action.  Share and learn, wherever you choose to do it.

5)"WOL is just a buzz-phrase, so I don't".  I hear you, not sure I like it myself, not long ago I called it "blurting", I've called it learning out loud (LOL - lol!) or just life really.  It's less about the label or a 'thing' and more about an attitude or a way of working.  I love working out loud and the benefits it brings to me, sharing success and learning opportunities along the way. If the buzz attracts others to a more effective way of working I'm cool with that - if it puts them off then they were unlikely candidates for truly sharing this way anyways...

In short, WOL is a really good way to work in a more collaborative environment beyond yourself, beyond your self chosen network and out there in the open.  If you don't agree I'm cool with that, comment and maybe I'll change my mind - that'll happen in the public arena too of course :)

The importance and irrelevance of design

So design is important right?  You wouldn't want to just build something without a bit of thought going in to it first.  Problem is that 'design' can and often is very important, but it's also kind of irrelevant in the end.  Okay, so that explains the blog title without really explaining what I mean (hey, otherwise it would just be a really short blog post after all).  Now I'm all about learning and so naturally I'm thinking learning design in the main here, but this applies all round.  Let me give you a learning example because that's where I'm most comfortable (I was going to pick buildings but with laws and codes of compliance I'm sure I'd fall foul of something).  A company approaches me (very wisely I must say) to build them a course for customer service training.  Six weeks later I deliver them the world's finest customer service training module and they are delighted, it gets rave reviews from their staff and has measurable impact on their business.  Great.  But what about the design?  Did I do it at all?  Say instead they'd gone to company B instead of to me (why, why?).  Company B is very process driven - the plan for the learning piece is extensive and covers every angle it seems and is the plan itself is part of the deliverables and very well received.  Six months later (no coincidence but I'll come back to this) the learning objects are grandly unveiled and the result is massively disappointing, but how can this happen with such great design?

The answer to 'did I do the design' question was yes, I did.  I'm an educationalist at heart so that was important to me, but not as important as the learning piece.  What I mean is that you need to put the work in on design without doubt, but it's not actually the deliverable that your clients need (even though they may want it).  The answer to the 'how can this happen..' question is that it does and it happens all the time - the main reason is that people worship the design and lose focus on the deliverable and, perhaps most importantly, close off ideas too early.

The problem with design is often that we put enormous effort into design to make it complete and then match the development to the design just like in the old models of ADDIE and the like.  The issue I have with this cyclic approach is that the iterations take too long in the rapid world we develop in and by the time you realise what you had in mind and what is delivered are two different things it's already too late.  It's also kind of crazy in a way to think that you know exactly what you want at the start of a project.. often when developing projects you come up with a better way of doing things, what sort of design won't allow for that kind of flexibility?  Bad.  Good design is always able to respond to change - yes budgets and timelines mean at some point you have to settle on certain aspects, but if you work in a live 'evolve' mode the end product will be far more likely to meet and exceed expectations.

Evolve I've talked about before, in design it means working in a live state rather than a 'published' state.  Some people call this working in perpetual beta and it's akin to Working out Loud and even Learning out Loud that I've talked about before.  What it means in a practical sense is that rather than designing in a Powerpoint type presentation or Word docs (no, not anti Microsoft here honestly!) you work in an environment that is live.  By this I mean you work using a wiki style approach to design using web tools where changes can be made by all parties at any time and it's all recorded and live to see for all.  The simplest of these tools can be a Google Doc or Google Sheet or using some of the great collaborative note taking software like Evernote or OneNote (see MS is here!), but the tool I like best for this is a really simple collaborative post-it type tool called Trello.  I can make comments and move things etc and it lets everyone know as we go.  You can still set deadlines etc, but it means when things change or you have an opportunity to improve or a better way of doing things you do this rather than settle for a dated design.

Hopefully you've understood from this that I do value design but I think we need to remember two very key points:

1. The design needs to be live, collaborative and able to change
2. The design output is not the end product

but I also think there's a third point that I haven't mentioned

3. The design phase is not a phase at all - it's part of every phase

by this I mean that don't worry that your design isn't perfect before you start building.  You can design throughout the build as well and in fact this is likely to make your end product that much better by staying on top of changes and requirements and always being on the look out for better ways of doing things.  If we try and sign-off a perfect design we'll take three times as long and the perfect design never really exists.

Practically when working with clients I try to not get too heavily into the finer parts of design too early, I think it's an artificial situation to get in to and you'll end up with a stilted design and final product.  What I do try to do is get the overall concept and then start the build, from there we can work the design collaboratively as part of the build process.

Remember again that learning is more of a journey than a destination - design is there to support your journey.

And of course as always feel free to disagree with me if you want to - just do it out loud :)